"We told the Americans, 'Bull - - - -. It doesn't make any sense,' " Chouet said.
Chouet said the information was contained in formal cables delivered to CIA offices in Paris and Langley, Va. Those communications did not use such coarse language, he said, but they delivered the point in consistent and blunt terms.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 15, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 65 words Type of Material: Correction
Faulty CIA intelligence -- A front-page article Dec. 11 about French spies' warnings not to trust Iraq-Niger uranium allegations said French officials forced out in 2002 had been aligned with the outgoing Socialist Francois Mitterrand. The officials were aligned with outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. Mitterrand -- whose last name the article misspelled -- left office as president in 1995 and died in 1996.
"We had the feeling that we had been heard," Chouet said. "There was nothing more to say other than that."
The former CIA official could not confirm the specifics of this 2002 communication, but said the general conclusions matched what many in the CIA were learning at the time.
Chouet left the French government in the summer of 2002, after the center-right coalition led by President Jacques Chirac won control, forcing out top officials who had been aligned with the outgoing Socialist Francois Mitterand.
When Bush gave his State of the Union address in January 2003, citing a report from the British that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium in Africa, other French officials were flabbergasted.
One government official said that French experts viewed the statement attributed to the British as "totally crazy because, in our view, there was no backup for this." Nonetheless, he said, the French once again launched an investigation, turning things "upside-down trying to find out what was going on."
Chouet's comments come as the FBI and the Italian government reopen investigations into the origins of the documents that surfaced in 2002 purporting to prove the Iraq-Niger link. The documents in question originally surfaced in Rome.
Before speaking with The Times last week, Chouet had told part of his story to La Repubblica, a Rome newspaper, prompting Italian investigators to resume their inquiry and seek Chouet's testimony.
In the U.S., the FBI recently reopened its inquiry into the documents in part because it had won access to new information.
Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador sent to Niger by the CIA to investigate the allegations, said he believed that his trip was inspired by the forged documents. He said the briefing he received at the CIA referred to a sales agreement between Iraq and Niger that sounded like the forged documents.
Bush attributed the African uranium information to British intelligence in his 2003 address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
