WMD Tale

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DECEPTION AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

AP 3 Nov 2005

Italian lawmaker: U.S. told of WMD forgeries

Senator says Bush administration was warned Iraq documents were fake

Italian secret services warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that a dossier about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa was fake, a lawmaker said Thursday after a briefing by the nation’s intelligence chief.

“At about the same time as the State of the Union address, they (Italy’s SISMI secret services) said that the dossier doesn’t correspond to the truth,” Sen. Massimo Brutti told journalists after the parliamentary commission was briefed.

Brutti said the warning was given in January 2003, but he did not know whether it was made before or after President Bush’s speech. Brutti, a leading opposition senator, said SISMI analyzed the documents between October 2002 and January 2003.

The United States and Britain used the claim that Saddam was seeking to buy uranium in Niger to bolster their case for the invasion, which started in March 2003. The intelligence supporting the claim later was deemed unreliable.

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THE CAKES WERE FAKE

CNN - 14 March 2003

Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S.

From David Ensor - CNN Washington Bureau

Intelligence documents that U.S. and British governments said were strong evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons have been dismissed as forgeries by U.N. weapons inspectors.

The documents, given to International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, indicated that Iraq might have tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger, but the agency said they were "obvious" fakes.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell referred to the documents directly in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council outlining the Bush administration's case against Iraq.

"I'm sure the FBI and CIA must be mortified by this because it is extremely embarrassing to them," former CIA official Ray Close said.

Responding to questions about the documents from lawmakers, Powell said, "It was provided in good faith to the inspectors and our agency received it in good faith, not participating ... in any way in any falsification activities."

"It was the information that we had. We provided it. If that information is inaccurate, fine," Powell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" last Sunday.

"We don't believe that all the issues surrounding nuclear weapons have been resolved [in Iraq]," he said.

How were forgeries missed?

But the discovery raises questions such as why the apparent forgeries were given to inspectors and why U.S. and British intelligence agents did not recognize that they were not authentic.

Sources said that one of the documents was a letter discussing the uranium deal supposedly signed by Niger President Tandja Mamadou. The sources described the signature as "childlike" and said that it clearly was not Mamadou's.

Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger in 14 years, sources said.

"The IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents -- which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger -- are not in fact authentic," ElBaradei said in his March 7 presentation to the U.N. Security Council.

Close said the CIA should have known better.

"They have tremendously sophisticated and experienced people in their technical services division, who wouldn't allow a forgery like this to get by," Close said. "I mean it's just mystifying to me. I can't understand it."

A U.S. intelligence official said that the documents were passed on to the International Atomic Energy Agency within days of being received with the comment, " 'We don't know the provenance of this information, but here it is.' "

If a mistake was made, a U.S. official suggested, it was more likely due to incompetence not malice.

"That's a convenient explanation, but it doesn't satisfy me," Close said. "Incompetence I have not seen in those agencies. I've seen plenty of malice, but I've never seen incompetence."

Who made the forgeries?

But the question remains -- who is responsible for the apparent forgeries?

Experts said the suspects include the intelligence services of Iraq's neighbors, other pro-war nations, Iraqi opposition groups or simply con men.

Most rule out the United States, Great Britain or Israel because they said those countries' intelligence services would have been able to make much more convincing forgeries if they had chosen to do so.

President Bush even highlighted the documents in his State of the Union address on January 28.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said.

U.S. officials said that the assertion by the president and British government was also based on additional evidence of Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from another African country. But officials would not say which nation and a knowledgable U.S. official said that there was not much to that evidence either.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/03/14/sprj.irq.documents/index.html

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BBC - 24 September 2003

No WMD in Iraq

No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq by the group looking for them, according to a Bush administration source who has spoken to the BBC.

This will be the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group's interim report, the source told the presenter of BBC television's Daily Politics show, Andrew Neil.

Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".

Mr Neil said the draft report - which the source said is due to be published next month - concludes that it is highly unlikely that weapons of mass destruction were shipped out of the country to places like Syria before the US-led war on Iraq.

