State Dept. Exposed Niger Forgeries 11 Days Before Bush's 16 Words

We are getting very close to proving George Bush knowingly and deliberately lied to Congress in his 2003 State of the Union when he uttered the infamous 16 words:

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

Lying to Congress, of course, is a crime - and therefore an impeachable offense.

Once again, Truthout's Jason Leopold has the scoop. (Lots of bloggers are saying Murray Waas is today's Bob Woodward - in that case Jason Leopold is today's Carl Bernstein!)

State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False

Eleven days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo...

On January 12, 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries," the memo dated July 7, 2003, says...

The memo had originally been drafted in June in response to Libby's questions about Wilson. But after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New York Times July 6, 2003, in which he disclosed that he had personally investigated the Niger uranium claims and found that they were false, Powell requested further information from his aides. Ford went back and retrieved the June memo, re-dated it July 7, 2003, and sent it to Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage...

The memo does not say that the State Department alerted the White House on January 12, 2003, about the bogus uranium claims.

But the memo's author, Carl Ford, said in a previous interview that he has no doubt the State Department's reservations about the Niger intelligence made its way to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld...

One high-ranking State Department official said that when the department's analysts briefed Colin Powell about the Niger forgeries Powell met with former Director of the CIA George Tenet and shared that information with him.

Tenet then told Vice President Dick Cheney and then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley, that the uranium claims were "dubious," according to current and former State Department and CIA officials who have direct knowledge of what Tenet discussed with the White House at the time.

The White House has long maintained that they were never briefed about the State Department's or the CIA's concerns related to the Niger uranium claims.

"I refuse to believe that the findings of a four-star general and an envoy the CIA sent to Niger to personally investigate the accuracy of the intelligence, as well as our own research at the State Department, never got into the hands of President Bush or Vice President Cheney. I don't buy it," said a high-ranking State Department official.

With any luck, Patrick Fitzgerald will get to the very bottom of the 16 words and prove Bush Lied so we can finally impeach him!