As Atrios notes, CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr said this morning:
The bottom line, Heidi, is the US certainly does have intelligence tying these Iranian weapons shipments to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah ali Khamenei. It’s not something that the Bush White House wants to talk about in public too much because they really do not want to ratchet up tensions with Iran, the facts aside.
Starr claims the White House doesn’t want to talk about this “too much.” Actually, the White House explicitly denies it. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said yesterday:
SNOW: This is where we get to the rhetorical question I was asking you before. Do we have a signed piece of paper from Mr. Khamenei or from President Ahmadinejad signing off on this? No. …
I’m trying to be careful about how we do this. The question is, do we know that some particular senior official signed off? No. It’s an opaque government. It’s not a transparent government.
Watch both clips back-to-back:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2007/02/cnniran.320.240.flv]
In other words, CNN is now overstating the intelligence on Iran beyond the overstatements of the Bush administration.