How Could The US Get Iraq’s WMD So Wrong?

There is a well known argument that the United States simply lied about the Iraq threat and its weapons programs to justify the war. The presidential and Senate investigations reject that line of thought and so does Charles Duelfer who was the deputy head of the United Nations inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s and then in charge of the Iraq Survey Group which searched for weapons of mass destruction after the 2003 invasion. In his book Hide And Seek he has an example of how U.S. intelligence made assumptions about Iraq which became the basis for all of its reports and assessments about WMD.

Review Curveball, Spies, Lies, And The Con Man Who Caused A War

Drogin, Bob, Curveball, Spies, Lies, And The Con Man Who Caused A War, New York: Random House, 2007

 

Author Bob Drogin believes that the story of Curveball a defector who claimed that Saddam Hussein had mobile weapons of mass destruction (WMD) labs showed the ultimate failure of U.S. intelligence on Iraq. He writes that American agencies weren’t conned by the Iraqi, but that they conned themselves. They took a single source whose story was never verified and made it the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s argument that Iraq was producing WMD. Curveball, Spies, Lies, And The Con Man Who Caused A War is a striking example of incompetence that helped lead to the invasion of Iraq.

Iraq’s Rejection Of UN Inspectors Led To Mistrust Over WMD And 2003 Invasion

(AP)

In January 2006 the Central Intelligence Agency released a review of how Iraq dealt with the United Nations’ weapons inspections in the 1990s and 2000s. It came to the conclusion that Iraq’s early deception campaign forever shaped how western governments and intelligence agencies perceived Iraq. That meant in 1995 when Iraq tried to come clean about its weapons programs and in the 2000s when it thought it was cooperating with a new inspections regime, it was still thought of as a country that was hiding its weapons of mass destruction.

Revised Review Iraq, In the Eye of the Storm

Revised Review Hiro, Dilip, Iraq, In the Eye of the Storm, New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002

Dilip Hiro was one of the few people consistently covering Iraq from the 1980s-2000s. Iraq In The Eye of the Storm covers the country from the Gulf War right up to before the 2003 invasion. Each chapter has a theme such as life for ordinary Iraqis under sanctions, the Iraqi opposition, the Kurds, the impact of 9/11, etc. The three most interesting parts were on the mid-1990s plots against Saddam, the coup proofing of the regime by Saddam, and the U.N. weapons inspections.

Iraq, One Of The Worst Intelligence Failures In US History

In the run up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq there were a few that questioned U.S. claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. It was only afterward that no WMD was discovered and official inquiries were made that the true extent of this failure was known. American intelligence agencies assumed that Baghdad had restarted its nuclear and WMD programs after U.N. inspectors left in the late 1990s and by the 2000s were looking for reports to confirm their suspicions rather than basing their opinions off of what they collected.

How Iraqi Defector CURVEBALL Became Basis For US Claims That Iraq Had WMD

During the 1990s the U.S. suspected that Iraq had continued with its biological weapons (BW) programs after the Gulf War. In 2000, an Iraqi defector codenamed CURVEBALL told the German intelligence service that Baghdad was still working on its WMD and had built seven mobile labs to produce them. This became the basis for the Americans’ assertion that Iraq not only restarted its program, but that it was larger than before 1991.  

How Suspicious Trucks Led US To Claim Iraq Had Chemical Weapons

In October 2002, the U.S. intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. The NIE was supposed to be the culmination of all of the intelligence the United States had on the subject. The paper assessed that Iraq had chemical weapons, had renewed production of them, and had 100-500 tons of chemical agents. All of the American agencies agreed with this section. The problem was most of that was based upon suspicious trucks at munitions dumps.

How U.S. Intelligence Created An Iraqi Nuclear Threat In 2002

In 2002, the Central Intelligence Agency said that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program. This was a change from its previous opinion that Baghdad had retained elements of its program, but it had not been reactivated. The Agency suffered from poor analysis and exaggeration to make its argument, and in retrospect should have never made those claims.

How A Contested Aluminum Tubes Story Became The Basis For War With Iraq

The Bush administration’s first public relations campaign to lobby for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was centered around the claim that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. This was based upon Baghdad trying to buy 60,000 aluminum tubes in 2001. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq used the tubes to claim that Iraq had renewed its atomic program. The problem was this story was always contested, especially by the Energy Department and nuclear specialists, while just one CIA analyst was able to get this claim propagated by the White House.

How US Intelligence Failed, The Iraq-Niger Uranium Story

Within the U.S. intelligence community that story that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger was never very important. It was a considered a secondary claim to other reports that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. It would later become a huge controversy when it was included in the president’s 2003 State of the Union address, and then Vice President Dick Cheney tried to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson who disputed the story. That embarrassing episode was only the public face of a larger example of the intelligence failure America suffered from in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

BBC VIDEO: The Spies Who Fooled The World

ASPEN INSTITUTE VIDEO: American Wars And Foreign Policy - Iraq

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT VIDEO: John Prados, National Security Archive: Media Countdown To War In Iraq

The CIA’s Shoddy Pre-War Intelligence Reporting: The Case Of Iraq’s Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were found, Washington officials descended into a war of words over who was responsible for one of the greatest intelligence failures in American history. This largely consisted of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House trading barbs about which side pushed the charges about Iraq’s weapons programs harder. The intelligence agency appeared to win that battle when many in the press and the public began to claim that the administration had lied about the threat posed by Iraq. This obscured the fact that the Agency was quite willing and able to make alarming claims about Iraq’s weapons programs with very little solid evidence. The case of Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) was a perfect example.

L-29 trainer converted into a drone (CIA)

In September 2002, the Bush White House began using the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in its arguments against Iraq. On September 5, Vice President Dick Cheney and Central Intelligence Director George Tenet briefed four Congressional leaders about Iraq, and mentioned that it had unmanned aircraft that could carry weapons of mass destruction (WMD). That same day, Tenet delivered the same message to the Senate Intelligence Committee, adding that the UAVs could be used against the continental United States. On September 12, the State Department publicly released “A Decade of Deception and Defiance,” detailing Iraq’s WMD programs, which said that Iraq had worked on converting Czech L-29 jet trainers into UAVs that could deliver chemical or biological agents. Four days later, in an article in Time about the threat posed by Iraq the piece mentioned that in 1998 during Operation Desert Fox, Talil Air Base in Dhi Qar province was hit, revealing one of the L-29 UAVs. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld then mentioned UAVs as a WMD delivery system in testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee on September 19. The story of the UAVs gained much more notoriety when in a television speech, President Bush mentioned them in October, and then later in the month at an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati. In December, the State Department issued a fact sheet saying that Baghdad had not included the UAVs in its declaration to the new round of United Nations weapons inspectors that had just begun. That same month, the White House was bandying about ideas to include in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s address to the United Nations when Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby provided a long list of charges to make against Iraq. One of those was the UAV story, including the claim that Iraq had tried to buy mapping software from Australia that included topographical information about the United States. This was the basis for the allegation that the UAVs could be used against the continental U.S. Cheney’s office heard about the UAVs through CIA chief George Tenet. Unbeknownst to the public, when Powell went through the story in January 2003, he found out that the CIA did not even know whether the mapping software had ever been sent to Iraq or whether Iraq’s military was going to use it. That led Powell to drop that specific charge from his speech, but he did use the UAVs. During the presentation Powell showed an image of an Iraqi F-1 Mirage jet fighter drone set to spray WMD. He went on to say that Iraq had plans to turn a MiG-21 into a UAV and put spray tanks on it as well. He claimed that the jet could be used in a terrorist attack. Iraq also told inspectors that they had produced four WMD tanks, but they were unaccounted for. The UAVs were first used in secret briefings to Congress, and then leaked to the press before being employed in public releases, and then in prominent speeches by Powell and President Bush. This showed a common tactic the White House used in its case against Iraq. It would often spread a story to the media and politicians, and then use it more officially until appearing in an important address to the public by a top official. The unmanned aircraft were never a major claim against Saddam Hussein, but they showed the spotty intelligence many of these stories were based upon.

