Iraq:  WMD Issue “Not of Immediate Consequence,” Wolfowitz Says

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz yesterday played down the search for evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, saying it was “not of immediate consequence” (see GSN, July 21).

“I’m not saying that getting to the bottom of this WMD issue isn’t important.  It is important,” Wolfowitz said following a five-day visit to Iraq.  “But it is not of immediate consequence,” he said.

Wolfowitz said he was more concerned with the reconstruction of Iraq than the WMD issue.

“I’m not concerned about weapons of mass destruction,” Wolfowitz said.  “I’m concerned about getting Iraq on its feet.  I didn’t come (to Iraq) on a search for weapons of mass destruction,” he said.

Iraqis themselves have little interest in the WMD issue, Wolfowitz said.

“If you could get in a relaxed conversation with Iraqis on that subject they’d say, ‘Why on Earth are you Americans fussing so much about this historical issue when we have real problems here, when Baathists are killing us and Baathists are threatening us and we don’t have electricity and we don’t have jobs?’” Wolfowitz said.  “Those are the real issues,” he said (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 22).

CIA Warned White House of Niger Uranium Claim Doubts in January

Meanwhile, CIA officials have said that the agency warned the White House in January, prior to U.S. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address, of doubts over claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, according to U.S. News & World Report.

A senior executive intelligence brief sent by the CIA to the White House and national security agencies Jan. 17 voiced similar doubts about the Niger uranium claim as those included in a national intelligence estimate prepared in October 2002, CIA officials said.  The NIE said, “We do not know the status” of the alleged Iraq-Niger transaction, and cited U.S. State Department doubts about the Niger uranium claim.

In addition, a document prepared by Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff around the same time as the State of the Union address did not include any reference to Iraq seeking to obtain uranium from Niger, according to U.S. News.  On Jan. 25, three days before Bush gave his address, Lewis “Scooter” Libby made a presentation to White House officials on Iraq’s WMD programs and links to terrorism.  Libby then summarized the conclusions of that meeting in a written document, which was provided to U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell to act as the basis of Powell’s presentation to the U.N. Security Council in early February, U.S. News reported.  The Niger claim was not included in Libby’s document (Pound/Auster, U.S. News & World Report, July 28).

Few U.S. Representatives See Iraq Intelligence

Only a small number of U.S. representatives have reviewed the more than 10,000 pages of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, which was made available by the House Select Committee on Intelligence a month ago, according to the Washington Times.

To see the information, representatives must first sign a confidentiality agreement saying they will not discuss the information.  Intelligence committee staff members said they do not brief representatives to avoid charges of spinning the information, but will help representatives find sections they are interested in examining.

The move to make the Iraq-related intelligence available to representatives is one reason why the controversy over the Bush administration’s handling of such intelligence has gained little ground in the House of Representatives as opposed to the Senate, Republicans and Democrats said.

“I honestly believe the membership of the House really believes we have a good committee that runs on a bipartisan basis,” committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) said. 

By making the intelligence information available, it shows that “there’s no cover-up going on, nothing untoward happening here,” Goss said (Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, July 22).

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Iraq:  White House Offers Further Explanation on African Uranium Claim

A senior Bush administration official Friday offered further details as to how a now-disputed claim that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Africa was included in U.S. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address (see GSN, July 18).

Prior to the address, the White House changed a draft to make it more credible by attributing the African uranium claim to a British intelligence dossier, the official said.  The change was made after an internal debate as to the best way to present information, and not because of CIA-raised concerns over the credibility of reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, the official said.

The White House had originally written the State of the Union to say “we know” specific things about former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs, such as “We also know that he has recently sought to buy uranium in Africa,” the senior Bush administration official said.  White House speechwriters decided to include the African uranium claim, not senior White House officials, the senior administration official said.

On the day before Bush gave his address, the White House team preparing it “decided that it would be much more credible if we could explain to the public how we knew it — not just assert it, but to fully disclose as much as possible how we knew this information,” the senior administration official said.  The address was then changed to attribute each statement on Iraq’s WMD efforts to a specific source, the official said.

The senior Bush administration official’s account as to how the African uranium claim was included into the State of the Union address differs from previously offered versions, according to the New York Times.  For example, CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement earlier this month that agency officials raised concerns about the “fragmentary nature of the intelligence” with White House officials.

“Some of the language was changed,” Tenet said (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, July 19).

Last week, Alan Foley, a CIA WMD expert, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during a closed hearing that a National Security Council official had asked him whether the Niger uranium claim could be included in the State of the Union, according to the Baltimore Sun.  Foley said he told Robert Joseph, NSC director for nonproliferation, that the CIA had found the evidence on the claim to be inconclusive and that it should not be included. 

According to Foley, Joseph then tried to negotiate the inclusion of the claim, asking whether it would be accurate to say that the United Kingdom had reported that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa.  Foley told the committee that he had eventually agreed.

The senior Bush administration official, however, said that no such “negotiation” had occurred and that the CIA had simply approved the reference to the British intelligence dossier to be included (David Greene, Baltimore Sun, July 19).

