Thursday, July 17, 2003

MEL GOODMAN,  http://www.ciponline.org/nationalsecurity/index.htm

Goodman, a former CIA analyst, is a professor of international security at the National War College in Washington and a senior fellow for intelligence reform at the Center for International Policy. He said today: "The administration is now asserting that statements about Iraq's alleged attempts to obtain unenriched uranium from Africa may well be factually correct -- based on Mr. Blair's claims that the British have other sources besides the forged Niger documents to back this assertion which, somehow, they cannot share with the Americans or the International Atomic Energy Agency. During my 24 years
with the CIA, I often worked with the Joint Intelligence Committee, which is Britain's senior intelligence institution.

I have never once heard a British official say that we have this important document but we can't show it to you. The rule is that truly sensitive stuff which cannot be shared is not talked about at all -- if it can come up, it can be shared. Otherwise, the CIA would not -- should not -- take an unsourced, unseen claim seriously. This is especially true for this particular claim because the uranium market is a heavily monitored international market. It's nearly impossible for anyone to obtain a sizeable quantity without some information being gleaned.... The Niger documents should not distract us from all the other bogus claims that were floating around -- regarding aluminum tubes that the U.S. Department of Energy and the IAEA decided could not be used for uranium enrichment, the never-proven Iraq - Al Qaeda links, the massive stockpiles of WMD and the biological and chemical weapons attack that could be launched within 45 minutes, which President Bush also repeated on September 26, 2002, again citing the British as the source. The main question was: Is Iraq an imminent threat? Based on the intelligence, the answer seems to have been no."