The British government maintains that its conclusions were based not on the forged documents but on other, more reliable sources. In fact, British officials have said that they reached their conclusions long before the forged documents surfaced.
Still, Chouet said in the interview that the question from CIA officials in the summer of 2002 seemed to follow almost word for word from the documents in question. He said that an Italian intelligence source, Rocco Martino, had tried to sell the documents to the French, but that in a matter of days French analysts determined the documents had been forged.
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 thought they [the Americans] were in possession of the documents," Chouet said. "The words were very similar." The former CIA official said that in fact the U.S. had been offered the same documents in 2001 but had quickly rejected them as forgeries.
A spokeswoman for the British Embassy in Washington declined to comment on Chouet's remarks, reiterating that the British government continued to stand behind its conclusions that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium in Africa.
A British report on prewar intelligence found the Africa claims in Bush's speech to be "well-founded," noting that British suspicions on Iraq's efforts to buy uranium originated with visits in 1999 by Iraqi officials to Niger and the Congo.
Bush's assertions in his 2003 State of the Union speech had previously been made by other U.S. officials in speeches and internal documents.
On Sept. 8, 2002 -- within months of the third French warning -- Cheney and then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice spoke in dire terms of Iraq's alleged efforts to pursue nuclear materials. Rice warned: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Chouet, asked for his reaction to Bush's speech and the claims of his lieutenants, said: "No proof. No evidence. No indication. No sign."
White House officials scrambled to explain how the 16 words found their way into the 2003 speech when so much doubt surrounded the claims. Ultimately, then-deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley took responsibility for allowing them to remain.
On June 17, 2003, five months after Bush's State of the Union, the CIA clarified its position on whether Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
"Since learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad," the agency said in an internal memorandum that was disclosed by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Bush critics now say that -- in light of the warnings from the French and others -- the White House owes the public a better explanation.
Former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was chairman of the Intelligence Committee when the Niger claims first surfaced in 2002, said some officials in the U.S. State Department were also expressing doubts: "The big mystery is why did the administration, in the face of at least a very persuasive contrary view, feel the president should take the risk of stating this?"
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Hamburger and Wallsten reported from Paris and Washington, Drogin from Washington. Times staff writer Sebastian Rotella in Paris contributed to this report.
