Give them yellow cake
Give them yellow cake
Did Marie-Antoinette Really Say “Let Them Eat Cake”?
“Let them eat cake” is the most famous quote attributed to Marie-Antoinette, the queen of France during the French Revolution. As the story goes, it was the queen’s response upon being told that her starving peasant subjects had no bread. Because cake is more expensive than bread, the anecdote has been cited as an example of Marie-Antoinette’s obliviousness to the conditions and daily lives of ordinary people.
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI (the former military intelligence agency of Italy), which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
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The first report of these documents was in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Senior Executive Intelligence brief dated 18 October 2001, entitled: "Iraq: Nuclear Related Procurement Efforts." This information was not considered to be certain and not much was done to promote this claim right away.
These documents were sent to the CIA office in Rome by SISMI.
On 10 May 2002, the CIA's Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA) in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) prepared a Principals Committee briefing book updating the status of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. The document noted that a "foreign government service says Iraq was trying to acquire 500 tons of uranium from Niger."
On 22 July 2002, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) published an intelligence product (Daily Intelligence Highlight, Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts Underway?) which highlighted the intelligence on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal as one of three indications that Iraq might be reconstituting its nuclear program.
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There was a second and third dissemination of these forged documents to the United States by SISMI in early September 2002. One source was a suspicious "ex-agent," of SISMI who occasionally worked on and off for them, who was selling the documents.
Far more officially, Nicolò Pollari, chief of SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House, meeting secretly in Washington on 9 September 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. In that month, the claims of Saddam trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger became much stronger. In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published an intelligence assessment (Defense Intelligence Assessment, Iraq's Reemerging Nuclear Program) which outlined Iraq's recent efforts to rebuild its nuclear program including uranium acquisition. On this issue, the assessment said "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake."
On 11 September 2002, National Security Council (NSC) staff contacted the CIA to clear language for possible use by the President, Bush. The language cleared by the CIA said, "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. And we also know this: within the past few years, Iraq has resumed efforts to obtain large quantities of a type of uranium oxide known as yellowcake, which is an essential ingredient of this process."
In October 2002 the Intelligence Community (IC) produced a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's WMD programmes which cited reports that Iraq began "vigorously trying to procure" more uranium from Niger, as well as Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The specific mention of yellowcake and Niger was not in this speech. There are many reports of a struggle about this, saying the Niger uranium claims were initially in this Cincinnati speech but taken out by the insistence of the CIA Director George Tenet.
Iraq and WMD
In late 2002, the Bush administration began soliciting support for war in Iraq using the political slogan "coalition of the willing" to refer to what later became the Multinational Force – Iraq. To back up its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that administration referred to intelligence from Italy, Britain, and France detailing interactions between Saddam Hussein and the governments of Niger, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, CIA director George Tenet and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited attempts by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At that time, using information derived from the same source, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an (unnamed) "African country". In December, the United States Department of State issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council."
Initial doubts
The classified documents detailing an Iraqi approach to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger were considered dubious by some analysts in US intelligence, according to news accounts. Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced serious doubt on the authenticity of the documents to the UN Security Council, judging them counterfeit.
In his January 2003 State of the Union speech, U.S. President George W. Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This single sentence is now known as "the Sixteen Words."[5] The administration later conceded that evidence in support of the claim was inconclusive and stated, "These sixteen words should never have been included." The administration attributed the error to the CIA. In mid-2003, the US government declassified the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which contained a dissenting opinion published by the US Department of State stating that the intelligence connecting Niger to Saddam Hussein was "highly suspect," primarily because State Department's intelligence agency analysts did not believe that Niger would be likely to engage in such a transaction due to a French consortium which maintained close control over the Nigerien uranium industry.
According to The Washington Post, when occupying troops found no evidence of a current nuclear program, the statement and how it came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war. The Post reported, "Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable." With the release of the 2002 NIE report, the Bush administration was criticized for including the statement in the State of the Union despite CIA and State Department reports questioning its veracity.
European and French intelligence reports
The front page of the 28 June 2004 Financial Times carried a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband, describing that between 1999 and 2001, three unnamed European intelligence services were aware that Niger was possibly engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. "The same information was passed to the US" but American officials decided not to include it in their assessment, Huband added in a follow-up report.
French intelligence informed the United States a year before President Bush's State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with hard evidence.
The Sunday Times dated 1 August 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source describing his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence.
Although the claims made in the British intelligence report regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the CIA and Department of State could not verify them and are said to have thought the claims were "highly dubious".
US doubts
Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of US Armed Forces Europe, Marine General Carlton W. Fulford, Jr., went to Niger and met with the country's president, Tandja Mamadou. He concluded that, given the controls on Niger's uranium supply, there was little chance any of it could have been diverted to Iraq. His report was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. The US Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, was also present at the meeting and sent similar conclusions to the State Department. CNN reported on 14 March 2003 (before invasion) that the International Atomic Energy Agency found the documents to be forged.
Wilson and Niger
In late February 2002, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate the claims himself. Wilson had been posted to Niger 14 years earlier, and throughout a diplomatic career in Africa he had built up a large network of contacts in Niger. Wilson interviewed former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who reported that he knew of no attempted sales to Iraq. Mayaki did however recall that in June 1999 an Iraqi delegation had expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations", which he had interpreted to mean yellowcake sales. Ultimately, Wilson concluded that there was no way that production at the uranium mines could be ramped up or that the excess uranium could have been exported without it being immediately obvious to many people both in the private sector and in the government of Niger. He returned home and told the CIA that the reports were "unequivocally wrong". The CIA retained this information in its Counter Proliferation Department and it was not passed up to the CIA Director, according to the unanimous findings of the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report.
Criticism
Former Ambassador Wilson had claimed that he found no evidence of Saddam Hussein ever attempting or buying yellowcake uranium from Niger on his trip to Niger.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence suggested that the evidence Wilson found could be interpreted differently:
< class="templatequote" style="overflow: hidden; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 32px; border-left: none; color: #202122; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 20px;">[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997–1999) or Foreign Minister (1996–1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, (REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq".[14]
Wilson has responded to criticism by observing that uranium was not actually discussed at the 1999 meeting. On Meet the Press, for example, Wilson stated:
At that meeting, uranium was not discussed. It would be a tragedy to think that we went to war over a conversation in which uranium was not discussed because the Niger official was sufficiently sophisticated to think that perhaps he might have wanted to discuss uranium at some later date.
In early October 2002, George Tenet called Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to ask him to remove reference to the Niger uranium from a speech Bush was to give in Cincinnati on 7 October. This was followed up by a memo asking Hadley to remove another, similar line. Another memo was sent to the White House expressing the CIA's view that the Niger claims were false; this memo was given to both Hadley and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
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