The senior Bush administration official also said Friday that neither Bush nor national security adviser Condoleezza Rice read in its entirety a National Intelligence Estimate prepared in October on Iraq’s WMD programs.

The NIE, portions of which were declassified and released Friday, said “most” of the six U.S. intelligence agencies believed there was “compelling evidence” that Iraq was rebuilding its uranium enrichment capability for a nuclear weapons program.  The report also included, however, dissent by the U.S. State Department that said the evidence did not “add up to a compelling case” that Iraq was attempting to develop nuclear weapons.

In an annex to the NIE, State’s intelligence service disputed the African uranium claim, saying it was “highly dubious.”

Bush and Rice, however, did not read the entire NIE, including the annex, the senior Bush administration official said.  “They did not read footnotes in a 90-page document,” the official said.

Bush was “briefed” on the NIE, but “I don’t think he sat down over a long weekend and read every word of it,” the official said.  The official also said that Bush “did not know” that the State Department had challenged the claim.

“The president was comfortable at the time, based on the information that was provided in his speech,” the senior Bush administration official said.  “The president of the United States is not a fact-checker,” the official said (Milbank/Priest, Washington Post, July 19).

Italian Reporter Says She Is Source of Nigerien Documents

Italian reporter Elisabetta Burba said she is the one who provided U.S. diplomats with documents purporting to illustrate an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger — documents that were later revealed to be forgeries, according to the Associated Press.

Burba was quoted Saturday by Corriere della Sera as saying her source for the documents “in the past proved to be reliable.”

“I realized that this could be a worldwide scoop, but that’s exactly why I was very worried,” Burba said.  “If it turned out to be a hoax, and I published it, I would have ended my career,” she said.

Burba said she traveled to Niger to try to authenticate the documents.  After she returned, she told the top editor at Panorama, where she worked, that the story seemed suspicious.  After discussions at the magazine, Burba then took the documents to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, AP reported.

“I went by myself and give them the dossier.  No one said anything more to me and in any case the decision not to publish it was already taken — with no further way to check out the reliability of those papers, we chose not to risk,” Burba said.  “I informed my source that I wasn’t going to write anything and for me that affair was forgotten,” she said (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 20).

NIE Says Hussein Might Provide WMD to Terrorists if Facing Death, Capture

Meanwhile, the declassified portions of the NIE released Friday indicate that U.S. intelligence agencies were concerned that Hussein might provide terrorists with biological or chemical weapons if he faced death or capture, according to the Washington Post.  This contrasts with Bush administration statements prior to the war that Hussein would provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists unprovoked.

“Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as al-Qaeda … already engaged in a life-or-death struggle against the United States, could perpetrate the type of terrorist attack that he would hope to conduct,” the NIE said.

Hussein could have chosen to take the “extreme step” of aiding al-Qaeda in conducting a terrorist attack against the United States if it “would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him,” the NIE said.

With Hussein believed to be alive and in hiding and the status of Iraqi WMD stockpiles unknown, there is concern that the NIE’s assessment may still occur, Bush administration officials said.  U.S. intelligence agencies do not know either “the extent to which Saddam Hussein has access or control” over the militias attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, or where possible WMD stockpiles could be hidden.

Asked whether Hussein would now use biological or chemical weapons if he had control of them, the senior administration official said, “We would not put that past him to do whatever makes our lives miserable” (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 21).

WMD Hunt

Former U.N. weapons inspector David Kay, who has been appointed by the CIA to oversee the Iraq Survey Group’s search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has said he expects to begin releasing evidence of such weapons within six months (see GSN, July 9).

“I think in six months from now we will have a considerable amount of evidence, and we’ll be starting to reveal that evidence,” Kay said (Stephen Farrell, London Times, July 21).

Soldiers and officials involved with the Iraq Survey Group’s predecessor, the 75th Exploitation Task Force, have named a number of flaws, such as poor intelligence and a lack of speed, as reasons why that unit failed to find conclusive evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, according to the New York Times.

Some sources said that the Bush administration used poor intelligence to plan and conduct the WMD search.  Planners had assumed that Iraq would use either biological or chemical weapons during the war, publicly proving their existence, or that such weapons would be easy to find if they were not used, the sources said.

In addition, promising suspect sites were either looted or cleaned before U.S. troops could secure and search them, some sources said.

“Because we arrived at sites so late, so often, we may never know what was there, and either walked or was taken away by looters and Baathist elements under the guise of looting,” said Capt. J. Ryan Cutchin, leader of the MET Bravo team, one of the four search teams in the task force.

Intelligence on suspect sites was often wrong, a senior officer said.

“The teams would be given a packet, with pictures and a tentative grid,” the officer said.  “They would be told:  ‘Go to this place.  You will find a McDonald’s there.  Look in the fridge.  You will find French fries, cheeseburger and Cokes.’  And they would go there, and not only was there no fridge and no McDonald’s, there was never even a thought of ever putting a McDonald’s there.  Day after day it was like that,” the officer said.

