By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, June 13, 2003; Page A16
The CIA, facing criticism for its failure to pass on a key piece of information that put in doubt Iraq's purported attempts to buy uranium from Niger, said yesterday it sent a cable to the White House and other government agencies in March 2002 that said the claim had been denied by officials from the central African country.
But Bush administration officials acknowledged that the 11/2-page document did not include the conclusion of a former U.S. ambassador dispatched by the CIA to Niger the month before that documents outlining a transfer of uranium to Baghdad were not authentic. The CIA cable attributed the Niger officials' denials to an anonymous source, but failed to mention the name of the former ambassador, who was a recognized expert in Africa, or that it had sent him to Niger.
The purported Iraqi effort to buy uranium oxide was used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertion that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear weapons program. The CIA's failure to pass on the details of what it knew helped keep the uranium-purchase story alive until shortly before the war in Iraq began, when the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector told the Security Council that the documents were forgeries.
An administration official said yesterday that the CIA report was only one of many such cables received by the White House each day. The official said that other information received after March 2002 supported claims that Iraq was actively attempting to buy uranium. Because of the anonymous nature of the source cited in the CIA report, it was not considered unusual or very important and not passed on to Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, or other senior White House officials.
Rice, in defending Bush's decision to claim that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium in Africa in his State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, said she was unaware that there were doubts about the information. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," Rice said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, "but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."
A White House spokesman said yesterday, "We have acknowledged that some documents detailing a transaction between Iraq and Niger were forged and we no longer give them credence. They were, however, only once piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa."
The official added that in his speech the president talked about purchases from Africa and did not specifically mention Niger, adding that Bush's comments were "based on a multiple of other sources."
Senior intelligence officials said the CIA on several occasions after March 2002 told administration policymakers about its doubts about claims Iraq was seeking uranium. When the State Department on Dec. 19, 2002, posted a reference to Iraq not supplying details on its uranium purchases, the CIA raised an objection, "but it came too late" to prevent its publication, the senior intelligence official said.
The agency did get a reference to the alleged sales removed from a speech made to the Security Council by U.S. Ambassador John D. Negroponte and kept it out of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's presentation to the council on Feb. 5 that outlined the administration's case that Iraq had covert weapons programs, the official said.