Niger uranium forgeries
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI (the former military intelligence agency of Italy), which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq and WMD[edit]
In late 2002, the Bush administration began soliciting support for war in Iraq using the political slogan "coalition of the willing" to refer to what later became the Multinational Force – Iraq. To back up its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that administration referred to intelligence from Italy, Britain, and France detailing interactions between Saddam Hussein and the governments of Niger, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, CIA director George Tenet and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited attempts by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At that time, using information derived from the same source, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an (unnamed) "African country". In December, the United States Department of State issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council."[2]
Initial doubts[edit]
The classified documents detailing an Iraqi approach to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger were considered dubious by some analysts in US intelligence, according to news accounts. Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced serious doubt on the authenticity of the documents to the UN Security Council, judging them counterfeit.[3]
"Sixteen Words" controversy in 2003 State of the Union[edit]
In his January 2003 State of the Union speech, U.S. President George W. Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[4] This single sentence is now known as "the Sixteen Words."[5]
The administration later conceded that evidence in support of the claim was inconclusive and stated, "These sixteen words should never have been included." The administration attributed the error to the CIA.[6] In mid-2003, the US government declassified the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which contained a dissenting opinion published by the US Department of State stating that the intelligence connecting Niger to Saddam Hussein was "highly suspect," primarily because State Department's intelligence agency analysts did not believe that Niger would be likely to engage in such a transaction due to a French consortium which maintained close control over the Nigerien uranium industry.[7]
According to The Washington Post, when occupying troops found no evidence of a current nuclear program, the statement and how it came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war. The Post reported, "Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable."[8] With the release of the 2002 NIE report, the Bush administration was criticized for including the statement in the State of the Union despite CIA and State Department reports questioning its veracity.
European and French intelligence reports[edit]
The front page of the 28 June 2004 Financial Times carried a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband, describing that between 1999 and 2001, three unnamed European intelligence services were aware that Niger was possibly engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China.[9] "The same information was passed to the US" but American officials decided not to include it in their assessment, Huband added in a follow-up report.[10]
French intelligence informed the United States a year before President Bush's State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with hard evidence.[11]
The Sunday Times dated 1 August 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source describing his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence.[12]
Although the claims made in the British intelligence report regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the CIA and Department of State could not verify them and are said to have thought the claims were "highly dubious".[13]
US doubts[edit]
Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of US Armed Forces Europe, Marine General Carlton W. Fulford, Jr., went to Niger and met with the country's president, Tandja Mamadou. He concluded that, given the controls on Niger's uranium supply, there was little chance any of it could have been diverted to Iraq. His report was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. The US Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, was also present at the meeting and sent similar conclusions to the State Department.[14] CNN reported on 14 March 2003 (before invasion) that the International Atomic Energy Agency found the documents to be forged.[15]
Panorama article[edit]
Carlo Rossella, the editor of Panorama, published the documents during the third week of September 2002 and passed them to the American embassy in Rome in October 2002.[20]
CIA doubts[edit]
In early October 2002, George Tenet called Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to ask him to remove reference to the Niger uranium from a speech Bush was to give in Cincinnati on 7 October. This was followed up by a memo asking Hadley to remove another, similar line. Another memo was sent to the White House expressing the CIA's view that the Niger claims were false; this memo was given to both Hadley and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.[21][22][23]
British inquiries[edit]
Foreign Affairs Committee[edit]
The first British investigation into this matter was conducted by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC).[26] The committee comprises fourteen Members of Parliament from government and opposition parties, and has permanent cross-party support.[27] They examined and tested several key claims in the September Dossier, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, including the topic of uranium acquisition.
In June and July, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw testified that the claim in the dossier rested on separate evidence to the fraudulent documents, and that this specific intelligence, obtained from a foreign government, was still under review and had not been shared with the CIA.[28] In written evidence to the same committee, Straw further disclosed that the separate intelligence information upon which the British Government had based its conclusion, was also briefed to the IAEA by a foreign intelligence service that owned the reporting, shortly before IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei's statement to the UN Security Council on 7 March 2003.[29][30] This was further confirmed in a parliamentary answer to Lynne Jones MP.[31] Lynne Jones subsequently contacted the IAEA to question whether a third party had discussed or shared separate intelligence with them and, if so, what assessment they made of it. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky responded to Jones in May 2004:
More doubts[edit]
In January 2006, The New York Times revealed the existence of a memo which stated that the suggestion of uranium being sold was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles. The memo, dated 4 March 2002, was distributed at senior levels by the office of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and by the Defense Intelligence Agency.[36]
Statements by Wilson[edit]
In a July 2003 op-ed, Ambassador Wilson recounted his experiences and stated "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".[18]
Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on the forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." However, the relevant papers were not in CIA hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip. Wilson had to backtrack and said he may have "misspoken" on this.[37]
[38] The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports."[37][38]
Background
Documents and those who relied on them
Joseph Wilson and Valarie Plame
United States Administration statements, speeches, plans
Legislative investigations