Footage of an F-1 Mirage converted into a UAV shown at Powell's Feb. 02 U.N. speech (Aero News)

U.S. intelligence had been writing about the UAVs since the early 1990s. The CIA first became aware of the vehicles during the Gulf War. The Agency issued one report claiming that Iraq planned on using three MiG-21 UAVs in a WMD attack upon Coalition forces during the Gulf War, but they were shot down. In May 1992, the CIA released a memo, which said that the United Nations weapons inspectors found ten UAVs at Nasir State Establishment for Chemical Industries. The U.N. ended up discovering that Iraq tried to convert both MiG-21s and Mirage F-1s into drones, but failed. What they were successful at was creating drop tanks that could spray WMD from planes. The inspectors destroyed four of these tanks during their work. These findings led to a January 1998 CIA report about the UAVs saying that they were specifically made as part of Iraq’s WMD program. That same report also said that Baghdad had worked on UAVs since the mid-1980s for training, reconnaissance, and decoy missions. The Agency would repeat these claims in two more reports in 1999. On December 17, 1998, the United States and England launched Operation Desert Fox to punish Saddam for refusing to cooperate with the weapons inspectors. During this raid was when Talil Air Base was struck, and a L-29 jet trainer converted into a UAV was discovered. This led to a new set of intelligence reports. In the U.N.s final report on Iraq, it said that Baghdad had built 20 WMD spray tanks that were unaccounted for. In 2000, U.S. intelligence sounded more alarm bells when it noted that the L-29 UAVs were being flown in Samarra, Salahaddin. That led to a July report that claimed the UAVs could deliver biological agents and were a threat to Iraq’s neighbors and American forces in the Gulf. In the summer of 2001, the CIA found out that Iraq had tried to get mapping programs from an Australian firm that included information on the continental United States. That led to the charges that the UAVs could threaten America. This was included in the October 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons programs. The Air Force and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center dissented however, saying that the UAVs were for reconnaissance, and that the mapping software automatically included the United States, so therefore, Iraq was not purposely buying maps of America. It was later discovered that the company offered Iraq the software, and that Iraq did not ask for it. As noted before, the CIA didn’t even know whether the software was ever delivered to Iraq. The Agency’s charge also ignored the fact that the UAVs would have to be delivered to Mexico or Canada or be placed in a ship off the coast to ever reach the U.S. Air Force chief General Robert Boyd would later note that he never believed the drones were a threat to the U.S. homeland, and that they were not for delivering WMD either. Despite these warnings from the branch of the military that should know the most about UAVs, the CIA held onto the claims about Iraq until after the 2003 invasion. That was because the Agency’s analysts believed the worst about Iraq, so any story that accused Saddam of working on weapons programs was prone to be believed. Even when contradictory evidence appeared such as the details about the mapping software, the CIA was reluctant to back off its reports.

The UAV tale finally began to unravel right before the 2003 invasion. In March, the United Nations inspectors found two UAVs in Samarra, Salahaddin along with a spray tank for chemical weapons. The problem was that the tank could not be attached to any of the UAVs. After the U.S. invasion, intelligence discovered that the UAV program was for reconnaissance as the U.S. Air Force had argued the previous year. In February 2004, David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, which was tasked to find Iraq’s weapons programs, testified to Congress saying that the UAVs were for surveillance, not WMD as well. That same month, the CIA first acknowledged differences in opinions about the UAVs when George Tenet gave a speech at Georgetown University stating that Iraq had worked on UAVs, but it was unknown whether they were for delivering WMD or not. In July, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on pre-war intelligence, which found that the UAV story was overstated, U.S. intelligence failed to deal with alternative uses for the aircraft, and that the argument about the mapping software was unsubstantiated. In September, the Iraq Survey Group issued its comprehensive findings, and noted that the UAVs were for reconnaissance, not use with WMD. It took sixteen months after the fall of Baghdad for the UAV story to be finally put to rest. That was true for all of the American WMD claims as not only the CIA, but the White House were reluctant to admit to getting anything wrong about its argument for going to war.

After no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, the CIA seemed to win the public relations battle by placing the blame for that failure upon the White House. The truth is, when it came to WMD, the Agency was ready and willing to provide a plethora of charges against Iraq with very flimsy evidence. Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicles was a glaring, although secondary example. The CIA knew that Iraq had worked on drones and tried to equip them with WMD spray tanks, but what the U.S. ignored was the fact that the weapons inspectors discovered that they failed back in the 1990s. The Agency never acknowledged that. To make matters worse, it took a miniscule piece of evidence, that an Australian company offered mapping software to Baghdad, and used it to claim that the UAVs could be used against the continental United States. How exactly Iraq was going to get them a few hundred miles off the U.S. coast undetected never seemed to be debated. The fact that the CIA didn’t even know whether the topographical program was sold to Iraq didn’t seem to matter either. This tale of foibles continued when the Air Force argued that the UAVs were for reconnaissance and not WMD when debating the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, but failed to win over the CIA. The Agency was so set in its view that Saddam Hussein was committed to developing his WMD programs that it would accept any piece of evidence it came upon, and repeat it in report after report after report. The UAVs were never a main piece of the argument for invading Iraq, but it did show how distorted U.S. intelligence reporting had become. The White House didn’t have to lie about Saddam, because there were plenty of fallacious stories to pick from the CIA.

For more on U.S. intelligence failures before the 2003 invasion see:

How The CIA Ignored Hard Evidence That Iraq No Longer Had Any WMD Programs In 2002 - Part 2

How The CIA Ignored Hard Evidence That Iraq No Longer Had Any WMD Programs In 2002 

The Story Of CURVEBALL and Iraq's Mobile Biological Weapons Labs 

"Fair Game" Movie To Relive Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame Controversy 

2002 CIA White Paper On Iraq Vs The 2002-2003 U.N. Inspectors 

Look Who The Los Angeles Times Dug Up - CURVEBALL 

For more on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction see:

Origins Of Iraq's WMD Programs

SOURCES

Auster, Bruce, Mazzetti, Mark and Pound, Edward, “Truth and Consequences,” U.S. News & World Report, 6/9/03

Battle, Joyce, “The Iraq War – PART I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001, Timeline,” National Security Archive, 9/22/10

Borger, Julian, “White House ‘exaggerating Iraqi threat,’” Guardian, 10/9/02

Cirincione, Joseph, Mathews, Jessica, Perkovich, George with Orton, Alexis, “WMD in Iraq Evidence and Implications,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

Collier, Robert, “Bush’s evidence of threat disputed,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10/12/02

Hanley, Charles, “Powell’s ‘thick file’ looking thin,” Associated Press, 8/9/03

Iraq Survey Group, “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCIA on Iraq’s WMD,” 9/30/04

Jehl, Douglas and Sanger, David, “Powell’s Case, a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of Iraq Arms,” New York Times, 2/1/04

Kemper, Bob, “Experts review, poke holes in case for war,” Chicago Tribune, 8/10/03

McGeary, Johanna, “What Does Saddam Have?” Time, 9/16/02

Mukhopandhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

Powell, Colin, “’A Policy of Evasion and Deception,’” Washington Post, 2/5/03

Prados, John, Hoodwinked, The Documents That Reveal How Bush Sold Us a War, New York, London: New Press, 2004

Rangwala, Glen, “Claims and evaluations of Iraq’s proscribed weapons,” University of Cambridge, 2004

Simpson, Alan, Rangwala, Glen, “The Dishonest Case for War on Iraq,” Labor Against the War,” 9/16/02

Strobel, Warren and Ibarguen, Diego, “Bush Administration Scoffs at Iraq’s Weapons report,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 12/20/02

Strobel, Warren and Landay, Jonathan, “What went wrong with Iraq intelligence?” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 2/6/04

Iraq And 9/11, How The Bush Administration Immediately Focused Upon Saddam After The September Attacks

When President Bush took office in January 2001, Iraq was one of the first foreign policy topics to come to the fore. The President and cabinet all wanted to do something about Iraq, but were deeply divided over what that should be. That led to deadlock in the first nine months of the new Bush term. When the September 11 attacks happened, Iraq again quickly became the focus of the White House. Many officials from Bush on down believed that Saddam Hussein was somehow connected with the terrorists, but had no evidence to supported their claims. While the administration quickly decided to take on Al Qaeda in Afghanistan as the first stage in the war on terror, it also decided that Iraq would be next.

September 11 immediately led to President Bush and the Pentagon to think about Iraq. Right after the attack upon the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the President asked some of his aides whether Iraq was involved since Saddam had supported terrorists. That same idea was prevalent in the Defense Department where Secretary Donald Rumsfeld jotted off a memo saying, “Best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at the same time. Not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]. … Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” Rumsfeld later asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to look into attacking both Al Qaeda and Iraq, and asked Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz for any information on links between the two. Separately Wolfowitz told his deputies that he thought Iraq was involved. Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, and William Luti of the Near East and South Asia division of the Pentagon were in Europe at the time, and both pushed for going after state sponsors of terrorism, with Iraq being the main target. That thought was echoed by Richard Perle, a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, who called one of Bush’s top speechwriters David Frum about it that night. These advisers and others were instrumental in Bush’s televised speech to the nation later that day when he said, “We will make no distinction between terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” Iraq was one of the first foreign policy issues discussed by the Bush administration. In those early conversations, the Pentagon became the major proponent of overthrowing Saddam using America’s military. During other meetings on what the United States’ new anti-terrorism policy should be, the Defense Department staff continually derided the threat of Al Qaeda and stressed Iraq instead. When 9/11 happened, those ideas came to the fore again. Iraq was already on the minds of many in the administration, so it was quick to jump on Saddam Hussein as being a participant in the September attacks. It also allowed those that were already supporters of getting rid of Saddam to push their agenda even further because now both the President and American public were more open to using military force in the world. 

