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" (and former agent of the precursor agency to SISMI, the SID), Rocco Martino , from Italian military intelligence (SISMI). A London Times article quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy, after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004). (Martino later recanted and said he had been misquoted, and that SISMI had not facilitated the meeting where he obtained the documents.)

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. [2] It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the U.S. In 2005, Vincent Cannistaro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians:

The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein . . . . [3]

In an interview published August 7, 2005, Cannistaro was asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the source of the forgery was former National Security Council & State Department consultant Michael Ledeen [4] (Ledeen had also allegedly had been a liason between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI two decades ago.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you'd be very close." [[5]]

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. [6] However, Martino is known to have been in New York in August 2004. [7]

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." [8]

External links

• Detailed timeline of Africa-uranium allegation - Center for Cooperative Research
• "Who Lied to Whom?" by Seymore M. Hersch, The New Yorker, March 31, 2003.
• "Fake Iraq documents 'embarrassing' for U.S." CNN, March 14, 2003.
• "Who Forged the Niger Documents?" interview of Vincent Cannistraro by Ian Masters, Alternet, April 7, 2005.