In late December 2002, most of Washington was winding down for Christmas.

Young White House staffers were hard at work writing thank you notes for the gifts that had been sent to the president.

But Bush wasn't ready to sign off for the holiday yet.

He called him meeting, and he asked the CIA to give him its best version of the case for war with Iraq.

The call went out when they started developing the case for anybody who had anything they

would like to contribute.

Bill McLaughlin had joined the CIA about six months earlier.

He was part of a team from the agency presenting to the president.

Because I had a UN inspection experience, I was to answer any of the president's questions on UN inspections.

Bush walked into the Oval Office meeting wearing his cowboy boots with the presidential seal on them.

And for the next 20 minutes, CIA director George Tenet's deputy presented the case.

The presentation of the case was done by John McLaughlin, who was very senior analysts.

John's not related to Bill McLaughlin, by the way.

And John had the briefing on a laptop. We also had briefing charts.

And John McLaughlin went through the briefing.

Tenet's deputy talked about the biological and chemical weapons Iraq had not accounted for since the Gulf War.

And he wrapped up by playing radio intercepts that were supposedly from Iraqi agents, talking about a weapon site.

After the presentation, the president fired off a number of questions.

The middle number of comments,

solicited our views on things.

Bush wasn't asking the CIA to take a closer look at the intelligence.

What he wanted was a more convincing pitch.

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