Rumsfeld's 9/11 memo (Washington Monthly)

 The next day there was a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC) to discuss the implications and responses to 9/11. The White House counterterrorism head Richard Clarke and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) said that Al Qaeda was behind the attacks. Wolfowitz disagreed saying that the operation was too sophisticated for a terrorist group to do by itself. He said a country must be behind it, and then began arguing that it had to be Iraq. Rumsfeld talked about how the Pentagon had been discussing plans for Iraq, and that it should therefore be included in the war on terror. He pushed for bombing Iraq as well, arguing there were no good targets in Afghanistan where Al Qaeda was based. Clarke and Secretary of State Colin Powell both pushed back saying that Al Qaeda and Afghanistan should be the target. Bush agreed that Saddam needed to be removed, while the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton said that could only be achieved through an invasion. After the meeting adjourned Clarke thanked Powell for his support, but Powell warned him that the Pentagon was not done pushing Iraq. They were not the only ones however, as the President would later pull Clarke over and ask him to investigate whether Saddam was behind 9/11. Clarke told him that it was Al Qaeda, but Bush insisted that Iraq be looked at. Also that day, Wolfowitz sent former CIA Director James Woolsey to England to investigate Iraq-Al Qaeda connections. He found none. The Deputy Defense Secretary had never seen Osama bin Laden as being a major threat to the United States in meetings before September even though he knew little about terrorism. That was because he was so set on Iraq he blamed Saddam for almost any act of terror. The President as well seemed to be convinced by earlier arguments within the cabinet that Iraq was the real problem, not some non-state actor, and that led him to push Clarke to look into the country’s possible involvement in 9/11. Faced with the greatest attack upon America since Pearl Harbor in 1941, the President and others were falling back upon what they knew, Iraq, rather than what they didn’t, Al Qaeda.

Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz was obsessed with Iraq and would bring it up every chance he could (Wikipedia)

 The focus upon states and Iraq continued on September 13. Wolfowitz gave a press conference repeating the President’s earlier theme that the U.S. would not only go after terrorists, but end their state sponsors. Powell, worried that the Wolfowitz was implying Iraq, said that the Deputy Secretary was speaking for himself, not the administration. That day there was another NSC meeting, where Powell asked for support from the Joint Chiefs chairman General Shelton against Wolfowitz and others who were pushing Iraq. Shelton agreed with Powell that the war on terror should not be expanded to Baghdad. During the meeting, the President asked CIA Director George Tenet whether he was looking into Iraq-Al Qaeda ties. Rumsfeld said that attacking Iraq would deter countries that supported terrorism. Bush then asked the Defense Secretary and General Shelton to come up with new plans and costs for invading Iraq. The next day, the President called England’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, and told him that Iraq was probably involved in the attacks, but Blair was skeptical. Two days after September 11, and there was the first mention of an Iraq invasion by the President. During earlier debates before the attack, the administration had been deadlocked over Iraq with the State and Defense having opposing viewpoints. Powell wanted to continue on with the previous policy of containment, while the Pentagon was pushing for overthrowing Saddam, although it didn’t agree upon how. Now, 9/11 had changed that. The United States had been attacked, and Bush and others were looking for revenge. Since the government was so use to dealing with nation-states Iraq seemed to be a much better target than a terrorist organization like Al Qaeda.

Cheney, Bush, Powell, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz at Campd David summit to discuss what to do about 9/11 (Flickr)

 From September 15 to 16, the White House staff met at Camp David to finally decide on what the response to September 11 should be. Iraq was included in position papers submitted before the summit. One from the Defense Department for example, listed three targets in the war on terror: Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and Iraq. Of those three, Al Qaeda and Iraq were listed as strategic threats. On the first day of the meeting, Rumsfeld asked what the U.S. should do about Saddam. Wolfowitz said that America should strike Iraq because it was the main source of terrorism in the world, and that there was a 10-50% chance that Iraq was behind 9/11. He would later argue that taking on Afghanistan would be too difficult, and that Iraq would be much easier. He then endorsed a plan made by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) that a revolt could be fomented with the Kurds in northern Iraq and the Shiites in the south. Rumsfeld supported Wolfowitz, while he was making these arguments. Vice President Dick Cheney on the other hand, slightly disagreed, saying that Iraq had to be dealt with, but that it would be a distraction now. He said that the United States would lose its standing if it went after Iraq, an idea supported by Powell and General Shelton. Three times, once by White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, once by Vice President Cheney, and by the President himself, Wolfowitz was told to drop Iraq. He didn’t, as he continued to push the issue later in the day, and into the next. On September 16, Bush asked for a show of hands about what to do, and the group agreed that Al Qaeda should be targeted. Bush was quoted as saying, “I believe Iraq was involved, but I’m not going to strike them now. I don’t have the evidence at this point.” With that being done, the President did ask the Pentagon to come up with new military plans for Iraq. Later on September 16, Vice President Cheney made public the administration’s decision. He appeared on Meet The Press where he said that the United States was going to take on Al Qaeda. When asked about Iraq, he said that Saddam was “bottled up.” Rice later claimed that the administration was simply worried that Iraq would take advantage of the September attacks. Powell on the other hand, believed that Wolfowitz was taking advantage of the situation to push his own Iraq agenda. Others like General Shelton and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil tended to agree. The Camp David meeting also marked the first time that the President had made a decision about Iraq. It took 9/11 to make him finally make one as before he let his cabinet dilly dally over the issue. He agreed that Afghanistan would be the first stop on the war on terror, but hinted that Iraq would be next when he ordered new war plans be made.

Wolfowitz was still pushing his point the next day. He wrote a memo to Rumsfeld entitled “Prevent More Events,” which stated that even if there was a 10% chance that Iraq was behind 9/11, something that he believed to be true, the United States should attack it. He went on to write that Saddam had praised September 11, was a long time supporter of terrorism, and was behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The last was a conspiracy theory that he subscribed too put forth by Laurie Myrolie of the American Enterprise Institute. Wolfowitz was writing to the true believers as Rumsfeld had been pushing an attack upon Iraq since the beginning of the year. Bush had joined their camp as well as at an NSC meeting that day, he officially ordered the military to plan for an invasion of Iraq.

On September 18, counterterrorism adviser Clarke finished his report on Iraq and 9/11 that the President had requested, and sent it to Rice for review. The memo, “Survey of Intelligence Information on Any Iraq Involvement in the September 11 Attacks” claimed that Iraq was not connected because bin Laden did not like Saddam Hussein’s government. It also stated that there were no confirmed reports that Iraq was working with Al Qaeda on weapons of mass destruction (WMD). President Bush never saw it, and Rice sent it back to Clarke saying, “Wrong answer … Do it again.” Rice too, seemed to believe that Iraq was behind 9/11, and did not want to hear otherwise. She was therefore not going to distribute Clarke’s paper, and ended up rejecting it.

The President too was looking for evidence against Iraq when he met with CIA Director Tenet on September 19. Bush asked the CIA to look into Iraq-Al Qaeda ties, and said that Vice President Cheney had some information about the matter. Cheney later consulted with Tenet, and told him about a report that claimed the chief 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met in Prague with Iraqi intelligence. Tenet went back to CIA headquarters and ordered an immediate report on the matter. That same day, Cheney was on Meet The Press and said that Iraq was not involved with 9/11. Publicly, the administration did not want people to know that it was focusing upon Iraq instead of Al Qaeda yet. The President however was pushing the matter hard.

That same day, the Defense Policy Board, a consulting group at the Pentagon, held a two-day meeting on the war on terror. Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University and Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) attended. Lewis urged the United States to respond to 9/11 with force, otherwise it would be perceived as weak. Lewis said that the attack could have been worse if Al Qaeda had WMD, an argument that would later be taken up by the administration as a reason to strike Iraq. Lewis then introduced Chalabi as a democratic reformer the White House should stand behind. Chalabi said that Iraq had WMD, and that it should be invaded instead of Afghanistan. He pushed his plan to start an uprising within the country that he claimed would only require some air support and Special Forces from the U.S. to be successful. He stated the result would be a modern, pro-Western, capitalistic Iraq. The second day, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz attended. Board member Richard Perle argued that Saddam should be removed even if he didn’t have ties with Al Qaeda. He and other conservatives would express this view to the President in a letter they sent him. Rumsfeld added that attacking Afghanistan alone wasn’t enough. He wanted the U.S. to do more to deter its enemies. That obviously meant expanding the war on terror to Iraq.

