1. The british intelligence was not based on the forged documents
2. The british intelligence services still stand by that intelligence to this day
You're actually right on this. I thought they received the same forged documents, but the investigation of the British White Paper found that it was based on other info. It was still about Niger and I believe Benin as well.
U.S. intelligence and the Iraq Study Group found nothing to either claim after the war.
"Bush said then, ???The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .??? Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.
A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush???s 16 words ???well founded.??? A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from ???a number of intelligence reports,??? a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke. Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush???s 16 words a ???lie???, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger . Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium."
The problem with this is that the White House writers did not know about any of the background intelligence to the Niger claim. The White House writers had already been told 4 times before the State Of The Union address not to include the Niger claim. They saw that it was included in the U.S. White Paper that had just been released, and the English White Paper so they thought they could use it again.
The CIA told them to switch the claim from Niger to Africa so that it wouldn't give away any intelligence. They then told them that it was a disputed story so they shouldn't use it at all. They compromised and said they would say the English claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa.
Again, the ONLY reason the White House writers mentioned the British claim was because the CIA didn't want them bringing up the Niger deal at all.
Hence the finding of the President's Intelligence Board:
"The board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable." - Washington Post
As for the actual intelligence on the Niger claim, the U.S. intelligence community never felt that the claims were "well founded."
The U.S. recieved intelligence reports from England and Italy on the supposed deal. The WINPAC division of the CIA heartily endorsed the charge, while the rest of the CIA ws skeptical. The State Department's Intel. division never believed the claim from the beginning, while the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) went back and forth.
Wilson's report got a mixed response from the CIA. He said that Niger officials said there was no deal with Iraq, but that an Iraqi trade delegation had visisted and asked to increase trade between the two countries. The CIA said that needed to be looked into. The WINPAC division said that it must involve uranium, which was an assumption, like most U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD, rather than based upon any hard facts.
By the time of the State of the Union, it seemed like the majority of the U.S. intelligence community didn't think the Niger story was a strong one, while WINPAC was still sticking to it. That's why the CIA didn't want the claim in any speech by the administration.
Here are two simple questions you can answer to try to settle this whole thing:
1) If Bush's statement that England had info on Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa/Niger was based upon good intelligence then why did the CIA tell the speech writers not to use it several times, and that they didn't believe in the British claim either?
2) How can Libby's defense case stand up in court if he claims that he forgot about Mrs. Wilson's name, only to be reminded about it by Tim Russert, when Russert didn't know who Wilson was?
For some background on the whole Niger claim here???s a piece that I wrote in the Winter of 2005.
Niger Yellow Cake Uranium Claim
???Should this regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.??? President Bush, weekly radio address, 9/14/02
???If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year.??? Iraq White Paper, 10/4/02
"If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." President Bush, Cincinnati speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars, 10/7/02
???The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.??? State Department Fact Sheet on Iraq???s Declaration to U.N., 12/19/02
???The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.??? President Bush, State of the Union, 1/29/03
"The judgment in the NIE was that if Saddam could acquire fissile material, weapons-grade material, that he would have a nuclear weapon within a few months to a year. That was the judgment of the intelligence community of the United States, and they had a high degree of confidence in it." Vice President Cheney on Meet The Press after the war on 9/14/03
One of the two major foundations for the U.S. claim that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program and could have a bomb within a year was the claim that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger beginning in 1999. This turned out to be based upon forged documents turned over to the U.S. by Italy. Despite the major questions about its authenticity, the U.S. intelligence community first grew to accept it, then move away from the claim. The Bush administration however, was looking so hard for evidence of Iraq???s nuclear program that they went public with the Niger claim in Bush???s State of the Union address in January 2003 despite the intelligence services telling them not to. After the war ended the administration and CIA played a blame game about how the claim ended up in Bush???s speech. An even larger controversy emerged as the White House tried to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who went public with his criticism of the Niger case by exposing his wife as a CIA analyst. Cheney???s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby has been indicted over this. The Niger story became a perfect example of the administration exaggerating the threat about Iraq with no solid evidence, and then trying to cover it up and later attacking its critics for exposing them.
The Niger claim began in February 1999 when the U.S. received an unverified intelligence report from Italy or England that Iraq had tried to buy 500 metric tons of yellow cake uranium from Niger. There was no evidence that the uranium arrived, and the CIA questioned the veracity of the report. When Bush came into office the Italians tried to pass the information directly to the White House. The head of Italian intelligence met with a neoconservative Michael Ledeen, who passed the yellow cake story on to Rice???s Deputy National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley.
The CIA issued its first report on the Niger claim on 10/11/01 when they outlined the documents they received. The intelligence community was divided about whether the claim was true or not, but all noted that it was not corroborated.
The administration first heard about the claim on 2/12/02 when Cheney read a DIA report about the Niger deal and asked the CIA for more info. The CIA told him that it lacked details and further proof.
Because of Cheney???s inquiry the CIA sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the claim in February 2002. Wilson???s wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA analyst, suggested his name. Wilson found no evidence of the deal, but did mention Iraq contacting a Niger business about buying uranium in 1999. Nothing happened though. U.S. intelligence was divided about whether Wilson???s report proved or disproved the Niger story.
7/22/02 The Department of Energy released a report on Niger saying that it was one of three pieces of evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. It did note that the uranium had never been delivered and that the quantity was far larger than Iraq actually needed but used it as evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from overseas. This was the first time the intelligence community used the Niger claim as part of its larger argument that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program.
Beginning in September 2002 the administration tried to use the Niger claim in various speeches, but the CIA always told them to remove it because it was not proven. This was also the month that the Niger claim went public when England released a White Paper on Iraq and Prime Minister Tony Blair made a speech about it saying that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. The CIA told the British not to use the claim because it was not proven, but England used it anyway.
9/26/02 Secretary of State Powell made the first official administration statement on the Niger deal when he mentioned it in congressional testimony.
10/1/02 the Niger claim was included in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq as proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It said that it did not know whether the deal ever went through, but it was evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from overseas to build a nuclear bomb. The State Department had a sidebar in the NIE stating its opposition to the claim. On 10/4/02 however, the Iraq White Paper did not use the Niger claim.
The growing belief in the Niger claim was again shown when U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq. The U.S. claimed that Iraq did not include the Niger deal to the inspectors and that this was a violation of the new U.N. resolution in December 2002.
The State Department was the last major intelligence service that did not believe in the Niger claim. They changed their mind on 12/19/02 when they released a report on the new U.N. inspections saying that Iraq had not reported the Niger claim. This was the first public mention of the story in the U.S. Internally there were still disputes over the Niger story within the intelligence community
Late January 2003 the debate over Niger continued as the National Security Council began writing Bush???s State of the Union speech. The administration wanted to use the report, while the CIA didn???t. First the White House changed the claim from Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, to trying to buy it from Africa since the British White Paper had already made that public. Then because the CIA still objected, the speech claimed that England had found evidence of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa to remove the U.S. completely from the story. The speech was given on 1/28/03. Bush said that it was proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. An internal investigation by the President???s Foreign Intelligence Board in May 2003 found that the administration included the Niger claim because it was desperate to find evidence against Iraq.
In February 2003 the Niger claim was finally proven false by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which took 10 days to find out the agreement between Niger and Iraq could not have been honored and just a few hours using a Google search to find that the documents from Italy were forged.
The IAEA???s findings heated up the internal debates within the intelligence community. On 2/11/03 the senior African analyst at the CIA circulated a memo speculating that the Niger deal was fake followed by a 3/11/03 CIA assessment agreeing with the IAEA report, while the DIA wrote a memo to Rumsfeld on 3/8/03 defending the claim against the IAEA. Finally on 4/5/03 the National Intelligence Council agreed that the Niger deal was faked.
At the same time Democr
ats in Congress began demanding the White House and intelligence community explain how the Niger claim ended up in Bush???s State of the Union address beginning in March 2003. By June the speech became a controversy as the administration first claimed that they knew nothing about the controversy over the Niger story even though the CIA had told them to remove it from various speeches. Then they blamed the CIA for letting the story be included, to finally Bush, Rice, and her deputy Hadley taking personal blame.
In May 2003 the Niger story took another turn when Cheney???s office began looking into Joseph Wilson???s trip to Niger. Publicly Cheney claimed that he didn???t know Wilson or about his trip to Niger, but in fact Cheney and his Chief of Staff Libby were deeply interested when Wilson started talking to the press criticizing Bush for using the Niger story in his State of the Union address. Beginning on 5/29/03 Libby had 18 meetings about Wilson with Cheney, the CIA and the media. This included a discussion with New York Times writer Judith Miller on 6/23/05 where he tried to discredit Wilson by saying he only went to Niger because his wife Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. Eventually columnist Robert Novak printed Plame???s name in a column attacking Wilson???s trip on 7/14/03. Miller would go to jail and Libby was indicted for this incident.
And a 3rd question that you still haven't answered as well:
1) If the British still stand by their claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa where is the proof since the 2003 invasion? That's four years to find the evidence and make it public to support their claim.
After the U.S. invasion, the Iraq Survey Group was created as the second organization to try to find evidence of Iraq's WMD and other weapons programs. They interviewed dozens of Iraqi officials and went through thousands of Iraqi documents that had been captured. They issued their final report in September 2004. Here's what they found about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium from abroad, specifically Niger and Africa:
"Investigation Into Uranium Pursuits and Indigenous Production Capabilities
Foreign Pursuits
ISG [Iraq Study Group] has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 [/b] or renewed indigenous production of such material???activities that we believe would have constituted an Iraqi effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. As part of its investigation, ISG sought information from prominent figures such as Ja???far Diya??? Ja???far???the head of the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
* According to Ja???far, the Iraqi government did not purchase uranium from abroad following its acquisition of yellowcake from Niger in 1981.[/b] However, Iraq also purchased uranium dioxide from Brazil in 1982. Iraq declared neither the Brazilian purchase nor one of the Niger purchases to the IAEA???demonstrating that the Iraqi Regime was willing to pursue uranium illicitly.
Regarding specific allegations of uranium pursuits from Niger, Ja???far claims that after 1998 Iraq had only two contacts with Niamey???neither of which involved uranium. Ja???far acknowledged that Iraq???s Ambassador to the Holy See traveled to Niamey to invite the President of Niger to visit Iraq. He indicated that Baghdad hoped that the Nigerian President would agree to the visit as he had visited Libya despite sanctions being levied on Tripoli. Former Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See Wissam Zahawie has publicly provided a similar account.
* Ja???far claims a second contact between Iraq and Niger occurred when a Nigerian minister visited Baghdad around 2001 to request assistance in obtaining petroleum products to alleviate Niger???s economic problems. During the negotiations for this contract, the Nigerians did not offer any kind of payment or other quid pro quo, including offering to provide Iraq with uranium ore, other than cash in exchange for petroleum.
* ISG recovered a copy of a crude oil contract dated 26 June 2001 that, although unsigned, appears to support this arrangement.
So far, ISG has found only one offer of uranium to Baghdad since 1991???an approach Iraq appears to have turned down. In mid-May 2003, an ISG team found an Iraqi Embassy document in the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) headquarters related to an offer to sell yellowcake to Iraq. The document reveals that a Ugandan businessman approached the Iraqis with an offer to sell uranium, reportedly from the Congo. The Iraqi Embassy in Nairobi???in reporting this matter back to Baghdad on 20 May 2001???indicated it told the Ugandan that Iraq does not deal with these materials, explained the circumstances of sanctions, and said that Baghdad was not concerned about these matters right now. Figure 1 is the translation of this document."
The problem with this is that the White House writers did not know about any of the background intelligence to the Niger claim. The White House writers had already been told 4 times before the State Of The Union address not to include the Niger claim. They saw that it was included in the U.S. White Paper that had just been released[/b], and the English White Paper so they thought they could use it again.
They actually didn't look at the U.S. White Paper to find reference to the Niger claim. The White Paper didn't include it. What they looked at was the October 2002 National Intellignece Estimate on Iraq, which did include the Niger story.
man Dolo is getting sonned presidentially in this thread.
Don't worry, the White House staff has got Dolo's back:
7/22/03 Mea Culpa by the adminstration:
Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admitted that he should have removed the Niger claim from the State of the Union because the 2 CIA memos asking that it be removed were addressed to him, and one was addressed to Rice as well.
Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman at the time: "This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."
Rice, "Knowing what we know now we would not have put it in the president's speech."
man Dolo is getting sonned presidentially in this thread.
Your bias precludes you from seeing the truth. Anyone can see I stomped motown into the fucking dirt. He has been forced to concede to my every point. He has been reduced to a glibbering wreck posting article after article of various state officials talking about whether the inclusion of the claim was justified as if this has any relation to to the question in hand: the credibility of joe wilson and the veracity of his statements. It is not whether the claim shouldve been included or not(it should have) but whether joe wilsons criticisms of the claim's inclusion were accurate and made in good faith. It has been made apparent in this thread that wilson lied repeatedly about the included intelligence in order to attack the bush administration.
The reason the CIA continually objected to the White House using the Niger claim in public speeches was that it was a contested report within the U.S. intelligence community. The last Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence that was released in September 2006 found that the CIA especially, had inconsistent reporting on the Niger story, sometimes saying that it was a good report, while at other times asking for it to be removed from speeches.
The Niger claim all revolved around a series of intelligence reports Italy provided to the U.S. It started with a trip by an Iraqi diplomat to Niger that Italy claimed was about buying yellow cake uranium, and was followed up by a set of faked documents allegedly from Niger???s embassy in Rome. Italian intelligence tried to enhance the fakes by adding real documents from when Niger actually sold uranium to Iraq in the 1980s. U.S. intelligence claimed that they had other evidence, but by the CIA???s own admission it was ???fragmentary and unconfirmed.???
