The following is an archived copy of a message sent to a Discussion List run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
Views expressed in this archived message are those of the author, not of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq.
[Main archive index/search] [List information] [Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq Homepage]
Hi all. Re: The Waxman Letters: Building the Case for Impeachment: Best Andreas ------------------------- 1) The latest: "Henry Waxman Asks Condoleezza Rice "Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq" 2a) Summary/Analysis: "The Henry Waxman Letter: Who Knew What, And When?" 2b) Documentation: "Waxman: 'Explain Why You Cited Forged Evidence' [earlier letter]" --------------- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3758.htm Democrat Henry Waxman, Asks Condoleezza Rice "Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq" June 10, 2003 The Honorable Condoleezza Rice Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Dr. Rice: Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying without success to get a direct answer to one simple question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union address? Although you addressed this issue on Sunday on both Meet the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, your comments did nothing to clarify this issue. In fact, your responses contradicted other known facts and raised a host of new questions. During your interviews, you said the Bush Administration welcomes inquiries into this matter. Yesterday, The Washington Post also reported that Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet has agreed to provide "full documentation" of the intelligence information "in regards to Secretary Powell's comments, the president's comments and anybody else's comments." Consistent with these sentiments, I am writing to seek further information about this important matter. Bush Administration Knowledge of Forgeries The forged documents in question describe efforts by Iraq to obtain uranium from an African country, Niger. During your interviews over the weekend, you asserted that no doubts or suspicions about these efforts or the underlying documents were communicated to senior officials in the Bush Administration before the President's State of the Union address. For example, when you were asked about this issue on Meet the Press, you made the following statement: We did not know at the time -- no one knew at the time, in our circles -- maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it was information that was mistaken. Similarly, when you appeared on This Week, you repeated this statement, claiming that you made multiple inquiries of the intelligence agencies regarding the allegation that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. You stated: George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I will tell you that when this issue was raised with the intelligence community... the intelligence community did not know at that time, or at levels that got to us, that this, that there were serious questions about this report. Your claims, however, are directly contradicted by other evidence. Contrary to your assertion, senior Administration officials had serious doubts about the forged evidence well before the President's State of the Union address. For example, Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department, told Newsweek last week that the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had concluded the documents were "garbage." As you surely know, INR is part of what you call "the intelligence community." It is headed by an Assistant Secretary of State, Carl Ford; it reports directly to the Secretary of State; and it was a full participant in the debate over Iraq's nuclear capabilities. According to Newsweek: "When I saw that, it really blew me away," Thielmann told Newsweek. Thielmann knew about the source of the allegation. The CIA had come up with some documents purporting to show Saddam had attempted to buy up to 500 tons of uranium oxide from the African country of Niger. INR had concluded that the purchases were implausible - and made that point clear to Powell's office. As Thielmann read that the president had relied on these documents to report to the nation, he thought, "Not that stupid piece of garbage. My thought was, how did that get into the speech?" Moreover, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has reported that the Vice President's office was aware of the fraudulent nature of the evidence as early as February 2002 - nearly a year before the President gave his State of the Union address. In his column, Mr. Kristof reported: I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged. The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade.... The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted - except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway. "It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said. When you were asked about Mr. Kristof's account, you did not deny his reporting. Instead, you conceded that "the Vice President's office may have asked for that report." It is also clear that CIA officials doubted the evidence. The Washington Post reported on March 22 that CIA officials "communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence." The Los Angeles Times reported on March 15 that "the CIA first heard allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger in late 2001," when "the existence of the documents was reported to [the CIA] second- or third-hand." The Los Angeles Times quoted a CIA official as saying: "We included that in some of our reporting, although it was all caveated because we had concerns about the accuracy of that information." With all respect, this is not a situation like the pre-9/11 evidence