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Reviewers Find That African Uranium Claim by Bush Was Careless, Not Deceitful
An advisory board to U.S. President George W. Bush has determined that Bush’s January State of the Union address included information about prewar Iraq’s WMD programs that was not properly evaluated, a source involved in the inquiry into the address said last week (see GSN, Oct. 30). Bush’s State of the Union address came under heavy criticism for its inclusion of a disputed claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium in Africa. The Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which was asked by the White House to investigate how the claim came to be included in the speech, has determined that there was no attempt by the White House to deceive the public, the source said. White House officials “truly believed when it landed on their desk it was right, but they should have checked the information, asked more questions,” the source said. “They truly believed what landed on their desk; they trusted what came out of the CIA,” the source added (CNN.com, Dec. 24). British Officials Confirm Effort to Place Iraqi WMD Stories in MediaMeanwhile, the British government Saturday confirmed that the MI6 intelligence service had organized an effort to place stories in the media about prewar Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, according to the London Sunday Times. MI6 had orchestrated Operation Mass Appeal, which was launched in the late 1990s to disseminate information about Iraqi efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, but had never spread misinformation, a senior official said. “There were things about Saddam’s regime and his weapons that the public needed to know,” the official said, referring to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (Nicholas Rufford, London Sunday Times, Dec. 28).
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