[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 89 (Tuesday, June 17, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H5413-H5415]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    AMERICA IS WAITING FOR AN ANSWER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to enter into the 
record a letter by the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman) to 
Condoleezza Rice, the Security Advisor to the President, because it 
contains some questions I think are important.
  The other night I was on Crossfire, and Robert Novak asked me whether 
I thought it would be a good thing or a bad thing if weapons of mass 
destruction were found in Iraq. The show moved on before I could 
answer, but it was an interesting question. I think what he was getting 
at is whether I would feel better if I knew the President were right 
all along and that there were huge stockpiles of anthrax and nerve gas 
and missiles armed with bioweapons ready to be launched 45 minutes and 
a latterday Manhattan Project hidden under a stadium somewhere.
  He was really asking if I would feel better knowing that I had not 
been misled or if I were rather nothing were found so I could gloat 
over having been right when I said in September that I thought indeed 
the President would mislead the American people on the way to Iraq.
  Of course, the answer is that I hope that no weapons are there to be 
found. I hope we are never in danger and that we were not in danger and 
that our troops were never in danger, and that Saddam Hussein, despite 
his aspirations, was not on his way of becoming the Saladin of the 21st 
century. Who would not prefer a world with fewer weapons in the hands 
of dictators? And if there were weapons, all Americans want them found 
and destroyed.
  The President himself seems to have retreated from the claim that the 
U.S. was in imminent danger from the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. 
Now he is speaking of existence of a weapons program, not of armed 
missiles and gallons of nerve gas.
  Mr. Speaker, 11 young Americans have died in Iraq in the past 15 
days. Fifty have died since the President declared the war over. A 
total of 180 Americans and 45 coalition troops have died. What does it 
mean that 180 young Americans have died in Iraq? Did they die to bring 
democracy to someone else's country or to stop Saddam Hussein's 
terrible human rights abuses?
  Mr. Speaker, I am glad that Hussein is gone, and I believe that 
nearly all Iraqis are glad that he's gone. But I do not think that the 
young Americans who died in Iraq signed up to fight against tyranny in 
general. They signed up to protect this country and our country, their 
own country.
  In light of this where do we go? If this were still the Clinton 
administration, there would be a highly publicized investigation coming 
out of every committee in this House, including Small Business and 
Agriculture. There would be calls for special prosecutors, for 
resignation, for impeachment.
  President Bush puts great store in personal responsibility, and I 
believe the time is long past for the President to take responsibility 
and level with the American people. Did the President believe that Iraq 
was so likely to pose a danger in the future that it was okay to play 
fast and loose with the Congress, the U.N. and the American people to 
get approval to go to war?
  Was the President misled by bad intelligence? Was he misled by 
advisors who had prejudged the facts, or was there solid, credible 
intelligence that just unaccountably turned up to be accurate? We need 
to know.
  If the President's information was bad, we need to know what steps 
are being taken to dismiss those who provided and vouched for it. If 
the President decided that future dangers were so great that misleading 
us about the present danger was warranted, we need him to take 
responsibility for that decision. We need the President to explain to 
us and to the world why 180 young Americans are dead and why U.S. 
credibility is eroding all over the

[[Page H5414]]

world. I am waiting to hear from the President, the Congress is 
waiting, and 180 American families are waiting to hear.
                                         House of Representatives,


