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How the 'IoS' broke the story of the ambassador and the fake uranium
claim
By Andrew Buncombe and Raymond Whitaker
10/30/05 "The
Independent" -- -- It was late on Friday evening, 27
June 2003, that Ambassador Joe Wilson finally returned our call.
The Independent on Sunday had learned that a senior American figure
had gone to the west African state of Niger to investigate a claim
that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons
there - and had found it untrue.
Britain had included the assertion in its September 2002 dossier on
Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Even though it had been
sceptically received, the claim was repeated in January 2003 by
President George Bush in his annual State of the Union address. In
that symbolic, televised speech, delivered before both houses of
Congress, Mr Bush told the American public: "The British government
has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa."
With war in Iraq imminent, and so many other charges being flung
against Saddam, this one did not attract much scrutiny. But six
months later, with Baghdad in coalition hands and Mr Bush having
declared major combat operations over, the questions about the
failure to find WMD were proliferating.The IoS was told by a source
that someone in the US knew the truth about the "Niger uranium"
claim. The source felt honour-bound not to reveal his name, but said
we could easily find out in Washington. He was right: to those
familiar with the issue, Joe Wilson's mission was common knowledge.
The former diplomat, who once served in Niger, had travelled there
in 2002 at the request of the CIA to investigate the claim. During
his eight-day visit he satisfied himself unequivocally that it was
untrue that Iraq had been seeking the uranium, and that documents
purporting to show a deal must be fakes. When the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) finally had the opportunity to look at
the documents itself, it concluded they were forgeries. Last week
the Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported that they had been
created by low-level agents of Sisme, the Italian intelligence
service, which was trying to curry favour with the White House by
supporting its WMD campaign.
In June 2003 Mr Wilson told the IoS it was all but impossible that
British intelligence had not also been told of the findings of his
mission. When the uranium story appeared in Britain's WMD dossier,
he even told the CIA to alert their British counterparts to their
error. He outlined his belief that the Bush administration had
twisted the intelligence to make a case for war against Iraq and had
chosen to ignore his report.
Mr Wilson asked that the IoS identify him only as a "retired
ambassador to Africa who went to Niger". The reason for this became
clear the following weekend, when, in a signed piece in The New York
Times, he wrote a full account of his investigation entitled "What I
didn't find in Africa". In it he wrote: "I have little choice but to
conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear
weapons programme was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." The
impact of this piece was huge, and it forced the White House on to
the back foot. The then CIA director, George Tenet had to apologise
over the claim in the State of the Union address, saying: "These 16
words should never have been included in the text written for the
President."
Britain continued to insist, however, that it had separate
intelligence that validated the claim. The Foreign Office hinted
that it was connected to the visit of an "Iraqi delegation" to Niger
in 1999, but when the IoS interviewed Wissam al-Zahawie, the only
Iraqi diplomat to go there that year, he said he had been
investigated and cleared by both the UN and the US.
Mr Wilson's article, however, made him a target for the White House.
Little more than a week after it appeared, the conservative
columnist Bob Novak reported that the ambassador's wife, Valerie
Plame, was a covert CIA operative, and that she had suggested
sending her husband to Niger. He said he had been given the
information by "two senior administration officials".
Mr Wilson long suspected the attempt to smear him went to the very
heart of the administration. In a subsequent memoir, The Politics of
Truth, subtitled "Inside the lies that led to war and betrayed my
wife's CIA identity", he wrote: "I am told ... that the office of
the Vice-President - either the Vice-President himself or more
likely his chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby - chaired a meeting
at which a decision was made to do a work-up on me." And Mr Wilson
told the IoS he believed it was very unlikely that Dick Cheney was
not aware of what was happening. "If he did not know about it, he
should be saying so."
© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.
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