98^th in blog series on the administration push to war. As allegations that Bush’s Niger story was bogus spread throughout the news media, the White House is forced into repeated denials and evasions. The implosion of the Niger uranium story casts reasonable doubt on the larger administration brief for invasion.
July 15-21, 2003:

July 15, 2003 – Scott McClellan holds his first press briefing as White House Press Secretary. McClellan is grilled over Niger uranium:

“Q Scott, on this Iraq-Niger situation, why is it that the President made the comment yesterday that doubts were only raised about the underlying intelligence behind that statement after the State of the Union address, when other administration officials and other evidence suggests that's not true?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, when it came to our attention, when it came to the President's attention was when the IAEA came out in March with the report showing that those documents relating to Niger were forged. And that was only one part of the overall piece of information that was cited.

Q But doubts were raised clear back to the previous --

MR. McCLELLAN: But go back to the NIE, and in the NIE it stated that Iraq was trying to seek uranium from Africa. And I think that we have addressed this issue. We have made it clear that that statement should not have been in the speech, and if the CIA had said, take it out, we would have taken it out.

But let's put this in perspective. This issue here relates to the threat that Saddam Hussein and his regime posed to the region, to his people and to the world. And the statement in the State of the Union was one piece of one part of a much larger body of evidence that --

Q Right, but that's not -- the question I'm dealing with has to do with --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- related to the regime's weapons of mass destruction and the threat that the regime posed; not only that it had weapons, but it has past history.

Q I'll ask a question about that in just a second. The point is, the President said doubts were only raised after the State of the Union address -- and that's not accurate. Why did he say that?

MR. McCLELLAN: And it was laid out previously. I think we've addressed this. We've addressed this over the last couple of days, about the timing of when we found out that those -- that the documents were forged.

Q But learning about the forgeries was one piece of this. But doubts about the intelligence were raised last year.

MR. McCLELLAN: The bottom line is that we should not have put that line in the speech, and we've made that clear.”

The argument, as the next reporter makes clear, is part of the much larger argument about the administration’s insistence on WMD as a cause for war:

“Q Yesterday, as a follow-up, your predecessor said it was "a bunch of bull" to suggest that Iraq's nuclear program was central to the case for war. Isn't that a statement that is at odds with the President's State of the Union remarks, and, indeed, the very congressional resolution that he fought to have passed, which was, in essence, the imminence of Iraq's nuclear weapons program was why this nation needed to act when it did?

MR. McCLELLAN: Wait a second. That was one part of the overall body of evidence that I talked about. And it is nonsense to suggest that there was any political reason behind those statements.

Iraq -- there is a lot of evidence showing that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. We outlined that evidence both going back, you know, October and previously, and even in later months, more recent months.

But the threat was established by Iraq's use of chemical weapons, not only that they had them, but that they had used them in the past; by UNSCOM's final report in 1999, which documented that thousands of chemical and biological weapons remained unaccounted for; and by Saddam Hussein's active defiance of the international community, and continued defiance, including the well-documented fact that Iraq never fully and completely cooperated with UN inspectors.

Q You're not disputing the notion that central to the argument for going to war was the threat posed by Iraq's nuclear program?

MR. McCLELLAN: That was one part of a large body of evidence about why. You go back --

Q It was more than one part.

MR. McCLELLAN: The reconstituting of nuclear weapons? That was one part. That was one part of the larger body of evidence.”

Not all of the content of White House press briefings is aired on television by outlets such as C-Span. The encounter above is remarkable: within a few weeks after the invasion of Iraq, which the administration had brought about by spending months laying down a case about Iraqi nuclear weapons, the White House is backpedaling, trying to downplay its own previous insistence.

July 15/16 – The Italian newspaper La Repubblica says that Prime Minister Berlusconi’s government and the Italian secret service, SISMI, were the source of the forged documents; Berlusconi, about to travel to the U.S., denies the story. The Italian parliament is set to probe Italian links to the Niger documents.

July 16, 2003 – CIA Director George Tenet is questioned behind closed doors, testifies to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence about the backstory to the Niger uranium item and its inclusion in the State of the Union address. Tenet testifies that the president had been warned off the uranium story.

July 17, 2003 –White House press secretary Scott McClellan (press briefing 12:36-1:17 p.m.) takes more grilling on the Niger uranium story:

“QUESTION: Within the NSC, was it, in fact, Bob Joseph who wanted the information about Iraq seeking uranium, allegedly, in Africa in the State of the Union? Was it he? Was that communicated, discussed, debated with Condoleezza Rice?       

       And why is it that he wanted that information in there so badly, given the fact that the CIA couldn't vouch for its accuracy? They told the British in September of '02 to take it out of their own reporting, and they wanted it out of the president's speech in October.        

       So why was the NSC hell-bent on having it in the State of the Union?

MCCLELLAN: Well, again, there are two different pieces that you touched on there. You touched on the October speech, relating to Cincinnati, and that was based a specific amount and a specific source. And you're correct: The CIA did say, "Take it out," and we did.

The State of the Union address focused on the reference that was made in the National Intelligence Estimate saying that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. It was based on additional sources.

MCCLELLAN: But at the time, before the State of the Union, the British had also made a document public stating that claim and they had additional sources upon which they relied.          We learned some information that we did not know at the time after the State of the Union speech. And that was when we acknowledged that, relating some information on some forged documents relating to one part of that overall piece of evidence. And we said, "This did not rise to the level of a presidential speech." And that's why it was taken out.

QUESTION: The reality is, that even though the language was changed as it was prepared for the State of the Union, the very fact that it had to be amended in the first place speaks to the fact that this was a suspect piece of intelligence by the admission of the CIA at the time. And it was subject to debate within the administration about its accuracy, and therefore...”

July 18, 2003 – Newspapers report that the purported Niger documents were obvious forgeries, highlight differing statements from CIA and State; e.g. Scottsbluff, Nebraska Star-Herald, Friday July 18, 2003, “Forged documents ignored until president’s speech” (AP) [There is wider publication of the same article on July 21.]

July 18, 2003 – A Time Magazine article by Matt Cooper suggests that the administration has “declared war” on Wilson.

 
Same day – White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan announces that the CIA cable about Wilson’s debriefing on his Niger trip has been declassified.

July 19, 2003 – Dr. David Kelly, British expert on weapons of mass destruction who had discussed the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq WMD used by Blair’s government as pretext for war in Iraq, is found dead in England. Police say the death is a suicide.

July 20, 2003 – Andrea Mitchell at NBC tells Joe Wilson that a senior White House source told her to press Wilson’s family relations rather than the “16 words.”

July 21, 2003 – NBC’s Chris Matthews tells Wilson that Karl Rove called Wilson’s wife “fair game.”