THE LIES ARE LEAKING

"..'American and British politicians have used the covert nature of intelligence gathering as cover to pass all kinds of arguments to the public,' says an official in France's intelligence community. 'There's a limit to that. Patience runs out. People demand accountability'...."
Uranium, Not Mine
Time, 28 July 2003

20 Lies About the War - Indepedent 13 July 2003 - click here
Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies About War And Terrorism - Steve Perry

"...the September dossier chose to describe all the weapons unaccounted for in thousands of tonnes and litres, a more dramatic choice of units, but a misleading one, implying that the quantities would be hard to miss. The sheer scale of the task, [Iraq Survey Group leader David] Kay points out, is why he may yet find chemical weapons, which Saddam generally stored unmarked among other weapons.... But 'multiple sources' have already told him, he notes, that 'Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled chemical weapons programme after 1991'. Even in so cautious a report, he does allow himself this damning judgment: 'Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new CW munitions was reduced — if not entirely destroyed — during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections.' That does directly contradict the September dossier's assertion that 'Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability . . . which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents.'..."
The powerful case that Blair should have made
London Times, 3 October 2003

"The dossier was for public consumption and not for experienced readers of intelligence material. The 45 minutes claim, included four times, was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before. As the 45 minutes claim was new to its readers, the context of the intelligence and any assessment needed to be explained. The fact that it was assessed to refer to battlefield chemical and biological munitions and their movement on the battlefield, not to any other form of chemical or biological attack, should have been highlighted in the dossier. The omission of the context and assessment allowed speculation as to its exact meaning. This was unhelpful to an understanding of this issue."
Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction – Intelligence and Assessments
UK Intelligence and Security Committee, 11 September 2003

"Colin Powell, US secretary of state, was advised that the evidence he cited in his speech to the United Nations in February concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons programme was questionable.The bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Mr Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable.In the presentation, in which the US laid out its case for a pre-emptive war on Iraq, Mr Powell accused Iraq of importing special aluminium tubes as evidence that Baghdad was still working on a programme to produce atomic weapons."
Doubts mount on Powell's evidence to UN
Financial Times, 29 July 2003

"Documents released by the National Archives yesterday show that Anthony Eden, Churchill’s wartime Foreign Secretary, sanctioned a whispering campaign to destabilise the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, in a shady episode with present-day parallels. Late in 1940, after a failed Arab rising in Palestine, the Mufti, a Palestinian named Haj Amin El Hussein, took refuge with Rashid Ali, the pro-Nazi Prime Minister of Iraq. British leaders, worried that the Mufti could cause trouble for the struggling 8th Army in North Africa, planned to create a dodgy dossier by claiming he was in the pay of Italy, a country with which Britain was then at war. False documents backing this claim were to be planted all over the Western Desert. But Whitehall backed out of the plot because it knew that it could not create the paper trail to support the claims. In December 1940 a Colonial Office official said in a memo to his superiors....'We must avoid any propaganda reference to documents that do not exist and cannot be produced... I feel that we must stick to our original plan of setting the ball rolling by a whispering campaign.”
Planners of 1941 dodgy dossier tangled with BBC
London Times, 25 July 2003

"The White House attempt to defuse criticism over President Bush's now-discredited claim of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Africa has produced shifting explanations of how the assertion landed in his State of the Union speech.... top Bush aides have contradicted each other on several key points."
White House Defense of Uranium Claim Produces Maze of Contradictions: An AP News Analysis
Associated Press, 24 July 2003

"CIA chief George Tenet tried to take the bullet for the 'yellowcake' flap, but the flap flapped on. So NSC aide Stephen Hadley was sent out to take it on the chin. Neither resigned, neither was fired. They just took responsibility.... the Bush White House is becoming Nixon-like..."
George W. Nixon
CBS News, 24 July 2003

"In Washington, where Tony Blair and the US President, George Bush, reaffirmed their faith that the war in Iraq had removed the threat of weapons of mass destruction, it emerged that documents purporting to show an Iraqi uranium deal with Niger had been received by the US State Department last year, months earlier than had previously been admitted. When copies of the documents were finally handed over to the UN's nuclear agency, it quickly denounced them as obvious fakes. The Bush administration had said that it did not see the documents until after 28 January, when the President declared in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa. But The Washington Post reported that the State Department distributed copies of the now-discredited documents nearly three months before Mr Bush's speech. The US waited even longer to share the information with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), finally handing it over in February."
African nation says: we never sold uranium to Saddam
Independent 20 July 2003

