ANKLE-BITING? Once upon a time, Newsweek made for good reading, or perhaps I've just grown. Out of curiosity, I purchased a copy for its coverage of the California budget and political problems (see infra -- if the infra comes at the top of the page where's the supra?) and I find an article on the African uranium flap. Reading carefully, I find, "According to this CIA official, an agency analyst cautioned him not to include the Niger reference. The NSC man asked if it would be all right to cite a British intelligence report that the Iraqis were trying to buy uranium from several African countries. The CIA official acquiesced. Though the British have not backed off that claim (a British official told NEWSWEEK that it came from an East African nation, not Niger), CIA Director Tenet publicly took responsibility for allowing a thinly sourced report by another country to appear in the State of the Union. (The White House last week denied that the Niger reference had ever shown up in an SOTU draft.) What Bush said in his address: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'" It strikes me that Director Tenet really has nothing to apologize for, and Newsweek's chasing of the Niger-Italy-wherever document is wasted space in the magazine.