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?
I think time will show it was Wilson who “outed” his wife to further the cabal and morever that it was he who planted the seed in the partisan and credulous media’s ear that she was “outed” by the Administration for revenge.
The Plame-Wilsons have much to gain from the scandal both personally and politically. They had both the opportunity and the motive to pull it off. It is fairly elaborate, but they are trained to pull off fairly elaborate things like this, it is their occupation. The difference is that they are paid to do it against foreign governments and populations, not against their own. The VIPS is starting to smell more like the Democratic National Committee Intelligence Agency (DNCIA) every day. They should be writing a book allright but it should be titled “Cloak and Dagger for Fun and Profit”.
It could also be possible the the government knew about some uranium “leaking” from Somalia and stated “Africa” in general but when confronted to produce details, used the Niger document as it was not going to blow any sources or methods. Somalia isn’t known for having much government control over anything, terrorists are known to operate there, and they have uranium deposits. I believe a Brazian minimg company might have signed an agreement to open a mine in Somalia but I am not sure if it ever started or if it is currently in operation. Apparently DIA had some intelligence concerning Somalia (according to a page at globalsecurity.org):
In September 2002, the DIA published an intelligence assessment (Defense Intelligence Assessment, Iraqs Reemerging Nuclear Program) which outlined Iraq’s recent efforts to rebuild its nuclear program. The report focused on a variety of issues related to Iraq’s nuclear efforts, including procurement efforts, nuclear facilities, consolidation of scientists and uranium acquisition. On the latter issue, the assessment said “Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake.” The report described the intelligence on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal and several other intelligence reports on Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The assessment said that “DIA cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources.”
AJ,
I am passing this along from Gerard; if I was a little better with html I’d tell you myself, but here it is:
Sorry to ask this, but could you do me a favor?
Tell strata at Strata-Sphere that he’s got an open blockquote on the first item that’s screwing up his site in some browsers. I’d do it myself but the register screen won’t take my username and I don’t have an email. You, I see, can post in the comments.
Thanks
Gerard
SW,
I think I fixed it?
By the way, Sweetness and Light has a thread about what Wilson and McGovern were saying about Iraqi WMD before the invasion.
There’s also another thread about Wilson’s apparent personality traits that also seems to fit the model of a group of narcissists screaming for attention.
AJ, the cite to my piece remains the same but I updated the article with some new information.
Here’s another quickie on the agency. CIA Run Amok
The editors of NRO point out how critical it is to continue the work of routing out the Fifth Column in the CIA. In addition to some things we’ve already noted about the considerable perfidy at the agency (such as allowing the head of its counterterrorism book to publish his anti-Bush screed Imperial Hubris), they note this:
Meanwhile, the CIA used its funding clout to underwrite Bush’s opponents. From 2001 through 2004, the agency’s Counterterrorism Center provided more than $15 million for various studies led by former Clinton officials (such as Richard Clarke) and Bush critics (such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace). The resulting products, according to a CIA spokeswoman, were aimed to bolster “our analytic product.†A 2004 investigation by the Washington Times found that the Counterterrorism Center had not funded any research by organizations supportive of the administration’s foreign policy.Most damaging of all, however, has been the CIA’s incorrigible leaking. Again and again, it has demonstrated that it is more dedicated to harming the Bush administration’s war effort than to protecting its own secret activities. On the eve of the 2004 presidential debates, for example, the CIA selectively leaked a report claiming that it had warned in early 2003 that a joint Baathist-jihadist insurgency would follow a U.S. invasion of Iraq. The report—which turned out not to have said much of anything about an insurgency, and to have been wrong in its core prognostications—was written by Paul Pillar, who has been happy to rip the Bush administration in the press, identifying himself as “a top national intelligence officer.â€
In May 2005, CIA officials leaked to the Washington Post details of a covert operation in which airplanes owned by CIA front companies were being used for various activities, including the renditions of top al Qaeda operatives. Six months later the Post, again relying on agency insiders (among others), reported that the CIA was using secret prisons in Eastern Europe to detain and interrogate high-level al Qaeda prisoners. This leak gravely jeopardized the cooperation of allied governments, whose own security and intelligence gathering were imperiled by the disclosure.
On the eve of a critical congressional vote on Patriot Act renewal, the New York Times sensationally broke a story it had been sitting on for a year: According to intelligence-community sources (which almost certainly included CIA officials), the NSA had, since 9/11, been intercepting international communications between suspected al Qaeda terrorists and persons stationed inside the United States. Aside from delaying the Patriot Act’s extension for months, the NSA leak has taught the enemy about our methods and submerged a vital program—an effort to create an early-warning system to avoid another 9/11—in a sea of legal controversy.
