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HENRY A, WAXMAN, CALIFORNIA
CHAIRMAN
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
Tþouse of ßrpr esentutibes
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
2157 Raveunru House Ornce Butorrrc
WesHrrucroru, DC 20515-¡ü43
Maior¡ty (202) 225-5051
Minority l2Ù2l 225-507 4
March 12,2007
The Honorable Condoleezza Ptice
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
V/ashington, DC 20520
Dear Madam Secretary:
Since 2003,I have written 16 letters to you, either in your capacity as National Security
Advisor or Secretary of State. According to Committee records, you have satisfactorily
responded to only five of those l6 letters. Those five were co-signed by Republicans. Under the
Bush Adminishation, several agencies followed a policy of not responding to minorityparty
requests. Although I do not agree with this policy, I presume that you were also following it
when you decided not to respond to my requests for information.
I am now renewing my requests as the chairman of the chief oversight committee in the
U.S. House of Representatives.
My inquiries cover vital issues within the Committee's oversight jurisdiction, including
your role in the President's false assertion that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. For your
convenience, I have enclosed copies of the letters to which the Committee seeks your responses.
The Fabricated Niger Claim
Since 2003,I have been asking \ryhy President Bush and other top Administration
officials used fabricated intelligence about lraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger to justiff
launching the Iraq war. I first wrote to the President about this matter on March 17 ,2003, two
days before the start of the Iraq war. In my letter, I asked why the President had included the
bogus Niger claim in his January 28,2003, State of the Union address, the most heavily vetted
speech a president makes. I wrote:
In the last ten days ... it has become incontrovertibly clear that a key piece of evidence
you and other Administration officials have cited regarding Iraq's efforts to obtain
nuclear weapons is a hoax. What's more, the Central Intelligence Agency questioned the
TOM DAVIS, VIRGINIA
RANKING MINORITY MEMBER
The Honorable Condoleezza Ptice
March 12,2007
Page2
veracity of the evidence at the same time you and other Administration officials were
citing it in public statements. This is a breach of the highest order, and the American
people are entitled to know how it happened.l
To this day, however, I have not received an adequate explanation to my question. The
President did not respond to my letter, nor did you respond to multiple letters I sent you about
this matter.
Soon after the bogus Niger claim was exposed by the Intemational Atomic Energy
Agency, you appeared on national television and claimed that you were never informed of any
doubts about the allegation. On Meet the Press on June 8, 2003, 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.2
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
uranium from Africa. 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 atthat time, or at levels that got to us, that this, that there were serious questions
about this report.'
After you made these assertions, I wrote to you on June 10,2003, asking for specific
information to support your claims, including the identity of any individuals in the
Administration who had expressed doubts about the validity of the evidence or who were made
aware of any doubts, as well as other information.a You did not respond.
t Letter from Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to President George W. Bush (Mar. 17,2003).
2 Meet the Press, NBC News (June 8, 2003).
t Thit Weekwith George Stephanopoulos, ABC News (June 8, 2003).
o Letter from Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to CondoleezzaRice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
(June 10,2003).
The Honorabl e Condoleezza Ptice
March 12,2007
Page 3
In the weeks that followed, you and President Bush continued to claim that you had never
heard any doubts about the Niger claim prior to the President's State of the Union address. On
July 13, 2003, for example, you made this statement on Face the Natíon:
ad there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George
Tenet did not want that sentence in .:. it would have been gone.s
The next day, President Bush made a similar assertion. At a press briefing on July 14,
2003, the President stated: "Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts. But when they
talked about the speech and when they looked at the speech, it was cleared."6
It was subsequently revealed, however, that the CIA had sent a memo directly to you and
your deputy at the time, Stephen Hadley, raising doubts about the Niger claim months before the
President's State of the Union address. According to Mr. Hadley, the CIA sent a memo directly
to the White House Situation Room addressed to you and him on October 6,2002, that described
"weakness in the evidence" and that stated "the CIA had been telling Congre_ss that the Africa
story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence."' Mr. Hadley also
reported that the CIA sent a second memo to him a day earlier, and that George Tenet, the
Director of Central Intelligence, personally telephoned him to ask that the reference be removed
from a speech the President delivered in October 2002.
