The Daily Background

Remember that whole New York Sun “we’re going to be real journalists, now!” business? Yeah, well, T r u t h o u t’s Jason Leopold (one of the finest independent investigative journalists this side of the blogosphere) has put them to shame. He writes about a newly de-classified State Department memo which has just revealed that the State Department opposed the use of the now infamous 16 Niger-Yellocake claims in the 2003 State of the Union (which ultimately proved to be entirely false).

Turns out, the White House had plenty of warning that the information they used was false. From the CIA, IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association), and now it turns out, from the State Department as well (then headed by Colin Powell, who refused to rely on the Niger claims when making that debacle of a UN-speech, because in his heart he knew it was bullshit):

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.

The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq.

This has all sorts of implications for the PlameGate investigation, as well as regarding the ramp-up to war in Iraq in 2003. Go read Leopold’s full article here.

Filed under: Plame Leak, Z-TDB Blog