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TPM: interview summary of his trip:In some retellings of it, in the way some people describe the trip, you basically went over there and said, "Have you guys been selling Iraq any uranium?" and they said no, and that was good enough for you.

WILSON: There was Ari Fleischer who said, that, well, he went over there and obtained the denials of the government and wouldn't any government deny this? I did not obtain the denials of the government, in fact, as I pointed out after Ari said that. What I did is this, I went over and I looked in some detail at how the uranium business operates. And it was much less a question of obtaining their denials, and much more a question of how would a government make a decision that would generate this report of a memorandum of agreement. (covering the sale of uranium). It would be very difficult for a legitimate transaction undertaken by the government of Niger with the government of Iraq to be secret. Not impossible--and it's sort of worth trying to ask yourself whether or not the president, a coup leader, could do a side deal outside the context of the government, for his own account, or for the military.
At a minimum, it would have involved the managing operating partner, which is the French uranium company.
The French have a--nuclear energy is an important component of the French electrical power grid. They need uranium, they need to have a steady source of supply. They need to make sure that they're irreproachable in that, so they can continue to have a steady supply of uranium without running afoul of the IAEA or other international organizations.