Really? Help a fella out and point me at 1 that states the British "had
already denounced the document as a
forgery" prior to the SOTUS.


I should have used the phrase "already been informed the document was a
forgery" Sorry. BTW, they were informed that the document was a forgery by the
CIA, the same people that Bush says cleared his speech.




CIA asked No 10 to drop uranium claim
By Toby Harnden in Washington
(Filed: 12/07/2003)


The CIA tried to persuade the British Government to drop a claim that Saddam
Hussein attempted to buy uranium in Africa but was told that MI6 had its own
intelligence backing up the report, it emerged yesterday.

As as the row in Washington over weapons of mass destruction deepened,
President George W Bush said his State of the Union address, which mentioned
the British claim, was vetted by the CIA. "I gave a speech to the nation that
was cleared by the intelligence service," Mr Bush said in Uganda. In the
address in January he said: "The British Government has learnt that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

According to officials who spoke to the Washington Post, the CIA attempted four
months earlier to persuade Downing Street that the claim, which the White House
stated this week was false, was dubious.

"We consulted about the [British intelligence] paper and recommended against
using that material," a senior Bush administration official told the newspaper.
It was subsequently included in an intelligence dossier released by No 10.

Although a CIA paper being compiled at the time mentioned Iraqi attempts to buy
uranium from three African countries, the agency told the British that US State
Department analysts had cast doubt on any involvement by Niger.

Downing Street has stuck by its claim there was a link between Niger and Iraqi
attempts to procure uranium, despite a letter supposedly relating to
negotiations proving a forgery. Officials said the CIA has not seen further
British intelligence material on Niger, despite its close co-operation with
MI6.

The gap between Downing Street and the White House is being exploited by Mr
Bush's Democratic opponents and Tony Blair's critics in Britain. It threatens
to complicate the Prime Minister's visit to Washington next week.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, who did not include a reference to
uranium-buying in Africa in his presentation of Iraq evidence to the United
Nations Security Council, has been lukewarm in his defence of the inclusion of
the claim in Mr Bush's address.

The CIA leak to the Washington Post appeared to be an attempt by the agency to
distance itself from the claim. George Tenet, the CIA director, was already
under pressure to step down after the intelligence failings of September 11.

But the White House yesterday placed the CIA firmly in the decision-making
process over what was included in the State of the Union address. The CIA
cleared the speech "in its entirety", said Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national
security adviser.

"The CIA cleared on it," she said. "There was even some discussion on that
specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought. And the
speech was cleared.

"What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the
Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the
president's speech. But that's knowing what we know now."

Mr Tenet admitted last night that he had been wrong to allow Mr Bush to say
that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from Africa. "These 16 words should never
have been included in the text written for the President. This was a mistake,"
Mr Tenet said.

The phrase "the British Government has learnt" was apparently inserted late in
the speech-writing process. Bush administration officials said this did not
indicate discomfort with the claim but was "because they were the first to say
it publicly in their September paper".