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The CIA cited the Italian intelligence service as saying that Niger had agreed to send several tons of uranium to Iraq. There was little detail in the report and the State Department dismissed it as “highly suspect”.

Indeed, western intelligence officials say now that the Italians had told the Americans to treat it with caution and that there was no evidence that any uranium had changed hands.

In February 2002, however, the Italians provided more details. Niger had allegedly signed a deal in 2000 to sell Iraq 500 tons of yellowcake. This was again circulated by the CIA to top American officials.

Anxious to make the case for war against Iraq, which was under fierce debate within the administration, Cheney wanted to know more.

Unable to provide further information, the CIA asked Joseph Wilson, a former ambassador, to go to Niger to investigate. In his own words, he “spent the next eight days drinking mint tea with dozens of people” who all assured him that there was no deal to supply Iraq with yellowcake. However, they left open the possibility that Iraq had tried and failed to obtain it.

At the time his visit was not seen as significant. A number of US officials pointed out that even if there had been a deal, there was not much chance of anyone admitting it to Wilson.

The yellowcake made its next appearance in September 2002 in the British dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD), which said that “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from Niger”.

Martino then re-entered the picture. In October 2002 he presented the DGSE with documents which appeared to show that Niger had signed a deal in July 2000 to supply Iraq with yellowcake — similar to the story Italian intelligence had told the CIA. The DGSE rejected the documents as fake.

Martino offered them for €15,000 to a journalist working on Panorama, the Italian magazine, who took them to the US embassy in Rome for authentication. Copies were sent to Washington. Then, a few weeks later, on November 22, the French opened up. They told the Americans about their original 1999 intelligence and said they were now certain that Iraq had tried and failed to obtain yellowcake.

Washington was receptive. When Iraq complied with a UN demand for details of its WMD programmes, the State Department accused it of omitting its “efforts to procure uranium from Niger”.

By now the yellowcake was at the top of Bush’s agenda. He wanted to mention it in his state of the union address on January 28, 2003 but it was agreed that rather than use disputed classified CIA intelligence, he should cite the British WMD dossier.

He used what have become infamous in America as “the 16 words”: “The British government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Six days later, in response to an IAEA request for evidence of Iraq’s attempts to procure uranium, the United States handed over the Martino documents. But in March, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the IAEA told the UN security council that the documents were fakes.

Shaken, the CIA eventually withdrew any suggestion that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. Neither Cheney nor Wilson let go, however.

That July, in the wake of the war, Wilson wrote an angry article in The New York Times accusing the Bush administration of twisting the intelligence on Niger to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.

This prompted a campaign from within the White House to discredit both Wilson and the CIA. Journalists learnt “on double super secret background” that his wife, Valerie Plame, was one of the CIA analysts who had come up with the yellowcake intelligence in the first place.

As a result Robert Novak, a columnist on the Chicago Sun-Times, named her as “a CIA operative”.

Outing a covert CIA officer is illegal under US law and the resultant criminal investigation under a special federal prosecutor has reached right into the White House.

The DGSE, meanwhile, is standing by its original intelligence that in early 1999, Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Niger. So is MI6, despite having ditched every other contentious report that it made on Iraqi WMD.

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