This is a transcript from AM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 08:00 on ABC [Australian Broadcasting] Local Radio.
Aust would have known of doubts over uranium report: Wilkie
AM - Wednesday, 9 July , 2003 08:11:08
Reporter: Hamish Fitzsimmons
LINDA MOTTRAM: The Australian Prime Minister John Howard says the Australian Government used its own intelligence assessment on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and he too believes that evidence of them will eventually be found in Iraq. But a former Australian intelligence officer disagrees.
Andrew Wilkie has told a British parliamentary inquiry that information from Australia, the US and Britain had been manipulated in order to justify a war, and this morning, he says that there is no doubt that the Australian Government was aware of question marks over the accuracy of particular claims about Iraq's nuclear program, claims which the US now admits were wrong.
Hamish Fitzsimmons spoke to Andrew Wilkie a short time ago.
ANDREW WILKIE: I'm sure that you'd appreciate that when it comes to collecting information on the Middle East we rely very much on our US and UK allies.
I was referring at the inquiry to a central role Australian agencies had played in particular in regard to finding out about the thousands of aluminium tubes that were used as evidence for some time that Iraq was trying to develop a gas centrifuge to enrich uranium.
HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Well the US is now admitting that that information about trying to buy that uranium is incorrect, but Foreign Minister Downer says the Australian Government wasn't told this and in your submission you say that the CIA knew this as far back as early 2002.
Why wasn't the Government told?
ANDREW WILKIE: Well I find this quite extraordinary that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister are still denying that we knew there ever any doubts about the Iraq nuclear story.
The facts of this matter are that the US State Department sent a diplomat to Niger in early 2002, Mr Wilson. He would have reported back to the US State Department not long after that visit to say that he thought the documentation was a fake.
The State Department would have passed that information onto its own intelligence agency, the INR (Bureau of Intelligence and Research), which has a very close relationship with ONA (Office of National Assessments) and would have certainly have passed that information onto ONA. And in fact an INR official, a Mr Thielmann, in the last few days has said that he has no doubts as well that INR had passed the information to ONA.
Now of course, as always, the Prime Minister is being very careful with his words and he's saying that ONA never received Mr Wilson's report. Well, of course, he's right in that regard. I mean, nor would we receive a report from the American diplomat. But we would have received, I have no doubt at all about this, we would have received a report from INR casting doubt over the whole Iraq nuclear story.
HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: So are you saying the Australian Government than was aware there was flawed information about Iraq's nuclear ambitions, but still used it as a reason for going to war?
ANDREW WILKIE: Well in essence, yes. I'm saying that ONA had made it quite clear to the Government that there was a question mark over the whole nuclear dimension of this Iraq story, but yet the Government continued to use that nuclear dimension as an explanation for the war, along with the more credible stories about Iraq's chemical and biological programs.
HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: John Howard says the British parliamentary report vindicates the Australian Government's reasons for going to war and that there is still time for evidence of Iraq's weapons for mass destruction program to be found.
What's your response?
ANDREW WILKIE: I found that the report failed to answer the most important questions, which is why we were promised that Iraq had a massive WMD program, that's a word our Prime Minister himself used, in fact he described it as 'massive' and on another occasion he described it as 'mammoth', but yet clearly that is not what has been found and nor is it what is likely to be found.
LINDA MOTTRAM: Former Australian intelligence officer Andrew Wilkie, speaking to Hamish Fitzsimmons.