did tenet really say "slam dunk"?

as you know, i've never believed that Tenet ever said "slam dunk" - that whole scene from woodwards Plan of Attack reads like it came out of Narnia. Ron has a post up about the slam dunk comment as well. (and let's not forget that the scene came from December21, 02!)

in any case, as i mentioned the other day, Larry Wilkerson, Powell's CoS, was on Demnow - lets cut to the vid:

AMY GOODMAN: Lieutenant Wilkerson, your response, and your involvement in the preparation of this absolutely key speech (UN, Feb03) in the lead-up to the invasion?

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I must tell you that when I heard Secretary Powell uttering those words yet again, my heart sank another inch or two. I have said before, I'll say it again, it was a low point in my professional career. I was in charge of the task force at the Secretary's orders to put together his presentation on 5 February, 2003 at the U.N. Security Council, and I spent six, seven days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency barely sleeping, as did my team, and then two days in New York with the same routine, putting this production together.

And I have read the stories, and I have heard people in the government who now continue to talk to me, talk about Curveball. I have also heard them talk about Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose story also, gained under other than Geneva Convention interrogation techniques, has now been recanted. That was the story that connected al-Qaeda and Baghdad very closely prewar. I have heard that story blown out of the water. Now I have heard the Curveball story blown out of the water.

I have no other defense than to say I sat in the room with the Secretary of State and the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, and listened to George Tenet and listened to John McLaughlin, his deputy, the D.D.C.I., and listened to his best national intelligence officers assure the Secretary of State, assure me, that this was a sound source, that indeed it was multiple-sourced, that everything we were seeing about the biological weapons labs was accurate. We could depend on it. It was a slam dunk. And now I have serious questions about -- after reading the L.A. Times piece, the Washington Post piece, I have serious questions in my mind about how we got to that point, because no one ever said a word to us during that intense preparation period, about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi's possible lack of veracity, because of the way he was interrogated, or more seriously, about Curveball and the doubts that existed in a number of places about his veracity.

It's not apparent (even from actually listening to Wilkerson, rather than just reading the transcript) that Tenet ever actually said those words to wilkerson & powell - or if Wilkerson was just characterising the conversation and repeating the phrase from Woodwards book.

It's also not obvious whether Wilkersons "slam dunk" referred only to the mobile labs, or to all of the intelligence. Woodward's claim is that "slam dunk" referred to WMD's generally (whatever that means)

i guess it doesnt really matter... woodward is a hack, so is tenet, so is Blinky, and they all got the war they wanted.