Experts and soldiers also criticized the U.S. Defense Department for failing to make the WMD search a high priority.

“Though it may be now, I don’t sense that this was much of a priority,” said former Undersecretary of Defense Fred Ikle (Judith Miller, New York Times, July 20).

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U.S. Response:  Pentagon Should Provide More Detail for CTR Budget

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — U.S. government auditors said Friday that the Defense Department should provide Congress with more details on joint disarmament efforts in Russia (see GSN, May 23).

The additional information is not required by law, but it could help lawmakers develop a better annual budget for the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, according to a General Accounting Office letter to the U.S. House and Senate Armed Services Committee.

The CTR effort funds programs in Russia to dismantle and dispose of weapons of mass destruction.

Citing its legal requirements, the Pentagon disagreed with the GAO’s assessment.

“The legislation governing the content of the CTR annual report does not require reporting on these elements,” according to a Defense Department response to the letter.

The annual Pentagon report on the threat reduction program “lacked a discussion of key strategic planning elements that could help congressional decision-makers in their annual CTR budget deliberations,” the GAO said.

Defense officials did meet their legally mandated reporting requirements in the CTR report, according to GAO, but the letter specifically asked for “annual performance goals,” “information on external factors” and “plans for revising program goals.”

Without this information, the CTR report “does not provide a useful context for understanding how project and budget plans might be affected in the future,” the GAO said.

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Iraq I:  Blair Defends War on Iraq, Cites Threat of Terrorists Obtaining Weapons

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday defended the need for going to war with Iraq, citing the potential threat of terrorists arming themselves with weapons of mass destruction if former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had remained in power (see GSN, July 17).

In a rare address before a joint session of Congress, Blair stressed the threat terrorism poses to international security, including the risk that terrorist groups might ally themselves with states seeking to develop weapons of mass destruction.  For example, according to Blair, Iraq under Hussein was known to have supported and sheltered such organizations.

“When you lead countries, as we both do, and you see the potential for this threat of terrorism and weapons of mass of destruction to come together, I really don’t believe that any responsible leader could ignore the evidence that we see and the threat that we face,” Blair said during a joint press conference with U.S. President George W. Bush following his address.  “And that’s why we’ve taken the action that we have, first in Afghanistan and now in Iraq,” Blair said.

Even if the threat of terrorists working together with rogue states remains unrealized, “history will forgive” the decision to go to war because of the brutality of the Hussein regime, Blair told Congress, adding that he did believe such weapons would be found.

“Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together?  Let us say one thing:  If we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that, at its least, is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering.  That is something I am confident history will forgive,” Blair said.

“But if our critics are wrong, if we are right, as I believe with every fiber of instinct and conviction I have that we are, and we do not act, then we will have hesitated in the face of this menace when we should have given leadership,” Blair said.  “That is something history will not forgive,” he said.

For his part, Bush said yesterday he was confident that the decision to go to war was justified, citing the threat Iraq posed to U.S. security.

Speaking at a joint press conference with Blair, Bush said, “The regime of Saddam Hussein was a grave and growing threat.  Given Saddam’s history of violence and aggression, it would have been reckless to place our trust in his sanity or restraint,” Bush said.  “As long as I hold this office, I will never risk the lives of American citizens by assuming the goodwill of dangerous enemies,” he said.

Bush also said he believed that coalition forces would find Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and evidence of efforts to produce such weapons.  He blamed the lack of progress so far in the WMD hunt on the postwar chaos in the country, Hussein’s history of hiding weapons from international inspectors and a lack of cooperation by former Iraqi officials.

“But, yeah, we will bring the weapons,” Bush said.  “And, of course, we will bring the information forward on the weapons when they find them.  And that’ll … end all this speculation,” he added.

During the press conference, Blair reiterated his support for a claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa prior to the war. 

“The British intelligence that we have we believe is genuine,” Blair said.  “We stand by that intelligence,” he said.

The uranium claim was included in a September 2002 British dossier on Iraq’s WMD programs, which Bush cited when he made the allegation in his State of the Union address in January.  The White House has admitted, however, that the claim should not have been included in Bush’s address.

Bush refused to directly answer whether he took personal responsibility for the inclusion of the claim into the State of the Union, instead praising U.S. and British intelligence.

“First, I take responsibility for putting our troops into action.  And I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to the security of other nations,” Bush said.  “I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein, because the intelligence — not only our intelligence but the intelligence of this great country [the United Kingdom] — made a clear and compelling case that Saddam Hussein was a threat to security and peace,” he said.

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Iraq II:  CIA Expert Says NSC Official Pushed Africa Charge

Working to find a way to include the controversial Iraq-Niger charge in the President George W. Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address, a White House official repeatedly modified the claim until a CIA official affirmed its accuracy, according to the CIA official’s testimony to a Senate committee this week (see GSN, July 17).

Ultimately, in his January speech, Bush said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”  The White House this month, however, acknowledged that the claim should not have been included in the address, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday stood by the charge (see related GSN story, today).