that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack planes and crash them into buildings. When you were asked about this on May 17, 2002, you said: As you might imagine... a lot of things are prepared within agencies. They're distributed internally, they're worked internally. It's unusual that anything like that would get to the president. He doesn't recall seeing anything. I don't recall seeing anything of this kind. That answer may be given more deference when the evidence in question is known only by a field agent in an FBI bureau in Phoenix, Arizona, whose suspicions are not adequately understood by officials in Washington. But it is simply not credible here. Contrary to your public statements, senior officials in the intelligence community in Washington knew the forged evidence was unreliable before the President used the evidence in the State of the Union address. Other Evidence In addition to denying that senior officials were aware that the President was citing forged evidence, you also claimed (1) "there were also other sources that said that there were, the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake - uranium oxide - from Africa" and (2) "there were other attempts to get yellowcake from Africa." This answer does not explain the President's statement in the State of the Union address. In his State of the Union address, the President referred specifically to the evidence from the British. He stated: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Presumably, the President would use the best available evidence in his State of the Union address to Congress and the nation. It would make no sense for him to cite forged evidence obtained from the British if, in fact, the United States had other reliable evidence that he could have cited. Moreover, contrary to your assertion, there does not appear to be any other specific and credible evidence that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from an African country. The Administration has not provided any such evidence to me or my staff despite our repeated requests. To the contrary, the State Department wrote me that the "other source" of this claim was another Western European ally. But as the State Department acknowledged in its letter, "the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited." The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found no other evidence indicating that Iraq sought to obtain uranium from Niger. The evidence in U.S. possession that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Niger was transmitted to the IAEA. After reviewing all the evidence provided by the United States, the IAEA reported: "we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq." Ultimately, the IAEA concluded: "these specific allegations are unfounded." Questions As the discussion above indicates, your answers on the Sunday talk shows conflict with other reports and raise many new issues. To help address these issues, I request answers to the following questions: 1. On Meet the Press, you said that "maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency" that the evidence cited by the President about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from Africa was suspect. Please identify the individual or individuals in the Administration who, prior to the President's State of the Union address, had expressed doubts about the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the claim. 2. Please identify any individuals in the Administration who, prior to the President's State of the Union address, were briefed or otherwise made aware that an individual or individuals in the Administration had expressed doubts about the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the claim. 3. On This Week, you said there was other evidence besides the forged evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa. Please provide this other evidence. 4. When you were asked about reports that Vice President Cheney sent a former ambassador to Niger to investigate the evidence, you stated "the Vice President's office may have asked for that report." In light of this comment, please address: (a) Whether Vice President Cheney or his office requested an investigation into claims that Iraq may have attempted to obtain nuclear material from Africa, and when any such request was made; (b) Whether a current or former U.S. ambassador to Africa, or any other current or former government official or agent, traveled to Niger or otherwise investigated claims that Iraq may have attempted to obtain nuclear material from Niger; and (c) What conclusions or findings, if any, were reported to the Vice President, his office, or other U.S. officials as a result of the investigation, and when any such conclusions or findings were reported. Conclusion On Sunday, you stated that "there is now a lot of revisionism that says, there was disagreement on this data point, or disagreement on that data point." I disagree strongly with this characterization. I am not raising questions about the validity of an isolated "data point," and the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was justified or not. What I want to know is the answer to a simple question: Why did the President use forged evidence in the State of the Union address? This is a question that bears directly on the credibility of the United States, and it should be answered in a prompt and forthright manner, with full disclosure of all the relevant facts. Thank you for your assistance in this matter. Sincerely, Henry A. Waxman Ranking Minority Member ------------------- 2a) http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3023wmd_fraud.html This article appears in the June 13, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. The Henry Waxman Letter: Who Knew What, And When? by Jeffrey Steinberg U.S. Representative Henry Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, sent