The State Department also remained highly skeptical about the Niger claim. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase." Wilson took strong exception to these conclusions in his 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. This conclusion has retained considerable currency despite a subsequent correction provided by the Post on the article's website: "Correction: In some editions of the Post, a July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C.
She reported that the Senate report stated that Wilson's report actually bolstered, rather than debunked, intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq. However, an article by journalist Susan Schmidt in The Washington Post on July 10, 2004, stated that the Iraq Intelligence Commission and the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at various times concluded that Wilson's claims were incorrect. Bush misrepresented intelligence leading up to the invasion and thus misleadingly suggested that the Iraqi government sought uranium to manufacture nuclear weapons. In one of these op-eds published in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson argues that, in the State of the Union Address, President George W.
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Wilson wrote a series of op-eds questioning the war's factual basis (See "Bibliography" in The Politics of Truth). Bush said "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." "What I Didn't Find In Africa" Īfter the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, Joseph C. In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union Address, US President George W. Wilson ultimately concluded that there "was nothing to the story", and reported his findings in March 2002.
The former Prime Minister of Niger, Ibrahim Hassane Mayaki, reported to Wilson that he was unaware of any contracts for uranium sales to rogue states, though he was approached by a businessman on behalf of an Iraqi delegation about "expanding commercial relations" with Iraq, which Mayaki interpreted to mean uranium sales. Wilson to Niger to investigate the possibility. In late February 2002, responding to inquiries from the Vice President's office and the Departments of State and Defense about the allegation that Iraq had a sales agreement to buy uranium in the form of yellowcake from Niger, the Central Intelligence Agency had authorized a trip by Joseph C. Main article: September Dossier § Uranium from Niger His prison sentence was ultimately commuted by President Bush, and he was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2018.īackground State of the Union Address Scooter Libby was convicted of lying to investigators. The scandal led to a criminal investigation no one was charged for the leak itself. David Corn and others suggested that Armitage and other officials had leaked the information as political retribution for Wilson's article. Novak had learned of Plame's employment, which was classified information, from State Department official Richard Armitage. Ī week after Wilson's op-ed was published, Novak published a column in The Washington Post which mentioned claims from "two senior administration officials" that Plame had been the one to suggest sending her husband. Bush stated that " Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson published a July 2003 op-ed in The New York Times stating his doubts during the mission that any such transaction with Iraq had taken place. Wilson, to the CIA for a mission to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq had arranged to purchase and import uranium from the country, but stated that he "may be in a position to assist".
In 2002, Plame wrote a memo to her superiors in which she expressed hesitation in recommending her husband, former diplomat Joseph C. The Plame affair (also known as the CIA leak scandal and Plamegate) was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
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