May 08 2006
CIA Source Of Niger Forgeries?
Folks, this post began as a look back on Wilson’s antics in 2003 based on his comments at the EPIC conference in June and a UVA speech in October 2003. It turned quickly into wild speculation about the Niger Forgeries and a plausible CIA role. As I was reviewing this material a year later with a much greater understanding of the players and events things Wilson said took on new meanings and hint at a scenario that weaves all we know into a cogent explanation. The post began here with the retrospective:
A good read out today on Plame from Clarice Feldman over at American Thinker. Clarice notes the comments of Wilson at the EPIC conference where he blew his own cover. To add to Clarice’s piece, I point folks to three posts I did on the EPIC gathering (McGovern’s talk, Wilson’s talk and their joint Q&A session) from the available audio(here, here and here).
It is interesting to see is Wilson’s dire predictions for Iraq three years later. The easy ones he got right were things like saying the Shia will rule southern Iraq. He had a lot if Duh! moments that day. The most pathetic one is his prediction the US would cut and run from Iraq and Israel .
What is interesting in the last audio tape is Wilson’s verbal repetition of the Rockefeller plan (from my earlier post):
Starting just around 12:30 into this 15 minute segment Wilson points out the administration was careful to only talk about uranium with respect to Africa initially. he says that until the story turned to Niger, and then the Niger angle was denied by state, it was difficult to make the case that the march to war was built on lies. Wilson admits, in his own words, that to attack Bush’s policies required the story to be about Niger and not Africa. Why? Well, because the forgery angle only applies to Niger, and the broader Africa angle has more substantiating intel and history.
Wilson also clearly states that people on the inside (CIA and others against the war in Iraq) could easily make the case if they could have been given voice. Which is what Joe Wilson would be doing in a few short days in the NY Times Op-Ed pages.
…
He goes on to say the story will have legs only if the press can make a profit, and to do that they need to make a scandal out of this issue. The guy is apparently telegraphing exactly what his little band of rogue agents planned. He is trying to lead the press and media to follow him in order to make a splash. He says “it would be great†if the press did make a scandal of this issue and he notes people are talking about the “I†word (impeachment).
Got that? Go listen to the audio and here Wilson expose the plan he and McGovern had cooked up. And realize this is before he outed himself in his Op-Ed. Back then he was all giddy about smearing the Bushies and winning the 2004 election.
Another interesting retrospective can be found here – Wilson in his own words from October 2003 at University of VA. Note that this is about the time Fitzg-Magoo was taking over the investigation. Wilson also could have been in Niger when the Iraqi delegation arrived. My original post on Wilson’s trips during this time is here.
Want some fun with this one? Note how Wilson puts himself at the scene of the crime about the forgeries. Recall that this was prior to the Senate investigation when Wilson was still pushing the idea he debunked the forgeries:
I was asked to go because I have a unique set of experiences to bring to the table on this issue. I had served there in the mid 1970’s. I had retained many ties and friendships including with the Niger Ambassador to the United States for the subsequent twenty-five years. When I was senior director for Africa at the National Security Council in the mid 1990’s, the government that was in place at the time of these purported documents covering the memorandum of agreement for the sale of Uranium from Niger to Iraq, that was the government that was in place when I was in the White House. I had worked very closely with them to try and move what was at the time a military’s dictatorship back to the Democratic side of the ledger. So, I knew these guys intimately. They were in Washington all of the time. I was out there both in government and in African government helping them.
It is sometimes forgotten Wilson worked for Niger and/or other African nations when he first went to Niger for Valerie and the CIA in 1999. He had access to the materials to make the forgeries. Another item to note re the forgeries:
I looked at the [Niger] bureaucracy and I found that because of the nature of the agreement and participation, nothing could happen that did not have the signatures of some key ministers in the government.
Emphasis mine. So, were the forgeries to fool Bush who had not even formally announced his run at the Presidency at this time? Of course not. Were the forgeries to set up Al Gore – the nominal winner of the 2000 elections? Possibly. Or were the forgeries meant for the Iraqi delegation to give them the idea they were entering into an agreement? That would make a lot of sense to a CIA effort trying to keep Saddam in the box. The source of those forgeries could still be Valerie’s CIA unit then.
Note Joe’s ‘miss speaking’ in detail about the Niger documents. Somehow he recalls with perfect clarity all sorts of known details, yet he keeps adding in details about documents that the CIA supposedly did not have at the time:
There were two other reports that were done at the same time as mine. One was the Ambassadors on the scene report and one was a report made by a fourth star marine corps general who made his way down to Niger and had taken a look at it. All three of us had concluded the same thing. It did not happen. We have information to the contrary. It cannot be authentic unless it contains three signatures. None of which were on those documents.
OK, if the Niger forgeries were actually created by the CIA for or around Joe’s 1999 trip to give to the Iraqi’s to make them think they had a uranium deal – that would explain why Joe Wilson kept ‘tainting’ his stories about Niger with these forgeries. We have speculated that the 2003 trip was to tell people to lay low since there were two other efforts underway and the IC felt Joe’s trip was redundant. But what if Joe’s trip was to tell the Niger folks who ran the country during the military coup d’etat from May 1999 to January 2000 to keep mum about the forged uranium sale! Well, this post has taken an interesting turn. I think I now see how all this could make sense seemlessly and without grand conspiracy theories until Joe joins the Kerry campaign. I will leave Wilson to pass sentence on himself and the CIA
If they [the Bush administration] lied about this, what else might they have lied about? For two, who is going to believe the President of the United States next time when he goes before the world and when he goes before the American people and when he goes before the Congress of the United States and says we have a real weapons of mass destruction problem here. Who is going to believe him?
Who is going to believe a former ambassador who hides the fact he is working for the opposing party when he lies about Niger Forgeries? Well, Joe I for one believe you when you said you knew about the forgeries in 2002 and knew they were fake. I believe you. And I believe you helped create those forgeries because they might contain the signatures of your Niger buddies from 1999 – don’t they? The forgeries come from the time period of 1999 possibly, and could have been a trick the CIA played on Iraq. I believe you went to Niger in 2002 to remind your cohorts that the CIA wanted the forgeries kept QUIET from the Bush administration’s investigation. And I think you, Val, Ray McGovern and others thought what a perfect use for these forgeries once Iraq was conquered and the forgeries useless to their original mission! Why not bring down a Presidency?
We know the forgeries were in a safe in Valerie’s CIA unit from October of 2002 onward. Wonder if there was a chance they were in the safe in Oct 2000? Or October 1999? What if those documents were in Valerie’s CIA unit’s safe from BEFORE the 2002 trip to Niger?
All rampant speculation of course and I have no proof. But I would think EPIC audio and UVA transcripts would make wonderful additions to Team Libby’s case. And I would expect some deep searching into the CIA information control documents that cover the contents of safes used by certain people in certain units. I would guess when word broke about the Niger forgeries in 2002, some in the CIA might have had to expose something in a controlled manner internally.
We shall see.
Addendum: Has anyone noticed it is impossible to find news reports on Nigers amazing transition from Military Coup d’Etat to democratic controlled government in less than a year from 1999-2000? I have been trying to find articles on who attended the big celebration after the transition which included many Dignataries – and one Joe Wilson. I find it strange that the new government, seated finally in January 2000, was not in the news?
This article in the Washington Times from 2003 also says the British had multiple sources of information aside from the forged documents that led them to believe Iraq was talking to Niger about uranium.
Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service had more than one “different and credible” piece of intelligence to show that Iraq was attempting to buy the ore, known as yellowcake, British officials insisted. But it was given to them by at least one and possibly two intelligence services and, under the rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared with anyone else without the originator’s permission.
…
British officials acknowledged that the country was Niger, but insisted that the intelligence behind it was genuine and had nothing to do with the fake documents. It was convincing and they were sticking with it, the officials said.
They dismissed a report from a former U.S. diplomat who was sent to Niger to investigate the claims and rejected them.
“He seems to have asked a few people if it was true, and when they said ‘no’ he accepted it all,” one official said. “We see no reason at all to change our assessment.”
The fake documents were not behind that assessment and were not seen by MI6 until after they were denounced by the IAEA. If MI6 had seen them earlier, it would have immediately advised the Americans that they were fakes, these officials said.
There had been a number of reports, in the United States in particular, suggesting that the fake documents — which came from another intelligence source — were passed on via MI6, the officials said. But this was not true.
This article is particularly interesting to me.
The imputation is that the Niger intel was based entirely on the forged documents: the exact gambit that Wilson himself was trying to pull off. Instead of exposing Wilson as a traitor, as an investigation into Kristof’s article should have done, the CIA memo misrepresented the facts in a way that abetted Wilson’s treason. That CAN’T have been a mistake.
The only logical conclusion is that the internal CIA memo was a carefully crafted bit of disinformation, calculated and timed to support Wilson’s public disinformation. It certainly had this effect. On June 7th 2003, the day after Wilson’s NYT op-ed, Ari Fleisher defended the President’s general claim that Saddam had sought uranium in Africa, but he conceded, incorrectly, that the forgeries had been the basis for U.S. estimates that Saddam had tried to buy uranium from Niger.
And
The 2004 Report on Prewar Intelligence by the Senate Select Committee (SSCI) would later reveal that Wilson was attempting a treasonous gambit. He could not have identified the forged documents as forged in February 2002 because they did not come into U.S. possession until October of 2002. (Search “misspokenâ€.)
In May of 2003, the public did not know who the unnamed envoy to Niger in Kristof’s article was, but the CIA certainly did, and they knew he was lying. Thus the CIA memo should have nabbed Wilson, identifying him as a traitor who had been caught spreading malicious disinformation about classified intelligence in an attempt to smear the President and undermine America’s war effort. Not only had Wilson not debunked the President’s suggestion that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Africa, but as CIA Director George Tenet made public a month later, he had brought back supporting evidence:
“He reported back to us that one of the former Nigerian officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office.
