A senior CIA official has said the intelligence agency informed the White House on 3/9/02 - 10 months before Bush's State of the Union address - that the agency could not confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger.
Despite the CIA's warnings that the story was bogus, Bush, in his televised SotU, said "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa."
Three senior administration officials said Dick 'Chicanery' Cheney and some officials on the National Security Council staff and at the Pentagon ignored the CIA's reservations and argued that the resident and others should include the allegation in their case against Saddam.
The claim later turned out to be based on crude forgeries that an African diplomat had sold to Italian intelligence officials.
The revelation of the CIA warning is the strongest evidence to date that pro-war administration officials manipulated, exaggerated or ignored intelligence information in their eagerness to make the case for invading Iraq (link).
No comments:
Post a Comment