Because these revelations directly contradicted your previous public statements, I wrote
to you again,on July 29,2003,seeking an explanation.s I requested copies of numerous
documents, including the CIA memo addressed to you and Mr. Hadley. I also sought
information about what kind of investigation you initiated after you leamed that the Niger
documents were forgeries, and I asked what role you and your staff played in drafting the
National Intelligence Estimate submitted to Congress on this issue. Again, you did not respond.
As a result of your failure to respond, the Committee still does not know what you knew
about the fabricated Niger claim and when you knew it. We also do not know how the fabricated
claim made it into the President's State of the Union address. We continue to learn in a
piecemeal fashion about other explicit wamings received by White House officials about this
bogus claim. According to one recent press account, for example, CIA briefer CraigR. Schmall
s Fo"" the Nation, CBS News (July 13,2003).
6 President Defends Allegation on lraq, Washington Post (July 15, 2003).
7 Dan Bartlett and Steve Hadley Hold Press Briefing on lraq Weapons of Mass
Destruction and the State of the Union Speech, FDCH Political Transcripts (Ju|y22,2003).
8 Letter from Rep. Henry A. 'Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
(Jtly 29,2003).
The Honorable Condoleezza Ptice
March 12,2007
Page 4
wrote a memo to Eric Edelman, Vice President Cheney's national security advisor, waming that
the "CIA on several occasions has cautioned ... that available information on this issue was
ftagmentary and unconfirmed."e Yet we still do not know who at the White House kept
resuscitating this claim after intelligence officials questioned its veracity.
I respectfully request a complete reply to my questions and document requests relating to
the fabricated Niger claim by March 23,2007.
Other Requests
In addition to the requests summarized above, I have written to you on several other
occasions without receiving a reply. Four of these inquiries are the following:
White House Treatment of Classified Information: On January 12,2004, one day
after former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill made negative comments about the Bush
Administration on 60 Minutes, the Administration publicly announced it was
investigating whether he inappropriately disclosed classified documents.l0 On June 20,
2002, an"ltate" Vice President Cheney reportedly told congressional leaders that the
President had "deep concems" about media accounts that the National Security Agency
had intercepts from September 10,2001, with cryptic references to possible attacks the
next day.ll In contrast, months passed before any investigation was initiated into the
disclosure of the identity of a covert CIA agent.tt And the White House took no action
when Bob Woodward revealed in his book Bush at llar that he obtained access to
classified notes from more than 50 National Security Council meetings.13 On January 14,
2004,I wrote to you as the highest ranking White House official responsible for security
matters seeking answers to specific questions about how the White House handled each
of these cases.to I did not receive any response to this request.
e A Foil"d Cover-(Jp, V/ashington Post (Feb. 2, 2007).
to O'N"iil Says He Didn't Take U.S. Treasury Documents, Reuters (Jan. 13, 2004).
" Whit" House Angered by Leal<s on Intelligence, LosAngeles Times (June 21,2002).
t' See Mission to Níger, Chicago Sun-Times (July 14, 2003);White House, Press
Briefing by Scott McClellan (July 22,2003); White House, Press Bríefing by Scott McClellan
(July 23,2003); Agent's Disclosure Investigated; CIA Has Requested Probe to See if Name Was
Illegally Revealed, Newsday (Sept. 28,2003).
13 Bob Woodward, Bush at War, xi-xii (2002).
to Letter from Rep. Henry A. 'Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Govemment
Reform Committee, to Condoleezza Rice, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs
(Ian.14,2004).
