CNN Makes News with WMD Special, But Press Deserves Blame, Too

By Greg Mitchell

Published: August 19, 2005 11:05 PM ET

NEW YORK A documentary to be aired on CNN this Sunday night on the "intelligence meltdown" on Iraq before the U.S. invasion is already making news. On Friday, CNN said that in the program, "Dead Wrong," a former top aide to Colin Powell calls his involvement in the former secretary of state's presentation to the United Nations on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction "the lowest point" in his life.

"I wish I had not been involved in it," Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, a longtime Powell adviser who served as his chief of staff from 2002 through 2005, told CNN. He said the information in Powell's presentation came from a document he described as "sort of a Chinese menu" that was provided by the White House. "It was anything but an intelligence document," he added, with some assertions based on the word of known fabricators.