During a closed hearing Wednesday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, CIA WMD expert Alan Foley described a prespeech meeting with National Security Council nonproliferation director Robert Joseph.  Foley’s testimony was described by unnamed senior intelligence officials.

Joseph asked Foley if Bush’s address could include a reference to Iraq attempting to obtain uranium from Niger, but he told Joseph that the CIA was not certain about the credibility of the Niger claim and recommended that it not be included.  The CIA had previously prevented a reference to Niger from appearing in an October 2002 Bush speech.

Foley then told the committee that Joseph asked him whether the speech could refer to British intelligence reports that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa.  Foley said he told Joseph that the CIA had warned the United Kingdom about uncertainties concerning the claim when the British government included it in a September 2002 dossier on Iraq’s WMD efforts.

Foley said Joseph then asked him whether it would be accurate to say that the British report said Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, and Foley said he agreed.  Foley did not tell the committee, however, that he had felt pressured by Joseph, officials familiar with Foley’s testimony said.

A senior Bush administration official denied Foley’s account, saying that none of the drafts of the State of the Union contained a specific reference to Niger. 

“If that was the testimony, it is not an accurate accounting of events,” the senior administration official said.  “There was never at any time a mention of place or amount in any draft of the State of the Union,” the official added (Risen/Sanger, New York Times, July 18).

Committee member Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said CIA Director George Tenet’s and other officials’ testimony in Wednesday’s hearing demonstrated that the White House ignored warnings to not include the Africa uranium claim in the State of the Union address.

“They weren’t searching for the right words, they were searching a way around the obvious,” Durbin said.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said the committee expects to hear testimony in coming weeks from the CIA inspector general and U.S. Defense Department and intelligence officials overseeing the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  Committee members also said they wanted to examine memos and other communications between the CIA and the White House during the negotiations over the State of the Union.

“We will take this inquiry wherever it goes,” Roberts said (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, July 18).

Senator John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said the committee is “looking at people in the executive branch, including the White House.”  Both Republicans and Democrats are concerned “about the further implication beyond Tenet,” Rockefeller said (Pincus/Priest, Washington Post, July 18).

Iraqi Scientists Says Aluminum Tubes Were Not Meant for Centrifuges

Meanwhile, an Iraqi scientist recently told the CIA that high-strength aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were never intended for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium, counter to previous U.S. assertions, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, June 27).

Mahdi Shukur Obeidi, who has provided centrifuge components and documents to the United States, has firmly denied that the tubes were intended for centrifuges both in discussions with U.N. weapons inspectors and later in discussions with the CIA, said former U.N. inspector David Albright.

“Before the war he took the position the tubes weren’t for centrifuges, and after the war” — when there was little fear of retribution — “he told them the same thing,” Albright said.

In addition, Obeidi “also said that since ‘91 they hadn’t resurrected a nuclear weapon program,” Albright said (Charles Hanley, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 17).

Iraqi Ricin Efforts

The head of an Iraqi program to weaponize ricin has said that, after a failed 1991 field test, Baghdad ceased its efforts, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Prior to the recent war in Iraq, U.S. officials had cited Iraq’s research into weaponizing ricin as evidence of Iraq’s efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, according to the Journal.  Iraqi scientist Shakir al-Akidy, who headed the ricin program, said, however, that Iraq had lacked the knowledge to turn ricin into a usable military weapon.

Iraqi scientists conducted research on ricin for two years, from 1989 to 1991, at the Salman Pak facility, according to the Journal.  While they had some success in producing small amounts of the toxin, which were refined and tested on animals, they were never successful in producing a highly concentrated form, al-Akidy said.

In 1991, a group of Iraqi scientists conducted a field test using ricin, the Journal reported.  The toxin was loaded into an artillery shell that was detonated near encaged small animals.  Once the shell exploded, those animals not killed by the blast were taken away for observation, according to two Iraqis involved in the experiment.  While three animals died over the next two months from suspected ricin poisoning, most showed no effect, according to the Journal.

Soon after the 1991 test, the ricin program was discontinued, al-Akidy said.  The ricin Iraq had been able to produce was either used up in testing or destroyed, he said.

“Ricin is very difficult to isolate,” al-Akidy said.  “What we made was very crude, not useful for military applications.  We threw everything away and that was the end,” he said (David Cloud, Wall Street Journal, July 18).

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U.S. Response:  Senate Passes $369 Billion Defense Spending Bill

The U.S. Senate passed a $368.6 billion defense spending bill last night, but the measure did not include any funding for military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 27).

The bill falls $3.1 billion short of U.S. President George W. Bush’s request, but the president is likely to seek more money for operations in the Middle East from later bills.

The U.S. Defense Department spends $3.9 billion each month on operations in Iraq and about $950 million monthly on Afghanistan.

Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the top ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, said Bush was trying to mislead the public by not including “one thin dime in the budget” for Iraq or Afghanistan (Ken Guggenheim, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, July 18).

