WASHINGTON, 15 March 2003 — The FBI is looking into the forgery of a key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program, including the possibility that a foreign government is using a deception campaign to foster support for military action against Iraq .
“It’s something we’re just beginning to look at,” a senior law enforcement official said yesterday. Officials are trying to determine whether the documents were forged to try to influence US policy, or whether they may have been created as part of a disinformation campaign directed by a foreign intelligence service. “We’re looking at it from a preliminary stage as to what it’s all about,” he said. The FBI has not yet opened a formal investigation because it is unclear whether the bureau has jurisdiction over the matter.
The phony documents — a series of letters between Iraqi and Niger officials showing Iraq’s interest in equipment that could be used to make nuclear weapons — came to British and US intelligence officials from a third country. The identity of the third country could not be learned yesterday.
The forgery came to light last week during a highly publicized and contentious United Nations meeting. Mohamed E1-Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the Security Council on March 7 that UN and independent experts had decided that the documents were “not authentic.”
E1-Baradei’s disclosure, and his rejection of three other key claims that US intelligence officials have cited to support allegations about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions, struck a powerful blow to the Bush administration’s argument on the matter.
El-Baradei told the Council: “We have to date found no evidence or plausible indications of the revival of a nuclear program in Iraq.”
The CIA had questions about “whether they were accurate,” said one intelligence official, and it decided not to include them in its file on Iraq’s program to procure weapons of mass destruction.
