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This is a scalable context timeline. It contains events related to the event March 23, 2003: CIA Analysts Confirm Pressure from Administration to Conform Reports to Bush Policies. You can narrow or broaden the context of this timeline by adjusting the zoom level. The lower the scale, the more relevant the items on average will be, while the higher the scale, the less relevant the items, on average, will be.
The Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) is expelled from Iran and takes refuge in Iraq. In exile, the group develops an overseas support structure and creates the National Liberation Army (NLA), which acquires tanks, armored vehicles, and heavy artillery. The group will receive support from Saddam Hussein until he is toppled by a US invasion in 2003 (see March 19, 2003). [US Department of State, 4/30/2003]
Entity Tags: People's Mujahedin of Iran, Saddam Hussein
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran
The Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf (CPSG), a bipartisan group made up largely of foreign policy specialists, sends an "Open Letter to the President" calling for President Clinton to use the US military to help Iraqi opposition groups overthrow Saddam Hussein and replace him with a US-friendly government. US law forbids such an operation. The group is led by, among others, former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and prominent Bush adviser Richard Perle, a former assistant secretary of defense. Largely Neoconservative in Makeup - Many of its co-signers will become the core of the Bush administration's neoconservative-driven national security apparatus. These co-signers include Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Stephen Bryen, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, Gary Schmitt, Max Singer, Casper Weinberger, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser, and Dov Zakheim. [CNN, 2/20/1998; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] The CPSG is closely affiliated with both the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC—see June 3, 1997 and January 26, 1998) and the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI), both of which boast Perle as a powerful and influential member. Jim Lobe of the Project Against the Present Danger later learns that the CPSG is funded in large part by a sizable grant from the right-wing Bradley Foundation, a key funding source for both the PNAC and the AEI. According to Counterpunch's Kurt Nimmo, the plan for overthrowing Iraq later adopted by the Bush administration, and currently advocated by the CPSG, will be echoed in the PNAC's September 2000 document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses" (see September 2000). [CounterPunch, 11/19/2002] Advocates Supporting Iraq-Based Insurgency - The letter reads in part: "Despite his defeat in the Gulf War, continuing sanctions, and the determined effort of UN inspectors to root out and destroy his weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein has been able to develop biological and chemical munitions.… This poses a danger to our friends, our allies, and to our nation.… In view of Saddam Hussein's refusal to grant UN inspectors the right to conduct unfettered inspections of those sites where he is suspected of storing his still significant arsenal of chemical and biological munitions and his apparent determination never to relinquish his weapons of mass destruction, we call upon President Clinton to adopt and implement a plan of action designed to finally and fully resolve this utterly unacceptable threat to our most vital national interests." The plan is almost identical to the "End Game" scenario proposed in 1993 (see November 1993) and carried out, without success, in 1995 (see March 1995). It is also virtually identical to the "Downing Plan," released later in 1998 (see Late 1998). In 2004, then-Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang will observe, "The letter was remarkable in that it adopted some of the very formulations that would later be used by Vice President [Dick] Cheney and other current administration officials to justify the preventive war in Iraq that commenced on March 20, 2003" (see March 19, 2003). The CPSG advocates: US support for Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC—see 1992-1996) as the provisional government to replace Hussein's dictatorship; Funding the INC with seized Iraqi assets, designating areas in the north and south as INC-controlled zones, and lifting sanctions in those areas; Providing any ground assault by INC forces (see October 31, 1998) with a "systematic air campaign" by US forces; Prepositioning US ground force equipment "so that, as a last resort, we have the capacity to protect and assist the anti-Saddam forces in the northern and southern parts of Iraq"; Bringing Hussein before an international tribunal on war crimes charges. Carrying out these actions, Solarz says, would completely eliminate the threat of weapons of mass destruction that he claims Iraq owns. [Abrams et al., 2/19/1998; CNN, 2/20/1998; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Entity Tags: Richard Burt, Richard Armitage, Richard Perle, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Paula J. Dobriansky, Peter Rosenblatt, Project for the New American Century, Richard V. Allen, Peter Rodman, Robert A. Pastor, Saddam Hussein, Robert Kagan, William Jefferson ("Bill") Clinton, William Kristol, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, William B. Clark, Sven F. Kraemer, Stephen Solarz, Roger Robinson, Paul Wolfowitz, Stephen Bryen, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Ledeen, Patrick Lang, Fred C. Ikle, Dov S. Zakheim, Elliott Abrams, Frank Carlucci, Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Donald Rumsfeld, Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, American Enterprise Institute, Ahmed Chalabi, Max Singer, David Wurmser, Bernard Lewis, Caspar Weinberger, Gary Schmitt, Kurt Nimmo, Leon Wienseltier, Martin Peretz, Joshua Muravchik, Frederick L. Lewis, John R. Bolton, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Jarvis Lynch, Jeffrey Gedmin, Jim Lobe, Iraqi National Congress
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence
During the first presidential debate between George W. Bush (R-TX) and Al Gore (D-TN), Bush accuses Gore of advocating a policy of aggressive foreign interventionism, a policy Gore does not support, but which Bush does (see December 2, 1999 and Spring 2000). "The vice president and I have a disagreement about the use of troops," Bush says. "He believes in nation-building. I would be very careful about using our troops as nation builders" (see March 19, 2003). (Apparently, Bush is conflating the idea of foreign interventionism with the concept of nation building, two somewhat different concepts.) [Unger, 2007, pp. 175-176] Bush will reiterate the claim in the next presidential debate (see October 11, 2000).
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Albert Arnold ("Al") Gore, Jr.
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US International Relations
Joseph Wilson. [Source: public domain]The CIA sends Joseph C. Wilson, a retired US diplomat, to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from that country (see February 13, 2002). The CIA pays Wilson's expenses for the trip, but does not pay him in any other respect. The identity of the party who requests the mission is later disputed. While Wilson will claim the trip was requested directly by Dick Cheney's office, other sources will indicate that the CIA had decided (see February 19, 2002) that a delegation to Niger was needed in order to investigate questions raised by one of Dick Cheney's aides (see (February 13, 2002)). [New York Times, 5/6/2003; Washington Post, 6/12/2003 ; Independent, 6/29/2003; New York Times, 7/6/2003; US Congress, 7/7/2004] Reason behind Request - Former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman will later note that "Wilson was asked to go to Niger for one specific purpose. It was the CIA's idea to get Cheney off their backs. Cheney would not get off their backs about the yellowcake documents. They couldn't get Cheney to stop pressing the issue. He insisted that was the proof of reconstitution of [Iraq's nuclear] program." [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 214] Normal Skepticism - Wilson goes into the situation with a healthy dose of skepticism. "My skepticism was the same as it would have been with any unverified intelligence report, because there is a lot of stuff that comes over the transom every day," he will recall in 2006. Wilson knows nothing of the influence of the Pentagon neoconservatives (see July 8, 1996, January 26, 1998, July 1998, September 2000, Late December 2000 and Early January 2001, Shortly after January 20, 2001, and Shortly After September 11, 2001) or the growing rift in the intelligence community over the reports: "I was aware that the neocons had a growing role in government and that they were interested in Iraq," he will recall. "But the administration had not articulated a policy at this stage." He is not given a copy of the Niger documents before leaving for Africa, nor is he told of their history. "To the best of my knowledge, the documents were not in the possession of the [CIA] at the time I was briefed," he will recall. "The discussion was whether or not this report could be accurate. During this discussion, everyone who knew something shared stuff about how the uranium business worked, and I laid out what I knew about the government in Niger, what information they could provide." With this rather sketchy preparation, Wilson leaves for Niger. [Unger, 2007, pp. 240; Wilson, 2007, pp. 113] Wilson's wife, senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, will later write, "He figured that if the vice president had asked a serious and legitimate question, it deserved a serious answer and he would try to help find it." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 111] No Trouble Finding Information - Wilson, who knows the Nigerien government and many of its officials, has little trouble finding the information he needs in the following week. In 2006, he will recall: "Niger has a simplistic government structure. Both the minister of mines and the prime minister had gone through the mines. The French were managing partners of the international consortium [which handles Niger's uranium]. The French mining company actually had its hands on the project. Nobody else in the consortium had operators on the ground." Wilson also personally knows Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican who supposedly negotiated the uranium deal with Niger (see February 1999). Wilson will later observe: "Wissam al-Zahawie was a world-class opera singer, and he went to the Vatican as his last post so he could be near the great European opera houses in Rome. He was not in the Ba'athist inner circle. He was not in Saddam [Hussein]'s tribe. The idea that he would be entrusted with the super-secret mission to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger is out of the question." [Unger, 2007, pp. 240-241] Wilson meets with, among other officials, Niger's former minister of mines, Mai Manga. As later reported by the Senate Intelligence Committee (see July 9, 2004), Manga tells Wilson "there were no sales outside of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) channels since the mid-1980s," and he "knew of no contracts signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of uranium." Manga says a "French mining consortium controls Nigerien uranium mining and keeps the uranium very tightly controlled from the time it is mined until the time it is loaded onto ships in Benin for transport overseas," and, "it would be difficult, if not impossible, to arrange a special shipment of uranium to a pariah state given these controls." [CounterPunch, 11/9/2005] Meeting with US Ambassador - Wilson arrives in Niger on February 26, two days after Marine General Carlton W. Fulford Jr.'s meeting (see February 24, 2002) with Nigerien officials. Wilson first meets with US Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, a veteran Foreign Service official, whom Wilson will later describe as "crisp" and well-informed. Over tea in the US Embassy offices in Niamey, Niger's capital, Owens-Kirkpatrick tells Wilson that she has already concluded that the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq are unfounded. "She had already debunked them in her reports to Washington," Wilson will later recall. "She said, yeah, she knew a lot about this particular report. She thought she had debunked it—and, oh, by the way, a four-star Marine Corps general had been down there as well—Carlton Fulford. And he had left satisfied there was nothing to report." [Wilson, 2004, pp. 20-22] Details of Alleged Uranium Production - Niger extracts uranium from two mines, both located in remote locations in the Sahara Desert. It takes well over a day to drive from the mines to Niamey. The mines are owned by a consortium of foreign companies and the Nigerien government, and managed by a French mining company, COGEMA. Because of a recent upswing in the production of Canadian uranium, Niger's uranium is mined at a net loss, and its only customers are consortium members. Wilson will later write, "[T]he Nigerien government has sold no uranium outside the consortium for two decades." If Iraq had bought 500 tons of uranium, as the story is told, that would have represented a 40 percent production increase. "There is no doubt," Wilson will later write, "that such a significant shift from historic production schedules would have been absolutely impossible to hide from the other partners, and most certainly from the managing partner, COGEMA. Everyone involved would have known about it." Any Nigerien government decision to produce such an amount of uranium would have involved numerous government officials and many well-documented meetings. Because the transaction would have been to a foreign country, Niger's Foreign Ministry would also have been involved in the decision. To sell Iraq uranium during that time would have been a violation of international law and of UN sanctions against Iraq, a weighty decision that would have ultimately been made by the president of Niger in conjuction with the foreign minister and the minister of mines. Such a decision would have been published in the Nigerien equivalent of the Federal Register and would have dramatic tax and revenue implications. The unexpected huge infusion of cash from the sale would have had a strong impact on the Nigerien economy, and would have been much anticipated and talked about throughout the Nigerien business community. [Wilson, 2004, pp. 22-25] Off-the-Books Production Virtually Impossible - It is conceivable that such an enormous operation could have been conducted entirely "off the books," Wilson will write, but virtually impossible to pull off. True, a military junta was in power at the time of the alleged sale, one that felt no responsibility or accountability to the Nigerien people. But even a secret transaction would have been impossible to conceal. Such a transaction would have involved thousands of barrels of clandestinely shipped uranium, extensive and complex adjustments to shipping schedules, and other ramifications. "It simply could not have happened without a great many people knowing about it, and secrets widely known do not remain hidden for long. And again, COGEMA, as the managing partner, would have had to know and be complicit." Add to that Niger's dependence on US foreign economic aid and its unwillingness to threaten the loss of that aid by secretly shipping uranium to a country that the US considers a dangerous rogue nation. All told, Wilson concludes, the possibility of such a clandestine operation is remote in the extreme. [Wilson, 2004; Wilson, 2004] 1999 Meeting with Iraqi Official - While speaking with a US Embassy official, Wilson learns about a 1999 meeting between the embassy official and an Iraqi representative in Algiers, perhaps in concert with a similar meeting between Iraqi officials and Niger's prime minister (see June 1999). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 27-28] Confirmation that Allegations are Unrealistic - After spending several days talking with current government officials, former government officials, and people associated with the country's uranium business, Wilson concludes the rumors are completely false. He will later call the allegations "bogus and unrealistic." [Washington Post, 6/12/2003 ; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; Independent, 6/29/2003; New York Times, 7/6/2003; CBS News, 7/11/2003; Vanity Fair, 1/2004; Wilson, 2004, pp. 20-28, 424; Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 282; Wilson, 2007, pp. 113]
Entity Tags: Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, Wissam al-Zahawie, Carlton W. Fulford, COGEMA, Mai Manga, Valerie Plame Wilson, Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Melvin A. Goodman, Central Intelligence Agency, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Joseph C. Wilson
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
William Luti. [Source: Helene C. Stikkel / Defense Department]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both staunch neoconservatives, rename the Northern Gulf Affairs Office on the Pentagon's fourth floor (in the seventh corridor of D Ring) the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) and increase its four-person staff to sixteen. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Vice President Cheney, is put in charge of the day-to-day operations [Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] , apparently at the behest of Cheney. Luti was, according to former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang, a member of Cheney's "shadow National Security Council." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Transforming NESA - Luti worked for the Near East and South Asian Affairs desk (NESA) at the Pentagon since mid-2001. Lang later describes NESA as having been "a Pentagon backwater, responsible primarily for arranging bilateral meetings with military counterparts" from various nations. Before the Afghanistan war, NESA worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Near East, South Asia, and Counterterrorism. During Luti's first months at NESA, the DIO was Bruce Hardcastle. The Pentagon dismantled the entire DIO system, partly because of friction between Luti and Hardcastle (see Early 2002). Lang will write, "The roots of the friction between Hardcastle and Luti were straightforward: Hardcastle brought with him the combined wisdom of the professional military intelligence community. The community had serious doubts about the lethality of the threat from Saddam Hussein, the terrorism links and the status of the Iraqi WMD programs. Luti could not accept this. He knew what he wanted: to bring down Saddam Hussein. Hardcastle could not accept the very idea of allowing a desired outcome to shape the results of analysis." Luti transforms NESA into what Lang will call "a 'de facto' arm of the vice president's office," and in the process shuts Hardcastle out of NESA (and later OSP) intelligence briefings. Luti does not report to either Feith or Donald Rumsfeld, as his chain of command delineates, but to Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. OSP staffer Karen Kwiatkowski later recalls being "shocked" to learn that Luti reports to Libby and not to his putative Pentagon superiors. She will say, "In one of the first staff meetings that I attended there, Bill Luti said, 'Well, did you get that thing over to Scooter? Scooter wants this, and somebody's got to get it over to him, and get that up to him right away.' After the meeting, I asked one of my co-workers, who'd been there longer, 'Who is this Scooter?' I was told, 'That's Scooter Libby over at the OVP (Office of the Vice President). He's the Vice President's chief of staff.' Later I came to understand that Cheney had put Luti there." Under Luti, NESA becomes a virtual adjunct to the OSP. [Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Strong Neoconservative Influence - The Office of Special Plans is staffed with a tight group of like-minded neoconservative ideologues, who are known advocates of regime change in Iraq. Notably, the staffers have little background in intelligence or Iraqi history and culture. [Salon, 7/16/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Some of the people associated with this office were earlier involved with the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, also known as the "Wurmser-Maloof" project (see Shortly After September 11, 2001). They hire "scores of temporary 'consultants'… including like-minded lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous right-wing think-tanks in the US capital." Neoconservative ideologues, like Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Newt Gingrich, are afforded direct input into the Office of Special Plans. [Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Vanity Fair, 7/2006, pp. 150] Kwiatkowski later says she saw Ledeen going "in and out of there (OSP) all the time." [Vanity Fair, 7/2006, pp. 150] Planning for Post-Saddam Iraq - The official business of Special Plans is to help plan for post-Saddam Iraq. The office's staff members presumably "develop defense policies aimed at building an international coalition, prepare the secretary of defense and his top deputies for interagency meetings, coordinate troop-deployment orders, craft policies for dealing with prisoners of war and illegal combatants, postwar assistance and reconstruction policy planning, postwar governance, Iraqi oil infrastructure policy, postwar Iraqi property disputes, war crimes and atrocities, war-plan review and, in their spare time, prepare congressional testimony for their principals." [Insight, 12/2/2003] Covert Source of 'Alternative' Intelligence - But according to numerous well-placed sources, the office becomes a source for many of the administration's prewar allegations against Iraq. It is accused of exaggerating, politicizing, and misrepresenting intelligence, which is "stovepiped" to top administration officials who use the intelligence in their policy decisions on Iraq. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Daily Telegraph, 7/11/2004; CNN, 7/11/2004] 'Top Secret' - There are very few news reports in the American mainstream media that report on the office. In fact, the office is reportedly Top Secret. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 308] "We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained," Kwiatkowski will later say, "and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment." [American Conservative, 12/1/2003] Part of a 'Separate Government,' Powell Feels - Colin Powell is said to have felt that Cheney and the neoconservatives in this "Gestapo" office had established what was essentially a separate government. [Washington Post, 4/17/2004] Powell's former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, is even more blunt. "When I say 'secret cabal,' I mean 'secret cabal,' he says of the White House officials behind the OSP. He compares Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives to the Jacobins, the radical zealots who plunged 18th-century France into the Reign of Terror. "I see them as messianic advocates of American power from one end of the globe, much as the Jacobins in France were messianic advocates of the French Revolution. I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process." [Unger, 2007, pp. 299-300] Among the claims critics find most troubling about the office are: Heavy Reliance on Intelligence from Exiles and Defectors - The office relies heavily on accounts from Iraqi exiles and defectors associated with Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), long considered suspect by other US intelligence agencies. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] One defector in particular, code-named "Curveball," provides as much as 98 percent of the intelligence on Iraq's alleged arsenal of biological weapons. [CNN, 7/11/2004] Much of the information provided by the INC's sources consists of "misleading and often faked intelligence reports," which often flow to Special Plans and NESA directly, "sometimes through Defense Intelligence Agency debriefings of Iraqi defectors via the Defense Human Intelligence Service and sometimes through the INC's own US-funded Intelligence Collection Program, which was overseen by the Pentagon." [Mother Jones, 1/2004] According to Kwiatkowski, the movement of intelligence from the INC to the Office of Special Plans is facilitated by a Colonel Bruner, a former military aide to Gingrich. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Salon, 3/10/2004] Bruner "was Chalabi's handler," Kwiatkowski will tell Mother Jones. "He would arrange meetings with Chalabi and Chalabi's folks." [Mother Jones, 1/2004] Kwiatkowski also finds that OSP personnel, along with DIA and CIA officials, are taking part in the debriefing of INC informants. She will recall confronting one DIA officer, John Trigilio, about the practice: "I argued with [Tregilio] after the president's Cincinnati speech (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). I told him that the president had made a number of statements that were just not supported by the intelligence. He said that the president's statements are supported by intelligence, and he would finally say, 'We have sources that you don't have.' I took it to mean the sources that Chalabi was bringing in for debriefing… Trigilio told me he participated in a number of debriefs, conducted in hotels downtown, or wherever, of people that Chalabi brought in. These debriefs had Trigilio from OSP, but also CIA and DIA participated… If [the information] sounded good, it would go straight to the OVP or elsewhere. I don't put it out of possibility that the information would go straight to the media because of the (media's) close relationship with some of the neoconservatives. So this information would make it straight out into the knowledge base without waiting for intelligence [analysts] to come by with their qualifications and reservations." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Cherry-Picked Intelligence - The Office of Special Plans purposefully ignores intelligence that undermines the case for war while exaggerating any leads that support it. "It wasn't intelligence—it was propaganda," Kwiatkowski will later explain. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." [New York Times, 10/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] "At the OSP, what they were doing was looking at all the intelligence they could find on WMD. That was the focal point, picking bits and pieces that were the most inflammatory, removing any context that might have been provided in the original intelligence report, that would have caused you to have some pause in believing it or reflected doubts that the intelligence community had, so if the intelligence community had doubts, those would be left out… They would take items that had occurred many years ago, and put them in the present tense, make it seem like they occurred not many years ago… But they would not talk about the dates; they would say things like, 'He has continued since that time' and 'He could do it tomorrow,' which of course, wasn't true… The other thing they would do would be to take unrelated events that were reported in totally unrelated ways and make connections that the intelligence community had not made. This was primarily in discussing Iraq's activities and how they might be related to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups that might be against us, or against Israel… These kinds of links would be made. They would be made casually, and they would be made in a calculated way to form an image that is definitely not the image that anyone reading the original reports would have. The summaries that we would see from Intelligence did not match the kinds of things that OSP was putting out. So that is what I call propaganda development. It goes beyond the manipulation of intelligence to propaganda development." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] No Intelligence Oversight - The OSP bypasses established oversight procedures by sending its intelligence assessments directly to the White House and National Security Council without having them first vetted by a review process involving other US intelligence agencies. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] The people at Special Plans are so successful at bypassing conventional procedures, in part, because their neoconservative colleagues hold key positions in several other agencies and offices. Their contacts in other agencies include: John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security; Bolton's adviser, David Wurmser, a former research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute, who was just recently working in a secret Pentagon planning unit at Douglas Feith's office (see Shortly After September 11, 2001); Elizabeth Cheney, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council's top Middle East aide; and Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman of the Defense Policy Board. The office provides very little information about its work to other US intelligence offices. [Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003] 'Stealth Organization' - Greg Thielmann, the former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, later says of the OSP: "It was a stealth organization. They didn't play in the intelligence community proceedings that our office participated in. When the intelligence community met as a community, there was no OSP represented in these sessions. Because, if they had done that, they would have had to subject their views to peer review. Why do that when you can send stuff right in to the vice president?" [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 299] Lang will say in January 2004 that what happened was fundamentally different from anything that had happened under previous presidents. Cheney's staff and allies "behaved as though they had seized control of the government in a 'silent coup,'" The result, according to Lang, is "a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends, and beliefs held to the point of religious faith." [Unger, 2007, pp. 301] Pressuring Intelligence Analysts - Retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dale Davis, who headed the International Programs Department at the Virginia Military Institute until March 2004, and an expert on Middle East affairs, later says he believes intelligence analysts at the CIA and other agencies were pressured indirectly. Davis will say, "By creating the OSP [Office of Special Plans], Cheney was able to say, 'Hey, look at what we're getting out of OSP. How come you guys aren't doing as well? What is your response to what this alternative analysis that we're receiving from the Pentagon says?' That's how you do it. You pressure people indirectly." Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior counterterrorism official with the CIA, will agree: "Over a long period of time, there was a subtle process of pressure and intimidation until people started giving them what was wanted… When the Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed, under oath, over 100 analysts, not one of them said, 'I changed my assessment because of pressure.'… The environment was conditioned in such a way that the analyst subtly leaned toward the conceits of the policymakers… The intelligence community was vulnerable to the aggressiveness of neoconservative policymakers, particularly at the Pentagon and at the VP's office. As one analyst said to me, 'You can't fight something with nothing, and those people had something. Whether it was right or wrong, fraudulent or specious, it almost didn't make any difference, because the policymakers believed it already, and if you didn't have hard countervailing evidence to persuade them, then you were at a loss.'" [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Strong Pro-Israel, Anti-Arab Biases - Lastly, the people involved in Special Plans openly exhibit strong pro-Israel and anti-Arab bias. The problem, note critics, is that the analysis of intelligence is supposed to be apolitical and untainted by ideological viewpoints. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003] According to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, Special Plans is the group responsible for the claim Bush will make in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from an African country (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). [Nation, 6/19/2003; Information Clearing House, 7/16/2003] Personal Grudges against Intelligence Community - The OSP reflects the personal grudges and ill will of many in the Office of the Vice President against the intelligence community, in part because of the CIA's refusal to give much weight to the claims of Chalabi and the INC. "This had been a fight for such a long period of time, where people were so dug in," a friend of one of Vice President Cheney's senior staffers will later reflect. A colleague of the senior staff later says, "They so believed that the CIA were wrong, they were like, 'We want to show these f_ckers that they are wrong.'" [New Republic, 11/20/2003] Propaganda - Kwiatkowski will later recall that the OSP generated a large amount of what she terms propaganda, in the form of "talking points" used in briefings and in press conferences. "With the talking points, many of the propagandistic bullets that were given to use in papers for our superiors to inform them—internal propaganda—many of those same phrases and assumptions and tones, I saw in Vice President Cheney's speeches and the president's speeches," she will say. "So I got the impression that those talking points were not just for us, but were the core of an overall agenda for a disciplined product, beyond the Pentagon. Over at the vice president's office and the [neoconservative news magazine] Weekly Standard, the media, and the neoconservative talking heads and that kind of thing, all on the same sheet of music." Kwiatkowski identifies Abram Shulsky, a neoconservative academic and recent Pentagon hire, as the source of many of these talking points. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Denials, Counter-Accusations after Public Learns of OSP - After the existence of the Office of Special Plans is revealed to the public, the Pentagon will deny that it served as a direct conduit to the White House for misleading intelligence, instead claiming that its activities had been limited to postwar plans for Iraq. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003] And a December 2003 opinion piece published in Insight magazine will call the allegations surrounding the Office of Special Plans the work of conspiracy theorists. [Insight, 12/2/2003]
Entity Tags: Colonel Bruner, Colin Powell, Abram Shulsky, Craig Unger, Office of the Vice President, David Wurmser, Elizabeth ("Liz") Cheney, Dale Davis, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, James Woolsey, John Trigilio, Office of Special Plans, Kenneth Adelman, Stephen J. Hadley, Vincent Cannistraro, Lawrence Wilkerson, Karen Kwiatkowski, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Patrick Lang, Greg Thielmann, Elliott Abrams
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence, Domestic Propaganda
Nicolo Pollari, chief of SISMI, Italy's military intelligence service, meets briefly with US National Security Council officials. [Il Foglio (Milan), 10/28/2005] Present at the meeting are National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice; her deputy, Stephen Hadley; and other US and Italian officials. [La Repubblica (Rome), 10/25/2005; American Prospect, 10/25/2005; La Repubblica (Rome), 10/26/2005; Los Angeles Times, 10/28/2005; AGI online, 10/29/2005] Mysterious 'Courtesy Call' - Pollari can presumably set the record straight on the question of whether Iraq is trying to purchase aluminum tubes for manufacturing rockets or for use in building muclear weapons (see Between April 2001 and September 2002, April 11, 2001, July 25, 2002, September 24, 2002, October 1, 2002, Between December 2002 and January 2003, January 11, 2003, and March 7, 2003)—the aluminum tubes in question are exactly the same as the Italians use in their Medusa air-to-ground missile systems (see December 2002). Apparently Iraq is trying to reproduce "obsolete" missile systems dating back to when Italy and Iraq engaged in military trade. Pollari could also discuss the documents alleging that Iraq and Niger entered into a secret uranium deal (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001), a set of documents originally promulgated by SISMI and now thoroughly discredited (see February 5, 2003). But apparently Pollari discusses none of this with White House officials. Hadley, who hosts the meeting with Pollari, will refuse to say what they discuss, except to label Pollari's visit "just a courtesy call," and will add, "Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents passed." Meeting with Hadley, Not Tenet, Significant - Author Craig Unger will write in 2007 that the real significance of the meeting is that Pollari meets with Hadley (widely considered an ally of Vice President Dick Cheney), and not with Pollari's counterpart, CIA Director George Tenet. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi later says, "It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign intelligence service to circumvent the CIA. It is uniquely unusual." Of the Iraq-Niger documents, Giraldi will say, "In spite of lots of people having seen the documents, and having said they were not right, they went around them." Former CIA and State Department analyst Melvin Goodman will concur. "To me there is no benign interpretation of" the Pollari-Hadley meeting, Goodman will say. "At the highest level it was known that the documents were forgeries. Stephen Hadley knew it. Condi Rice [Hadley's supervisor] knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew." Neoconservative columnist, author, and former Italian intelligence asset Michael Ledeen, who has close ties with both Pollari and Hadley and may have played a part in producing the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see December 9, 2001). will deny setting up the meeting. And a former CIA official speaking on Tenet's behalf will say that Tenet has no information to suggest that Pollari or elements of SISMI were trying to circumvent the CIA and go directly to the White House. [Unger, 2007, pp. 258-259] (In 2006, history professor Gary Leupp will write that Ledeen is the informal liaison between SISMI and the Office of Special Plans—see September 2002). [CounterPunch, 11/9/2005] Downplaying Significance of Meeting - The Bush administration later insists the meeting was of little importance. Frederick Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, describes the meeting as a courtesy call of 15 minutes or less. He also says, "No one present at that meeting has any recollection of yellowcake [uranium oxide] being discussed or documents being provided." [New York Times, 10/28/2005] Meeting Remains Secret until 2005 - This meeting is not reported until 2005, when Italy's La Repubblica reports that a meeting—arranged through a backchannel by Gianni Castellaneta, the Italian prime minister's diplomatic advisor—took place between Pollari and Hadley on this date. The report is refuted by Italy which insists it was actually a short meeting between Pollari and Rice. Italy says that although Hadley was present, he was really not part of the meeting. [AGI online, 10/29/2005] It is not clear from the reporting, however, if the meeting acknowledged by Italy and Washington, is in fact the same meeting reported by La Repubblica.
