EXCLUSIVE…2 Books Tell the Inside Story of Forged Iraq-Niger Docs That Helped Build Case for War

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http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/10/1321236

EXCLUSIVE…Two Explosive Books Tell the Inside Story of the Forged Iraq-Niger Docs That Helped Build the Case for War

In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush declared the infamous sixteen words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The claim was central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as a basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger. But there was one problem: the document was a fake. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we speak with the authors of two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the Niger story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” It was one of the key justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

President Bush: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

President Bush made the statement in his January 2003 State of the Union. Those sixteen words were central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as a basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger. But there was one problem: the document was a fake.

Bush’s smoking gun evidence would quickly unravel and ignite a political firestorm that reached the highest levels of the US government. The story behind the forged document stretches from Italy to Niger to Iraq and deep into the corridors of the US intelligence community and the White House itself. The document played a key role in the chain of events that led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the CIA leak case.

And its effect continues to reverberate today. Congressmember Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently formally requested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before a committee hearing next week regarding the false Iraq-Niger claims.

Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive: two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” He is an investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome, and he joins us in our firehouse studio. Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” He joins us from Washington, D.C.

* Peter Eisner. Veteran foreign correspondent. He is currently an editor at the Washington Post. He is co-author of “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.”

* Carlo Bonini. Investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome. He is co-author of “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.”

Rush transcript at link...

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