Yellowcake Forgery Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
The yellowcake forgery refers to a set of false documents that were used in the justification of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The documents suggested that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger. Both President Bush's State of the Union address and Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the United Nations Security Council cited the forgeries as "indisputable" evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons.The documents had long been suspected as frauds by US intelligence at the time of these 2003 presentations. In early 2002, Ambassador Joseph Wilson had been dispatched to Niger to investigate the documents. On February 22, 2002 Wilson reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was "unequivocally wrong" and that the documents had been forged.
On March 7, 2003, only days before the invasion, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released results of his analysis of the documents. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Niger officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic."
Soon thereafter, the documents became generally accepted by the press as falsified. In July 2003, conservative Patrick Buchanan stated "[T]he truth now, we know, is that a forgery was put together to get this country into a war with Iraq, that forgery found its way into our intelligence agencies, it found its way into the State of the Union, and the president of the United States should show more indignation and outrage that this was done." Buchanan added "Somebody in our own government knew very well that was a forgery, and they advanced it on up the line." [1]
By late 2003, the trail of the documents had been partially uncovered. They were obtained by a "security consultant", Rocco Martino, from Italian military intelligence. Martino, in turn, offered them to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba. On instructions from her editor at Panorama, Burba offered them to the US Embassy in Rome in October, 2002. [1] It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the US.
In March 2003, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed not to open a Congressional investigation of the matter, but rather asked the FBI to conduct the investigation. As of September 2004, the FBI had not yet interviewed Martino, claiming they were awaiting permission from the Italian government to do so. [1] However, Martino is known to have been in New York in August 2004. [1]
In September 2004, the CBS News program 60 Minutes decided to delay a major story on the forgeries because such a broadcast might influence the 2004 U.S. presidential election. A CBS spokesman stated "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election." [1]
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