Entity Tags: Michael Ledeen, Craig Unger, George J. Tenet, Gianni Castellaneta, Condoleezza Rice, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, Stephen J. Hadley, Nicolo Pollari, Philip Giraldi, SISMI
British Prime Minister Tony Blair gives a speech to Parliament concurrent with the just-released dossier on Iraqi WMD (see September 24, 2002). Blair combines fact—such as Iraq's lengthy defiance and deception of UN weapons inspections since the 1991 Gulf War, the possible existence of tons of chemical and biological weapons material left unaccounted for in 1998, and the attempts by Iraq to subvert the UN's Food for Oil program—with speculation that Saddam Hussein's "chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons program is not an historic leftover from 1998.… His WMD program is active, detailed, and growing. The policy of containment is not working. The WMD program is not shut down. It is up and running." Unverified Claims - Blair calls the dossier "extensive, detailed, and authoritative," and says that according to intelligence data used to compile it: "Iraq has chemical and biological weapons.… Saddam has continued to produce them… he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shi'a population, and … he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability." Only the "45-minute" strike capability is not sourced from the dossier (see September 28, 2002). Blair makes a number of patently false allegations about Iraq's nuclear weapons, including the disputed aluminum tubes claim (see Between April 2001 and September 2002, April 11, 2001, July 25, 2002, September 24, 2002, October 1, 2002, Between December 2002 and January 2003, January 11, 2003, and March 7, 2003) and the tale about Iraq attempting to purchase uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, October 15, 2001, October 18, 2001, November 20, 2001, February 5, 2002, March 1, 2002, Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002, and Late June 2002). "[W]e know Saddam has been trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Africa, though we do not know whether he has been successful," Blair says. He tells the assembled lawmakers: "There will be some who dismiss all this. Intelligence is not always right. For some of this material there may be innocent explanations. There will be others who say, rightly, that, for example, on present going, it could be several years before he acquires a usable nuclear weapon. Though, if he were able to purchase fissile materiel illegally, it would only be a year or two. But let me put it at its simplest: on this 11-year history; with this man, Saddam; with this accumulated, detailed intelligence available; with what we know and what we can reasonably speculate: would the world be wise to leave the present situation undisturbed; to say, despite 14 separate UN demands on this issue, all of which Saddam is in breach of, we should do nothing; to conclude that we should trust not to the good faith of the UN weapons inspectors but to the good faith of the current Iraqi regime?" Regime Change - After all of this buildup, Blair says that he is not necessarily calling for military action against Iraq, but "the case for ensuring Iraqi disarmament… is overwhelming." He then makes the case for regime change, citing the need for a new leader "who can bring Iraq back into the international community where it belongs, not languishing as a pariah. Someone who can make the country rich and successful, not impoverished by Saddam's personal greed. Someone who can lead a government more representative of the country as a whole, while maintaining absolutely Iraq's territorial integrity. We have no quarrel with the Iraqi people. Liberated from Saddam, they could make Iraq prosperous and a force for good in the Middle East. So the ending of regime would be the cause of regret for no one other than Saddam." Blair says, "our purpose is disarmament," not military action, but it is hard to conceive how the regime change he advocates could be effected without military action. [10 Downing Street, 9/24/2002] Two years later, Blair will admit that the claim is erroneous (see October 13, 2004).
Entity Tags: Tony Blair, Saddam Hussein
Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
The Times of London uses the recently released intelligence "dossier" from British intelligence (see September 24, 2002) to report that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has sent agents into Africa to find uranium for Iraqi nuclear weapons. The Times does not inform its readers that many British journalists were shown evidence contradicting the British intelligence claims (see September 24, 2002). It focuses on the dossier's claim that Iraqi "agents" have secretly visited several African countries in search of uranium. Thirteen African nations produce uranium to one extent or another. A Whitehall source tells The Times that while Hussein may have attempted to find African uranium, those alleged efforts were unsuccessful. "If Iraq had succeeded in buying uranium from Africa, the dossier would have said so," the source says. The Times reports that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from, among other sources, the Democratic Republic of Congo, though at least part of that nation's uranium mines are currently under the control of troops from Zimbabwe. The dossier does not specify any other countries that may have been contacted by Iraq. The Times also repeats the dossier's claim that Iraq has biological and chemical weapons that can be launched against targets in as little as 45 minutes (see Late May 2003, August 16, 2003, December 7, 2003, January 27, 2004, and October 13, 2004), that Iraq is developing missiles with ranges of 600 miles (see January 9, 2003, January 16, 2003, February 27, 2003, March 7, 2003, and June 2004), and that Hussein may have given his son Qusay the power to order the use of those weapons. It also reports that the dossier specifically downplays suspected links between Iraq and radical Islamist groups such as al-Qaeda. Hussein has little sympathy for Islamist fundamentalists, The Times reports. [London Times, 9/25/2002]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, London Times, UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)
UNSCOM photo of an Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicle. [Source: CIA]The National Intelligence Council, a board of senior analysts that prepares reports on crucial national security issues, completes a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. The purpose of an NIE is to provide policy-makers with an intelligence assessment that includes all available information on a specific issue so they can make sound policy decisions. The formal document is supposed to be the result of a collaborative effort of the entire intelligence community and is supposed to be untainted by political interests. The decision to produce the assessment on Iraq followed criticisms that the administration had already made a decision to invade Iraq without having thoroughly reviewed all available intelligence on Iraq. Congress wanted the NIE completed prior to voting on a bill authorizing the president to use force against Iraq (see September 5, 2002). NIEs such as this usually take months to prepare, however this document took a mere three weeks. The person in charge of preparing the document was weapons expert Robert Walpole. According to the Independent of London, Walpole has a track record of tailoring his work to support the biases of his superiors. "In 1998, he had come up with an estimate of the missile capabilities of various rogue states that managed to sound considerably more alarming than a previous CIA estimate issued three years earlier," the newspaper later reports. "On that occasion, he was acting at the behest of a congressional commission anxious to make the case for a missile defense system; the commission chairman was none other than Donald Rumsfeld…." [Independent, 11/3/2003; New York Times, 10/3/2004] Summary of NIE Conclusions - The NIE says there are potentially links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, but uses cautionary language and acknowledges that its sources—Iraqi defectors and captured al-Qaeda members—have provided conflicting reports. The sections dealing with weapons of mass destruction are also filled with caveats and nuanced statements. In the second paragraph of its "key judgment" section, the NIE states that US intelligence lacks "specific information" on Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. And while the NIE says that Iraq probably has chemical and biological weapons, it also says that US intelligence analysts believe that Saddam Hussein would only launch an attack against the US if he felt a US invasion were inevitable. It also concludes that Saddam would only provide terrorists with chemical or biological agents for use against the United States as a last resort in order to "exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him." [Central Intelligence Agency, 10/1/2002; Washington Post, 6/22/2003; Agence France-Presse, 11/30/2003] Reconstituted nuclear weapons programs - According to the NIE, "most" of the US' six intelligence agencies believe there is "compelling evidence that Saddam [Hussein] is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program." The one agency that disagrees with this conclusion is the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which says in its dissenting opinion: "The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its nuclear weapons programs, INR is unwilling to… project a timeline for the completion of activities it does not now see happening." It is later learned that nuclear scientists in the Department of Energy's in-house intelligence office were also opposed to the NIE's conclusion and wanted to endorse the State's alternative view. However, the person representing the DOE, Thomas Ryder, silenced them and inexplicably voted to support the position that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program (see Late September 2002). The DOE's vote was seen as critical, since the department's assessment was supposed to represent the views of the government's nuclear experts. [Central Intelligence Agency, 10/1/2002; Washington Post, 7/19/2003; Knight Ridder, 2/10/2004; Knight Ridder, 2/10/2004] Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Africa - According to the NIE, Iraq is "vigorously trying" to obtain uranium and "reportedly" is working on a deal to purchase "up to 500 tons" of uranium from Niger. It reads: "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement. Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." But the alternative view—endorsed by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR)—says that it is doubtful Iraq is trying to procure uranium from Africa. "(T)he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment, highly dubious," it reads. [Central Intelligence Agency, 10/1/2002; Washington Post, 7/19/2003] Iraqi attempts to obtain aluminum tubes - The NIE says that most "agencies believe that Saddam's personal interest in and Iraq's aggressive attempts to obtain high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors—as well as Iraq's attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines, and machine tools—provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program." To support its analysis of the tubes, it includes a chart which compares the dimensions of the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq with those that would be needed for a "Zippe-type" centrifuge. The chart's comparison of the tubes makes it appear that the tubes are similar. But the NIE neglects to say that the aluminum tubes are an exact match with those used in Iraq's 81-millimeter rocket. The estimate also claims that the tubes are not suitable for rockets. The assertion ignores the fact that similar tubes are used in rockets from several countries, including the United States. [US Congress, 7/7/2004, pp. 84; New York Times, 10/3/2004] It does note however that the 900 mm tubes ordered by Iraq would have to have been cut in half to make two 400 mm rotors, and that the tubes would have needed other modifications as well in order to be used in centrifuge rotors. [The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission'), 3/31/2005] The NIE's conclusion about the tubes is challenged by two US intelligence agencies, the DOE's in house intelligence agency, and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. In its dissenting opinion, the DOE says, "It is well established in open sources that bare aluminum is resistant to UF6 and anodization is unnecessary for corrosion resistance, either for the aluminum rotors or for the thousands of feet of aluminum piping in a centrifuge facility. Instead, anodization would likely introduce uncertainties into the design that would need to be resolved before a centrifuge could be operated." The DOE's dissenting opinion—written mainly by nuclear physicist William Domke at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and nuclear physicist Jeffrey Bedell at the Los Alamos National Laboratory—also notes that anodization is a standard practice in missile construction for environmental protection. The Energy Department's centrifuge physicists suggested more than a year before that the tubes were meant to serve as casings for conventional rockets (see May 9, 2001), but CIA analysts held fast to their theory. [Washington Post, 7/19/2003; USA Today, 7/31/2003; Washington Post, 10/26/2003; US Congress, 7/7/2004, pp. 59] Years later a DOE intelligence analyst will tell two journalists, "[The DOE's nuclear scientists] are the most boring people. Their whole lives revolve around nuclear technology. They can talk about gas centrifuges until you want to jump out of a window. And maybe once every ten years or longer there comes along an important question about gas centrifuges. That's when you should really listen to these guys. If they say an aluminum tube is not for a gas centrifuge, it's like a fish talking about water." [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 40] The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, similarly writes in its dissenting footnote: "In INR's view Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets. The very large quantities being sought, the way the tubes were tested by the Iraqis, and the atypical lack of attention to operational security in the procurement efforts are among the factors, in addition to the DOE assessment, that lead INR to conclude that the tubes are not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapon program." [Washington Post, 7/19/2003; USA Today, 7/31/2003] Chemical and Biological Weapons - On the question of chemical and biological weapons, the NIE says: "We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives." But the document also highlights the belief that it is unlikely that Iraq has any intention to use these against the US. "… Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW [Chemical/Biological Weapons] against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington with a stronger case for making war." Iraq would probably only use such weapons against the United States if it "feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge." [Central Intelligence Agency, 10/1/2002] Unmanned Aerial Vehicles - Citing defectors and exiles, the NIE states that Iraq possesses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which can be used to deploy biological and chemical weapons. But the document includes a dissenting opinion by the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center. The center, which controls most of the US military's UAV fleet, says there is little evidence that Iraq's drones are related to the country's suspected biological weapons program. Current intelligence suggests that the drones are not capable of carrying much more than a camera and a video recorder. The Air Force believes that Iraq's unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are for reconnaissance, like its counterparts in the US. The dissenting opinion reads: "… The Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not agree that Iraq is developing UAVs primarily intended to be delivery platforms for chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq's new UAV strongly suggests a primary role of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery is an inherent capability." [Associated Press, 8/24/2003; Washington Post, 9/26/2003; Knight Ridder, 2/10/2004] Bob Boyd, director of the Air Force Intelligence Analysis Agency, will tell reporters in August 2003 that his department thought the allegation in the NIE "was a little odd," noting that Air Force assessments "all along" had said that reconnaissance, not weapons delivery, was the purpose of Iraq's drones. "Everything we discovered strengthened our conviction that the UAVs were to be used for reconnaissance," he will explain. "What we were thinking was: Why would you purposefully design a vehicle to be an inefficient delivery means? Wouldn't it make more sense that they were purposefully designing it to be a decent reconnaissance UAV?" [Associated Press, 8/24/2003; Washington Post, 9/26/2003] The NIE also says that Iraq is attempting to obtain commercially available route-planning software that contains topographic data of the United States. According to the NIE, this data could facilitate targeting of US sites. But Air Force analysts were not convinced by the argument, noting that this sort of information could easily be retrieved from the Internet and other highly accessible sources. "We saw nothing sinister about the inclusion of the US maps in route-planning software," Boyd will tell reporters. [Washington Post, 9/26/2003] Analysts at the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency are said to back the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center's position. [Associated Press, 8/24/2003] Appendices - Most of the caveats and dissents in the NIE are relegated to a variety of appendices at the end of the document. [Unger, 2007, pp. 266] Aftermath - After the completion of the National Intelligence Estimate, the Bush administration will continue to make allegations concerning Iraq's weapons capabilities and ties to militant Islamic groups, but will include none of the qualifications and nuances that are present in the classified NIE. After excerpts from the classified version of the NIE are published in the press in July of 2003 (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), administration officials will claim that neither Bush, Rice, nor other top officials were informed about the alternative views expressed by the DOE, INR, and the Air Force intelligence agency. They will also assert that the dissenting views did not significantly undermine the overall conclusion of the NIE that Iraq was continuing its banned weapons program despite UN resolutions. [Washington Post, 7/19/2003; New York Times, 7/19/2003; Washington Post, 7/27/2003] But this claim is later disputed in an article by the Washington Post, which reports: "One person who has worked with Rice describes as 'inconceivable' the claims that she was not more actively involved. Indeed, subsequent to the July 18 briefing, another senior administration official said Rice had been briefed immediately on the NIE—including the doubts about Iraq's nuclear program—and had 'skimmed' the document. The official said that within a couple of weeks, Rice 'read it all.'" [Washington Post, 7/27/2003] The official's account, will in fact be confirmed by Rice herself, who reportedly tells Gwen Ifill at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention in Dallas on August 7, 2003: "I did read everything that the CIA produced for the president on weapons of mass destruction. I read the National Intelligence Estimate cover to cover a couple of times. I read the reports; I was briefed on the reports. This is—after 20 years, as somebody who has read a lot of intelligence reports—this is one of the strongest cases about weapons of mass destruction that I had ever read." [Daily Howler, 8/11/2003] Conclusions 'Overstated' - George Bush is also provided with a summary of the NIE's dissenting views. According to the Robb-Silberman report, released in early 2005, the president's summary of the NIE notes that "INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapon uses." [The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission'), 3/31/2005] Additionally, senior CIA analyst Stuart Cohen, the acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council at this time, who helped write the document, will tell the Agence France-Presse, "Any reader would have had to read only as far as the second paragraph of the Key Judgments to know that as we said, 'we lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD program.'" The Key Judgments section is also where INR's detailed dissent on the aluminum tubes allegation was located. [Agence France-Presse, 11/30/2003] A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation will determine in July 2004 that "most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting." [US Congress, 7/7/2004, pp. 59] And in 2006, one of the report's authors, CIA senior analyst Paul Pillar, will admit the NIE had been written with the intent of "strengthen[ing] the case of going to war with the American public." [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] NIE 'Distorted' Due to Political Pressures, Author Claims - In 2007, author Craig Unger will write, "At the time, to virtually everyone in Congress, the NIE was still sacrosanct. It was still the last word in American intelligence. Yet it had been distorted thanks to political pressures from the neocons and the White House. If one took it seriously, the Niger documents were real. Curveball had credibility. And the aluminum tubes were part of Saddam's nuclear program. Only one conclusion could be drawn: Saddam Hussein post an extraordinarily grave threat." [Unger, 2007, pp. 266]
Entity Tags: Bob Boyd, Condoleezza Rice, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Paul R. Pillar, US Congress, Jeffrey Bedell, Stuart Cohen, George W. Bush
Italian freelance information peddler and former SISMI agent Rocco Martino, surprised at the tremendous media coverage his documents alleging an Iraq-Niger uranium deal are receiving (see September 24, 2002,March 2000, Late June 2002, and Summer 2004), approaches Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for a Milan news magazine, Panorama. Martino and Burba have worked together in the past; she considers him to be a reliable source. Panorama is edited by Carlo Rossella, a close political ally of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (see October 16, 2001). Berlusconi is a close ally of the Bush administration, and is actively working with the US to promote the war with Iraq. One of Panorama's foreign contributors is American neoconservative Michael Ledeen (see December 9, 2001). These are all considerations which may have influenced Martino's decision to contact Burba rather than a journalist with another news outlet. He tells her that he has some documents (see March 2000) that might interest her. [Talking Points Memo, 10/31/2003; Financial Times, 8/2/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 259-261; Washington Post, 4/3/2007] 'Let's Make This War Start' - They meet at a restaurant in Rome. Martino tells Burba that he has documents proving that Iraq made a deal to purchase hundreds of tons of uranium from Niger. "Let's make this war start," he says. "This is a megagalactica situation." [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 147] The 'Italian Letter' - Perhaps the most interesting document is a letter from Nigerien President Mamadou Tandja to Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, giving his formal approval for a deal for Niger to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Iraq. Washington Post reporter Peter Eisner will later write, "This was the smoking gun in the package, claiming to show the formal approval of Niger's president to supply Iraq with a commodity that would in all likelihood only be used for a nuclear weapons program: Iraq had no nuclear power plants." The letter is written in all capital letters, like an old telex, is dated July 27, 2000, and bears what Eisner describes as "an odd shield on the top, a shining sun surrounded by a horned animal head, a star, and a bird." It is marked "Confidential and Urgent." The letter reads in part, "500 tons of pure uranium per year will be delivered in two phases." It bears a seal reading "The Office of the President of the Republic of Niger." Written over the seal is a barely legible signature, apparently from Tandja. [Washington Post, 4/3/2007] Cash on Corroboration - Martino hands over copies of the documents, totaling some 22 pages, mostly in French, and offers to sell Burba the originals. Skeptical but interested, Burba agrees to pay Martino 10,000 euros—about $12,500—for the documents if they can be corroborated by independent authorities. When Burba informs Rossella of the deal later in the day, he proposes sending her to Africa to investigate the claim (see October 16, 2002 and After), and insists she give copies of Martino's documents to the US embassy. "I think the Americans are very interested in this problem of unconventional weapons," he tells her. [Agence France-Presse, 7/19/2003; Reuters, 7/19/2003; New Yorker, 10/27/2003; Talking Points Memo, 10/31/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 259-261; Washington Post, 4/3/2007]
Entity Tags: Peter Eisner, Panorama, Rocco Martino, Michael Ledeen, Bush administration (43), Elisabetta Burba, Mamadou Tandja, Saddam Hussein, Carlo Rossella, Silvio Berlusconi
Nicolo Pollari, the chief of the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, personally warns the CIA that the documents "proving" that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003) are fakes. [CounterPunch, 11/9/2005]
Entity Tags: SISMI, Central Intelligence Agency, Nicolo Pollari
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
An official with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asks the US for information it has that can verify the claims of Iraqi attempts to buy Nigerien uranium (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [Christian Science Monitor, 11/15/2005]
Entity Tags: International Atomic Energy Agency
White House speechwriters Michael Gerson, Matthew Scully, and John Gibson decide to include an allegation about the purported Iraq-Niger uranium deal in President Bush's upcoming state of the union address. They remember that the allegation had been pulled from at least two previous speeches (see September 11, 2002, October 5, 2002, October 6, 2002, and Late September 2002), but figure that if the CIA has a problem with it, the agency will ask them to remove it. They want to include it in the speech to increase the persuasiveness of Bush's argument. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 169] Gibson later recalls that his assumption at this time is, "Maybe we had gotten better information on it." [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 171]
Entity Tags: Matthew Scully, Michael Gerson, John Gibson
Robert G. Joseph, director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council. [Source: CBC]Embarrassed and angered by CIA Director George Tenet's refusal to support the use of the Iraq-Niger uranium claim in President Bush's upcoming State of the Union speech (see October 5, 2002, October 6, 2002, January 27, 2003, and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), the White House decides to go behind Tenet's back to get CIA approval for publicly citing the claim in the speech. Robert Joseph, director for nonproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC), telephones Alan Foley, director of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), and mentions plans to include the Africa-uranium claim in Bush's upcoming State of the Union address. When Foley warns that the allegation has little evidence to support it, Joseph instead suggests including a statement about the British learning that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa, leaving out the bit about Niger and the exact quantity of uranium that was allegedly sought. [Washington Post, 7/17/2003; New York Times, 7/17/2003; Time, 7/21/2003; Washington Post, 7/27/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 273-274] Foley apparently has no qualms about putting his bureau's stamp of approval on the claim, having already told his staff, "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so." Foley rationalizes that if Bush attributes the claim to British intelligence, he can make it without having to worry whether it is actually true. The fact that the CIA has repeatedly labeled the British reports as untrustworthy does not stop Foley from vetting the claim. [Unger, 2007, pp. 273-274] Joseph will claim he does not recall the discussion, and White House communications director Dan Bartlett will call Foley's version of events a "conspiracy theory." [Washington Post, 7/27/2003]
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Dan Bartlett, Central Intelligence Agency, Alan Foley, Robert G. Joseph, Bush administration (43)
At a National Security Council meeting, CIA Director George Tenet is given a hard copy of President Bush's State of the Union address, to be given the next evening (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), containing a direct assertion that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger for nuclear weapons (see October 6, 2002). The story of what happens next is murky. Tenet apparently does not read the speech, but sends a copy, via an assistant, to his Deputy Director of Intelligence, Jami Miscik (see January 10, 2003). But, the Senate Intelligence Committee will later report, no one in Miscik's office recalls ever receiving the speech or if anyone was ever assigned to review it. Some find this story unbelievable: a State of the Union speech calling for war going unread and misplaced is hard to countenance. "It is inconceivable to me that George Tenet didn't read that speech," former CIA officer Milt Bearden will later say. "At that point, he was effectively no longer DCI [director of the CIA]. He was part of that [Bush-Cheney] cabal, and no longer able to carry an honest message." A former intelligence officer close to Tenet will dispute Bearden's characterization, and insist that Tenet knew nothing of the Niger uranium allegations included in the speech. "Had he been aware," the official will state, "he would have vigorously tried to have it removed." [Unger, 2007, pp. 269]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, National Security Council, Jami Miscik, Milt Bearden, Senate Intelligence Committee
Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's chief of European operations, is "dumbfounded," in author Craig Unger's words, at the claims President Bush makes in his State of the Union speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Bush and the CIA top brass had ignored Drumheller's warnings that the intelligence about Iraq's mobile biological laboratories is weak (see December 18-20, 2002), but Bush made the claim anyway. Just as bad, Bush made a direct reference to the long-disproven Iraq-Niger uranium deal (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The White House decided to justify the uranium claim by attributing it to Britain. Unger will write, "Not only had the president of the United States taken a statement that many in the administration knew to be a lie and used it as a cause for war, he had taken the cowardly way out and attributed it to a third party." [Unger, 2007, pp. 273-274]
Entity Tags: Tyler Drumheller, Central Intelligence Agency, George W. Bush, Craig Unger
Iraqi bomb allegedly containing botulism toxin. [Source: CIA]President Bush gives his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, making several false allegations about Iraq. [US President, 2/3/2003] An empty seat is left open to symbolize the lives lost during the 9/11 attacks. Author Craig Unger will later characterize Bush's delivery as somber and effective. He will be interrupted some 70 times by thunderous applause from the assembled lawmakers in the House chambers. One of his biggest applause lines is his statement about the US's war on "international terrorism:" "The war goes on, and we are winning." [Unger, 2007, pp. 269-270] African Uranium - He says: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities.… He clearly has much to hide." [US President, 2/3/2003; White House, 4/18/2003; Independent, 6/5/2003] The British allegation cited by Bush concerns a SISMI (Italy's military intelligence) report (see Mid-October 2001) based on a set of forged documents. Months after the speech, with evidence mounting that the statement was completely false, the administration will retract this claim (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Aluminum Tubes - Bush alleges that a shipment of aluminum tubes imported by Iraq was intended to be used in the country's alleged nuclear weapons program. "Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide." [US President, 2/3/2003] Biological Agents - Bush lists a parade of agents: "anthrax, botulinum toxin, Ebola, and plague," many of which Iraq has never been accused of possessing, and warns against "outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and builogical weapons… blackmail, terror, and mass murder." He then moves from the general to the specific, accusing Iraq of having enough material "to produce over 25,000 liters of anthrax—enough doses to kill several million people… more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin—enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure… as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent." [US President, 2/3/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 270-271] False Testimony from Iraqi Scientists - Bush alleges: "Iraqi intelligence officers are posing as the scientists inspectors are supposed to interview. Real scientists have been coached by Iraqi officials on what to say." [US President, 2/3/2003] But Hans Blix, the chief UNMOVIC weapons inspector, tells the New York Times in an interview that he knows of no evidence supporting this claim. [New York Times, 1/31/2003] Defector Allegations - Bush, citing intelligence provided by "three Iraqi defectors," says, "We know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile weapons labs… designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors." One of the defectors referred to by Bush is 'Curveball,' whom the CIA station chief in Germany warned was not reliable the day before (see January 27, 2003). German intelligence officials watching Bush's speech are "shocked." One official later recalls: "Mein Gott! We had always told them it was not proven.… It was not hard intelligence." [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005] Another source for the claim was Mohammad Harith, whom the Defense Intelligence Agency had labeled a "fabricator" the previous May (see May 2002). Torture, Murder, and 9/11 - Bush accuses Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein of routinely torturing his own people, using such techniques as "electric shock, burning with hot irons, dripping acid on the skin, mutilation with electric drills, cutting out tongues, and rape." He then connects Hussein, the torturer, murderer, and terrorist supporter, to the 9/11 attacks, saying: "[I]magine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans—this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known." He invites "all free nations" to join him in ensuring no such attack ever happens, but notes that "the course of this nation does not depend on the decisions of others." After another long burst of applause, Bush continues, "Whatever action is required, whatever action is necessary, I will defend the freedom and security of the American people." [Unger, 2007, pp. 270-271] 'Direct Personal Threat' - Bush states what former ambassador Joseph Wilson later writes can only be interpreted by Hussein "as a direct personal threat," saying: "Tonight I have a message for the brave and oppressed people of Iraq: Your enemy is not surrounding your country, your enemy is ruling your country. And the day he and his regime are removed from power will be the day of your liberation." Wilson will later write: "Not simply promising the disarmament of Iraq as he had in his recent speeches, the president now stated outright his intention to rout Saddam from power, and to kill or capture him. It was an unwise thing to say. It made whatever strategy we adopted for Iraq that much more dangerous because it so blatantly telegraphed our next move and our ultimate goal." [US President, 2/3/2003; Wilson, 2004, pp. 315] Defending America - To America's soldiers, he says: "Many of you are assembling in or near the Middle East, and some crucial hours lay ahead. In these hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you." In 2007, Unger will write: "A few years earlier, Bush had confided that he thought to be a great president meant being a great commander in chief. Now George W. Bush was leading his nation into war." [Unger, 2007, pp. 270-271]
Entity Tags: Hans Blix, George W. Bush, Joseph C. Wilson, 'Curveball', Saddam Hussein, Craig Unger, Mohammad Harith
Colin Powell and George Tenet, at the UN presentation. [Source: CBS News]US Secretary of State Colin Powell presents the Bush administration's case against Saddam to the UN Security Council, in advance of an expected vote on a second resolution that the US and Britain hope will provide the justification to use military force against Iraq. [US Department of State, 2/5/2003] At the insistence of Powell, CIA Director George Tenet is seated directly behind him to the right. "It was theater, a device to signal to the world that Powell was relying on the CIA to make his case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction," Vanity Fair magazine will later explain. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 371-2; Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 232] In his speech before the Council, Powell makes the case that Iraq is in further material breach of past UN resolutions, specifically the most recent one, UN Resolution 1441 (see November 8, 2002). Sources cited in Powell's presentation include defectors, informants, communication intercepts, procurement records, photographs, and detainees. [US Department of State, 2/5/2003] Most of the allegations made by Powell are later demonstrated to be false. "The defectors and other sources went unidentified," the Associated Press will later report. "The audiotapes were uncorroborated, as were the photo interpretations. No other supporting documents were presented. Little was independently verifiable." [Associated Press, 8/9/2003] Iraq's December 7 Declaration Was Inaccurate - Powell contends that Iraq's December 7 declaration was not complete. According to UN Resolution 1441 the document was supposed to be a "currently accurate, full and complete declaration of all aspects" of its programs to develop weapons of mass destruction. But Saddam has not done this, says Powell, who explains that Iraq has yet to provide sufficient evidence that it destroyed its previously declared stock of 8,500 liters of anthrax, as it claimed in the declaration. Furthermore, notes the secretary of state, UNSCOM inspectors had previously estimated that Iraq possessed the raw materials to produce as much as 25,000 liters of the virus. [New York Times, 2/5/2003; US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003] Iraq Has Ties to Al-Qaeda - Powell repeats earlier claims that Saddam Hussein's government has ties to al-Qaeda. Powell focuses on the cases of the militant Islamic group Ansar-al-Islam and Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, who had received medical treatment in Baghdad during the summer of 2002 (see December 2001-Mid-2002). [US Department of State, 2/5/2003] However, just days before Powell's speech, US and British intelligence officials—speaking on condition of anonymity—told the press that the administration's allegations of Iraqi-al-Qaeda ties were based on information provided by Kurdish groups, who, as enemies of Ansar-al-Islam, should not be considered reliable. Furthermore, these sources unequivocally stated that intelligence analysts on both sides of the Atlantic remained unconvinced of the purported links between Iraq and al-Qaeda (see February 3-4, 2003). [Independent, 2/3/2003; Daily Telegraph, 2/4/2003] Powell also claims that Iraq provided "chemical or biological weapons training for two al-Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000." The claim is based on a September 2002 CIA document which had warned that its sources were of "varying reliability" and that the claim was not substantiated (see September 2002). The report's main source, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda operative who offered the information to CIA interrogators while in custody, later recounts the claim (see February 14, 2004). [CNN, 9/26/2002; New York Times, 7/31/2004; Newsweek, 7/5/2005] Larry Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, will later say that neither he nor Powell ever received "any dissent with respect to those lines… indeed the entire section that now we know came from [al-Libi]." [Newsweek, 11/10/2005] Senior US officials will admit to the New York Times and Washington Post after the presentation that the administration was not claiming that Saddam Hussein is "exercising operational control" of al-Qaeda. [New York Times, 2/6/2003; Washington Post, 2/7/2003] Iraq Has Missiles Capable of Flying Up to 1,200 Kilometers - Describing a photo of the al-Rafah weapons site, Powell says: "As part of this effort, another little piece of evidence, Iraq has built an engine test stand that is larger than anything it has ever had. Notice the dramatic difference in size between the test stand on the left, the old one, and the new one on the right. Note the large exhaust vent. This is where the flame from the engine comes out. The exhaust vent on the right test stand is five times longer than the one on the left. The one of the left is used for short-range missiles. The one on the right is clearly intended for long-range missiles that can fly 1,200 kilometers. This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath the test stand." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; New York Times, 2/5/2003] But according to the Associated Press, "… UN missile experts have reported inspecting al-Rafah at least five times since inspections resumed Nov. 27, have studied the specifications of the new test stand, regularly monitor tests at the installation, and thus far have reported no concerns." [Associated Press, 2/7/2003] Similarly, Reuters quotes Ali Jassem, an Iraqi official, who explains that the large stand referred to in Powell's speech is not yet in operation and that its larger size is due to the fact that it will be testing engines horizontally. [Reuters, 2/7/2003; Guardian, 2/15/2003] Several days later, Blix will report to the UN that "so far, the test stand has not been associated with a proscribed activity." [Guardian, 2/15/2003] Iraqis Attempted to Hide Evidence from Inspectors - Powell shows the UN Security Council satellite shots depicting what he claims are chemical weapons bunkers and convoys of Iraqi cargo trucks preparing to transport ballistic missile components from a weapons site just two days before the arrival of inspectors. "We saw this kind of housecleaning at close to 30 sites," Powell explains. "We must ask ourselves: Why would Iraq suddenly move equipment of this nature before inspections if they were anxious to demonstrate what they had or did not have?" [US Department of State, 2/5/2003] But the photos are interpreted differently by others. An unnamed UN official and German UN Inspector Peter Franck both say the trucks in the photos are actually fire engines. [Mercury News (San Jose), 3/18/2003; Agence France-Presse, 6/6/2003] 'Literally Removed the Crust of the Earth' - Another series of photos—taken during the spring and summer of 2002—show that Iraqis have removed a layer of topsoil from the al-Musayyib chemical complex. This piece of evidence, combined with information provided by an unnamed source, leads Powell to draw the following conclusion: "The Iraqis literally removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical weapons activity." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003] Showing another series of pictures—one taken on November 10 (before inspections) and one taken on December 22—Powell says that a guard station and decontamination truck were removed prior to the arrival of inspectors. Powell does not explain how he knows that the truck in the photograph was a decontamination truck. [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003] AP reporter Charles Hanley says that some of Powell's claims that Iraq is hiding evidence are "ridiculous." Powell says of a missile site, "This photograph was taken in April of 2002. Since then, the test stand has been finished and a roof has been put over it so it will be harder for satellites to see what's going on underneath the test stand." Hanley later says, "What he neglected to mention was that the inspectors were underneath, watching what was going on." [PBS, 4/25/2007] Communication Intercepts Demonstrate Iraqi Attempts to Conceal Information from Inspectors - Powell plays recordings of three conversations intercepted by US intelligence—one on November 26, another on January 30, and a third, a "few weeks" before. The conversations suggest that the Iraqis were attempting to hide evidence from inspectors. [New York Times, 2/5/2003; US Department of State, 2/5/2003; London Times, 2/6/2003; Sydney Morning Herald, 2/7/2003] Senior administration officials concede to the Washington Post that it was not known "what military items were discussed in the intercepts." [Washington Post, 2/13/2003] Some critics argue that the intercepts were presented out of context and open to interpretation. [Sydney Morning Herald, 2/7/2003; Sydney Morning Herald, 2/9/2003] Others note that the conversations were translated from Arabic by US translators and were not analyzed or verified by an independent specialist. [Newsday, 2/6/2003] Biological Weapons Factories - Colin Powell says that US intelligence has "firsthand descriptions" that Iraq has 18 mobile biological weapons factories mounted on trucks and railroad cars. Information about the mobile weapons labs are based on the testimonies of four sources—a defected Iraqi chemical engineer who claims to have supervised one of these facilities, an Iraqi civil engineer (see December 20, 2001), a source in "a position to know," and a defected Iraqi major (see February 11, 2002). Powell says that the mobile units are capable of producing enough dry biological agent in a single month to kill several thousand people. He shows computer-generated diagrams and pictures based on the sources' descriptions of the facilities. Powell says that according to the chemical engineer, during the late 1990s, Iraq's biological weapons scientists would often begin the production of pathogens on Thursday nights and complete the process on Fridays in order to evade UNSCOM inspectors whom Iraq believed would not conduct inspections on the Muslim holy day. [New York Times, 2/5/2003; US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003; Reuters, 2/11/2003] Powell tells the delegates, "The source was an eyewitness, an Iraqi chemical engineer, who supervised one of these facilities. He actually was present during biological agent production runs. He was also at the site when an accident occurred in 1998. Twelve technicians died from exposure to biological agents." He displays models of the mobile trucks drawn from the source's statements. [CBS News, 11/4/2007] Responding to the allegation, Iraqi officials will concede that they do in fact have mobile labs, but insist that they are not used for the development of weapons. According to the Iraqis, the mobile labs are used for food analysis for disease outbreaks, mobile field hospitals, a military field bakery, food and medicine refrigeration trucks, a mobile military morgue and mobile ice making trucks. [Guardian, 2/5/2003; ABC News, 5/21/2003] Iraq's explanation is consistent with earlier assessments of the UN weapons inspectors. Before Powell's presentation, Hans Blix had dismissed suggestions that the Iraqis were using mobile biological weapons labs, reporting that inspections of two alleged mobile labs had turned up nothing. "Two food-testing trucks have been inspected and nothing has been found," Blix said. And Ewen Buchanan, spokesman for the UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, said, "The outline and characteristics of these trucks that we inspected were all consistent with the declared purposes." [Guardian, 2/5/2003; ABC News, 5/21/2003] 'Curveball' Primary Source of Claims - Powell's case is further damaged when it is later learned that one of the sources Powell cited, the Iraqi major, had been earlier judged unreliable by intelligence agents at the Defense Intelligence Agency (see February 11, 2002). In May 2002, the analysts had issued a "fabricator notice" on the informant, noting that he had been "coached by [the] Iraqi National Congress" (INC) (see May 2002). But the main source for the claim had been an Iraqi defector known as "Curveball," who was initially believed to be the brother of a top aide to Ahmed Chalabi. The source claimed to be a chemical engineer who had helped design and build the mobile labs. His information was passed to Washington through Germany's intelligence service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which had been introduced to the source by the INC. In passing along the information, the BND noted that there were "various problems with the source." And only one member of the US intelligence community had actually met with the person—an unnamed Pentagon analyst who determined the man was an alcoholic and of dubious reliability. Yet both the DIA and the CIA validated the information. [Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, 8/22/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/28/2004; Knight Ridder, 4/4/2004; Newsweek, 4/19/2004; Newsweek, 7/19/2004] Powell says that the US has three other intelligence sources besides Curveball for the mobile bioweapons labs. Powell will be infuriated to learn that none of those three sources ever corroborated Curveball's story, and sometimes their information contradicted each other. One of the three had failed a polygraph test and was determined to have lied to his debriefers. Another had already been declared a fabricator by US intelligence community, and had been proven to have mined his information off the Internet. [Buzzflash (.com), 11/27/2007] In November 2007, Curveball is identified as Rafid Ahmed Alwan. Serious questions about Curveball's veracity had already been raised by the time of Powell's UN presentation. He will later be completely discredited (see November 4, 2007). Further Problems with Mobile Lab Claims - In addition to the inspectors' assessments and the dubious nature of the sources Powell cited, there are numerous other problems with the mobile factories claim. Raymond Zilinskas, a microbiologist and former UN weapons inspector, argues that significant amounts of pathogens such as anthrax, could not be produced in the short span of time suggested in Powell's speech. "You normally would require 36 to 48 hours just to do the fermentation…. The short processing time seems suspicious to me." He also says: "The only reason you would have mobile labs is to avoid inspectors, because everything about them is difficult. We know it is possible to build them—the United States developed mobile production plants, including one designed for an airplane—but it's a big hassle. That's why this strikes me as a bit far-fetched." [Washington Post, 2/6/2003] After Powell's speech, Blix will say in his March 7 report to the UN that his inspectors found no evidence of mobile weapons labs (see March 7, 2003). [CNN, 3/7/2003; Agence France-Presse, 3/7/2003; CNN, 3/7/2003] Reporter Bob Drogin, author of Curveball: Spies, Lies and the Con Man Who Caused a War, says in 2007, "[B]y the time Colin Powell goes to the UN to make the case for war, he shows the world artists' conjectures based on analysts' interpretations and extrapolations of Arabic-to-German-to-English translations of summary debriefing reports of interviews with a manic-depressive defector whom the Americans had never met. [CIA director George] Tenet told Powell that Curveball's information was ironclad and unassailable. It was a travesty." [Alternet, 10/22/2007] 'Four Tons' of VX Toxin - Powell also claims that Iraq has "four tons" of VX nerve toxin. "A single drop of VX on the skin will kill in minutes," he says. "Four tons." Hanley later notes, "He didn't point out that most of that had already been destroyed. And, on point after point he failed to point out that these facilities about which he was raising such alarm were under repeated inspections good, expert people with very good equipment, and who were leaving behind cameras and other monitoring equipment to keep us a continuing eye on it." [PBS, 4/25/2007] Iraq is Developing Unmanned Drones Capable of Delivering Weapons of Mass Destruction - Powell asserts that Iraq has flight-tested an unmanned drone capable of flying up to 310 miles and is working on a liquid-fueled ballistic missile with a range of 745 miles. He plays a video of an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet dispersing "simulated anthrax." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; New York Times, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/6/2003] But the Associated Press will later report that the video was made prior to the 1991 Gulf War. Apparently, three of the four spray tanks shown in the film had been destroyed during the 1991 military intervention. [Associated Press, 8/9/2003] Imported Aluminum Tubes were Meant for Centrifuge - Powell argues that the aluminum tubes which Iraq had attempted to import in July 2001 (see July 2001) were meant to be used in a nuclear weapons program and not for artillery rockets as experts from the US Energy Department, the INR, and the IAEA have been arguing (see February 3, 2003)
(see January 11, 2003)
(see August 17, 2001)
(see January 27, 2003). To support the administration's case, he cites unusually precise specifications and high tolerances for heat and stress. "It strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds US requirements for comparable rockets," he says. "Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don't think so." Powell also suggests that because the tubes were "anodized," it was unlikely that they had been designed for conventional use. [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 2/5/2003; Washington Post, 3/8/2003] Powell does not mention that numerous US nuclear scientists have dismissed this claim (see August 17, 2001)
(see September 23, 2002)
(see December 2002). [Albright, 10/9/2003] Powell also fails to say that Iraq has rockets identical to the Italian Medusa 81 mm rockets, which are of the same dimensions and made of the same alloy as the 3,000 tubes that were intercepted in July 2001 (see After January 22, 2003). [Washington Post, 8/10/2003] This had been reported just two weeks earlier by the Washington Post. [Washington Post, 1/24/2003] Moreover, just two days before, Powell was explicitly warned by the US State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research not to cite the aluminum tubes as evidence that Iraq is pursuing nuclear weapons (see February 3, 2003). [Financial Times, 7/29/2003] Iraq Attempted to Acquire Magnets for Use in a Gas Centrifuge Program - Powell says: "We… have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines. Both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium. In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant. Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing 20 to 30 grams. That's the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq's gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; New York Times, 2/6/2003] Investigation by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] will demonstrate that the magnets have a dual use. IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said a little more than a week before, on January 27, in his report to the Security Council: "Iraq presented detailed information on a project to construct a facility to produce magnets for the Iraqi missile program, as well as for industrial applications, and that Iraq had prepared a solicitation of offers, but that the project had been delayed due to 'financial credit arrangements.' Preliminary investigations indicate that the specifications contained in the offer solicitation are consistent with those required for the declared intended uses. However, the IAEA will continue to investigate the matter…."
(see January 27, 2003) [Annan, 1/27/2003 ] On March 7, ElBaradei will provide an additional update: "The IAEA has verified that previously acquired magnets have been used for missile guidance systems, industrial machinery, electricity meters and field telephones. Through visits to research and production sites, reviews of engineering drawings and analyses of sample magnets, IAEA experts familiar with the use of such magnets in centrifuge enrichment have verified that none of the magnets that Iraq has declared could be used directly for a centrifuge magnetic bearing."
(see March 7, 2003) [CNN, 3/7/2003] Iraq Attempted to Purchase Machines to Balance Centrifuge Rotors - Powell states: "Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer show that Iraq front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to balance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; New York Times, 2/6/2003] Powell Cites Documents Removed from Home of Iraqi Scientist Faleh Hassan - Powell cites the documents that had been found on January 16, 2003 by inspectors with the help of US intelligence at the Baghdad home of Faleh Hassan, a nuclear scientist. Powell asserts that the papers are a "dramatic confirmation" that Saddam Hussein is concealing evidence and not cooperating with the inspections. The 3,000 documents contained information relating to the laser enrichment of uranium (see January 16, 2003). [Daily Telegraph, 1/18/2003; Associated Press, 1/18/2003; BBC, 1/19/2003; US Department of State, 2/5/2003] A little more than a week later, in the inspectors' February 14 update to the UN Security Council (see February 14, 2003), ElBaradei will say, "While the documents have provided some additional details about Iraq's laser enrichment development efforts, they refer to activities or sites already known to the IAEA and appear to be the personal files of the scientist in whose home they were found. Nothing contained in the documents alters the conclusions previously drawn by the IAEA concerning the extent of Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Guardian, 2/15/2003; BBC, 2/17/2003; Associated Press, 8/9/2003] Iraq is Hiding Missiles in the Desert - Powell says that according to unidentified sources, the Iraqis have hidden rocket launchers and warheads containing biological weapons in the western desert. He further contends that these caches of weapons are hidden in palm groves and moved to different locations on a weekly basis. [US Department of State, 2/5/2003] It will later be suggested that this claim was "lifted whole from an Iraqi general's written account of hiding missiles in the 1991 war." [Associated Press, 8/9/2003] Iraq Has Scud Missiles - Powell also says that according to unnamed "intelligence sources," Iraq has a few dozen Scud-type missiles. [Associated Press, 8/9/2003] Iraq Has Weapons of Mass Destruction - Secretary of State Colin Powell states unequivocally: "We… have satellite photos that indicate that banned materials have recently been moved from a number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction facilities. There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to rapidly produce more, many more." Elsewhere in his speech he says: "We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more." [US Department of State, 2/5/2003; CNN, 2/5/2003] Governments, Media Reaction Mixed - Powell's speech will fail to convince many skeptical governments, nor will it impress many in the European media. But it will have a tremendous impact in the US media (see February 5, 2003 and After).
