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[casi] The Waxman Letters: Building the Case for Impeachment:



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).





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