Good versions of the Niger Documents

This was a huge big-mega document dump from Wikisource. To make it manageable, I had to simply display links, not images as links. So click on the links to see the high-definition documents - afew

Intelligence Analysis, SCI and Red Teams

Director of Central Intelligence, Directive 1/21. (1994) PHYSICAL SECURITY STANDARDS FOR SENSITIVE COMPARTMENTED INFORMATION FACILITIES Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/dcid1-21.htm

Hessing Cahn, Anne. (1993) Team B: The Trillion Dollar Experiment. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, vol. 49, no. 03. Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn

Kaplan, Fred. (2004) Red Herrings - Can the CIA be saved? Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://www.slate.com/id/2103650

Lang, W. Patrick. (2004) Bureaucrats Versus Artists. Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/files/artists_versus_bureaucrats....pdf

Lang, W. Patrick. (2004) Drinking the Kool-Aid. Middle East Policy Council, vol. 11, no. 02 Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://www.mepc.org/public_asp/journal_vol11/0406_lang.asp

O'Connor, Tom. (2005) Intelligence Analysis. Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/427/427lect04.htm

Safire, William. (1998) Team B vs. CIA. New York Times, July 8, 1998. Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://www.security-policy.org/papers/1998/98-D136at.html

Shulsky, Abram and Schmitt, Gary. (1998) Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence. Retrieved: December 5, 2005
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/files/leo_strauss_and_the_world_of_intelligence.p df

A red team fixed the aluminum tubes around the policy of pre-emptive war with Iraq. The DOE, the Intelligence Community's centrifuge experts, assessed in August, 2001 that the tubes Iraq had been trying to import did not match any known centrifuge design. In fact, the tubes could not be used in a centrifuge program without substantial modification. In September, 2002, with the product launch for war in full swing and Bush administration officials terrorizing America with talk of smoking guns and mushroom clouds, the unexpected NIE threatened to establish DOE's assessment as the Intelligence Community's majority position. The red team was brought in to assume what it was supposed to prove: that Saddam had an active gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program. The red team's analysis became the basis of the WINPAC paper that became the basis of the tubes majority position in the October NIE. The fix was in.

In mid-September, Joe the WINPAC analyst contacted CIA's Counter Proliferation Division (CPD) for assistance in testing the tubes. (RS, p. 206) CPD recommended an individual from a group of "contractors" who had been providing CIA with "broad-based technical advice". (SSCI, p. 93). The Robb-Silberman Commission refers to the contractors as a red team. (RS, p. 211).

Vice-President Dick Cheney declared publicly that Iraq was "pursuing a nuclear weapon" for the first time on March 17, 2002. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Robb-Silberman Commission would find later that the IC's judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program was based on the CIA's assessment of the Iraqi tubes. (SSCI, p. 85; RS, p. 52) However, the CIA had not published a detailed assessment of the tubes at the time of Cheney's declaration and, in fact, would not do so until August 1. A Senior Executive Memorandum published in March, 2002, was titled The Status of Iraq's Uranium Enrichment Program. The document explained that the tubes were only "suitable" for gas centrifuges (RS, p. 200) and only that Iraq "may be trying" to reconstitute its enrichment program (SSCI, p. 127). The document also stated that Iraq "could" have a nuclear weapon by "mid-to-late decade" (SSCI, p. 127). Despite these caveats, over the following months Cheney implied regularly in public addresses that Iraq's nuclear weapons program was certain, advanced and a threat to the United States.

September 11, 2001. In the wake of the terror attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Centre, senior Bush administration officials became convinced that the U.S. must militarily overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.

On October 18, the CIA published a Senior Executive Intelligence Brief, Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts (SSCI, p. 36). Unlike formal assessment papers, SEIBs are not disseminated among the IC. Instead, they are distributed to `senior executives' such as the president and vice-president. SEIBs are usually drafted in response to specific policymaker questions and are narrow in scope. From July, 2001, until July, 2002, the CIA published nine SEIBs that discussed the tubes, none of which provided any information that supported the assessment they were intended for a nuclear program beyond a description of Joe's research.

Iraq began a gas centrifuge uranium enrichment program in August, 1987 (Albright, 1997). Iraq planned to build first a working centrifuge, then a number of experimental cascades, then commission a cascade facility comprising a thousand centrifuges. Iraq's goal was to be able to produce 10kg of HEU per year by 1994 (Albright, 1997). Iraqi scientists attempted to build a Beams centrifuge, however the project was abandoned in 1989. Iraq had obtained a more advanced centrifuge design, a modified Zippe-type developed by the European enrichment conglomerate, Urenco. The Zippe/ Urenco design could use carbon fibre or maraging steel rotors. The Iraqis also acquired technical expertise in centrifuge construction from Germany. By the end of 1990, Iraq had built two working Zippe/Urenco centrifuges. Iraq would have started development of a centrifuge cascade had not its enrichment program been halted after the 1991 Gulf War (Albright, 1997).

There are many issues surrounding the IC's various assessments of the Iraqi tubes' intended end-use over 2001 and 2002. To understand these, some basic information about nuclear weapons, uranium and gas centrifuge uranium enrichment is required. The following section will cover the necessary details.

[Author's note: The following account of the U.S. Intelligence Community's analysis of Iraq's high-strength aluminum tube procurement is based primarily on the reports of the United States Senate and Robb-Silberman Commission. Both investigated the WMD `intelligence failure' of 2002-2003 and their reports describe many assessments the Intelligence Community published in that time. Unfortunately, neither report discusses these assessments in their chronological order. For example, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) discusses the Department of Energy's December, 2001 assessment in its section on the National Intelligence Estimate, which was published in October, 2002. The Robb-Silberman Commission (RS) describes the assessments of various agencies as if they occurred simultaneously. However, the report's footnotes reveal that the different assessments were actually published months apart. (I suspect this obfuscation may have been deliberate.) In any case, my article discusses the aluminum tube assessments - and, more importantly, the arguments they contained - in their chronological order. Where there are gaps, I've had to rely on press reports, though fortunately I've not had to do so often. - FMJ]

In his article for the Times and on his blog, journalist Mick Smith argues that Saddam Hussein really was trying to buy uranium from Niger. According to Smith, MI6 has credible intelligence of the procurement attempt that is independent of the infamous Niger documents, the crude forgeries that claimed an Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. Smith also argues that the Cabal (which is what I half-jokingly call the forgers of the Niger documents) was Laura Montini, an Italian secretary working in the Nigerien embassy in Rome, and a Nigerien consul, Maiga Zakariaou. Montini and Zakariaou's motive was money. They sold the forgeries to Rocco Martino, a freelance spy, who in turn tried to sell them to various intelligence services, notably the French service, DGSE.