On January 24, 2003, in response to a question for the Office of the Secretary of Defense/International Security Affairs for information on Nigerien uranium sales to Iraq, the DIA provided a background paper which described the original CIA Niger reporting and the November 25 Navy report on alleged storage of uranium destined for Iraq. The paper concluded that "DIA cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore or yellowcake from Niger. However, sufficient time has elapsed since the commencement of the recent alleged uranium agreement, that we cannot discount that Iraq may have received an unknown quantity." The report made no mention of the foreign language documents on the alleged uranium deal and did not indicate that there were any concerns about the quality of those documents.

(U) On January 26, 2003, Secretary of State Powell addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said, "why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?"

On January 27, 2003, a CIA intelligence report

indicated that foreign government service reported that the uranium sodium compound in storage at the warehouse in Cotonou, Benin was destined for France, not Iraq. The same report said that separate foreign government service had information on Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Niger, dating from 1999, but had no further information. The foreign government service also indicated that Niger had been looking to sell an old stock of uranium for years to the highest bidder. According to the foreign government service, other countries had expressed interest.

I. The State of the Union

(U) On January 27, 2003, the DCI was provided with a hardcopy draft of the State of the Union address at an NSC meeting. When he returned to the CIA, he passed the draft to an executive assistant to deliver to the office of the DDI. No one in the office of the DDI recalls who the point of contact for the speech was, or if a point of contact was ever named. No one recalled receiving parts of the speech for coordination and because the speech was hand carried, no electronic versions of the speech exist at the CIA. The DCI testified at a July 16, 2003 hearing that he never read the State of the Union speech.

(U) In late January, the Director of WINPAC discussed, over the phone, the portion of the State of the Union draft pertaining to uranium with his NSC counterpart, the Special Assistant to the President for Nonproliferation. Neither individual can recall who initiated the phone call. Both the WINPAC Director and NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff that the WINPAC Director's concerns about using the uranium information pertained only to revealing sources and

methods and not to any concerns about the credibility of the uranium reporting. The WINPAC Director said because the Niger information was specifically and directly tied to a foreign government service, his concern was about releasing classified information in an unclassified speech. He told Committee staff that this had been the CIA's longstanding position and was the reason the CIA wanted the reference removed from the British white paper. Both the WINPAC Director and NSC Special Assistant agreed that the discussion was brief, cordial, and that they mutually agreed that citing the British information, which was already unclassified, was preferable to citing U.S. classified intelligence.

(U) The WINPAC Director and the NSC Special Assistant disagreed, however, about the content of their conversation in some important respects. First, when the WINPAC Director first spoke to Committee staff and testified at a Committee hearing, he said that he had told the NSC Special Assistant to remove the words "Niger" and "500 tons" from the speech because of concerns about sources and methods. The NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff that there never was a discussion about removing "Niger" and "500 tons" from the State of the Union and said that the drafts of the speech show that neither "Niger" nor "500 tons" were ever in any of the drafts at all. He believed that the WINPAC Director had confused the State of the Union conversation with a conversation they had previously had in preparation for the Negroponte speech in which they did discuss removing "Niger" from the speech because of the WINPAC Director's concerns about revealing sources and methods.

(U) A few days after his testimony before the Committee, the WINPAC Director found the draft text of the State of the Union in WINPAC's files and noticed that it did not say "500 tons of uranium from Niger." In a follow up interview with Committee staff, he said that he still recalls the conversation the way he described it to the Committee originally, however, he believes that he may have confused the two conversations because the documentation he found does not support his version of events. The draft text of the State of the Union he found said, "we know that he [Saddam Hussein] has recently sought to buy uranium in Africa." The White House also told the Committee that the text they sent to the CIA in January said, “we also know that he has recently sought to buy uranium in Africa."

(U) Second, the WINPAC Director also told the Committee that the NSC Special Assistant came up with the idea to source the uranium information to the British during their conversation when he was attempting to come up with an unclassified way to use the uranium reporting. The NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff that the reference to the British came from the White House speech writers who were working to come up with publicly usable sources for all of the intelligence information in the speech. Because the speech writers obtained

information regarding Iraq's attempts to acquire uranium from Africa from both the intelligence underlying the NIE and the British white paper, the speech writers sought to attribute the State of the Union reference to one of those sources. The NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff the discussion with the WINPAC Director was focused on which of the two sources would be better to use and that the WINPAC Director preferred sourcing the information to the British paper because it was unclassified. Both the WINPAC Director and NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff that there was never a discussion about the credibility of the information.

