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U.S. Intelligence was “Reasonable” in Assessing That Prewar Iraq May Have Sought Uranium, Report Says By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — The Bush administration may have moved too quickly last year to back away from allegations that prewar Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Africa, according a report released last week by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see GSN, July 13). During the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Bush administration listed Iraq’s alleged attempts to obtain uranium as evidence that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking to relaunch a nuclear weapons program. Citing British intelligence, U.S. President George W. Bush included the claim in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address (see GSN, April 30). In March 2003, however, the International Atomic Energy Agency determined that documents provided by the United States purporting to show an Iraq-Niger uranium agreement were forgeries. The following July, a senior Bush administration official said in a statement authorized by the White House that the uranium claim should not have been included in Bush’s speech. In its yearlong inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraqi WMD efforts, though, the Senate intelligence panel concluded that prior to receiving the forged documents in October 2002, it had been “reasonable” for U.S. intelligence to conclude that Iraq might have sought uranium from Africa. The committee also criticized U.S. intelligence for failing to yet provide a conclusive assessment on the matter. The Senate report provides a detailed account of U.S. intelligence efforts to ascertain Iraq’s possible uranium procurement in Niger, which began in October 2001 when the CIA issued a report citing a foreign intelligence service as indicating that Niger had been in negotiations with Iraq since 1999 on a shipment of several tons of uranium. In February 2002, the CIA issued a second and more detailed report on the alleged uranium transaction, citing again a foreign intelligence source as having provided the information. According to the Senate report, CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency analysts were “impressed” by the second and more detailed report on the alleged uranium transaction deal. Analysts from the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, however, were more skeptical and doubted that Niger would attempt to sell uranium to Iraq. The Financial Times recently reported, though, that the original allegations of an alleged Iraq-Niger deal were made by an European intelligence service that conducted three years of surveillance of alleged uranium smuggling efforts within African countries — efforts that are suspected of involving Iraq. The Times reported that intelligence on the alleged uranium smuggling in Niger was passed to the United States in late 2001 (see GSN, June 28). The Senate report also examines the February 2002 trip to Niger by former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon Joseph Wilson, who was dispatched by the CIA to learn more information following a request from Vice President Dick Cheney. Wilson later told the Senate intelligence committee that after meeting with former Nigerien officials, he believed that there was no basis for the uranium allegations. A March 2002 intelligence report based on Wilson’s trip, though, said that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki said that a businessman had approached him in June 1999 to meet with Iraqi officials to increase “commercial relations” between the two countries, the Senate report says. The March report also said that Mayaki interpreted the proposal as meaning that the Iraqi delegation wanted to discuss uranium sales. According to media reports, Wilson identified the businessman as former Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed Sahhaf. Wilson told committee staff that while Mayaki met with the Iraqi delegation, the Nigerien prime minister had been wary of discussing trade issues with a country under U.N. sanctions and had avoided such discussions, the Senate report says. In addition to Niger, U.S. intelligence received in 2002 other signs that prewar Iraq had sought uranium in Africa, according to the Senate report. It cites several intelligence reports indicating that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and that an Iraqi delegation had traveled in March and April 1999 to Somalia to discuss obtaining uranium from a Somali. In September 2002, the British government released a dossier on Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts, which included the claim later cited by Bush that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa. The United Kingdom has continued to stand by that claim, saying its intelligence did not base the assessment on the forged documents — a finding reaffirmed today by the results of a British inquiry into prewar Iraq intelligence (see related GSN story, today). Even after October 2002, when the United States received copies of the forged documents, there were still indications of possible Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Africa, and more specifically Niger, according to the Senate report. It cites a brief U.S. Navy report issued the following month that indicated that a “large quantity” of Nigerien uranium was being stored in a warehouse in Cotonou, Benin. The Navy report said that the uranium had been sold to Iraq by the Nigerien president and provided the name and contact information for a West African businessman who allegedly brokered the deal. While the Navy report indicated that businessman was willing to discuss the alleged transaction, he was never contacted by U.S. intelligence and no effort has been made to determine whether the businessman had any useful information, according to the Senate report. “No one even thought to do that,” a CIA official was quoted in the Senate report as having told the panel. U.S. officials found no uranium inside the warehouse during a December 2002 investigation, only bales of cotton, the report says. It adds, though, that the CIA was unable to determine whether the cotton may have hidden the uranium and that no radiation-detection equipment was used during the search.
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