NEW YORK, July 6: Joseph Wilson a former American ambassador who investigated a report about Iraq buying uranium from Niger accused the Bush administration on Sunday of twisting intelligence to exaggerate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

In an Op-ed piece in Sunday’s New York Times, Wilson, who was Washington’s envoy to Gabon from 1992 to 1995, says that he went to Niger in February 2002 at the request of the CIA to assess the intelligence report — which the International Atomic Energy Agency later dismissed as being based on forged documents.

“Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons programme was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

Before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) gave its verdict, the report was cited by President George W. Bush and Britain to support their charges that Saddam was trying to obtain nuclear weapons and to justify their invasion of Iraq in March.

Controversy is raging in both Britain and the United States over charges that the governments of the two countries manipulated intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to justify the war. No evidence of such weapons has been found by the occupying forces in Iraq.

Wilson says in the NYT article that he spent eight days in Niger meeting current and former government officials and people associated with the uranium business to check if there had been an Iraq-Niger deal.

“It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place,” he said.

Wilson, who helped to direct Africa policy for the National Security Council under former President Bill Clinton, said the CIA would have passed on his findings to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.