(U) Finally, the two disagreed about the WINPAC Director's account that he had told the NSC Special Assistant that the CIA had urged the British to remove the uranium reference from their white paper, also because of concerns about sources and methods. The NSC Special Assistant told Committee staff that the WINPAC Director did not tell him the CIA had asked the British to remove the reference from their white paper.

(U) The CIA has told the Committee in a written response that the agency did not coordinate with any other NSC directorates on the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa.

(U) On January 28, 2003, the President noted in his State of the Union address that the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." At the time the President delivered the State of the Union address, no one in the IC had asked anyone in the White House to remove the sentence from the speech. CIA Iraq nuclear analysts and the Director of WINPAC told Committee staff that at the time of the State of the Union, they still believed that Iraq was probably seeking uranium from Africa, and they continued to hold that belief until the IAEA reported that the documents were forgeries.

J. Secretary Powell's UN Speech

(U) Beginning in late January the CIA, State Department, White House and NSC officials began to work together to draft, coordinate and clear language to be used in an upcoming U.S. policy speech to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). In the early stages of the process, it was unclear exactly who would be delivering the speech.

(U) At the White House's request, the initial input for the speech came from the CIA. The CIA sent the input to the White House which reworked it and added additional material. In the final days of January and during the weekend of February 2, 2003, the Secretary of State and officials from the State Department, White House and the CIA, met at CIA headquarters to work

through the issues the Secretary would address and to provide substantive clearance for the text. Several CIA analysts told Committee staff, and Secretary Powell has said publicly, that the Secretary did not want to use any information in the speech which was not supported by IC analysts.

(U) According to the CIA's former ADDI for Intelligence for Strategic Programs, who was the point person for coordinating the speech, the CIA removed some of the information that the White House had added to the speech, gathered from finished and raw intelligence, because the information was single source and uncorroborated. All of the individuals interviewed by Committee staff who were involved in drafting and coordinating the speech, said that they never saw any drafts that referenced Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa. The ADDI told Committee staff that a White House staffer and the Secretary asked about the uranium information, but after discussing the issue with a WINPAC analyst, did not want to include the information in the speech. Committee staff spoke to the WINPAC analyst, but he remembered discussing the issue with a State Department staffer, not a White House staffer. Committee staff interviewed the State Department staffer who said that he did ask about the uranium reporting. He said he asked the analysts if they had any new information on the reporting and, when they said they did not, he dropped the issue.

On February 3, 2003, the CIA sent a cable to

requesting information from the foreign government service, on its January 27, 2003 report which had information on a Iraq-Niger uranium deal from 1999. The cable said, "the issue of Iraqi uranium procurement continues to resonate with senior policymakers and may be part of SecState's speech to the UN Security Council on 5 Feb 2003 if [a foreign government service] is able to provide a contract for the 1999 uranium deal, confirm that the information was not from another foreign government service,

responded that

On February 4, 2003, the U.S. Government passed electronic copies of the Iraq-Niger documents to the IAEA. Because the Director of the IAEA's INVO was in New York at the time, the U.S. Government also provided the documents to him in New York. Included with the documents were the U.S. Government talking points which stated, of reporting suggest Iraq has attempted to

acquire uranium from Niger. We cannot confirm these reports and have questions regarding some specific claims. Nonetheless, we are concerned that these reports may indicate Baghdad has attempted to secure an unreported source of uranium yellowcake for a nuclear weapons program." The of reporting mentioned refer to the original CIA intelligence reports from the foreign government service and the CIA intelligence report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger.

(U) On February 5, 2003, Secretary Powell briefed the UN. His speech did not mention Iraqi uranium procurement efforts.

(U) On February 7, 2003, the State Department's Office of Language Services, Translating Division, completed the translation of the Iraq-Niger uranium documents. The State Department passed the translated documents to the CIA. Some signs that the documents were forgeries were not conveyed in the translation process.

On February 10, 2003, the U.S. Defense Attache in Abidjan (the capital of the African country, Ivory Coast) reported that its reports officer examined two warehouses in Benin suspected of storing uranium on route to Iraq on December 17, 2002. The visit was conducted almost a month after a Navy report indicated uranium destined for Iraq was transiting through the warehouses. (See page 59) The report indicated that the warehouses appeared to contain only bales of cotton. A CIA operations cable on the inspection noted, however, it was not possible to determine if the cotton bales concealed the uranium shipment and that no radiation detection equipment had been used during the inspection. The DIA told Committee staff that this report was not published sooner because of a coup in Ivory Coast and a civil war and unrest in Liberia, a country for which the Defense Attache in Abidjan had temporary responsibility, occupied the office with other responsibilities.

On February 11, 2003, a CIA senior Africa analyst sent an intelligence assessment to other CIA offices for coordination.

On the Iraq-Niger uranium reporting,