"The Government has refused to tell the IAEA what it knows... arguing that the information came from a third country, and that it is up to that country to disclose it. But the IAEA says there is no such exemption from Britain's obligations under UN Security Council resolutions".
African nation says: we never sold uranium to Saddam
Independent 20 July 2003

"Raymond McGovern, a former CIA analyst and supervisor, says, 'Never before in my 40 years of experience in this town has intelligence been used in so cynical and so orchestrated a way.' McGovern is one of several retired intelligence analysts who say they are speaking out for those who can't inside the CIA.'The Agency analysts that we are in touch with are disheartened, dispirited, angry,' he says. 'They are outraged.'..."
Ex-Spies: CIA Workers Outraged
CBS News 19 July 2003

"The uranium-from-Africa affair took a new twist yesterday when an Italian newspaper claimed that MI6 had been duped [oh yes?] by forged documents given to it by Italy’s military intelligence service.... La Repubblica published photocopies of four documents which suggest Iraq reached an agreement to buy 500 tonnes of uranium 'yellowcake' from Niger. They appear to contain obvious errors: one document, dated October 10, 2000, has the signature of Allele Habibou, the Niger Foreign Affairs and Co-operation Minister who left office in 1989.... The newspaper quotes a source from Sismi, the Italian military intelligence agency, as saying that the documents were passed to MI6 in 2002. Six documents referring to Niger, possibly the same as those given to the Italians, were also passed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) by Washington. Mohammed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, told the UN Security Council in March that they were crude forgeries."
MI6 was 'duped by forgeries'
London Times, 17 July 2003

"Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet....Mr Straw said in a statement he had known that letters given to the UN nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, about the Niger claim were fake as early as February. Mr Straw also claimed that the Government's case for military action was not based on 'intelligence reports' . Labour MPs, including Tam Dalyell, the father of the House, asked why Mr Straw had not told MPs that the documents were fake in advance of the vote to approve military action on 18 March... Last night the Labour-dominated Foreign Affairs Committee asked Mr Straw to reveal what he knew about the Niger claim...The letter, signed by 11 MPs of all parties, called on Mr Straw to confirm The Independent's report that technical documents and centrifuge parts found at the home of an Iraqi nuclear scientist in Baghdad had lain buried for 12 years. The letter also asked Mr Straw to reveal when he knew that the former US ambassador Joseph Wilson had found claims about Niger-Iraq links to be false."
Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence
Independent, 16 July 2003

"I see the intelligence which is relevant to my expertise which is in the area of chemical and biological weapons..... I have no idea whether there were weapons or not at that time [of the September dossier].... It is possible it was not the case... I have referred to that: the issue of the 30 per cent probability of Iraq possessing chemical weapons. That is the sort of statement that I do make and may well have made to [Andrew Gilligan of the BBC]..."
Dr David Kelly
Evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, 15 July 2003

"One western diplomat said: 'As far as I know, the only other evidence Britain has about the Niger connection is based on intelligence coming from other western countries which saw the same forgeries. Blair's claim that he has other evidence is nonsense. These foreign intelligence agencies are basing their claims on the same forgeries as the Brits.' The diplomat's accusations tally with a letter sent in April, before the White House climbdown, by the State Department to Democrat House of Representative's member Henry Waxman, who has been demanding answers on the deception carried out against the American and British people. In it, the State Department admits that it received intelligence from the UK and another 'western European ally' -- which many believe to be Italy -- that Iraq was trying to buy Niger uranium. But it adds: 'not until March 4 did we learn that, in fact, the second western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the US that was subsequently discredited'. In other words, as one intelligence source said: 'It was based on the same crap the British used'. Given the letter is dated April 29, this information invites the question: why did it take until last week for the White House to admit the Niger connection was rubbish?"
Niger and Iraq: the war's biggest lie?
Glasgow Sunday Herald, 14 July 2003

'Fight Smart' answer to the above question - because former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson didn't go public with what he knew about the Niger situation until the middle of the diversionary Campbell saga in July 2003. If Wilson hadn't piped up the media would not be discusing this now. Britain and the US thought they'd got away with it when the press mainly ignored the Niger forgeries story as it first broke in March.
It was during May and June that press reports about Britain's alleged involvement with the forged documents started to re-emerge.