“We should put an end to this shell game of allowing the administration to hide the cost of occupation by using supplemental appropriations bills,” Byrd said (Carl Hulse, New York Times, July 18).

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Iraq I:  Tenet Likely to Survive Intelligence Controversy, Experts Say

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — CIA Director George Tenet will probably keep his job despite recent calls by some in Congress for his resignation, intelligence experts told Global Security Newswire this week.  In a statement last week Tenet publicly took responsibility for allowing U.S. President George W. Bush to make the now-discredited claim that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Africa (see GSN, July 16).

Intelligence experts said Tenet’s record as a “team player” within the Bush administration is likely to play a major role in helping him remain as CIA director.  In addition, the White House could end up creating more problems for itself politically if it forced Tenet to resign, or if he were to do so on his own, they said.  Some experts said, however, that the Bush administration might call on Tenet to resign or dismiss him if the controversy over the administration’s handling of prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq begins to have a major political impact on Bush himself.

Tenet’s Troubles

Tenet’s current difficulties can be traced back to late 2001, when Italy obtained documents that indicated Iraq had tried to purchase processed uranium, known as “yellowcake,” from Niger, according to Time.  When the United States received the information, it came to the attention of the vice president’s office, which dispatched Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the claim (see GSN, July 7).

In a commentary published July 6 in the New York Times, Wilson described his trip to Niger, which included meetings with current and former Nigerien officials and people associated with the country’s uranium industry.  “It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place,” Wilson said.

Wilson said that when he returned to the United States in early March 2002, he “promptly” provided a detailed briefing on his findings to the CIA.  While the CIA cabled the White House with information that Nigerien officials had denied that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium, the information was attributed to an anonymous source, not Wilson, the Washington Post reported last month.

The African uranium claim came up again in September 2002 when it was included in a British dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Sept. 24, 2002).  While not specifically naming Niger, the dossier said, “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium in Africa” (see related GSN story, today).

Iraq’s purported attempts to purchase uranium from Africa, including Niger, were also included in a U.S. national intelligence estimate prepared in October 2002, according to Tenet’s recent statement.  While the claim was not offered as evidence that Iraq was seeking to relaunch its nuclear weapons program, the NIE included three paragraphs describing reports that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Niger and two other African countries, Tenet said in his statement.  He also quoted the NIE as saying: “We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources.”

The White House, however, wanted to use the NIE’s Niger reference in a speech Bush was slated to give Oct. 7 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Washington Post reported.  Tenet personally told White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the claim should not be included in that speech because it came from only one source, a senior official told the Post.  The reference was ultimately excluded from Bush’s Cincinnati speech (see GSN, Oct. 8, 2002).

In early December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of WMD-related information to U.N. weapons inspectors, as required by the U.N. Security Council (see GSN, Dec. 9, 2002).  On Dec. 19, the U.S. State Department issued a fact sheet listing a number of alleged omissions from the Iraqi declaration, which specifically raised the Niger claim.

“The declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger,” the State Department fact sheet says.  “Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?” it says [emphasis included in original copy].

Soon after State released the fact sheet, the International Atomic Energy Agency requested that the United States provide evidence to support the claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, according to a letter the agency sent last month to Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

Meanwhile, in January the African uranium claim received its most significant endorsement when Bush included it in his State of the Union address in the now-infamous “16 words.”

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Bush said in his address.

While apparently being significant enough for Bush to include it in his State of the Union address, the African uranium claim was not included in U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February presentation to the U.N. Security Council on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Feb. 6).

“When I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore,” Powell said last week during a press conference in Pretoria, South Africa.  “It was not standing the test of time.  And so I didn’t use it, and we haven’t used it since.”

Also in February, the United States responded to the IAEA’s request for evidence to support the claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.  According to the agency’s letter to Waxman, it only took about 10 days to determine that an alleged contract between Iraq and Niger for the delivery of uranium could not have been honored.  The agency then examined the veracity of the documents, finding a number of flaws, such as incorrect references to the date of the Nigerien constitution, the incorrect name of the Nigerien foreign minister at the time the alleged documents were signed and the use of obsolete letterhead and the incorrect symbol of the Nigerien presidency.

According to a State Department letter sent to Waxman earlier this month, the department told the IAEA when it provided the alleged Nigerien documents that the reports of Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium there could not be confirmed and that the department had questions regarding specific claims (see GSN, July 9).

The first major blow was dealt to the African uranium claim in March when IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei publicly announced that the documents purporting to show Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium from Niger were forgeries (see GSN, March 10).

“Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents are in fact not authentic,” ElBaradei told the Security Council March 7, according to a U.N. press release.

Newsweek reported yesterday that the FBI is conducting an investigation into the forged Nigerien documents (see GSN, March 13).  Sources told the magazine that the bureau’s Counterintelligence Division has decided to investigate the issue after prompting by Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), whose earlier request three months ago was denied.

The African uranium claim came crashing down earlier this month when the White House publicly acknowledged that it should not have been included in Bush’s State of the Union address (see GSN, July 8).