A little over a month after Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address which said that England had intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa, a veiled reference to Niger, the Italian documents were found to be fakes. What followed was a passing of the buck by the White House for responsibility over the speech. Eventually, all of the top officials involved, even Bush, said that they should not have mentioned the Niger claim in the State of the Union.
Overall, the Niger story is an example of how U.S. intelligence was incompetent when analyzing intelligence about Iraq, and how the White House refused to take responsibility at first for its own zealotry and wanted to blame others instead.
The following is a timeline of the major events surrounding the Niger story and why it was such a disputed claim in the U.S.
February 1999[/b]
Iraq???s ambassador to the Vatican went on a four-country tour of Africa that included Niger. The trip was meant to foster trade ties and undermine U.N. sanctions. While in Niger, the Iraqi diplomat met with the president of the country. Because they discussed trade, some analysts in the U.S. believed that it was an attempt to buy yellow cake uranium. After the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi diplomat said that he never discussed uranium while in the country.
Based on this trip however, Italy delivered an intelligence report to the CIA claiming that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. The report lacked details. This was the report that Cheney would later find out about and ask for the CIA to confirm. They in turn, sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate it. This was the origin of the entire Niger claim.
1/2/01[/b]
Someone broke into the Nigerian embassy in Rome. The thieves stole official stationary and letterheads. These stolen papers were used to forge documents that claimed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents purported to be official correspondence between the Niger government and Iraq over 500 tons of yellow cake. A known intelligence scam artist sold the documents to Italian military intelligence, SISMI.
SISMI embellished the faked documents with real ones from the 1980s when Iraq had really bought uranium from Niger. There are reports that SIMI might have been the ones that broke into the embassy in the first place as well.
The faked documents plus embellishments were later passed onto the CIA and England???s MI5. The head of SISMI tried to get the documents directly to White House by giving them to a leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. The head of SISMI also discussed the documents with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.
10/14/01[/b]
The CIA issued its first intelligence report based upon the faked foreign documents that it received from Italy. The CIA said that, based upon the documents, Iraq was trying to buy tons of uranium from Niger. The report said that negotiations between Iraq and Niger had been going on since early 1999, referring to the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican???s trip, and that the deal was approved in late 2000. The CIA report also said that in October 2000 the Nigerian foreign minister told one of his ambassadors in Europe of the deal.
The report created immediate controversy within the U.S. intelligence community. The CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and Department of Energy analysts considered the report possible, but lacking in detail. The State Department???s intelligence division thought it was highly suspect. They didn???t believe that Niger would make such a deal, and that it couldn???t even if it wanted to because a French company controlled the uranium in the country.
10/18/01[/b]
The CIA wrote a second intelligence brief on the Niger claim, ???Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts.??? It repeated the story and noted that there was no corroboration for it.
10/20/01[/b]
The U.S. Ambassador to Niger sent a cable to Washington D.C. saying that the French-led company that controlled Niger???s uranium assured her that there was no deal with Iraq.
11/20/01[/b]
The U.S. Embassy in Niger talked to the director of the French business that ran Niger???s uranium and he said that no deal was possible.
1/1/02[/b]
Someone broke into the Niger embassy in Italy again. Papers and stamps were stolen. Italian police came to believe that the break-in was faked to give credibility to the forged documents that Italian intelligence had originally disseminated to the U.S. and England.
2/5/02[/b]
The CIA issued its 3rd report on the Niger-Iraq claim. It again cited the faked Italian documents as a source. It provided more details and a ???verbatim text??? of the deal. The report said that the deal went through after a series of meetings in mid-2000 for 500 tons of yellow cake. The CIA and DIA were impressed with the details of this report, while the State Department was still skeptical. The State Department asked that the source of the documents be polygraphed, and when a CIA analyst asked about the source of the claim, the CIA???s Directorate of Operations said that it was ???very credible.??? Again, analysts used the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican???s trip to Niger in 1999 as partial corroboration of the story.
2/12/02[/b]
The DIA wrote its own intelligence report based upon the most recent CIA report about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. Vice President Cheney came across the report and asked his daily CIA briefer what they thought about the DIA report. The CIA reported that the claim came from a foreign intelligence service, that it was looking into it, but that it lacked details and corroboration, and that the U.S. Embassy in Niger had found no evidence of a deal.
Because of Cheney???s inquiry, the CIA contacted former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson to travel to Niger to look into the accusations. Wilson had been posted to Niger before, knew many of the leading officials there, and had worked for the CIA before.
2/18/02[/b]
The U.S. Embassy in Niger said that the claim needed to be looked into because the amount of uranium alleged, 500 tons, would have been impossible for Niger to deliver because it was more than all of the yellow cake produced in the country in 2001.
2/19/02[/b]
While Wilson met with CIA and State Department officials about his upcoming trip, the State Department???s intelligence division continued to argue against the Niger story, while others questioned whether Wilson would be able to uncover anything at all.
2/24/02[/b]
Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger claim. The CIA gave him a report that said Niger was trying to limit its uranium exports so that it did not end up being used for anyone???s nuclear program, and that the for
eign service that had supplied the original documents had not provided any new information. They also told Cheney that a new source, i.e. Wilson who was not named, was being debriefed and might provide new info.
The State Department also wrote a report entitled, ???Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely,??? which argued that Niger would never make such a deal because of the consequences of being caught and that the original foreign intelligence report, i.e. the fake Italian documents, were of ???questionable credibility.??? The report was sent to the White House.
3/8/02[/b]
CIA wrote a report based upon Wilson???s trip to Niger. It said that the Prime Minister of Niger did not know of any deals with Iraq. In June 1999, a Niger businessman did bring up a business deal between Iraq and Niger, which the Prime Minister assumed must involve uranium. Nothing came of the deal however. The report was given a ???good??? rating by the CIA, supported by the State Department, but the CIA and DIA analysts argued over the meaning of the business deal aspect of it.
Wilson???s trip led to further disputes between the CIA???s WINPACT nuclear program section and the State Department???s intelligence division. The CIA analysts believed that Iraq could be buying uranium from Niger, while State analysts believed that it never happened. The two sides ???agreed to disagree.???
Cheney was never told of Wilson???s trip because the intelligence community couldn???t agree on what he found.
3/25/02[/b]
The CIA issued another report on Niger that simply restated its earlier findings.
5/10/02[/b]
The CIA???s office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis put out a briefing book on Iraq that included the Niger claim.
7/22/02[/b]
The Department of Energy issued an intelligence report that said the Iraq-Niger deal was one of three events that might prove that Iraq was re-starting its nuclear program again even though there was no evidence that the deal ever went through. The report noted that the 500 tons that Iraq supposedly ordered, ???far exceeds what Iraq would need for a robust nuclear weapons program.??? This was a marked change of opinion by the Department, which had previously believed that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear program.
September 2002[/b]
The DIA issued a report saying that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It used the Niger case as an example, as well as alleged attempts by Iraq to buy other materials from the Congo and Somalia. The report noted that the DIA could not confirm the source of the Niger story.
9/11/02[/b]
Bush???s top speechwriter received a call from his boss that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and that they might want to use it in one of Bush???s speech or leak it to the New York Times. The writers decided that they would use it in a speech Bush was set to deliver to the U.N. The CIA told the writers that the report had not been confirmed and to not include it in the speech, so they removed it. This was the first attempt to go public with the Niger deal by the administration, and the first time the CIA told them that it was a questionable story.
9/24/02[/b]
England???s Joint Intelligence Committee published a White Paper on Iraq???s WMD. It included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. CIA Director George Tenet told the British that they shouldn???t make that claim, but the British used it anyway.
In a press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that the English White Paper included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa, and that they agreed with it. This was the first public mention of the Niger story even though the country wasn???t named.
The National Security Council asked the CIA to allow Bush to say make the Niger claim in a speech. The CIA didn???t say that the Niger deal hadn???t happened, but that the language should be changed to get Bush???s point across. The claim was never made. This was the second time the CIA warned the White House about the story.
October 2002[/b]
The CIA published a classified handbook to be used by policymakers, intelligence officials and the military that included the Niger claim. The CIA also gave the ok to a White House paper that included the story was well.
10/1/02[/b]
The U.S. intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. It said that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and used the Niger claim as one bit of evidence. It stated that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger as early as 2001, but it didn???t know if the deal had gone through or not. It also said that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Somalia and the Congo, but the NIE couldn???t confirm whether these deals had been consummated either. The State Department???s intelligence service was the only part of the intelligence community that disagreed with the story. The State Department included their own separate text box disputing the claim. Overall, the NIE analysts did not think that the Niger deal was key to the argument that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program.
10/2/02[/b]
During testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director Tenet was asked if he had read the British White Paper, and whether he disagreed with any part of it. Tenet said, ???The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We???ve looked at those reports and we don???t think they are very credible. I doesn???t diminish our conviction that he???s going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point. Otherwise I think it???s very solid.???
10/4/02[/b]
The National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programs of the CIA backed up Tenet???s earlier testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by saying that the British White Paper stretched its conclusions by including the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. The officer said that the main concern about the story was that Iraq already had some uranium in the country, so they didn???t need to buy any from abroad.
The National Security Council sent a draft of a speech that Pres. Bush was to get at Cincinnati that included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium from Africa.
The CIA delivered its public White Paper on Iraq to Congress. The Agency had begun work on it before it started on the NIE. The White Paper did not include the Niger or African uranium claims.
10/5/02[/b]
The CIA held a meeting to go through Bush???s proposed Cincinnati speech. Nuclear analysts questioned whether the Africa/Niger story should be included because it came from a questionable source and the fact that it would be very hard to actually carry out. The CIA told the Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Bush???s speechwriters to remove the claim because the story was disputed and Iraq already had 550 tons of uranium in the country. The National Security Council wouldn???t give up and sent back another draft that still included the Africa/Niger claim in it.
10/6/02[/b]
CIA Director Tenet called Hadley several times to get him to remove the Africa/Niger claim from Bush???s speech. The CIA also sent along 2 memos to the White House, one to Hadley and one to his boss Rice, arguing why it should not be used. The claim was eventually dropped from the speech. This is the third time the White House tried to include the claim, and the CIA had it removed.
10/9/02[/b]
An Italian magazine passed on copies of the faked Niger documents to the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
10/15/02[/b]
The State Department received the faked documents. State???s intelligence ana
lysts were immediately suspicious of the documents because of their format and content. One document for example, claimed that there was a secret meeting in Rome of military officials from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Pakistan. The State Department didn???t believe that Iran and Iraq would be cooperating on secret deals. Other officials from State also argued that the documents looked like forgeries.
10/16/02[/b]
Copies of the Italian documents were given to the CIA, DIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Energy. The CIA did not think that they were important because Italy had already given them enough intelligence on the Niger-Iraq deal. Apparently they did not notice that these were the same documents their original reporting was based upon.
Mid-November 2002[/b]
The U.S. told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Niger story was ???fragmentary, at best. We assess that none of these deals have gone through, but it shows that Iraq is probably trying to acquire uranium ore abroad.???
11/22/02[/b]
The French told the State Department that they had found no evidence of an Iraq-Niger deal.
12/7/02[/b]
Iraq released a 12,000 page report on its weapons programs to U.N. inspectors. The State Department noted that the report did not mention the Niger story.
12/17/02[/b]
The CIA published a report on Iraq???s report to U.N. inspectors. The report said that Iraq had not accounted for trying to buy uranium from Niger. The report was passed onto the White House without the dissenting opinions of the State and Energy Departments who disputed the story. State and Energy Department analysts complained to each other that their objections were not included in the CIA???s report. They thought that the CIA was trying to control the discussion on the issue. An Energy Department analyst wrote to a State Department intelligence officer, ???It is most disturbing that WINPAC [the CIA???s proliferation division who had been championing the Niger story] is essentially directing foreign policy in this matter. There are some very strong points to be made in respect to Iraq???s arrogant non-compliance with UN sanctions. However, when individuals attempt to convert those ???strong statements??? into the ???knock-out??? punch, the Administration will ultimately look foolish ??? i.e. the tubes and Niger!???
By the time the report came out, the top two at the CIA, Tenet and his deputy had already discounted the Niger story, but the WINPAC division would not relent.
12/18/02[/b]
The Principals Group of the National Security Council discussed how to deal with Iraq???s report. The State Department was asked to draft a response. There was lots of debate about whether to include the Niger story.
12/19/02[/b]
The State Department issued its report on Iraq???s disclosure to U.N. inspectors. It said that Iraq had try to buy yellow cake from Niger and that Iraq was trying to hide it. The document was the first public mention of the Niger story by name.
12/20/02[/b]
The CIA removed a reference to the Niger claim in a speech by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte that was scheduled to be delivered to the Security Council. This was the fourth time the CIA blocked the inclusion of the claim in a public speech.
12/24/02[/b]
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Mines in Niger publicly denied selling uranium to Iraq after the public disclosure of the story by the State Department.
1/3/03[/b]
The International Atomic Energy Agency requested information on the Iraq-Niger deal from the State Department.
1/13/03[/b]
State Department intelligence officials sent off e-mails to the intelligence community arguing that the Niger deal was a hoax.
1/15/03[/b]
The CIA told the White House to change language in a draft of Bush???s State of the Union address from Niger to Africa to protect intelligence sources.
1/17/03[/b]
The CIA made a report at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. The CIA reported on the Niger story while questioning its veracity.
1/20/03[/b]
Bush submitted a report to Congress on Iraq???s non-compliance with U.N. resolutions to counter U.N. weapons inspector reports that they had found no evidence of WMD. The Bush report included the Niger claim. The National Security Council wrote the report, and the CIA did not check it.
1/24/03[/b]
The National Security Council asked for more info on Iraq???s WMD programs for Powell???s planned speech to the U.N. The CIA faxed over info that included the Niger story. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked for information on the Niger claim. In response, the DIA sent a paper on the original CIA report. It said that it couldn???t confirm whether the yellow cake had been delivered, but that enough time had passed that Iraq could have received some.