"Of the nine main conclusions in the British government [dossier] document 'Iraq's weapons of mass destruction', not one has been shown to be conclusively true"
Core of weapons case crumbling
BBC Online, 13 July 2003

"Both Tony Blair and President George Bush declared they had intelligence showing that Saddam had been trying to acquire uranium — an essential ingredient for an atomic bomb — from Africa. But now much of the evidence for those claims is disputed — and in some cases discredited. It has forced the White House to admit that Bush’s state of the union speech in January was inaccurate.... Several sources say [US envoy] Wilson’s findings [on the false claims] were also communicated to Britain, but Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, denies this. Whatever the case, the documents were at best dubious."
The Niger connection: how a spy story tarnished British and US reputations
London Times, 13 July 2003

"Britain by September last year had still not seen the disputed documents relating to Niger, but its own sources were giving it information. Intelligence that was 'non-documentary' but came from 'more than one source' was enough for the British to conclude independently that Iraq had indeed tried to obtain uranium from Africa."
The Niger connection: how a spy story tarnished British and US reputations
Sunday Times, London, 13 July 2003

"There is one simple question it must answer. Why did [the British government's] evidence of the uranium deal not convince the CIA? If it was not good enough to be in the President's address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister's dossier."
Robin Cook, Former British Foreign Secretary
Observer, 13 July 2003

"Sources close to the IAEA said last week: 'We first asked for documents in September 2002 when we read the comments in the British government dossier referring to Iraq seeking to obtain uranium ore from Africa. We wrote to ask what this was all about. It was not until February 4, 2003, that we got the fake Niger documents — from the State Department. Since then we have had nothing.'... If the British have their own intelligence to back the claim, why have they not told Tenet about it? (Or has he seen it and rejected it?) How does Britain’s case square with Donald Rumsfeld’s admission last week that 'the coalition' had no 'dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder' before it invaded? And why has British intelligence not passed its information to the IAEA? The Foreign Office says it believes the intelligence sources have spoken to the agency, but the IAEA denies this"
Focus: The Niger connection: how a spy story tarnished British and US reputations
Sunday Times, London, 13 July 2003

"Deep in [Bush's January 2003] 5,400-word [State of the Union] speech was.....a line that had launched a dozen memos, several diplomatic tugs of war and some mysterious, last-minute pencil editing. The line—'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa'—wasn't the Bush team's strongest evidence for the case that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons. It was just the most controversial, since most government experts familiar with the statement believed it to be unsupportable. Last week the White House finally admitted that Bush should have jettisoned the claim....Where else did the U.S. stretch evidence to generate public support for the war? If so many doubted the uranium allegations, who inside the government kept putting those allegations on the table?.... late in 2001, the Italian government came into possession of evidence suggesting that Iraq was again trying to purchase yellowcake from Niger. Rome's source provided half a dozen letters and other documents alleged to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials negotiating a sale. The Italians' evidence was shared with both Britain and the U.S. When it got to Washington, the Iraq-Niger uranium report caught the eye of someone important: Vice President Dick Cheney...."
A Question of Trust
TIME, 13 July 2003

"We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there.... Now the American people need to know how the accusation got into the speech in the first place, and whether it was put there with an intent to deceive the nation. The White House has a lot of explaining to do. So far, the administration's handling of this important - and politically explosive - issue has mostly involved a great deal of finger-pointing instead of an exacting reconstruction of events and an acceptance of blame by all those responsible...... It is clear, however, that much more went into this affair than the failure of the C.I.A. to pounce on the offending 16 words in Mr. Bush's speech. A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January. Doubts about the accusation were raised in March 2002 by Joseph Wilson, a former American diplomat, after he was dispatched to Niger by the C.I.A. to look into the issue. Mr. Wilson has said he is confident that his concerns were circulated not only within the agency but also at the State Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Tenet, in his statement yesterday, confirmed that the Wilson findings had been given wide distribution, although he reported that Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other high officials had not been directly informed about them by the C.I.A. The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat."
The Uranium Fiction
New York Times, 12 July 2003

"In a letter to a senior MP, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the UK had additional information to support the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger, but this intelligence had not been passed on to the US administration.... The prime minister's office said the extra intelligence had come from a foreign service and could not be disclosed."
Iraq uranium claim sows confusion
BBC Online, 12 July 2003