                               Committee on Government Reform,

                                    Washington, DC, June 10, 2003.
     Hon. Condoleeza Rice,
     Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the 
         White House, Washington, DC.
       Dear Dr. Rice: Since March 17, 2003, I have been trying 
     without success to get a direct answer to one simple 
     question: Why did President Bush cite forged evidence about 
     Iraq's nuclear capabilities in his State of the Union 
     address?
       Although you addressed this issue on Sunday on both Meet 
     the Press and This Week with George Stephanopoulos, your 
     comments did nothing to clarify this issue. In fact, your 
     responses contradicted other known facts and raised a host of 
     new questions.
       During your interviews, you said the Bush Administration, 
     welcomes inquiries into this matter. Yesterday, the 
     Washington Post also reported that Director of Central 
     Intelligence George Tenet has agreed to provide ``full 
     documentation'' of the intelligence information ``in regards 
     to Secretary Powell's comments, the president's comments and 
     anybody else's comments.'' Consistent with these sentiments, 
     I am writing to seek further information about this important 
     matter.
       The forged documents in question describe efforts by Iraq 
     to obtain uranium from an African country, Niger. During your 
     interviews over the weekend, you asserted that no doubts or 
     suspicions about these efforts or the underlying documents 
     were communicated to senior officials in the Bush 
     Administration before the President's State of the Union 
     address. For example, when you were asked about this issue on 
     Meet the Press, you made the following statement:
       ``We did not know at the time--no one knew at the time, in 
     our circles--maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the 
     agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts 
     and suspicions that this might be a forgery. Of course, it 
     was information that was mistaken.''
       Similarly, when you appeared on This Week, you repeated 
     this statement, claiming that you made multiple inquiries of 
     the intelligence agencies regarding the allegation that Iraq 
     sought to obtain uranium from an African country. You stated:
       ``George, somebody, somebody down may have known. But I 
     will tell you that when this issue was raised with the 
     intelligence community . . . the intelligence community did 
     not know at that time, or at levels that got to us, that 
     this, that there were serious questions about this report.''
       Your claims, however, are directly contradicted by other 
     evidence. Contrary to your assertion, senior Administration 
     officials had serious doubts about the forged evidence well 
     before the President's State of the Union address. For 
     example, Greg Thielmann, Director of the Office of Strategic, 
     Proliferation, and Military Issues in the State Department, 
     told Newsweek last week that the State Department's Bureau of 
     Intelligence and Research (INR) had concluded the documents 
     were ``garbage.'' As you surely know, INR is part of what you 
     call ``the intelligence community.'' It is headed by an 
     Assistant Secretary of State, Carl Ford; it reports directly 
     to the Secretary of State; and it was a full participant in 
     the debate over Iraq's nuclear capabilities. According to 
     Newsweek.
       ``What I saw that, it really blew me away,'' Thielmann told 
     Newsweek. Thielmann knew about the source of the allegation. 
     The CIA had come up with some documents purporting to show 
     Saddam had attempted to buy up to 500 tons of uranium oxide 
     from the African country of Niger. INR had concluded that the 
     purchases were implausible--and made that point clear to 
     Powell's office. As Thielmann read that the president had 
     relied on these documents to report to the nation, he 
     thought, ``Not that stupid piece of garbage. My thought was, 
     how did that get into the speech?''
       Moreover, New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has 
     reported that the Vice President's office was aware of the 
     fraudulent nature of the evidence as early as February 2002--
     nearly a year before the President gave his State of the 
     Union address. In his column, Mr. Kristof reported:
       ``I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that 
     more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an 
     investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. 
     ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 
     2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that 
     envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the 
     information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents 
     had been forged. The envoy reported, for example, that a 
     Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents 
     had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. . . . 
     The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the 
     administration and seemed to be accepted--except that 
     President Bush and the State Department kept citing it 
     anyway. ``It's disingenuous for the State Department people 
     to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for 
     a year,'' one insider said.''
       When you were asked about Mr. Kristof's account, you did 
     not deny his reporting. Instead, you conceded that ``the Vice 
     President's office may have asked for that report.''
       It is also clear that CIA officials doubted the evidence. 
     The Washington Post reported on March 22 that CIA officials 
     ``communicated significant doubts to the administration about 
     the evidence.'' The Los Angeles Times reported on March 15 
     that ``the CIA first heard allegations that Iraq was seeking 
     uranium from Niger in late 2001,'' when ``the existence of 
     the documents was reported to [the CIA] second- or third-
     hand.'' The Los Angeles Times quoted a CIA official as 
     saying: ``We included that in some of our reporting, although 
     it was all caveated because we had concerns about the 
     accuracy of that information.''
       With all respect, this is not a situation like the pre-9/11 