“The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Iraq and Niger.
“The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.
It is interesting, then, that the CIA’s June memo does not seem to have exposed Wilson as a liar. On the contrary, the bits that Waas reports seem to present clear disinformation in support of Wilson’s lies.
The author goes on to speculate who might have written the memo which means little. The memo looks about how he describes it, a document designed to support Wilson and discredit the administration. Forgive me if this information has already been drawn into the discussion, I am just starting to really get interested in this story but I haven’t read through all the archives here yet.
It appears that Rocco Martino testified under oath that he obtained the documents in 2000 from an employee of the Niger Embassy in Rome, thus confirming the Timesonline story.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220533/posts
“Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy’s secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.
According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from “judicial and other sources”, Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours.
Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy’s military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.
He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000. ”
Also, here is an interview with Martino by Il Giornale after he testified:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222497/posts
This does not support the theory that Wilson and the CIA forged the docs. Of course, we dont know EXACTLY what Martino said under oath, so this is still not conclusive.
AJ,
Are you reviewing my posts? No problem if you are, I just want to be sure they went through. If so, the 2 previous are basically the same, so only one is needed. An no need to post this one, of course.
PS Do you have a public email contact address?
Sorry AJ,
Maybe the system is doing back ups right now. From here it looks like my posts are disappearing , but I was able to get one through, so I don’t know what is going on. I’ll wait until tomorrow to check.
PS Don’t post this to the comments, as it is just clutter.
“Also, have you ever considered the possibility that Wilson, Plame and the CIA WMD group were actually brokering deals in uranium?”
Or that Iraq might have had an active nuclear program operating in Lybia, which seems to be hinted at here and there.
“Or that Iraq might have had an active nuclear program operating in Lybia, which seems to be hinted at here and there.”
Here is a link to a great timeline, going all the way back to the first gulf war.:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1168703/posts?page=342#342
The timeline starts in post #342 and is continued in # 343.
Xrayiis,
If you have too many links in your post they go into a moderation queue and don’t show until I authorize them. Sorry, but it is protection against spam in the comments.
Apparently Rocco Martino testified under oath that he obtained the documents in 2000 from his contact at the Nigerian Embassy in Rome:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1220533/posts
“Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy’s secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.
According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from “judicial and other sources”, Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours.
Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy’s military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.
He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000. ”
This does not support the theory that the wilson and the CIA forged the docs. However, we do not know EXACTLY what Martino said under oath, so it is open to speculation.
For further background, here is an interview with Martino after he testified:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1222497/posts
OOPS! Sorry AJ. I did not see my earlier posts and posted again. Please delete as you see fit.
Another thing is slate had an article
http://www.slate.com/id/2139609/
In February 1999, Zahawie left his Vatican office for a few days and paid an official visit to Niger, a country known for absolutely nothing except its vast deposits of uranium ore. It was from Niger that Iraq had originally acquired uranium in 1981, as confirmed in the Duelfer Report. In order to take the Joseph Wilson view of this Baathist ambassadorial initiative, you have to be able to believe that Saddam Hussein’s long-term main man on nuclear issues was in Niger to talk about something other than the obvious. Italian intelligence (which first noticed the Zahawie trip from Rome) found it difficult to take this view and alerted French intelligence (which has better contacts in West Africa and a stronger interest in nuclear questions). In due time, the French tipped off the British, who in their cousinly way conveyed the suggestive information to Washington. As everyone now knows, the disclosure appeared in watered-down and secondhand form in the president’s State of the Union address in January 2003.
Another artice I read and can’t find now suggested that the CIA leaked to forgery via Niger, to the Niger embasy in Rome thus becoming the forgerys that came to light.
The author said that the forgeries were intended to discredit the real trip of Iraqs Vatican Ambassador.
Also somewhere in the early days of this mess, I saw something that described Valaries job a CIA and said one thing they would do is buy black market yellowcake and such to get it off the street.
Xrayiis,
Your cool. Your posts went into moderation so I let them all go so commenters undersrtand sometimes their words of wisdoms have to pass by me first. I have deleted 2 comments out of thousands posted here. It really is to catch spam.
AJStrata
I just found this little gem while doing some research.
It is a plamegate timeline in pdf format.. hmmmmmmm it is only a bit over 111 page pdf file!
http://jakking.typepad.com/daily/files/plamegate_chronology.pdf
got a reference to it of a blog
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/11/berlusconis-men-doctor-niger-uranium.html
Merlin,
The timeline is detailed, and based solely on leftwing ‘sources’. They do not even cover Wilson’s 1999 trip to Niger for Val and the CIA.
I did find the dates for the Iraqi visits a nice detail. I was suspecting there were two visits in 1999 (the delegation and the business man).
Cheers, AJStrata