What I Didn't Find in Africa
By Joseph C. Wilson, IV
WASHINGTON -- Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?
Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
For 23 years, from 1976 to 1998, I was a career foreign service officer and ambassador. In 1990, as charge d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. (I was also a forceful advocate for his removal from Kuwait.) After Iraq, I was President George H. W. Bush's ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome and Principe; underPresident Bill Clinton, I helped direct Africa policy for the National Security Council.
It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me.
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
After consulting with the State Department's African Affairs Bureau (and through it with Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, the United States ambassador to Niger), I agreed to make the trip. The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70's and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90's. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
The next morning, I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq -- and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.
(As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors -- they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government -- and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)
Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
I thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa.
The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.
Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses. (It's worth remembering that in his March "Meet the Press" appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was "trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.") At a minimum, Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the president's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted.
I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program -- all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed.
But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.
Joseph C. Wilson, IV, United States ambassador to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, is an international business consultant.
July 14, 2003, The Chicago Sun-Times
Even after a belated admission of error last week, finger-pointing continued
By Robert Novak
The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political fire storm that has not yet subsided.
Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, before his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government. That the British relied on forged documents made Wilson's mission, nearly a year earlier, the basis of furious Democratic accusations of burying intelligence though the report was forgotten by the time the president spoke.
Reluctance at the White House to admit a mistake has led Democrats ever closer to saying the president lied the country into war. Even after a belated admission of error last Monday, finger-pointing between Bush administration agencies continued.
Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon asked the CIA to look into it.
That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public note had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." The next year, President George H.W. Bush named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.
After eight days in the Niger capital, Wilson made an oral report in Langley that an Iraqi uranium purchase was "highly unlikely," though he also mentioned in passing that a 1988 Iraqi delegation tried to establish commercial contacts. CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive, being based primarily on what the Niger officials told him and probably would have claimed under any circumstances. The CIA report based on Wilson's briefing remains classified. All this was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post on June 12 that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public on July 6, however, did his finding ignite the fire storm.
During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position--viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action as a last resort. He has seemed much more critical since revealing his role in Niger. In the Washington Post on July 6, he talked about the Bush team "misrepresenting the facts," asking: "What else are they lying about?"
After the White House admitted error, Wilson declined all television and radio interviews.
"The story was never me," he told me, "it was always the statement in [Bush's] speech."
The story, actually, is whether the administration deliberately ignored Wilson's advice, and that requires scrutinizing the CIA summary of what their envoy reported. The agency never before has declassified that kind of information, but the White House would like it to do just that now--in its and in the public's interest.
October 5, 2003, The Chicago Sun-Times
Wilsons give it up for Gore
By Robert Novak
On the same day in 1999 that retired diplomat Joseph Wilson was returned $1,000 of $2,000 he contributed to Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore a month earlier because it exceeded the federal limit, his CIA-employee wife gave $1,000 to Gore using a fictitious identification for herself.
In making her April 22, 1999, contribution, Valerie E. Wilson identified herself as an "analyst" with "Brewster-Jennings & Associates." No such firm is listed anywhere, but the late Brewster Jennings was president of Socony-Vacuum oil company a half-century ago. Any CIA employee working under "nonofficial cover" always is listed with a real firm, never an imaginary one.
A footnote: In July, when he revealed himself as author of a report commissioned by the CIA, Wilson sought a book agent. After being turned down by a prominent agent, he has now found one.
Daschle runs again
Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle ended months of speculation last week by informing close supporters that he will seek re-election for a fourth term in South Dakota next year.
Daschle's supporters are confident former Rep. John Thune will not be the Republican Senate candidate despite White House pleas for him to run. A Daschle-Thune contest is a tossup according to polls, but Daschle would be prohibitively favored against anybody else.
A footnote: According to close associates, Daschle nearly announced his candidacy for president this year but decided against it because his wife Linda, a prominent Washington lobbyist, would be subject to personal attacks.
Dianne vs. Arnold?
Close associates of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, considered California's most popular political figure, say she will not challenge Arnold Schwarzenegger for a full term as governor in 2006 even if the Republican actor is elected Tuesday.
These sources also say the 70-year-old former mayor of San Francisco will seek a third Senate term in 2006, ending months of speculation on that point.
A footnote: State Atty. Gen. William Lockyer, who has been building a war chest for years, is considered the most likely Democrat to oppose Schwarzenegger in 2006 if he is elected. Lockyer was shut out of the recall election when Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante jumped in.
Environmental politics
Behind the Democratic boycott Wednesday of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the party's leadership is at the least trying to extend debate over whether Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt should head the Environmental Protection Agency well into the election year.
The committee was scheduled Wednesday to confirm Leavitt, but it couldn't meet when no Democrats showed up. Energy industry sources have been informed that Senate Democratic Leader Thomas Daschle wants President Bush to put Leavitt in office through a recess appointment, once Congress adjourns -- thereby continuing through 2004 a debate that Democrats believe benefits them. Leavitt has indicated he would rather drop out than accept a recess appointment.
Holds on the Leavitt nomination have been indicated by three presidential candidates -- Senators John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Edwards of North Carolina -- plus Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Redskins politics
Federal Express Chairman Frederick W. Smith, who owns a minority stake in the Washington Redskins football team, held a political fund-raiser in the FedEx Suite at the owner's club level during last Sunday's game against the New England Patriots.
Washington lobbyists were solicited by Smith to contribute on behalf of his fellow Tennessean, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The requested contribution of $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for political action committees would go to Frist's VOLPAC Leadership Fund, which mainly distributes money to Republican candidates around the country.
A footnote: Smith generally contributes to Republican candidates but only infrequently. He has recently given money to President Bush and Republican Senators Frist, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and John McCain of Arizona. He contributed in 1997 and 2002 to Democratic Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina.