FRENCH told CIA: NIGER Intelligence was BOGUS in 2001 & 2002

[kpete]

THE WORLD
French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence

The foreign spy service warned the U.S. various times before the war that there was no proof Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ex-officials say.

By Tom Hamburger, Peter Wallsten and Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writers


PARIS — More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The previously undisclosed exchanges between the U.S. and the French, described in interviews last week by the retired chief of the French counterintelligence service and a former CIA official, came on separate occasions in 2001 and 2002.

The French conclusions were reached after extensive on-the-ground investigations in Niger and other former French colonies, where the uranium mines are controlled by French companies, said Alain Chouet, the French former official. He said the French investigated at the CIA's request.


The repeated warnings from France's Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure did not prevent the Bush administration from making the case aggressively that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons materials.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-niger11dec11,0,3678379.story?coll=la-home-headlines

[H2O Man]

1. The IAEA had

stated in the late 1990s that there was no evidence that Iraq had taken any steps towards starting a nuclear program; in fact, all evidence showed just the opposite.

[Deja Q]

2. x

self-del

[Selatius]

3. Most likely he assumed Saddam still had some weapons, however...

whether or not he did have WMD holds no bearing on whether Saddam was fishing for yellowcake in Niger. It's like speculating whether a person has a loaded weapon in his home. It's totally different from whether he was seen at the local gunshop trying to purchase a new gun. It doesn't answer the former question of if he had a gun prior to that sighting.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

4. Yes, they did. Then there was the 1995 transcript of Hussein Kamel which

was released in February 2003 declaring that all weapons had been destroyed right after the Gulf War.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1845

[Octafish]

5. Please forward this to Conyer's office.

Conyer's office is putting together a resource of all pre-war intel.

So far, it's a slam-dunk: Saddam was no threat to the USA.