<p>gla, regarding “Africa”, here are some conclusions from the report:
Throughout the time the Niger reports were being disseminated, the =CIA Iraq nuclear analyst said he had discussed the issue with his INR colleague and was aware that INR disagreed with the CIAs position. He said they discussed Nigers uranium production rates and whether Niger could have been diverting any yellowcake. He said that he and his INR counterpart essentially agreed to disagree about whether Niger could supply uranium to Iraq. The CIA analyst said he assessed at the time that the intelligence showed both that Iraq may have been trying to procure uranium in Africa and that it was possible Niger could supply it. He said his assessment was bolstered by several other intelligence reports on Iraqi interest in uranium from other countries in Africa.
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On January 17,2003, eleven days before the State of the Union address, WINPAC published a current intelligence paper (Regue****r Evidence of Iraq sNuclear WeaponsProgram Other Than the Aluminum Tube Procurement Effort, SPWRO11703-01) in response to a request from the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff for information, other than the aluminum tubes, that showed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program. Regarding uranium acquisition, the paper said, fragmentary reporting on Iraqi attempts to procure uranium from various countries in Africa in the past several years is another sign of reconstitution.
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WINPAC analysts told Committee staff that, even though they were still in the process of analyzing the documents, their analytic position had not changed, so they believed it would have been premature to publish concerns about the documents without having investigated those concerns for themselves. One analyst said that if he were presenting CIASbest evidence on reconstitution he would not have included the uranium information, but when asked what else we had besides the tubes, he ratcheted down the threshold of what was appropriate to include. He also indicated that the reference in the paper about efforts to acquire uranium from Africa were broader than the alleged Niger contract in that it included the reports on Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. </p>
<p>Other WINPAC analysts told Committee staff that by January, they had come to believe that if Iraq was in fact attempting to acquire uranium from Africa, it would bolster their argument that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program because Iraq had no other use for uranium. Most of the other elements of the reconstitution case, the tubes, magnets, machine tools and balancing machines, were all dual-use materials, while for Iraq, uranium had only one potential use -a nuclear weapons program.
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On January 24,2003, in response to a request from the NSC for additional details regarding IC input to the case for Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction,the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs faxed a packet of background information to the NSC. The fax contained the information from the October 2002 NIE on Iraqs vigorous attempts to procure uranium ore and yellowcake from Niger and other countries in Africa . The information was used to prepare for Secretary Powells presentation of intelligence to the UN in February 2003.
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On February 10,2003, the U.S. Defense Attache in Abidjan (the capital of the African country, Ivory Coast) reported that its reports officer examined two warehouses in Benin suspected of storing uranium on route to Iraq on December 17,2002. The visit was conducted almost a month after a Navy report indicated uranium destined for Iraq was transiting through the warehouses. (See page 59) The report indicated that the warehouses appeared to contain only bales of cotton. A CIA operations cable on the inspection noted, however, it was not possible to determine if the cotton bales concealed the uranium shipment and that no radiation detection equipment had been used during the inspection.
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<p>Note that the suspected yellowcake in the last quote would have initiated from Niger but the investigation was botched by not doing a thorough inspection of the warehouse and the Navy never followed up with the businessman who allegedly brokered the deal even though they had his name and telephone number.</p>