Entity Tags: Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Bush administration (43), Bundesnachrichtendienst, Bob Drogin, Central Intelligence Agency, Ansar al-Islam, 'Curveball', Al-Qaeda, Charles Hanley, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ahmed Chalabi, Ali Jassem, Colin Powell, Ewen Buchanan, Faleh Hassan, Saddam Hussein, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, United Nations Special Commission, Raymond Zilinskas, Peter Franck, United Nations Security Council, Lawrence Wilkerson, Hans Blix, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Iraqi National Congress, Mohamed ElBaradei, George J. Tenet
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix's 12th quarterly report is circulated among UN Security Council members. The report will be presented orally to the Council on March 7 (see March 7, 2003). The report does not provide any evidence to support the US and British claim that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or that is has any programs to develop such weapons. Blix does however say the Iraqis could do more to assist his team's work. [Daily Telegraph, 2/28/2003; Associated Press, 2/28/2003; Guardian, 3/1/2003]
Entity Tags: Hans Blix
The Tillman brothers (see May 23-June 1, 2002), Pat and Kevin, are sent to Iraq, where they will participate in the invasion (see March 19, 2003). [ESPN (.com), 4/2006]
Entity Tags: Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman
Timeline Tags: War in Afghanistan
Some of the documents turned over to the UN by Iraq. [Source: CIA]United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission chief arms inspector Hans Blix provides a quarterly report to the UN Security Council on the progress of inspections in Iraq, as required by UN Security Resolution 1284 (1999). It is the twelfth such report since UNMOVIC's inception. Blix's report to the Council does not contain any evidence to support US and British claims that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction or the programs to develop such weapons. [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; CNN, 3/7/2003] International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General Mohamed ElBaradei also reports to the Council and says there are no signs that Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ] UNMOVIC Report by Hans Blix - There is no evidence that Iraq has mobile biological weapons factories, as was recently alleged by Colin Powell in his February 5 presentation (see February 5, 2003) to the UN. "Several inspections have taken place… in relation to mobile production facilities," Blix says. "No evidence of proscribed activities has so far been found." He further explains that his inspectors had examined numerous mobile facilities and large containers with seed processing equipment. [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; CNN, 3/7/2003; Agence France-Presse, 3/7/2003] The Iraqi government has increased its cooperation with inspectors since the end of January. It is attempting to quantify the biological and chemical weapons that it says were destroyed in 1991. [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; CNN, 3/7/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003] Iraq's destruction of several Al Samoud II missiles represents a real step towards disarmament. "The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament," he says. "We are not watching the destruction of toothpicks. Lethal weapons are being destroyed." [CNN, 3/7/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003] Blix adds, "The destruction undertaken constitutes a substantial measure of disarmament—indeed, the first since the middle of the 1990s." Major Corrine Heraud, the chief weapons inspector for UNMOVIC in this operation, calls the level of cooperation from the Iraqis "unprecedented," something that she never would have expected and did not encounter during the 1996-98 inspections. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Blix says that the UN inspectors needed a few more months to finish their work. "Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude induced by continued outside pressure, it will still take some time to verify sites and items, analyze documents, interview relevant persons and draw conclusions," he says, concluding, "It will not take years, nor weeks, but months." [CNN, 3/7/2003; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003] Iraqi scientists have recently accepted inspectors' requests to be interviewed without "minders." "Since we started requesting interviews, 38 individuals were asked for private interviews, of which 10 accepted under our terms, seven during the past week," Blix explains. [CNN, 3/7/2003] Some Iraqi scientists have agreed to interviews without "minders"—but more cooperation is needed. Blix says, "While the Iraqi side seems to have encouraged interviewees not to request the presence of Iraqi officials or the taping of the interviews, conditions ensuring the absence of undue influences are difficult to attain inside Iraq." [CNN, 3/7/2003] Iraq needs to turn over more documents. "Iraq, with a highly developed administrative system, should be able to provide more documentary evidence about its proscribed weapons. Only a few new such documents have come to light so far and been handed over since we began." [CNN, 3/7/2003] There is no evidence of underground weapons facilities. Blix says: "There have been reports, denied by Iraq, that proscribed activities are conducted underground. Iraq should provide information on underground structures suitable for the production or storage of weapons of mass destruction. During inspections of declared or undeclared facilities, inspectors examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground-penetrating radar was used in several locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found." [CNN, 3/7/2003] IAEA report by Mohamed ElBaradei - There is no evidence that the aluminum tubes imported by Iraq in July 2001 were meant for a nuclear weapons program. ElBaradei says: "Extensive field investigation and document analysis have failed to uncover any evidence that Iraq intended to use these 81mm tubes for any project other than the reverse engineering of rockets.… Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminum tubes in question." [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003; Washington Post, 3/8/2003] There is no evidence that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. Documents provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency by the US were determined to be forgeries. The documents were a collection of letters between an Iraqi diplomat and senior Niger officials discussing Iraq's interest in procuring a large amount of uranium oxide (see Afternoon October 7, 2002). "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic," ElBaradei explains. "We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded"
(see June 12, 2003). [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003; Washington Post, 3/8/2003; Globe and Mail, 3/8/2003; Guardian, 3/8/2003] The IAEA has yet to come across evidence of a nuclear weapons program. "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq," ElBaradei states. "[T]here is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites." [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ; Los Angeles Times, 3/7/2003; Associated Press, 3/7/2003; Globe and Mail, 3/8/2003; Washington Post, 3/8/2003] In a direct response to allegations made by Colin Powell on February 5 (see February 5, 2003) related to the attempted procurement of magnets that could be used in a gas centrifuge, ElBaradei, says: "The IAEA has verified that previously acquired magnets have been used for missile guidance systems, industrial machinery, electricity meters, and field telephones. Through visits to research and production sites, reviews of engineering drawings, and analyses of sample magnets, IAEA experts familiar with the use of such magnets in centrifuge enrichment have verified that none of the magnets that Iraq has declared could be used directly for a centrifuge magnetic bearing." [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ] Iraq's industrial capacity "has deteriorated" at the inspected sites because of lack of maintenance and funds. [United Nations, 3/7/2003 ] ElBaradei concludes: "After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq.… I should note that, in the past three weeks, possibly as a result of ever-increasing pressure by the international community, Iraq has been forthcoming in its cooperation, particularly with regard to the conduct of private interviews and in making available evidence that contributes to the resolution of matters of IAEA concern." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Inspections 'Fruitful,' Say French, Russians - Both sides claim that the reports give further support to each of their respective stances on the issue of Iraqi disarmament. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin tells the Council that the reports "testify to the progress" of the inspections. He states that France will not support another resolution because "we cannot accept any ultimatum, any automatic use of force." Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov says that the reports demonstrate that inspections have been "fruitful." Inspections Not Working, US Claims - The Bush administration does not alter its position, despite statements by the two inspectors that Iraq is cooperating with inspections and complying with demands to disarm. Colin Powell, responding to the inspectors' reports, reiterates the administration's position that the inspections are not working and that Saddam is not cooperating. "We must not walk away," Powell says. "We must not find ourselves here this coming November with the pressure removed and with Iraq once again marching down the merry path to weapons of mass destruction, threatening the region, threatening the world." He claims that Iraq's behavior is a "a catalog still of noncooperation" and repeats the administration's allegation that the "Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised." Back at the White House, Ari Fleischer tells reporters, "As the president has said, if the United Nations will not disarm Saddam Hussein, it will be another international organization, a coalition of the willing that will be made up of numerous nations that will disarm Saddam Hussein." [CNN, 3/6/2003; CNN, 3/7/2003; Independent, 3/7/2003; US Department of State, 3/7/2003 ] Bush: Missile Destruction 'Meaningless' - Bush himself will call the destruction of Iraqi missiles "meaningless" and nothing more than an Iraqi "campaign of destruction," shocking UNMOVIC inspectors: "We didn't know what to make of [his words]," one inspector says afterwards. Former State Department official Patrick Lang will write: "In the final weeks of the countdown to war, the administration's actions resembled nothing so much as some of the madder scenes from Alice in Wonderland. The fact that the documents the administration had used to 'prove' that Iraq was working on nuclear weapons were forged only led to greater insistence that Iraq was a danger. The absence of discovery of WMD by the UN inspectors was only further evidence that the Iraqis were the greatest deceivers in history and that they had succeeded in concealing their location. The destruction of the Al Samoud missiles was just more evidence of a 'grand deception.'" [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Uranium Allegations 'Outrageous,' Says Former Ambassador - The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times do give the story front-page coverage, and on CNN, former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003) calls the uranium allegation "outrageous," adding that the claim "taints the whole rest of the case that the government is trying to build against Iraq." The US government is "simply stupid" for not finding out the truth sooner: "a couple of phone calls" could have proven that such a deal between Iraq and Niger could not have happened: "All this stuff is open," Wilson says. "It's a restricted market of buyers and sellers." [Rich, 2006, pp. 71] IAEA Report 'Widely Ignored' - Author and media critic Frank Rich will later note, "With America's March 17 deadline for war (see March 17, 2003 and March 17, 2003) dominating the news, ElBaradei's pronoucements were widely ignored. The news of the forged uranium documents did not make any of the three network evening newscasts and did not appear in the following day's New York Times. (It would turn up a day later, in a four-hundred word story on page A13.)" [Rich, 2006, pp. 71]
Entity Tags: Corrine Heraud, Ari Fleischer, Colin Powell, Dominique de Villepin, Patrick Lang, Frank Rich, Mohamed ElBaradei, International Atomic Energy Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Igor Ivanov, Hans Blix
In a radio address, Bush asserts that "it is clear" from the report given by Chief United Nations Weapons Inspector Hans Blix to the UN Security Council the day before (see March 7, 2003)
"that Saddam Hussein is still violating the demands of the United Nations by refusing to disarm." While Blix described Iraq's destruction of Al Samoud II missiles (see March 1, 2003) as significant, Bush downplays this, claiming the US has intelligence that Saddam Hussein "ordered the continued production of the very same type of missiles." Near the conclusion of his radio address, Bush says: "We are doing everything we can to avoid war in Iraq. But if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force."
[US President, 3/17/2003]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush
The cover of an April issue of Entertainment Weekly featuring nearly-nude depictions of the Dixie Chicks, all with words written on their skin used in commentaries about the band. [Source: Associated Press / Guardian]The Dixie Chicks, a modern country band from Texas, plays a concert in London. The band consists of three singers and multi-instrumentalists, Natalie Maines, Martie Maguire, and Emily Robison, and backing musicians. During the show, Maines says to the audience: "Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the president of the United States is from Texas." The London Guardian, in a review of the show, reports the comments on March 12. Within days, Maines and the Dixie Chicks become the targets of intense and heavy criticism from conservative commentators and Bush supporters in the United States. Country music radio stations across the nation begin dropping their songs from their playlists, even though the Chicks currently have the top song in country music airplay, "Travelin' Man." Radio stations set up trash cans outside their stations for listeners to publicly discard their Dixie Chicks CDs, and some radio stations hold "disc-burning" and "disc-smashing" festivals featuring bonfires and tractors. Two radio station chains, Cox and Cumulus, ban the Chicks from being played on all the stations they own. Critics on Fox News and conservative radio shows nickname the band "the Dixie Sluts," "Saddam's Angels," and other monikers. Country musician Toby Keith, a conservative and frequent guest on Fox News and radio talk shows, begins using a backdrop at his concerts featuring a photo montage putting Maines together with Saddam Hussein. Maines reluctantly accepts 24-hour security from the barrage of death threats she receives. She quickly issues an apology, saying, "Whoever holds that office [the presidency] should be treated with the utmost respect," but the apology makes little difference to many. Indeed, the band does not back away from its position: Robison will later say: "Everybody talks about how this war was over quickly and not that many people died. Tell that to the parents of people coming home in body bags.… Natalie's comment came from frustration that we all shared—we were apparently days away from war (see March 19, 2003) and still left with a lot of questions." Maines will later say: "The thing is, it wasn't even a political statement. It was a joke made to get cheers and applause and to entertain, and it did. But it didn't entertain America." Maines will later say the controversy starts on a right-wing message board and blog called Free Republic. Music producer and comedian Simon Renshaw, a close friend of the band members, agrees with Maines, saying: "The extreme right-wing group, for their own political reasons, are attempting to manipulate the American media, and the American media is falling for it. The Free Republic is very well organized. There's definitely a Free Republic hit list with all of the radio stations they're trying to affect, and they are totally focused, and the girls are going to get whacked." Documentary maker Barbara Kopple, who is making a film about the group, will later say: "[The c]ountry music [industry] put[s] sort of their musicians in a box, and they're expected to be very conservative in their leanings, and these were three all-American girls that nobody ever expected this from. So when Natalie made her statement, it was as if she had betrayed country music. There was a massive boycott on playing any of their music. There was this group called the Free Republic that immediately got on Web sites and blogs and everything else to make sure that their music was not shown, their CDs were trampled, and for this, they even got death threats. So they had to have bomb-sniffing dogs, they had security, and nothing could stop these women from playing." Kopple cites one example of a very specific and credible death threat issued for a July 6, 2003 concert in Dallas, but the three band members insist on playing, and the concert goes off without incident. In April 2003, Maines says: "People think this'll scare us and shut us up and it's gonna do the opposite. They just served themselves a huge headache." [Guardian, 3/12/2003; Guardian, 4/25/2003; Democracy Now!, 2/15/2007] Eventually, their CD sales begin to rebound, and in 2007, they will win five Grammy awards, an accomplishment many will see as a vindication of the Dixie Chicks's music and their right to freedom of speech, as well as something of a repudiation of the Nashville-based country music industry. Music executive Jeff Ayeroff will note that "the artist community… was very angry at what radio did, because it was not very American." Music executive Mike Dungan, a powerful member of the country music industry, says of the awards, "I think it says that, by and large, the creative community sees what has happened to the Dixie Chicks as unfair and unjust." [New York Times, 2/13/2007]
Entity Tags: Martie Maguire, Dixie Chicks, Barbara Kopple, Emily Robison, Jeff Ayeroff, Simon Renshaw, Toby Keith, Mike Dungan, Natalie Maines, Free Republic
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda
In a response to a recent report from the International Atomic Energy Agency debunking the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see March 7, 2003), and a report from the Defense Intelligence Agency that claims the allegations are true, a CIA senior-level report concludes, "We do not dispute the IAEA director general's conclusion—last Friday before the UN Security Council—that documents on Iraq's agreement to buy uranium from Niger are not authentic." [Central Intelligence Agency, 4/3/2003 ; Central Intelligence Agency, 5/30/2003 ]
Entity Tags: Defense Intelligence Agency, International Atomic Energy Agency, Central Intelligence Agency
Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, writes a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Rockefeller asks for an FBI investigation of the forged Iraq-Niger documents (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), because "the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." An FBI inquiry, Rockefeller writes, "should, at a minimum, help to allay any concerns" that the Bush administration itself created the documents to build support for the war. Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) refuses to sign the letter [Washington Post, 3/22/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 292] , saying he believes it would be inappropriate for the FBI to launch such an inquiry. Secretary of State Colin Powell denies any role by the US government in creating the documents. [Associated Press, 3/14/2003] The FBI will not respond to Rockefeller's request. [Future of Freedom Foundation, 9/2003]
Entity Tags: Robert S. Mueller III, John D. Rockefeller, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Colin Powell, Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts
During an appearance on NBC's Meet The Press, Vice President Dick Cheney says: "[Saddam Hussein has] had years to get good at [deceiving weapons inspectors] and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei frankly is wrong [about rejecting US claims concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons program—see March 7, 2003] ]. And I think if you look at the track record of the International Atomic Energy Agency and this kind of issue, especially where Iraq's concerned, they have consistently underestimated or missed what it was Saddam Hussein was doing. I don't have any reason to believe they're any more valid this time than they've been in the past." Cheney also insists that the US invasion force will be welcomed by the Iraqis. "I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators," he says. "The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that." [Meet the Press, 3/16/2002; Sunday Herald (Glasgow), 7/13/2003]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Saddam Hussein, International Atomic Energy Agency
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan orders all UN weapons inspectors, peacekeepers, and humanitarian aid workers to withdraw from Iraq. [Washington File, 3/17/2003] UN inspectors have been in Iraq since November 18 (see November 18, 2002). During their four months of work in Iraq, they inspected hundreds of sites (some of them more than once) and found no evidence of ongoing WMD programs. Their work was reportedly obstructed, not by the Iraqis, but by the US, which refused to provide inspectors with the intelligence they needed to identify sites for inspection (see February 12, 2003, December 5, 2002, December 6, 2002, December 20, 2002, and January 11, 2003). Of the 105 sites identified by US intelligence as likely housing illicit weapons, 21 were deliberately withheld from inspectors. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 344] Reflecting on the inspections in 2009, Hans Blix, the chief of the UN weapons inspection team, will say: "In March 2003, when the invasion took place, we could not have stood up and said, 'There is nothing,' because to prove the negative is really not possible. What you can do is to say that we have performed 700 inspections in some 500 different sites, and we have found nothing, and we are ready to continue. If we had been allowed to continue a couple of months, we would have been able to go to all of the some hundred sites suggested to us, and since there weren't any weapons of mass destruction, that's what we would have reported. And then I think that, at that stage, certainly the intelligence ought to have drawn the conclusion that their evidence was poor." [Vanity Fair, 2/2009]
Entity Tags: United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, Bush administration (43), International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, Kofi Annan
A building in Baghdad is bombed during the US invasion of Iraq. [Source: Reuters]The US begins its official invasion of Iraq (see (7:40 a.m.) March 19, 2003). While most observers expect a traditional air assault, the US planners instead launch what they call a "Shock and Awe" combination of air and ground assaults designed to avoid direct confrontations with Iraqi military forces and instead destroy Iraqi military command structures. [CNN, 3/20/2003; CNN, 3/20/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 302] The initial invasion force consists of 250,000 US forces augmented by 45,000 British troops and small contingents from Poland, Australia, and Denmark, elements of the so-called "coalition of the willing." [BBC, 3/18/2003; Unger, 2007, pp. 302]
Entity Tags: United States
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation
President Bush calls British Prime Minister Tony Blair, his central ally in the US's "coalition of the willing." After speaking to Blair, Bush goes to the White House Situation Room, where a videoconference with his field commanders in the Persian Gulf is set up. Bush asks if they are ready to commence hostilities against Iraq; each one answers in the affirmative. Bush then says: "For the peace of the world and the benefit and freedom of the Iraqi people, I hereby give the order to execute Operation Iraqi Freedom. May God bless our troops" (see March 19, 2003). He later goes for a walk outside his office. He will recall: "I prayed as I walked around the circle. I prayed that our troops be safe, be protected by the Almighty, that there be minimal loss of life.… I was praying for strength to do God's will.… I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible." [Unger, 2007, pp. 294-295]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Tony Blair
US forces fire more than 40 Tomahawk missiles at the Dora Farms compound on the Tigris River, where intelligence intercepts have indicated that Saddam Hussein may be holed up in an underground bunker. The Tomahawks are accompanied by "bunker-buster" bombs from F-117 Stealth fighters. The strike is an attempt to "decapitate" Iraq's military and government by killing the dictator in the first hours of the assault (see March 19, 2003). The missile barrage destroys all of the building in the compound except the main palace. Unfortunately for the US military planners, Hussein is not at the compound; later intelligence learns that Hussein has not been at the Dora Farms complex since 1995. Hussein is at a safe house in Baghdad, watching the international television coverage of the strike and drafting a message to the Iraqi people. Hussein will remain in Baghdad for weeks, moving from safe house to safe house; though American forces will strike at numerous targets in Baghdad, none will come close to Hussein's locations. [CBS News, 5/28/2003; New York Times, 3/12/2006; Unger, 2007, pp. 295]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, US Department of Defense
The New York Times reveals that CIA analysts acknowledge being pressured to shape their intelligence reports on Iraq to conform to Bush administration policies. In particular, they were pressured to find or create evidence that Iraq had links to al-Qaeda. [New York Times, 3/23/2003] In 2004, Times editor Daniel Okrent will admit that the story was "completed several days before the invasion (see March 19, 2003) and unaccountably held for a week," not appearing until three days after the war began, when it "was interred on Page B10." [New York Times, 5/30/2004; Rich, 2006, pp. 192] For months, some CIA analysts have privately expressed concerns over the forcible shaping of their reports to colleagues and Congressional officials, but until now have not revealed those concerns to reporters. "A lot of analysts have been upset about the way the Iraq-al-Qaeda case has been handled," a senior intelligence official says. The revelation that the claims of Iraq's attempt to buy uranium from Niger were false (see March 7, 2003) sparked some analysts to come forward. One government official says, "The forgery heightened people's feelings that they were being embarrassed by the way Iraqi intelligence has been handled." The intelligence official says: "As we have become an integral component informing the debate for policy makers, we have been asked a lot of questions. I'm sure it does come across as a pressured environment for analysts. I think there is a sense of being overworked, a sense among analysts that they have already answered the same questions. But if you talk to analysts, they understand why people are asking, and why policy makers aren't accepting a report at face value." Other analysts have discussed leaving the agency over their frustration with the way intelligence is being manipulated by the Bush administration. Another government official says, "Several people have told me how distraught they have been about what has been going on." A CIA official says no analysts have resigned in protest over the management of Iraqi intelligence. [New York Times, 3/23/2003]
Entity Tags: Daniel Okrent, Bush administration (43), Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, New York Times
The National Intelligence Council issues a Sense of the Community Memorandum (SOCM) expressing doubt that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. "We judge it highly unlikely that Niamey has sold uranium yellowcake to Baghdad in recent years. The IC agrees with the IAEA assessment that key documents purported showing a recent Iraq-Niger sales accord are a fabrication. We judge that other reports from 2002—one alleging warehousing of yellowcake for shipment to Iraq, a second alleging a 1999 visit by an Iraqi delegation to Niamey—do not constitute credible evidence of a recent or impending sale." The SOCM report notes also that "the current government of Niger [redacted in source] probably would report such an approach by the Iraqis, especially because a sale would violate UN resolution 687." [US Congress, 7/7/2004, pp. 71]
Entity Tags: Naval Criminal Investigative Service
Nicholas Kristof. [Source: Women's Conference]New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, citing unnamed sources, breaks the story of former US diplomat Joseph Wilson's February 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Kristof's source for the story is Wilson, who he recently met at a political conference in Washington that was sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee (see Early May 2003). The following morning, they met for breakfast, and Wilson recounted the details of his trip. Kristof writes in part: "I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former US ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.… In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong, and that the documents had been forged." [New York Times, 5/6/2003; Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 282] In response to the column, Patrick Lang, the former head of the DIA's Middle Eastern affairs bureau, tells Kristof that the office of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had pressured the US intelligence community before the war, asking analysts "to think it over again" when they filed reports skeptical of Iraq's WMD programs. Lang also says that any intelligence warning "that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer US troops, and that the Shi'ite clergy could be a problem," was also unwelcome at the Defense Department. [Rich, 2006, pp. 97] In 2007, author Craig Unger will write: "Now the secret was out with regard to the Niger documents. Not only had the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] determined that they were forgeries (see February 17, 2003), but it was clear that the administration knew the Niger deal was phony even before Bush cited them in the State of the Union address" (see March 8, 2002 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). [Unger, 2007, pp. 309] Wilson expects a certain amount of criticism and opprobrium from the White House and its allies in the media over the column, but as his wife, senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, will later write, "In retrospect, if anything, he underestimated the potential for those in the administration, and their allies, to change the subject from the lies in the president's address to lies about us." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 108]
Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick Lang, Joseph C. Wilson, International Atomic Energy Agency, Nicholas Kristof, Craig Unger, Donald Rumsfeld
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
Shortly after Nicholas Kristof's New York Times op-ed appears, citing an anonymous source as accusing the Bush administration of ignoring evidence debunking the White House's claim of Iraqi WMD (see May 6, 2003), Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus contacts Vice President Dick Cheney's communications director, Cathie Martin, for comment on the controversy. Martin alerts Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, that Pincus is "sniffing around" for information. As White House deputy press secretary Scott McClellan will later write: "The vice president and Libby were quietly stepping up their efforts to counter the allegations of the anonymous envoy to Niger (see June 2003), and Pincus's story was one opportunity for them to do just that. [Cheney] dictated talking points to Libby, who used them in responding to Pincus." Pincus subsequently writes a June 12, 2003 story that hinges on Cheney's assertion that the CIA had never shared its doubts about the existence of Iraqi WMD with the White House. The article helps spin the controversy, fueling speculation that the CIA, not the White House, is responsible for the "erroneous intelligence" on Iraq's WMD. Pincus does quote a "senior CIA analyst" who says that in the run-up to war, "information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was [consistent] was not seriously scrutinized." The White House does not like either of these versions of events—either it used faulty intelligence to craft its argument for war, or it deliberately lied to the American people to send troops into Iraq. [Time, 7/31/2005; McClellan, 2008, pp. 166-167]
Entity Tags: Bush administration (43), Catherine ("Cathie") Martin, Central Intelligence Agency, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Office of the Vice President, Walter Pincus, Scott McClellan
Commenting on the recent revelation (see May 6, 2003) that former diplomat Joseph Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) had determined that Iraq did not conclude a deal with Niger to supply it with uranium, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says during an appearance on "Meet the Press," "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery." [Washington Post, 6/13/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; ABC News, 6/16/2003] Upon learning of Rice's comments, an infuriated Wilson sends a message to Rice that if she will not correct her statement, he will (see June 9, 2003-July 6, 2003).