a letter to President George W. Bush, demanding a full explanation from the Administration, as to why senior officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and the President himself "cited forged evidence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear materials." (Representative Waxman's letter and the Executive's reply appear below in Documentation.) Informed of Waxman's June 2 letter to the President, Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche immediately seized on the significance of senior Administration officials having used a proven forged foreign government document, to win Congressional and public support for the Iraq War, based on the fabricated claim that Iraq was attempting to purchase large quantities of uranium precursor, "yellow cake," from the Niger government. LaRouche insisted that it is an urgent matter of national security to determine "who knew what, and when?" LaRouche's own track record of challenging the wall of disinformation thrown up by the Straussian neo-conservative network inside the Bush Administration, to launch the Iraq War, puts him in a unique position to hold the other Democratic Presidential candidates—as well as Bush Administration top officials—accountable for their repeated failure, up until now, to challenge the avalanche of disinformation and "spun" intelligence products. On Feb. 9, 2003, LaRouche had issued a campaign statement, "Powell Apparent Victim of Hoax," sharply criticizing the Secretary of State's Feb. 5 report to the United Nations Security Council, during which he had presented a series of fraudulent charges about Iraq's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Appended to the LaRouche statement was a grid of comments from the other declared Democratic Presidential candidates, which, for the most part, revealed that they, too, had been uncritical endorsers of the fakery. The Waxman Letters Representative Waxman's letter was a follow-up to one he had written on March 17 to the President on the same topic. The chronology of events, spelled out in the Waxman letters, and in documentation cited in those letters, is as follows: * Sometime in late 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency received several documents, purporting to show Iraqi government efforts to purchase large volumes of "yellow cake" from the African government of Niger. According to EIR intelligence sources, the Niger documents were produced at the country's embassy in Rome, and were passed on to the Italian Carabinieri, who passed them along, without further comment, to the British MI6 and the CIA. * According to a May 6, 2003 New York Times report "Missing In Action: Truth," by Nicholas D. Kristof, "more than a year ago, the Vice President's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged. The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade.... The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the Administration and seemed to be accepted—except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway." * Despite the fact that top Bush Administration officials—including Vice President Cheney—knew that the Niger documents were fabrications as early as February 2002, the same documents continued to be cited—by both American and British government officials. On Sept. 24, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's 10 Downing Street office issued a 50-page public dossier, titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction—The Assessment of the British Government," which stated, in part, "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The same day, according to a March 31, 2003 New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, "Who Lied to Whom?" a group of senior U.S. intelligence officials delivered a closed-door, classified briefing to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, citing the same Niger "yellow cake" evidence of Iraq's nuclear weapons program. Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell reported on the same subject and repeated the CIA material. * Two weeks later, the U.S. Congress voted to grant President Bush authority to go to war against Iraq. As Representative Waxman wrote to Bush on March 17, 2003, "Despite serious misgivings, I supported the resolution because I believed Congressional approval would significantly improve the likelihood of effective UN action. Equally important, I believed that you had access to reliable intelligence information that merited deference. Like many other members, I was particularly influenced by your views about Iraq's nuclear intentions. Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no argument for attacking Iraq is as compelling as the possibility of Saddam Hussein brandishing nuclear bombs." * On Dec. 19, 2002, the U.S. State Department, in response to Iraq's weapons declaration to the UN Security Council, issued a one-page fact sheet, "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council," which cited eight cases. The third item, "Nuclear Weapons," simply read: "The Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" * In January 2003, senior Administration officials repeated the allegations about Iraq's attempted procurement of uranium, including National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—and President Bush, in his Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address. * On March 7, Dr. Mohammed ElBaradei, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), testified before the UN Security Council, and flatly declared that the Niger documents were forgeries. "Based on thorough analysis," he testified publicly, "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents—which formed the basis for reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger—are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded." * Even following Dr. ElBaradei's public discrediting of the Niger forgeries, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney appeared, on March 16, on the Sunday TV talk-show "Meet the Press"—three days before the invasion of Iraq—and repeated the false charges. Referring to Saddam Hussein, "We know," Cheney told host Tim Russert, "he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons." * On March 17, 2003, Rep. Henry Waxman wrote the first letter to President Bush, detailing the Niger forgery, and seeking an explanation. * On April 29, 2003, Representative Waxman received a one-page reply from Paul V. