Report backs uranium claim

WASHINGTON – A Senate report criticizing false CIA claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction at the same time provides support for an assertion the White House repudiated: that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

White House officials said last year it was a mistake for President Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union message, to refer to British reports that Saddam Hussein’s government tried to buy uranium. The White House said the evidence for that claim was too shaky to have been included in such an important speech, and CIA Director George Tenet took the blame for failing to have the reference removed.

A Friday report from the Senate Intelligence Committee offers new details supporting the claim.

French and British intelligence separately told the United States about possible Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger, the report said. The report from France is significant not only because Paris opposed the Iraq war but also because Niger is a former French colony and French companies control uranium production there.

Joseph Wilson, a retired U.S. diplomat the CIA sent to investigate the Niger story, also found evidence of Iraqi contacts with Nigerian officials, the report said.

Wilson told the committee that former Nigerian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki reported meeting with Iraqi officials in 1999. Mayaki said a businessman helped set up the meeting, saying the Iraqis were interested in “expanding commercial relations” with Niger – which Mayaki interpreted as an overture to buy uranium, Wilson said.

Mayaki told Wilson he met with the Iraqis but steered the discussion away from commercial activity because he did not want to deal with a country under United Nations sanctions.

All of that information came to Washington long before an Italian journalist gave U.S. officials copies of documents purporting to show an agreement from Niger to sell uranium to Baghdad. Those documents have been determined to be forgeries.

Even before the forged documents surfaced, U.S. analysts cast doubt on the Niger story, the Senate report said. State Department analysts thought the uranium story was farfetched because such a deal would be detected easily and Iraq already had some 500 tons of lightly processed uranium “yellowcake.”

Some CIA analysts shared that view, the report said.

The CIA also made only “halfhearted” attempts to investigate a West African businessman’s claim that Nigerian uranium bound for Iraq was being stored in a warehouse in the nearby African nation of Benin, the report said. The CIA never contacted the businessman, even though the U.S. Navy gave the CIA his phone number, the report said.