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice
According to the investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, the CIA faxes Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, classified documents concerning Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger (see March 4-5, 2002, (March 6, 2002) and March 8, 2002), in response to a recent op-ed by Wilson (see July 6, 2003). Although the documents do not mention Wilson by name, the words "Wilson" and "Joe Wilson," in Libby's handwriting, are later found written on one of them. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; Marcy Wheeler, 11/1/2005; Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 216; National Journal, 6/14/2006; US District Court for the District of Columbia, 9/22/2006 ] Another, unidentified White House official also receives the documents. [New York Times, 2006] He is most likely Cheney's national security adviser, John Hannah. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ] Reporter Murray Waas will write, "It is unclear if one of the documents in question, or the one with Wilson's name handwritten on it by someone in the vice president's office, was the March 2002 CIA report (see July 12, 2003), but the fact that it did not mention Wilson by name suggests that it possibly was indeed the one with the handwriting." [National Journal, 6/14/2006]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, John Hannah, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Central Intelligence Agency, Murray Waas, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Office of the Vice President
The Senate Intelligence Committee, under the aegis of chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), issues a report on the US intelligence community's prewar intelligence assessments of Iraq. Contained within the report is a section on the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), a section that author Craig Unger will call "extraordinary." The report concludes in part, "At the time the president delivered the State of the Union address (see September 11, 2002, Late September 2002, and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), no one in the IC [intelligence community] had asked anyone in the White House to remove the sentence from the speech" (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). It also finds, "CIA Iraq nuclear analysts told committee staff that at the time of the State of the Union, they still believed that Iraq was probably seeking uranium from Africa" (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 6/11/2003 ; Unger, 2007, pp. 312]
Entity Tags: Pat Roberts, Senate Intelligence Committee, Craig Unger
Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, says: "We have acknowledged that some documents detailing a transaction between Iraq and Niger were forged and we no longer give them credence," he says. "They were, however, only one piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa. The issue of Iraq's pursuit of uranium in Africa is supported by multiple sources of intelligence. The other sources of evidence did and do support the president's statement." [Washington Post, 6/13/2003; Associated Press, 6/13/2003]
Entity Tags: Sean McCormack, National Security Council
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof contradicts National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's recent statement that no one in the White House ever suspected that the documents "proving" Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger were forged (see May 6, 2003). Rice recently said, "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery" (see June 8, 2003). Kristof also notes that the White House claims Vice President Cheney learned of its own role in using the forged documents as "evidence" of the Iraq-Niger claim from reading Kristof's May 6 column in the Times. Using information from what he calls "two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on" the story, Kristof writes that the truth is quite different from what Rice and Cheney say. He writes, "while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told [President] Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower CIA officials did tell both the vice president's office and National Security Council staff members. Moreover, I hear from another source that the CIA's operations side and its counterterrorism center undertook their own investigations of the documents, poking around in Italy and Africa, and also concluded that they were false—a judgment that filtered to the top of the CIA" (see January 28-29, 2003 and March 23, 2003). Kristof also notes that "the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, independently came to the exact same conclusion about those documents, according to Greg Thielmann, a former official there. Mr. Thielmann said he was 'quite confident' that the conclusion had been passed up to the top of the State Department." Kristof also quotes former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, who says, "It was well known throughout the intelligence community that it was a forgery." Kristof adds that Tenet and the US intelligence communities "were under intense pressure to come up with evidence against Iraq." As a result, "[a]mbiguities were lost, and doubters were discouraged from speaking up." A former military intelligence officer says: "It was a foregone conclusion that every photo of a trailer truck would be a 'mobile bioweapons lab' and every tanker truck would be 'filled with weaponized anthrax.' None of the analysts in military uniform had the option to debate the vice president, secretary of defense, and the secretary of state." Kristof concludes: "I don't believe that the president deliberately lied to the public in an attempt to scare Americans into supporting his war. But it does look as if ideologues in the administration deceived themselves about Iraq's nuclear programs—and then deceived the American public as well." [New York Times, 6/13/2003]
Entity Tags: New York Times, Bush administration (43), Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Condoleezza Rice, Nicholas Kristof, George J. Tenet, Greg Thielmann, George W. Bush, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Melvin A. Goodman
Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
An internal CIA memorandum addressed to CIA Director George Tenet states that the agency no longer believes allegations that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. The highly classified memo, titled "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium from Abroad," reads in part, "[S]ince learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." Tenet asked for the assessment in part because of repeated inquiries from Vice President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, regarding the Iraq-Niger matter and the mission by Joseph Wilson to determine the likelihood of such a purchase (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and May 29, 2003). However, neither Cheney nor Libby asked for the review. In addition, Tenet wanted the assessment because of the media attention being paid to Wilson's trip to Niger, and his worry that Congress or the press might raise additional questions about the matter. Soon afterwards, Cheney and Libby are briefed on the memo, but both continue to question the veracity and loyalty of Wilson, and continue to insist that Iraq did, indeed, attempt to purchase Nigerien uranium. Libby is adamant that the CIA is trying to "whitewash" the "truth" behind the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations, and insists that the CIA's WINPAC (Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control) is primarily responsible for the CIA's "whitewashing." He mistakenly believes that Valerie Plame Wilson, Wilson's wife, works in WINPAC, and has already informed a reporter of his belief (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). Cheney and others in the Office of the Vice President also apparently believe that Plame Wilson works for WINPAC, though they have already been informed that she is a senior official for the CIA's counterproliferation division (see (June 12, 2003)) and a covert agent (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003). [The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission'), 3/31/2005; National Journal, 2/2/2006]
Entity Tags: Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Central Intelligence Agency, Counterproliferation Division
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has a telephone conversation with Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Woodward informs Libby that he is sending an 18-page list of questions for his upcoming book, Plan of Attack, that he wants to ask Cheney. One question is about "yellowcake" uranium, obviously a reference to the claims that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), and another is about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002). Woodward will later testify that he does not discuss Valerie Plame Wilson, the covert CIA agent whom another government official had "outed" to him a few days before (see June 13, 2003). [Washington Post, 11/16/2005]
Entity Tags: Bob Woodward, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Valerie Plame Wilson
Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward meets with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, pursuant to their telephone conversation four days prior (see June 23, 2003). Woodward's interview is in regards to to his upcoming book Plan of Attack. Although Woodward questions Libby about the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) and the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), Woodward will later testify that the subject of "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson does not come up. He will say that he may have asked Libby about either Plame Wilson or her husband Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), but he has nothing in his notes about Libby discussing the subject. [Washington Post, 11/16/2005; Marcy Wheeler, 2/12/2007] Woodward is aware of Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA official (see June 13, 2003). According to later testimony from Woodward (see November 14, 2005), Libby discusses classified information from the October 2002 NIE (see October 1, 2002) that purports to show Iraq attempted to buy enriched uranium from Africa. According to Woodward's notes, Libby describes the purported Iraqi efforts to buy uranium as "vigorous." [Washington Post, 4/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Joseph C. Wilson, Bob Woodward
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador to Gabon and a former diplomatic official in the US embassy in Iraq during the Gulf War (see September 20, 1990), writes an op-ed for the New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." Wilson went to Africa over a year ago (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003) to investigate claims that the Iraqi government surreptitiously attempted to buy large amounts of uranium from Niger, purportedly for use in nuclear weapons. The claims have been extensively debunked (see February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Wilson opens the op-ed by writing: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Wilson notes his extensive experience in Africa and the Middle East, and says candidly: "Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me" (see May 6, 2003). He makes it very clear that he believes his findings had been "circulated to the appropriate officials within… [the] government." Journey to Niger - Wilson confirms that he went to Africa at the behest of the CIA, which was in turn responding to a directive from Vice President Cheney's office. He confirms that the CIA paid his expenses during the week-long trip, and that, while overseas, "I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government." About Nigerien uranium, Wilson writes: "For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador [Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick] told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq—and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington" (see November 20, 2001). Wilson met with "dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Wilson notes that Nigerien uranium is handled by two mines, Somair and Cominak, "which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German, and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister, and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." Wilson told Owens-Kirkpatrick that he didn't believe the story either, flew back to Washington, and shared his findings with CIA and State Department officials. "There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report," he writes, "just as there was nothing secret about my trip." State of the Union Reference - Wilson believed that the entire issue was settled until September 2002, when the British government released an intelligence finding that asserted Iraq posed an immediate threat because it had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa (see September 24, 2002). Shortly thereafter, President Bush repeated the charges in his State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). Wilson was surprised by the charge, but put it aside after discussing the issue with a friend in the State Department (see January 29, 2003). Wilson now knows that Bush was indeed referring to the Niger claims, and wants to set the record straight. Posing a Real Nuclear Threat? - Wilson is now concerned that the facts are being manipulated by the administration to paint Iraq as a looming nuclear threat, when in fact Iraq has no nuclear weapons program. "At a minimum," he writes, "Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted." He is quite sure that Iraq has some form of chemical and biological weapons, and in light of his own personal experience with "Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed." But, he asks, are "these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information.… The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons." [New York Times, 7/6/2003] 'Playing Congress and the Public for Fools' - Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will write in 2004 that after Wilson's editorial appears, he checks out the evidence behind the story himself. It only takes Dean a few hours of online research using source documents that Bush officials themselves had cited, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and the United Nations. He will write: "I was amazed at the patently misleading use of the material Bush had presented to Congress. Did he believe no one would check? The falsification was not merely self-evident, it was feeble and disturbing. The president was playing Congress and the public for fools." [Dean, 2004, pp. 145-146]
Entity Tags: US Department of Energy, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, United Nations, Somair, Office of the Vice President, Joseph C. Wilson, Bush administration (43), Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, New York Times, Cominak, John Dean, George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, International Atomic Energy Agency
The State Department sends a memo (see June 10, 2003) to Secretary of State Colin Powell as he is traveling with President Bush and other senior White House officials to Africa. Powell is seen during the flight walking around Air Force One with the memo in his hand. The memo concerns the trip by former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger, where he learned that allegations of Iraq attempts to purchase Nigerien uranium were false (see February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), and reveals his wife as a covert CIA agent. [New York Times, 7/16/2005; Rich, 2006, pp. 180] The paragraph identifying Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA official is marked "S-NF," signfying its information is classified "Secret, Noforn." Noforn is a code word indicating that the information is not to be shared with foreign nationals. [Washington Post, 7/21/2005; Newsweek, 8/1/2005] When Wilson's op-ed debunking the uranium claim and lambasting the administration for using it as a justification for war appears in the New York Times (see July 6, 2003), Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, calls Carl Ford, the head of the State Department's internal intelligence unit, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at Ford's home. Armitage asks Ford to send a copy of the Grossman memo to Powell, who is preparing to leave for Africa with Bush. Ford sends a copy of the memo to the White House for transmission to Powell. The memo relies on notes by an analyst who was involved in a February 19, 2002 meeting to discuss whether to send someone to Africa to investigate the uranium claims, and if so, who (see February 19, 2002). The notes do not identify either Wilson or his wife by name, and erroneously state that the meeting was "apparently convened by" the wife of a former ambassador "who had the idea to dispatch" her husband to Niger because of his contacts in the region. Wilson is a former ambassador to Gabon. Plame Wilson has said that she suggested her husband for the trip, introduced him at the meeting, and left after about three minutes (see February 13, 2002). The memo identifies Wilson's wife as Valerie Wilson; when conservative columnist Robert Novak outs her as a CIA agent (see July 14, 2003), he identifies her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. The memo will later become a matter of intense interest to investigators attempting to learn how Plame Wilson's identity was leaked to the press (see (July 15, 2005)). [New York Times, 7/16/2005; Rich, 2006, pp. 180]
Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, George W. Bush, Carl W. Ford, Jr., Valerie Plame Wilson, Richard Armitage, Central Intelligence Agency, US Department of State, Colin Powell, Robert Novak
The Library Lounge of the St. Regis Hotel, where Libby and Miller discussed the Wilsons. [Source: Starwood Hotels]Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, meets with New York Times reporter Judith Miller for breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC. Libby has already learned that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is an undercover CIA agent (see 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003 and (June 12, 2003)). Again Reveals Plame Wilson's CIA Identity - During their two-hour meeting, Libby again tells Miller, who will testify to this conversation over two years hence (see September 30, 2005), that Wilson's wife is a CIA agent (see June 23, 2003), and this time tells Miller that she works with WINPAC, the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control bureau that deals with foreign countries' WMD programs. Claims that Iraq Tried to Obtain African Uranium - Libby calls Wilson's Times op-ed (see July 14, 2003) inaccurate, and spends a considerable amount of time and energy both blasting Wilson and insisting that credible evidence of an Iraq-Niger uranium connection indeed exists. He also says that few in the CIA were ever aware of Wilson's 2002 trip to Niger to verify the uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Miller will write: "Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise—chemical and biological weapons—my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims. His main theme echoed that of other senior officials: that contrary to Mr. Wilson's criticism, the administration had had ample reason to be concerned about Iraq's nuclear capabilities based on the regime's history of weapons development, its use of unconventional weapons, and fresh intelligence reports." Libby gives Miller selected information from the classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (NIE—see October 1, 2002) that he says backs up the administration's claims about Iraqi WMD and the Iraq-Niger uranium claim. That information will later be proven to be false: Cheney has instructed Libby to tell Miller that the uranium claim was part of the NIE's "key judgments," indicating that there was consensus on the claim's validity. That is untrue. The claim is not part of the NIE's key judgments, but is contained deeper in the document, surrounded by caveats such as the claims "cannot [be] confirm[ed]" and the evidence supporting the claim is "inconclusive." Libby does not inform Miller about these caveats. [New York Times, 10/16/2005; Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 216-217; Rich, 2006, pp. 183-184; Washington Post, 4/9/2006] In subsequent grand jury testimony (see March 24, 2004), Libby will admit to giving Miller a bulleted copy of the talking points from the NIE he wanted her to emphasize. He will tell prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he had it typed by his assistant Jenny Mayfield. "It was less than what I had been authorized to share with her," he will say, and describes it as about a third of a page in length. This document will either not be submitted into evidence in Libby's trial (see January 16-23, 2007) or not be made publicly available. [Marcy Wheeler, 2/22/2007] Libby Identified as 'Former Hill Staffer' and Not White House Official - Miller agrees to refer to Libby as a "former Hill staffer" instead of a "senior administration official" in any story she will write from this interview. Though technically accurate, that characterization, if it had been used, would misdirect people into believing the information came from someone with current or former connections to Congress, and not from the White House. Miller will not write a story from this interview. In later testimony before a grand jury, Libby will falsely claim that he learned of Plame Wilson's CIA identity "from reporters." The reverse is actually true. [New York Times, 10/16/2005; Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 216-217; Rich, 2006, pp. 183-184] Libby is also apparently aware of Wilson's 1999 trip to Niger to find out whether Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan had tried to procure Nigerien uranium (see Late February 1999), as Libby's notes include the notation "Khan + Wilson?" Cheney's chief lawyer, David Addington, has also asked Libby about Wilson's 1999 trip. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 361-362] Libby has authorization from Cheney to leak classified information to Miller, and understands that the authorization comes directly from President Bush (see 7:35 a.m. July 8, 2003). It is unclear whether Libby has authorization from Cheney or Bush to divulge Plame Wilson's CIA identity. Miller Learned Plame Wilson Identity from Libby - Miller will later testify that she did not learn Plame Wilson's identity specifically from Libby, but that testimony will be undermined by the words "Valerie Flame" (an apparent misspelling) written in her notes of this meeting. She will also testify that she pushed, without success, for her editors to approve an article about Plame Wilson's identity. [New York Times, 10/16/2005]
Entity Tags: Jennifer Mayfield, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, Judith Miller, Central Intelligence Agency, Abdul Qadeer Khan, Bush administration (43), Valerie Plame Wilson, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Joseph C. Wilson, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, David S. Addington
Facing criticisms that the Bush administration lacked accurate and specific intelligence about Iraq's alleged arsenal of illicit weapons, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld provides the Senate Armed Services Committee with a new reason for why it was necessary for the US to invade Iraq. "The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass murder," he says. "We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light, through the prism of our experience on 9/11." [BBC, 7/9/2003; USA Today, 7/9/2003; Washington Times, 7/10/2003] When asked when he learned that the reports about Iraq attempting to obtain uranium from Niger were false, Rumsfeld replies, "Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available." [Slate, 7/10/2003; WorldNetDaily, 7/15/2003] The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had debunked the claim four months before (see March 7, 2003). [Rich, 2006, pp. 99] Rumsfeld later revises his statement twice, first saying that he had learned "weeks," and then "months," before. [WorldNetDaily, 7/15/2003]
Entity Tags: International Atomic Energy Agency, Senate Armed Services Committee, Bush administration (43), Donald Rumsfeld
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, answers calls to investigate the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). In March, Roberts refused to sign off on a request from his committee to investigate the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see March 14, 2003). In June, his committee released a report defending the White House's use of the uranium claims (see June 11, 2003); on that same day, Roberts and fellow Republicans denounced calls to investigate pre-war intelligence (see June 11, 2003). In 2008, current White House press secretary Scott McClellan will write that Roberts's call for an investigation plays into the administration's attempts to pin the blame for the uranium claims directly onto the CIA, and in a larger sense to blame the CIA for all the intelligence failures preceding the invasion of Iraq. According to McLellan: "On a broader front, the White House sought to dispel the nation that the intelligence had been 'cooked' by showing that it had been provided and cleared by the CIA. Most observers—war critics and supporters, Democrats and Republicans—had shared the assumption that Saddam had WMD programs and likely possessed at least some chemical and biological weapons. Only now, after the fact, were some prominent critics disavowing or downplaying their earlier belief, and the partisan tone of their attacks provided us with the gist of our counterattack." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 171]
Entity Tags: Senate Intelligence Committee, Central Intelligence Agency, Scott McClellan, Pat Roberts
White House political strategist Karl Rove, upon concluding a phone conversation with Time reporter Matthew Cooper in which Rove divulged the CIA status of Valerie Plame Wilson (see 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), e-mails Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley about the conversation. "Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he's got a welfare reform story coming," Rove writes. "When he finished his brief heads-up he immediately launched into Niger. Isn't this damaging? Hasn't the president been hurt? I didn't take the bait, but I said if I were him I wouldn't get Time far out in front on this." According to the Associated Press, this is the first indication that an intelligence official knew Rove talked to Cooper before Cooper's Time article about Plame Wilson and the White House effort to discredit her husband, war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 17, 2003). Rove will testify about the e-mail to the grand jury investigating the Plame Wilson leak in 2004 (see October 15, 2004 and October 14, 2005), telling the jury that he never intended to leak Plame Wilson's identity, but rather wanted to warn Cooper about some of the allegations Wilson was making about the White House's use of intelligence to bolster its case for war with Iraq. Rove is aware that conservative columnist Robert Novak, whom he has already spoken to about Plame Wilson (see July 8, 2003 and July 8 or 9, 2003), is planning an article on the Wilsons (see July 14, 2003). He also knows that CIA Director George Tenet is planning to take responsibility for the false Iraq-Niger uranium claims made by President Bush and other White House officials (see July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [Associated Press, 7/15/2005; Washington Post, 12/3/2005] In 2005, investigative reporter Jason Leopold will note that Rove's version of the conversation as he recounts it to Hadley is substantially different from the material Cooper records in his notes. Most notably, Rove fails to tell Hadley about his outing of a CIA official. Leopold will write, "It is unclear whether Rove was misleading Hadley about his conversation with Cooper, perhaps, because White House officials told its staff not to engage reporters in any questions posed about Wilson's Niger claims." [CounterPunch, 12/9/2005]
Entity Tags: Matthew Cooper, Bush administration (43), Jason Leopold, Karl C. Rove, Valerie Plame Wilson, Stephen J. Hadley
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims of a uranium deal between Iraq and Niger during a fact-finding trip to Africa (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at CIA Director George Tenet's admission that the Iraq-Niger uranium claim "should never have been included in the text written for the president" (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). According to his wife, senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson, "Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 140] Wilson himself will recall believing: "I honestly thought that my exposure in the matter would quickly fade, as the administration would now have to concentrate on the serious question of competence among the members of the president's staff. I told any interested friends and all inquisitive journalists that as my charges had been satisfactorily answered, I'd have nothing more to say. I honored obligations for interviews that I had previously accepted, but I denied any others in order to allow the waters I'd roiled to still. I thought that surely the focus of the debate would shift away from me. How naive and mistaken I was on that score!" [Wilson, 2004, pp. 335]
Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency
Referring to President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA Director George Tenet says in a written statement: "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president." Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. His statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003). [CNN, 7/11/2003; Central Intelligence Agency, 7/11/2003; New York Times, 7/12/2003] CIA Chose to Send Wilson to Niger - Tenet also confirms that it was the CIA's choice to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), apparently in an effort to rebut claims that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the mission. Tenet states: "There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam's efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region [Wilson] to make a visit to see what he could learn." Tenet says that Wilson found no evidence to believe that Iraq had attempted to purchase Nigerien uranium, though this did not settle the issue for either the CIA or the White House. [Central Intelligence Agency, 7/11/2003] Coordinated with White House - Tenet's admission was coordinated by White House advisers for what reporter Murray Waas will call "maximum effect." Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House political strategist Karl Rove, and Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby had reviewed drafts of Tenet's statement days in advance; Hadley and Rove had suggested changes in the draft. [National Journal, 3/30/2006] Cheney rejected an earlier draft, marking it "unacceptable" (see July 11, 2003). White House Joins in Blaming CIA - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA. Peppered with questions from reporters about the claim, she continues the White House attempt to pin the blame for the faulty intelligence on the CIA: "We have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches" than other governments or other agencies. "We don't make the president his own fact witness. That's why we send them out for clearance." Had the CIA expressed doubts about the Niger claim before the State of the Union? she is asked (see January 26 or 27, 2003, March 8, 2003, March 23, 2003, April 5, 2003, Early June 2003, June 9, 2003, and June 17, 2003). "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," she replies. "If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' (see January 27, 2003) it would have been gone without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.… What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the president's speech—but that's knowing what we know now." Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisers, tells ABC News: "We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels." But another intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, contradicts this statement. [CNN, 7/11/2003; White House, 7/11/2003; Washington Post, 7/12/2003; New York Times, 7/12/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 99; McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] Tenet's mea culpa is apparently enough for Bush; press secretary Ari Fleischer says, "The president has moved on." [White House, 7/11/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 99] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later claim that at this point Rice is unaware that her National Security Council is far more responsible for the inclusion than the CIA. He will write that the news media reports "not unfairly" that Rice is blaming the CIA for the inclusion. [McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet's statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the Africa-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the claim had little evidence supporting it. [Boston Globe, 3/16/2003; New York Times, 3/23/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/12/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; ABC News, 6/16/2003; Newsday, 7/12/2003; Washington Post, 7/20/2003] For example, CBS News reports, "CIA officials warned members of the president's National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa." And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, "We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material." [CBS News, 7/10/2003; CNN, 7/10/2003; Washington Post, 7/11/2003] Claim 'Technically True' since British, Not US, Actually Made It - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion, "Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: "A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president's speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British." The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, "The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials." [ABC News, 6/12/2003; CBS News, 7/10/2003; New York Times, 7/14/2003; New York Times, 7/19/2003] Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [Information Clearing House, 7/16/2003] Reactions - Rice says that the White House will not declassify the October 2002 NIE on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) to allow the public to judge for itself whether the administration exaggerated the Iraq-Niger claim; McClellan will write that Rice is currently "unaware of the fact that President Bush had already agreed to 'selective declassification' of parts of the NIE so that Vice President Cheney, or his top aide Scooter Libby, could use them to make the administration's case with selected reporters" (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] Two days later, Rice will join Bush in placing the blame for using the Iraq-Niger claim solely on the CIA (see July 13, 2003). McClellan will later write, "The squabbling would leave the self-protective CIA lying in wait to exact revenge against the White House." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 172] Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet's admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, "Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 140]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Bush administration (43), Karl C. Rove, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Murray Waas, Valerie Plame Wilson, ABC News, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Scott McClellan, CBS News, Office of Special Plans
The same day that Vice President Dick Cheney tells his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to disclose classified information from a CIA report to discredit war critic Joseph Wilson (see July 12, 2003), Libby and Cheney, along with Cheney's press spokesperson Cathie Martin, fly to and from Norfolk, Virginia. During the flight, the three discuss how they can rebut Wilson's criticisms of the administration's war effort and discredit him. They consider passing information to reporters such as Time correspondent Matthew Cooper (see 12:45 p.m. July 11, 2003) and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler (see July 12, 2003). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 10/28/2005 ; Washington Post, 10/30/2005; National Journal, 6/14/2006] Cheney tells Libby to leak classified information from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD to reporters (see July 12, 2003). Cheney also tells him to steer reporters towards a recent statement by CIA Director George Tenet that asserts Wilson had been sent to Niger by CIA counterproliferation officers "on their own initiative" (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). [Raw Story, 10/1/2005; New York Times, 10/1/2005; National Journal, 6/14/2006] He also tells Libby to alert reporters to the morning's attack on Wilson by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see 3:20 a.m. July 12, 2003). [Washington Post, 10/30/2005] And Cheney tells Libby to ask the CIA to back his assertion that the Office of the Vice President knew nothing of the Wilson mission and "didn't get the report back," referring to the CIA's report on Wilson's debriefing (see March 5, 2002). [Murray Waas, 12/23/2008] According to the FBI's investigation, Cheney and Libby discuss whether to tell reporters that Wilson's wife works for the CIA. [Washington Post, 2/21/2007] Libby will "out" Plame Wilson to Cooper later this afternoon (see 2:24 p.m. July 12, 2003) as well as to New York Times reporter Judith Miller (see Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003). Cheney may have given Libby direct orders to leak Plame Wilson's identity to the press, according to classified transcripts of Libby's later testimony to FBI investigators. According to Libby's notes of the conversation, Cheney says that the CIA has told him that Wilson was sent to Niger "at our behest," referring to the agency (see Shortly after February 13, 2002). Libby's notes also state that Cheney told him Wilson's "wife works in that division." Plame Wilson is a senior official for the CIA's Joint Task Force on Iraq (see April 2001 and After), a bureau within the agency's counterproliferation division. [Murray Waas, 12/23/2008]
Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, Ari Fleischer, Judith Miller, Catherine ("Cathie") Martin, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Matthew Cooper, Glenn Kessler, Office of the Vice President, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, in Nigeria with President Bush and his entourage, hosts an early-morning press gaggle in which he discusses war critic Joseph Wilson and the Iraq-Niger uranium claims. (The gaggle takes place at 8:20 a.m. local time; Eastern Daylight Savings Time in the US is five hours behind.) In light of recent admissions that the claims of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger were false (see July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), Fleischer tries to steer the press's attention onto Wilson, saying that he "also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official, Wilson, meet an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA. Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it, who never said anything about forged documents, reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales." Fleischer is referring in part to a 1999 trip by Wilson to Niger to investigate earlier claims of Iraqi interest in Nigerien uranium (see Fall 1999). [White House, 7/12/2003] In the CIA debriefing for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate the uranium claims (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and March 4-5, 2002), Wilson did not say that Iraqi officials were attempting to engage Nigerien officials in negotiations to buy uranium; in neither of his missions to Niger did any Nigeriens ask him to meet with Iraqi officials to discuss commercial ventures of any kind. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will later subpoena the transcript of Fleischer's press gaggle for his investigation into the Plame Wilson identity leak (see January 22, 2004). [Marcy Wheeler, 11/1/2005]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Ari Fleischer, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Patrick J. Fitzgerald
The White House continues to back away from its admission of error concerning President Bush's claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see July 8, 2003 and July 11, 2003). Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice appear on the Sunday morning talk shows to assert that the "16 words" in Bush's January speech (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) were "technically correct" because British intelligence, not American intelligence, was the original source of the claim as worded by Bush. The British still stand by the claim, though they refuse to provide evidence. In the interviews, Rice tries to call the claim a "mistake" and simultaneously vouch for its "accuracy." [Washington Post, 7/26/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 100] "I believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction," she says. In particular, Fox News host Tony Snow gives Rice multiple opportunities to state that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and that the Iraq-Niger uranium claim is probably true. She says that the related claim of the Iraqis buying aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges is also supported by the CIA, even though Snow acknowledges that the tubes theory has been "knocked down." [Fox News, 7/13/2003] Invoking the British, Blaming Tenet - On CBS's Face the Nation, Rice again blames CIA Director George Tenet for the error (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), saying: "My only point is that, in retrospect, knowing that some of the documents underneath may have been—were, indeed, forgeries, and knowing that apparently there were concerns swirling around about this, had we known that at the time, we would not have put it in.… And had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the director of central intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone." [CBS News, 7/13/2003] On Fox News, Rice says: "[T]he statement that [Bush] made was indeed accurate. The British government did say that. Not only was the statement accurate, there were statements of this kind in the National Intelligence Estimate. And the British themselves stand by that statement to this very day, saying that they had sources other than sources that have now been called into question to back up that claim. We have no reason not to believe them.… We have every reason to believe that the British services are quite reliable." [Fox News, 7/13/2003] On CNN, Rice calls the issue "enormously overblown.… This 16 words has been taken out of context. It's been blown out of proportion." She emphasizes that Bush's claim came "from a whole host of sources.… The British, by the way, still stand by their report to this very day in its accuracy, because they tell us that they had sources that were not compromised in any way by later, in March or April, later reports that there were some forgeries." She adds: "We're talking about a sentence, a data point, not the president's case about reconstitution of weapons of mass destruction, or of nuclear weapons in Iraq.… We're talking about a single sentence, the consequence of which was not to send America to war. The consequence of which was to state in the State of the Union something that, while accurate, did not meet the standard that we use for the president." [CNN, 7/13/2003] Denies Involvement in Wilson Mission - Rice also denies that anyone at the White House had any involvement in sending former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the uranium claims (see July 6, 2003). CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer says of the Wilson mission, "Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president." Rice replies: "No, this is simply not true, and this is something that's been perpetuated that we simply have to straighten out. The vice president did not ask that Joe Wilson go to Niger. The vice president did not know. I don't think he knew who Joe Wilson was, and he certainly didn't know that he was going. The first that I heard of Joe Wilson mission was when I was doing a Sunday talk show and heard about it (see June 8, 2003 and June 8, 2003)… [T]he Wilson trip was not sent by anyone at a high level. It wasn't briefed to anyone at high level. And it appears to have been inconclusive in what it found." Rice is following the White House strategy of denying Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in the Wilson mission (see July 6, 2003, 8:45 a.m. July 7, 2003, 9:22 a.m. July 7, 2003, July 7-8, 2003, and July 8, 2003). [CNN, 7/13/2003]
Entity Tags: Wolf Blitzer, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Tony Snow, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush, Joseph C. Wilson, Donald Rumsfeld, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration (43), George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice
Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley gives a briefing assessing the lessons of the war with Iraq to US and allied military officers at Nellis airbase in Nevada. He says that as part of Operation Southern Focus, US and British aerial attacks on Iraq southern and northern no-fly zones laid the foundations for the invasion of Iraq. He explains that during the nine-month period spanning mid-2002 to early 2003 (see June 2002-March 2003), US and British planes flew 21,736 sorties, dropping 606 bombs on 391 carefully selected targets. The pre-invasion bombing campaign made it possible for the official invasion (see March 19, 2003) to begin without a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions. "It provided a set of opportunities and options for General Franks," Mosely says. [New York Times, 7/20/2003; London Times, 6/27/2005; Raw Story, 6/27/2005]
Entity Tags: Michael Moseley
The Bush administration releases a heavily redacted version of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE—see October 1, 2002). Most of the report is whited out, and most of what remains is selected from the key judgments section; those remnants tend to support the Bush administration's position that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and therefore posed a threat to the Middle East and perhaps to the US. The redacted version is released days after Vice President Dick Cheney authorized his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, to leak selected portions of the NIE to reporters (see 7:35 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 10, 2003, (July 11, 2003), July 12, 2003, and July 12, 2003). [National Foreign Intelligence Board, 10/2002 ; National Foreign Intelligence Board, 7/18/2003; National Security Archive, 7/9/2004] Overall Findings - According to the redacted release, the NIE found "that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.… We judge that we are seeing only a portion of Iraq's WMD efforts, owing to Baghdad's vigorous denial and deception efforts. Revelations after the Gulf War starkly demonstrate the extensive efforts undertaken by Iraq to deny information. We lack specific information on many key aspects of Iraq's WMD programs. Since inspections ended in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons; in the view of most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program." Financing through Oil Sales - The NIE maintained that Iraq used illicit oil sales "to finance WMD programs," that it "has largely rebuilt missile and biological weapons facilities damaged during Operation Desert Fox, and has expanded its chemical and biological infrastructure under the cover of civilian production." Seeking Weapons-Grade Uranium for Nuclear Weapons Program - As for nuclear weapons, "[a]lthough we assess that Saddam [Hussein] does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them.… How quickly Iraq will obtain its first nuclear weapon depends on when it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material. If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year. Without such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not be able to make a weapon until 2007 to 2009, owing to inexperience in building and operating centrifuge facilities to produce highly enriched uranium and challenges in procuring the necessary equipment and expertise." The NIE judgments cited the long-discredited claims that Iraq purchased aluminum tubes as part of its nuclear weapons program (see Late September 2002 and March 7, 2003). In toto, the NIE claimed the existence of "compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort for Baghdad's nuclear weapons program." Large, Covert Chemical Weapons Program - It found that Iraq produced between 100 and 500 metric tons "of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin), and VX," all deadly chemical agents, and had succeeded in hiding much of its production facilities "within Iraq's legitimate chemical industry." And Iraq was capable of filling "a limited number of covertly stored Scud" missiles, "possibly a few with extended ranges," with chemical weapons. Significant Biological Weapons Program - The redacted report claimed, "We judge that all key aspects—R&D, production, and weaponization—of Iraq's offensive BW [biological weapons] program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." Iraq had "some lethal and incapacitating BW agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives. Chances are even that smallpox is part of Iraq's offensive BW program. Baghdad probably has developed genetically engineered BW agents. Baghdad has established a large-scale, redundant, and concealed BW agent production capability. Baghdad has mobile facilities for producing bacterial and toxin BW agents; these facilities can evade detection and are highly survivable." Delivery Systems - According to the judgments, Iraq possessed several dozen "Scud-variant" short-range ballistic missiles, and is developing other methods of delivering chemical and biological payloads, including unmanned aerial vehicles "probably intended to deliver biological warfare agent." It claimed, "Baghdad's UAVs could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and if brought close to, or into, the United States, the US homeland." Iraq had attempted to procure commercially available software, including a topographic database, that would allow it to target specific areas within the US, the report said. Not Conducting Terrorist Attacks - The report found that Iraq was not conducting "terrorist attacks with conventional or" chemical or biological weapons against the US for fear it would trigger American reprisals. However, the report claimed that Iraq "probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the US homeland if Baghdad feared an attack that threatened the survival of the regime were imminent or unavoidable, or possibly for revenge. Such attacks—more likely with biological than chemical agents—probably would be carried out by Special Forces or intelligence operatives." More likely were covert attacks by Iraqi intelligence agents against "US and allied interests in the Middle East in the event the United States takes action against Iraq. The US probably would be the primary means by which Iraq would attempt to conduct any CBW attacks on the US homeland, although we have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against US territory." In such a case, Iraq might have allied itself with al-Qaeda to conduct more widespread attacks against American targets within the US itself and/or overseas. Dissent in a Box - In a small boxed area at the bottom of the redacted report is a summary of some of the dissents filed by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). Called "State/INR Alternative View of Iraq's Nuclear Program," the dissents actually reiterate much of the conclusions in the main body of the report, but with the INR backing away from claiming Iraq's "integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons." Neither is the INR sure of the findings about the aluminum tubes. [National Foreign Intelligence Board, 10/2002 ; National Foreign Intelligence Board, 7/18/2003] White House Briefing - An unnamed "senior administration official" briefs the Washington press corps on the redacted NIE release, walking the reporters through the contents of the report and reiterating Bush administration claims of the imminent danger posed by the Hussein regime, the Iraqi efforts to dodge UN oversight, and the support for the entire NIE throughout the US intelligence community. The official then quotes extensively from the October 2002 speech by President Bush in Cincinnati, where he made a number of specious and belligerent assertions about Iraq (see October 7, 2002). At the end of the briefing, the official concludes that everything Bush has told the public has been sourced from many different intelligence analyses and findings, and every claim Bush and his officials has made has been based in fact. The official blames "changes in style and tone" for the confusion and groundless claims made by Bush and other officials in earlier settings, particularly Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). "And as we've said all along, that information that we know today is different from information we knew then," he says. Questions - The official takes questions from the assembled reporters. The first question of substance concerns the CIA's warnings to remove the Iraq-Niger claims from the Cincinnati speech (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002) before they were included in the State of the Union address. The official explains that the speechwriters merely chose to be less specific in the Cincinnati speech than in the State of the Union address, because at that time the CIA only had "a single source" on which to base the Iraq-Niger assertion. The official denies that the claim was ever "flawed" or erroneous (see July 8, 2003), merely that it lacked adequate sourcing. He also denies that anyone in the White House knew that the Niger documents "proving" the uranium claim were forged until after the address (see March 8, 2003). The official repeatedly notes that the dubious and fallacious claims were "signed off" by the CIA, and by implication the fault of the CIA and not the White House. The official, responding to a question about the fact-finding trip to Niger by Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) and his later repudiation of the Iraq-Niger uranium claims (see July 6, 2003), reiterates that no one at the White House knew of Wilson's findings (see March 5, 2002 and March 8, 2002), and the report actually bolstered the intelligence community's suspicions that Iraq was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger. [White House, 7/18/2003]
Entity Tags: Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Bush administration (43), Joseph C. Wilson, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Dennis Hastert. [Source: Cleveland Leader]Congressional Republicans join in the White House attempt to recover its credibility on the Iraq-Niger uranium affair (see February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003) by attacking critics. Days earlier, President Bush met with House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). Hastert said that Bush needed a stronger defense against criticism, and both men told Bush they and other Congressional leaders were ready to help. Hastert now says that Bush's critics "want to be president" and are out "to hurt the credibility of the president, to throw mud and see what sticks." Frist cites the "relative silence in the press about the conditions on the ground" in Iraq "in terms of progress, in terms of improvement." [Associated Press, 7/22/2003]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Bill Frist, Dennis Hastert, Bush administration (43)
As decided the night before (see July 21, 2003), Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House communications director Dan Bartlett hold a press conference in which Hadley admits to having forgotten about CIA Director George Tenet's October warning that the Iraq-Niger claim was not solid. Hadley admits that President Bush should never have made the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger; he takes responsibility for its inclusion in the president's State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). His admission and apology follow closely on the heels of Tenet's acceptance of responsibility for the "error" (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Hadley admits that he received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from Tenet in October 2002 that questioned the Iraq-Niger allegations and warned that they should not be made public. The allegations were excised from Bush's speech in Cincinnati (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). Hadley says he should have made sure those same allegations were not in Bush's State of the Union speech: they "should have been taken out of the State of the Union.… There were a number of people who could have raised a hand" to have the passage removed from the draft of Bush's speech. "And no one raised a hand.… The high standards the president set were not met." (In reality, author Craig Unger will later write, the White House was reluctant to go back to Tenet because the CIA had already twice rejected the claim. Instead, White House officials had obtained clearance to use the material from a more amenable CIA subordinate—see January 26 or 27, 2003.) Hadley says he has apologized to Bush for the "error." Bartlett says, "The process failed." He adds that Bush retains "full confidence in his national security adviser [Condoleezza Rice], his deputy national security adviser [Hadley], and the director of central intelligence [Tenet]." Hadley says he had forgotten about the October CIA memos until they were discovered a few days ago by White House speechwriter Michael Gerson. [Associated Press, 7/22/2003; White House, 7/22/2003; New York Times, 7/23/2003; Raw Story, 11/16/2005; Unger, 2007, pp. 273; Truthout (.org), 1/23/2007; McClellan, 2008, pp. 178] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later take some responsibility for the lapse, saying, "The fact is that given the October 5 and 6 memorandum [from Tenet], and my telephone conversation with the DCI Tenet at roughly the same time, I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue." The press briefing, McClellan will write, "accomplish[es] our goal of putting the 16-word controversy behind us." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 178]
Entity Tags: Craig Unger, George W. Bush, Dan Bartlett, Scott McClellan, Bush administration (43), Michael Gerson, Stephen J. Hadley
Hama Hamadou. [Source: Sangonet (.com)]The prime minister of Niger, Hama Hamadou (whose name is sometimes spelled Amadou), denies that Iraq ever attempted to buy uranium from his country (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, and March 7, 2003), and challenges British Prime Minister Tony Blair to produce the evidence that he says proves the claim. Hamadou says Niger is an ally of Britain and the US, since it sent 500 troops to fight against Saddam Hussein in the 1991 Gulf War. "Is this how Britain and America treat their allies?" he asks. "If Britain has evidence to support its claim then it has only to produce it for everybody to see. Our conscience is clear. We are innocent." The US has admitted that its claims that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger was based on forged documents (see March 8, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), but Britain continues to insist that it has intelligence from "independent sources" that proves the claim. Britain has not shared this intelligence with anyone. Hamadou denies that Iraq and Niger ever entered into any negotiations over uranium. "Officials from the two countries have never met to discuss uranium," he says, and continues: "We were the first African country to send soldiers to fight against Saddam after the invasion of Kuwait in 1991. Would we really send material to somebody whom we had fought against and who could could destroy half the world with a nuclear bomb? It is unthinkable." Hamadou says no one from either Britain or the US has formally accused Niger of any involvement in any uranium deals with Iraq. "Everybody knows that the claims are untrue," he says. "We have survived famine in Niger. We can survive this." [Daily Telegraph, 7/27/2003]
Entity Tags: Tony Blair, Hama Hamadou
Condoleezza Rice being interviewed by Gwen Ifill. [Source: PBS]After CIA Director George Tenet admits that President Bush should never have made the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley admits the White House also erred in allowing the claim (see July 22, 2003), Hadley's boss, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, grudgingly admits to her own responsibility in allowing the claim to be made. She tells PBS reporter Gwen Ifill: "What we learned later, and I did not know at the time, and certainly did not know until just before Steve Hadley went out to say what he said last week, was that the director [Tenet] had also sent over to the White House a set of clearance comments that explained why he wanted this out of the speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). I either didn't see the memo, or I don't remember seeing the memo." When Ifill asks if she feels any "personal failure or responsibility" over allowing the false claim, Rice responds: "Well, I certainly feel personal responsibility for this entire episode. The president of the United States has every right to believe that what he is saying in his speeches is of [sic] the highest confidence of his staff." On the same day, Rice continues to insist that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program (see July 30, 2003, July 30, 2003, and July 31, 2003). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 352-353]
Entity Tags: Stephen J. Hadley, Bush administration (43), Condoleezza Rice, Gwen Ifill, George W. Bush, George J. Tenet
A former Bush administration official warns Niger's president to keep quiet about the forged documents alleging Iraq attempted to buy enriched uranium from his country (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), according to a Sunday Telegraph report. Nigerien Prime Minister Hama Hamadou has said that Iraq never attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see July 27, 2003). According to the report, Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa, visits the Nigerien capital of Niamey, and calls on President Mamadou Tandja. Senior Nigerien government officials later say that Cohen makes it clear to Tandja that he needs to stay quiet about the forgeries. "Let's say Mr. Cohen put a friendly arm around the president to say sorry about the forged documents, but then squeezed his shoulder hard enough to convey the message, 'Let's hear no more about this affair from your government,'" one Nigerien official will tell a Telegraph reporter. "Basically he was telling Niger to shut up." It was a Telegraph reporter who interviewed Hamadou earlier in the week. Bush administration officials deny attempting to "gag" Tandja or the Nigerien government. That denial is contradicted by the Nigerien official, who says there was "a clear attempt to stop any more embarrassing stories coming out of Niger" by the Americans. The official says the warning is likely to be heeded: "Mr. Cohen did not spell it out but everybody in Niger knows what the consequences of upsetting America or Britain would be. We are the world's second-poorest country and we depend on international aid to survive." [Sunday Telegraph, 8/8/2003; CounterPunch, 11/9/2005]
Entity Tags: Hama Hamadou, Herman Cohen, Mamadou Tandja, Bush administration (43)
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador to Gabon who has played a key part in discrediting the Bush administration's attempts to claim that Iraq tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from Niger (see July 6, 2003)), is interviewed for the PBS Frontline episode, "Truth, Consequences, and War." The interview will be broadcast in early October 2003. Trip to Niger - Wilson confirms that the CIA sent him to Niger in February 2002 to find evidence either supporting or challenging claims that Iraq tried to purchase weapons-grade uranium from that nation (see Shortly after February 13, 2002 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). Wilson notes that the CIA officials who sent him to Iraq "said that the Office of the Vice President had raised questions about this report, and they'd asked them to look into it" (see (February 13, 2002)), but he personally had no contact with anyone in that office. Reactions to Claims of Iraq-Niger Uranium Deal - Wilson recalls being bemused by President Bush's assertion that Iraq tried to purchase uranium from an African country, but accepted the possibility that he was not referring to Niger, but another African nation that also mines and sells uranium (see January 28-29, 2003). Wilson says the issue became a concern to him when the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents used for the Iraq-Niger claims were obvious forgeries (see March 7, 2003), and the State Department admitted to being gulled by them (see March 8, 2003). He says, "Now, when the State Department spokesman said that, I was moved to say on a news program that I thought that if the US government looked into its files, it would find that it had far more information on this particular subject than the State Department spokesman was letting on" (see March 8, 2003). Wilson calls the decision to allow Bush to make the claim in his State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) irresponsible. "You allow the president of the United States to use information that did not even pass the threshold for an Italian news magazine [Panorama—see October 9, 2002]? You allow him to use that information in the most important speech that he makes in his tenure?" Correcting the Record - Wilson denies that his decision to write an op-ed for the New York Times exposing the falsehood of the White House claims (see July 6, 2003) was political. Instead, he says, it was "a response to what appeared to me to be a series of misstatements on the part of senior administration officials." Wilson notes that the White House had many opportunities to set the record straight without his intervention, but chose not to. He made pleas to the White House through his friends at the State Department and friends of senior administration officials to be honest about the claims (see January 29, 2003 and March 8, 2003). Wilson reiterates his feelings that the Iraq invasion was outside the bounds of the various United Nations resolutions constraining Iraq's behavior, and that Iraq could have been successfully contained by continuing UN efforts to disarm the Iraqi regime. There were no provable links between Iraq and Islamist terrorism, there was no provable imminent threat to the US or the Middle East from Iraq, and allegations that Iraq had committed genocide could have been addressed through the UN's Genocide Convention. Blowing His Wife's CIA Identity - Wilson concludes by addressing the leak of his wife Valerie Plame Wilson's identity as a CIA official (see June 23, 2003, July 7, 2003, 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003, July 8, 2003, 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, Late Afternoon, July 12, 2003, 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003, July 12, 2003, and July 14, 2003), and notes that while he won't confirm that his wife is a CIA official, to publicly expose such an official is a crime under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (see July 16, 2003). It was an attempt to intimidate others, Wilson says: "I think it was a signal to others, that should you decide to come forward, we will do this to your family as well. It was just very sloppy." He adds that if his wife is indeed a CIA official, "if it's a real violation, [it will] cause a lot of pain in our national security apparatus, because at a minimum—the assertions were that she was a CIA operative working in the weapons of mass destruction programs. So if those assertions are true, what this administration has done is they've taken a national security asset involved in a program to which they give high priority, off the table, and to protect whose career? What political objective is so important… that you take a national security asset off—not to shut me up, but to… [shut] others up. That would be the only conclusion I could come to. If you read the story in which this assertion was made, the assertion adds absolutely nothing to the story, nothing. It is not germane, it is not relevant." The interviewer says, "All's fair in love and war," and Wilson responds: "When you're an administration that comes to office on a platform of restoring dignity and honor to the White House, and you act in such a dishonorable and undignified way, then you really do descend to that 'all's fair in love and war' status. I think in that case it's important to point out how duplicitous some in the White House are." [PBS Frontline, 10/9/2003]
Entity Tags: New York Times, Intelligence Identities Protection Act, George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration (43), International Atomic Energy Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Public Broadcasting System, US Department of State, Office of the Vice President, Valerie Plame Wilson
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson pens his second op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News, titled "Seeking Honesty in US Policy." Wilson writes that the Bush administration is dragging the country "down a rabbit hole," a reference to Alice in Wonderland, "all the while trying to convince the American people that life in newly liberated Iraq is not as distorted as it seems." He accuses President Bush and his top officials of attempting to "misrepresent reality—and rewrite history—to mask its mistakes" in Iraq. If the US wants to fight terrorism, as Bush claims, it needs to go elsewhere, Wilson asserts. 'Dangerous, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy' - But, Wilson writes, "[b]y trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden.… And the policy advanced by the speech is a major step toward creating a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground." Powerful Insurgency, Growing Terrorist Presence - Wilson notes that the US is fighting an ever-growing insurgency in Iraq, largely composed of "an angry but not yet defeated Sunni Muslim population who, although a minority in Iraq, had been in power for a century." He notes that the US is "beginning to face terrorists there, but it is our own doing. Our attack on Iraq—and our bungling of the peace—led to the guerrilla insurgency that is drawing jihadists from around the Muslim world. The 'shock and awe' campaign so vividly shown on our television screens (see March 19, 2003) has galvanized historic Arab envy, jealousy, and resentment of the United States into white-hot hatred of America." Redefining Rationale for War - Instead of correcting its mistakes and pursuing terrorists where they actually congregate, Wilson says, "the administration is trying to redefine why we went to Iraq, because we have accomplished so little of what we set out to do—and severely underestimated the commitment it would take to deal with the aftermath of war." No longer does the administration make its claims that Iraq had WMD that pose a threat to the Middle East or even the US itself. Now it claims that we invaded Iraq because it had WMD programs (see July 9, 2003). Wilson writes, "In other words, we're now supposed to believe that we went to war not because Saddam's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction threatened us, but because he had scientists on his payroll." The cost in American lives and tax dollars has been staggering and continues to rise virtually unchecked. Large sections of Iraq are in chaos. Imposed Democracy, Security for Israel - "The truth is, the administration has never leveled with the American people on the war with Iraq," Wilson writes. Powerful members of the administration wanted war no matter what, Wilson writes, because it was always their intention to overthrow Saddam Hussein and impose democracy on Iraq as a first step towards democratizing the entire Middle East. And at worst, some believed that even if the experiment in imposed democracy failed, Israel would be more secure because it would be surrounded by small, less powerful Arab states too busy bickering with one another to form a solid bloc in opposition to it. Playing It Straight - Wilson concludes: "[B]efore we can hope to win back international trust or start down a truly new path in Iraq, the administration has to start playing it straight, with the American people and with the world. Recent administration statements, including the president's speech, suggest that it still prefers to live in a fantasy world." [Mercury News (San Jose), 9/14/2003] Scowcroft Won't Share Op-Ed with White House - Wilson sends the editorial to White House adviser Brent Scowcroft and asks if he will share it with administration officials; Scowcroft laughingly demurs, saying that he is in enough trouble with the administration already (see March 8, 2003). [Wilson, 2004, pp. 375]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Bush administration (43), George W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft, Joseph C. Wilson
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
