In a press conference on July 22, 2003, Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley “accepted responsibility for allowing the sixteen-word sentence about the Niger deal [to sell uranium to Iraq] to remain in the [2003 State of the Union] speech. ‘I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue… When the language in the drafts of the State of the Union referred to efforts to acquire natural uranium, I should have either asked that they–the 16 words given to that subject–be stricken, or I should have alerted DCI [Director of Central Intelligence, George] Tenet.’ ”
– Craig Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush, Page 273