Senior intelligence officials say it was a top aide of President Bush’s who urged the inclusion of a false line in his State of the Union address that alleged that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Africa.

The man Robert Joseph serves as the director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council. He had previously served in the Bush and Reagan White Houses and has been identified as a close ally to neoconservative hawks including Richard Perle and Elliott Abrams

CIA expert Alan Foley says he had warned Joseph and the White House before the State of the Union that the CIA was not certain about the credibility of the evidence connecting Iraq to Niger and recommended that it be removed from the speech.

The White House has attempted to place the blame for the misuse of the Iraq intelligence on the CIA. Last week CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for the inclusion of the uranium deal in the State of the Union address. This despite the fact that three months earlier Tenet personally called on the President to remove any references to the uranium transaction from another speech.

But after Tenet and other CIA officials testified on Wednesday in a series of closed door intelligence hearings on Capitol Hill the White House has been put back in the hot seat.

Senator Richard Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois said yesterday, “The president has within his ranks on staff some person who was willing to spin and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech the president delivers in any given year.”