1/27/03[/b]
The CIA issued a report saying that a foreign intelligence service gave them information on Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger in 1999, a reference to the Iraqi ambassador???s trip in February 1999.
At a National Security Council meeting Tenet was given a hard copy of Bush???s State of the Union address. Tenet told Congress that he never read it otherwise he would???ve removed the reference to Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger.
CIA and National Security Council officials had been discussing the Niger claim beforehand. A CIA analyst wanted the claim to be completely removed, but they made a compromise and decided to change the source of the claim from U.S. to British intelligence because they had mentioned it in their White Paper.
1/28/03[/b]
Bush gives his State of the Union address that includes the yellow cake claim.
1/29/03[/b]
Rumsfeld opened a press conference by saying that Iraq was working on its nuclear program and had tried to buy uranium form Africa.
2/3/03[/b]
The CIA asked Italy about more details about the Niger story, but they said they had none.
2/4/03[/b]
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave a briefing on the Niger claim. They said they had not received any documents on the story yet. The IAEA was finally given the documents on the day of Powell???s speech to the U.N.
It took the IAEA ten days to determine that the agreement was a hoax. A few hours of searching on Google revealed 15 anomalies amongst the papers that led the IAEA to determine that they were fakes. Among its discoveries was a letter that referred to the 1965 Niger constitution, when a new one had been passed in 1999. One letter dated October 2000 bore the signature of the Foreign Minster of Niger who had not been in office since 1988.
2/11/03[/b]
The CIA???s senior African analyst sent an intelligence assessment to the rest of the CIA saying that the Niger documents were very questionable and could be forgeries.
2/12/03[/b]
The IAEA interviewed Iraq???s former ambassador to the Vatican who had traveled to Niger in 1999. He said that he had never discussed uranium while there, but the U.N. was skeptical.
2/27/03[/b]
Senator Levin had requested information about the Niger claim. The CIA told him that Iraq had attempted to buy yellow cake from Niger, that Niger had assured the CIA that the deal did not happen, but that the CIA still had confidence that the deal was discussed beginning in 1999.
3/3/03[/b]
The IAEA told the U.S. mission in Vienna that it had studied the Niger documents and found that they were forgeries.
3/4/03[/b]
Earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten confirmation of the Iraq-Niger deal from French intelligence.
The U.S. now found that France based its claims on the same faked documents from Italy.
3/7/03[/b]
The IAEA told the U.N. Security Council that the Iraq-Niger documents were fakes.
3/8/03[/b]
The DIA wrote a memo to Rumsfeld about a Washington Post story that said the IAEA had found the Niger story to be a fake. The DIA claimed that there was other evidence to support the claim. According to the DIA, some of the other information included a U.S. Naval intelligence report that a Benin warehouse was being used to store large amounts of Niger uranium destined for Iraq. The DIA did not mention that a Defense Department official had checked the warehouse and found only bales of cotton.
CIA???s WINPAC division also claimed that it had other information to support the Niger claim, but admitted that it was ???fragmentary and unconfirmed.???
3/11/03[/b]
The CIA wrote an assessment saying they did not dispute the findings of the IAEA that the Iraq-Niger documents were fakes. It said that the CIA had always said that the Niger claim was not confirmed. Still, the CIA was concerned that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from abroad.
4/5/03[/b]
The National Intelligence Council issued a memo saying that they agreed with the IAEA???s conclusions that the Niger documents were fakes, that the other evidence was not credible, and that Niger would probably not sell uranium to Iraq.
May 2003[/b]
The President???s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board began an investigation into how the Niger claim made its way into Bush???s State of the Union address. The Board found that the White House was so desperate to find evidence against Iraq that it ignored the CIA???s warnings and included the Niger story over their objections.
5/6/03[/b]
Former ambassador Wilson complained about the White House ignoring his findings on Niger to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who included it in one of his pieces.
This piece caught the attention of Cheney who began discussing with his deputy Lewis ???Scooter??? Libby about how to respond.
5/29/03[/b]
Libby had up to 18 discussions beginning on May 29 about Wilson???s trip, which included discussions about his wife Valier Plame/Wilson.
June 2003[/b]
The State Department circulated a document about Wilson???s trip to Niger. The document discussed why State did not believe the Niger claims.
During June Libby had several discussions with reporters bringing up the fact that Wilson???s wife worked at the CIA and implied that he went on the trip because of nepotism, rather than his previous experience in Niger.
6/2/03[/b]
Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a press releases where he said he did not use the Niger claim in his February 2003 U.N. speech because he didn???t believe it was substantiated.
6/8/03[/b]
The White House began damage control over the State of the Union-Niger controversy by denying that it knew about objections to its use, while blaming the CIA for its inclusion at the same time. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice told Meet The Press, ???Maybe someone knew down in the bowls of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.??? Rice failed to mention that she had been warned by the CIA not to use the Niger claim in a previous Bush speech in October 2002. Rice still claimed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from overseas even though she admitted that the Niger report should not have been included in Bush???s speech.
6/12/03[/b]
Former Ambassador Wilson was the source for a Washington Post story that said the Niger-Iraq documents were forgeries even though he hadn???t seen them. The Senate Intelligence Committee later found that most of Wilson???s comments to the press were not based upon his first hand knowledge, but rather his own assumptions and media reports.
The DIA sent a memo to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz about Iraq???s nuclear program that said the National Intelligence Committee agreed with the IAEA that the Niger documents were fakes. It reported that was other evidence of the Niger deal such as the Navy report about a Benin warehouse, but the DIA again did not mention that that charge had been proven false.
Cheney and Libby had a meeting about Wilson talking to the press. Cheney told Libby Wilson???s wife???s name and that she worked at the CIA. Testimony at Libby???s trial showed that Cheney wanted to make personnel attacks on Wilson to discredit him using his wife. Cheney would also direct the White House???s public statements on the Wilson affair, while carrying out his own covert PR campaign against Wilson.
6/17/03[/b]
It took the CIA five months after Bush???s State of the Union address to acknowledge that the Niger deal was based upon forged documents and that Iraq was not trying to buy uranium from Niger. The memo was distributed outside the CIA as well.
7/6/03[/b]
Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, ???What I Didn???t Find In Africa.??? He went over his trip to Niger and how he had found no evidence of a deal with Iraq. He also claimed that Cheney must have been informed of his trip, and asked how the White House could then use the claim in the State of the Union if they were not manipulating intelligence to justify the war. As mentioned earlier, because the intelligence community was so conflicted over Wilson???s trip, they never informed Cheney of Wilson???s trip.
Rice told Face the Nation, ???Had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence ??? it would have been gone.???
7/7/03[/b]
Bush chimed in by saying, ???Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts. But when they talked about the speech and when they look at the speech, it was cleared.???
7/8/03[/b]
The National Security Council???s spokesman said that the forged documents were not the only source of Bush???s State of the Union claim about African uranium.
7/11/03[/b]
During a trip to Africa, the administration continued to blame the CIA for the State of the Union gaffe with statements by both Bush and Rice that the Agency had cleared the speech. Rice also said that the CIA was not the only source for the Niger claim, but that England believed it as well. CIA analysts responded by leaking to the Washington Post that the CIA had warned the British not to include any Niger or African uranium claim in their White Paper. Others leaked the fact that the CIA had the White House remove the Niger claim from other Bush speeches before the State of the Union.
Tenet publicly took responsibility for the uranium claim being included in the State of the Union speech. The Senate Intelligence Committee later agreed with Tenet and the White House that the CIA was at fault for the Niger claim getting into the State of the Union.
7/12/03[/b]
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote a letter that England still believed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. Straw said the claim was based upon another intelligence service, but that it could not share the info with the U.S.
7/13/03[/b]
Rice and Rumsfeld appeared on Sunday morning TV talk shows to defend how the Niger claim got into the State of the Union. On Face The Nation, Rice said that it was a mistake to include the Africa claim in the State of the Union, but now it was being blown out of proportion. Rice said that the British had other evidence to support the Niger claim.
7/16/03[/b]
Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had told Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley to remove the Niger/Africa comment from Bush???s October 2002 Cincinnati speec
h. Tenet also said that he had never read Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address, which was how the Africa claim got into it.
7/17/03[/b]
Tenet and other CIA officials again testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the negotiations with the White House over the State of the Union. A CIA officer said that when the White House faxed over a copy that included the Niger claim he told them that it should not be used because of doubts about its source. The White House official first agreed to remove it, but then asked if Bush said the claim came from the British could Bush use it? The CIA official said that they had tried to get the British to not use the claim either.
7/22/03[/b]
Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley said that he had deleted reference to the Niger story from Bush???s Cincinnati speech based upon the CIA???s objections so he should have removed it from the State of the Union. He said the CIA sent him one memo and Rice with another, contradicting her claim that she knew nothing about objections to the story. Hadley offered to resign over the incident, but Bush refused. This marked a turn in the White House???s policy. At first they blamed the CIA for the State of the Union. Because the controversy had not gone away, they now had to take responsibility themselves. Hence White House spokesman Flesicher said, ???This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech,??? and Rice stated, ???Knowing what we know now we would not have put it in the president???s speech.???
Cheney???s office on the other hand was still on the defensive claiming that he did not know about Wilson???s report on his trip to Niger. Cheney???s spokeswoman said, ???The vice president doesn???t know Joe Wilson and did not know about his trip until he read about it in the press.??? This was only partially true because Cheney and Libby had already hatched an official and unofficial program to attack Wilson???s credibility ever since he started talking to the press.
7/30/03[/b]
Bush and Rice took personal responsibility for mentioning the Niger/Africa claim in the State of the Union.
10/2/03[/b]
After the U.S. invasion in March 2003 the Iraq Survey Group was established to find Iraq???s WMD programs. They released their interim report that found no evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from any foreign country including Niger or other African countries since 1991. They actually found out that Iraq had turned down an offer for uranium from Uganda.
7/7/04[/b]
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its first report on the U.S.???s pre-war intelligence on Iraq. It said one problem with the CIA???s reporting on Niger was that not all of its analysts knew about the controversy over its authenticity so they continued to use it.
7/14/04[/b]
A British commission on its pre-war intelligence on Iraq found that claims about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa were not based upon the faked documents from Italy.
September 2004[/b]
The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report. It had the same findings as the interim report that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium from Niger or any other African or foreign country since 1991.
April 2005[/b]
The Robb-Silberman Commission that was established by Pres. Bush to look into pre-war intelligence issued its report. It found that U.N. inspectors had disproved the Niger claim, but that their findings were routinely dismissed by the White House and U.S. intelligence.
2006[/b]
The FBI said that the fake Niger documents were part of a money scam by an official at the Niger embassy in Rome.
9/8/06[/b]
The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a new report comparing America???s pre-war intelligence to what they found after the invasion. They stated that the majority of the intelligence community believed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from abroad, but didn???t think that the Niger deal was critical proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It found that the State Department was the only part of the intelligence community that consistently dissented on the veracity of the Niger story. The CIA on the other hand, had inconsistent reporting, sometimes saying that it was valid, while other times questioning it and wanting it removed from Bush???s speeches.
man Dolo is getting sonned presidentially in this thread.
Your bias precludes you from seeing the truth. Anyone can see I stomped motown into the fucking dirt. He has been forced to concede to my every point. He has been reduced to a glibbering wreck posting article after article of various state officials talking about whether the inclusion of the claim was justified as if this has any relation to to the question in hand: the credibility of joe wilson and the veracity of his statements. It is not whether the claim shouldve been included or not(it should have) but whether joe wilsons criticisms of the claim's inclusion were accurate and made in good faith. It has been made apparent in this thread that wilson lied repeatedly about the included intelligence in order to attack the bush administration.
ITS A WRAP BATCHES!
Yes, you will never be accused of being biased. Just being a bitch.
Plus Dolo you're running in circles. Wilson's major claim was that there was no proof of an Iraq-Niger deal. No deal existed. The White House was told not to do it and did it anyways. Afterwards the President on down said they shouldn't have done it. No evidence has been found in the four years after the invasion that a deal existed. If you want to still believe that such a deal existed go ahead. Perhaps then you'd be interested to know that my 8 year old kid believes that the Irish have a pot of gold. Maybe you two would like to set up a play day together and go chase down your
From the Senate Intelligence Report on Pre-War Intelligence July 2004
???Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador???s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts??? assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
Conclusion 19. Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.???
Here's a breakdown of Wilson's op-ed piece that he wrote for the New York Times where he went public with his accusations:
Published on Sunday, July 6, 2003 by the New York Times What I Didn't Find in Africa by Joseph C. Wilson 4th
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg?? d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S??o Tom?? and Pr??ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.
It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ??? a form of lightly processed ore ??? by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq ??? and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.
(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors ??? they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government ??? and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.
I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigo
rous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program ??? all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.
But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.
Joseph C. Wilson 4th, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.>>
There is plenty of evidence that the Bush administration did in fact manipulate intelligence to argue its case for war. Here Wilson is referring to the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraq-Niger deal, yet the White House included it in Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address.
For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg?? d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S??o Tom?? and Pr??ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.>>
Here???s a short rundown of Wilson???s career to establish his authenticity. Wilson came from a wealthy California Republican family that included Pete Wilson former senator and governor of California.
It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.>>
This was not the first time that Wilson had been involved in Africa???s uranium industry. While a diplomat he???d been involved in tracking uranium production in West Africa. When Wilson was posted in Niger in the 1970s he tracked the growth of the country???s uranium production. He did the same thing in Gabon. When he worked at the National Security Council from 1997-98 he was also charged with tracking uranium trade throughout Africa. Wilson had also worked for the CIA in 1999 when he was tasked to find any business deals Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan might have had with Niger.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ??? a form of lightly processed ore ??? by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.>>
On 2/12/02 Cheney read a DIA report that simply restated the most recent findings of the CIA on an alleged Niger-Iraq deal for yellow cake uranium. The CIA reporting was basked upon faked documents provided to it by Italian intelligence. The Italians had recently provided a text of the supposed deal and the CIA and DIA analysts were impressed with what they saw.