The bottom line is that the team has found no weapons of mass destruction
Andrew Neil

The report was still to be finalised and could undergo some changes, but the source had been told the content of some key passages which were not expected to be substantively altered.

Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said if these details of the report were true, it would be a "savage blow" to the prime minister.

IRAQ SURVEY GROUP

Took over WMD hunt from the US military in June
Using intelligence to build picture of Iraqi weapons programmes
Led by US general, but has some UK and Australian staff
1,300 staff include former UN weapons inspectors
But, Mr Neil added, the report would publish computer programmes, files, pictures and paperwork which it says shows that Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to develop a weapons of mass destruction programme.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told the Reuters news agency he expected the report would "reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out".

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BBC - 3 October, 2003

Stakes high in weapons report

The weapons threat was key to Blair and Bush's case for war

By Nick Assinder - Political correspondent

Tony Blair has invested everything - and most certainly his personal credibility - in the hunt for Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

Now the Iraq Survey Group has so far found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, although has unearthed some evidence of research and development, the prime minister's critics will have a field day.

But as each day has passed, the prime minister's room for manoeuvre has narrowed

The thing that is absolutely certain is that the stakes could not be higher.

Ever since the war ended, the prime minister has insisted he was confident weapons would be found.

And he told his doubters, with increasing irritation, that they should wait until the group reported before leaping to judgements.

Products or programmes?

On at least one occasion Mr Blair suggested he was aware of some of the group's findings.

He didn't say so in as many words, but journalists at one of his monthly news conferences earlier in the summer were left speculating that he must be confident they had found something.

Of course, that something may not have been physical weapons.

Maybe it was "evidence of WMD programmes" or "WMD products" - the phrases the prime minister had started deploying when questioned too hard.
And sure enough, that's what the group says it has found in significant amounts.

But that will not placate his critics. And the prime minister knows that full well.

Unless real weapons are found, the backlash against the war, which is already growing in the wake of the Hutton inquiry, is almost certain to escalate.

Of course the ISG report is not clear cut as all that and it is only an interim report.

Rising scepticism

The group is asking for more time to complete their search - but that is precisely what UN inspector Hans Blix wanted before the war.

But as each day has passed, the prime minister's room for manoeuvre has narrowed.

Anti-war opinion has hardened while scepticism and suspicion have increased.

It may be that a couple of months or so ago, discovery of some evidence that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction or had hidden his weapons before the conflict might have been enough.

But the series of inquiries into the war suggesting the threat from Iraq was not as serious as suggested, and the recent comments by Mr Blix that Saddam destroyed his weapons over a decade ago, have added to public distrust.

Mr Blair needs something concrete from the survey group if he is to stand any chance of finally putting this crisis behind him.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3136780.stm

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BBC: 9 July 2003

"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." President George W Bush

"Given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the president's broader statement" White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer

White House 'warned over Iraq claim'

The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned.

Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, a CIA official has told the BBC.

On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and suggested it should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January.

But the CIA official has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.

Both President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the claim, based on British intelligence, that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger as part of its attempt to build a nuclear weapons programme.

Mr Blair is under fire from British MPs about the credibility of a dossier of evidence, which set out his case for war.

And in the US, increasing doubts are being raised about the American use of intelligence.

Forged documents

In his keynote speech to Congress in January, the President said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

But the documents alleging a transaction were found to have been forged.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer appeared to concede on Tuesday that the uranium claim in the State of the Union address was based on inaccurate information.

"The president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake [uranium] from Niger," Mr Fleischer said.

"So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the president's broader statement."

But a former US diplomat, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, went on the record at the weekend to say that he had travelled to Africa to investigate the uranium claims and found no evidence to support them.

Now the CIA official has told the BBC that Mr Wilson's findings had been passed onto the White House as early as March 2002.

That means that the administration would have known nearly a year before the State of the Union address that the information was likely false.

In response, a US Government official told the BBC that the White House received hundreds of intelligence reports every day.

