[eDebate] nailing the niger coffin: ex-US diplomat spills the beans...

[Jack Stroube]

making a real cumback w an inside the park grandslam...try to close this one 
down Mr. Phallus Jerkins of Harvard Dabait Failure, Inc...things are progressing 
much faster in britain and the independent gots the story again...intelligence 
whistleblowers will not allow agencies that informed the president to take the 
rap...Cheney will most likely become the fall guy as the democrats unload heavy 
ammo from point-blank...

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=419982

Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat 

US official who identified documents incriminating Iraq as fakes says Britain 
must have been aware of findings

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington and Raymond Whitaker in London

29 June 2003

A high-ranking American official who investigated claims for the CIA that Iraq 
was seeking uranium to restart its nuclear programme last night accused Britain 
and the US of deliberately ignoring his findings to make the case for war against 
Saddam Hussein.

The retired US ambassador said it was all but impossible that British 
intelligence had not received his report - drawn up by the CIA - which revealed 
that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the west African 
state of Niger, were forgeries. When he saw similar claims in Britain's dossier on 
Iraq last September, he even went as far as telling CIA officials that they needed 
to alert their British counterparts to his investigation.

The allegation will add to the suspicions of opponents to the war that last week's 
row between the BBC and Tony Blair's director of communications Alastair 
Campbell was a sideshow to draw attention away from more serious questions 
about the justification for the war.

The comments of the former US diplomat appear to be at odds with those of the 
Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw. Appearing before a parliamentary committee last 
week, Mr Straw said the British intelligence community had not known of the 
forged documents' existence "at the time when [the September dossier] was put 
together".

But in his first interview on the issue, the former US diplomat told The 
Independent on Sunday: "It is hard for me to fathom, that as close as we are and 
[while] preparing for a war based on [claims about] weapons of mass 
destruction, that we did not share intelligence of this nature."

Asked if he felt his findings had been ignored for political reasons, he added: 
"It's an easy conclusion to draw." Though the official's identity is well-known in 
Washington - he was on the National Security Council under President Clinton - 
he asked that his name be withheld at this stage.

During last week's hearings by the Foreign Affairs Committee, MPs cited 
repeated reports that the forged documents - a letter on which the signature of 
Niger's president had been faked, and another carrying the signature of a man 
who had not held office in the country since the 1980s - had originally reached 
the CIA via British intelligence.

Mr Straw not only denied that the forged documents came from British sources, 
but said Britain's allegations about Iraq's quest for uranium in Africa came from 
"quite separate sources". He said he would give further details of these sources 
for the uranium allegation in a closed session on Friday, during which he was 
fiercely cross-questioned by Sir John Stanley, the committee's chief sceptic. 
After hearing what the Foreign Secretary had to say, the Tory MP is reported to 
have told Mr Straw he did not believe him.

The testimony of the former US diplomat further undermines the claims of both 
the British and US governments that Saddam had developed, or was 
developing, weapons of mass destruction.

The Niger connection became one of the most important and most controversial 
elements in the build-up to war, and both Britain and the US used it to claim that 
Iraq was "reconstituting" its nuclear programme. It later emerged that the report 
was based on forged letters obtained by Italian intelligence from an African 
diplomat. The Italians were said to have passed the letters to their British 
counterparts, from where they reached the CIA.

When the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) finally had the opportunity 
to inspect the documents, nearly a year later, they were dismissed as fakes in 
less than a day. Neither the US nor Britain ever gave the IAEA any other 
information to back up their allegations on Iraq's uranium-buying activities, 
despite the "separate sources" cited by Mr Straw.

In February 2002, the former diplomat - who had served as an ambassador in 
Africa - was approached by the CIA to carry out a "discreet" task: to investigate if 
it was possible that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. He said the CIA had 
been asked to find out in a direct request from the office of the Vice-President, 
Dick Cheney.

During eight days in Niger he discovered it was impossible for Iraq to have been 
buying the quantities of uranium alleged. "My report was very unequivocal," he 
said. He also learnt that the signatures of officials vital to any transaction were 
missing from the documents.

On his return he was debriefed by the CIA. One senior CIA official has told 
reporters the agency's findings were distributed to the Defence Intelligence 
Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department, the FBI and the office 
of the Vice President on the same day in early March.

Six months later the former diplomat read in a newspaper that Britain had 
issued a dossier claiming Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa. He 
contacted officials at CIA headquarters and said they needed to clarify whether 
the British were referring to Niger. If so, the record needed to be corrected. He 
heard nothing, and in January President Bush said in his State of the Union 
speech that the "British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently 
sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa".

The ex-diplomat says he is outraged by the way evidence gathered by the 
intelligence community was selectively used in Washington to support pre-
determined policies and bolster a case for war. 
	?	
30 June 2003 14:47

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