Fact Check on Clinton Campaign's Claim that Obama Asserted Rockefeller Voted Against the War

"Apparently, the Clinton campaign read Senator Obama’s remarks about as carefully as Senator Clinton read the National Intelligence Estimate. Because the truth is the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 was Bob Graham, and he read the NIE, voted against the war, and counseled other Democrats to read the NIE before they voted -- Senator Clinton made a different judgment and gave George Bush a blank check for war." --Obama spokesperson Bill Burton

Despite the Clinton campaign's claims, Barack Obama was clearly referring to Senator Graham, not Senator Rockefeller today"Now I have to say, when it came to making the most important foreign policy decision of our generation - the decision to invade Iraq - Senator Clinton got it wrong. She didn't read the National Intelligence Estimate. Jay Rockefeller read it, but she didn't read it. I don't know what all that experience got her because I have enough experience to know that if you have a National Intelligence Estimate and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says, "You should read this, this is why I'm voting against the war," you should read it. I don't know how much experience you need for that."

Bob Graham, The Chair Of The Intelligence Committee in 2002, Voted Against The War Because Of What He Read In The Nie

Senator Graham: The Classified NIE "Contained Vigorous Dissents On Key Parts Of The Information" With "Particular Skepticism" on Aluminum Tubes--"The American People Needed To Know These Reservations." In an op-ed titled "What I Knew Before the Invasion," Bob Graham wrote of the classified National Intelligence Estimate, "There were troubling aspects to this 90-page document. While slanted toward the conclusion that Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction stored or produced at 550 sites, it contained vigorous dissents on key parts of the information, especially by the departments of State and Energy. Particular skepticism was raised about aluminum tubes that were offered as evidence Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. As to Hussein's will to use whatever weapons he might have, the estimate indicated he would not do so unless he was first attacked. The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled 'Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.' It represented an unqualified case that Hussein possessed them, avoided a discussion of whether he had the will to use them and omitted the dissenting opinions contained in the classified version. Its conclusions, such as 'If Baghdad acquired sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year,' underscored the White House's claim that exactly such material was being provided from Africa to Iraq. From my advantaged position, I had earlier concluded that a war with Iraq would be a distraction from the successful and expeditious completion of our aims in Afghanistan. Now I had come to question whether the White House was telling the truth -- or even had an interest in knowing the truth." [Washington Post, 11/20/05]

The Contents Of The NIE Led Bob Graham To Vote Against The War. Gerth and Van Natta wrote, "The question of whether Clinton took the time to read the N.I.E. report is critically important. Indeed, one of Clinton's Democratic colleagues, Bob Graham, the Florida senator who was then the chairman of the intelligence committee, said he voted against the resolution on the war, in part, because he had read the complete N.I.E. report. Graham said he found that it did not persuade him that Iraq possessed W.M.D. As a result, he listened to Bush's claims more skeptically." [New York Times, 6/3/07]

Sen. Graham Read The NIE Before Voting Against The Iraq War. "But no more than a half-dozen or so members actually come to review the NIE, despite the urgings of Peter Zimmerman, the scientific advisor to the Senate foreign relations committee, who is one of the first to look at the document. Zimmerman was stunned to see how severely the dissenting opinions of the Energy Department and the State Department undercut the conclusions that were so boldly stated in the NIE's 'Key Judgments' section. He later recalls, 'Boy, there's nothing in there. If anybody takes the time to actually read this, they can't believe there actually are major WMD programs.' One of the lawmakers who does read the document is Senator Bob Graham (D-Fl). Like Zimmerman, he is disturbed by the document's 'many nuances and outright dissents.' But he is unable to say anything about them in public because the NIE is classified." ["Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," Isikoff and Corn, p. 133-134, 137]