CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, “We no longer believe there is sufficient” credible information to “conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.” The memo was titled: “In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq’s Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad.” Despite the CIA’s findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless…. The new disclosures raise questions as to why Libby and other Bush administration officials continued their efforts to discredit Wilson — even as they were told that claims about Iraq’s having procured uranium from Niger were most likely a hoax. The answer may lie in part with the already well-known misgivings about the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and other senior Bush administration officials. At one point during that period — the summer of 2003 — Libby confronted a senior intelligence analyst briefing him and the vice president and accused the CIA of willfully misleading him and the administration on Niger. Libby was said to be upset that the CIA, in his view, had routinely minimized the extent to which Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and was now prematurely attempting to distance itself from the Niger allegations…. … In the memo, the CIA analysts wrote: “Since learning that the Iraqi-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 purchased uranium from abroad.”
Of course, Libby’s lack of confidence in CIA weapons assessments is understandable. After all, the CIA was clueless on Saddam’s nuclear program in 1991 — a program that “resembled the Manhattan project” as the Washington Post described at the time of its discovery. The Agency also played a big role in producing the infamous 2002 NIE on Iraq’s wmd programs. And despite the best efforts of many inside the beltway to blame the flawed NIE on White House pressure, two commissions found no evidence to support the allegation. From the Silberman/Robb Commission:
The Commission has found no evidence of “politicization” of the Intelligence Community’s assessments concerning Iraq’s reported WMD programs. No analytical judgments were changed in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion.
And the Senate’s 2004 prewar intelligence report:
The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
So it’s tough to get a good handle on whether the CIA “minimizes” or “maximizes” its threat assessments — at least based on its Iraq performance. Anyway, the Journal piece also notes that by June 2003 the CIA told policymakers that
“[s]ince learning that the Iraqi-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 purchased uranium from abroad.”
This was quite a reversal from its previous reporting. In the run-up to the Iraq War, the CIA had consistently approved the uranium language that was used in the speeches of administration officials. Again, according to the 2004 Senate intelligence report,
The report on the former ambassador’s trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts’ assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq. (p. 73)
The same Senate report also concluded:
Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.(p. 77)
But even if the CIA eventually changed its Niger assessment (though, the full text of June ’03 memo has yet to be made available to the public), the British have stood firm in their intelligence. In fact, the July 2004 Butler report states that the president’s uranium reference in his 2003 State of the Union address was “well-founded” and based on intelligence having nothing to do with the forged documents. The report also makes the distinction between “sought” and “purchased.” Here are the “relevant” bits, on pages 123 and 125:
We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that: ‘The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa’ was well-founded.
And,
From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that: a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible. c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this. d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.
No doubt, the Iraq-Niger matter isn’t going away anytime soon.
