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Senator Seeks FBI Probe of Iraq Documents |
Fri Mar 14, 3:12 PM ET
By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated
Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI on Friday to investigate forged documents the Bush
administration used as evidence against Saddam Hussein and his military ambitions in Iraq.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West
Virginia said he was uneasy about a possible campaign to deceive
the public about the status of Iraq's nuclear program.
An investigation should "at
a minimum help to allay any concerns" that the government was involved in the creation of the documents to build support for
administration policies, Rockefeller wrote in a letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Secretary of State Colin Powell
has denied the U.S. government had any hand in creating the false documents.
"It came from other sources,"
Powell told a House committee Thursday. "We were aware of this piece of evidence, and it was provided in good faith to the
inspectors."
Rockefeller asked the FBI
to determine the source of the documents, the sophistication of the forgeries, the motivation of those responsible, why intelligence
agencies didn't recognize them as forgeries and whether they are part of a larger disinformation campaign.
The FBI did not immediately
respond to a request for comment.
The documents indicated that
Iraq tried to by uranium from Niger, the West African nation that is the third-largest producer of mined uranium, Niger's
largest export. The documents had been provided to U.S. officials by a third country, which has not been identified.
A U.S. government official,
who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said it was unclear who first created the documents. The official said American suspicions
remain about an Iraq-Niger uranium connection because of other, still-credible evidence that the official refused to specify.
In December, the State Department
used the information to support its case that Iraq was lying about its weapons programs. But on March 7, Mohammed ElBaradei,
head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents were forgeries.
Rockefeller said U.S. worries
about Iraqi nuclear weapons were not based primarily on the documents, but "there is a possibility that the fabrication of
these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding
Iraq."
At a House Appropriations
subcommittee hearing Thursday, Powell said the State Department had not participated "any way in any falsification."
Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin,
the committee's top Democrat, noted a Washington Post report that said a foreign government might have been conducting a deception
campaign to win support for military action against Iraq. When Obey asked Powell if he could say which country that was, Powell
replied, "I can't with confidence."
The Niger documents marked
the second time that ElBaradei has challenged evidence presented by the United States meant to illustrate Iraq's nuclear weapons
program. He also rejected the U.S. position that aluminum tubes imported by Iraq were intended to make nuclear bombs.
ElBaradei has said his inspectors
have found no evidence that Saddam has revived its nuclear weapons program.
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Associated Press writer John
J. Lumpkin contributed to this story. |