When Cheney read the report he asked his CIA daily briefer what he thought about the report. The CIA got back to the Vice President telling him that the report came from a foreign country, that it was looking into it, but that it lacked details and corroboration. They also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Niger had fond no evidence that the deal had ever been made.
The CIA felt that Cheney???s inquiry gave added impetus to discover whether the deal was actually made however that led them to contact former Ambassador Wilson to travel to Niger to investigate it.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.>>
The U.S. Ambassador to Niger had been doing her own investigation of the Niger deal and had found no evidence of it. In October and November 2001 she reported that the French company that controlled Niger???s uranium industry said that a deal with Iraq was impossible. On 2/18/02 the U.S. Embassy reported that the amount in the alleged deal, 500 tons of yellow cake, would have been nearly impossible for Niger to delivery because it was more than the country???s total output in 2001.
On 2/19/02 Wilson met with the CIA and State Dept. about his trip to Niger. Within the intelligence community the Niger claim and Wilson???s trip was also a source of contention. The State Department???s intelligence division was the one section of the community that had consistently argued against the possibility of a Niger deal, while one section of the CIA vehemently believed in it. Intelligence analysts were also questioning whether Wilson???s trip would be worthwhile or not and turn anything up.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq ??? and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.>>
As already stated, the U.S. Embassy in Niger had sent three reports to Washington questioning the Iraq-Niger deal. Wilson also had extensive contacts with current and former Nigerian officials, which he met with while in the country.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two
mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.>>
This is what the U.S. Embassy in Niger had already reported to Washington, that Niger???s uranium was controlled by a foreign country that would not make such a deal with Iraq.
(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors ??? they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government ??? and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)>>
Wilson is referring to the faked Italian documents that set off the slew of U.S. intelligence reports on the Niger story. They were in fact full of inconsistencies, which were pointed out by the State Department, but ignored by the CIA. It was these consistencies that led the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare that they were fakes in March 2003.
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.>>
Wilson had talked to the leading ex-government officials in Niger and the U.S. Ambassador and they said that there was no deal with Iraq. He also confirmed that the uranium businesses was highly regulated by a French led company, and that 500 tons of yellow cake would be too much for the country to produce. The only suspicious activity that he found out about was from the former Niger prime minister that told him that in 1999 an Iraqi official wanted to discuss increasing trade between the two countries which the prime minister interpreted to mean uranium. Nothing came of it however and uranium was never openly discussed.
Wilson reported his findings to the CIA and thought the matter was over.
What Wilson didn???t know was that his trip, rather than calming the storm within the intelligence community, just gave it new wind. The CIA believed that the 1999 discussion with an Iraqi official was proof that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger because this was the first report they had received back in January 2001. The State Department however was still dissenting, arguing that the deal could have never been pulled off.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.>>
There has already been extensive discussion of how the African uranium claim got into the State of the Union. The White House speechwriters included the claim over the objections of the CIA who did not feel that it was a strong story.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.>>
On 12/7/02 the State Department issued a response to Iraq???s disclosure to U.N. weapons inspectors saying that Iraq did not mention the Niger case. On 12/19/02 the State Department a public report making the same charge.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.>>
When Wilson was briefed by the CIA and State Department he was told that he was going on his trip because the vice president had asked about an intelligence report on Niger. Wilson assumed that since Cheney was the impetus behind the trip that he would be informed of his findings. In fact, because Wilson???s trip was so disputed within the intelligence community they did not inform Cheney.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.>>
This is pure speculation on Wilson???s part.
I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program ??? all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.
But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.>>
Here Wilson finishes off by saying that while he felt Iraq was a threat he didn???t feel that it required a war. He questions whether the government was truthful about its accusations against Iraq???s WMD based upon his own personal experience with Niger.
1. the british intelligence suggested that iraq had sought a deal with niger to purchase the yellowcake. Why would someone believe that pointing to a lack of evidence suggesting a deal took place would undermine a statement that never claimed a deal had taken place? because they are an idiot
2. The argument from the very beginning has not been about whether the british intelligence should have been included, it has been about wilson's credibility. Your repeated attempts to drag the argument onto this ground only act as an implicit admission of wilson's complete lack of credibility as evidence by his numerous distortions and outright lies.
hey doloSCUM at this point in the game all of your heroes are belly up dead and bloated on the beach who are you defending? tony blair? a puppet of the Bush Crime Family has even had a change of heart since things are so grim. who cares about wilson? CHANEY BLEW PLAME's COVER because he was pissed that is TREASON from any angle it is a crime worthy of hanging if the founding fathers were alive Chainey would be swinging like billy budd dead from a blodclot heart attakkk long ago so who are you defending over this immense failure of foreign policy? wolfwitz?pearle? the project for a new America? lockheed martin or prehaps you are gaging on Raytheon Cock? yummy like blood pudding are you down with the Carlyle Group Consortium/Gang? or prehaps Root Kellog Browne or the nice mercenary death machine fellows over at BLACKWATER/WACKENHUT?
Who is your mean white guy IDOl DOLO SKKKUM ASSWIPE?
FESS UP BITCH
WHOOSE STOCK IS NOT IN YOUR URINE STAINED Imaginery PORTFOLIO?
what has bveen gained in iraq? they can't even get the oil pumping silly fools as always the republicanss are full of empty bravado and lies /propaganda /massive press minipulation/ownage -the veil of which was lifted during the trial of WASP SCUM [see mission accomplished episode in 03] Rumsfeld is the New McNamara who admitted after the fact that vietnam was wrong and wasting 2 million north vietnemese was a fact that never came up in his book So how many dead Iraqi civilians will the final count be? For What?
I just went through Wilson's op-ed piece where he went public with his argument against the administration. I actually hadn't read it since it first came out. Show me where he's lying in that piece.
1. the british intelligence suggested that iraq had sought a deal with niger to purchase the yellowcake. Why would someone believe that pointing to a lack of evidence suggesting a deal took place would undermine a statement that never claimed a deal had taken place? because they are an idiot
And this twisted piece of logic only shows that you are an idiot.
And P.S. - My kid is still waiting for his playday with you. He's 8, you'd get along great.
Since my bitch has ???cut and run??? like usual, I???d just like to clarify a couple points.
Dolo claimed:
1. The british intelligence was not based on the forged documents
2. The british intelligence services still stand by that intelligence to this day
Yes, the British intelligence claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa was not based upon the forged Italian documents according to the Butler commission that looked into England???s pre-war intelligence.
However the claim WAS based upon info that the CIA already had. Here???s a footnote from the book Hubris by Michael Isikoff from Newsweek and David Corn of the Nation and Fox News:
???A year later, a British parliamentary committee headed by Lord Butler described the ???other intelligence??? as reports of the February 1999 trip to Niger by Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi ambassador to the Holy See. British intelligence had assessed that a uranium deal ???could have been the subject of discussions??? during the visit. This led the Butler commission to conclude that the British government???s assertion about Iraq???s attempts to buy uranium ??? and Bush???s sixteen words ??? were ???well founded.??? Yet the Butler Commission noted that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] had obtained excerpts of Zahawei???s travel report, and they contained no reference to any talks about uranium. And no new intelligence had been obtained indicating the Zahawie trip had been related to uranium purchases. Moreover, the idea that Zahawie???s trip could have justified Bush???s assertion was a stretch: Bush had said Saddam had ???recently??? sought uranium from Africa. At the time of Bush???s speech, the Zahawie visit was nearly four years in the past.???
Zahawie???s trip was actually the beginning of the entire Niger story for BOTH British intelligence and the CIA. As I pointed out in a timeline:
February 1999[/b]
Iraq???s ambassador to the Vatican went on a four-country tour of Africa that included Niger. The trip was meant to foster trade ties and undermine U.N. sanctions. While in Niger, the Iraqi diplomat met with the president of the country. Because they discussed trade, some analysts in the U.S. believed that it was an attempt to buy yellow cake uranium. After the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi diplomat said that he never discussed uranium while in the country.
Based on this trip however, Italy delivered an intelligence report to the CIA claiming that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. The report lacked details. This was the report that Cheney would later find out about and ask for the CIA to confirm. They in turn, sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate it. This was the origin of the entire Niger claim.
What it proves is that neither the British nor the U.S. had any good intell on Iraq after the U.N. weapons inspectors were kicked out. They didn???t have any evidence of uranium discussions at all at this trip, they just ASSUMED that???s what must have been talked about.
And if the British still stick to that claim, then they???re worse than the White House at outdated claims about Iraq. As the Iraq Study Group found by interviewing hundreds of Iraqi officials and going through thousands of documents after the invasion:
"Investigation Into Uranium Pursuits and Indigenous Production Capabilities
Foreign Pursuits
ISG [Iraq Study Group] has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 or renewed indigenous production of such material???activities that we believe would have constituted an Iraqi effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. As part of its investigation, ISG sought information from prominent figures such as Ja???far Diya??? Ja???far???the head of the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
End of story. The Niger story was always a disputed claim within U.S. intelligence. That???s why the CIA kept on telling the White House not to use it, but they did it anyways. Changing the claim to Africa and the British was just sidestepping the warning, thus the President???s Foreign Intelligence Board found that ???the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.???[/b]
I didnt cut and run, I conquered and left. Motown got stomped out as evidenced by the pitiful attempt to switch the debate. The question was about whether wilson's criticisms of the included intelligence were valid. That motown is searching his 'files' for differing criticism of the included intelligence from other parties shows to things:
1) He is attempting to make this a debate about the intelligence itself rather than wilsons criticisms of it because he knows he has lost comprehensively on the latter point
2) If motown really believed wilsons criticism of the included intelligence to be sound he wouldnt be citing other sources of criticism which differ and conflict with wilsons.
I didnt cut and run, I conquered and left. Motown got stomped out as evidenced by the pitiful attempt to switch the debate. The question was about whether wilson's criticisms of the included intelligence were valid. That motown is searching his 'files' for differing criticism of the included intelligence from other parties shows to things:
1) He is attempting to make this a debate about the intelligence itself rather than wilsons criticisms of it because he knows he has lost comprehensively on the latter point
2) If motown really believed wilsons criticism of the included intelligence to be sound he wouldnt be citing other sources of criticism which differ and conflict with wilsons.
You're like a chicken that has lost his head.
Wilson talked to the Nigerian officials that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican talked to in 1999. They said the Iraqi wanted to expand trade. They said that might have been about yellow cake, but they never brought it up. This meeting in 1999 was the entire basis for both the British and American claims about uranium/Niger/Africa.
Wilson believed that there was no attempt by Iraq to get uranium because it was never discussed and passes this onto the CIA. He assumes this ends the debate, but it only increases the different views of intell analysts (CIA's WINPAC vs State Dept.)He assumed this was passed up to the chain of command to Cheney becuase the CIA told him he was going on this trip because of the V.P.'s office, but it wasn't.
Did Wilson not address the original British and U.S. intelligence report then? Yes he did. Did he think the claim was legit? No he didn't. Was he proven right in the end? According to the Iraq Survey Group, yes he was.
Honest debates are a good thing. Can you participate in one and make a coherent argument or is your whole shtick name calling and false braggadocio?
Can you actually make an argument and back up your statements that you???ve made?
1) Libby???s #1 defense was that he forgot about Mrs. Wilson???s name until Tim Russert reminded him.
Russert said this was impossible because he didn???t know who Mrs. Wilson was.
You claim Libby was found guilty because of contradictory statements by reporters.
Where were the contradictions in Russert???s testimony?[/b]
2) The British White Paper report was based upon a 1999 report from Italy that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican had gone on a trip of Africa that included Niger and talked about increasing trade. The Butler report found that British intelligence was able to gain records from this trip, and found that uranium was never discussed. Still, they assumed that yellow cake must have been what the Iraqi wanted to talk about.
U.S. intelligence got the same report. By the time of the State of the Union address the CIA leadership thought that it was so disputed it shouldn???t be included in any of Bush???s speeches.
You claim that it was legitimate for Bush to include the Niger claim because it was based upon the British instead of U.S. intelligence.
Why then did Bush, Rice, her deputy Hardley all say they shouldn???t have used the report later on?[/b]
Why did Bush???s speech writers use the claim in the State of the Union even after the CIA told them they didn???t believe the British report, and that the whole story was questionable?[/b]
Why did Bush???s intelligence board say that the speechwriters shouldn???t have used the claim, and only did it because they were over zealous and desperate to find evidence against Iraq?[/b]
3) The 2004 Senate Intelligence Report on pre-war intelligence details the disputes within the U.S. intelligence community over the Niger story. Besides the faked documents received from Italy they had a few other reports. Many of these were disputed or proven to be false.
The Fact Check report you posted said that Bush had a legitimate reason to use the Niger story because U.S. intelligence had other reports besides the fake Italian ones to base the claim upon.
What reports did U.S. intelligence have that were not disputed that would justify Bush using the story?[/b]
4) Wilson went on a trip to Niger at the request of the CIA because Cheney asked about the 1999 report that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican had visited Niger. On his trip he talked to the Nigerian officials that met with the Iraqi diplomat and to him, he didn???t believe the story was true. He also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Niger didn???t believe the story either. When he gave his report to the CIA he believed that it ended the Niger story and that his findings would be passed up the chain of command to Cheney who originally asked about it. What he didn???t know was that his report didn???t end the controversy within U.S. intelligence and because of that, it wasn???t passed up to Cheney. When he wrote his op. ed piece in the New York Times, he gave his account of what he found and what he thought had happened to his report.
