Posted on 09/29/2003 5:34:27 PM PDT by Dog
Last Updated: Wednesday, 9 July, 2003, 06:31 GMT 07:31 UK
White House 'warned over Iraq claim'
The CIA warned the US Government that claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions were not true months before President Bush used them to make his case for war, the BBC has learned. Doubts about a claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African state of Niger were aired 10 months before Mr Bush included the allegation in his key State of the Union address this year, a CIA official has told the BBC.
On Tuesday, the White House for the first time officially acknowledged that the Niger claim was wrong and suggested it should not have been used in the president's State of the Union speech in January.
Uranium row in quotes But the CIA official has said that a former US diplomat had already established the claim was false in March 2002 - and that the information had been passed on to government departments, including the White House, well before Mr Bush mentioned it in the speech.
Both President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair mentioned the claim, based on British intelligence, that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger as part of its attempt to build a nuclear weapons programme.
Mr Blair is under fire from British MPs about the credibility of a dossier of evidence, which set out his case for war.
And in the US, increasing doubts are being raised about the American use of intelligence.
Forged documents
In his keynote speech to Congress in January, the President said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
But the documents alleging a transaction were found to have been forged.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer appeared to concede on Tuesday that the uranium claim in the State of the Union address was based on inaccurate information.
"The president's statement was based on the predicate of the yellow cake [uranium] from Niger," Mr Fleischer said.
"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."
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
President George W Bush
Mr Bush's State of the Union address But a former US diplomat, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, went on the record at the weekend to say that he had travelled to Africa to investigate the uranium claims and found no evidence to support them.
Now the CIA official has told the BBC that Mr Wilson's findings had been passed onto the White House as early as March 2002.
That means that the administration would have known nearly a year before the State of the Union address that the information was likely false.
In response, a US Government official told the BBC that the White House received hundreds of intelligence reports every day.
The official said there was no evidence that this specific cable about uranium had been passed on to the president.
But in Congress, Democrats are demanding a full investigation into the intelligence that underpinned the case for war.
They have demanded to know if President Bush used evidence that he knew to be weak or wrong.
British undeterred
The British Government has stood by its assertion, saying the forged documents were not the only evidence used to reach its conclusion that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Africa.
On Tuesday Mr Blair defended the assessment, telling a committee of MPs that it was not a "fantasy" and that the intelligence services themselves stood by the allegation.
"The evidence that we had that the Iraqi Government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from these so-called 'forged' documents, they came from separate intelligence," Mr Blair said.
However, Mr Blair did not specify what that separate intelligence was.
Ambassador Wilson identified him as Karl Roverer, with the umlaut over the o.
According to reliable sources, as well as our own Al Martin Raw.com investigation, Karl Rove is, in fact, the grandson of Karl Heinz Roverer, the gauleiter of Mecklenburg, who was also a partner and senior engineer of Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurb FCroAG. They built Birchenau, the concentration camp in Nazi Germany.
So Karl Rove has been identified as the leaker responsible for the deaths of more than 70 CIA assets overseas (See previous story Will the Real Chemical Ali Please Stand Up? The Curious Case of Ambassador Joseph Wilson)
When Ambassador Wilson was asked how he knew it was Rove, he had documents in his possession identifying Rove as the leaker from a secret investigation of the State department's Internal Security Unit. It was a from a small clique, four Clinton holdovers in that department of the State Department that were sympathetic to what had happened to Wilson.
That was in the back of my mind as I wrote KGB. This could also be a scenario put together by a hollywierd FOB who thinks he knows the playbook.
Soros is an interesting possibility. He hates President Bush and tried to crash our $ with the Euro before the Iraqi war started.
This is a player that scares me, much the way Richard Mellon Scaife scares the left. He reminds me of Armand Hammer, who was a KGB agent of influence, taking his marching orders from the old Soviet Kremlin bosses. Who does Soro's associate with?
Wilson should be forced to present a complete list of every person he spoke to in Niger and what they said.
An unsigned CIA memo on Oct. 5 advised that "the CIA had reservations about the British reporting" on Iraq's alleged attempts in Niger, Hadley [No.2 guy on Bush's National Security team] said. A second memo, sent on Oct. 6, elaborated on the CIA's doubts, describing "some weakness in the evidence," such as the fact that Iraq already had a large stock of uranium and probably wouldn't need more, Hadley said.
Saddam didn't have to purchase it, because according to the CIA, he already had enough. That is way more damning than the Niger claim that he sought uranium.
Close. Here's the rest. 10 to 1 that Novaks source is someone at State, who told him specifically, that Wilsons wife was the one liased the trip with him.
Wilson's Bio made her name a matter of Public Record, in the form that Novak Published it.
No information was leaked, realistically by anyone....
Look at it this way....An very partisan guy with an agenda writes a NYTOpEd, 6 months after the speech.
Novak obviously knows who the guy is etc, and asks himself, How in the Hell did HE get sent over to Niger? And that was the question he asked.
As Cliff May pointed out, it was fairly common knowledge among insiders that Wifey worked at Langely, so whoever Novak asked, probably answered the question in an offhand manner.......
The Rest is a matter of published record.
Yes, but the article sources a CIA official who claimed (as it now seems, incorrectly) that Wilson's report had been pushed up to the Whitehouse. This is the aspect of the report that warrants its reairing. One can't help but wonder if the CIA source was Wilson's wife.
I assume she faces hard time for her petulence.
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