(1)
According to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, he doesn’t know (or doesn’t remember) when President Bush first became aware that “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program“:

QUESTION: Steve, what is the first time the president was given the inkling that something? I’m not clear on this. Was it months ago, when the first information started to become available to intelligence agencies? […]

HADLEY: [W]hen was the president notified that there was new information available? We’ll try and get you a precise answer. As I say, it was, in my recollection, is in the last few months. Whether that’s October — August-September, we’ll try and get you an answer for that.

Just to be perfectly clear what Hadley is saying: he cannot for the life of him recall whether he went “Oh, shit!” when he heard Bush declare on October 17 that he believed Iran was trying to build a nuclear weapon.

It was, of course, Hadley’s job to be aware of the strong consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003. And to bring this to Bush’s attention. Poor guy probably doesn’t remember either when he first became aware of this.

The fact of that matter is that the NIE on Iran has existed (in pretty much its present form, presumably) for more than a year. As Gareth Porter of Inter Press Service reported on November 8:

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney‘s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say.
[...]
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi … told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.

The Bush administration — heartened, no doubt, by all the ox-crap Americans have swallowed without question over the last seven years — now wants us to believe that although a draft NIE on Iran has been in existence for more than a year, and although the Bush administration has been deeply engaged in urgent efforts to avert World War III by preventing Iran from pursuing its nuclear weapons program, they decided it was best not to take the draft NIE into account at all. In fact, to keep the commander-in-chief entirely in the dark about the contents of the NIE. That a policy decision was made that averting World War III, or nuclear war, works so much better when you’re groping in the dark.

(2)
For the record, WaPo has a front page story this morning (by Peter Baker and Robin Wright) which confidently declares:

President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.

In fact, that’s the first paragraph.

It’s really hard to tell from the article, but it sounds to me like they’re simply referring to the Stephen Hadley quote I started the post with. If that’s true, WaPo is going to have a hell of a lot of egg on their face.

The only elaboration of this first-paragraph claim comes very late in the article, and consists of:

Still, the administration understood how explosive the new conclusions would be and kept them tightly held. Hadley said Bush was first told in August or September about intelligence indicating Iran had halted its weapons program, but was advised it would take time to evaluate.

No one else is reporting any such bombshell this morning.

*** Update, 8 am ***
According to AP, Bush claimed at his press conference this morning that “he only learned of the new intelligence assessment last week”.

The president is the last to know, apparently. Why cloud his decision-making?