US Senators questioned CIA Director George Tenet about prewar intelligence on Iraq at a closed Senate hearing on Wednesday amid controversy over anunsubstantiated claim by President George W. Bush that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.
It was Tenet's first trip to Capitol Hill since he publiclydeclared he was accepting responsibility for the CIA approvingthe president's January State of the Union speech that includedthe faulty reference on Iraq.
Passing a crowd of reporters, the CIA chief ignored ashouted question about whether he would resign.
Asked what he expected to hear from Tenet, KansasRepublican and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman PatRoberts replied, "Candor."
Republicans were expected to press hard on why the CIAdirector, who had not read the State of the Union addressbefore Bush delivered it, was not more involved in preventingthe mistake from landing in the key presidential speech.
Democrats were likely to turn the blame on the White Houseand focus on whether someone there had been intent on includingthe reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Africa knowing itwas based on shaky intelligence in order to hype the threat asthe president tried to gather support for going to war.