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Uranium case riddled with questions
Tue Jul 15 03:55:16 2003
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Uranium case riddled with questions
USA Today - 4 hours ago
WASHINGTON Sixteen words in President Bush's State of the Union address alleging that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa have exploded six months later into a controversy over the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq.
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http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2003-07-14-uranium-usat_x.htm
Uranium case riddled with questions
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Sixteen words in President Bush's State of the Union address alleging that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa have exploded six months later into a controversy over the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq.


Tony Blair's British government says it has promised secrecy to the government that provided information about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. By Dave Caulkin, AP

In whipsaw fashion over the past 10 days, the White House has withdrawn Bush's allegation as unsupportable, blamed CIA Director George Tenet for not editing it out and then claimed that the charge may yet prove true.

In January, Bush told the nation, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." On Monday, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said that although some evidence supporting the allegation has been discredited, the statement was technically correct.

"The president said that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa," Fleischer said. "That still may be absolute fact."

This much is clear: The evidence that the United States and Britain have on alleged Iraqi efforts to buy the basic ingredient of a nuclear weapon indicates only that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from countries in Africa in the 1990s but almost certainly failed, U.S. and British officials say.

Beyond that, much of the alleged Iraq-Africa connection remains a mystery. Almost all the evidence is secret and has not been independently assessed. The key evidence that has been publicly disclosed — documents about supposed Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Niger — have been judged forgeries. That's why the White House said Bush should not have included the charge in his speech.

As legislative committees in the United States and Britain prepare inquiries, key questions include:

• Who provided the information to Britain that formed the basis of its charge last September that Iraq was seeking significant quantities of uranium in Africa? Britain has refused to identify its source or describe the information in detail. Prime Minister Tony Blair's government says it is bound by a promise of secrecy to the government that provided the information.

• Who forged the documents that the Bush administration passed to the United Nations to back up its claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger? Italian intelligence officials obtained the documents in 2001. U.S. intelligence officials say they don't know who is responsible for the forgery or why it was done.

• Why did the CIA, which obtained the documents in February, fail to notice the forgeries, which the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency quickly detected a month later?

• What separate information do U.S. intelligence officials have, if any, supporting the allegation that Iraq tried to buy uranium?

To date, no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. U.S. soldiers have seized two large trailers that the CIA says were probably part of a mobile biological weapons plant. And the CIA has uncovered components and blueprints indicating that Iraq might have been able to build a gaseous diffusion plant to enrich uranium.

Iraq already has stocks of concentrated uranium ore, called "yellowcake," from a 1970s nuclear research program. Making a nuclear weapon would require enrichment by an elaborate technology Iraq has not yet developed. Because Iraq has no civilian nuclear power plants, its alleged hunt for uranium would indicate it was pursuing a nuclear bomb in violation of an international embargo.

Circumstantial evidence supporting the Bush allegation was provided by Joseph Wilson, the ambassador to Gabon in the first Bush administration. The CIA sent Wilson to Niger in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking new uranium supplies.

Wilson's report said that a former Niger official told him a businessman had approached him in June 1999 and proposed a meeting with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations." As Tenet said in a statement Friday, "The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales." But Wilson's main conclusion was that Niger had made no deals with Iraq or any other rogue state. He said it was very unlikely any Niger uranium could have been illegally diverted.

A U.S. intelligence official said the CIA also has information about Iraqi efforts in the other three African countries that produce or stockpile uranium: South Africa, Namibia and Gabon. But the agency has not disclosed the details of that information.

Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the furor as a flap over "one scrap of intelligence" among many pointing to Iraqi efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction. But by putting the charge in his State of the Union address, Bush highlighted the specific allegation about Iraq's efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Other evidence of Iraq's nuclear intentions cited by the Bush administration included intercepts purportedly indicating that Saddam called meetings with his nuclear scientists and satellite photographs showing reconstruction of some of Iraq's nuclear research facilities.