“After the speech, information was learned about the forged documents,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said during a July 9 press conference in Pretoria, referring to the Nigerien documents.  “With the advantage of hindsight, it’s known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech.  This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech,” he said.

Two days later, Tenet issued his statement taking responsibility for the CIA’s approval of Bush’s address (see GSN, July 14).

“First, CIA approved the president’s State of the Union address before it was delivered.  Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.  And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound,” Tenet said.  “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president,” he said.

Tenet told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday that his staff did not bring the uranium statement to his attention before Bush gave the speech, the Washington Post reported.  Tenet told the committee during a closed hearing that he had taken responsibility for the speech because a CIA official had approved it after meetings with the White House, congressional and Bush administration sources told the Post.

“Members were stunned because he said he basically wasn’t aware of the sentence until recently,” the Post quoted a Democratic senator as saying.

Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said today that Tenet also told the Senate intelligence committee that a White House official had insisted that the African uranium claim be included in the State of the Union address.

“He (Tenet) certainly told us who the person was who was insistent on putting this language in which the CIA knew to be incredible, this language about the uranium shipment from Africa,” the Associated Press quoted Durbin as saying on ABC’s Good Morning America. 

“And there was this negotiation between the White House and the CIA about just how far you could go and be close to the truth, and unfortunately those 16 words were included in the most important speech the president delivers in any given year,” Durbin said.

Tenet’s Future

Soon after Tenet released his statement, Bush and other senior White House officials expressed support for both him and the CIA.

“President Bush has confidence in Director Tenet, and President Bush has confidence in the CIA,” White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Saturday.

“George Tenet is an enormously talented public servant, and the intelligence community does a darn good job,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday on ABC’S This Week.  “There it is, end of story,” he said.

Yesterday though, two contenders for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination — Senator Joseph Lieberman (Conn.) and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean — publicly called for Tenet to resign.

“The reason the director should step aside is that he is now part of the shifting of the blame,” Dean told the Associated Press.

Lieberman was even stronger in his criticism of Tenet, saying he would have little confidence in Tenet if Lieberman were president.

“Unlike the current president, I would not continue to have confidence in my CIA director, and would ask him to resign,” Lieberman told AP.  “This president ought to hold someone accountable for causing him to say something that was not true,” he added.

Tenet’s reputation as one of the better CIA directors in recent history and as a “team player” within the Bush administration could go a long way, however, in helping him to keep his job, according to experts. 

If Tenet were to be removed from his CIA position after taking personal responsibility for the statement, some career CIA officials would likely retaliate with even more embarrassing revelations if they felt the White House had treated him “dirty,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org.

“Tenet’s been a stand-up guy.  He’s kept the secrets and carried the water,” Pike said.

The White House also risks portraying Tenet as a “scapegoat” if it engineers his resignation, which could cause political difficulties, said Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy.

While Tenet was appointed to his position by former President Bill Clinton, and therefore not seen as a Bush loyalist, he does have a strong team player reputation, said Charles Pena, director of Defense Policy Studies at the CATO Institute.  Even so, the impact of the intelligence-handling controversy on Bush’s personal approval rating could determine Tenet’s status, with his position in danger if the rating dips below 60 percent, Pena said.

If there were “any one guy to hang out to dry on this one,” it would be Tenet, Pena said.

Pike said, however, that previous administrations — such as those of former Presidents John Kennedy and Richard Nixon — had experienced difficulties in blaming controversies on the CIA.

“Nixon tried to blame Watergate on the CIA.  Look where it got him,” Pike said.  “Kennedy tried to blame Bay of Pigs on the CIA.  Look where it got him,” he said.

In fact, the lessons of Watergate may not be lost on some senior Bush administration officials, such as Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld, who served in the Ford administration during the aftermath of that scandal, Pike said.

“They got some adults over there who’ll take a hand to this and make it go away,” Pike said.  “They all saw Nixon self-destruct and don’t want to go there,” he said.

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Iraq II:  U.S., British Intelligence Agencies Did Not Share Africa Uranium Information, Officials Say

U.S. and British intelligence agencies did not fully share information with each other on claims that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, resulting in differing conclusions, British officials said yesterday (see related GSN story, today).

British officials said the CIA had attempted last year to persuade the British government to drop the African uranium claim from a September report on Iraq’s WMD programs.  In a letter to a parliamentary committee conducting an inquiry into the United Kingdom’s decision to go to war with Iraq, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the CIA request was denied because of “reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the U.S.” and because the CIA had made the request “unsupported by explanation.”

While British officials will not provide further detail about the additional evidence they say supports the Africa uranium claim, they have said they have multiple sources, including at least one foreign intelligence agency, that said its information could not be shared with other countries, according to the Washington Post.

Straw also said the CIA did not inform British officials about a visit to Niger by Joseph Wilson, a former U.S ambassador to Gabon, who found there was no evidence to support a claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium there.