Pres. Bush phoned and later met with British PM Blair immediately after 9/11, each time talking about Iraq. Blair tried to warn the president to stay focused upon Al Qaeda (EPA)

 On September 20, President Bush met with Prime Minister Blair, Powell, Rice, and the British Ambassador to the U.S. Christopher Meyer. Bush said that he wanted to get rid of Saddam. Blair told Bush that they should not lose focus upon Al Qaeda. Bush said that Afghanistan would be first, but that Iraq would come later. England would later be America’s strongest supporter for the invasion of Iraq, but at this early date Blair thought that it was a distraction.

Back at the Pentagon, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith sent a memo to Rumsfeld urging expansion of the war on terror. He wrote that there were no good targets in Afghanistan, and that the war should not be a narrow one limited just to that single country. Feith argued that the U.S. should bomb Iraq, South America, and South Asia, as a way to surprise terrorists. Rumsfeld liked Feith because of his original thinking, but his memo was bordering on the ridiculous. What it did show was that the leadership of the Pentagon was firmly set upon attacking Iraq.

In Virginia, the CIA issued its first report on Iraq and September 11, as per the request of the President. It was presented as part of the President’s daily intelligence briefing. It found that Iraq had not cooperated with Al Qaeda, but the two did have sporadic meeting since the mid-1990s. Iraq might have offered a non-aggression pact and training to keep tabs on the organization’s activities as well. Finally, it stated that there was nothing behind the story that Mohammed Atta had met with Iraqi intelligence. Overall, the two did not trust each other, and had different goals, which precluded them working together. All the way to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq the Agency proved consistent with this first paper. It never claimed there was an Iraqi connection to 9/11 nor to Al Qaeda, although it did think that some meeting occurred and training might have been offered. The Bush administration made such ties a key piece of its argument for war, but that was only partially based upon the official intelligence it was receiving.

For the rest of September, continuing into the following months, the White House moved closer to war with Iraq. On September 23, Rice said that Iraq would be the second stage in the fight against terror. By October, the war in Afghanistan was going well, and Cheney returned to Iraq. The campaign against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, also convinced Rumsfeld that an invasion of Iraq would be quick and easy. That month, the Third Army was told to revise its Iraq Vigilant Guardian plan that included seizing Iraq’s southern oil fields with just 75,000-100,000 troops. At the beginning of November, Rumsfeld asked Douglas Feith to evaluate ways to get rid of Iraq’s WMD. Feith wrote a memo in response, saying that supporting Ahmed Chalabi and the INC’s plans for an uprising, would be the best way to do that. Later in November, Bush asked Rumsfeld about the Iraq war plans. He responded that he didn’t think the existing ones were good enough. He wanted a lighter and smaller force akin to the war in Afghanistan. On November 21, the Pentagon had gone over those plans, which included a 500,000-man invasion force. Rumsfeld objected to using so many troops. Within a week, the Defense Secretary would fly to Tampa, Florida to meet with General Tommy Franks, the head of the Central Command (CENTCOM), which was in charge of the Middle East to discuss Iraq. Rumsfeld talked about the INC’s revolt idea, but his main point was that he believed a traditional attack upon Iraq was outdated. By December, the Bush administration was getting briefings on the progress of the new plans. That was the same month that the United States believed that most of the fighting in Afghanistan was over. The White House quickly moved to Iraq, making it the number one foreign policy issue going into 2002, until it finally invaded in March 2003.

Iraq was on the minds of all the top Bush administration officials from the day it took office in January 2001. For the first nine months, the Defense and State Departments, along with Richard Clarke, went back and forth on the issue of what to do about Saddam Hussein. The debate went nowhere because the President never made a decision about which policy he wanted to follow. When September 11 happened, it convinced Bush that America’s enemies could attack it, and that therefore the country had to be far more aggressive to protect itself. He, along with many on his staff, also believed that states were what mattered, and that they were ultimately behind terrorism, not organizations like Al Qaeda. Since the President and the Defense Department already believed that Iraq was the greatest security risk in the Middle East and was the prime supporter of terrorism in the world, 9/11 made them immediately think of Saddam. At Camp David, the cabinet decided to deal with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan first, but Iraq was going to be next. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Rice were all pushing the matter, and Bush needed little convincing. That’s why within a week of the New York City and Washington D.C. assaults, the President had already ordered the Defense Department to review its invasion plans for Iraq. It was only a matter of time before U.S. was going to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

SOURCES

9/11 Commission, “9/11 Commission Report,” 7/22/04

Battle, Joyce, “The Iraq War – PART I: The U.S. Prepares for Conflict, 2001, Timeline,” National Security Archive, 9/22/10

Benjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steven, The Next Attack; The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right, New York: Times Books, 2005

Berry, Jessica, Sherwell, Philip and Wastell, David, “Alert by Saddam points to Iraq,” Telegraph 9/23/01

Burrough, Bryan, Peretz, Evgenia, Rose, David and Wise, David, “Path To War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004

CBS, “Did Bush Press For Iraq-9/11 Link?” 3/21/04

Clarke, Richard, Against All Enemies, Inside America’s War on Terror, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2004

Coile, Zachary, “Ex-aide’s charges spark blame game on 9/11, Iraq,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3/23/04

Diamond, John, Keen, Judy, Moniz, Dave, Page, Susan and Slavin, Barbara, “Iraq course set from tight White House circle,” USA Today, 9/11/02

Donnelly, John and Bender, Bryan, “U.S. Looks for an Iraqi Role in Attacks,” Boston Globe, 9/20/01

Elliott, Michael and Carney, James, “First Stop, Iraq,” Time, 3/31/03

Gordin, Philip, “The End of the Bush Revolution,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006

Isikioff, Michael and Corn, David, Hubris, The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, New York: Crown Publishers, 2006

Karon, Tony, “Draining Bin Laden’s Swamp,” Time, 9/20/01

- “Iraq: The GOP War With Itself,” Time, 8/21/02

Packer, George, The Assassins’ Gate, America In Iraq, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005

PBS Frontline,"Bush's War - Transcript," Bush's War, 3/24/08
- “In Their Own Words: Who Said What When,” Truth, War and Consequences, 10/9/03

- “Rumsfeld’s War - Transcript,” Rumsfeld's War, 11/10/04

- “The War Behind Closed Doors – Transcript,” War Behind Closed Doors, 2/20/03

Roberts, Joel, “Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11,” CBS News, 9/4/02

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04

Siddique, Haroon, “Chilcot inquiry hears Bush began Iraq war drumbeat three days after 9/11,” Guardian, 11/30/09

Strobel, Warren, “Experts say Iraq, Hussein not likely tied to terrorist attacks,” Knight Ridder, 9/21/01

- “Former CIA Director looks for evidence that Iraq had a role in attacks,” Knight Ridder, 10/11/01

Suskind, Ron, The One Percent Doctrine, Deep Inside America’s Pursuit Of Its Enemies Since 9/11, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Simon & Schuster, 2006

-The Price of Loyalty, London, Sydney: Free Press, 2004

Uhler, Walter, “Foreign policy and its offenders,” San Francisco Chronicle, 4/25/04

How The CIA Ignored Hard Evidence That Iraq No Longer Had Any WMD Programs In 2002

In 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) began a secret program to contact relatives of scientists working on Iraq’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs living in the United States. For years, U.S. intelligence had struggled to get any agents into Iraq, and this was seen as a new way to make contacts within the country. What the Agency was told was that Saddam Hussein no longer had any active weapons program since the 1990s. That didn’t fit the CIA's pre-conceived view of Iraq, so the reports were ignored, and never shared within the Agency or with the rest of the government. Instead, U.S. intelligence stuck with its previous assessment that all of Iraq’s WMD and nuclear operations were up and running, and were even larger than they’d been before. After the 2003 invasion, it turned out that the family members were right, and the Agency was wrong. This successful intelligence operation was a perfect example of how the CIA was convinced that Iraq had WMD, and ignored anything that contradicted that belief.

For decades, the United States had struggled to recruit or infiltrate agents into Iraq. Saddam Hussein had a near totalitarian hold upon the country. He used several methods to achieve this, starting with the Baath Party, which reached down to every community, and the largesse of the state, both of which were used to create patronage systems to maintain both support and tabs on the public. There were also several different intelligence agencies that kept track of different sectors of the country. On top of that, Saddam created a complex network of family and clan members that came from his hometown of Tikrit in Salahaddin province that made up his internal circle. He also carried out constant purges, used a divide and conquer strategy with both his opponents and allies, and increasingly turned to tribal sheikhs for additional support after the Gulf War. Many Iraqis then, were dependent upon the state for support, and fearful of Saddam’s repression, which greatly curtailed the likelihood of anyone cooperating with the United States.

