Sunday, July 17, 2005
Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence - Excerpts
The following comes from the body of the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence aggreed to by all Senators, not the Additional Views of various individual Senators:
"Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq- Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal ...."
"The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name' and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador's wife says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'" (Report, p. 39)
"When the former ambassador spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respect." (Report, p. 44)
"The intelligence report [based on Mr. Wilson's debriefing following his trip to Niger] indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states ... 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." (Report, p. 43)
"In an interview with Committee staff, the former ambassador was able to provide more information about the meeting between former Prime Minister Mayaki and the Iraqi delegation. The former ambassador said that Mayaki did meet with the Iraqi delegation but never discussed what was meant by 'expanding commercial relations.'" (Report, p. 44)
"[The CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the [Wilson] report was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting." (Report, p. 46)
"Because CIA analysts did not believe that the [Wilson] report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers. For the same reason, CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue." (Report, p. 46)
Thus, the body of the Report agreed to by Democratic Senators found that Mr. Wilson confirmed the CIA assessment that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger. One may readily disagree with that assessment. Of course, to do so one must believe that a high level Iraqi delegation met with former Prime Minister Miyaki to talk about the purchase of onions.
Frankly, I don't believe that any rational, non-ideologically blinded person would believe that.
# posted by Thomas A. Becket : 11:49 AM