You claim that Wilson is a liar.
Where were his lies in his initial report to the CIA?[/b]
Where were the lies in his New York Times piece?[/b]
You claim that Wilson didn???t address the British White Paper report, but he talked to the Nigerian officials that the British claim was based upon.
How did he not address the British claim?[/b]
There were actually problems with some of Wilson???s statements that took place in other forums and places, but you never mentioned them. You just said he was a liar with no proof or argument behind it.
Can you actually find where Wilson made conflicting claims?[/b]
5) When Cheney found out about Wilson???s trip and criticisms of Bush he led the White House???s response and launched a covert campaign to discredit Wilson personally by leaking classified intelligence and spreading the name of his wife to reporters to say Wilson only went because of nepotism.
Wilson???s wife???s name was first told to reporters by Richard Armitage, a member of the Bush administration, but not part of Cheney???s plan. Grand Jury testimony and evidence at Libby???s trial showed that Valerie Wilson???s identity was then given to reporters by Carl Rove, Libby, and Ari Fleischer.
You claim that this was legitimate because Wilson was attacking the White House and was a liar, and wanted proof that Cheney launched a secret campaign against Wilson. You also dispute the fact that the White House was spreading Wilson???s wife???s name, and that her name was already known.
I cited several press reports about Cheney???s covert campaign, can you disprove them?[/b]
Can you disprove that Rove, Libby and Fleischer gave out her name to reporters?[/b]
6) After the war the Iraq Survey Group found no proof of the Niger story. They found that Iraq had never even sought to buy uranium after 1991.
You claim that the British still stand by the story to this day.
Can you find some evidence to contradict that Iraq Survey Group???s findings?[/b]
Can you find evidence that the British still stand by their story to this day?[/b]
It???s no fun beating a bitch over and over. It gets old. Prove that you???re a grown up for once.
Comments
You're actually right on this. I thought they received the same forged documents, but the investigation of the British White Paper found that it was based on other info. It was still about Niger and I believe Benin as well.
U.S. intelligence and the Iraq Study Group found nothing to either claim after the war.
Here are the major findings of that article:
"Bush said then, ???The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .??? Some of his critics called that a lie, but the new evidence shows Bush had reason to say what he did.
A British intelligence review released July 14 calls Bush???s 16 words ???well founded.???
A separate report by the US Senate Intelligence Committee said July 7 that the US also had similar information from ???a number of intelligence reports,??? a fact that was classified at the time Bush spoke.
Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush???s 16 words a ???lie???, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger .
Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium."
The problem with this is that the White House writers did not know about any of the background intelligence to the Niger claim. The White House writers had already been told 4 times before the State Of The Union address not to include the Niger claim. They saw that it was included in the U.S. White Paper that had just been released, and the English White Paper so they thought they could use it again.
The CIA told them to switch the claim from Niger to Africa so that it wouldn't give away any intelligence. They then told them that it was a disputed story so they shouldn't use it at all. They compromised and said they would say the English claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa.
Again, the ONLY reason the White House writers mentioned the British claim was because the CIA didn't want them bringing up the Niger deal at all.
Hence the finding of the President's Intelligence Board:
"The board believes the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable." - Washington Post
The U.S. recieved intelligence reports from England and Italy on the supposed deal. The WINPAC division of the CIA heartily endorsed the charge, while the rest of the CIA ws skeptical. The State Department's Intel. division never believed the claim from the beginning, while the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) went back and forth.
Wilson's report got a mixed response from the CIA. He said that Niger officials said there was no deal with Iraq, but that an Iraqi trade delegation had visisted and asked to increase trade between the two countries. The CIA said that needed to be looked into. The WINPAC division said that it must involve uranium, which was an assumption, like most U.S. intelligence on Iraq's WMD, rather than based upon any hard facts.
By the time of the State of the Union, it seemed like the majority of the U.S. intelligence community didn't think the Niger story was a strong one, while WINPAC was still sticking to it. That's why the CIA didn't want the claim in any speech by the administration.
And you're still a bitch.[/b]
Here are two simple questions you can answer to try to settle this whole thing:
1) If Bush's statement that England had info on Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa/Niger was based upon good intelligence then why did the CIA tell the speech writers not to use it several times, and that they didn't believe in the British claim either?
2) How can Libby's defense case stand up in court if he claims that he forgot about Mrs. Wilson's name, only to be reminded about it by Tim Russert, when Russert didn't know who Wilson was?
Niger Yellow Cake Uranium Claim
???Should this regime acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.??? President Bush, weekly radio address, 9/14/02
???If Baghdad acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within a year.??? Iraq White Paper, 10/4/02
"If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year." President Bush, Cincinnati speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars, 10/7/02
???The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger.??? State Department Fact Sheet on Iraq???s Declaration to U.N., 12/19/02
???The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.??? President Bush, State of the Union, 1/29/03
"The judgment in the NIE was that if Saddam could acquire fissile material, weapons-grade material, that he would have a nuclear weapon within a few months to a year. That was the judgment of the intelligence community of the United States, and they had a high degree of confidence in it." Vice President Cheney on Meet The Press after the war on 9/14/03
One of the two major foundations for the U.S. claim that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program and could have a bomb within a year was the claim that Iraq had tried to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger beginning in 1999. This turned out to be based upon forged documents turned over to the U.S. by Italy. Despite the major questions about its authenticity, the U.S. intelligence community first grew to accept it, then move away from the claim. The Bush administration however, was looking so hard for evidence of Iraq???s nuclear program that they went public with the Niger claim in Bush???s State of the Union address in January 2003 despite the intelligence services telling them not to. After the war ended the administration and CIA played a blame game about how the claim ended up in Bush???s speech. An even larger controversy emerged as the White House tried to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who went public with his criticism of the Niger case by exposing his wife as a CIA analyst. Cheney???s Chief of Staff Lewis Libby has been indicted over this. The Niger story became a perfect example of the administration exaggerating the threat about Iraq with no solid evidence, and then trying to cover it up and later attacking its critics for exposing them.
The Niger claim began in February 1999 when the U.S. received an unverified intelligence report from Italy or England that Iraq had tried to buy 500 metric tons of yellow cake uranium from Niger. There was no evidence that the uranium arrived, and the CIA questioned the veracity of the report. When Bush came into office the Italians tried to pass the information directly to the White House. The head of Italian intelligence met with a neoconservative Michael Ledeen, who passed the yellow cake story on to Rice???s Deputy National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley.
The CIA issued its first report on the Niger claim on 10/11/01 when they outlined the documents they received. The intelligence community was divided about whether the claim was true or not, but all noted that it was not corroborated.
The administration first heard about the claim on 2/12/02 when Cheney read a DIA report about the Niger deal and asked the CIA for more info. The CIA told him that it lacked details and further proof.
Because of Cheney???s inquiry the CIA sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the claim in February 2002. Wilson???s wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA analyst, suggested his name. Wilson found no evidence of the deal, but did mention Iraq contacting a Niger business about buying uranium in 1999. Nothing happened though. U.S. intelligence was divided about whether Wilson???s report proved or disproved the Niger story.
7/22/02 The Department of Energy released a report on Niger saying that it was one of three pieces of evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. It did note that the uranium had never been delivered and that the quantity was far larger than Iraq actually needed but used it as evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from overseas. This was the first time the intelligence community used the Niger claim as part of its larger argument that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program.
Beginning in September 2002 the administration tried to use the Niger claim in various speeches, but the CIA always told them to remove it because it was not proven. This was also the month that the Niger claim went public when England released a White Paper on Iraq and Prime Minister Tony Blair made a speech about it saying that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. The CIA told the British not to use the claim because it was not proven, but England used it anyway.
9/26/02 Secretary of State Powell made the first official administration statement on the Niger deal when he mentioned it in congressional testimony.
10/1/02 the Niger claim was included in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq as proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It said that it did not know whether the deal ever went through, but it was evidence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from overseas to build a nuclear bomb. The State Department had a sidebar in the NIE stating its opposition to the claim. On 10/4/02 however, the Iraq White Paper did not use the Niger claim.
The growing belief in the Niger claim was again shown when U.N. inspectors returned to Iraq. The U.S. claimed that Iraq did not include the Niger deal to the inspectors and that this was a violation of the new U.N. resolution in December 2002.
The State Department was the last major intelligence service that did not believe in the Niger claim. They changed their mind on 12/19/02 when they released a report on the new U.N. inspections saying that Iraq had not reported the Niger claim. This was the first public mention of the story in the U.S. Internally there were still disputes over the Niger story within the intelligence community
Late January 2003 the debate over Niger continued as the National Security Council began writing Bush???s State of the Union speech. The administration wanted to use the report, while the CIA didn???t. First the White House changed the claim from Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger, to trying to buy it from Africa since the British White Paper had already made that public. Then because the CIA still objected, the speech claimed that England had found evidence of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa to remove the U.S. completely from the story. The speech was given on 1/28/03. Bush said that it was proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. An internal investigation by the President???s Foreign Intelligence Board in May 2003 found that the administration included the Niger claim because it was desperate to find evidence against Iraq.
In February 2003 the Niger claim was finally proven false by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which took 10 days to find out the agreement between Niger and Iraq could not have been honored and just a few hours using a Google search to find that the documents from Italy were forged.
The IAEA???s findings heated up the internal debates within the intelligence community. On 2/11/03 the senior African analyst at the CIA circulated a memo speculating that the Niger deal was fake followed by a 3/11/03 CIA assessment agreeing with the IAEA report, while the DIA wrote a memo to Rumsfeld on 3/8/03 defending the claim against the IAEA. Finally on 4/5/03 the National Intelligence Council agreed that the Niger deal was faked.
At the same time Democr ats in Congress began demanding the White House and intelligence community explain how the Niger claim ended up in Bush???s State of the Union address beginning in March 2003. By June the speech became a controversy as the administration first claimed that they knew nothing about the controversy over the Niger story even though the CIA had told them to remove it from various speeches. Then they blamed the CIA for letting the story be included, to finally Bush, Rice, and her deputy Hadley taking personal blame.
In May 2003 the Niger story took another turn when Cheney???s office began looking into Joseph Wilson???s trip to Niger. Publicly Cheney claimed that he didn???t know Wilson or about his trip to Niger, but in fact Cheney and his Chief of Staff Libby were deeply interested when Wilson started talking to the press criticizing Bush for using the Niger story in his State of the Union address. Beginning on 5/29/03 Libby had 18 meetings about Wilson with Cheney, the CIA and the media. This included a discussion with New York Times writer Judith Miller on 6/23/05 where he tried to discredit Wilson by saying he only went to Niger because his wife Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. Eventually columnist Robert Novak printed Plame???s name in a column attacking Wilson???s trip on 7/14/03. Miller would go to jail and Libby was indicted for this incident.
1) If the British still stand by their claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa where is the proof since the 2003 invasion? That's four years to find the evidence and make it public to support their claim.
And by the way:
Did you have to google that?
"Investigation Into Uranium Pursuits and Indigenous Production Capabilities
Foreign Pursuits
ISG [Iraq Study Group] has not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 [/b] or renewed indigenous production of such material???activities that we believe would have constituted an Iraqi effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. As part of its investigation, ISG sought information from prominent figures such as Ja???far Diya??? Ja???far???the head of the pre-1991 nuclear weapons program.
* According to Ja???far, the Iraqi government did not purchase uranium from abroad following its acquisition of yellowcake from Niger in 1981.[/b] However, Iraq also purchased uranium dioxide from Brazil in 1982. Iraq declared neither the Brazilian purchase nor one of the Niger purchases to the IAEA???demonstrating that the Iraqi Regime was willing to pursue uranium illicitly.
Regarding specific allegations of uranium pursuits from Niger, Ja???far claims that after 1998 Iraq had only two contacts with Niamey???neither of which involved uranium. Ja???far acknowledged that Iraq???s Ambassador to the Holy See traveled to Niamey to invite the President of Niger to visit Iraq. He indicated that Baghdad hoped that the Nigerian President would agree to the visit as he had visited Libya despite sanctions being levied on Tripoli. Former Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See Wissam Zahawie has publicly provided a similar account.
* Ja???far claims a second contact between Iraq and Niger occurred when a Nigerian minister visited Baghdad around 2001 to request assistance in obtaining petroleum products to alleviate Niger???s economic problems. During the negotiations for this contract, the Nigerians did not offer any kind of payment or other quid pro quo, including offering to provide Iraq with uranium ore, other than cash in exchange for petroleum.
* ISG recovered a copy of a crude oil contract dated 26 June 2001 that, although unsigned, appears to support this arrangement.
So far, ISG has found only one offer of uranium to Baghdad since 1991???an approach Iraq appears to have turned down. In mid-May 2003, an ISG team found an Iraqi Embassy document in the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) headquarters related to an offer to sell yellowcake to Iraq. The document reveals that a Ugandan businessman approached the Iraqis with an offer to sell uranium, reportedly from the Congo. The Iraqi Embassy in Nairobi???in reporting this matter back to Baghdad on 20 May 2001???indicated it told the Ugandan that Iraq does not deal with these materials, explained the circumstances of sanctions, and said that Baghdad was not concerned about these matters right now. Figure 1 is the translation of this document."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/librar..._nuclear-03.htm
They actually didn't look at the U.S. White Paper to find reference to the Niger claim. The White Paper didn't include it. What they looked at was the October 2002 National Intellignece Estimate on Iraq, which did include the Niger story.
Don't worry, the White House staff has got Dolo's back:
7/22/03 Mea Culpa by the adminstration:
Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admitted that he should have removed the Niger claim from the State of the Union because the 2 CIA memos asking that it be removed were addressed to him, and one was addressed to Rice as well.
Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman at the time: "This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."