"Six backbenchers signed a Commons motion questioning 'why the UK Government has not submitted the evidence, upon which it bases its assessment, to IAEA scrutiny, in line with its obligations under Security Council resolutions' ".
The Niger connection: what we know, what we don't know, and what we may never be told
Independent, 10 July 2003

"A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.... This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.... He conceded that part of the problem lay with US intelligence, but added: 'Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided.'... At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, 'Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States'..."
White House 'lied about Saddam threat'
Guardian, 10 July 2003

"Beneath all the spinning and party political manoeuvring, the [Foreign Affairs Select Committee] report ended up being more critical than Downing Street had anticipated.... [it said] the government's defence of the claim that Iraq imported uranium from Africa was 'very odd'...."
Split Commons committee serves up another 'complete Horlicks'
Financial Times, 8 July 2003

"They may have finally found the smoking gun that nails the culprit responsible for the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the incriminating evidence wasn't left in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces but rather in Vice President Dick Cheney's office....Former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson publicly revealed over the weekend that he was the mysterious envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate a document - now known to be a crude forgery - that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either... In order to believe that our president was not lying to us, we must believe that this information did not find its way through Cheney's office to the Oval Office."
A Diplomat's Undiplomatic Truth: They Lied
The Los Angeles Times, 8 July 2003

"... 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."
Bush 'warned over uranium claim'
BBC Online 8 July, 2003

"Tonight, after Air Force One had departed, White House officials issued a statement in Mr. Fleischer's name that made clear that they no longer stood behind Mr. Bush's [uranium from Africa] statement. How Mr. Bush's statement made it into last January's State of the Union address is still unclear. No one involved in drafting the speech will say who put the phrase in, or whether it was drawn from the classified intelligence estimate....In interviews in recent days, a number of administration officials have conceded that Mr. Bush never should have made the claims, given the weakness of the case....White House officials would not say, however, how the statement was approved."
Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says
New York Times, 8 July 2003

"Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq...'It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?..'..In September 2002, the story of Iraq purchasing uranium in Africa made its way into a published British dossier on Hussein's weapons of mass destruction that got wide coverage. Wilson was perplexed. '[I]t was unfathomable to me that this information would not have been shared' with the British, he said...on Dec. 19, 2002, a State Department fact sheet listed attempts to purchase uranium, specifically from Niger, as an item omitted from Iraq's supposedly full disclosure of its weapons of mass destruction program. Bush, in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 23, declared that 'the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'..."
Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored
Washington Post, 6 July 2003

"According to news reports, the allegations of an Iraq-Niger deal were based on forged letters obtained by Italian intelligence from an African diplomat. The allegations were apparently passed to British intelligence and then to the CIA. A former U.S. ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger accused the Bush administration on Sunday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Joseph Wilson, Washington's envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, said in an article in the New York Times that he went to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the CIA to assess the intelligence report -- which the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed as being based on forged documents.  Before the IAEA gave its verdict, the report was cited by President Bush and Britain to support their charges that Saddam was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and to justify their invasion of Iraq in March.... Wilson, who helped to direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, said the CIA would have passed on his findings to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Wilson noted that in January 2003 Bush 'repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.' 'If the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them,' he said.  Wilson said that if the administration had ignored his information 'because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.'    According to news reports, the allegations of an Iraq-Niger deal were based on forged letters obtained by Italian intelligence from an African diplomat. The allegations were apparently passed to British intelligence and then to the CIA."
U.S. Envoy Says Bush 'Twisted' Iraq Intelligence
    Reuters, 5 July 2003

"We recommend that the Foreign Secretary provide the Committee with the date on which the British intelligence community were first informed by the CIA that forged documentation in relation to Iraqi purchases of uranium from Niger existed, as soon as he has found this out."
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee
The Decision to go to War in Iraq
Ninth Report of Session 2002 –03, Volume I, 3 July 2003

"We conclude that it is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged, but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence. The assertion '… that Iraq sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa …' should have been qualified to reflect the uncertainty.We recommend that the Government explain on what evidence it relied for its judgment in September 2002 that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq’s attempts to procure uranium from Africa, in the light of subsequent events."
House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee
The Decision to go to War in Iraq
Ninth Report of Session 2002 –03, Volume I, 3 July 2003

