Your Government Thinks You’re Stupid

If she didn’t forget uranium – what DID she forget?

The Niger uranium forgeries are forged documents initially revealed by SISMI (Italian military intelligence). These documents 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 Iraq sanctions by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.

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.”

The classified documents detailing an Iraqi approach to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger were considered dubious by some analysts in U.S. intelligence, according to news accounts. By early 2002, separate investigations by both the CIA and the US State Department had found the documents to be inaccurate. 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.

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.”

This single sentence is now known as “the Sixteen Words.” 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. In mid-2003, the U.S. government declassified the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which contained a dissenting opinion published by the U.S. 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.

The Sunday Times dated August 1, 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.

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”.

Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of U.S. 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 U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, was also present at the meeting and sent similar conclusions to the State Department. CNN reported on 14 March 2003 (before invasion) that the International Atomic Energy Agency found the documents to be forged.

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 October 7. 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.

The actual words President Bush spoke: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” suggests that his source was British intelligence and not the forged documents.

However, George Tenet has admitted that making the claim was a mistake, stating, “The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.”

Further, in March 2003, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released results of his analysis of the documents. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerien officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were “in fact not authentic”.

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.

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 March 7, 2003.

This was further confirmed in a Parliamentary answer to Lynne Jones MP. 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:

I can confirm to you that we have received information from a number of member states regarding the allegation that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger. However, we have learned nothing which would cause us to change the conclusion we reported to the United Nations Security Council on March 7, 2003 with regards to the documents assessed to be forgeries and have not received any information that would appear to be based on anything other than those documents.

We conclude that 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. The assertion “… that Iraq sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa …” should have been qualified to reflect the uncertainty

The 16 words that Condi said were based on a forgery and were “mistaken” had to be talking about the forgery.

DR. RICE: The president quoted a British paper. We did not know at the time, no one knew at the time in our circles—maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew—that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken.

That famous neocon Chris Hitchens
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In a 2010 BBC interview, he stated that he was “still a Marxist”

Got any other bright lights in your bag of tricks, dumbass?