[laughs]

... that they must be really sinister.

We can't find them.

Look how good they are, right? So it was this very weird mirror kind of, of assessment that was going on.

His information becomes the linchpin of the American case for war when Colin Powell goes to the United Nations Security Council, and I was sitting there that day, and he says, "First thing, let's talk about biological weapons.

We have an eyewitness." And George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, Intelligence, is sitting right behind him, and Tenet has kno- not told him that the CIA has never interviewed this eyewitness, this guy sitting in, this guy in Germany, who by then, by the way, is working...

He can't hold a job.

It was just, you know, he was sort of the fall guy in a lot of ways.

... what does that mean? The White House pool, not like the outside pool.

So, yeah.

Oh, right.

So it's not a swimming pool.

It is, um...

There has been, since the days of, I believe, FDR, a dedicated, um, uh, reporters assigned full time to be with the president every time, uh, he or...

Well, it's always been a he, travels or, or does anything in public.

And I would like to know, you offered to give a little bit of perspective about the golden age of newspapers, how short it was, and the sort of fallout from that.

Right

... or so.

When Jerry said a minute ago that there were caveats and they may have this and they may have that, by the fall of 2002 when the CIA and the whole, uh, national intelligence community issues something called the National Intelligence Estimate, right? Which is supposed to be the gold standard of finished, uh, intelligence products, uh, and sends it over to Congress.

And normally, those kinds of things take, I'm told, six months, eight months, a long, long time through a, a very extensive review process.

They bang that puppy out in something like 19 days, and it did not have those caveats and did not have any of those things.

It just says, "We assess he has with high confidence," and, and so on.

And in the case of...

Uh, one follow-up to the lessons learned, uh, question is how, uh, does this apply to our current war in the Middle East against Iran?