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White House Backs Off Claim on Iraqi Buy
By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
Tuesday 08 July 2003
The Bush administration acknowledged for the first time yesterday that President Bush should not have alleged in his State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.
The statement was prompted by publication of a British parliamentary commission report, which raised serious questions about the reliability of British intelligence that was cited by Bush as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program were a threat to U.S. security.
The British panel said it was unclear why the British government asserted as a "bald claim" that there was intelligence that Iraq had sought to buy significant amounts of uranium in Africa. It noted that the CIA had already debunked this intelligence, and questioned why an official British government intelligence dossier published four months before Bush's speech included the allegation as part of an effort to make the case for going to war against Iraq.
The findings by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee undercut one of the Bush administration's main defenses for including the allegation in the president's speech -- namely that despite the CIA's questions about the assertion, British intelligence was still maintaining that Iraq had indeed sought to buy uranium in Africa.
Asked about the British report, the administration released a statement that, after weeks of questions about the president's uranium-purchase assertion, effectively conceded that intelligence underlying the president's statement was wrong.
"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech," a senior Bush administration official said last night in a statement authorized by the White House.
The administration's statement capped months of turmoil over the uranium episode during which senior officials have been forced to defend the president's remarks in the face of growing reports that they were based on faulty intelligence.
As part of his case against Iraq, Bush said in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28 that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
The International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council in March that the uranium story -- which centered on documents alleging Iraqi efforts to buy the material from Niger -- was based on forged documents. Although the administration did not dispute the IAEA's conclusion, it launched the war against Iraq later that month.
It subsequently emerged that the CIA the previous year had dispatched a respected former senior diplomat, Joseph C. Wilson, to Niger to investigate the allegation and that Wilson had reported back that officials in Niger denied the story. The administration never made Wilson's mission public, and questions have been raised over the past month over how the CIA characterized his conclusion in its classified intelligence reports inside the administration.
The report by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee followed weeks of hearings by the panel into two intelligence dossiers on Iraq's weapons programs -- one published in September and the other in January -- that the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair used to justify supporting the administration in going to war against Iraq.
Questions about the British government's handling of intelligence have mirrored many of the issues being raised in the United States. But they have created a far greater political uproar in London.
Parliament's response has been notably different than that of Congress. The House and Senate intelligence panels have moved cautiously, with Democrats and Republicans divided over the necessity of full-blown public hearings into the administration's use of pre-war intelligence. The House of Commons moved quickly to investigate the matter, with the Blair government battling accusations that it misled Parliament and members of the Labor Party in persuading them to support an unpopular war.
The commission's report issued yesterday found that Blair and his other key ministers "did not mislead" Parliament in describing the threat from Iraq's alleged chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. But the panel did find that the Blair government mishandled intelligence material on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs.
The panel said it is too soon to determine whether the government's assertions about Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs will be borne out, but added that the government's actions "were justified by the information available at the time."
In a major political issue within Britain, the panel found that Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications chief, "did not exert or seek to exert improper influence" in drafting the September intelligence report or a key statement in the document that "the Iraqi military are able to deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes if ordered to do so."
The panel did find that this statement "did not warrant the prominence given to it" in the first pages of the dossier because it was based on "intelligence from a single, uncorroborated source." The panel asked the Blair government to explain why it was given such a prominent position in the report.
A senior administration official said yesterday that a classified version of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons programs, completed last September, contains references to intelligence reports that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from three African countries, not just Niger. The other two countries are Namibia and Gabon, according to intelligence sources. The sources said the reports about other countries have not been confirmed and that some government analysts do not consider the information reliable.
A senior intelligence official said that there were reports of "possible attempts" by Iraqis or their agents to buy uranium, but that "they were all somewhat sketchy."
One Bush administration official said British and U.S. intelligence agencies got their Niger documents from the intelligence service of one country that he refused to name, but that others have identified as Italy.
"We both had one source reporting through some liaison service which said, 'Look what we found,' " this official said. "There were other [intelligence] reporting streams, but it may be that all streams are traced to the same source."
Transcript of Ari Fleischer’s Press Conference
Recorded and Transcribed By Joshua Micah Marshall
Monday 07 July 2003
Q: Can you give us the White House account of Ambassador Wilson's account of what happened when he went to Niger and investigated the suggestions that Niger was passing yellow cake to Iraq? I'm sure you saw the piece yesterday in The New York Times.
