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==Events==
[[Seymour M. Hersh]] of the ''The New Yorker'' Magazine wrote: [http://www.bostonphoenixnewyorker.com/bostonfact/news_featurescontent/this_just_in/documents/01996753.htm?030331fa_fact1 wrote]in the March 24, 2003, ''The New Yorker'' Magazine:
:"Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the [[U.N. Security Council]] that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. 'The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,' ElBaradei said."
:"One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told [Hersh], 'These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.'" [http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1]
"Congressmen [[Henry A. Waxman]], who approved Bush's war initiative, expessed concern that such a mishap could have occurred. 'It is hard to imagine how this situation could have developed,' he stated in a letter to the President. 'The two most obvious explanations — knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence — both have immediate and serious implications.' Waxman added, 'These facts raise troubling questions. It appears that at the same time you, Secretary [[Donald Rumsfeld|Rumsfeld]], and State Department officials were citing Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa as a crucial part of the case against Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials regarded this very same evidence as unreliable. If true, this is deeply disturbing: it would mean that your Administration asked the U.N. Security Council, the Congress, and the American people to rely on information that your own experts knew was not credible.'" [http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/03/waxman.pdf]