“I want to make clear that neither I nor, to the best of my knowledge, any U.K. officials were aware of Ambassador Wilson’s visit until reference first appeared in the press” last month, Straw said in his letter.  “In response to our questions, the U.S. authorities have confirmed that Ambassador Wilson’s report was not shared with the U.K.,” he said.

British officials have said they have now seen a summary of Wilson’s report on his visit to Niger, adding that they view it as inconclusive.

“We can see why it wasn’t passed on to us because it doesn’t point in one direction,” an official said, adding that the summary confirmed that an Iraqi trade delegation had visited Niger in 1999, but no trade agreements were reached.  “Uranium is Niger’s top export; it’s unlikely the Iraqis were looking for livestock, which is their second export,” the official said (Glenn Frankel, Washington Post, July 17).

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency has criticized the United Kingdom for failing to hand over its additional evidence supporting claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.

“Despite requests, the British government has provided no such evidence,” said a Western diplomat close to the IAEA.  “Senior officials at the agency think it is involved in an information blackout,” the diplomat said (Andrew Buncombe, London Independent, July 17).

British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday defended the claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger, saying the British intelligence justifying the claim was not based on documents later found to be forgeries by the IAEA.

“It may just be worth pointing out to the House and also to the public, it’s not as if this link between Niger and Iraq was some invention of the CIA or Britain.  We know (that) in the 1980s that Iraq purchased from Niger over 270 tons of uranium, and therefore it is not beyond the bounds of possibility,” Blair said before the House of Commons.  “Let’s at least put it like this, that they went back to Niger again,” he said (Xinhua News Agency, July 17).

Blair is scheduled to arrive in the United States today to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush and make a rare address before a joint session of Congress.

While Blair is not expected to discuss the intelligence-handling controversy in his address to Congress, it is expected to have an effect on his meeting with Bush, the Boston Globe reported.

The issue “is going to overshadow this meeting, and it’s going to be a much tenser meeting than previous summits,” said Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.  “This is going to be a much more combative meeting than previous ones between Blair and Bush,” Gardiner said (Anne Kornblut, Boston Globe, July 17).

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Iraq III:  Niger Documents Were Poorly Forged, Newspaper Reports

The now-discredited documents used by the United Kingdom and the United States to prove that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger had mistakes that were easily detectable, Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported yesterday after gaining access to the letters and documents.

According to the newspaper, for instance, a letter dated Oct. 10, 2000, which was supposed to be the draft of the protocol of the agreement between Niger and Iraq, was signed by Nigerien Foreign Minister Allele Habibou, who had left the position in 1989.

In addition, a letter referring to supposed agreements made between Niger and Iraq on June 29, 2000, was signed and dated July 1999.  The text of a letter dated July 27, 2000, had many spelling mistakes and the logo of Niger’s national symbol was obviously fake, according to the newspaper.

There are two theories on who forged the letters and documents, according to La Repubblica:  low-level diplomats from the embassy of Niger in Rome, which is the theory that CIA supports, or Italian intelligence services that sold the letters to an African diplomat in 2001.  The diplomat then passed the letters to British authorities.

The newspaper also reported on the possible link between the forged documents and a robbery that occurred in Niger’s embassy in Rome on a night between Dec. 29, 2000, and Jan. 1, 2001.  According to the newspaper, the embassy was found on Jan. 2 to have been vandalized, with paper strewn about and drawers turned upside down.  Despite creating the mess, the intruders stole only a steel clock and three small perfume bottles.

The theory, according to La Repubblica, is that the break-in was staged to cover the removal of material needed to forge the documents (Bonini/D’avanzo, La Repubblica, July 16, GSN translation).

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Syria:  Bolton Congressional Appearance Canceled Due to Dispute Over WMD Assessment

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s planned appearance yesterday before a House International Relations subcommittee to testify on Syria’s WMD programs was delayed until September because of objections from U.S. intelligence agencies over his assessment, according to Knight-Ridder (see GSN, June 5).

Bolton was prepared to tell the Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee that Syria’s WMD programs had developed to the point where they posed a threat to the region, U.S. officials said.  The CIA and other intelligence agencies, however, objected to this assessment, saying it was exaggerated, according to Knight-Ridder.

Bolton’s planned testimony caused a “revolt” among intelligence experts who thought it inflated Syria’s WMD progress, a U.S. official said.  The CIA’s objections alone to Bolton’s prepared remarks ran to up to 40 pages, the official said.

A Bolton aide said the undersecretary’s appearance was delayed because he was called to a White House meeting yesterday afternoon.  Other White House and congressional officials said, however, that the White House Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates officials’ public statements, would not give final approval to Bolton’s prepared testimony.

Another possible reason that Bolton’s congressional appearance was canceled was because of the questioning the White House has recently faced over possible exaggerations of Iraq-related intelligence, several officials said.  There is now more attention paid to “dotting i’s and crossing t’s,” a U.S. State Department official said.  The official added that Bolton’s prepared testimony was subjected to “extensive edits” (Strobel/Landay, Knight Ridder, Miami Herald, July 16).

