A memo to Members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members by newly elected Ranking Member Darrell Issa reveals that a key witness cited in a report issued December 18, 2008, by outgoing Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, told the committee that "there was no discussion about the substance" of the yellowcake intelligence in the "very short phone call" with Dr. Rice on September 24, 2002. The investigation has looked at how a since disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium yellowcake was included in the 2003 State of the Union address.
Despite the witnesses' testimony that the substance of the intelligence was never discussed, Chairman Waxman's December 18 memo stated a "former Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA told the Committee that she personally warned Dr. Rice not to use the uranium claim."
Chairman Waxman's report also did not disclose the fact that the former Deputy Director, Jamie Miscik, told the committee she did not discuss the substance of the intelligence in question and had "no reason to question" accounts which suggest that it was Dr. Rice who proposed deleting proposed sentences about yellowcake to obviate whatever "issue on the speech" had apparently been expressed by subordinates to each official.
The Republican memo criticizes Chairman Waxman's uranium probe as, "a selective investigation that has ignored critical evidence contradicting Chairman Waxman's conclusions which, unfortunately, seemed preordained from the inquiry's onset."
The Republican memo cites the distortions in Chairman Waxman's December 18 report and his failure to examine evidence and follow-up on a communication from the CIA calling into question the truthfulness of Valerie Plame Wilson's March 16, 2007, testimony in front of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee as examples of the probe's flaws. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has refused to share critical evidence requested by Republican Oversight and Government Reform Committee members - that Chairman Waxman has refused to join - related to the uranium probe.
Despite the investigation by Chairman Waxman, no evidence has been obtained that contradicts the previous conclusion that all CIA Iraq analysts who had analyzed the Niger uranium reporting believed, until at least March 2003, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. It has also found no evidence contradicting the conclusion of the Robb-Silberman Commission that "in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments."