Article & Journal Resources

By Marc Santora

Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas Governor, is again making misleading statements about how long he was unaware of a National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons.

The report was released the morning of Dec. 3 and dominated the news that day. He was asked by reporters his reaction to the report the afternoon of Dec. 4 - more than 30 hours after its release - and said he had not heard about it. His aides also said at the time that he’d been campaigning all day long, and hadn’t been briefed.

Yet, Mr. Huckabee asserted Monday that he was ambushed by reporters questioning him about the report when there was really little time for him to have looked into the matter.

“The whole perception was based on an ambush question on the NIE report,” Mr. Huckabee told the Quad City Times. “From there, it was like, Wow.’ That was released at 10 o’clock in the morning. At 5:30 in the afternoon, somebody says, ’Have you read the report?’”

He made a similar misstatement about the matter back in mid-December when questioned on “Fox News Sunday” about whether the episode reinforced doubts about his foreign policy experience.