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Cheney under pressure to quit over false war evidence
(Andrew Buncombe and Marie Woolf, The Independent, July 16, 2003)
Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President and the administration's most outspoken hawk over Iraq, faced demands for his resignation last night as he was accused of using false evidence to build the case for war. . . . He was accused of using his office to insist that a false claim about Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Africa to restart its nuclear programme be included in George Bush's State of the Union address - overriding the concerns of the CIA director, George Tenet. . . . Mr Cheney was also accused of knowingly misleading Congress when the administration sought its authorisation for the use of force to oust Saddam Hussein. . . . Last week the White House admitted that the claim that Iraq was seeking "significant quantities of uranium from Africa" - based on faked documents provided by the Italian intelligence services - should not have been included in President Bush's speech of 28 January. . . . In Washington there is no conclusive proof that Mr Cheney was responsible for insisting that the claim be made in the speech. But there is clear evidence of Mr Cheney's interest in the alleged Niger deal. Joseph Wilson, a former US ambassador, said he was asked by the CIA to go to Niger and investigate the claim in a request from the Vice-President's office. Mr Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has admitted that during a briefing from the CIA "the Vice-President asked a question about the implication of the report". . . . There have been reports from CIA officials that in the months before the war Mr Cheney made a "multiple number" of personal visits to its headquarters in Virginia to meet officials analysing intelligence relating to Iraq. "[He] sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior CIA official told reporters.

posted by LoZo 6:50 PM