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House Democrat asks Rice about 'fabricated Niger claim'

Story Highlights

• Rep. Henry Waxman ask about "fabricated claim" in Bush's 2003 St. of the Union
• Bush justified invasion of Iraq, saying that Iraq sought uranium in Niger
• Rep. Henry Waxman says earlier letters to Condoleezza Rice ignored
• Waxman wants to know when she knew uranium assertion to be untrue
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WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The new chairman of a House investigative committee is demanding answers to questions he asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice nearly four years ago about President Bush's assertion that Iraq once sought uranium from Africa.

In a letter released Monday, Rep. Henry Waxman said Rice responded to only five of 16 letters about the issue when he was the committee's ranking Democrat -- only those that had been co-signed by congressional Republicans.

"I am now renewing my request as the chairman of the chief oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives," the Democrat from California wrote to Rice Monday.

The uranium claim, which Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address, was a key element in the administration's case for the invasion of Iraq. Rice was President Bush's national security adviser at the time.

"As a result of your failure to respond, the committee still does not know what you knew about the fabricated Niger claim and when you knew it," Waxman wrote.

"We also do not know how the fabricated claim made it into the president's State of the Union address. We continue to learn in a piecemeal fashion about other explicit warnings received by the White House about this bogus claim."

In July 2003, the White House backed away from the uranium assertion after a former diplomat, Joseph Wilson, announced the CIA had sent him to Niger in 2002 to check out the report. Wilson said he found it unlikely to be true, and alleged the Bush administration had "twisted" the evidence for war.

Waxman became the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee when Democrats took over Congress in January. In his letter, he called on Rice to outline who at the White House "kept resuscitating" the disputed report after the CIA blocked its inclusion in an October 2002 Bush speech on Iraq.

He also asked her to lay out what steps the White House took after learning documents supporting the uranium claim were forgeries and what role presidential aides played in drafting a pre-war intelligence estimate on Iraq's weapons programs.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters Monday the letter had not yet been received, but officials would "respond appropriately" once it had been reviewed.

A leak and many questions

Last week, Waxman announced he would turn the committee's attention to the White House's role in the public exposure of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, who was a CIA operative at the time the Niger uranium controversy erupted.

A three-year federal probe of that leak led to last week's conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to investigators.

Libby was not charged with leaking Valerie Wilson's identity, but prosecutors accused him of lying to FBI agents and a grand jury investigating the disclosure.

In his trial, prosecutors argued the administration's efforts to counter Joseph Wilson's allegations led the administration to expose his wife's identity.

Libby's attorney, Ted Wells, opened the trial by declaring his client was "set up" to protect Bush political adviser Karl Rove ahead of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak, who first published her identity, attributed his information to "two senior administration officials" -- later identified as Rove and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Neither has been charged.

The White House declared in October 2003 that Rove and Libby had denied any role in the leak. It has largely refused to comment on the matter since then, citing the criminal probe and Libby's plan to appeal.


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Rep. Henry Waxman wants answers from Condoleezza Rice about a "fabricated claim" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

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