     evidence that al-Qaeda was planning to hijack planes and 
     crash them into buildings. When you were asked about his on 
     May 17, 2002, you said:
       ``As you might imagine . . . a lot of things are prepared 
     within agencies. They're distributed internally, they're 
     worked internally. It's unusual that anything like that would 
     get to the president. He doesn't recall seeing anything. I 
     don't recall seeing anything of this kind.''
       That answer may be given more deference when the evidence 
     in question is known only by a field agent in an FBI bureau 
     in Phoenix, Arizona, whose suspicions are not adequately 
     understood by officials in Washington. But it is simply not 
     credible here. Contrary to your public statements, senior 
     officials in the intelligence community in Washington knew 
     the forged evidence was unreliable before the President used 
     the evidence in the State of the Union address.
       In addition to denying that senior officials were aware 
     that the President was citing forged evidence, you also 
     claimed (1) ``there were also other sources that said that 
     there were, the Iraqis were seeking yellowcake--uranium 
     oxide--from Africa'' and (2) ``there were other attempts to 
     get yellowcake from Africa.''
       This answer does not explain the President's statement in 
     the State of the Union address. In his State of the Union 
     address, the President referred specifically to the evidence 
     from the British. He stated: ``The British government has 
     learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant 
     quantities of uranium from Africa.'' Presumably, the 
     President would use the best available evidence in his State 
     of the Union address to Congress and the nation. It would 
     make no sense for him to cite forged evidence obtained 
     from the British if, in fact, the United States had other 
     reliable evidence that he could have cited.
       Moreover, contrary to your assertion, there does not appear 
     to be any other specific and credible evidence that Iraq 
     sought to obtain uranium from an African country. The 
     Administration has not provided any such evidence to me or my 
     staff despite our repeated requests. To the contrary, the 
     State Department wrote me that the ``other source'' of this 
     claim was another Western European ally. But as the State 
     Department acknowledged in its letter, ``the second Western 
     European government had based its assessment on the evidence 
     already available to the U.S. that was subsequently 
     discredited.''
       The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) also found no 
     other evidence indicating that Iraq sought to obtain uranium 
     from Niger. The evidence in U.S. possession that Iraq had 
     sought to obtain uranium from Niger was transmitted to the 
     IAEA. After reviewing all the evidence provided by the United 
     States, the IAEA reported: ``We have to date found no 
     evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear 
     weapons programme in Iraq.'' Ultimately, the IAEA concluded: 
     ``These specific allegations are unfounded.''
       As the discussion above indicates, your answers on the 
     Sunday talk shows conflict with other reports and raise many 
     new issues. To help address these issues, I request answers 
     to the following questions:
       1. On Meet the Press, you said that ``maybe someone knew 
     down in the bowels of the agency'' that the evidence cited by 
     the President about Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium from 
     Africa was suspect. Please identify the individual or 
     individuals in the Administration who, prior to the 
     President's State of the Union address, had expressed doubts 
     about the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the 
     claim.
       2. Please identify any individuals in the Administration 
     who, prior to the President's State of the Union address, 
     were briefed or otherwise made aware that an individual or 
     individuals in the Administration had expressed doubts about 
     the validity of the evidence or the credibility of the claim.
       3. On This Week, you said there was other evidence besides 
     the forged evidence that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium 
     from Africa. Please provide this other evidence.
       4. When you were asked about reports that Vice President 
     Cheney sent a former ambassador to Niger to investigate the 
     evidence, you stated ``the Vice President's office may have 
     asked for that report.'' In light of this comment, please 
     address: (a) Whether Vice President Cheney or his office 
     requested an investigation into claims that Iraq may have 
     attempted to obtain nuclear material from Africa, and when 
     any such request was made; (b) Whether a current or former 
     U.S. ambassador to Africa, or any other current or former 
     government official or agent, traveled to Niger or otherwise 
     investigated claims that Iraq may have attempted to obtain 
     nuclear material from Niger; and (c) What conclusions or 
     findings, if any, were reported to the Vice President, his 
     office, or

[[Page H5415]]

     other U.S. officials as a result of the investigation, and 
     when any such conclusions or findings were reported.
       On Sunday, you stated that ``there is now a lot of 
     revisionism that says, there was disagreement on this data 
     point, or disagreement on that data point.'' I disagree 
     strongly with this characterization. I am not raising 
     questions about the validity of an isolated ``data point,'' 
     and the issue is not whether the war in Iraq was justified or 
     not.
       What I want to know is the answer to a simple question: Why 
     did the President use forged evidence in the State of the 
     Union address? This is a question that bears directly on the 
     credibility of the United States, and it should be answered 
     in a prompt and forthright manner, with full disclosure of 
     all the relevant facts.
       Thank you for your assistance in this matter.
           Sincerely,
                                                  Henry A. Waxman,
     Ranking Minority Member.

                          ____________________