French Intelligence Assessments
A June 4, 2003 article in the Financial Times reported that "French intelligence had seized a separate shipment of tubes to the US, and tested their tolerance by spinning them to 98,000 revolutions per minute, concluding they were too sophisticated to have alternative uses." The Times also reported that Secretary of State Colin Powell was denied permission by French political authorities from using this information in his February 5, 2003 speech before the U.N. Security Council.
In a speech before the New American Foundation American Strategy Program Policy Forum on October 19, 2005, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.), a former Chief of Staff for the State Department from 2002–2005, commented on this. According to Wilkerson, "The French came in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments? We were wrong. We were wrong."
Read more about this topic: Iraqi Aluminum Tubes
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