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. After reviewing the sources of the Niger allegations, Kelly wrote, "Not until March 4 [2003] did we learn that in fact the second Western European government had based its assessment on the evidence already available to the U.S. that was subsequently discredited. Based on what appeared at the time to be multiple sources for the information in question, we acted in good faith in providing the information earlier this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors responsible for verifying Iraq's claims regarding its nuclear program." * On June 2, 2003, Representative Waxman sent his second letter to the President on the forged Niger documents and the Administration's continued references to the documents, long after they were known to be fakes. Waxman wrote: "Unfortunately, to date I have received only a cursory, one-page response from the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs. Although this April 29, 2003, letter asserts that the Administration acted in 'good faith,' the letter in fact further confuses the situation and raises additional questions." The Cheney Question One additional question certainly raised, is the particular role of Vice President Cheney, who was among the first Administration officials to be informed that the Niger documents were forgeries, and who was the only senior Administration official to continue to assert the Niger-Iraq uranium story after Dr. ElBaradei addressed the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003. ------------------- 2b) http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2003/3023waxman_ltr.html This documentation appears in the June 13, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. Documentation Waxman: 'Explain Why You Cited Forged Evidence' The President The White House Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President: Increasing questions are now being raised within the United States and around the world about whether you and other senior U.S. officials misrepresented the evidence regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons capability. In response, investigations have been launched and your spokesman has stated that everything you said was "valid."[1] As these investigations move forward. I urge you to explain why you cited forged evidence about Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear materials in your State of the Union address on January 28, 2003. I first wrote to you about this matter on March 17, before the Iraq war had begun. As I explained in that letter, your own intelligence experts at the CIA questioned the veracity of the nuclear evidence at the same time that you and other senior Administration officials were repeatedly using the evidence as a major part of the case against Iraq. Yet despite the seriousness of this matter, the only response I received was an ambiguous one-page letter from the State Department that raises far more questions than it answers. News reports this weekend were filled with accounts of how carefully Secretary Powell prepared for his February 5 address to the United Nations, spending nearly a week at CIA headquarters going over his remarks to ensure their accuracy. But there is no speech given by any government official that is more carefully constructed than a State of the Union address. The State of the Union address takes weeks—not days—to prepare, and every line is reviewed by a myriad of high-ranking officials. That a President could cite forged evidence in such an address on a matter as momentous as impending war should be unthinkable. There are many complex issues that are now being raised by our failure to date to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. These need to be examined closely in the coming months. But explaining your statements in the State of the Union should not take months of investigation—just candor. With the credibility of the United States being called into question around the world, I urge you to address this vital matter without further delay. The Evidence in Question The allegation that Iraq sought to obtain nuclear material from an African country was first made publicly by the British government on September 24, 2002, when Prime Minister Tony Blair released a 50-page report on Iraqi efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. As the New York Times reported in a front-page article, one of the two "chief new elements" in the report was the claim that Iraq had "sought to acquire uranium in Africa that could be used to make nuclear weapons."[2] According to the Washington Post, the evidence included "a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger."[3] It is now conceded that these letters were rudimentary forgeries. Recent accounts in the news media explain that the forgers "made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away—including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written."[4] The world did not learn that this evidence was forged, however, until March 7, 2003, when the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mohamed ElBaradei, released the results of his analysis of the evidence. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications that should have been evident to novice intelligence officials. As a result, Director ElBaradei reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic."[5] We also now know that the CIA was not incompetent in this matter—it had consistently expressed significant doubts about the validity of these documents. Press reports are replete with statements by CIA officials who warned about the lack of credibility of this information.[6] As the Washington Post reported on March 22, CIA officials "communicated significant doubts to the administration about the evidence."[7] According to another CIA official, "it's not fair to accuse the analysts for what others say about our material."[8] Indeed, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof revealed that Vice President Cheney's office became aware of the evidence early in the process and dispatched a former U.S. ambassador to Niger to investigate. On February 22, 2002—nearly a year before your State of the Union address—the ambassador "reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged."[9] The Use of the Forged Evidence Despite the doubts of your own intelligence experts, you and your most senior advisers asserted repeatedly over a period of months that Iraq attempted to obtain nuclear material from Niger. The State Department featured the evidence in its written response to the Iraqi weapons declaration in December.[10] National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice made this allegation again on January 23, 2003,1[1] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeated this allegation on January 29, 2003,[12] and senior officials continued to repeat this claim in contacts with press outlets. As a result of the emphasis given the evidence by senior Administration officials, the nuclear evidence was featured on national network news and front-page articles in major national newspapers.[13]. The most prominent use of the forged nuclear evidence occurred during your State of the Union address to Congress. You stated: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[14] As I wrote you on March 17, your statement was worded in a way to suggest that it was carefully crafted to be both literally true and deliberately misleading at the same time. The statement itself may be technically accurate, since this appears to have been official British position. But given what the CIA knew at the time, the implication you intended—that there was credible evidence that Iraq sought uranium from Africa—-was simply false. This was not the only time you emphasized Iraq's nuclear threat. Just four days before Congress was scheduled to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, you claimed that Iraq could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.[15] You also raised the ominous specter of a "mushroom cloud" if the war resolution was not adopted.[16] On March 17, just days before the war began, Vice President Cheney said: "We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.[17] These statements played a pivotal role in shaping congressional and public opinion about the need for military intervention in Iraq. I voted for the congressional resolution condemning Iraq and authorizing the use of force. Like other members, I was particularly influenced by your views about Iraq's nuclear intentions. Although chemical and biological weapons can inflict casualties, no threat is greater than the threat of nuclear weapons and no subject requires greater candor. The Ambiguous State Department Response In order to obtain information about your Administration's reliance on the forged nuclear evidence, I wrote to you on March 17, 2003. As I stated in that letter, it is hard to imagine how this situation could have developed. The two most obvious explanations—knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence—both have immediate and profound implications. Consequently, I urged you address the matter without delay and provide an alternative explanation, if there was one. Unfortunately, to date I have received only a cursory, one-page response from the State Department's Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs. Although this April 29, 2003, letter asserts that the Administration acted "in good faith," the letter in fact further confuses the situation and raises additional questions. The State Department letter makes clear that the nuclear evidence from Britain that you cited in your State of the Union address was the evidence that was "discredited" as a forgery. The letter also indicates that this evidence was "available to the U.S." The response thus appears to rule out the unlikely explanation that the CIA did not know the basis of the British evidence when you gave your State of the Union address. But the letter does not begin to explain why you used the obviously forged evidence in your State of the Union address. The letter says that another Western European nation relayed similar information about Iraq's nuclear program to the United States privately. But the letter acknowledges that the United States did not know the basis of this information until March 4, over a month after the State of the Union, at which time the United States learned that the information was based on the same forged documents. Moreover, the letter reveals that during the period prior to March 4, U.S. intelligence officials were aware that the information might be based on the same discredited information provided by the British and "sought several times to determine the basis for the ... assessment, and whether it was based on independent evidence not otherwise available to the U.S." No explanation is offered for why it took so long to learn the basis of the reporting from this "Western European ally." At its core, the argument in the State Department letter is ludicrous. U.S. intelligence officials knew that the available Niger evidence was