In the 1990s for example, the CIA tried and failed to penetrate Iraq. First, before and after (1) the 1991 Gulf War, President George H. Bush ordered U.S. intelligence to try a coup, but with no success. In 1994, a CIA base was established in Kurdistan to work with the Kurds and Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC). The next year, Chalabi led a failed revolt. The year after that, Saddam launched a campaign in northern Iraq that largely expelled the INC from the region. In 1996, the CIA backed a failed coup that involved Iyad Allawi and his Iraqi National List. (2) From 1997-1998 Jack Downing, the Agency’s Deputy Director of Operations launched a campaign to recruit sources within the country, but with no success. Around the same time, CIA Director George Tenet created a committee that covered the nations considered the biggest threats to the Unites States that were also the hardest to penetrate. That included North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The group went over the lack of resources America had in Iraq, but failed to gain any success. During the decade, Saddam also launched waves of repression, executions, and purges. All together these events made the 1990s a disappointing period for the CIA and U.S., as it failed to establish a foothold in Saddam’s Iraq. The Americans didn’t have much more success in the 2000s before the U.S. invasion either.

When it came to Iraq’s WMD programs, the U.S. became almost completely dependent upon the United Nations inspectors that were in the country from 1991 to 1998. The U.N. team had unprecedented access to Iraq, and went to every major suspected site. Despite Saddam’s best effort to stifle them, they proved to be highly effective, and put an end to his programs by the time they left. The problem for the U.S. was when the inspectors departed, the intelligence agencies had to depend upon satellites and defectors, neither of which proved reliable. In turn, their reporting on Iraq got spottier and spottier, and became largely based upon the assumptions that Saddam must have restarted all of his programs after the U.N. exited. This theory eventually became the conventional wisdom within the Agency, and shaped all of its studies in the 2000s.

Into this information vacuum stepped Charlie Allen. Allen was the CIA’s Assistant Director of Collection. In 1998, he began looking for new ways to collect data on Iraq. Two years later he hatched a scheme to contact family members of scientists working on Iraq’s weapons programs. He got in touch with around 30 of them, and James Risen of the New York Times talked to one, Sawsan Al-Haddad. Haddad was a doctor living in Cleveland, Ohio when in May 2002 a CIA officer contacted her. She was asked to go back to Iraq and talk to her brother, Saad Tawfiq. Tawfiq was a British trained engineer who lived in Baghdad, and worked on the nuclear program. The Agency wanted to know whether Tawfiq would defect, and if not whether he would answer questions about Saddam’s weapons operations. Haddad agreed. She went through weeks of training, going through the things should would ask her brother. In September, she set off to Iraq. When she met her brother, and they initially talked he said that it would be impossible for him to leave the country. Then she started going over the questions the CIA had prepared for him. Tawfiq said that the nuclear program was ended in the 1990s after the Gulf War. He said there was no more funding, no one was working on it, that Iraq lacked the equipment and material to restart it, and that there was no drive to even revive it. Tawfiq also refuted the story that Iraq tried to buy uranium yellow cake from the African country of Niger, which had just been released in the British dossier on Iraq’s WMD. Haddad asked her brother about Khidir Abdul Abbas Hamza, the former Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected in 1994, and then wrote a book in 2000, Saddam’s Bombmaker, claiming that Saddam had restarted his effort to build an atomic bomb. Tawfiq stated that Hamza knew nothing, and was just talking to making money. At the end, Haddad’s brother told her that he hoped his interview would stop the war. Unfortunately, that was not to be.

When Haddad returned to Cleveland and was debriefed, her brother’s testimony was rejected. The CIA officer who originally contacted her told her that the Agency thought her brother was lying. The 29 other scientists in Iraq that were talked to by family members also claimed there were no WMD or nuclear programs in Iraq. The CIA took this information, and did nothing with it. None of it was believed because they thought the scientists were trying to hide Saddam’s weapons. Therefore the reports were not disseminated within the Agency or to any other part of the government. In fact, the Directorate of Operations that was also trying to find spies within Iraq, was mad at Allen, and shut down his program. Instead, the CIA and the rest of the American intelligence community continued on with their claims that Iraq’s nuclear and WMD programs had been restarted, and were larger than before the Gulf War largely based upon assumptions rather than hard evidence. That was the story portrayed in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons program, which was presented to Congress to help convince them for the necessity of war. Tawfiq on the other hand, was hoping that he could change minds in Washington about Iraq, but when he saw Secretary of State Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in February 2003 about Iraq’s weapons programs, he was discouraged.

The CIA leadership in fact, was so wedded to their hypothesis about Iraq’s programs that it went on to ignore other on the ground intelligence before and after the 2003 invasion. In November 2002, international weapons inspectors returned to Iraq. By January 2003, they reported that the nuclear facilities they had visited were basically untouched since the last time they were there in 1998. (3) At the end of the month, and then in February, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the U.N. inspectors issued their official reports to the Security Council saying there was no active weapons programs in the country.  That was dismissed. Then after the 2003 invasion, when no weapons showed up, CIA Director Tenet continued to believe that they were going to be found. The head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, who led the search for Iraq’s WMD and nuclear programs in post-Saddam Iraq, met with Tenet and told him that there was nothing in Iraq just before he resigned in January 2004. Kay claimed the Director still thought the U.S. was going to turn something up. It took around a year after the war had started for Tenet to finally change his mind. That obstinacy in the face of growing evidence even into 2004, showed how reports like those from Tawfiq who was in Iraq, and had worked on the nuclear program, could be dismissed by the Agency. It was so firmly wedded to its ideas about Iraq that anything that did not fit its view was discarded.

Saddam Hussein believed that a nuclear bomb was the path to making Iraq a world power. The 1991 Gulf War, United Nations inspectors, and sanctions put an end to his dreams. Facilities were taken apart, documents were found, and eventually Baghdad decided to shut down its program, and shift its scientists to other work. The United States knew nothing of his because they were largely blind about what was happening within Iraq after the inspectors left in 1998. Attempts to get spies within Iraq failed, but when Charlie Allen contacted 30 scientists from Iraq’s weapons programs, the U.S. finally had hard evidence that there was nothing suspicious going on in Iraq. Rather than analyzing these stories, and using them for further research, they were dismissed because they didn’t fit the Agency’s assumptions. That wasn’t because intelligence was lying about Saddam, but rather it believed all the programs were up and running, and nothing was going to shake them from that image. The CIA and others just could not fathom that Iraq would give up on obtaining nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons given its past history. This was a missed opportunity, and highlighted the huge intelligence failure that the U.S. experienced, which helped lead to the 2003 invasion.

FOOTNOTES

1. Waller, Douglas, “Bush’s Rude Surprise,” Newsweek, 4/22/91

2. Shrader, Katherine Pfleger, “Nominee linked to U.S., CIA by decades of anti-Hussein work,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/29/04

3. Jansen, Michael, “Inspectors states no banned weapons found in Iraq so far,” Irish Times, 1/2/03

SOURCES

Anderson, Jon Lee, “A Man Of The Shadows,” New Yorker, 1/24/05

El Baradei, Mohamed, “The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” IAEA, 2/14/03

Broder, Jonathan, “U.S. policy on Iraqi chaos: Cold, hard – and wistful,” San Francisco Examiner, 3/31/91

Gordon, Michael and Risen, James, “Report’s Findings Undercut U.S. Argument,” New York Times, 1/28/03

Hersh, Seymour, “The Iraq Hawks,” New Yorker, 12/24/01
- “Selective Intelligence,” New Yorker, 5/12/03

Hoffman, David and Balz, Dan, “Bush Plans Effort Aimed at Destabilizing, Toppling Iraqi Leader,” Washington Post, 8/6/90

Iraq Survey Group, “Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCIA on Iraq’s WMD,” 9/30/04

Jansen, Michael, “Inspectors states no banned weapons found in Iraq so far,” Irish Times, 1/2/03

MacLeod, Scott, “Live From Baghdad: What the Iraqis Told Blix,” Time, 11/21/02

Overseas and Defense Secretariat, “Iraq: Options Paper,” 3/8/02

PBS Frontline, “Khidhir Hamza,” Gunning For Saddam, 11/8/01

Priest, Dana and Pincus, Walter, “Bush Certainty On Iraq Arms Went Beyond Analysis’ Views,” Washington Post, 6/7/03

Risen, James, “C.I.A. Held Back Iraqi Arms Data, Officials Say,” New York Times, 7/6/04
- State of War; The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, New York, London, Toronto, Sydney: Free Press, 2006

Risen, James, Sanger, David and Shanker, Thom, “In Sketchy Data, White House Sought Clues to Gauge Threat,” New York Times, 7/20/03

Rose, David, “Iraq’s Arsenal of Terror,” Vanity Fair, May 2002

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04

Shelburne, Elizabeth, “Weapons of Misperception,” Atlantic, 1/13/04

Shrader, Katherine Pfleger, “Nominee linked to U.S., CIA by decades of anti-Hussein work,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/29/04

Tripp, Charles, A History Of Iraq, Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Dehli: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Waller, Douglas, “Bush’s Rude Surprise,” Newsweek, 4/22/91

Whitelaw, Kevin and Mazzetti, Mark, “Why War?” U.S. News & World Report, 10/14/02

“Fair Game” Movie To Relive Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame Controversy

The U.S. and the world are about to relive the Iraq-Niger-Joe Wilson-Valerie Plame affair when the movie “Fair Game” is released in theaters on November 5, 2010. Joe Wilson was a former American diplomat, and his wife Valerie Plame was a CIA analyst. In 2001 it was reported that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger for its nuclear weapons program. In 2002, Wilson went on a trip to Niger for the CIA, and reported that he didn’t believe the story was true. In January 2003 President George Bush claimed that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address, and that began the controversy. Wilson and the White House began a war of words over the Niger story. Wilson ended up exaggerating and embellishing his role in the matter, while the White House tried to discredit him using his wife Plame over an event that proved to be false from the beginning.

In 2001 freelance spy Rocco Martino and Italy’s Italian Military Information and Security Service (SISMI) began disseminating the claim that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from the western African nation of Niger. The two used forged and real documents that they put together in 2000 to make their case, with SISMI even breaking into the Niger embassy in Rome to steal letterhead and seals to make the papers seem more realistic. SISMI and Martino passed the story along to the French, British, and Americans. This created an echo chamber as Britain then forwarded the report to the CIA, and France told England.

Niger is in Western Africa (Luventicus)

In October 2001 the CIA began writing the first reports about Niger. On October 15, the CIA office in the U.S. Embassy in Rome wrote a summary of the SISMI report on Niger, but didn’t put much merit behind it. Three days later, an analyst at the CIA headquarters in Virginia wrote a more detailed report. SISMI claimed that Niger had talked about buying yellowcake since 1999, and that the deal was finalized in 2000 for 500 tons of uranium. There was a document claiming that the Niger president approved the sale, and that in October 2000 Niger’s Foreign Minister told an ambassador in Europe about the deal. The CIA thought the report was limited, lacked confirmation, needed more details, and that Iraq didn’t have the facilities to process uranium if it was true. It wrote a second paper on Niger in February 2002. Both were disseminated to other agencies in the U.S. government with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Energy Department thinking that the story was possible while the State Department’s intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research questioned it.

At the end of 2001 SISMI chief Nicolo Pollari tried to spread the story to receptive American think tanks as well. In December Pollari met with Michael Ledeen, a conservative analyst with ties to the White House about Niger and Iraq. Ledeen then told deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley about the conversation.

On February 12, 2002 the DIA wrote a paper about Niger, which caught the attention of Vice President Dick Cheney. The DIA report repeated the same claims as the previous two CIA ones, saying that Niger had agreed to sell 500 tons of uranium to Baghdad. When Cheney read the report, he asked the CIA for more information. The CIA summed up the SISMI claim, and said that a French consortium controlled Niger’s uranium industry, and they denied any sales to Iraq.

With the Vice President’s interest piqued, the CIA decided to investigate the story more. In February 2002 they decided to send someone to Niger. Valerie Plame a CIA analyst suggested that her husband, former diplomat Joe Wilson go. He had worked for the CIA before, and had been posted to Niger in the past. On February 19 the CIA and State Department met with Wilson to go over the details of his trip. The State Department was still critical of the original claim, and said that the U.S. Embassy in Niger would’ve been able to detect any large sale to Iraq. Others at the meeting questioned what Wilson could find. Despite the differences, Wilson left on February 20.

Former Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the uranium claim in February 2002 (Slate)

On his trip Wilson met with U.S. and Niger officials. First, the U.S. Ambassador to Niger set up a conference with General Carlton Fulford, deputy U.S. commander of American forces in Europe, who had investigated the matter earlier in February already, and concluded that the story was not true. Wilson then talked with former and current Niger politicians and businessmen. The former prime minister told Wilson that in June 1999 a delegation led by Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican Wissam al-Zahawie arrived in Niger. The former premier thought the Iraqis wanted to talk about uranium, but he didn’t discuss the matter because of United Nations sanctions. Other Niger officials such as the former Minister of Energy and Mines said no uranium sales were made to Iraq, and that the industry was regulated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. A French-led consortium also ran the country’s two uranium mines, and would’ve been aware of any sale to Iraq. The U.S. Ambassador didn’t believe any deal had been made either. Wilson left thinking that the yellowcake story was not true.

Iraqi ambassador Wissam al-Zahawie’s trip to Niger in 1999 was of great interest to U.S. and English intelligence (Huffington Post)

On March 5, the CIA and State Department debriefed Wilson after he returned from Africa. Although Wilson didn’t think there was any substance to the claim, analysts were divided over his findings. The CIA believed his story about the 1999 Iraqi delegation to Niger supported the Italian story, while the State Department came away thinking the opposite. Overall, the CIA didn’t feel Wilson’s trip advanced the story much. On March 9 the CIA summed up Wilson’s trip in a memo, but it was not passed along to Vice President Cheney, as the former ambassador would later claim.

Nothing much happened with the story until the second half of 2002. In July the Department of Energy used the Niger story as one of three examples to prove that Iraq had restarted its nuclear program. Energy was the only agency in the U.S. government to give the alleged Niger-Iraq deal such a high profile. No other intelligence service thought it was that important. 

In September the White House picked up on the story and tried to include it in speeches about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. On September 11, the National Security Council (NSC) got the okay from the CIA to use Niger in a speech by President Bush, but it wasn’t used. On September 24 the NSC asked the CIA again about Niger, but decided not to use it a second time.

That same month, the British gave the first public hint of the Niger story. On September 24, it released a White Paper on Iraq entitled “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government.” (1) It said that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa. British Prime Minister Tony Blaire gave a speech on the paper repeating the Africa claim. Before the release of the White Paper, the CIA had warned the British about using Niger. That led to the wording being changed in the dossier, but England’s intelligence service MI6 stood by the report, saying that they had their own sources. In 2004 the Deputy Director of the CIA and the National Intelligence Officer both told the Senate Intelligence Committee that they thought the British had stretched the Africa story in the dossier.

MI6 had always been more receptive to the SISMI story than other intelligence agencies. When France passed along the Niger story to London, MI6 took that as confirmation, even though Paris was using the same faked Italian claim. In the autumn of 2001 Martino went to London and offered up the forgeries to the British as well. MI6 also believed that the 1999 delegation to Niger was about buying uranium. 

The British dossier got Wilson re-involved in the Niger story. Wilson claimed that when he saw the White Paper he called the CIA to urge them to consult with the British, and tell them about his February trip to Niger. The former ambassador also began talking to reporters as an anonymous source about his mission to Africa, and that he believed his findings were passed along to Cheney. Wilson would later tell the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he assumed that the Vice President would get his report, not that he knew that as a fact. Cheney wouldn’t find out who Wilson was until he wrote a piece for the New York Times in July 2003. 

At the beginning of October the Niger story was included in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. The Niger section was based upon the February DIA report, and was not included in the key judgments as only the Energy Department thought it was important. When the NIE was being drafted the State Department was the only agency that objected to the story being used. As a result, State got a sidebar voicing their skepticism.

That same month the White House again tried to include the Niger story in a Bush speech. On October 4, the NSC sent a draft of an address the president was going to give on Iraq in Cincinnati that included Niger. The CIA told them to remove it again. Two days later a revised version was delivered to the Agency that said Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. CIA Director George Tenet told the Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley that the story shouldn’t be used because it was single sourced, the French controlled the Niger mines, Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium, and that overall it was an overblown claim. That was enough to have Niger excised from the speech.

October was also when the SISMI story began to unravel. On October 7, Rocco Martino contacted an Italian reporter for Panorama magazine, Elisabetta Burba, about the Niger papers. Martino wanted $10,000 for them. Burba agreed to pay him only after the documents were verified. She showed them to her editor who suggested she take them to the U.S. embassy in Rome to see whether they were real or not since Washington was talking about Iraq’s weapons programs. October 9 she dropped off the papers at the embassy that then forwarded them to Washington. The State Department intelligence service immediately found problems with the papers, and passed them along to the CIA on October 16, warning them that the documents were questionable. The CIA wasn’t interested in them however, because they didn’t think the Niger story was that important to begin with. It didn’t receive the papers until January 16, and then sent them back to the State Department to be translated. They didn’t return until February. A CIA Africa analyst circulated a memo that the documents were questionable on February 11.

Back in Italy, Burba checked on the papers herself, and thought they were fakes. Later in October she flew to Niger to continue her investigation, and found nothing. Her story on the documents didn’t appear in Panorama until July 2003.

