Chapter 5, Part 1 Summary

As opposition to the Administration's preemptive war policy was growing, in the fall of 2002, information came from both the C.I.A. and British Intelligence that the African country of Niger was involved in a plot to supply uranium to Iraq. This information was subsequently used by the Bush administration to pressure congressional holdouts into supporting (by mandate) a military assault on Iraq. The Niger connection was mentioned in a senior intelligence meeting and in the President's Daily Brief (a sensitive document summarizing important events for the President, released daily). A State Department paper publicly mentioned the Niger story in December 2002, and Bush also spoke of the uranium deal in his State of the Union speech, a month later.

On the eve of the Iraq war on March 7^th, the International Atomic Energy Agency released information showing the Niger-Iraq connection was...