CIA told UK to drop uranium reference

At that time, the CIA was completing its own classified national intelligence estimate on Iraq’s weapons programmes. Although the CIA paper mentioned alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from three African countries, it warned that State Department analysts were questioning its accuracy when it came to Niger and that CIA personnel considered reports on other African countries to be ‘‘sketchy,’’ the official said.

The CIA paper’s summary conclusions about whether Iraq was restarting its weapons programme did not include references to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa. The latest disclosures illustrate the lack of confidence expressed by the US intelligence community.

Even so, Bush used the charge — citing British intelligence as its source — in the January 28 address as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraq had an ongoing programme to build WMDs and posed a serious threat to the US.

The White House on Monday acknowledged for the first time that Bush’s uranium claim was based on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech, further Administration officials preparing drafts of the speech also wanted to name Niger as the focus of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium, according to a senior administration official who has looked into the process. But when CIA officials said there were problems with the Niger information, the more vague reference to Africa was substituted for Niger. The State Department, in its talking points on Iraq, had made a similar change the month before the speech. The International Atomic Energy Agency told the UN Security Council in March that the Niger claim had been based on forged documents, a conclusion the Bush administration did not dispute at the time. (LAT-WP)