December, 2002 U.S. State Department Fact Sheet:

The [Iraqi] Declaration ignores efforts to procure uranium from Niger. Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?

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From a World Net Daily article:

"As soon as IAEA nuclear inspectors heard State claim in December Iraq was trying to procure uranium from Niger, they asked the administration to provide 'any actionable information' that would aid them in confronting Iraq and Niger with the allegation.

"The information they finally received – a month-and-a-half later, and just after Bush's State of the Union speech, interestingly enough – consisted of only the Niger documents, which they easily exposed as crude forgeries.

"No other additional information was provided to IAEA by the administration to support the uranium charge, according to IAEA spokesman Piet de Klerk, in a June 20 letter to the House Government Reform Committee.

"And the forgeries were likely the underlying source of the NIE report's Niger claims, as well.

"The NIE cites a 'foreign government service' as its source for the Niger claim.

"But in his letter to Congress, Kelly says State's Dec. 19 fact sheet 'was a product developed jointly by the CIA and the State Department.' And State's source was Britain and Italy, whose source was the forged Niger documents, making it the central source, known at the time or not.

"Technically correct

"The White House has also argued the president's State of the Union statement, while based on shaky intelligence, was nonetheless technically accurate because he attributed it in the final draft, after much back-and-forth between at least NSC staffers and concerned CIA analysts, to the 'British government.'

"However, that argument assumes the administration didn't know the British government's allegation was faulty, when in fact the CIA warned the British government to drop the uranium charge in September, after it published it in its Iraq dossier."
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http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=33753

"America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud." - George W. Bush - Speech - October 2002

When information from "crude forgeries" is used in a U.S. State Department fact sheet, an intelligence NIE and an American president's SoTU address to the nation, it strains credulity to believe it's due to the fog of ethereal intelligence data. It was most likely the administration blowing smoke.