At the end of 2002 United Nations inspectors returned to Iraq. As part of that process, on December 7 Baghdad provided the U.N. with a declaration of its weapons programs. That month, the CIA and State Department both issued reports saying that Iraq failed to include Niger in its declaration. This was the first time that Niger was mentioned in public. Neither the CIA nor State Department believed that it was a major issue still. The State Department even conceded later that the CIA told them not to mention Niger, but the warning came to late to have it removed from the fact sheet. 

That didn’t stop the administration from picking up on the Niger claim and running with it. In January 2003 the White House released a fact sheet, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz gave a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, and Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the World Economic Forum in Switzerland. They all mentioned the fact that Iraq had not included its attempt to buy uranium overseas in its weapons declaration. That culminated with President Bush saying that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa in his January 28 State of the Union speech. One of Rice’s aides had it included in the speech only after a CIA official told him to change the language from Niger to Africa, and accredit it to England. The Agency member still didn’t want the matter included in the State of the Union, but then gave in. CIA Director Tenet didn’t read the draft of the speech, which allowed it to go through. In December 2003 the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board reported that the White House was desperate for new information on Iraq’s nuclear program, so it ignored warnings about the Niger story and pushed for its inclusion in Bush’s speech. 

The publication of the Niger story caught the attention of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). In January 2003 they asked the State Department and England (2) for information about Niger. They then interviewed Wissam al-Zahawie who visited Niger in 1999. He told the inspectors that he was on a trip to four African countries at the time to try to get officials to visit Baghdad, and didn’t even know that Niger produced uranium.

At the beginning of February the CIA turned over the Niger documents that it had received from the Italian journalist Burba to the IAEA. The Americans told them they had questions about the papers themselves. There were obvious problems in them as others had discovered. One letter dated July 2000 signed by the Niger president discussing Iraq buying 500 tones of uranium oxide had the 1965 constitution on it. Niger passed a new constitution in 1999 and the signature was not that of the president. Another letter from 1999 signed by the Niger foreign minister had letterhead belonging to the former military government, and the signature on it was from an official that left office in 1989. These issues and others were quickly identified by the IAEA that told the U.S. and the world that they were forgeries in early March. Shortly afterward the CIA issued a statement saying that they did not disagree with the IAEA’s assessment about the documents, and that their own reporting had always been fragmentary about Niger. The next month the CIA issued a recall notice for the three reports it made on Niger.

In the aftermath of the IAEAs findings Joe Wilson re-entered the scene. In early May 2003 Wilson mentioned his trip to Niger at a conference. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof was present, and got Wilson’s permission to write about it. On May 6 Kristof’s piece was published. He wrote that Vice President Cheney was interested in the Niger story, and asked for an investigation. That led to a former ambassador being sent to Niger to check on it in February 2002. He told the CIA and State Department that there was no basis for the story, and that the supporting documents were forgeries. His report was distributed within the U.S. government and accepted, but the White House kept mentioning Niger. Wilson’s version of events had several major problems. First off, he had no idea what impact his trip had upon American intelligence, let alone the White House. As noted before, the CIA and State Department were split over Wilson’s trip, and Cheney at least never heard about him until 2003. He also never saw the faked Italian documents. Wilson told to the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 that he got mixed up about the papers because of all the press that they were receiving at the time. It seems more likely that he exaggerated and embellished his own story since he brought up the documents over and over with reporters. He would go on to be the source of stories in the Washington Post, the New Republic, and England’s Independent about the forged Niger documents that he had no experience with. He even went as far as to tell the Independent that MI6 must have gotten his report about Niger, implying that they too ignored his findings.

The Kristof column raised the ire of the Vice President’s office. Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby wanted to find out who the unnamed diplomat was in the article. He called the Undersecretary of State for Information, while Cheney’s press secretary called the CIA to find out. They told Cheney’s staff that Wilson was Kristof’s source, and that his wife Valerie Plame worked at the Agency and sent him.

VP Cheney and his Chief of Staff Libby orchestrated a covert media campaign to discredit Wilson after his comments to the press about Niger (New York Times)

Later Cheney told his staff to begin tracking stories about Niger and Wilson. He also came up with a series of points that aides should use with the press to counter Wilson, namely that he only went to Africa because his wife worked at the CIA. The Vice President wanted to not only prove that he was not the one that sent Wilson on his trip, but also hoped to paint Wilson’s trip as a form of nepotism with his wife that would raise questions about his credibility. Libby was then directed to call up journalists to refute the Kristof piece using this argument. Cheney even went as far as getting permission from Bush to leak classified material from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to defend himself from Wilson’s charges. The Vice President was incensed by the claim that he sent Wilson personally to Niger, and that the former ambassador was criticizing the administration over its justification to invade Iraq. Wilson became an obsession, and Cheney was intent on discrediting him through a covert media campaign. 

Cheney’s office for example, would call six different journalists about Wilson. Libby contacted the New York Times’ Judith Miller on three separate occasions, and each time told her the story of Wilson and his CIA wife. One time, Libby and Miller met for lunch, and the Vice President’s Chief of Staff told her that the NIE confirmed the Niger story, and that there was plenty more classified evidence behind it as well, which was not true. (3)

In the meantime the administration had to deal with the IAEA and CIA’s statements about Niger. In June, Rice admitted that the story was false and shouldn’t have been included in Bush’s State of the Union address. The White House also told reporters that there was more than one source on the Niger story, which was why Bush said Africa in the State of the Union. They were referring to the British White Paper. Rice later told This Week With George Stephanapolous that there were reports about Niger outside of even the British, but those didn’t prove to be credible. The administration also tried to place the blame for Bush’s comments on the CIA, saying that they had okayed the speech. That eventually led CIA Director Tenet to take personal responsibility for the matter in early July.

On July 6, Wilson went public with his complaints. He wrote an article of the New York Times entitled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” He claimed that the Niger story was an example of how the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to justify its war with Iraq. He said that in February 2002 the CIA was asked by Cheney to look into the Niger claim. That led the CIA to ask him to go to Niger to investigate, where he found nothing to support it. He then changed his story by saying that he never saw the forged Niger documents, but that the press reported that they had problems. He believed that the issue was over until England released its September 2002 White Paper that claimed Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. That was followed by the December 2002 State Department fact sheet on Iraq’s declaration to weapons inspectors that said Iraq didn’t mention its attempt to obtain uranium, and then Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003. Wilson believed that he had disproved the Niger story, and that his findings must have been ignored by the White House, otherwise they wouldn’t have kept mentioning it after his trip.

The day the article came out Wilson also appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press. (4) He claimed that Cheney’s office must have heard about his trip since the Vice President was the reason why he went to Niger in the first place. He went on to say that the White House must have had other intelligence on the matter or they were distorting the story after he went to Africa.

The White House immediately responded to Wilson’s new charges. It admitted that the administration relied upon bad intelligence when it included Africa in Bush’s State of the Union, but they claimed they had other intelligence on the matter. Behind the scenes though, the White House joined in Cheney’s on-going campaign to attack Wilson by bringing up his wife as the reason why he went to Niger. Both the president’s top political advisor Karl Rove and the White House spokesman Ari Fleischer repeated this line to reporters.

All the talk of the White House, Niger, Wilson, and his wife eventually led to columnist Robert Novak writing about it on July 14. The piece said that Wilson’s wife suggested that he go to Niger, and named her. That was the first time Valerie Plame’s name was printed in public. Democrats, some in the press, and Wilson and Plame claimed that this was part of the administration’s smear campaign against Wilson. It eventually came out that Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was Novak’s source, not someone in the administration who was out to get Wilson. Nonetheless, the CIA was angered that Plame’s name was used in Novak’s article, and got the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the leak.

By July 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq. It concluded that before the forged documents arrived, it was reasonable for U.S. intelligence to believe that Iraq might have been seeking to buy uranium from Africa. It noted that Wilson’s trip did not change analysts’ ideas about the story. In fact, some thought that Wilson confirmed the story because of the 1999 Iraqi delegation, which Niger’s premier thought was about buying yellowcake. It did fault the CIA for not passing along Wilson’s report to Cheney and other top officials in the administration. The intelligence community was also at fault for overstating the Niger story in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimated, and the CIA for not being interested in the forged Italian documents when they arrived in the U.S. That led the Agency to allow the administration to continue to talk about Niger even though they had proof that the story was a fake. In fact, the CIA and DIA did not tell the rest of the government when it discounted the claim.

The British on the other hand, continued to stand by their September 2002 White Paper that said Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa. In July 2003 Prime Minister Blair’s office said that England still stood by its story because it had other intelligence, which it could not share with the U.S. on the matter. A year later in July 2004 the Butler Inquiry repeated the same thing. As stated before, that other information was the 1999 Iraq delegation to Niger, and France, which only passed along the Italian story that was the original basis for MI6’s dossier.