The official said there was no evidence that this specific cable about uranium had been passed on to the president.

But in Congress, Democrats are demanding a full investigation into the intelligence that underpinned the case for war.

They have demanded to know if President Bush used evidence that he knew to be weak or wrong.

British undeterred

The British Government has stood by its assertion, saying the forged documents were not the only evidence used to reach its conclusion that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Africa.


On Tuesday Mr Blair defended the assessment, telling a committee of MPs that it was not a "fantasy" and that the intelligence services themselves stood by the allegation.

"The evidence that we had that the Iraqi Government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called 'forged' documents, they came from separate intelligence," Mr Blair said.

However, Mr Blair did not specify what that separate intelligence was.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3056626.stm

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Claims: 'Niger uranium'

Escalation of arguments in a row over Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger.

24 September 2002

"There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Iraq has no active civilian nuclear power programme or nuclear power plants and therefore has no legitimate reason to acquire uranium."

Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The assessment of the British Government


28 January 2003

"The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

US President George W Bush's State of the Union address

7 March 2003

"Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic.

We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded."

UN nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei's report to the UN Security Council

3 July 2003

"It is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence... We recommend that the Government explain on what evidence it relied for its judgement in September that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Africa in the light of subsequent events."

House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report

6 July 2003

"It was highly doubtful that any such (Niger-Iraq) transaction had ever taken place."

Former US diplomat Joseph Wilson writing in the New York Times about his fact-finding visit to Niger in February 2002

8 July 2003

"The president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake [uranium] from Niger.

So given the fact that the report on the yellow cake did not turn out to be accurate, that is reflective of the president's broader statement."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer

8 July 2003

"The evidence that we had that the Iraqi Government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called "forged" documents, they came from separate intelligence."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair testimony to the House of Commons Liaison Committee.

11 July 2003

"The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety... Some specifics about amount and place were taken out. With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared. The agency did not say they wanted that sentence out.

If the CIA - the director of central intelligence - had said "Take this out of the speech," it would have been gone. We have a high standard for the president's speeches."

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice on US President George W Bush's State of the Union address

11 July 2003

"These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president. The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. I am responsible for the approval process in my agency."

CIA Director George Tenet

12 July 2003

"The CIA expressed reservations to us about this element of the September dossier... However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US... A judgement was therefore made to retain it."

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in a letter to Donald Anderson MP, Chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee

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BBC - 12 July, 2003

Iraq uranium claim sows confusion

Mr Straw says separate evidence backs the UK claim


The UK Government has defended its claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, despite the White House saying it was unfounded.

In a letter to a senior MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UK had additional information to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, but this intelligence had not been passed on to the US administration.

In Washington, the CIA has accepted the blame for allowing the claim to be included in a speech by President George W Bush, even though the agency had long had doubts about its credibility.

The uranium claim was used by both governments to build a case for going to war over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Fresh doubts about intelligence information used by Britain to make the case for war have also been voiced by former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix.

No weapons of mass destruction have so far been found.

Mr Bush on Saturday tried to draw a line under the affair, which Democrats have seized on to challenge the president's authority.

A new opinion poll shows that public support for Mr Bush's handling of the conflict has fallen nine points to 58%.

The BBC's Nick Childs in Washington says though it's too early to say how significant the row will become, the administration is suddenly on the defensive.

Second source

The UK Government's insistence on standing by the Niger claim in spite of Washington's decision to back down has deepened confusion about the intelligence itself.

The claim was first made public in a dossier on Iraq released by the UK in September last year.

The claim was then cited in President Bush's State of the Union speech to Congress in January - in what the White House now says was a mistake.

It has emerged that long before that, in February 2002, Ambassador Joseph Wilson - now retired - was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify the claim. He reported it was unfounded.

Mr Straw on Saturday said his government had not been told of Mr Wilson's visit.

And he said separate intelligence which London had not passed to Washington in any case meant that the UK was still certain Iraq had indeed tried to get uranium in Niger.