Rice, "Knowing what we know now we would not have put it in the president's speech."
Your bias precludes you from seeing the truth. Anyone can see I stomped motown into the fucking dirt. He has been forced to concede to my every point. He has been reduced to a glibbering wreck posting article after article of various state officials talking about whether the inclusion of the claim was justified as if this has any relation to to the question in hand: the credibility of joe wilson and the veracity of his statements. It is not whether the claim shouldve been included or not(it should have) but whether joe wilsons criticisms of the claim's inclusion were accurate and made in good faith. It has been made apparent in this thread that wilson lied repeatedly about the included intelligence in order to attack the bush administration.
ITS A WRAP BATCHES!
The Niger claim all revolved around a series of intelligence reports Italy provided to the U.S. It started with a trip by an Iraqi diplomat to Niger that Italy claimed was about buying yellow cake uranium, and was followed up by a set of faked documents allegedly from Niger???s embassy in Rome. Italian intelligence tried to enhance the fakes by adding real documents from when Niger actually sold uranium to Iraq in the 1980s. U.S. intelligence claimed that they had other evidence, but by the CIA???s own admission it was ???fragmentary and unconfirmed.???
A little over a month after Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address which said that England had intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa, a veiled reference to Niger, the Italian documents were found to be fakes. What followed was a passing of the buck by the White House for responsibility over the speech. Eventually, all of the top officials involved, even Bush, said that they should not have mentioned the Niger claim in the State of the Union.
Overall, the Niger story is an example of how U.S. intelligence was incompetent when analyzing intelligence about Iraq, and how the White House refused to take responsibility at first for its own zealotry and wanted to blame others instead.
The following is a timeline of the major events surrounding the Niger story and why it was such a disputed claim in the U.S.
February 1999[/b]
Iraq???s ambassador to the Vatican went on a four-country tour of Africa that included Niger. The trip was meant to foster trade ties and undermine U.N. sanctions. While in Niger, the Iraqi diplomat met with the president of the country. Because they discussed trade, some analysts in the U.S. believed that it was an attempt to buy yellow cake uranium. After the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi diplomat said that he never discussed uranium while in the country.
Based on this trip however, Italy delivered an intelligence report to the CIA claiming that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. The report lacked details. This was the report that Cheney would later find out about and ask for the CIA to confirm. They in turn, sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate it. This was the origin of the entire Niger claim.
1/2/01[/b]
Someone broke into the Nigerian embassy in Rome. The thieves stole official stationary and letterheads. These stolen papers were used to forge documents that claimed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The documents purported to be official correspondence between the Niger government and Iraq over 500 tons of yellow cake. A known intelligence scam artist sold the documents to Italian military intelligence, SISMI.
SISMI embellished the faked documents with real ones from the 1980s when Iraq had really bought uranium from Niger. There are reports that SIMI might have been the ones that broke into the embassy in the first place as well.
The faked documents plus embellishments were later passed onto the CIA and England???s MI5. The head of SISMI tried to get the documents directly to White House by giving them to a leading neoconservative Michael Ledeen. The head of SISMI also discussed the documents with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser.
10/14/01[/b]
The CIA issued its first intelligence report based upon the faked foreign documents that it received from Italy. The CIA said that, based upon the documents, Iraq was trying to buy tons of uranium from Niger. The report said that negotiations between Iraq and Niger had been going on since early 1999, referring to the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican???s trip, and that the deal was approved in late 2000. The CIA report also said that in October 2000 the Nigerian foreign minister told one of his ambassadors in Europe of the deal.
The report created immediate controversy within the U.S. intelligence community. The CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and Department of Energy analysts considered the report possible, but lacking in detail. The State Department???s intelligence division thought it was highly suspect. They didn???t believe that Niger would make such a deal, and that it couldn???t even if it wanted to because a French company controlled the uranium in the country.
10/18/01[/b]
The CIA wrote a second intelligence brief on the Niger claim, ???Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts.??? It repeated the story and noted that there was no corroboration for it.
10/20/01[/b]
The U.S. Ambassador to Niger sent a cable to Washington D.C. saying that the French-led company that controlled Niger???s uranium assured her that there was no deal with Iraq.
11/20/01[/b]
The U.S. Embassy in Niger talked to the director of the French business that ran Niger???s uranium and he said that no deal was possible.
1/1/02[/b]
Someone broke into the Niger embassy in Italy again. Papers and stamps were stolen. Italian police came to believe that the break-in was faked to give credibility to the forged documents that Italian intelligence had originally disseminated to the U.S. and England.
2/5/02[/b]
The CIA issued its 3rd report on the Niger-Iraq claim. It again cited the faked Italian documents as a source. It provided more details and a ???verbatim text??? of the deal. The report said that the deal went through after a series of meetings in mid-2000 for 500 tons of yellow cake. The CIA and DIA were impressed with the details of this report, while the State Department was still skeptical. The State Department asked that the source of the documents be polygraphed, and when a CIA analyst asked about the source of the claim, the CIA???s Directorate of Operations said that it was ???very credible.??? Again, analysts used the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican???s trip to Niger in 1999 as partial corroboration of the story.
2/12/02[/b]
The DIA wrote its own intelligence report based upon the most recent CIA report about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. Vice President Cheney came across the report and asked his daily CIA briefer what they thought about the DIA report. The CIA reported that the claim came from a foreign intelligence service, that it was looking into it, but that it lacked details and corroboration, and that the U.S. Embassy in Niger had found no evidence of a deal.
Because of Cheney???s inquiry, the CIA contacted former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson to travel to Niger to look into the accusations. Wilson had been posted to Niger before, knew many of the leading officials there, and had worked for the CIA before.
2/18/02[/b]
The U.S. Embassy in Niger said that the claim needed to be looked into because the amount of uranium alleged, 500 tons, would have been impossible for Niger to deliver because it was more than all of the yellow cake produced in the country in 2001.
2/19/02[/b]
While Wilson met with CIA and State Department officials about his upcoming trip, the State Department???s intelligence division continued to argue against the Niger story, while others questioned whether Wilson would be able to uncover anything at all.
2/24/02[/b]
Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger claim. The CIA gave him a report that said Niger was trying to limit its uranium exports so that it did not end up being used for anyone???s nuclear program, and that the for eign service that had supplied the original documents had not provided any new information. They also told Cheney that a new source, i.e. Wilson who was not named, was being debriefed and might provide new info.
The State Department also wrote a report entitled, ???Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely,??? which argued that Niger would never make such a deal because of the consequences of being caught and that the original foreign intelligence report, i.e. the fake Italian documents, were of ???questionable credibility.??? The report was sent to the White House.
3/8/02[/b]
CIA wrote a report based upon Wilson???s trip to Niger. It said that the Prime Minister of Niger did not know of any deals with Iraq. In June 1999, a Niger businessman did bring up a business deal between Iraq and Niger, which the Prime Minister assumed must involve uranium. Nothing came of the deal however. The report was given a ???good??? rating by the CIA, supported by the State Department, but the CIA and DIA analysts argued over the meaning of the business deal aspect of it.
Wilson???s trip led to further disputes between the CIA???s WINPACT nuclear program section and the State Department???s intelligence division. The CIA analysts believed that Iraq could be buying uranium from Niger, while State analysts believed that it never happened. The two sides ???agreed to disagree.???
Cheney was never told of Wilson???s trip because the intelligence community couldn???t agree on what he found.
3/25/02[/b]
The CIA issued another report on Niger that simply restated its earlier findings.
5/10/02[/b]
The CIA???s office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis put out a briefing book on Iraq that included the Niger claim.
7/22/02[/b]
The Department of Energy issued an intelligence report that said the Iraq-Niger deal was one of three events that might prove that Iraq was re-starting its nuclear program again even though there was no evidence that the deal ever went through. The report noted that the 500 tons that Iraq supposedly ordered, ???far exceeds what Iraq would need for a robust nuclear weapons program.??? This was a marked change of opinion by the Department, which had previously believed that Iraq had not reconstituted its nuclear program.
September 2002[/b]
The DIA issued a report saying that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It used the Niger case as an example, as well as alleged attempts by Iraq to buy other materials from the Congo and Somalia. The report noted that the DIA could not confirm the source of the Niger story.
9/11/02[/b]
Bush???s top speechwriter received a call from his boss that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger and that they might want to use it in one of Bush???s speech or leak it to the New York Times. The writers decided that they would use it in a speech Bush was set to deliver to the U.N. The CIA told the writers that the report had not been confirmed and to not include it in the speech, so they removed it. This was the first attempt to go public with the Niger deal by the administration, and the first time the CIA told them that it was a questionable story.
9/24/02[/b]
England???s Joint Intelligence Committee published a White Paper on Iraq???s WMD. It included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. CIA Director George Tenet told the British that they shouldn???t make that claim, but the British used it anyway.
In a press briefing, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that the English White Paper included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa, and that they agreed with it. This was the first public mention of the Niger story even though the country wasn???t named.
The National Security Council asked the CIA to allow Bush to say make the Niger claim in a speech. The CIA didn???t say that the Niger deal hadn???t happened, but that the language should be changed to get Bush???s point across. The claim was never made. This was the second time the CIA warned the White House about the story.
October 2002[/b]
The CIA published a classified handbook to be used by policymakers, intelligence officials and the military that included the Niger claim. The CIA also gave the ok to a White House paper that included the story was well.
10/1/02[/b]
The U.S. intelligence community released a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. It said that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program and used the Niger claim as one bit of evidence. It stated that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger as early as 2001, but it didn???t know if the deal had gone through or not. It also said that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Somalia and the Congo, but the NIE couldn???t confirm whether these deals had been consummated either. The State Department???s intelligence service was the only part of the intelligence community that disagreed with the story. The State Department included their own separate text box disputing the claim. Overall, the NIE analysts did not think that the Niger deal was key to the argument that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program.
10/2/02[/b]
During testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, CIA Director Tenet was asked if he had read the British White Paper, and whether he disagreed with any part of it. Tenet said, ???The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We???ve looked at those reports and we don???t think they are very credible. I doesn???t diminish our conviction that he???s going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point. Otherwise I think it???s very solid.???
10/4/02[/b]
The National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programs of the CIA backed up Tenet???s earlier testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee by saying that the British White Paper stretched its conclusions by including the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. The officer said that the main concern about the story was that Iraq already had some uranium in the country, so they didn???t need to buy any from abroad.
The National Security Council sent a draft of a speech that Pres. Bush was to get at Cincinnati that included the claim that Iraq was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium from Africa.
The CIA delivered its public White Paper on Iraq to Congress. The Agency had begun work on it before it started on the NIE. The White Paper did not include the Niger or African uranium claims.
10/5/02[/b]
The CIA held a meeting to go through Bush???s proposed Cincinnati speech. Nuclear analysts questioned whether the Africa/Niger story should be included because it came from a questionable source and the fact that it would be very hard to actually carry out. The CIA told the Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and Bush???s speechwriters to remove the claim because the story was disputed and Iraq already had 550 tons of uranium in the country. The National Security Council wouldn???t give up and sent back another draft that still included the Africa/Niger claim in it.
10/6/02[/b]
CIA Director Tenet called Hadley several times to get him to remove the Africa/Niger claim from Bush???s speech. The CIA also sent along 2 memos to the White House, one to Hadley and one to his boss Rice, arguing why it should not be used. The claim was eventually dropped from the speech. This is the third time the White House tried to include the claim, and the CIA had it removed.
10/9/02[/b]
An Italian magazine passed on copies of the faked Niger documents to the U.S. Embassy in Rome.
10/15/02[/b]
The State Department received the faked documents. State???s intelligence ana lysts were immediately suspicious of the documents because of their format and content. One document for example, claimed that there was a secret meeting in Rome of military officials from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, and Pakistan. The State Department didn???t believe that Iran and Iraq would be cooperating on secret deals. Other officials from State also argued that the documents looked like forgeries.
10/16/02[/b]
Copies of the Italian documents were given to the CIA, DIA, National Security Agency, and Department of Energy. The CIA did not think that they were important because Italy had already given them enough intelligence on the Niger-Iraq deal. Apparently they did not notice that these were the same documents their original reporting was based upon.
Mid-November 2002[/b]
The U.S. told the International Atomic Energy Agency that the Niger story was ???fragmentary, at best. We assess that none of these deals have gone through, but it shows that Iraq is probably trying to acquire uranium ore abroad.???
11/22/02[/b]
The French told the State Department that they had found no evidence of an Iraq-Niger deal.
12/7/02[/b]
Iraq released a 12,000 page report on its weapons programs to U.N. inspectors. The State Department noted that the report did not mention the Niger story.
12/17/02[/b]
The CIA published a report on Iraq???s report to U.N. inspectors. The report said that Iraq had not accounted for trying to buy uranium from Niger. The report was passed onto the White House without the dissenting opinions of the State and Energy Departments who disputed the story. State and Energy Department analysts complained to each other that their objections were not included in the CIA???s report. They thought that the CIA was trying to control the discussion on the issue. An Energy Department analyst wrote to a State Department intelligence officer, ???It is most disturbing that WINPAC [the CIA???s proliferation division who had been championing the Niger story] is essentially directing foreign policy in this matter. There are some very strong points to be made in respect to Iraq???s arrogant non-compliance with UN sanctions. However, when individuals attempt to convert those ???strong statements??? into the ???knock-out??? punch, the Administration will ultimately look foolish ??? i.e. the tubes and Niger!???
By the time the report came out, the top two at the CIA, Tenet and his deputy had already discounted the Niger story, but the WINPAC division would not relent.
12/18/02[/b]
The Principals Group of the National Security Council discussed how to deal with Iraq???s report. The State Department was asked to draft a response. There was lots of debate about whether to include the Niger story.