In September 2004 the Iraq Survey Group seemed to finally put the matter to rest. They found that there was no evidence that Iraq tried to buy uranium from abroad. Iraq was offered uranium twice from Africa, and turned it down each time. With regards to Niger, Iraq only had two contacts with it after 1998, and neither was about uranium. The 1999 visit by Iraq’s ambassador to the Vatican Wissam Zahawie was about inviting the Niger president to visit Baghdad to rebuke sanctions, not buying yellowcake.

In October 2005 the investigation into the Plame leak came to fruition when Cheney’s chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted for obstruction of justice, making false statements, and perjury. Lewis’ lawyers presented an implausible defense that he heard Plame’s name first from NBC Meet The Press host Tim Russert. Russert disputed that claim. During the trial, the White House’s covert media campaign to discredit Wilson using his wife was exposed, and Libby was eventually found guilty of four of five counts in March 2007. Special Investigator and prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made it clear in court that he felt that Cheney was the one that should’ve been on trial, and that Lewis was just a fall guy. President Bush would later pardon him.

Cheney’s Chief of Staff Libby was found guilty for his role in the Plame affair, but was then pardoned by Pres. Bush (Esquire)

In the end, the Iraq-Niger-Wilson-Plame affair turned out to be a sordid one. All along the British and Americans were using a fake story made up by Italian intelligence. When the two went public with it, Wilson exaggerated his role in the affair, and embellished his story by initially saying that he disproved the Niger documents, even though he had never seen them. His actions angered the White House, who then decided to get back at him by using his wife. Robert Novak wrote about the feud, and in the process publicized Plame’s name. Wilson and others took this as another form of payback by the administration, but it turned out not to be. Still the ensuing investigation led to Cheney’s Chief of Staff Libby being convicted for his role in the mess. Oddly enough, when the whole Niger story seemed to be put to rest the British still stood by its claims, even though it had been discredited. Through each twist and turn government officials and individuals such as Wilson wanted to use the Niger story for their own political ends. U.S. intelligence never gave it much credence, yet the White House came back to it again and again. Wilson then exploited it to attack Bush’s decision to go to war. The administration then tried to use it against Wilson. Italy’s SISMI seemed to get the last laugh as it caused the entire controversy, and yet was never held accountable. Instead, the whole story got caught up in partisan politics in America with supporters and detractors of the Iraq war trying to spin it for their own cause. The movie “Fair Game” is likely to play right into this history.

FOOTNOTES

1. Mukhopandhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

2. Gardiner, Beth, “Britain stands by claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/13/03

3. Isikoff, Michael and Hosenball, Mark, “Terror Watch: Media Manipulation on Iraq,” Newsweek, 10/21/05

4. Kerr, Jennifer, “Bush aides twisted findings on Iraq, former envoy says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/7/03

SOURCES

Associated Press, “Italy warned uranium dossier on Iraq was fake,” USA Today, 11/3/05

Barstow, David, Broad, William, and Gerth, Jeff, “Skewed Intelligence Data in March to War in Iraq,” New York Times, 10/3/04

Buncombe, Andrew, Phillips, John and Whitaker, Raymond, “The Niger connection,” Independent, 11/6/05

Buncombe, Andrew and Whitaker, Raymond, “Ministers Knew War Papers Were Forged, Says Diplomat,” Independent, 6/29/03

Burrough, Bryan, Peretz, Evgenia, Rose, David and Wise, David, “Path To War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004

Cirincione, Joseph, Mathews, Jessica, Perkovich, George with Orton, Alexis, “WMD in Iraq Evidence and Implications,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

Collier, Robert, “Seeds of leak scandal sown in Italian intelligence agency,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10/30/05

Coughlin, Con, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam,” Telegraph, 12/13/03

Cowell, Alan and Marquis, Christopher, “British report assails intelligence, clears Blair,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/15/04

Duffy, Michael, “Leaking With A Vengeance,” Time, 10/13/03
- “Weapons of Mass Disappearance,” Time, 6/9/03

Eisner, Peter, “How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War,” Washington Post, 4/3/07

Fattah, Hassan, “Saddam’s Niger Point-man Speaks,” Time, 10/1/03

Frank, Mitch, “Anatomy Of A Leak,” Time, 10/13/03

Gardiner, Beth, “Britain stands by claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/13/03

Gordon, Michael and Risen, James, “Report’s Findings Undercut U.S. Argument,” New York Times, 1/28/03

Hamburger, Tom, “French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence,” Los Angeles Times, 12/11/05

Hersh, Seymour, “The Stovepipe,” New Yorker, 10/27/03

Hess, Pamela, “Report raps ex-White House pair on Iraq claims,” Associated Press, 12/18/08

Iraq Survey Group, “Final Report,” 9/30/04

Isikoff, Michael and Hosenball, Mark, “Terror Watch: Media Manipulation on Iraq,” Newsweek, 10/21/05

Kaufmann, Chaim, “Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas,” International Security, Summer 2004

Kerr, Jennifer, “Bush aides twisted findings on Iraq, former envoy says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/7/03

Kristof, Nicholas, “Missing in Action: Truth,” New York Times, 5/6/03

Landay, Jonathan and Strobel, Warren, “Indictment doesn’t clear up mystery at heart of CIA leak probe,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 10/31/05

Leopold, Jason, “State Department Memo: “16 Words” Were False,” Truthout, 4/17/06

Lichtblau, Eric, “2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim,” New York Times, 1/18/06

McAllister, J.F.O., “Blair Indicts Saddam,” Time, 9/24/02

Miller, Greg, “Uranium claim linked to aide at White House,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/18/03

Miller, Greg, Schreck, Adam, “Jurors had a lot of sympathy – but didn’t doubt he was guilty,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3/7/07

Moran, Michael, “Bush team united Iraq front unravels,” MSNBC, 7/11/03

Mukhopandhyay, Dipali, “The Bush Administration on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 2004

NBC News, “Sunday, September 14, 2003 GUEST: Dick Cheney, vice president Tim Russert, moderator,” 9/14/03

Pincus, Walter, “Bush Team Kept Airing Iraq Allegation,” Washington Post, 8/8/03
- “CIA Says It Cabled Key Data to White House,” Washington Post, 6/13/03
- “Intelligence panel sees no intention to lie on Iraq arms,” San Francisco Chronicle, 12/24/03
- “Officials Defend Iraq Intelligence,” Washington Post, 6/9/03

Pincus, Walter and Allen, Mike, “Tenet had kept claim out of earlier Bush speech,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/13/03

Priest, Dana, “Uranium Claim Was Known for Months to Be Weak,” Washington Post, 7/20/03

Priest, Dana and DeYoung, Karen, “CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore,” Washington Post, 3/22/03

Rangwala, Glen, “Claims and evaluations of Iraq’s proscribed weapons,” University of Cambridge, 2004

Robb, Charles Silberman, Laurence, “Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction,” 3/31/05

Rutenberg, Jim, “Trial shows Cheney had free rein in the White House,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2/20/07

San Francisco Chronicle, “CIA Leak Probe Libby Indicted,” 10/29/05

Sandalow, Marc, “In public’s mind, White House is guilty,” San Francisco Chronicle, 3/7/07

Sanger, David, “White House shrinks its Iraqi nuclear claim,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/8/03

Schlesinger, Robert, “CIA director takes blame for false Iraq claim,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/12/03

Schmitt, Richard, “Cheney, Libby led attack, aide says,” San Francisco Chronicle, 1/26/07

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, “Report On the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04

Shear, Michael, “Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq,” Washington Post, 5/28/08

Smith, Chris, “A Spurious ‘Smoking Gun,’” Mother Jones, 3/25/03

Smith, Jeffrey, Leoning, Carol, “Testimony in CIA leak case shows Cheney's hand,” San Francisco Chronicle, 2/5/07

Smith, R. Jeffrey, “Cheney’s Suspected Role in Security Breach Drove Fitzgerald,” Washington Post, 3/7/07

Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, “For Cheney, Political Toll May Follow Libby Verdict,” New York Times, 3/7/07

Strobel, Warren, “Data didn’t back Bush claims on Iraqi weapons, officials say,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 6/6/03

Strobel, Warren and Ibarguen, Diego, “Bush Administration Scoffs at Iraq’s Weapons report,” Knight Ridder Newspapers, 12/20/02

VandeHei, Jim, “Vice president’s office at center of leak probe,” San Francisco Chronicle, 10/18/05

Washington Post, “Bush takes blame for uranium error,” San Francisco Chronicle, 7/31/03

Whitaker, Raymond, “The Niger Timebomb,” Independent, 8/10/03

Wilson, Joseph, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” New York Times, 7/6/03