June 13, 2007 (LPAC)--Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has postponed the June 19 hearing where Secretary of State Condi Rice and former CIA Director George Tenet were due to testify--Tenet by agreement, and Rice under subpoena--on how the Administration came to spread the false pre-Iraq war intelligence that Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger.

The Niger procurement scheme, later shown to be a crude forgery, will be examined with other false evidence of Iraq's alleged nuclear capability used by the Bush Administration as a pretext to go to war. The testimony of government officials who doubted the evidence and presented evidence for its unreliability will be included in the questioning of Rice and Tenet.

Waxman released his letters to Rice and Tenet on June 12, informing them of the postponement of the June 19 hearing, while the Committee conducts more interviews and depositions of other officials with knowledge of these facts. Waxman names John McLaughlin, former Deputy Director of the CIA; Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell; and Carl Ford, former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research; and cites information now coming in from documents which "the State Department and the CIA "have begun to provide to the Committee."