unreliable and based on forged documents. Despite this, the State Department argues that it was acceptable for the United States to use this information as a central part of the case for military action in Iraq, because the United States received reporting from another nation. In essence, the argument seems to be that it is permissible to use fake evidence so long as the evidence can be attributed to another source. The State Department response also raises questions about the CIA's role in reviewing and clearing various Administration statements relating to the Niger allegation. The letter states that the written information about the forged nuclear evidence provided to the United Nations on December 19 "was a product developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department." But this is contradicted by other published accounts. Just last weekend, the Washington Post quoted a senior intelligence official as saying that the "only" statement that was "reviewed by the intelligence agencies in detail and backed by detailed intelligence" was Secretary Powell's February 5 speech before the United Nations.[18] In fact, according to one administration official, when the State Department document was issued on December 19, "people winced and thought, 'Why are you repeating this trash?' "19 Conclusion Mr. President, I recognize that you have many demands on your time and that there are many issues that you cannot address. But this issue should be different. The credibility of the United States is now in question. To date, you have offered no explanation as to why you and your most senior advisers made repeated allegations based on forged documents. Yet your entire pre-emption doctrine depends on the ability of the United States to gather accurate intelligence and make honest assessments. This matter raises fundamental issues that cannot be ignored. So I again request that you respond to my March 17 letter and the additional questions raised in this letter. Sincerely, Henry A. Waxman Ranking Minority Member [1] The White House, Press Briefing by Ari Fleischer (May 29, 2003) (online at www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/05/20030529-4.html) ("[R]ewind the tapes, and you'll see what the administration said before the war and you'll find a series of statements, all of which are valid"). [2] "Blair Says Iraqis Could Launch Chemical Warheads in Minutes," New York Times (Sept. 25, 2002). [3] "Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake; UN. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged," Washington Post (Mar. 8, 2003). [4] Id. See also "U.N. Saying Documents Were Faked," CNN American Morning with Paula Zahn (Mar. 14, 2003). ("One of the documents purports to be a letter signed by Tandjia Mamadou, the president of Niger, talking about the uranium deal with Iraq. On it [is] a childlike signature that is clearly not his. Another, written on paper from a 1980s military government in Niger, bears the date of October 2000 and the signature of a man who by then had not been foreign minister of Niger for 14 years.") [5] IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, The Status of Nuclear Inspections in Iraq: An Update (Mar. 7, 2002) (online at www.iaea.org/worldatomfPress/Statements/ 2003/ebsp2003nOO6.shtml). [6] See, e.g., "Italy May Have Been Misled by Fake Iraq Arms Papers, US Says," Los Angeles Times (Mar. 15, 2003) (quoting a CIA official as saying: "We included that in some of our reporting, although it was all caveated because we had concerns about the accuracy of that information"); "FBI Probes Fake Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Plans," Washington Post (Mar. 13, 2003) ("The CIA... had questions about 'whether they were accurate,' said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq's program to procure weapons of mass destruction"). [7] "CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore," Washington Post (Mar. 22, 2003). [8] "Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence," Washington Post (May 31, 2003). [9] Nicholas D. Kristof, "Missing in Action: Truth," New York Times (May 6, 2003). [10] U.S. Department of State, Illustrative Examples of Omissions from the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council (Dec. 19, 2002). [11] Dr. Condoleeza Rice, "Why We Know Iraq is Lying" (Jan. 23, 2003) (online at www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2003/0 1 /print/20030 123-1 .html). [12] Press Conference with Donald Rumsfeld, General Richard Myers, Cable News Network (Jan. 29, 2003). [13] See, e.g., "U.S. Accuses Iraqi Weapons Report of Failing to Meet U.N. Demands," NBC Nightly News (Dec. 19, 2002); "Threats and Responses: Report by Iraq; Iraq Arms Report Has Big Omissions, U.S. Officials Say," New York Times (Dec. 12, 2002); "U.S. Issues a List of Shortcomings in Iraqi Arms Declaration," Los Angeles Times (Dec. 20, 2002); "Iraqi Weapons Declaration Full of Holes, U.S. Officials Say," Associated Press (Dec. 12, 2003). [14] The President, State of the Union Address (Jan, 28, 2003) (online at www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2003/0 1/20030128-1 9.html). [15] The White House, "President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat" (Oct. 7, 2002) (online at www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8 .html); see also "Matters of Emphasis," New York Times (Apr. 23, 2003) (noting that President Bush cited an IABA report for this assertion, but that no such report exists). [16] The White House, supra note 15. [17] "U.S. Officials Make It Clear: Exile or War," Washington Post (Mar. 17, 2003). [18] "Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence," Washington Post (May 31, 2003). [19] "CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore," Washington Post, (Mar. 22, 2003). _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk