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This is a news article posted online today about O'Neill. In it, O'Neill explains that many people took his words about Bush's Iraq plans out of context... (Sorry, y'all. I couldn't get the link to work, so I'm pasting the article below.)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, under fire for criticizing President Bush (news - web sites)'s leadership, denied on Tuesday he had taken secret documents from the Treasury.On Monday, hours after O'Neill criticized the president on CBS television, the Treasury Department (news - web sites) said its Inspector General was investigating how a document marked "secret" was shown during the interview.
Speaking on NBC's "Today" show, the ex-Treasury Secretary said the documents were given to him by the Treasury's chief legal officer after he requested them to help former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind write a book on O'Neill's time in the Cabinet.
"I said to him (the general counsel) I would like to have the documents that are OK for me to have. About three weeks later, the general counsel, the chief legal officer, sent me a couple of CDs, which I frankly never opened," said O'Neill, who resigned under pressure a year ago in a shake-up of Bush's economy team.
O'Neill, the first major Bush insider to criticize the president, said he had given the compact disc with the documents to Suskind.
"I don't honestly think there is anything that is classified in those 19,000 sheets," said O'Neill, adding only the cover sheet shown on television bore the words "secret."
But O'Neill said he was not surprised the Treasury was looking into how he got the documents. "If I were secretary of the Treasury I would have done the same," he said.
He described the reaction to Suskind's book as a "red meat frenzy" and said people should read his comments in context, particularly about the Iraq (news - web sites) war.
"People are trying to say that I said the president was planning war in Iraq early in the administration. Actually there was a continuation of work that had been going on in the Clinton administration with the notion that there needed to be a regime change in Iraq."
What surprised him, said O'Neill, was how much priority was given to Iraq by the president.
Asked about comments he did not believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the main reason cited for going to war, O'Neill said he never saw "concrete evidence" of such weapons.
"I think the fact that we have not found them makes the point. But that doesn't make the point that we should not have got rid of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)."
Asked about his comment that during Cabinet meetings Bush was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf people," O'Neill said he regretted some of the language he used to describe his former boss.
"If I could take it back, I would take it back. It has become the controversial centerpiece."
Pressed whether he would vote for Bush in the November presidential election, O'Neill said he probably would, but he said the American people needed to demand more of their leaders.
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