WHEN was the first mainstream news article saying Niger dox were bogus?

[grytpype]

I think that's a very important date. Because it's not that the dox were merely doubtful, really, they were a fucking joke. So my thesis is that after the date that was made public, no reasonable person could rely on those documents in any way. Now, how many times did Bush & Blair rely on those documents after their infirmities were made public? Does that include the SOTU?

[markses]

1. I remember very clearly

Watching El Baradei's testimony at the UN Security Council, and having my jaw drop wide-open when he said, in a highly official style, that the documents were forged.

Did he just say FORGED? I gasped. Indeed he had.

I can't imagine that any news source said anything about the fact that they were forged BEFORE that presentation, which came, I believe, the week before the war started.

[Merlin]

2. My recollection is early March.

I'd say around the 7th or 8th. It was the UN's IAEA which first proclaimed them to be forgeries, I believe.

That fact is somewhat astounding, given that there were only 6 documents, and 2 of them--as I understand it--were signed by Niger officials who were no longer in office, one of them having been out of power for 12 years.

So, if these documents were so terribly ominous, so frightening, so potent as to drive the US to war, why in the hell weren't they examined for prima facia validity sometime during the prior year during the entire time of which they were in indisputable possession of at least Brit intel, if not US intel?

[Jack Rabbit]

3. Dr. ElBaradei's reference

Please click here.

The IAEA was also able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the Government of Niger, and to compare the form, format, contents and signatures of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation.
Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic.
We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.

[Merlin]

4. Thanks, JR

I'm amazed my memory was that close.

One thing needs to be said on this, though. The fact that these documents were forgeries was not the only damning indictment against the concocted story of an Iraq-Niger yellowcake connection. The entire story itself, aside from the documents purporting to support it, was discredited much earlier by, inter alia, Wilson's fact finding junket, and reassurances from the French that the non-governmental, French run authority that runs the yellowcake operation in Niger was completely responsible and ran a tight ship.

[DEMActivist]

6. March 7, 2003

The day of the inspectors report to the UN Security Council.

on edit:
corrected date

[arcane1]

5. I saved the Washington Post article onto my hard drive on March 8

however it looks like the page is mostly gone now

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A59403-2003Mar7

-snip-

Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake
U.N. Nuclear Inspector Says Documents on Purchases Were Forged


By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 8, 2003; Page A01


A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.

Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.

[julka]

7. Question: WHY did they ignore it then, and play it up now?

Because MTP made the mistake of letting Andrea Mithcell on, or because the March stories were BEFORE the war, and would've raised smelly, emabarrassing questions about all the lies being told to justify what they were about to pull?

[JetJaguar]

8. March 1st Associated Press Worldstream

http://www.detnow.com/news/0303010804.html
Last Paragraph

...
Other letters to Blix this week explained that 3,000 122 mm chemical warheads that are unaccounted for were smelted; 550 bombs filled with mustard gas were destroyed by previous inspectors; and a document alleging that Iraq contracted to import raw uranium from Niger after 1998 was forged, the Syrians said.