CIA says it made Iraq doubts clear to White House

From Associated Press

Washington - The CIA shared with other U.S. agencies its doubts about prewar reports - later proven false - that Iraq sought uranium from Niger, a senior intelligence official says.

The CIA passed the information along anyway, and the reports made it into U.S. President George W. Bush's State of the Union address.

About a month after Mr. Bush's January 2002 speech, the United Nations determined the uranium reports were based primarily on forged documents initially obtained by European intelligence agencies.

A Bush administration official said the information was vetted by relevant agencies, and it was included in the president's speech because at the time it was believed to be reliable.

It is no longer regarded as such.

The Washington Post, quoting unidentified U.S. officials, reported Thursday that the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies.

The U.S. intelligence official, however, 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.

The reports first surfaced around the end of 2001, when the British and Italian governments told the United States they had intelligence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger.

That uranium, once fully processed, could be used in a nuclear weapon.

At the time, the allies did not describe their sources, which turned out to be a series of letters purportedly between officials in Niger and Iraq, the intelligence official said.

In 2003, UN experts determined the letters were forgeries.

The CIA distributed the Europeans' information to the rest of the government in early 2002 and noted that the allegations lacked "specifics and details and we're unable to corroborate them," the senior intelligence official said.

The CIA asked a retired diplomat to investigate the reports.

The diplomat went to Niger in February 2002 and spoke with officials who denied having any uranium dealings with Iraq.

That information was shared with British officials, and was reported widely within the U.S. government, the senior intelligence official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The British included their information in a public statement on Sept. 24, 2002, citing intelligence sources, that said Iraq "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

That same day, a U.S. intelligence official expressed doubts to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a closed session about the truth of the uranium reports.

The reports made it into the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that was distributed throughout the U.S. government.

But it also said they were uncorroborated and not necessarily believed, the intelligence official said.

Other, fragmentary U.S. intelligence also pointed to an Iraqi effort to acquire uranium in Africa.

But the forged letters remained the key source, although it is unclear how much the CIA knew at this point about the original letters acquired by the Europeans.

A public report, gleaned from the classified intelligence estimate and published by the CIA in early October, made no mention of the specific uranium allegation.

The CIA did not think the report was reliable enough to be included, the intelligence official said.

A former intelligence official at the State Department, Greg Thielmann, said the Niger uranium claim was long regarded with skepticism.

Mr. Thielmann retired in September 2002.

However, the uranium report was published in a State Department fact sheet that was put out Dec. 19 to poke holes in Iraq's declaration to the United Nations that it had no prohibited weapons.

The CIA tried unsuccessfully to have it edited out of the fact sheet before it was published, the official said.

It was omitted from future statements by State Department officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell's Feb. 5 address to the United Nations.