More Evidence Emerges That Bush Administration Disregarded Data Undermining Iraq Nuclear Claims

Bush administration officials ignored considerable amounts of contradictory evidence when building a presidential claim in 2003 that Niger had inked a deal to supply uranium to Iraq, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Jan. 18, 2006).

The claim was a major feature of U.S. assertions that Iraq had active WMD programs.

“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” U.S. President George W. Bush said in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

The claim was based largely on a letter from Nigerian President Mamadou Tandja to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein saying that “500 tons of pure uranium per year will be delivered in two phases.”

The letter, however, was a forgery, and a poor one, according to many who have seen it, the Post reported.

Italian reporter Elisabetta Burba was given the letter by an informant in October 2002, about eight months after the CIA first acquired it. 

Burba traveled to Niger to investigate the story, but determined that the concept of a covert sale of uranium to Iraq was impossible.  Simply shipping such a large amount of uranium would have drawn attention, she said.  “They would have needed hundreds of trucks,” she said, a number that would have been impossible to hide.

It did not take her long to determine that the document itself was riddled with errors and clearly not an authentic document.  She elected not to do a story on it, the Post reported.

Many U.S. intelligence officers made similar assessments when they first saw the document, according to the Post, but others viewed the letter as damning when they learned of it months later.

Those analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency prevailed, and the White House kept the claim in the president’s speech, according to the Post.

The source of the forged letter remains a mystery, but some intelligence officials believe it was circulated by disgruntled personnel within Italy’s intelligence service who wanted to make money on the side (Peter Eisner, Washington Post, April 3).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.