The Honorabl e Condoleezza Ptice
March 12,2007
Page 5
Appointment of Official Under Investigation: Richard Jones served as Ambassador to
Kuwait and as Ambassador Paul Bremer's deputy at the Coalition Provisional Authority
in2003 and2004. During that time, he intervened on behalf of an obscure Kuwaiti
company that was overcharging U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people to import gasoline
into kaq.rs The involvement of embassy officials in this matter triggered a federal
criminal investigation.l6 Nevertheless, you appointed Ambassador Jones to a new
position of "special coordinator" for lruq." On February 17,2OO5,I wrote to you
seeking the results of the investigation regarding this issue or, if the investigation were
not concluded, an explanation of why you appointed Ambassador Jones to this position
while a criminal investigation remained ongoing.l8 I did not receive any response to this
request.
Political Considerations Affectins International Delesations: In April 2005, Time
magazine reported that the White House refused to allow several technical experts to join
a U.S. delegation to a telecommunications conference .re Time also reported that the
White House confirmed that these experts were excluded for political reasons. On
August 1,2005,I wrote to you expressing concern about whether the Administration was
screening potential technical delegates to international conferences based solely on
political affiliation. I sought information about the number of intemational conference
delegations to which the State Department included nongovernmental representatives, as
well as instances in which the White House rejected delegates proposed by the State
Department.20 I did not receive any response to this request.
Needle Exchange Programs to Battle Blood-Borne Diseases: In March 2005, the
United Nætotts Co--i*ion on ú Session in Vienna,
Austria. A major topic to be discussed was the importance of needle exchange programs
to prevent the spread of blood-borne diseases, including HIV/AIDS. On March 2,the
tt 5"", e.g., E-mail from Ambassador Richard A. Jones to CPA Officials (Dec.2,2003)
(directing officials to "tell KBR to get off their butts and conclude deals with Kuwait NOW!
Tell them we want adeal done with al-Tanmia within 24 hours and don't take any excuses").
t6 E-Maíl Muddíes Probe of KBR, Houston Chronicle (Nov. 11,2004) ("The State
Department's Inspector General's Office launched an investigation into the embassy staff s
behavior earlier this year. The Justice Department was also brought in to investigate the alleged
fuel overcharges").
r7 Rice Moves to Name Senior Adv¡,sers, Boston Globe (Feb. 17, 2005).
t8 Letter from Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State (Feb. 17, 2005).
tn Any Kerry Supporters on the Line?, Time (May 2,2005).
20 Letter from Rep. Henry A. W'axman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State (Aug. 1, 2005).
The Honorable Condoleezza Ftice
March 12,2007
Page 6
week before the session, I joined Rep. Elijah Cummings in writing to urge you to follow
the best available scientific evidence, including studies from the National Institutes of
Health, the World Health Organization, and the Department of Health and Human
Services, to support needle exchange programs as a key tool in the fight against AIDS.
We requested a reply by March 4.21 We did not receive any response to this request.
Each of these letters was sent after careful thought and consideration, and they deserve a
response. I therefore respectfully request a complete response to these four letters by April 20,
2007.
Conclusion
Our system of govemment is based on checks and balances. Congress has an obligation
to ask tough questions of the Executive Branch, and the Executive Branch has an obligation to
respond. Reñrsing to allow officials to testiff before Congress, as the Department did in the case
of Ambassador Timothy Camey on February 6,2007, or ignoring congressional requests for
information, as you apparently ignored my inquiries, are not consistent with our constitutional
system of government.
lrealize that there are great demands on your time and that your preference may be to not
revisit the issues the Committee is raising. But the fact that four years has passed since my
March 17,2003,letter does not lessen the obligation you have to respond or Congress'
responsibility to conduct competent oversight. Just the opposite is true. The long delay in
responding makes it even more important that you provide the Committee a complete response to
these legitimate and important inquiries.
For these reasons, I urge you to reconsider your approach and to provide complete
responses to the Committee's inquiries.
Sincerely,
4%C*\'Ùar"-^r^
Henry A. Waxman
Chairman
Enclosure
Tom Davis
Ranking Minority Member
" Letter from Rep. Henry A. Waxman, Ranking Minority Member, House Government
Reform Committee, to Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State (Mar. 2,2005).
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