European and French Intelligence Reports
The front page of the June 28, 2004 Financial Times carried a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband, describing that between 1999 and 2001, three unnamed European intelligence services were aware that Niger was possibly engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. "The same information was passed to the US" but American officials decided not to include it in their assessment, Huband added in a follow up report.
French intelligence informed the United States a year before President Bush's State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with hard evidence.
The Sunday Times dated August 1, 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source describing his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence.
Although the claims made in the British intelligence report regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the CIA and Department of State could not verify them and are said to have thought the claims were "highly dubious".
Read more about this topic: Niger Uranium Forgeries
Famous quotes containing the words european, french, intelligence and/or reports:
“Americans want action for their money. They are fascinated by its self-reproducing qualities if it’s put to work.... Gold-hoarding goes against the American grain; it fits in better with European pessimism than with America’s traditional optimism.”
—Paula Nelson (b. 1945)
“The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Technology represents intelligence systematically applied to the problem of the body. It functions to amplify and surpass the organic limits of the body; it compensates for the body’s fragility and vulnerability ...”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)
“He who is only a traveler learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)