Bush Only Found Out About Iran Intel Last Week? (Updated)

Did the nation's spies only decide last week that Iran had halted its nuclear program? That's the White House line -- and its explanation for why the President was warning of "World War III," as recently as mid-October. From a White House press briefing with National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley:

Q: Steve, let me follow on this point. If we now estimate with high confidence that it was shut down as of 2003, that it was halted, in
October of this year, in 2007, the President is speaking about the
Iranian threat, in terms of World War III. Why wouldn't you conclude that this President is hyping the threat?

MR. HADLEY: Because he was describing the threat as the intelligence community itself had been describing the threat both publicly and in their briefings to him. __ The President, as I think if you look at the testimony that was given by Don Kerr and Mike Hayden today, they basically said that the intelligence community finally came to the judgments that they came to on this issue Tuesday of last week. The
President was briefed on Wednesday.__ So this is challenging information.
The intelligence community had to decide what they thought about it.
They were sufficiently uncertain about it that they delayed the publication of the NIE until they could come to the bottom of it, reach their conclusions, present it to the President, as they did on
Wednesday, and then at that point, obviously, we wanted to get it out quickly.*

Q They describe the Iranian threat today differently than the
President would have even a month ago.*

MR. HADLEY: Because our intelligence community has told us effective today that their assessment is somewhat different than it was before.
That's correct. (emphasis mine)*

Maybe this is true. If so, it runs 180 degrees counter to my experience with how the government releases information -- especially sensitive information that would appear to undermine Administration assertions.

As Josh notes, the Post is reporting that President Bush "first learned in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program and was advised it would take time to evaluate."

UPDATE: "At a press briefing this morning, President Bush said he was told by his Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell 'in
August' that 'we have some new information' regarding Iran’s nuclear program," Think Progress notes. "But Bush asserted 'he didn’t tell me what the information was'":

BUSH: I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was
John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information.
He didn’t tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.*

Later, when a reporter followed-up on this statement, Bush asserted no one ever told him to stop ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran:

REPORTER: Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as World War III was making it into conversation — at no point, nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, Maybe you want to back it down a little bit?

BUSH: No — I’ve never — nobody ever told me that.

UPDATE 2:* According to Harper's *Scott Horton, "one highly reliable intelligence community source I consulted immediately after Hadley spoke answered my question this way:"

“This is absolutely absurd. The NIE has been in substantially the form in which it was finally submitted for more than six months. The White House, and particularly Vice President Cheney, used every trick in the book to stop it from being finalized and issued. There was no last minute breakthrough that caused the issuance of the assessment.”

UPDATE 3: "Absurd" is a little strong, according to the three-letter agency folks I've talked to. Unlikely, yeah. But still within the realm of the possible. Not absurd.

(High five: Andrew)