USA TODAY International Edition
Dispute over uranium at the center of the scandal
No evidence that Iraq tried to make a deal with Niger
WASHINGTON — What’s now a political scandal and a legal controversy began with a dispute over whether Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger to help Saddam Hussein’s scientists build nuclear bombs.
Three years of investigations by a Senate committee, the CIA’s chief weapons hunter in Iraq, and a presidential commission = nally have provided an answer: No evidence was found to show that Iraq either bought or tried to buyura nium in Africa during the dozen years Iraqwas under U.N. sanctions after the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
But during the run- up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the intelligence on this question was not clear and what the CIA did collect, the agency badly mishandled, according to a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report.
In some ways, the uranium allegation never made sense. Iraq already had a supply of uranium, which was subject to inspection once a year. Iraq did not have the equipment to enrich uranium for use in a bomb.
In February 2002, the CIA sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to look into an Oct. 15, 2001, intelligence report from an unidenti = ed country. Wilson was sent to Africa at the suggestion of his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked in the CIA’s counter- proliferation division. It is the leak of her name and CIA employment that is at the heart of the indictment of former White House aide I. Lewis “ Scooter” Libby.
The intelligence report said Iraq had a deal with Niger for an illicit supply of uranium. A follow- up to that October 2001 report sparked Vice President Cheney’s interest and led the CIA to dispatch Wilson.
Here the bungling began:
uThe agency did n ot tell
Cheneyt hat Wilson had been
sent to Niger to look into the
matter and did not brief Cheney on Wilson’s = ndings, according to the Senate report.
uAt the time of Wilson’s trip
in February 2002, the CIA had
the text of the purported Iraq-
Niger deal but failed to notice
errors in dates and names, according to a commission headed by former senator Chuck
Robb, D- Va.
uWhen the CIA got the supporting documents in October 2002, it = led them away and forgot about them, according to the Senate report. The International Atomic Energy Agency declared in March 2003 that the documents were forgeries.
uWilson was wrong in his July 2003 oped piece in The New York Times that his mission to Niger had put to rest concerns about the uranium deal. He had reported to the CIA and State Department about a 1999 overture by Iraq to re-establish commercial ties with Niger. The CIA thought it could be a veiled effort to open negotiations for buying uranium.
In the ensuing months, U.S. intelligence reports on the uranium issue were inconsistent:
uAn Oct. 1, 2002, intelligence report to the president and Congress stated that Iraq was “ vigorouslyt rying to procure uranium” to make nuclearweapons.
uThe next day, Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin told lawmakers reports that Britain was using the uranium allegation in a brie = ng paperwas not “ very credible.” Later in October, CIA of = cials urged the White House to delete a reference to the uranium issue from a draft presidential speech because “ the reporting was weak,” then-CIA Director George Tenet recalled.
Still, President Bush said in his 2003 State of the Union address: “ The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recentlys ought signi = cant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
No one at the CIA told the White House to delete the 16 words, a lapse for which Tenet later accepted responsibility. Days after Bush’s speech, then- Secretary of State Colin Powell made no mention of the uranium reports in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council aimed at justifying an Iraq invasion.
Not until June 2003 — three months after the Iraq invasion — did the CIA formally state that “ we no longer believe that there is suf = cient reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.”
Chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer also examined the issue in 2003- 2004 with the help of Iraqi archives and senior of = cials in Iraq’s long-defunct nuclear program. Duelfer said his team had “ not found evidence to showthat Iraq sought uranium from abroad.”