"Neither the US nor Britain ever gave the IAEA any other information to back up their allegations on Iraq's uranium-buying activities [as provided for under UN resolution 1441], despite the 'separate sources' cited by Mr Straw."
Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat
Independent, 29 June 2003

"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...."
Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat
Independent, 29 June 2003

"Deliberately misrepresented intelligence at least 10 years old was used by the British government to claim that Iraq could deploy chemical weapons in just 45 minutes. 'We are talking about information relating to the first Gulf war and afterwards,' a senior intelligence source said. We are talking about information relating to the first Gulf war and afterwards. We told the government when this information was handed over that it was old and they ignored that fact. These were mobile missiles. A good Iraqi team would take about 20 minutes to get them active, an average team would take 45 minutes -- that is where the government claim comes from. The government elected to use this to say Saddam Hussein could deploy chemical weapons in 45 minutes. But it's total rubbish. Saddam's capabilities were destroyed. Iraq simply wouldn't have had this ability when we invaded. There was only the very remotest possibility that he had Scuds or chemical weapons left. It can't be denied that Saddam did once have this capability, but when intelligence handed this information to the government, the 45 minute claim was extracted in isolation and misrepresented. You can't use 10-year-old intelligence as the basis for anything. Alastair Campbell is able to fall back on the fact that Saddam once had the ability to deploy in 45 minutes, but there is a fear within intelligence that he can turn around and blame us for passing old intelligence'."
Revealed: the truth behind the 45-minute warning
Sunday Herald, 29 June 2003

"It's getting harder to ignore. More and more evidence is emerging to suggest that U.S. intelligence was manipulated to justify going to war with Iraq."
Scandal lurks in shadow of Iraq evidence
Denver Post, 29 June 2003

"There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious....  even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications."
Denial and Deception
New York Times, 24 June 2003

"The CIA warned Britain that claims Iraq had tried to get uranium from Niger were false, months before the Government published the allegation in an intelligence dossier justifying military action against on Iraq. The US intelligence agency asked a retired diplomat to investigate reports from Britain and Italy that Saddam had sought uranium for possible use in a nuclear weapon. The diplomat went to Niger in February 2002 and spoke to officials who denied having any uranium dealings with Iraq. That information was shared with British officials, and was reported widely within the US government, a senior intelligence official in Washington told the Associated Press. But the British government still included their information in a public statement on 24 September last year, citing intelligence sources, which said that Iraq 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' That same day, an American intelligence official expressed doubts about the truth of the uranium reports during a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Early this year, UN inspectors announced that the uranium reports were based primarily on forged documents initially obtained by European intelligence agencies.... the US intelligence official who spoke to the AP, said the CIA's doubts were made known to other federal agencies through various internal communications, starting more than a year before the war began."
Blair ignored CIA warning over forged documents on Saddam's nuclear capability
Independent, 13 June 2003

"Three senior administration officials said Vice President Dick Cheney and some officials on the National Security Council staff and at the Pentagon ignored the CIA's reservations and argued that the president and others should include the allegation in their case against Saddam. The revelation of the CIA warning is the strongest evidence to date that pro-war administration officials manipulated, exaggerated or ignored intelligence information in their eagerness to make the case for invading Iraq....Among the most vocal proponents of publicizing the alleged Niger connection, two senior officials said, were Cheney and officials in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The effort was led by Robert G. Joseph, the top National Security Council staff official on nuclear proliferation, the officials said. Cheney alleged in an Aug. 26, 2002, speech that Saddam 'has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,' and this March 16 he went much further, saying: 'We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.'..."
White House was warned of dubious intelligence, official says
Miami Herald, 13 June 2003

"We must find out whether the CIA deceived the President as he was developing his Iraq policy or whether it is deceiving the public now to protect the President and the Vice President".
 New Questions on President's Use of Forged Nuclear Evidence
Statement of Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Committee on Government Reform, 12 June 2003

