Doubts about Iraq's aluminum tubes raised as early as 2001

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The administration of President George W. Bush was made aware as early as 2001 that the aluminum tubes used as critical evidence to justify an invasion of Iraq were most likely not for nuclear weapons, The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.
The newspaper said senior scientists considered the theory implausible, yet in the months after the September 11 attacks, as the administration built a case for confronting Iraq, the theory gained currency as it rose to the top levels of government in Washington.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other senior officials embraced it despite warnings the intercepted tubes could have no relation to nuclear weapons.

"She was aware of the differences of opinion," The Times quotes a senior administration official saying about Rice. "She was also aware that at the highest level of the intelligence community, there was great confidence that these tubes were for centrifuges."

In May 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney told a group of Wyoming Republicans the United States had "irrefutable evidence" of Iraq's nuclear ambition - thousands of tubes made of high-strength aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges.

Rice told CNN in September 2002 the tubes were "only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

But before Rice made those remarks, she was aware that the government's top nuclear experts had concluded that the tubes were most likely not for nuclear weapons at all, the report said.