Then there is the lying going on and on and on
U.N. Official: Fake Iraq Nuke Papers Were Crude
By Louis Charbonneau
Reuters
Wednesday 26 March 2003
A few hours and a simple internet search was all it took for U.N. inspectors to realize documents
backing U.S. and British claims that Iraq had revived its nuclear program were crude fakes, a
U.N. official said.
Speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, a senior official from the U.N. nuclear agency
who saw the documents offered as evidence that Iraq tried to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger,
described one as so badly forged his "jaw dropped."
"When (U.N. experts) started to look at them, after a few hours of going at it with a critical eye
things started to pop out," the official said, adding a more thorough investigation used up
"resources, time and energy we could have devoted elsewhere."
The United States first made the allegation that Iraq had revived its nuclear program last fall when
the CIA warned that Baghdad "could make a nuclear weapon within a year" if it acquired uranium.
President Bush found the proof credible enough to add it to his State of the Union speech in
January.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) official said the charge Iraq sought the uranium
was to be the "stake in the heart" of Baghdad and "would have been as close to a smoking gun
as you could get" because Iraq could only want it for weapons.
OBVIOUS FAKES
Once the IAEA got the documents -- which took months -- French nuclear scientist Jacques
Bautes, head of the U.N. Iraq Nuclear Verification office, quickly saw they were fakes.
Two documents were particularly bad. The first was a letter from the president of Niger which
referred to his authority under the 1965 constitution. That constitution has been defunct for nearly
four years, the official said.
There were other problems with the letter, including an unsuccessful forgery of the president's
signature.
"It doesn't even look close to the signature of the president. I'm not a (handwriting) expert but
when I looked at it my jaw dropped," the official said.
Another letter about uranium dated October 2000 purportedly came from Niger's foreign minister
and was signed by a Mr. Alle Elhadj Habibou, who has not been foreign minister since 1989.
To make matters worse, the letterhead was out of date and referred to Niger's "Supreme Military
Council" from the pre-1999 era -- which would be like calling Russia the Soviet Union.
After determining the documents were fakes, the IAEA had a group of international forensics
experts -- including people from the U.S and Britain -- verify their findings. The panel unanimously
agreed with the IAEA.
"We don't know who did it," the official said, adding that it would be easy to come up with a long
list of groups and states which would like to malign the present Iraqi regime.
The IAEA asked the U.S. and Britain if they had any other evidence backing the claim that Iraq
tried to buy uranium. The answer was no.
IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei informed the U.N. Security Council in early March that the Niger
proof was fake and that three months with 218 inspections at 141 sites had produced "no
evidence or plausible indication" Iraq had a nuclear program.
But last week Vice President Dick Cheney repeated the U.S. position and said that ElBaradei
was wrong about Iraq.
"We know (Iraqi President Saddam Hussein) has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire
nuclear weapons, and we believe he has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons," he said.
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