Seen on Headline News: White House official accused of trying to keep...

...Nigergate quiet?

I only caught this for a second, but I'm fairly certain it said something to this effect. Did anyone else see this?

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/215/world/Niger_demands_formal_exonerati:.shtml

Niger demands formal exoneration of Bush's Iraq-uranium allegation
By Associated Press, 8/3/2003 10:39

NIAMEY, Niger (AP) Niger's president demanded the U.N. nuclear agency exonerate it of any claims it had any uranium dealings with Iraq, a widely discounted accusation included in President Bush state of the union address. Ahead of the U.S.-led of invasion of Iraq, Bush said British intelligence possessed a document showing that Iraq had approached Niger to obtain uranium. The claim was used to suggest Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. U.N. officials have called the document a forgery, and Bush administration officials have since said it should not have been cited in the president's speech. ''This affair represents nothing other than accusations without foundation,'' Niger President Mamadou Tandja said in a televised address late Saturday in the arid West African nation. The Vienna-based U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency should ''publicly wash Niger of all suspicions before the U.N. Security Council,'' Tandja declared.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20030803T210000-0500_47138_OBS_NIGERIA_IGNORES_US_PRESSURE_TO_KEEP_OUT_OF_URANIUM_ROW.asp

Niger's president Mamadou Tandja, yesterday rejected the allegation by the US and Britain, which had formed part of their justification for war on Saddam Hussein. Tandja has demanded that the International Atomic Energy Agency, which he said had cleared his country of all suspicion at the United Nations, exonerate Niger of any claims that it had any uranium dealings with Iraq. According to reports in the British newspaper, Sunday Telegraph, Herman Cohen, a former US assistant secretary of state for Africa, last week called on Tandja in Niger's capital of Niamey, to relay Washington's message for Niger to keep out of the uranium row. The paper quoted senior Niger government officials.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=430315

Evidently the ambassador or Bush flunky HAD A FIRM GRIP on the Niger official as he told him to butt out of the controversy. It almost sounded like physical intimidation.

What passes for DIPLOMACY in this administration...