Leading up to the recent war in Iraq, the Bush administration made a number of allegations heightening the threat posed by Iraq’s nuclear weapons program that went beyond what the available intelligence would support, the Washington Post reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 3).

In August 2002, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card created the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), which was to create strategy for each stage of the U.S. confrontation with Iraq, according to the Post.  Regular participants in the group’s meetings included Karl Rove, U.S. President George W. Bush’s senior political adviser; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice; deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley; and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney. 

One senior official described the group as “an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities.”

A WHIG “strategic communications” task force was created to begin preparing speeches and white papers on the threat posed by Iraq, according to the Post.  The first white paper that examined specific Iraqi WMD programs was the never-published A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons.  During the paper’s creation and revision, the WHIG wanted to use vivid imagery that was not available in the typically hedged language of intelligence reports, according to three officials who followed the paper’s creation.

The draft white paper contained a number of exaggerated, or false claims, later made by Bush administration officials, such as the now-disputed claim that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, according to the Post. 

The draft paper also said that U.N inspectors had said that satellite imagery showed “many signs of the reconstruction and acceleration of the Iraqi nuclear program.”  However, the inspectors said no such thing, the Post reported.  A national intelligence estimate prepared by the CIA in October 2002 on Iraq’s WMD programs cited new construction at facilities once linked to the Iraqi nuclear program, according to the Post.  By February, however, U.S. specialists had visited the sites and had seen that no forbidden activities were being conducted.

In addition, Bush and other officials claimed that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein held a number of meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists.  They did not say, however, that the work the scientists were known to have been conducting was mostly peaceful, such as for industrial purposes, the Post reported.

In January, a CIA analyst described by the Post as “Joe” traveled to the headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna to present the U.S case that Iraq was attempting to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for use in gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, according to the Post.  The IAEA, however, believed that the tubes were for use in conventional rockets.

During his meeting, Joe told the IAEA that the aluminum in the tubes Iraq had sought to purchase was “overspecified,” “inappropriate” and “excessively strong,” according to people familiar with his presentation.  No country would waste the aluminum by using it in a rocket, Joe said.

There was a rocket, however, that used such aluminum tubes — the Italian-made Medusa 81, the Post reported.  Experts from the U.S. national laboratories told the Energy Department and U.S. intelligence analysts that Iraq was producing copies of the Medusa 81.  The aluminum tubes in dispute matched both the alloy and the dimensions of the Medusa 81, according to the Post.

Following Joe’s presentation to the IAEA, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration officials denied that the tubes could have been used for rockets.  They did so even after intelligence analysts photographed in Iraq a near-identical tube marked with the logo of the Italian company that produces the Medusa 81 rocket and the words “81mm rocket” in English, the Post reported.

Two senior U.S. policy-makers that supported the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq said the White House exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq’s nuclear efforts.

“I never cared about the ‘imminent threat,’” said one of the policy-makers.  “The threat was there in (Hussein’s) presence in office.  To me, just knowing what it takes to have a nuclear weapons program, he needed a lot of equipment.  You can stare at the yellowcake (uranium ore) all you want.  You need to convert it to gas and enrich it.  That does not constitute an imminent threat, and the people who were saying that, I think, did not fully appreciate the difficulties and effort involved in producing the nuclear material and the physics package,” the policy-maker said (Gellman/Pincus, Washington Post, Aug. 10).

Iraqi Diplomat Denies Traveling to Niger to Purchase Uranium

Meanwhile, Iraqi diplomat Wissam al-Zahawie has denied that the reason for his visit to Niger in 1999 was to purchase uranium for Iraq, according to the London Independent.

The United States and the United Kingdom have previously accused Iraq of attempting to obtain uranium from Africa.  One of the key pieces of evidence used to support that claim though — documents purporting to show an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium in Niger — was later revealed to be fraudulent.  Al-Zahawie said he believed he was suspected of attempting to arrange a uranium purchase during his visit because his name appeared on the forged documents.

Al-Zahawie, former Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, said he traveled to Niger to invite the then-president to visit Iraq.

“My only mission was to meet the president of Niger and invite him to visit Iraq,” al-Zahawie said.  “The invitation and the situation in Iraq resulting from the genocidal U.N. sanctions were all we talked about.  I had no other instructions, and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium,” he said (Raymond Whitaker, London Independent, Aug. 10).

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