WASHINGTON – The White House denies reports that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice plans to resign over the State of the Union controversy.

"Absolutely not," NSC spokesman Michael Anton told WorldNetDaily yesterday.

Condoleezza Rice with President Bush

Rice has come under fire for her office's promotion – in spite of CIA warnings – of flawed intelligence on Iraq before the war, including a dubious charge that Baghdad was shopping for uranium to make nuclear bombs. President Bush made the allegation in his Jan. 28 speech to Congress.

Rice claims she was out of the loop at the time concerns were raised about the uranium reference.

"If there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern and as was I," she said in a July 11 press briefing.

But documents emerged last week that cast doubt on her explanation.

According to a memo sent to Rice on Oct. 6, the CIA warned her the uranium charge suffered from a "weakness in evidence." CIA Director George Tenet also tried to wave Rice's deputy Steve Hadley off the charge in several phone calls. On Oct. 7, Bush dropped the allegation from a speech he delivered on Iraq in Cincinnati. Three months later, it reappeared in his State of the Union speech.

Rice has yet to explain the inconsistency presented by the memo.

She also has maintained that the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, on Iraq – a 90-page Top Secret report prepared by the U.S. intelligence community, and sent to the White House on Oct. 2 – did not raise doubts about the uranium evidence.

"If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president or to me," Rice said on July 11.

And in a June 8 ABC News interview, she said, "The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that there were serious questions about this report."

But her remarks are at odds with the facts.

The six intelligence agencies that prepared the NIE, which was sent to Rice's office, had so little faith in the veracity of the uranium reports that they voted unanimously to leave it out of the NIE's conclusions, or "key judgments," which were recently declassified. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy of them from the NSC.

In fact, they are conspicuously absent from the list of evidence supporting the key judgment that "Saddam [Hussein] is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program."

Here is the full text of that conclusion from the NIE:

"Most agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors – as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools – provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program. (DOE agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is under way, but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.)"

The only mention of Iraq's alleged uranium procurement is contained in the "discussion" section of the NIE, and is replete with qualifiers – such as "reportedly" and "probably" – as well as caveats – such as "We do not know the status of this arrangement" and "We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."

In an "annex" to the discussion section, the State Department dismisses the claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa as "highly dubious."

Still, the president used the allegation in his State of the Union address.

Hadley, for his part, says he forgot the CIA had raised questions about the allegation – in phone conversations and in at least two memos – just three months before the address. A top agency analyst also argued over the use of the allegation with another Rice aide, Bob Joseph, during the drafting of the State of the Union.

The White House says it will not release the CIA memos sent to Rice and Hadley.

"They are both classified," Anton said. "I don't expect anything to be released."

Rumors that Rice may take the blame for the uranium controversy and step down first appeared last weekend in U.S. News and World Report.

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Previous stories:

Nuke group exposed Niger fraud in 'days'

State letter: Niger hoax main source of U.S., U.K. uranium claims

Bush had hands-on role revising disputed speech

Secret report undercuts Iraq connection to WTC

State, Energy ruled out tubes as part of Iraq program

Energy task force documents reveal Iraqi oil maps

Rumsfeld corrects testimony – twice

Pentagon miscounted MPs, translators needed for occupation

Marine general slams 'Chicken Little' news

Marine general admits Iraq intelligence flawed

No shock, no awe: It never happened

Saddam's 'gruesome' Gulf war crimes documented

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