"The day before the State of the Union, I was at a Principals' meeting in the White House Situation Room...As the meeting broke up, several of us were handed copies of a draft of the forthcoming speech. I remember going back to headquarters and giving the draft to one of my special assistants, unread, and asking that it be put 'into the system for review.'

I gave it no further thought...I fully expected that if there were any problems with the State of the Union draft, someone would have come and alerted me. That's exactly what happened with the Cincinnati speech the previous fall."

("At the Center of the Storm," by George Tenet, p.459)

"When President Bush addressed the Joint Session of Congress on January 28, 2003, the handful of words toward the end of the lengthy address received very little attention from most people. But at that moment, they got absolutely no attention from me. I was at home, in bed, asleep...I was exhausted from fifteen months of nonstop work and worry since the tragedy of 9/11."

("At the Center of the Storm," Tenet, pages 451-452)

Those fateful "sixteen words" that came back to haunt George Tenet and the Bush Administration --

"THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT HAS LEARNED THAT SADDAM HUSSEIN RECENTLY SOUGHT SIGNIFICANT QUANTITIES OF URANIUM IN AFRICA."

("State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush, January 28, 2003)

(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html)