12/19/02[/b]
The State Department issued its report on Iraq???s disclosure to U.N. inspectors. It said that Iraq had try to buy yellow cake from Niger and that Iraq was trying to hide it. The document was the first public mention of the Niger story by name.
12/20/02[/b]
The CIA removed a reference to the Niger claim in a speech by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Negroponte that was scheduled to be delivered to the Security Council. This was the fourth time the CIA blocked the inclusion of the claim in a public speech.
12/24/02[/b]
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Mines in Niger publicly denied selling uranium to Iraq after the public disclosure of the story by the State Department.
1/3/03[/b]
The International Atomic Energy Agency requested information on the Iraq-Niger deal from the State Department.
1/13/03[/b]
State Department intelligence officials sent off e-mails to the intelligence community arguing that the Niger deal was a hoax.
1/15/03[/b]
The CIA told the White House to change language in a draft of Bush???s State of the Union address from Niger to Africa to protect intelligence sources.
1/17/03[/b]
The CIA made a report at the request of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on evidence that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. The CIA reported on the Niger story while questioning its veracity.
1/20/03[/b]
Bush submitted a report to Congress on Iraq???s non-compliance with U.N. resolutions to counter U.N. weapons inspector reports that they had found no evidence of WMD. The Bush report included the Niger claim. The National Security Council wrote the report, and the CIA did not check it.
1/24/03[/b]
The National Security Council asked for more info on Iraq???s WMD programs for Powell???s planned speech to the U.N. The CIA faxed over info that included the Niger story. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld asked for information on the Niger claim. In response, the DIA sent a paper on the original CIA report. It said that it couldn???t confirm whether the yellow cake had been delivered, but that enough time had passed that Iraq could have received some.
1/27/03[/b]
The CIA issued a report saying that a foreign intelligence service gave them information on Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger in 1999, a reference to the Iraqi ambassador???s trip in February 1999.
At a National Security Council meeting Tenet was given a hard copy of Bush???s State of the Union address. Tenet told Congress that he never read it otherwise he would???ve removed the reference to Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger.
CIA and National Security Council officials had been discussing the Niger claim beforehand. A CIA analyst wanted the claim to be completely removed, but they made a compromise and decided to change the source of the claim from U.S. to British intelligence because they had mentioned it in their White Paper.
1/28/03[/b]
Bush gives his State of the Union address that includes the yellow cake claim.
1/29/03[/b]
Rumsfeld opened a press conference by saying that Iraq was working on its nuclear program and had tried to buy uranium form Africa.
2/3/03[/b]
The CIA asked Italy about more details about the Niger story, but they said they had none.
2/4/03[/b]
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave a briefing on the Niger claim. They said they had not received any documents on the story yet. The IAEA was finally given the documents on the day of Powell???s speech to the U.N.
It took the IAEA ten days to determine that the agreement was a hoax. A few hours of searching on Google revealed 15 anomalies amongst the papers that led the IAEA to determine that they were fakes. Among its discoveries was a letter that referred to the 1965 Niger constitution, when a new one had been passed in 1999. One letter dated October 2000 bore the signature of the Foreign Minster of Niger who had not been in office since 1988.
2/11/03[/b]
The CIA???s senior African analyst sent an intelligence assessment to the rest of the CIA saying that the Niger documents were very questionable and could be forgeries.
2/12/03[/b]
The IAEA interviewed Iraq???s former ambassador to the Vatican who had traveled to Niger in 1999. He said that he had never discussed uranium while there, but the U.N. was skeptical.
2/27/03[/b]
Senator Levin had requested information about the Niger claim. The CIA told him that Iraq had attempted to buy yellow cake from Niger, that Niger had assured the CIA that the deal did not happen, but that the CIA still had confidence that the deal was discussed beginning in 1999.
3/3/03[/b]
The IAEA told the U.S. mission in Vienna that it had studied the Niger documents and found that they were forgeries.
3/4/03[/b]
Earlier, U.S. intelligence had gotten confirmation of the Iraq-Niger deal from French intelligence. The U.S. now found that France based its claims on the same faked documents from Italy.
3/7/03[/b]
The IAEA told the U.N. Security Council that the Iraq-Niger documents were fakes.
3/8/03[/b]
The DIA wrote a memo to Rumsfeld about a Washington Post story that said the IAEA had found the Niger story to be a fake. The DIA claimed that there was other evidence to support the claim. According to the DIA, some of the other information included a U.S. Naval intelligence report that a Benin warehouse was being used to store large amounts of Niger uranium destined for Iraq. The DIA did not mention that a Defense Department official had checked the warehouse and found only bales of cotton.
CIA???s WINPAC division also claimed that it had other information to support the Niger claim, but admitted that it was ???fragmentary and unconfirmed.???
3/11/03[/b]
The CIA wrote an assessment saying they did not dispute the findings of the IAEA that the Iraq-Niger documents were fakes. It said that the CIA had always said that the Niger claim was not confirmed. Still, the CIA was concerned that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from abroad.
4/5/03[/b]
The National Intelligence Council issued a memo saying that they agreed with the IAEA???s conclusions that the Niger documents were fakes, that the other evidence was not credible, and that Niger would probably not sell uranium to Iraq.
May 2003[/b]
The President???s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board began an investigation into how the Niger claim made its way into Bush???s State of the Union address. The Board found that the White House was so desperate to find evidence against Iraq that it ignored the CIA???s warnings and included the Niger story over their objections.
5/6/03[/b]
Former ambassador Wilson complained about the White House ignoring his findings on Niger to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who included it in one of his pieces.
This piece caught the attention of Cheney who began discussing with his deputy Lewis ???Scooter??? Libby about how to respond.
5/29/03[/b]
Libby had up to 18 discussions beginning on May 29 about Wilson???s trip, which included discussions about his wife Valier Plame/Wilson.
June 2003[/b]
The State Department circulated a document about Wilson???s trip to Niger. The document discussed why State did not believe the Niger claims.
During June Libby had several discussions with reporters bringing up the fact that Wilson???s wife worked at the CIA and implied that he went on the trip because of nepotism, rather than his previous experience in Niger.
6/2/03[/b]
Secretary of State Colin Powell issued a press releases where he said he did not use the Niger claim in his February 2003 U.N. speech because he didn???t believe it was substantiated.
6/8/03[/b]
The White House began damage control over the State of the Union-Niger controversy by denying that it knew about objections to its use, while blaming the CIA for its inclusion at the same time. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice told Meet The Press, ???Maybe someone knew down in the bowls of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.??? Rice failed to mention that she had been warned by the CIA not to use the Niger claim in a previous Bush speech in October 2002. Rice still claimed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from overseas even though she admitted that the Niger report should not have been included in Bush???s speech.
6/12/03[/b]
Former Ambassador Wilson was the source for a Washington Post story that said the Niger-Iraq documents were forgeries even though he hadn???t seen them. The Senate Intelligence Committee later found that most of Wilson???s comments to the press were not based upon his first hand knowledge, but rather his own assumptions and media reports.
The DIA sent a memo to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz about Iraq???s nuclear program that said the National Intelligence Committee agreed with the IAEA that the Niger documents were fakes. It reported that was other evidence of the Niger deal such as the Navy report about a Benin warehouse, but the DIA again did not mention that that charge had been proven false.
Cheney and Libby had a meeting about Wilson talking to the press. Cheney told Libby Wilson???s wife???s name and that she worked at the CIA. Testimony at Libby???s trial showed that Cheney wanted to make personnel attacks on Wilson to discredit him using his wife. Cheney would also direct the White House???s public statements on the Wilson affair, while carrying out his own covert PR campaign against Wilson.
6/17/03[/b]
It took the CIA five months after Bush???s State of the Union address to acknowledge that the Niger deal was based upon forged documents and that Iraq was not trying to buy uranium from Niger. The memo was distributed outside the CIA as well.
7/6/03[/b]
Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times, ???What I Didn???t Find In Africa.??? He went over his trip to Niger and how he had found no evidence of a deal with Iraq. He also claimed that Cheney must have been informed of his trip, and asked how the White House could then use the claim in the State of the Union if they were not manipulating intelligence to justify the war. As mentioned earlier, because the intelligence community was so conflicted over Wilson???s trip, they never informed Cheney of Wilson???s trip.
Rice told Face the Nation, ???Had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence ??? it would have been gone.???
7/7/03[/b]
Bush chimed in by saying, ???Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts. But when they talked about the speech and when they look at the speech, it was cleared.???
7/8/03[/b]
The National Security Council???s spokesman said that the forged documents were not the only source of Bush???s State of the Union claim about African uranium.
7/11/03[/b]
During a trip to Africa, the administration continued to blame the CIA for the State of the Union gaffe with statements by both Bush and Rice that the Agency had cleared the speech. Rice also said that the CIA was not the only source for the Niger claim, but that England believed it as well. CIA analysts responded by leaking to the Washington Post that the CIA had warned the British not to include any Niger or African uranium claim in their White Paper. Others leaked the fact that the CIA had the White House remove the Niger claim from other Bush speeches before the State of the Union.
Tenet publicly took responsibility for the uranium claim being included in the State of the Union speech. The Senate Intelligence Committee later agreed with Tenet and the White House that the CIA was at fault for the Niger claim getting into the State of the Union.
7/12/03[/b]
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw wrote a letter that England still believed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa. Straw said the claim was based upon another intelligence service, but that it could not share the info with the U.S.
7/13/03[/b]
Rice and Rumsfeld appeared on Sunday morning TV talk shows to defend how the Niger claim got into the State of the Union. On Face The Nation, Rice said that it was a mistake to include the Africa claim in the State of the Union, but now it was being blown out of proportion. Rice said that the British had other evidence to support the Niger claim.
7/16/03[/b]
Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had told Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley to remove the Niger/Africa comment from Bush???s October 2002 Cincinnati speec h. Tenet also said that he had never read Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address, which was how the Africa claim got into it.
7/17/03[/b]
Tenet and other CIA officials again testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee about the negotiations with the White House over the State of the Union. A CIA officer said that when the White House faxed over a copy that included the Niger claim he told them that it should not be used because of doubts about its source. The White House official first agreed to remove it, but then asked if Bush said the claim came from the British could Bush use it? The CIA official said that they had tried to get the British to not use the claim either.
7/22/03[/b]
Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley said that he had deleted reference to the Niger story from Bush???s Cincinnati speech based upon the CIA???s objections so he should have removed it from the State of the Union. He said the CIA sent him one memo and Rice with another, contradicting her claim that she knew nothing about objections to the story. Hadley offered to resign over the incident, but Bush refused. This marked a turn in the White House???s policy. At first they blamed the CIA for the State of the Union. Because the controversy had not gone away, they now had to take responsibility themselves. Hence White House spokesman Flesicher said, ???This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech,??? and Rice stated, ???Knowing what we know now we would not have put it in the president???s speech.???
Cheney???s office on the other hand was still on the defensive claiming that he did not know about Wilson???s report on his trip to Niger. Cheney???s spokeswoman said, ???The vice president doesn???t know Joe Wilson and did not know about his trip until he read about it in the press.??? This was only partially true because Cheney and Libby had already hatched an official and unofficial program to attack Wilson???s credibility ever since he started talking to the press.
7/30/03[/b]
Bush and Rice took personal responsibility for mentioning the Niger/Africa claim in the State of the Union.
10/2/03[/b]
After the U.S. invasion in March 2003 the Iraq Survey Group was established to find Iraq???s WMD programs. They released their interim report that found no evidence that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from any foreign country including Niger or other African countries since 1991. They actually found out that Iraq had turned down an offer for uranium from Uganda.
7/7/04[/b]
The Senate Intelligence Committee released its first report on the U.S.???s pre-war intelligence on Iraq. It said one problem with the CIA???s reporting on Niger was that not all of its analysts knew about the controversy over its authenticity so they continued to use it.
7/14/04[/b]
A British commission on its pre-war intelligence on Iraq found that claims about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Africa were not based upon the faked documents from Italy.
September 2004[/b]
The Iraq Survey Group issued its final report. It had the same findings as the interim report that Iraq had not tried to buy uranium from Niger or any other African or foreign country since 1991.
April 2005[/b]
The Robb-Silberman Commission that was established by Pres. Bush to look into pre-war intelligence issued its report. It found that U.N. inspectors had disproved the Niger claim, but that their findings were routinely dismissed by the White House and U.S. intelligence.
2006[/b]
The FBI said that the fake Niger documents were part of a money scam by an official at the Niger embassy in Rome.
9/8/06[/b]
The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a new report comparing America???s pre-war intelligence to what they found after the invasion. They stated that the majority of the intelligence community believed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from abroad, but didn???t think that the Niger deal was critical proof that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program. It found that the State Department was the only part of the intelligence community that consistently dissented on the veracity of the Niger story. The CIA on the other hand, had inconsistent reporting, sometimes saying that it was valid, while other times questioning it and wanting it removed from Bush???s speeches.
Yes, you will never be accused of being biased. Just being a bitch.
???Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador???s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts??? assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
Conclusion 19. Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.???
Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.>>
There is plenty of evidence that the Bush administration did in fact manipulate intelligence to argue its case for war. Here Wilson is referring to the fact that he found no evidence of an Iraq-Niger deal, yet the White House included it in Bush???s 2003 State of the Union address.
For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charg?? d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and S??o Tom?? and Pr??ncipe; under President Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.>>
Here???s a short rundown of Wilson???s career to establish his authenticity. Wilson came from a wealthy California Republican family that included Pete Wilson former senator and governor of California.