"Gary Samore, author of an earlier dossier published by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the London-based think-tank, says the claim 'was wrong in a very embarrassing way. I understand (the documents) were crude forgeries . . . pretty crude cutting and pasting of letterheads. I don’t know how it’s possible that the CIA and MI6 (the intelligence services) did not do obvious checks to make sure they were authentic.' Hans Blix, the UN chief weapons inspector, has called that failure 'very, very disturbing'. Downing Street said yesterday 'of course we stand by it (the claim)' and that 'we had more than one source' for the claim. A spokesman adds that 'I wouldn’t draw the extrapolation' that the claims about Iraq’s attempt to get African uranium were based on the documents in contention. Really? Then what were they based on? This is an ambitious piece of stonewalling which Downing Street may yet be called on to justify, and it will be all the more embarrassing if there are no credible other sources. In the foreword to the dossier, amid a lavish tribute to the intelligence agencies, Blair got away with saying that to protect agents from Saddam’s regime 'we cannot, of course, publish the detailed raw Intelligence'. With Saddam’s regime gone, and few weapons found, that answer now looks blithe. It certainly would not satisfy a Senate committee."
The Forged Papers Chase That is Bound to Run and Run
London Times, 23 May

".... Kamel's information has been cited as central evidence and a key reason for attacking Iraq. In his February 5 presentation to the UN Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell [used it]... Newsweek chose to run a short, 500-word item in its 'Periscope' section rather than put the story on the cover or make it the focal point of a longer article showing that the Bush Administration is rushing to war for no reason at all.... Instead, that issue of Newsweek featured a cover story on the African-American gender gap in jobs, education and other areas -- a worthy story, but nothing that could not have waited a week.... other media failed to pick up on the Kamel story ... [instead] they smothered the audience in inconsequential material about the most consequential of topics.... Cumulatively, [NEWSEEK'S] item on Kamel, the revelation that Colin Powell was citing a graduate student's thesis as British 'intelligence' and a new revelation that more British 'evidence' of Iraqi nuclear arms development cited by the Administration was (according to weapons inspectors themselves) fabricated suggest that a monstrous Big Lie is in process -- an effort to construct falsified evidence and to trick this country and the world."
The Big Lie
The Nation, 7 April 2003

"There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, Letter to the Director of the FBI, March 2003
Washington Post, 22 March 2003

"Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq’s weapons capability.....According to two of those present at the briefing.... this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, .....On the same day, in London, Tony Blair’s government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret—that Iraq had sought to buy 'significant quantities of uranium' from an unnamed African country... President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought 'significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'....Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes.... Some I.A.E.A. investigators.... speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy.... Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections....A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program—part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops—was known to a few senior officials in Washington.... dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence—[were] to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. 'It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn’t move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,' the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area..... None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.)....[However] What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British—President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech—and that 'the Brits placed more stock in them than we did.' It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that 'something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere.'... "
WHO LIED TO WHOM?
New Yorker, 24 March 2003

"A former United Nations weapons inspector has accused the United States of deliberately provoking confrontations with Iraq, which, he says, was almost fully disarmed by 1995. Scott Ritter says the United States undermined the work of UNSCOM, the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, and used the issue to push Iraq towards conflict with the West. Mr Ritter has been an outspoken critic of US policy towards Iraq since he resigned from UNSCOM in 1998. In his new documentary film, In Shifting Sands: The Truth About UNSCOM and the Disarming of Iraq, the UN and UNSCOM in particular are portrayed as American pawns in its dealings with Saddam Hussein. Mr Ritter says his team was satisfied Iraq had destroyed 98% of its weapons by 1995. But, he says, the US Government deliberately set new standards of disarmament criteria to maintain UN sanctions against Baghdad and justify bombing raids. In the film, which was premiered at the United Nations, Mr Ritter said UNSCOM chief Richard Butler told his inspectors: 'You have to provoke a confrontation...so the US can start bombing' before 15 March, a Muslim holy period...'...Mr Ritter called for an end to sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in August, 1990, saying he did not feel the country posed a danger any longer. 'Iraq is a defanged tiger', he said."
US 'provoked clashes with Iraq'
BBC Online, 19 July 2001

"President Bush, asked about the Niger issue at a news conference during his visit to South Africa, did not answer directly but said that he was 'certain that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction programme'. Like Mr Blair, he has dropped the assertion that Iraq actually had weapons. Both now say that it had a 'programme.' "
Did Iraq try to get African uranium?
BBC Online 9 July

"There is no longer any serious doubt that Bush administration officials deceived us into war. The key question now is why so many influential people are in denial, unwilling to admit the obvious....  even people who aren't partisan Republicans shy away from confronting the administration's dishonest case for war, because they don't want to face the implications."
Denial and Deception
New York Times, 24 June 2003

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