Iraqi aluminum tubes
After the invasion, the Iraq Survey Group determined that the best explanation for the tubes' use was to produce conventional 81-mm rockets; no evidence was found of a program to design or develop an 81-mm aluminum rotor uranium centrifuge.
Concerned that the tubes might be related to Iraqi efforts to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, Garry Cordukes, the director of the company, contacted the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS).
Two days after the shipment left China, Cordukes revealed that Lei, the CEO of Kam Kiu Propriety Limited, had said they received a call from the Chinese government.
[3] On September 8, 2002, Michael R. Gordon and Judith Miller published a story in the New York Times titled "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts": In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.
American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.
President Hussein has met repeatedly in recent months with Iraq's top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.
Bush administration officials say the quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes is one of several signs that Mr. Hussein is seeking to revamp and accelerate Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
[5]A substantial part of the story was based on deliberate leaking of classified information to the Times reporters by Scooter Libby, the chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.
"[10] In January 2003, the language in the CIA's report to Congress was similar, but provided a bit more detail about conventional weapons: "Iraq's efforts to procure tens of thousands of proscribed high-strength aluminum tubes were of significant concern.
[13] In September 2006, David Corn of The Nation reported that Valerie Plame was involved in CIA work to determine the use of aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq.
According to Corn, one of her actions was a trip to Jordan "to work with Jordanian intelligence officials who had intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes heading to Iraq that CIA analysts were claiming--wrongly--were for a nuclear weapons program.
In September 2006, Representative Heather Wilson, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, disclosed that she had learned, in 2002, that the Department of Energy disputed whether those tubes could be used in the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium for bomb fuel.
Wilson told The Albuquerque Tribune that she did not publicly disclose the Energy Department's doubts about the aluminum tubes before Congress voted because the information was classified.
[17] A June 4, 2003, article in the Financial Times reported that "French intelligence had seized a separate shipment of tubes to the US, and tested their tolerance by spinning them to 98,000 revolutions per minute, concluding they were too sophisticated to have alternative uses."
The Times also reported that Secretary of State Colin Powell was denied permission by French political authorities from using this information in his February 5, 2003, speech before the U.N. Security Council.
[citation needed] In a speech before the New America Foundation American Strategy Program Policy Forum on October 19, 2005, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.
Why would they continue refining the specifications, go to all that trouble for something that, if it were a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?In the summer of 2003, an informal review of classified government records by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.
The review by Hadley was to be part of a damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding uranium purchases were not true.