It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.>>
This was not the first time that Wilson had been involved in Africa???s uranium industry. While a diplomat he???d been involved in tracking uranium production in West Africa. When Wilson was posted in Niger in the 1970s he tracked the growth of the country???s uranium production. He did the same thing in Gabon. When he worked at the National Security Council from 1997-98 he was also charged with tracking uranium trade throughout Africa. Wilson had also worked for the CIA in 1999 when he was tasked to find any business deals Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan might have had with Niger.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake ??? a form of lightly processed ore ??? by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.>>
On 2/12/02 Cheney read a DIA report that simply restated the most recent findings of the CIA on an alleged Niger-Iraq deal for yellow cake uranium. The CIA reporting was basked upon faked documents provided to it by Italian intelligence. The Italians had recently provided a text of the supposed deal and the CIA and DIA analysts were impressed with what they saw.
When Cheney read the report he asked his CIA daily briefer what he thought about the report. The CIA got back to the Vice President telling him that the report came from a foreign country, that it was looking into it, but that it lacked details and corroboration. They also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Niger had fond no evidence that the deal had ever been made.
The CIA felt that Cheney???s inquiry gave added impetus to discover whether the deal was actually made however that led them to contact former Ambassador Wilson to travel to Niger to investigate it.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.>>
The U.S. Ambassador to Niger had been doing her own investigation of the Niger deal and had found no evidence of it. In October and November 2001 she reported that the French company that controlled Niger???s uranium industry said that a deal with Iraq was impossible. On 2/18/02 the U.S. Embassy reported that the amount in the alleged deal, 500 tons of yellow cake, would have been nearly impossible for Niger to delivery because it was more than the country???s total output in 2001.
On 2/19/02 Wilson met with the CIA and State Dept. about his trip to Niger. Within the intelligence community the Niger claim and Wilson???s trip was also a source of contention. The State Department???s intelligence division was the one section of the community that had consistently argued against the possibility of a Niger deal, while one section of the CIA vehemently believed in it. Intelligence analysts were also questioning whether Wilson???s trip would be worthwhile or not and turn anything up.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq ??? and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.>>
As already stated, the U.S. Embassy in Niger had sent three reports to Washington questioning the Iraq-Niger deal. Wilson also had extensive contacts with current and former Nigerian officials, which he met with while in the country.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.>>
This is what the U.S. Embassy in Niger had already reported to Washington, that Niger???s uranium was controlled by a foreign country that would not make such a deal with Iraq.
(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors ??? they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government ??? and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)>>
Wilson is referring to the faked Italian documents that set off the slew of U.S. intelligence reports on the Niger story. They were in fact full of inconsistencies, which were pointed out by the State Department, but ignored by the CIA. It was these consistencies that led the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare that they were fakes in March 2003.
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.>>
Wilson had talked to the leading ex-government officials in Niger and the U.S. Ambassador and they said that there was no deal with Iraq. He also confirmed that the uranium businesses was highly regulated by a French led company, and that 500 tons of yellow cake would be too much for the country to produce. The only suspicious activity that he found out about was from the former Niger prime minister that told him that in 1999 an Iraqi official wanted to discuss increasing trade between the two countries which the prime minister interpreted to mean uranium. Nothing came of it however and uranium was never openly discussed.
Wilson reported his findings to the CIA and thought the matter was over.
What Wilson didn???t know was that his trip, rather than calming the storm within the intelligence community, just gave it new wind. The CIA believed that the 1999 discussion with an Iraqi official was proof that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger because this was the first report they had received back in January 2001. The State Department however was still dissenting, arguing that the deal could have never been pulled off.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.>>
There has already been extensive discussion of how the African uranium claim got into the State of the Union. The White House speechwriters included the claim over the objections of the CIA who did not feel that it was a strong story.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.>>
On 12/7/02 the State Department issued a response to Iraq???s disclosure to U.N. weapons inspectors saying that Iraq did not mention the Niger case. On 12/19/02 the State Department a public report making the same charge.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.>>
When Wilson was briefed by the CIA and State Department he was told that he was going on his trip because the vice president had asked about an intelligence report on Niger. Wilson assumed that since Cheney was the impetus behind the trip that he would be informed of his findings. In fact, because Wilson???s trip was so disputed within the intelligence community they did not inform Cheney.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.>>
This is pure speculation on Wilson???s part.
I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program ??? all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.
But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.>>
Here Wilson finishes off by saying that while he felt Iraq was a threat he didn???t feel that it required a war. He questions whether the government was truthful about its accusations against Iraq???s WMD based upon his own personal experience with Niger.
1. the british intelligence suggested that iraq had sought a deal with niger to purchase the yellowcake. Why would someone believe that pointing to a lack of evidence suggesting a deal took place would undermine a statement that never claimed a deal had taken place? because they are an idiot
2. The argument from the very beginning has not been about whether the british intelligence should have been included, it has been about wilson's credibility. Your repeated attempts to drag the argument onto this ground only act as an implicit admission of wilson's complete lack of credibility as evidence by his numerous distortions and outright lies.
MOTOWN = DESTROYED
who are you defending?
tony blair?
a puppet of the Bush Crime Family has even had a change of heart since things are so grim.
who cares about wilson?
CHANEY BLEW PLAME's COVER because he was pissed
that is TREASON
from any angle it is a crime worthy of hanging
if the founding fathers were alive Chainey would be swinging like billy budd dead from a blodclot heart attakkk long ago
so
who are you defending over this immense failure of foreign policy?
wolfwitz?pearle? the project for a new America?
lockheed martin or prehaps you are gaging on Raytheon Cock?
yummy like blood pudding
are you down with the Carlyle Group Consortium/Gang?
or prehaps Root Kellog Browne or the nice mercenary death machine fellows over at BLACKWATER/WACKENHUT?
Who is your mean white guy IDOl DOLO SKKKUM ASSWIPE?
FESS UP BITCH
WHOOSE STOCK IS NOT IN YOUR URINE STAINED Imaginery PORTFOLIO?
what has bveen gained in iraq?
they can't even get the oil pumping
silly fools
as always the republicanss are full of empty bravado and lies /propaganda /massive press minipulation/ownage -the veil of which was lifted during the trial of WASP SCUM [see mission accomplished episode in 03]
Rumsfeld is the New McNamara who admitted after the fact that vietnam was wrong and wasting 2 million north vietnemese was a fact that never came up in his book
So how many dead Iraqi civilians will the final count be?
For What?
And this twisted piece of logic only shows that you are an idiot.
And P.S. - My kid is still waiting for his playday with you. He's 8, you'd get along great.
Dolo claimed:
Yes, the British intelligence claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa was not based upon the forged Italian documents according to the Butler commission that looked into England???s pre-war intelligence.
However the claim WAS based upon info that the CIA already had. Here???s a footnote from the book Hubris by Michael Isikoff from Newsweek and David Corn of the Nation and Fox News:
???A year later, a British parliamentary committee headed by Lord Butler described the ???other intelligence??? as reports of the February 1999 trip to Niger by Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi ambassador to the Holy See. British intelligence had assessed that a uranium deal ???could have been the subject of discussions??? during the visit. This led the Butler commission to conclude that the British government???s assertion about Iraq???s attempts to buy uranium ??? and Bush???s sixteen words ??? were ???well founded.??? Yet the Butler Commission noted that the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] had obtained excerpts of Zahawei???s travel report, and they contained no reference to any talks about uranium. And no new intelligence had been obtained indicating the Zahawie trip had been related to uranium purchases. Moreover, the idea that Zahawie???s trip could have justified Bush???s assertion was a stretch: Bush had said Saddam had ???recently??? sought uranium from Africa. At the time of Bush???s speech, the Zahawie visit was nearly four years in the past.???
Zahawie???s trip was actually the beginning of the entire Niger story for BOTH British intelligence and the CIA. As I pointed out in a timeline:
What it proves is that neither the British nor the U.S. had any good intell on Iraq after the U.N. weapons inspectors were kicked out. They didn???t have any evidence of uranium discussions at all at this trip, they just ASSUMED that???s what must have been talked about.
And if the British still stick to that claim, then they???re worse than the White House at outdated claims about Iraq. As the Iraq Study Group found by interviewing hundreds of Iraqi officials and going through thousands of documents after the invasion:
End of story. The Niger story was always a disputed claim within U.S. intelligence. That???s why the CIA kept on telling the White House not to use it, but they did it anyways. Changing the claim to Africa and the British was just sidestepping the warning, thus the President???s Foreign Intelligence Board found that ???the White House was so anxious "to grab onto something affirmative" about Hussein's nuclear ambitions that it disregarded warnings from the intelligence community that the claim was questionable.???[/b]
Thanks bro...
1) He is attempting to make this a debate about the intelligence itself rather than wilsons criticisms of it because he knows he has lost comprehensively on the latter point
2) If motown really believed wilsons criticism of the included intelligence to be sound he wouldnt be citing other sources of criticism which differ and conflict with wilsons.
You're like a chicken that has lost his head.
Wilson talked to the Nigerian officials that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican talked to in 1999. They said the Iraqi wanted to expand trade. They said that might have been about yellow cake, but they never brought it up. This meeting in 1999 was the entire basis for both the British and American claims about uranium/Niger/Africa.
Wilson believed that there was no attempt by Iraq to get uranium because it was never discussed and passes this onto the CIA. He assumes this ends the debate, but it only increases the different views of intell analysts (CIA's WINPAC vs State Dept.)He assumed this was passed up to the chain of command to Cheney becuase the CIA told him he was going on this trip because of the V.P.'s office, but it wasn't.
Did Wilson not address the original British and U.S. intelligence report then? Yes he did. Did he think the claim was legit? No he didn't. Was he proven right in the end? According to the Iraq Survey Group, yes he was.
Are you a bitch? Case closed.
And what was that bitch? Were you talking to me bitch?
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I think you need to start asking permission before you talk to me again.
Did I give you permission to speak?
And last time I checked it was Libby that got the guilty sentence.
Dolo, master of the incoherent argument and all around
Can you actually make an argument and back up your statements that you???ve made?
1) Libby???s #1 defense was that he forgot about Mrs. Wilson???s name until Tim Russert reminded him.
Russert said this was impossible because he didn???t know who Mrs. Wilson was.
You claim Libby was found guilty because of contradictory statements by reporters.
Where were the contradictions in Russert???s testimony?[/b]
2) The British White Paper report was based upon a 1999 report from Italy that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican had gone on a trip of Africa that included Niger and talked about increasing trade. The Butler report found that British intelligence was able to gain records from this trip, and found that uranium was never discussed. Still, they assumed that yellow cake must have been what the Iraqi wanted to talk about.
U.S. intelligence got the same report. By the time of the State of the Union address the CIA leadership thought that it was so disputed it shouldn???t be included in any of Bush???s speeches.
You claim that it was legitimate for Bush to include the Niger claim because it was based upon the British instead of U.S. intelligence.
Why then did Bush, Rice, her deputy Hardley all say they shouldn???t have used the report later on?[/b]
Why did Bush???s speech writers use the claim in the State of the Union even after the CIA told them they didn???t believe the British report, and that the whole story was questionable?[/b]
Why did Bush???s intelligence board say that the speechwriters shouldn???t have used the claim, and only did it because they were over zealous and desperate to find evidence against Iraq?[/b]
3) The 2004 Senate Intelligence Report on pre-war intelligence details the disputes within the U.S. intelligence community over the Niger story. Besides the faked documents received from Italy they had a few other reports. Many of these were disputed or proven to be false.
The Fact Check report you posted said that Bush had a legitimate reason to use the Niger story because U.S. intelligence had other reports besides the fake Italian ones to base the claim upon.
What reports did U.S. intelligence have that were not disputed that would justify Bush using the story?[/b]
4) Wilson went on a trip to Niger at the request of the CIA because Cheney asked about the 1999 report that the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican had visited Niger. On his trip he talked to the Nigerian officials that met with the Iraqi diplomat and to him, he didn???t believe the story was true. He also noted that the U.S. Embassy in Niger didn???t believe the story either. When he gave his report to the CIA he believed that it ended the Niger story and that his findings would be passed up the chain of command to Cheney who originally asked about it. What he didn???t know was that his report didn???t end the controversy within U.S. intelligence and because of that, it wasn???t passed up to Cheney.
When he wrote his op. ed piece in the New York Times, he gave his account of what he found and what he thought had happened to his report.
You claim that Wilson is a liar.
Where were his lies in his initial report to the CIA?[/b]
Where were the lies in his New York Times piece?[/b]
You claim that Wilson didn???t address the British White Paper report, but he talked to the Nigerian officials that the British claim was based upon.
How did he not address the British claim?[/b]
There were actually problems with some of Wilson???s statements that took place in other forums and places, but you never mentioned them. You just said he was a liar with no proof or argument behind it.
Can you actually find where Wilson made conflicting claims?[/b]
5) When Cheney found out about Wilson???s trip and criticisms of Bush he led the White House???s response and launched a covert campaign to discredit Wilson personally by leaking classified intelligence and spreading the name of his wife to reporters to say Wilson only went because of nepotism.
Wilson???s wife???s name was first told to reporters by Richard Armitage, a member of the Bush administration, but not part of Cheney???s plan. Grand Jury testimony and evidence at Libby???s trial showed that Valerie Wilson???s identity was then given to reporters by Carl Rove, Libby, and Ari Fleischer.
You claim that this was legitimate because Wilson was attacking the White House and was a liar, and wanted proof that Cheney launched a secret campaign against Wilson. You also dispute the fact that the White House was spreading Wilson???s wife???s name, and that her name was already known.
I cited several press reports about Cheney???s covert campaign, can you disprove them?[/b]
Can you disprove that Rove, Libby and Fleischer gave out her name to reporters?[/b]
6) After the war the Iraq Survey Group found no proof of the Niger story. They found that Iraq had never even sought to buy uranium after 1991.
You claim that the British still stand by the story to this day.
Can you find some evidence to contradict that Iraq Survey Group???s findings?[/b]
Can you find evidence that the British still stand by their story to this day?[/b]
It???s no fun beating a bitch over and over. It gets old. Prove that you???re a grown up for once.