FLEISCHER: Well, there is zero, nada, nothing new here. Ambassador Wilson, other than the fact that now people know his name, has said all this before. But the fact of the matter is in his statements about the Vice President -- the Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger. The Vice President's office was not informed of his mission and he was not aware of Mr. Wilson's mission until recent press accounts -- press reports accounted for it.
So this was something that the CIA undertook as part of their regular review of events, where they sent him. But they sent him on their own volition, and the Vice President's office did not request it. Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect.
[Here there were questions unrelated to the Niger-uranium issue]
Q: I just want to take you back to your answer before, when you said you have long acknowledged that the information on yellow cake turned out to be incorrect. If I remember right, you only acknowledged the Niger part of it as being incorrect -- I think what the --
FLEISCHER: That's correct.
Q: I think what the President said during his State of the Union was he --
FLEISCHER: When I refer to yellow cake I refer to Niger. The question was on the context of Ambassador Wilson's mission.
Q: So are you saying the President's broader reference to Africa, which included other countries that were named in the NIE, were those also incorrect?
FLEISCHER: Well, I think the President's statement in the State of the Union was much broader than the Niger question.
Q: Is the President's statement correct?
FLEISCHER: I'm referring specifically to the Niger piece when I say that.
Q: Do you hold that the President -- when you look at the totality of the sentence that the President uttered that day on the subject, are you confident that he was correct?
FLEISCHER: Yes, I see nothing that goes broader that would indicate that there was no basis to the President's broader statement. But specifically on the yellow cake, the yellow cake for Niger, we've acknowledged that that information did turn out to be a forgery.
Q: The President's statement was accurate?
FLEISCHER: We see nothing that would dissuade us from the President's broader statement.
Q: Ari, that means that, indeed, you all believe that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from an African nation; is that correct?
FLEISCHER: What the President said in his statement was that according to a British report they were trying to obtain uranium. When I answered the question it was, again, specifically about the Niger piece involving yellow cake.
Q: So you believe the British report that he was trying to obtain uranium from an African nation is true?
FLEISCHER: I'm sorry?
Q: If you're hanging on the British report, you believe that that British report was true, you have no reason to believe --
FLEISCHER: I'm sorry, I see what David is asking. Let me back up on that and explain the President's statement again, or the answer to it.
The President's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake from Niger. The President made a broad statement. 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, David. So, yes, the President' broader statement was based and predicated on the yellow cake from Niger.
Q: So it was wrong?
FLEISCHER: That's what we've acknowledged with the information on --
Q: The President's statement at the State of the Union was incorrect?
FLEISCHER: Because it was based on the yellow cake from Niger.
Q: Well, wait a minute, but the explanation we've gotten before was it was based on Niger and the other African nations that have been named in the national intelligence --
FLEISCHER: But, again, the information on -- the President did not have that information prior to his giving the State of the Union.
Q: Which gets to the crux of what Ambassador Wilson is now alleging -- that he provided this information to the State Department and the CIA 11 months before the State of the Union and he is amazed that it, nonetheless, made it into the State of the Union address. He believes that that information was deliberately ignored by the White House. Your response to that?
FLEISCHER: And that's way, again, he's making the statement that -- he is saying that surely the Vice President must have known, or the White House must have known. And that's not the case, prior to the State of the Union.
Q: He's saying that surely people at the decision-making level within the NSC would have known the information which he -- passed on to both the State Department and the CIA.
FLEISCHER: And the information about the yellow cake and Niger was not specifically known prior to the State of the Union by the White House.
Q: What does that say about communications?
FLEISCHER: We've acknowledged that the information turned out to be bogus involving the report on the yellow cake. That is not new. You can go back. You can look it up. Dr. Rice has said it repeatedly. I've said it repeatedly. It's been said from this podium on the record, in several instances. It's been said to many of you in this room, specifically.
Q: But, Ari, even if you said that the Niger thing was wrong, the next line has usually been that the President's statement was deliberately broader than Niger, it referred to all of Africa. The national intelligence estimate discusses other countries in Africa that there were attempts to purchase yellow cake from, or other sources of uranium --
FLEISCHER: Let me do this, David. On your specific question I'm going to come back and post the specific answer on the broader statement on the speech.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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