David Kay quits his job as head of the Iraq Survey Group. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005] He is being replaced by former senior UN weapons inspector Charles Duelfer, who recently said that the chances of Iraq being found to possess chemical or biological weapons is "close to nil." Kay gives no reason for his resignation, but sources in Washington say he is resigning for both personal reasons and because of his disillusionment with the weapons search. Kay says he does not believe Iraq possesses any major stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons, and he does not believe it has had any such weapons since the 1991 Gulf War. "I don't think they existed," he says. "What everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the 90s. I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find." [BBC, 1/24/2004] He adds: "I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s. Somewhere in the mid-1990s, the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated." [New York Times, 1/25/2009] In 2005, Kay will say: "My view was that the best evidence that I had seen was Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out we were all wrong, and that is most disturbing. If the intelligence community had said there were no weapons there, would the policymakers have decided for other reasons, regime change, human rights, whatever, to go to war? All you can say is we'll never know, because in fact the system said, apparently, it's a slam dunk, there are weapons there." [CNN, 8/18/2005] Misled by Internal Duplicity of Iraqi Scientists, Failure of Fundamental Intelligence Gathering and Analysis - Kay says that the CIA and other US intelligence agencies were misled by duplicitous Iraqi scientists, who, in the words of New York Times reporter James Risen, "had presented ambitious but fanciful weapons programs to [Saddam] Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes," and by the agencies' failure to realize that Iraq had essentially abandoned its WMD programs after the 1991 war; what remained of the Gulf War-era WMD stockpiles was destroyed by US and British air strikes in 1998 (see December 16-19, 1998). According to Kay, Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Hussein and present fantastic plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability was quickly turned into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in the arts of lying and surviving in Hussein's autocratic police state. "The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process," Kay says. "The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs." Kay adds that in his view the errors committed by the intelligence agencies were so grave that he recommends those agencies revamp their intelligence collection and analysis efforts. Analysts have come to him, he says, "almost in tears, saying they felt so badly that we weren't finding what they had thought we were going to find—I have had analysts apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did." The biggest problem US agencies had, Kay says, was their near-total lack of human intelligence sources in Iraq since the UN weapons inspectors were withdrawn in 1998. [New York Times, 1/25/2009] 'Rudimentary' Nuclear Weapons Program - Iraq did try to restart its moribund nuclear weapons program in 2000 and 2001, Kay says, but that plan never got beyond the earliest stages. He calls it "rudimentary at best," and says it would have taken years to get underway. "There was a restart of the nuclear program," he notes. "But the surprising thing is that if you compare it to what we now know about Iran and Libya, the Iraqi program was never as advanced." No Evidence of Attempt to Purchase Nigerien Uranium - Kay says that his team found no evidence that Iraq ever tried to obtain enriched uranium from Niger, as has frequently been alleged (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). "We found nothing on Niger," he says. [New York Times, 1/25/2009] Democrats: Proof that Administration 'Exaggerated ... Threat' - Senator John Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says of Kay's resignation: "It increasingly appears that our intelligence was wrong about Iraq's weapons, and the administration compounded that mistake by exaggerating the nuclear threat and Iraq's ties to al-Qaeda. As a result, the United States is paying a very heavy price." Rockefeller's counterpart in the House of Representatives, Jane Harman (D-CA), says Kay's comments indicate a massive intelligence failure and cannot be ignored. [BBC, 1/24/2004] Asked to Delay Resignation until after State of Union Address - In 2005, Kay will reveal that he was asked by CIA Director George Tenet to hold off on his resignation. According to Kay, Tenet told him: "If you resign now, it will appear that we don't know what we're doing. That the wheels are coming off." Kay will say, "I was asked to not go public with my resignation until after the president's State of the Union address which—this is Washington and in general—I've been around long enough so I know in January you don't try to get bad news out before the president gives his State of the Union address." Kay does not say exactly when Tenet asked him to delay his resignation. [CNN, 8/18/2005]
Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Jane Harman, John D. Rockefeller, Charles Duelfer, David Kay, George J. Tenet, Iraq Survey Group, James Risen
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Iraq under US Occupation
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh informs his listeners of a Harris poll showing a majority of those surveyed believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction when the war began over a year before (see March 19, 2003). Limbaugh blames the misconception on the "liberal media," not on the government officials and conservative pundits, including Limbaugh, who pushed the idea of Iraqi WMD on the public before the invasion (see July 30, 2001, Mid-September, 2001, Mid-September-October 2001, October 17, 2001, November 14, 2001, December 20, 2001, 2002, February 11, 2002, Summer 2002, July 30, 2002, August 26, 2002, September 4, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 24, 2002, September 28, 2002, October 7, 2002, December 3, 2002, December 19, 2002, January 2003, January 9, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 17, 2003, March 16-19, 2003, March 23, 2003, May 21, 2003, May 29, 2003, and June 11, 2003), and uses the incident to warn his listeners about getting their news from the "liberal media." [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 151]
Entity Tags: Rush Limbaugh, Saddam Hussein
Pat Roberts during a July 9, 2004 interview on PBS. [Source: PBS]The Senate Intelligence Committee releases the 511-page Senate Report on Iraqi WMD intelligence, formally titled the "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the US Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq." [US Congress, 7/7/2004; CNN, 7/9/2004] All nine Republicans and eight Democrats signed off on the report without dissent, which, as reporter Murray Waas will write, is "a rarity for any such report in Washington, especially during an election year." [National Journal, 10/27/2005] Report Redacted by White House - About 20 percent of the report was redacted by the White House before its release, over the objections of both Republicans and Democrats on the committee. Some of the redactions include caveats and warnings about the reliability of key CIA informants, one code-named "Red River" and another code-named "Curveball" (see Mid- and Late 2001). The source called "Red River" failed polygraph tests given to him by CIA officers to assess his reliability, but portions of the report detailing these and other caveats were redacted at the behest of Bush administration officials. [New York Times, 7/12/2004; New York Times, 7/18/2004] Widespread Failures of US Intelligence - The report identifies multiple, widespread failures by the US intelligence community in its gathering and analysis of intelligence about Iraq WMD, which led to gross misunderstandings and misrepresentations about Iraq's WMD programs to the American public by government officials. Committee chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), who has previously attempted to shift blame for the intelligence misrepresentations away from the Bush administration and onto the CIA (see July 11, 2003 and After), says that intelligence used to support the invasion of Iraq was based on assessments that were "unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence." He continues: "Before the war, the US intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and if left unchecked would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Today we know these assessments were wrong." Senator John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the ranking Democrat on the 18-member panel that created the report, says "bad information" was used to bolster the case for war. "We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now," he says (see October 10, 2002). "Leading up to September 11, our government didn't connect the dots. In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed." Numerous assertions in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE—see October 1, 2002) were "overstated" or "not supported by the raw intelligence reporting," including: Claims that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program; Claims that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; Claims that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle that could be used to deliver chemical and/or biological weapons payloads onto distant targets; The so-called "layering effect," where "assessments were based on previous judgments, without considering the uncertainties of those judgments" (Roberts calls it an "assumption train"); The failure to explain adequately the uncertainties in the October 2002 NIE to White House officials and Congressional lawmakers; Reliance on claims by "Curveball," noting that the use of those claims "demonstrated serious lapses in handling such an important source"; Use of "overstated, misleading, or incorrect" information in helping then-Secretary of State Colin Powell present the administration's case to the United Nations in February 2003 (see February 5, 2003); and The failure of the CIA to share significant intelligence with other agencies. [CNN, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] "One fact is now clear," Roberts says. "Before the war, the US intelligence community told the president as well as the Congress and the public that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. Well, today we know these assessments were wrong." [Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] Rockefeller says the intelligence community failed to "accurately or adequately explain the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate to policymakers." The community's "intelligence failures" will haunt America's national security "for generations to come," he says. "Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower," he says. "We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before." [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] 'Group Think' and 'Corporate Culture' - Roberts says the report finds that the "flawed" information used to send the nation to war was the result of "what we call a collective group think, which led analysts and collectors and managers to presume that Iraq had active and growing WMD programs." He says this "group think caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs." Roberts blames "group think" and a "broken corporate culture and poor management," which "cannot be solved by simply adding funding and also personnel." [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] Lack of Human Intelligence in Iraq - Perhaps the most troubling finding, Roberts says, is the intelligence community's near-total lack of human intelligence in Iraq. "Most alarmingly, after 1998 and the exit of the UN inspectors, the CIA had no human intelligence sources inside Iraq who were collecting against the WMD target," he says. [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] No Connection between Iraq, al-Qaeda - Rockefeller says that the administration's claims of an alliance between Iraq's Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda had no basis in fact: "[N]o evidence existed of Iraq's complicity or assistance in al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks, including 9/11." The report says that intelligence claims of connections between Iraq and some terrorist activities were accurate, though the contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq from the 1990s "did not add up to an established formal relationship." [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004] Divided Opinion on Pressure from Bush Administration - Republicans and Democrats on the committee differ as to whether they believe the CIA and other intelligence agencies groomed or distorted their findings as a result of political pressure from the White House. "The committee found no evidence that the intelligence community's mischaracterization or exaggeration of intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities was the result of politics or pressure," Roberts says. However, Rockefeller notes that the report fails to explain fully the pressures on the intelligence community "when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly. It was clear to all of us in this room who were watching that—and to many others—that they had made up their mind that they were going to go to war." The analysts were subjected to a "cascade of ominous statements," Rockefeller says, that may have pushed them to slant their analyses in the direction the White House indicated it wanted. The report finds that Vice President Dick Cheney and others who repeatedly visited intelligence agencies (see 2002-Early 2003) pressured intelligence analysts or officials to present particular findings or change their views. However, the report notes repeated instances of analysts exaggerating what they knew, and leaving out, glossing over, or omitting dissenting views. According to the report, the intelligence community released a misleading public version of the October 2002 NIE (see October 4, 2002) that eliminated caveats and dissenting opinions, thus misrepresenting "their judgments to the public which did not have access to the classified National Intelligence Estimate containing the more carefully worded assessments." [CNN, 7/9/2004; New York Times, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004] In an interview the evening after the report's release, Rockefeller is asked if the report documents "a failure of a system or is this a failure of a bunch of individuals who just did their jobs poorly?" Rockefeller responds: "This is a failure of a system.… It is not fair to simply dump all of this on the Central Intelligence Agency. The Central Intelligence Agency does not make the decision, and [former Director] George Tenet does not make the decision to go to war. That decision is made at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.… So we went to war under false pretenses, and I think that is a very serious subject for Americans to think about for our future." Asked "if the president had known then what he knows now, he would have still taken us to war?" Rockefeller answers: "I can't answer that question. I just ask—the question I ask is, why isn't he, and maybe he is, why isn't he as angry about his decision, so to speak his vote on this, as I am about mine?" [PBS, 7/9/2004] Supporting the Claim of Iraq's Attempt to Purchase Nigerien Uranium - The report states flatly that senior CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson made the decision to send her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger to investigate false claims that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from that nation (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002). The CIA has demonstrated that Plame Wilson did not make that decision (see February 19, 2002). However, as well as claiming that Plame Wilson sent Wilson to Niger, it claims that Wilson's report, far from disproving the assertion of an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium, actually bolstered that assertion. The report states that the question of Iraq's attempt to buy Nigerien uranium remains "open." It also says Wilson lied to the Washington Post in June 2004 by claiming that the documents used to support the claim were forgeries (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). "Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the report states. Wilson told committee members he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to some reporters (see May 2, 2004). The committee did not examine the documents themselves. [Washington Post, 7/10/2009] The committee made similar claims a year before (see June 11, 2003 and July 11, 2003 and After). Progressive reporter and columnist Joshua Micah Marshall disputes the report's claim that Wilson's trip to Niger actually helped prove the assertion that Iraq tried to buy Nigerien uranium. The intelligence reports making the assertion are "fruits of the same poison tree" that produced so many other false and misleading claims, Marshall writes, and were based on the assumption that the forged documents were genuine. [Joshua Micah Marshall, 7/10/2004] In 2007, Plame Wilson will write, "What was missing from the [committee] report was just as telling as the distortions it contained. The 'Additional Views' section… had concluded" that she was responsible for sending Wilson to Niger. Yet that was contradicted by a senior CIA official over a year before. Plame Wilson will call the "Additional Views" section "a political smear if there ever was one," crammed with "distortions and outright lies. Yet it continues to be cited today by Joe's critics as proof of his lack of credibility." The Wilsons learn months later that committee Democrats decided not to fight against the attacks on Wilson's integrity; according to one of the senior Democratic senators on the panel, there was simply too much "incoming" from the Republicans for them to fight every issue. There were "far too many serious substantial disputes" that needed solving, and the Democrats chose to allow the attacks on Wilson to proceed without comment. [Wilson, 2007, pp. 187-190] Portion of the Report Delayed - Roberts and other Republican majority committee members were successful in blocking Democrats' attempts to complete the second portion of the report, which delineates the Bush administration's use of the intelligence findings. That report will not be released until after the November 2004 presidential election. Rockefeller says he feels "genuine frustration… that virtually everything that has to do with the administration" has been "relegated to phase two" and will be discussed at another time. The second part of the committee's investigation will focus on the "interaction or the pressure or the shaping of intelligence" by the Bush administration, Rockefeller says. "It was clear to all of us that the Bush administration had made up its mind to go to war," he says, and he believes that such a "predetermination" influenced the intelligence community. Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says she hopes a similar House investigation would address some of those issues. However, she notes, she has been stymied by House Republicans in even launching that investigation. "There has not been the cooperation that there apparently has been on the Senate side," she says. She has just now managed to wangle a meeting with House Intelligence Committee chairman Porter Goss (R-FL), who is being touted as the next director of the CIA (see September 24, 2004). Harman says, "I would hope we could address [the issues] factually and on a bipartisan basis, but at the moment I don't have a lot of confidence in it." [CNN, 7/9/2004; Cybercast News Service, 7/9/2004] Roberts's spokeswoman Sarah Little later says that the committee has not yet decided whether the second portion of the report will be fully classified, declassified, or even if it will hold hearings. [National Journal, 10/27/2005] Cheney, Roberts Colluded in Interfering with Report - Over a year later, the media will find that Roberts allowed Cheney and members of his staff to interfere with the committee's investigation and dramatically limit its scope (see October 27, 2005). Rockefeller will say that he made three separate requests for White House documents during the committee's investigation, but never received the documents he asked for. "The fact is," Rockefeller will say, "that throughout the Iraq investigation any line of questioning that brought us too close to the White House was thwarted." Rockefeller's spokesperson, Wendy Morigi, will say that Rockefeller will "sadly come to the conclusion that the Intelligence Committee is not capable of doing the job of investigating the fundamental question as to whether the administration has misused intelligence to go to war." [National Journal, 10/30/2005] Plame Wilson will write: "In the coming months, many reliable sources told us that before the report was issued, there was considerable collusion between the vice president's office and… Roberts on how to craft the report and its content. So much for checks and balances and the separation of powers." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 192]
Entity Tags: Joshua Micah Marshall, Pat Roberts, Murray Waas, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Valerie Plame Wilson, Porter J. Goss, Joseph C. Wilson, Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller, Central Intelligence Agency, House Intelligence Committee, 'Curveball', Jane Harman, Bush administration (43), Al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, Wendy Morigi, Sarah Little, George J. Tenet
Western intelligence officials say that a French intelligence operation to protect Niger's uranium industry and to prevent weapons proliferation is the inadvertent cause of the forged documents alleging a surreptitious attempt by Iraq to procure uranium from Niger. The operation began in 1999, the officials say. In 2000, French intelligence officials received documents from Italian information peddler Rocco Martino, a source they had used before, that indicated Iraq wanted to expand economic "trade" with Niger. The intelligence officials assumed Iraq wanted to trade for uranium, Niger's main export. Alarmed, the French asked Martino to provide more information, which, the Financial Times reports, "led to a flourishing 'market' in documents." The next documents Martino provided to the French were forgeries, later exposed as such by inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (see March 7, 2003). The US, which used the documents to support President Bush's claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger in his 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), later disavowed the claim; the British have yet to do so, insisting that they have other evidence showing the truth behind the allegations. Martino recently confirmed that the documents originated from contacts provided to him by Italian intelligence (see Late July, 2004). A Western intelligence official says: "This issue shows how vulnerable intelligence services and the media are to tricksters like Martino. He responded to a legitimate… demand from the French, who needed the information on Niger. And now he is responding to a new demand in the market, which is being dictated by the political importance this issue has in the US. He is shaping his story to that demand." [Financial Times, 8/2/2004]
Entity Tags: Rocco Martino, Financial Times, International Atomic Energy Agency, George W. Bush
Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, under fire for his 2002 findings that there was no truth to the reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), speaks at several events arranged by his literary agent in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. He and his wife are disappointed that many invitees decline to come based on the recent smear campaign against him—his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, will write in 2007, "[I]t suddenly struck me that we had officially become pariahs"—but some do attend Wilson's short, impassioned presentations. At a book signing at a local library, Wilson asks the attendees if anyone knows who put the infamous "sixteen words" into President Bush's State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). No one raises a hand. He then asks if anyone does not know the name of his wife. Again, no hands. Wilson asks: "What's wrong with this picture? Nobody knows who put a lie in the president's mouth, yet everybody knows the name of a covert CIA officer simply because she is married to a man who had the temerity to challenge the administration." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 196-199]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Joseph C. Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson
According to CounterPunch, the Italian Parliament releases a report on the forged Iraq-Niger uranium documents (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The report names four people as the most likely forgers: neoconservative Michael Ledeen (see April 3, 2005), former CIA agent Duane Clarridge (see Late 1998), Iraqi National Congress (INC) head Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996 and February 2002), and Chalabi's close friend and colleague Francis Brooke, who belongs to the Rendon Group, a public relations group formed by the Pentagon in part to promote Chalabi and the INC (see May 1991 and Mid-December 2003). The report suggests the forgeries may have been planeed at a December 2001 meeting in Rome (see December 9, 2001) that involved Ledeen, head of the Italian intelligence service SISMI Nicolo Pollari (see September 9, 2002), and accused spy Larry Franklin (see December 9, 2001). [CounterPunch, 11/1/2005; CounterPunch, 11/9/2005] When the report is publicized in November 2005, Italian government officials will deny the existence of any such report, a denial bolstered by media reports. Journalist Laura Rozen will write that no such report was ever produced, nor was a parliamentary investigation into the Niger forgeries held by the Italian parliament at the time. "There is no parliamentary report," a spokeswoman for Enzo Bianco, a member of Italy's parliament, will say. Nor is there an unpublished report, the spokeswoman will say. Rozen will write that Bianco's spokeswoman "does not just appear to be engaged in a cover up of a secret report. No one in Italy seriously investigating the Niger forgeries has heard of such a report." The Italian newspaper La Repubblica will also report that no such parliamentary report was ever written. Former CIA officer Vincent Cannistraro, who will say he knew of rumors about such a report at one time, will also say that no such report exists. "There is no published report," he will tell Rozen. "If there is a report, we might expect it would have some analysis and conclusions. There is no report, at least not a published report.… I think this stuff is just getting circulated." [Laura Rozen, 11/3/2005]
Entity Tags: La Repubblica, Enzo Bianco, Duane Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi, Francis Brooke, Italian Parliament, Nicolo Pollari, Iraqi National Congress, Vincent Cannistraro, Laura Rozen, Larry Franklin, Michael Ledeen
According to a United Press International (UPI) report, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has sought and received documentation on the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003) from the Italian government. UPI reports, "Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with [y]ellowcake uranium." (In November, that parliamentary report will be shown not to exist—see July 2005.) According to reporter Jason Leopold, the information about the Iraq-Niger documents being provided to Fitzgerald comes from NATO sources. Leopold's reporting will later be shown to be less than reliable (see June 19, 2006). [Raw Story, 10/24/2005; Global Research, 10/29/2005; CounterPunch, 11/9/2005]
Entity Tags: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United Press International, Jason Leopold
The FBI terminates its two-year investigation into who disseminated the forged documents that alleged Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Italian intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari has confirmed that former Italian intelligence agent Rocco Martino disseminated the documents (see November 3, 2005). FBI chief Robert Mueller has praised Pollari and SISMI's cooperation with the bureau's investigation. In part because of information provided by SISMI to the FBI, the bureau concludes that the forgeries were produced by a person or persons for personal profit, and rules out any possibility that SISMI attempted to influence US policies. The Italian newspaper La Repubblica has published a three-part investigative series claiming Pollari had knowingly provided the US and Great Britain with the forgeries (see October 16, 2001, October 18, 2001, December 9, 2001, and September 9, 2002), perhaps at the behest of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who it says was said to be eager to help President Bush in the search for weapons in Iraq (see (After October 18, 2001)). Berlusconi has denied any involvement. [New York Times, 11/4/2005]
Entity Tags: La Repubblica, Federal Bureau of Investigation, George W. Bush, Silvio Berlusconi, Nicolo Pollari, Rocco Martino, Robert S. Mueller III
Author and Vanity Fair reporter Craig Unger interviews Michael Ledeen regarding the false claims that Iraq attempted to purchase massive amounts of uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). Ledeen, a prominent neoconservative who holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute, is well known to have extensive ties to the Italian intelligence community and for his relationship with discredited Iranian arms merchant Manucher Ghorbanifar (see 1981 and December 9, 2001). Ledeen denies any involvement in promulgating the fraudulent uranium allegations. "I'm tired of being described as someone who likes fascism and is a warmonger," he says. (Ledeen has written books and articles praising Italy's Benito Mussolini, and wrote numerous articles in the run-up to the Iraq invasion calling for the US to forcibly overthrow numerous Middle Eastern governments along with Iraq's—see September 20, 2001, December 7, 2001, and August 6, 2002.) "I think it's obvious I have no clout in the administration. I haven't had a role. I don't have a role." He barely knows White House political adviser Karl Rove, he says, and has "no professional relationship with any agency of the federal government during the Bush administration. That includes the Pentagon." The facts contradict Ledeen's assertions. Since before Bush's inauguration, Rove has invited Ledeen to funnel ideas to the White House (see After November 2000). Former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski says Ledeen "was in and out of [the Pentagon] all the time." Ledeen is very close to David Wurmser, who held key posts in the Pentagon and State Department before becoming the chief Middle East adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney. Ledeen also has close ties to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Of course, none of this proves or disproves his connections, if any, to the Iraq-Niger fabrications. [Unger, 2007, pp. 231]
Entity Tags: Manucher Ghorbanifar, Bush administration (43), American Enterprise Institute, Craig Unger, David Wurmser, Karen Kwiatkowski, Karl C. Rove, Stephen J. Hadley, Michael Ledeen, US Department of Defense, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
A court filing by Lewis Libby's defense team lists the witnesses the lawyers say they intend to put on the stand in their client's defense. The list includes: Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage (see June 13, 2003, After October 28, 2005, and November 14, 2005); Former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, and 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003); Former Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003); Former Secretary of State Colin Powell (see July 16, 2004); White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003); Former CIA Director George Tenet (see June 11 or 12, 2003, July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003); Former US ambassador Joseph Wilson (see July 6, 2003); Former CIA covert operative Valerie Plame Wilson (see July 14, 2003); National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley (see July 21, 2003 and November 14, 2005); CIA briefers Craig Schmall (see 7:00 a.m. June 14, 2003), Peter Clement, and/or Matt Barrett; Former CIA officials Robert Grenier (see 4:30 p.m. June 10, 2003, 2:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, and 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003) and/or John McLaughlin (see June 11 or 12, 2003); Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow (see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003, (July 11, 2003), and Before July 14, 2003); Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington (see July 8, 2003); Former Cheney press secretary Cathie Martin (see 5:27 p.m. June 11, 2003); and Cheney himself (see July 12, 2003 and Late September or Early October, 2003). The defense also: Wants notes from a September 2003 White House briefing where Powell reportedly claimed that many people knew of Plame Wilson's CIA identity before it became public knowledge; Implies that Grossman may not be an unbiased witness; Suspects Fleischer may have already cooperated with the investigation (see June 10, 2004); Intends to argue that Libby had no motive to lie to either the FBI (see October 14, 2003 and November 26, 2003) or the grand jury (see March 5, 2004 and March 24, 2004); and Intends to argue that columnist Robert Novak's primary source for his column exposing Plame Wilson as a CIA official was not Libby, but "a source outside the White House" (see July 8, 2003). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/17/2006 ; Jeralyn Merritt, 3/18/2006] Criminal defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt believes Libby's team may be preparing to lay blame for the Plame Wilson leak on Grossman. She writes that, in her view, "Libby's lawyers are publicly laying out how they intend to impeach him: by claiming he is not to be believed because (either or both) his true loyalty is to Richard Armitage rather than to the truth, or he is a self-aggrandizing government employee who thinks of himself a true patriot whose duty it is to save the integrity of the State Department." [Jeralyn Merritt, 4/4/2006] Libby's lawyers indicate that they will challenge Plame Wilson's significance as a covert CIA official (see Fall 1992 - 1996, April 2001 and After, Before September 16, 2003, October 3, 2003, October 11, 2003, October 22-24, 2003, October 23-24, 2003, and February 13, 2006). "The prosecution has an interest in continuing to overstate the significance of Ms. Wilson's affiliation with the CIA," the court filing states. They also intend to attempt to blame Armitage, Grossman, Grenier, McLaughlin, Schmall, and/or other officials outside the White House proper as the real sources for the Plame Wilson identity leak. [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 3/17/2006 ; Truthout (.org), 3/18/2006]
Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Robert Novak, Robert Grenier, Catherine ("Cathie") Martin, Colin Powell, Ari Fleischer, Central Intelligence Agency, Bush administration (43), Bill Harlow, Richard Armitage, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Stephen J. Hadley, Matt Barrett, George J. Tenet, Peter Clement, Craig Schmall, Jeralyn Merritt, John E. McLaughlin, David S. Addington, Karl C. Rove, Joseph C. Wilson, Marc Grossman, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby
Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi says that the violence in Iraq has reached the point of civil war and that his country is nearing a "point of no return." Allawi, who leads a 25-member coalition of representatives in the Iraqi National Assembly, says: "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day, as an average, 50 to 60 people through the country, if not more." Answering claims that Iraq is not locked in such a conflict, Allawi says, "If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is." General George Casey, commander of US forces in Iraq, contradicts Allawi, claiming, "We're a long way from civil war." Vice President Dick Cheney, part of an administration that is marking the three-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by US and coalition forces (see March 19, 2003) by presenting a unified front, echoes Casey's remarks, and adds that the war must be viewed in a broader context. "It's not just about Iraq, it's not about just today's situation in Iraq," he says. "It's about where we're going to be 10 years from now in the Middle East and whether or not there's going to be hope and the development of the governments that are responsive to the will of the people, that are not a threat to anyone, that are not safe havens for terror or manufacturers of weapons of mass destruction." Cheney blames the news media for the perception that the war is going badly: "I think it has less to do with the statements we've made, which I think were basically accurate and reflect reality, than it does with the fact that there's a constant sort of perception, if you will, that's created because what's newsworthy is the car bomb in Baghdad," he says. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld compares the Iraq war to the two great conflicts of his generation, World War II and the Cold War. "Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis," he writes in an op-ed published by the Washington Post. "It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination." [New York Times, 3/19/2006]
Entity Tags: George Casey, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Iraqi National Assembly, Iyad Allawi
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporter Robert Scheer that neither he nor any of the State Department's top experts believed that Iraq ever posed an imminent nuclear threat, contrary to the statements of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other top White House officials. Powell says that Bush followed the advice of Cheney and the CIA (see October 1, 2002) in making the claim (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) and taking the country to war in Iraq. Scheer asks Powell why, in light of the State Department's own intelligence bureau correctly concluding that the claims that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger were false (see March 1, 2002, March 4, 2002, Mid-October 2002, and January 12, 2003), Bush ignored that information in making his case for war? Powell responds: "The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily (see March 7, 2003) and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote. That was a big mistake. It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need [former ambassador Joseph] Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it" (see January 26, 2003). Powell adds that the responsibility for pressing the argument that Iraq was a nuclear threat was not Bush's; rather, "That was all Cheney." In his article, Scheer asks, "Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistle-blower Wilson, whose credibility the president then sought to destroy?" [Truthdig, 4/11/2006]
Entity Tags: Robert Scheer, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Colin Powell, US Department of State, Joseph C. Wilson, George W. Bush
Lewis Libby's defense team files a response to special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's rejection of its demands for more classified documents (see April 5, 2006). Defense Lawyers Intend to Subpoena Wilson, White House Officials - In the filing, Libby's lawyers indicate that they intend to call for testimony a number of people involved in the Plame Wilson leak, including former ambassador Joseph Wilson (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002 and July 6, 2003), White House political strategist Karl Rove (see July 8, 2003, July 8 or 9, 2003, and 11:00 a.m. July 11, 2003), State Department official Marc Grossman (see June 10, 2003), former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (see July 7, 2003, 8:00 a.m. July 11, 2003, and 1:26 p.m. July 12, 2003), and former CIA Director George Tenet (see June 11 or 12, 2003, July 11, 2003 and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The defense would consider Wilson a "hostile witness" if they indeed subpoena his testimony. Many of these potential witnesses were also disclosed by the Libby team a month earlier (see March 17, 2006). Limiting Document Requests - The defense also agrees to limit its future document requests "to documents that are currently in the actual possession of the OSC [Office of Special Counsel] or which the OSC knows to exist." Libby Claims No Memory of Key Conversation - Libby's lawyers also assert that Libby remembers nothing of conversations he had with Grossman, in which Grossman has testified that he told Libby of Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA status (see May 29, 2003, June 10, 2003, 12:00 p.m. June 11, 2003, and October 17, 2003). [US District Court for the District of Columbia, 4/12/2006 ; Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006] However, sources close to the case say that "a half-dozen witnesses" have testified as to the accuracy of Grossman's claims. A former State Department colleague of Grossman's says: "It's not just Mr. Grossman's word against Mr. Libby's. There were other people present at the meeting at the time when Mr. Grossman provided Mr. Libby with details about Ms. Plame's employment with the agency. There is an abundance of evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has that will prove this." Investigative reporter Jason Leopold observes: "The meeting between Libby and Grossman is a crucial part of the government's case against Libby. It demonstrates that Libby knew about Plame Wilson a month or so before her name was published in a newspaper column and proves that Libby lied to the grand jury when he testified that he found out about Plame Wilson from reporters in July 2003." [Truthout (.org), 4/14/2006]
Entity Tags: Karl C. Rove, Ari Fleischer, Joseph C. Wilson, George J. Tenet, Jason Leopold, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Valerie Plame Wilson, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Marc Grossman
CBS's 60 Minutes airs a half-hour interview with Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba, the first reporter to obtain the now-infamous forged documents that purported to show that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003). The now-defunct 60 Minutes II had planned to show the segment just before the November 2004 elections, but questions from right-wing bloggers and commentators about another 60 Minutes II segment—one that showed President Bush did not fulfill his Texas Air National Guard duties during the Vietnam War—led CBS executives to pull the segment (see Late September 2004). [Newsweek, 9/23/2004; Rich, 2006, pp. 142-143; CBS News, 4/23/2006] CBS News president Andrew Heyward refused to air the story during the last week of September 2004, saying it would be "inappropriate" to air it during the last weeks of the 2004 presidential election campaign. Media observer Mary Jacoby says the CBS report contains little new information, but "is powerfully, coherently, and credibly reported." She calls CBS "cowardly" for not airing the segment when it was originally scheduled. [Salon, 9/29/2004] Author Jane Hamsher, the owner of the progressive blog FireDogLake, writes that the 60 Minutes segment is "a simple, direct narrative that will reach millions of Americans and let them know that they have been duped." The segment does not delve into the outing of CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson, staying strictly with the Iraq-Niger uranium claims, and, she writes, demonstrates that the officially sanctioned "investigations" into the claims were little more than "partisan hatchet jobs." [Jane Hamsher, 4/23/2006]
Entity Tags: Valerie Plame Wilson, Mary Jacoby, George W. Bush, CBS News, Andrew Heyward, Jane Hamsher, Elisabetta Burba
Responding to columnist Robert Novak's disclosure that White House political strategist Karl Rove was one of his sources in the Plame Wilson identity leak (see July 12, 2006), Mary Matalin, the former media adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, launches an attack against the prosecutors investigating the leak on Fox News. Matalin says that neither Lewis Libby, the former White House official charged with perjury and obstruction in the investigation (see October 28, 2005), nor anyone else committed a crime—even going so far as to claim that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald acknowledged that no one committed a crime—and former ambassador Joseph Wilson "flat-out lied" in his July 2003 op-ed debunking the Iraq-Niger uranium claim (see July 6, 2003). Fitzgerald repeatedly asserted the serious nature of Libby's crimes in Libby's indictment, noting that Libby both lied and obstructed justice in his dealings with the FBI and with Fitzgerald's grand jury. Moreover, Matalin's claim that Wilson was "lying" is countered by numerous findings that the Iraq-Niger claims were absolutely false (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, Late September 2001-Early October 2001, October 15, 2001, December 2001, February 5, 2002, February 12, 2002, October 9, 2002, October 15, 2002, January 2003, February 17, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, and 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), including a July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on prewar intelligence (see July 9, 2004). Matalin goes on to say that "everybody in town knew" that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent, an assertion again debunked by Fitzgerald in his indictment. [Media Matters, 7/12/2006]
Entity Tags: Karl C. Rove, Joseph C. Wilson, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Robert Novak, Mary Matalin, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby
A bipartisan Senate report finds that no credible evidence of any links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's government ever existed, despite repeated and insistent claims by the White House and its allies (see Early 1995), March-June 1998, (2:40 p.m.) September 11, 2001, Shortly After September 11, 2001, September 18, 2001, September 19, 2001, September 21, 2001, October 27, 2001, 2002, February 6, 2002, March 22, 2002, July 25, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 15, 2002, September 25, 2002, October 1, 2002, October 2, 2002, October 7, 2002, October 7, 2002, December 2, 2002, Mid-January 2003, January 26, 2003, January 28, 2003, January 28, 2003, February 1, 2003-February 4, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 6, 2003, February 8, 2003, February 9, 2003, February 11 or 12, 2003, February 16, 2003, March 9, 2003, March 17, 2003, March 17-18, 2003, Shortly After April 9, 2003, July 9, 2003, September 7, 2003, September 14, 2003-September 17, 2003, September 28, 2003, December 17, 2003, January 8, 2004, January 9, 2004, Early June 2004, June 14, 2004, June 15, 2004, June 15, 2004, October 4, 2004, May 2005, October 2005, (2006), January 31, 2006, March 29, 2006, and September 10, 2006). Panel Democrats say that the White House knew the intelligence surrounding its claims of such links was flawed and unreliable. Tenet Admitted to Giving in to Pressure - They note that in July former CIA Director George Tenet told the panel that the White House pressured him to support its arguments and that he agreed despite the findings of his own analysts. "Tenet admitted to the Intelligence Committee that the policymakers wanted him to 'say something about not being inconsistent with what the president had said,'" says Intelligence Committee member Carl Levin (D-MI). Such compliance was, in hindsight, "the wrong thing to do," Tenet added, according to Levin. "Well, it was much more than that," Levin says. "It was a shocking abdication of a CIA director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its policy." Tenet also admitted that he erred in issuing a statement after President Bush's October 7, 2002 speech saying that Bush's claims were consistent with CIA findings (see October 7, 2002). Republicans Say Report Just 'Election-Year Politicking' - Republican committee members insist that there is little new information about prewar intelligence or claims about Iraq's links to terrorism. Ranking committee member Pat Roberts (R-KS) accuses Levin and other Democrats of trying to "use the committee… insisting that they were deliberately duped into supporting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime.… That is simply not true, and I believe the American people are smart enough to recognize election-year politicking when they see it." Democrats retort that the report speaks for itself. Impeachment Not Warranted - However, committee Democrats such as John Rockefeller (D-WV) say that the report does not prove any criminal behavior from Bush or his top officials, and say that impeachment of Bush or anyone else is not warranted. Hussein Opposed to US Policies - An FBI summary quoted in the report shows Hussein acknowledging that his government had met with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, but denying any collusion. Hussein said he opposed only US policies, and added that "if he wanted to cooperate with the enemies of the US, he would have allied with North Korea or China," according to the FBI summary. Other Portions of Report - Other sections of the report find that no evidence existed to support claims that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program (see February 7, 2001, February 12, 2001, November 14, 2001, May 2002-September 2002, September 9, 2002, January 9, 2003, March 8, 2003, May 25, 2003, and May 30, 2003), had possessed biological weapons in 2003 (see 2002, 2002-March 2003, Mid-January 2002, March 22, 2002, August 2002, September 2002, September 24, 2002, December 2002, End of December 2002, January 9, 2003, and March 7, 2003), used the Salman Pak facility to train Islamist terrorists (see September 8, 2006), or that Iraqi officials met with 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta in the months before the 9/11 attacks (see September 8-10, 2006). The report also finds that the White House relied heavily on false intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (see After August 2, 1989, (1994), January 1996, November 6-8, 2001, Between February 12, 2002 and March 31, 2002, Between February 12, 2002 and March 31, 2002, Summer 2002, and June 26, 2002). [Senate Intelligence Committee, 9/8/2006 ; Associated Press, 9/9/2006]
Entity Tags: Iraqi National Congress, Bush administration (43), Ahmed Chalabi, Carl Levin, George J. Tenet, Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, Osama bin Laden, Pat Roberts, Senate Intelligence Committee, John D. Rockefeller, Mohamed Atta
Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald enters a copy of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's July 13, 2003 op-ed, "National House of Waffles," into evidence in the Lewis Libby trial. The copy is heavily marked with notes from Libby. Fitzgerald blacked out most of the column, not because of security concerns, but to focus the jury's attention on the section at the bottom. He directs the jury's attention to the section that reads: "When the president attributed the information about Iraq trying to get Niger yellowcake to British intelligence (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003), it was a Clintonian bit of flim-flam. Americans did not know what top Bush officials knew: that this 'evidence' could not be attributed to American intelligence because the CIA had already debunked it. [Condoleezza] Rice did not throw out the line, even though the CIA had warned her office that it was sketchy. Clearly, a higher power wanted it in. And that had to be Dick Cheney's office. Joseph Wilson, former US ambassador to Gabon, said he was asked to go to Niger to answer some questions from the vice president's office about that episode and reported back that it was highly doubtful" (see July 6, 2003). Libby's notes read in part, "not us" and "not to us" in response to Dowd's suggestions that the CIA had debunked the evidence pointing to an Iraqi attempt to obtain Nigerien uranium. [National Public Radio, 3/7/2007; Office of the Special Prosecutor, 5/2007 ]
Entity Tags: Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Central Intelligence Agency, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Maureen Dowd
Admiral William Fallon. [Source: US Navy]Admiral William Fallon, named to replace General John Abizaid as head of the US Central Command (Centcom) for the Middle East and Southwest Asia (see March 16, 2007), reportedly privately opposes the proposed addition of a third US aircraft carrier group in the Persian Gulf, and vows that there will be no war against Iran as long as he is chief of Centcom. Fallon's opposition to a military strike against Iran results in a shift in the Bush administration away from its aggressive, threatening posture towards Iran, and instead moves the administration's rhetoric incrementally towards diplomatic engagement with that nation. Historian and author Gareth Porter writes, "That shift, for which no credible explanation has been offered by administration officials, suggests that Fallon's resistance to a crucial deployment was a major factor in the intra-administration struggle over policy toward Iran." Fallon's resistance to further naval buildups in the Gulf apparently surprises Bush officials; in January, Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly suggested that Fallon's appointment gives greater emphasis on the military option for Iran. Gates said in January, "As you look at the range of options available to the United States, the use of naval and air power, potentially, it made sense to me for all those reasons for Fallon to have the job." A third carrier group deployment would have pushed the US naval presence in the region to the same level as it was during the last months of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Apparently, the deployment of a third carrier group was envisioned as a means of pressuring the Iranian government, in a plan to engage in a series of operations that would appear to Tehran to be war preparations much like those that presaged the invasion of Iraq (see March 19, 2003). But Fallon's opposition scotched those plans. Fallon recently told an informed source that an attack on Iran "will not happen on my watch.… You know what choices I have. I'm a professional." And Fallon indicated he is not alone: "There are several of us trying to put the crazies back in the box." Fallon's position weakens the belligerent posture adopted by Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides, and strengthens that of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is now preparing to make high-level diplomatic contacts with Iranian officials. [Inter Press Service, 5/15/2007]
Entity Tags: John P. Abizaid, Bush administration (43), Condoleezza Rice, Gareth Porter, Robert M. Gates, US Central Command, William Fallon, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Saddam Hussein
In an interview given during his trip to the Middle East, Vice President Dick Cheney insists that the "surge" (see January 10, 2007) in Iraq is working: "On the security front, I think there's a general consensus that we've made major progress, that the surge has worked. That's been a major success." When asked how his assessment of success jibes with polls that show two-thirds of Americans oppose the war—"Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting," interviewer Martha Raddatz points out—Cheney replies, "So?" Raddatz asks: "So? You don't care what the American people think?" Cheney replies: "No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls." [ABC News, 3/19/2008; New York Times, 3/19/2008] Multiple polls show a relatively steady decrease in public support for the Iraq war, and for the presence of US troops in Iraq, since early highs in March 2003 when the US launched its opening attacks (see March 19, 2003). [Mother Jones, 3/19/2008]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Martha Raddatz
A man thought to be Osama bin Laden releases a new audio message urging Muslims to join the insurgency in Iraq, as this is the "nearest jihad battlefield to support our people in Palestine." The message comes one day after the previous communication thought to be from bin Laden (see March 19, 2008) and just over five years after the invasion of Iraq (see March 19, 2003). According to the person thought to be bin Laden, "Palestine cannot be retaken by negotiations and dialogue, but with fire and iron," and Arab leaders were complicit in Israeli attacks on Gaza. "The people of the blessed land should sense the great favour God has bestowed upon them and do what they should do to support their mujahideen brothers in Iraq," the speaker says. "It is a great opportunity and a major duty for my brothers the Palestinian emigrants [in Arab countries], between whom and jihad on the plains of Jerusalem a barrier has been built." [BBC, 3/20/2008]
Entity Tags: Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
The Senate Armed Services Committee releases a classified 261-page report on the use of "harsh" or "enhanced interrogation techniques"—torture—against suspected terrorists by the US. The conclusion of the report will be released in April 2009 (see April 21, 2009). The report will become known as the "Levin Report" after committee chairman Carl Levin (D-MI). Though the report itself is classified, the committee releases the executive summary to the public. Top Bush Officials Responsible for Torture - One of the report's findings is that top Bush administration officials, and not a "few bad apples," as many of that administration's officials have claimed, are responsible for the use of torture against detainees in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. Began Shortly after 9/11 - The report finds that US officials began preparing to use "enhanced interrogation" techniques just a few months after the 9/11 attacks, and well before Justice Department memos declared such practices legal. The program used techniques practiced in a US military program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE—see December 2001), which trains US military personnel to resist questioning by foes who do not follow international bans on torture. As part of SERE training, soldiers are stripped naked, slapped, and waterboarded, among other techniques. These techniques were "reverse-engineered" and used against prisoners in US custody. Other techniques used against prisoners included "religious disgrace" and "invasion of space by a female." At least one suspected terrorist was forced "to bark and perform dog tricks" while another was "forced to wear a dog collar and perform dog tricks" in a bid to break down their resistance. Tried to 'Prove' Links between Saddam, Al-Qaeda - Some of the torture techniques were used before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq (see March 19, 2003). Much of the torture of prisoners, the report finds, was to elicit information "proving" alleged links between al-Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. US Army psychiatrist Major Paul Burney says of some Guantanamo Bay interrogations: "Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. We were not being successful in establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link… there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." Others did not mention such pressure, according to the report. [Senate Armed Services Committee, 12/11/2008 ; Agence France-Presse, 4/21/2009] (Note: Some press reports identify the quoted psychiatrist as Major Charles Burney.) [McClatchy News, 4/21/2009] A former senior intelligence official later says: "There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used. The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack [after 9/11]. But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq that [former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed] Chalabi (see November 6-8, 2001) and others had told them were there.… There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder." [McClatchy News, 4/21/2009] Warnings of Unreliability from Outset - Almost from the outset of the torture program, military and other experts warned that such techniques were likely to provide "less reliable" intelligence results than traditional, less aggressive approaches. In July 2002, a memo from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JRPA), which oversees the SERE training program, warned that "if an interrogator produces information that resulted from the application of physical and psychological duress, the reliability and accuracy of this information is in doubt. In other words, a subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop" (see July 2002). [Senate Armed Services Committee, 12/11/2008 ; Agence France-Presse, 4/21/2009] Ignoring Military Objections - When Pentagon general counsel William Haynes asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to approve 15 of 18 recommended torture techniques for use at Guantanamo (see December 2, 2002), Haynes indicated that he had discussed the matter with three officials who agreed with him: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and General Richard Myers. Haynes only consulted one legal opinion, which senior military advisers had termed "legally insufficient" and "woefully inadequate." Rumsfeld agreed to recommend the use of the tactics. [Senate Armed Services Committee, 12/11/2008 ]
Entity Tags: William J. Haynes, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Richard B. Myers, Paul Burney, Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, US Department of Justice, Bush administration (43)
Timeline Tags: Torture of US Captives
Investigative journalist Robert Parry speaks at a conference in Heidelberg, Germany concerning the progression of journalism from the 1970s to the present. Parry tells the gathering that American investigative journalism may have hit something of a zenith in the 1970s, with the media exposure of the Pentagon Papers (see March 1971) and the Watergate scandal (see August 8, 1974). "That was a time when US journalism perhaps was at its best, far from perfect, but doing what the Founders had in mind when they afforded special protections to the American press," he says. "In the 1970s, besides the Pentagon Papers and Watergate, there were other important press disclosures, like the My Lai massacre story and the CIA abuses—from Iran to Guatemala, from Cuba to Chile. For people around the world, American journalism was the gold standard. Granted, that was never the full picture. There were shortcomings even in the 1970s. You also could argue that the US news media's performance then was exceptional mostly in contrast to its failures during the Cold War, when reporters tended to be stenographers to power, going along to get along, including early in the Vietnam War." However, those days are long past, Parry notes, and in recent years, American journalism has, he says, gone "terribly wrong." Parry says that the American press was subjected to an orchestrated program of propaganda and manipulation on a par with what the CIA did in many foreign countries: "Think how the CIA would target a country with the goal of shoring up a wealthy oligarchy. The agency might begin by taking over influential media outlets or starting its own. It would identify useful friends and isolate troublesome enemies. It would organize pro-oligarchy political groups. It would finance agit-prop specialists skilled at undermining and discrediting perceived enemies. If the project were successful, you would expect the oligarchy to consolidate its power, to get laws written in its favor. And eventually the winners would take a larger share of the nation's wealth. And what we saw in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States was something like the behavior of an embattled oligarchy. Nixon's embittered allies and the Right behaved as if they were following a CIA script. They built fronts; they took over and opened new media outlets; they spread propaganda; they discredited people who got in the way; ultimately, they consolidated power; they changed laws in their favor; and—over the course of several decades—they made themselves even richer, indeed a lot richer, and that, in turn, has translated into even more power." Building a Base - Right-wing billionaires such as the Koch brothers (see 1979-1980) and Richard Mellon Scaife, along with Nixon-era figures such as former Treasury Secretary William Simon (a Wall Street investment banker who ran the right-wing Olin Foundation) worked to organize conservative foundations; their money went into funding what Parry calls "right-wing media… right-wing think tanks… [and] right-wing attack groups. Some of these attack groups were set up to go after troublesome reporters." Parry finds it ironic, in light of the CIA's interference in the affairs of other nations, that two foreign media moguls, Sun Myung Moon and Rupert Murdoch, were key figures in building and financing this conservative media construct. Some media outlets, such as Fox News (see Summer 1970 and October 7, 1996), were created from scratch, while others, such as the venerable and formerly liberal New Republic, were bought out and taken over by conservatives. When Ronald Reagan ascended to the White House, Parry says, he brought along with him "a gifted team of [public relations] and ad men." Vice President George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, enabled access to that agency's propaganda professionals. And Reagan named William Casey to head the CIA; Casey, a former Nixon administration official, was "obsessed [with] the importance of deception and propaganda," Parry says. "Casey understood that he who controlled the flow of information had a decisive advantage in any conflict." Two-Pronged Attack - Two key sources of information for Washington media insiders were targeted, Parry says: the "fiercely independent" CIA analytical division, whose analyses had so often proven damaging to White House plans when reported, and the "unruly" Washington press corps. Casey targeted the CIA analysts, placing his young assistant, Robert Gates, in charge of the analytical division; Gates's reorganization drove many troublesome analysts into early retirement, to be replaced with more malleable analysts who would echo the White House's hard line against "Soviet expansionism." Another Casey crony, Walter Raymond Jr., worked to corral the Washington press corps from his position on the National Security Council. Raymond headed an interagency task force that ostensibly spread "good news" about American policies in the foreign press, but in reality worked to smear and besmirch American journalists who the White House found troubling. According to Parry, "Secret government documents that later emerged in the Iran-Contra scandal revealed that Raymond's team worked aggressively and systematically to lobby news executives and turn them against their reporters when the reporters dug up information that clashed with Reagan's propaganda, especially in hot spots like Central America." It was easy to discredit female journalists in Central America, Parry says; Raymond's team would spread rumors that they were secretly having sexual liaisons with Communist officials. Other reporters were dismissed as "liberals," a label that many news executives were eager to avoid. Working through the news executives was remarkably successful, Parry says, and it was not long before many Washington reporters were either brought to heel or marginalized. 'Perception Management' - Reagan's team called its domestic propaganda scheme "perception management." Parry says: "The idea was that if you could manage how the American people perceived events abroad, you could not only insure their continued support of the foreign policy, but in making the people more compliant domestically. A frightened population is much easier to control. Thus, if you could manage the information flows inside the government and inside the Washington press corps, you could be more confident that there would be no more Vietnam-style protests. No more Pentagon Papers. No more My Lai massacre disclosures. No more Watergates." The New York Times and Washington Post, the newspapers that had led the surge of investigative reporting in the 1970s, were effectively muzzled during the Reagan era; Parry says that the two papers "became more solicitous to the Establishment than they were committed to the quality journalism that had contributed to the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s." The same happened at the Associated Press (AP), where Parry had attempted, with limited success, to dig into the Reagan administration's Central American policies, policies that would eventually crystallize into the Iran-Contra scandal (see May 5, 1987). Few newspapers followed the lead of AP reporters such as Parry and Brian Barger until late 1986, when the Hasenfus air crash provided a news story that editors could no longer ignore (see October 5, 1986). But, Parry says, by the time of the Iran-Contra hearings, few news providers, including the Associated Press, had the stomach for another scandal that might result in another impeachment, particularly in light of the relentless pressure coming from the Reagan administration and its proxies. By June 1990, Parry says he understood "the concept of 'perception management' had carried the day in Washington, with remarkably little resistance from the Washington press corps.… Washington journalists had reverted to their pre-Vietnam, pre-Watergate inability to penetrate important government secrets in a significant way." The process accelerated after 9/11, Parry says: "[M]any journalists reverted back their earlier roles as stenographers to power. They also became cheerleaders for a misguided war in Iraq. Indeed, you can track the arc of modern American journalism from its apex at the Pentagon Papers and Watergate curving downward to that center point of Iran-Contra before reaching the nadir of Bush's war in Iraq. Journalists found it hard even to challenge Bush when he was telling obvious lies. For instance, in June 2003, as the search for WMD came up empty, Bush began to tell reporters that he had no choice but to invade because Saddam Hussein had refused to let UN inspectors in. Though everyone knew that Hussein had let the inspectors in and that it was Bush who had forced them to leave in March 2003, not a single reporter confronted Bush on this lie, which he repeated again and again right through his exit interviews in 2008" (see November 2002-March 2003, November 25, 2002, December 2, 2002, December 5, 2002, January 9, 2003, March 7, 2003, and March 17, 2003). The Wikileaks Era and the 'Fawning Corporate Media' - Parry says that now, the tough-minded independent media has been all but supplanted by what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the "Fawning Corporate Media." This has increased public distrust of the media, which has led to people seeking alternative investigative and reporting methods. Parry comments that much of the real investigative journalism happening now is the product of non-professionals working outside the traditional media structure, such as Wikileaks (see February 15, 2007, 2008, and April 18, 2009). However, the independent media have not demonstrated they can reach the level of influence of institutions like the Washington Post and the New York Times. "[I]f we were assessing how well the post-Watergate CIA-style covert operation worked," Parry says, "we'd have to conclude that it was remarkably successful. Even after George W. Bush took the United States to war in Iraq under false pretenses and even after he authorized the torture of detainees in the 'war on terror,' no one involved in those decisions has faced any accountability at all. When high-flying Wall Street bankers brought the world's economy to its knees with risky gambles in 2008, Western governments used trillions of dollars in public moneys to bail the bankers out. But not one senior banker faced prosecution.… Another measure of how the post-Watergate counteroffensive succeeded would be to note how very well America's oligarchy had done financially in the past few decades. Not only has political power been concentrated in their hands, but the country's wealth, too.… So, a sad but—I think—fair conclusion would be that at least for the time being, perception management has won out over truth. But the struggle over information and democracy has entered another new and unpredictable phase." [Consortium News, 5/15/2012]
Entity Tags: Fox News, David Koch, Washington Post, William Casey, William Simon, Central Intelligence Agency, Associated Press, The New Republic, Sun Myung Moon, Walter Raymond, Jr, Ronald Reagan, New York Times, George W. Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush, Rupert Murdoch, Robert Parry, Ray McGovern, Robert M. Gates, Olin Foundation, Charles Koch, Richard Mellon Scaife
According to a poll just released by Dartmouth professor Benjamin Valentino, 63 percent of self-identified Republicans still believe that Iraq under Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction when the US invaded in March 2003 (see March 19, 2003). Twenty-seven percent of self-identified independents and 15 percent of self-identified Democrats hold that view. The question was: "Do you believe that the following statement is true or not true? 'Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the United States invaded in 2003.'" Reporter Dan Froomkin, commenting on the poll results, writes: "The Bush administration's insistence that the Iraqi government had weapons of mass destruction and might give them to terrorists was a key selling point in its campaign to take the country to war (see September 30, 2001, 2002-2003, July 30, 2002, August 26, 2002, September 4, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 8, 2002, September 12, 2002, September 12, 2002, October 7, 2002, December 12, 2002, January 2003, January 9, 2003, 9:01 pm January 28, 2003, February 5, 2003, February 8, 2003, March 16-19, 2003, March 21, 2003, March 22, 2003, March 22, 2003, March 23, 2003, March 24, 2003, March 30, 2003, Late March 2003 and After, April 10, 2003, April 20, 2003, Between April 20, 2003 and April 30, 2003, May 28, 2003, May 29, 2003, June 2003, June 1, 2003, June 3, 2003, June 9, 2003, June 11, 2003, July 31, 2003, September 14, 2003, January 22, 2004, and March 24, 2004). It turned out to be untrue.… There is no reality-based argument that Iraq actually had WMD, after extensive searches found none (see 2002-March 2003, 2002, Mid-January 2002, March 22, 2002, May 2002-September 2002, September 2002, Late September 2002, September 24, 2002, September 28, 2002, Before October 7, 2002, December 2002, End of December 2002, December 3, 2002, January 9, 2003, January 28-29, 2003, February 20, 2003, March 7, 2003, March 8, 2003, May 4, 2003, May 25, 2003, May 30, 2003, June 2003, Early June 2003-Mid-June 2003, Between June 3, 2003 and June 17, 2003, Mid-June 2003, Early July 2003, July 11, 2003, July 20, 2003, July 29, 2003, July 30, 2003, August 16, 2003, October 2, 2003, October 2003, November 2, 2003, December 2003, December 2003, December 17, 2003, Mid-January 2004, January 20, 2004, January 23, 2004, January 27, 2004, January 28, 2004, February 8, 2004, and July 9, 2004), but this is hardly the first time many Americans have been certain of something that simply wasn't true" (see May 14, 2003-May 18, 2003). The 65-question poll was conducted by YouGov from April 26 through May 2, 2012, and surveyed 1,056 respondents. It has a margin of error of plus/minus 3.18 percent. [Valentino, 6/20/2012 ; Jim Lobe, 6/20/2012; Huffington Post, 6/21/2012]
Entity Tags: Dan Froomkin, Saddam Hussein, Benjamin Valentino
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