President Bush’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union address made claims of Iraq buying yellowcake uranium from Niger, which had already been unsubstantiated by the CIA. “A new firestorm ignited and the question quickly arose over who put the faulty assertion in the speech.” CIA Director George Tenet and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley “agreed that the CIA and the NSC [National Security Council], which were both responsible for reviewing the president’s State of the Union address, would share the blame. But before any statement came out of the White House, Tenet learned that [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice…had briefed reporters and laid the blame squarely on the CIA. ‘The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,’ Rice said [on July 11, 2003], adding that ‘I can tell you, if the CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, had said, take this out of the speech, it would have been gone, without question.’ The next day…Tenet, turning the other cheek, accepted partial responsibility in a statement acknowledging that he had never read a draft of the speech ahead of time, although it had been sent to him. …Although Hadley took his share of the blame ten days later and even offered his resignation to the president for missing the yellowcake claim–Bush refused to accept it–Rice never took any blame for herself or for the NSC…”
– Elisabeth Bumiller, Condoleezza Rice: An American Life, Pages 220-221