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Iraq I:  At Least 10 Kilos of Uranium Compounds Missing, IAEA Says

At least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds are missing from an Iraqi nuclear material storage facility near the Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad, which was the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, June 23).

An IAEA inspection team, working under the auspices of the agency’s safeguards agreement with Iraq, found last month that at least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds “could have dispersed” from the Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility, according to the report.  It also says, however, that the missing materials pose little threat of being used to develop nuclear weapons.

“The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view,” the report says.

The IAEA plans to request coalition authorities to “make every effort” to find the missing materials and return them to the Location C site and place them under IAEA safeguards, the report says.  It also calls on the United States and the United Kingdom “to ensure the physical protection and security of the entire nuclear material inventory in Iraq” (International Atomic Energy Agency release, July 14).

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Iraq II:  Prior to January Bush Speech, Most Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Ambition Was in Tatters

By the time U.S. President George W. Bush’s delivered his January State of the Union address, the now-discredited evidence that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa was the only intelligence supporting the allegation that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 15).

Bush administration officials have recently said that the African uranium claim was just one of many pieces of intelligence that indicated Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons.  However, following Bush’s Oct. 7 speech outlining the case against Iraq, most of the other pieces of intelligence suggesting Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons had been discredited by U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the Post.

In that speech, Bush said satellite imagery indicated that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear sites.  Bush also cited as further evidence of Baghdad’s nuclear intentions “numerous meetings’ between former President Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists, as well as Iraq’s attempts to obtain aluminum tubes that could be used to develop uranium enrichment centrifuges.

The day before Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address, however, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that two months of U.N. inspections within Iraq had turned up no prohibited activities occurring at former nuclear sites (see GSN, Jan. 27).  ElBaradei also said that inspectors had “useful” interviews with some Iraqi nuclear scientists and that the aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking could not have been used to build centrifuges without modifications (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 16).

Congressional Action

Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet is expected to testify on the African uranium claim today before a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, according to the New York Times.

Among the questions Tenet is expected to field is why he sought personally to have a reference to Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium from Niger removed from Bush’s October speech, according to the Times.  The reference had been included in a national intelligence estimate distributed Oct. 1, but four days later Tenet called a Bush aide to have it removed from the speech, according to White House and intelligence officials.

Tenet’s move to remove the reference has led to questions by some in the White House who want to know why the Niger claim was included in the national intelligence estimate, the Times reported.

“This report was supposed to be the gold standard of our intelligence about Iraq,” a senior Bush administration official said.

CIA officials defended the intelligence, saying such reports sometimes include information that does not rise to the level of certainty required of a presidential speech.  The report also contained a footnote saying the U.S. State Department had doubts about the African uranium claim, the Times reported.

“It’s one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something,” an intelligence official said (Risen/Sanger, New York Times, July 16).

The House Select Committee on Intelligence is scheduled to hold a public hearing next week on claims that the Bush administration misrepresented U.S. intelligence on Iraq prior to the war, according to the Financial Times.

“Big questions remain about who forged the documents and the paper trail that followed,” said Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), referring to the documents used by the Bush administration to support the African uranium claim.  The IAEA revealed in March that those documents, purporting to show an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, were forgeries.

After returning this week from a visit to Iraq, senior members of the House Intelligence Committee said it is unlikely that the United States would soon find evidence of large-scale Iraqi WMD stockpiles.

“Thus far, the evidence emerging on Iraq’s WMD programs does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons,” the committee said in a statement (Edward Alden, Financial Times, July 16).

Meanwhile, Niger is angry over suggestions that it was involved in an attempted sale of uranium to Iraq, according to the Straits Times.

There have been calls within Niger for Bush to make a public apology for mentioning the African uranium claim in his State of the Union address.  The BBC has reported that some in Niger have also called for the issue to be taken before the International Court of Justice (Straits Times, July 16).

France denied Monday a Financial Times report that said Paris was a probable source of the uranium information, according to Agence France-Presse. 

“Contrary to the insinuations which appeared in the British press, France is not behind the intelligence published in the British dossier dated Sept. 24, 2002, and relative to the nuclear program of Iraq,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Times report also said that Italy was a likely source for the information (Agence France-Presse, July 14, in FBIS-WEU, July 14).  Italian judicial officials yesterday began an investigation into whether Italy’s intelligence service was the source for the information, judicial sources said, adding that there is no evidence so far of any wrongdoing (Washington Times, July 16).

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Kyrgyz Response:  Kyrgyzstan to Implement Export-Control Laws

Kyrgyzstan is set to establish new export-control regulations to prevent the spread of WMD-related materials, a senior Kyrgyz trade official said yesterday (see GSN, April 18).

Under the new regulations, materials such as uranium, cyanide and rare-earth metals will now require prior approval before they can be exported or imported, Deputy External Trade and Industry Minister Nina Kirichenko said.  “These measures will allow us to strictly control movement of such dangerous materials,” Kirichenko said (Agence France-Presse, July 16).

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