Yellowcake forgery

The term yellowcake forgery refers to falsified documents which appeared to depict an attempt by Iraq's Saddam Hussein regime to purchase yellowcake uranium from the country of Niger, in defiance of United Nations sanctions.

Related Topics:
Falsified - Iraq - Saddam Hussein - Yellowcake - Uranium - Niger - United Nations

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These documents were cited as evidence by the United States and United Kingdom governments during the Iraq disarmament crisis that Iraq had attempted to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating "weapons of mass destruction."

Related Topics:
United States - United Kingdom - Iraq disarmament crisis - Weapons of mass destruction

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This claim was part of the political basis for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

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The documents had long been suspected as frauds by U.S. intelligence. By early 2002, investigations by both the CIA and the State Department had found the allegations to be baseless. Days before the invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) told the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic." A FBI investigation into the provenance of these documents is ongoing, though critics suspect that a U.S. government agency—ostensibly the White House Iraq Group —may itself have produced them.

Related Topics:
2002 - CIA - State Department - International Atomic Energy Agency - U.N. Security Council - FBI - White House Iraq Group

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The reference to the Yellowcake documents in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech (in which he made a case for war with Iraq) became the focus of the first important public criticism of the plan to invade Iraq. Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents, and the governments prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Days later, in a column by Robert Novak, the covert identity of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame was exposed.

Related Topics:
George W. Bush - State of the Union - Criticism of the plan to invade Iraq - Joseph C. Wilson - Robert Novak - Valerie Plame

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The ensuing Plame affair" (aka. "CIA leak scandal") is an ongoing political scandal and criminal investigation into the source of the leak which "outed" Plame.

Related Topics:
Plame affair - Political scandal

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