Update [2006-4-2 16:8:25 by ePluribus Media]: See endnote (6) for update.

ePMedia Editors’ Note:
Last summer, Barbara Morrill and Todd Johnston started tugging at an oddity that occurred  July 14, 2003, during Ari Fleischer’s last day on the job.  Fleischer was cornered into handling discrepancies from Dr. Condoleezza Rice’s July 11th comments about the “16 words.”  Both Morrill and Johnston were intrigued by the disconnect between Dr. Rice’s comments specific to the 2003 State of the Union Speech and Fleischer switching those comments to apply to an October 7th 2002 Cincinnati speech instead. Notably, the Cincinnati speech was prior to the HJ 114 Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 vote in Congress.

Morrill’s and Johnston’s diaries, published before ePluribus Media even had a public web presence, analyzed the conundrum. Since then, on January 18, 2006, a New York Times article, 2002 Memo Doubted Uranium Sale Claim by Eric Lichtblau revealed that the administration “would not say whether President Bush had seen”  a 2002 memo circulated by the State Department stating reasons why Iraq was “unlikely” to get uranium from Africa/Niger. And just this past Thursday, Murray Waas’s National Journal article establishes that President Bush did see a one-page summary about weakness of the aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons claims.

Today, in light of Lichtblau’s article and Murray Waas’s  ‘smoking gun’ that reveal full blown propaganda at work, Morrill revisits those two press briefings.

Barbara Morrill
for ePluribus Media

In the March 30, 2006  must-read National Journal article PREWAR INTELLIGENCE: Insulating Bush, Murray Waas reveals a concerted effort by the White House in the run-up to the 2004 election to hide the fact that it had been:

…determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union Address — that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon — might not be true, according to government records and interviews.

Given that the Bush administration called the aluminum tubes, as Waas states, the “most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon,” this is perhaps the most damning evidence to date that “facts were being fixed around the policy”(1) in the lead-up to the Iraq War. But Murray Waas was wrong about one thing.  He said:

The White House was largely successful in defusing the Niger controversy because there was no evidence that Bush was aware that his claims about the uranium were based on faulty intelligence.

There was evidence.

On January 28th 2003, President George W. Bush stood before the American people to deliver his State of the Union address.  He already had the approval of Congress, the Senate having overwhelmingly passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 the previous October, but this was his last public appeal to the American people for their support.  And while outlining the case for war, he said:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.(2)

It’s been nearly three years since the White House was forced to retract those infamous sixteen words, but the repercussions from those words and ensuing events are still being felt today.  But this isn’t about the “firestorm…at the highest levels of the Bush administration” after former ambassador Joseph Wilson denounced the claims made in Bush’s State of the Union address in a New York Times op-ed, or the outing of Valerie Plame.  Rather, it is to prove that the White House knew that their claims that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger were untrue, and the proof comes from the words of then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and former White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer.

What is often overlooked in discussions about the inclusion of the sixteen words in the January 28th 2003 State of the Union address is this: It wasn’t the first time the White House attempted to include the claim that Hussein sought uranium oxide from Africa. The previous October, Bush was scheduled to give a speech in Cincinnati on the eve of Congress’ vote on the Iraq War Resolution of 2002. An October 4th draft of the speech included the Africa claim (3). After the CIA called the “reporting weak,” the reference was removed, but even so, the day before the speech was to be given on October 7th, 2002, the CIA  faxed the White House(4):

…more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine city by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British.

Despite this, three months later in his State of the Union speech, President George W. Bush stood before the American people and stated with certainty that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake to further his nuclear ambitions.

And by the second week in July, the White House was intensifying a campaign to smear Joseph Wilson for speaking out about White House statements regarding uranium in Niger (5), even as they publicly retracted the Niger uranium claim and defended the vetting process for Bush’s State of the Union address.  On July 11th, 2003 aboard Air Force One, Condoleezza Rice took questions from the press and was asked:

Q:  Dr. Rice, there are a lot of reports, apparently overnight, that CIA people had informed the NSC well before the State of the Union that they had trouble with the reference in the speech. Can you tell us specifically what your office had heard, what you had passed along to the President on that?

She said that the CIA had cleared the speech, that Bush had said African countries, not specifically Niger, and:

DR. RICE: I’m going to be very clear, all right? The President’s speech — that sentence was changed, right? And with the change in that sentence, the speech was cleared. Now, again, if the Agency had wanted that sentence out, it would have been gone. And the Agency did not say that they wanted that speech out — that sentence out of the speech. They cleared the speech.

Now, the State of the Union is a big speech, a lot of things happen. I’m really not blaming anybody for what happened. But there is a fact here, in the way that we clear speeches.

And three days later, Ari Fleischer faced that same press corps and was asked:

Q Ari, to follow-up on his question, the apple was a reference in a draft to the October speech to a specific quantity of uranium from Niger. To take another apple, the draft of the State of the Union speech — according to Dr. Rice’s briefing on the plane on Friday — included references to quantity and place, and we were told that that was Niger, they were taken out.

MR. FLEISCHER: She was referring to Cincinnati in that. I talked to her afterwards, and she was referring to Cincinnati when she said that.

Q When she said that on the plane?

MR. FLEISCHER: Yes.

Q Wow, that wasn’t clear at all.

Dr. Rice was specifically asked about the State of the Union speech, she answered extensively and specifically about the State of the Union speech; yet three days later, Ari Fleischer says she was referring to Cincinnati.  And why was it so important for the White House to try and establish that Dr. Rice was talking about Cincinnati?  Because the White House had been warned by the CIA in no uncertain terms in October that the uranium claims were based on weak reporting and shouldn’t be used.  And when CIA Director George Tenet fell on his sword and took responsibility for the inclusion of the sixteen words, he said:

Although the documents related to the alleged Niger-Iraqi uranium deal had not yet been determined to be forgeries, officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed.

The language that was changed was simply to exchange the word Niger for Africa. It didn’t make the charge true, but it did provide plausible deniability. When Condoleezza Rice inadvertently told the truth, the fact that she was speaking about the State of the Union and not Cincinnati could not be allowed to stand.  Because it proved that the White House knew full well that Bush’s uranium claim in his State of the Union address was not true. And they knew it before he made the speech.

(1)  Pincus, Walter. British Intelligence Warned of Iraq War. Washington Post, May 13, 2005; Page A18.
(2) President Delivers State of the Union Transcript from the White House, Office of the Press Secretary, January 28, 2003.
(3) REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY’S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ II. Niger Section F. The Cinncinnati Speech Page 55. Specific quote is:

and the regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa – an essential ingredient in the enrichment process.

(4) ibid.
(5) Jason Leopold. Cheney Spearheaded Effort to Discredit Wilson. Truthout 09 February 2006.

The CIA and State Department officials said that a day after Wilson’s March 8, 2003, CNN appearance, they attended a meeting at the Vice President’s office chaired by Cheney, and it was there that a decision was made to discredit Wilson.

(6) Update with a nod to smintheus. Waas, Murray. What Bush Was Told About Iraq. National Journal, March 2, 2006.

For additional information about the Plame affair, fact-checked and sourced, check the ePluribus Media timeline.

Other ePluribus Media contributors include: Kfred, Susie Dow, stoy, standingup and Todd Johnston

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