In a letter to Donald Anderson MP, chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr Straw wrote:

"The CIA expressed reservations to us about this element of the September dossier...

"However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US... A judgement was therefore made to retain it."

The prime minister's office said the extra intelligence had come from a foreign service and could not be disclosed.

A spokesman said it was entirely different from the information the CIA had disavowed.

Mr Anderson has called on the government to reveal its source to clear up the confusion.

In his criticism, Hans Blix said the UK Government made a fundamental mistake when it declared that Saddam Hussein could deploy weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes.

He told the British newspaper the Independent on Sunday that he believed the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, overinterpreted the intelligence Britain had.

American approach

The row over intelligence which has been dominating British politics in recent weeks has now seized the US.

In his January address, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

CIA director George Tenet acknowledged that his organisation was wrong to let President Bush include the claim in his speech.

Mr Bush has given his support to Mr Tenet and said he now considers the matter closed.

However, our Washington correspondent says pressure may continue on Mr Tenet, whom some Republicans distrust for having been appointed by President Clinton.

And the Democrats also continue to press the president.

"This government either is inept or simply has not told us the truth," said Howard Dean, a contender for the Democrat presidential nomination.

An opinion poll for the Washington Post and ABC News on Saturday showed the country split on the issue, with 50% saying the president deliberately exaggerated evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and 46% saying he had not.

And the poll shows opinion becoming disillusioned with the Iraq conflict.

For the first time, more than half the respondents said there had been an unacceptable level of US casualties in Iraq.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3061665.stm

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BBC - 12 July, 2003

CIA takes blame for Iraq claims

Tenet says the CIA made a mistake

The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that his organisation was wrong to let President George W Bush tell the American people that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear material from Africa.

In a statement, George Tenet said CIA officials had failed to prevent the allegation from being inserted into the president's State of the Union address in January, despite having doubts about its validity.

This, he said, was not the level of certainty required for presidential speeches.

The statement came as senior Democrats called for an independent inquiry into the way the Bush administration made the case for war.

The BBC's Rob Watson in Washington says the White House strategy is clear - to put an end to what has become an increasingly embarrassing row, the CIA has been assigned the blame.

But there are signs that Mr Tenet's admission may not bring an end to the controversy, our correspondent adds.

British claims

President Bush has denied that he knowingly gave out false information.

In his January address, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Mr Tenet, in his statement, said that although the president's words were factually correct - in the sense they attributed the allegation to the British Government - they should never have been included in the speech, given the long-held doubts that US intelligence had about Britain's claims.

The British Government stands by the allegation. Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman has said Britain had separate intelligence from that of the Americans.

The White House acknowledged for the first time earlier this week that the claim about Iraq seeking to buy uranium from Niger might be wrong.

Before Mr Tenet made his statement, some US media reports were suggesting that the CIA had advised the White House to remove the claims from the speech.

Asked about this during a visit to Uganda, Mr Bush replied: "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services."

He did not answer when pressed on how the erroneous material came to be included in the address, stressing instead that his government took the right decision to invade Iraq.

Changes made

Mr Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice insisted the president "did not knowingly say anything that we knew to be false".

Putting the onus of responsibility on the intelligence services, she reiterated that the CIA had vetted the speech and cleared it "in its entirety".

If anyone had any doubts about the uranium claim, "those doubts were not communicated to the president," Ms Rice told reporters.

However, she said the CIA did make some changes to that particular sentence in the speech.

"Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," she said. "With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared."

Senior US Democrats are demanding to know what Mr Bush knew about the allegation, and who pressed for it to be included in the State of the Union address, despite the doubts of US intelligence.

One of the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Howard Dean, has demanded resignations over the issue.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, another Democratic presidential hopeful, said the controversy "breaks the basic bond of trust we must have with our leaders in times of war and terrorism".

Our correspondent says that most worryingly of all, perhaps, for President Bush there now appears to be a shift in public opinion with the latest polls showing that a majority of Americans now believe the White House exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/3060615.stm
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