Plame case documents: July 2003 British parliamentary report on WMD claims

This report by the British House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee issued 07/07/03 and titled The Decision to go to War in Iraq examined the pre-war claims of the British government on WMD in Iraq, among the British intelligence report cited by Bush in his famous "16 words" in his 2003 State of the Union address. (A *.pdf version is also available.)

The section on the uranium from Africa claim addresses some of the immediately relevant issues on the Plame outing. For example, it describes Joe Wilson's trip to Niger:

As has been widely reported, and not denied by the US Government, the CIA in February 2002 sent a retired US ambassador to Niger to investigate claims that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger. The ambassador reported to the CIA that the claims were false and that the documents relating to them may have been forged. The Independent on Sunday reported on 29 June 2003 "The retired US ambassador said that it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report-drawn up by the CIA - which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the West African state of Niger, were forgeries." When the Foreign Secretary was asked "What was the date on which the British intelligence community were informed by the CIA that this forged documentation existed" he replied: "We will find out."

One of the factual issues that is still unclarified is whether Wilson's official report on his Niger trip, which was prepared by his CIA debriefers and still not publicly available, addressed the issue of the document forgeries. Wilson did not directly examine the documents as part of his CIA mission. But it seems a perfectly sensible inference that if the actions the documents supposedly recorded did not take place, that the documents were not accurate, and had to be forgeries of some kind. Wilson told the staff of the Senate WMD cover-up investigation that he discussed with the debriefers information relevant to determining the authenticity of the documents. CIA Director Tenet said in a public statement that the report prepared by the CIA based on Wilson's trip did not include a judgment on the validity of the documents.


The House of Commons report notes that Blair's government claimed its findings about uranium from Africa were based on something other than the forged Niger documents. But the report says pointedly (bolding in original):

We conclude that it is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged, but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence. The assertion "... that Iraq sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa ..." should have been qualified to reflect the uncertainty. We recommend that the Government explain on what evidence it relied for its judgment in September 2002 that Iraq had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. We further recommend that in its response to this Report the Government set out whether it still considers the September dossier to be accurate in what it states about Iraq's attempts to procure uranium from Africa, in the light of subsequent events.