Faster please. Clarice Feldman 5 08 06
The American MSM, once up in arms over the existence of the Niger forgeries, has proven distressingly incurious as to how those documents came into existence.
I’m curious, then, AJ: to what degree does your theory as to how the documents came into being conflict (if it does at all) with this story which recently made its way into the British press?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2125630.html
“According to the sources, an official investigation believes Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the (Niger) consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador’s assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money.
They allegedly concocted their scheme as reports reached western intelligence agencies, including MI6, that Saddam Hussein had been trying to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The agencies had no evidence he had succeeded. The pair are alleged to have copied a real contract to look like an agreement with Iraq under which Niger would supply Saddam with 500 tons of yellowcake.
The story of the fake deal had begun with a meeting in a Rome bar in February 2000 set up by Antonio Nucera, an officer in the Sismi, the Italian intelligence agency, between two of his former agents, Rocco Martino and Montini.
However, unknown to the Sismi, Martino, a former policeman turned spy, had been working for the French intelligence service, the DGSE, since 1996. He was controlled by the DGSE head of station in Brussels, who paid him a retainer of between £1,050 and £1,400 a month…
In the spring of 2000, she (Montini) handed him a document relating to a visit to Niger by Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican. Martino passed it to his French handler.
The French, who were watching for an attempt by Saddam to obtain uranium from Niger, showed great interest and told Martino they wanted more information. Martino asked Montini if she could get a copy of a contract for Niger to supply Iraq with uranium…
Martino passed the contract to his French handlers, but they spotted it was a fake and refused to pay.”
As a sidenote: I find it hilarious that this piece was penned by Michael Smith, perhaps the last journalist in Great Britain who should be expending ink on the subject of forged documents.
According to the Weekly Standard, McGovern has ties to Maoists.
Ward Churchill is supported by Maoists, too. He was at an Able Danger conference that Cynthia McKinney hosted. One of the VIPS was at that, I think. I forget who.
Here is a link to the Weekly Standard. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/193hqlnl.asp
“In January, McGovern popped up again, this time as front man for an exceedingly unsavory group called Not In Our Name. According to the group’s press release, McGovern served war crimes “indictments” from a “people’s tribunal” on the Bush White House. Not In Our Name is a coalition formed in 2002 by the likes of the Maoist Revolutionary Communist party. It is commonly referred to as anti-war, but it’s no such thing. Some of its constituent groups profess a deep belief in revolutionary violence–which is to say, they are pro-war, they just want the United States to lose.”
Ward Churchill is defended by the Maoist site called MIM.
http://www.mimnotes.info/section.php?file=wardchurchill
I have written about the Maoist connection to Churchill on my blog.
http://www.legendofpineridge.blogspot.com
Search there for “mao.”
DubiousD,
Welcome to the site. We can nail down that Wilson first went to Niger between May and Oct of 1999 because, in that UVA speech, he mentions trying to convince the Military leaders who took over after the Niger leader was assisinated to move to a democratic solution. Since elections happened in Oct for Parliament, and they take months to set up that puts Wilson in Niger around the time of the Iraqi envoy who was there in June. If the CIA was tipped to the Iraqi overture for trade (in what else of course) then they could have established a plan to get the forgeries together as part of the CIA deal to buy out the Niger coup leaders. The military leaders had to have been bought off to establish a new Democratic country so fast. Heck, they could of offed the assisinated leader as part of a longer CIA or French effort to remove the guy.
So assuming the Niger officials wanted to do this before the new government, to get paid, they would have the papers ready and in front of the Iraqis sometime around Dec 1999 or Jan 2000. My guess is Iraqi’s attended the transition ceremony and got their faux agreement then (which keeps them insight of the CIA or others). The other folks you mentioned in Niger could have been trying to forge a different set (I believe there were multiple attempts at fake documents), or they could have been a ruse to set someone on the wrong path.
But Val and Joe and the CIA are tied to those documents because of the knowledge they spilled. My guess those guys had nothing to do with it because they were one of many amatuers trying to sell fakes. There must be a 100 stories like that one. They need to be tied to the specific forgeries that were in the CIA CPD unit’s safe.
Important to note:
503. From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:
a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi ofï¬cials visited Niger in 1999.
b. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact of the forgery does not undermine it.
and also Hitchens on Slate:
NATO investigation has identified two named employees of the Niger Embassy in Rome who, having sold a genuine document about Zahawie to Italian and French intelligence agents, then added a forged paper in the hope of turning a further profit. The real stuff went by one route to Washington, and the fakery, via an Italian journalist and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, by another. The upshot was—follow me closely here—that a phony paper alleging a deal was used to shoot down a genuine document suggesting a connection.
I found this article from last year to be interesting too:
Here we have a columnist for a major paper saying that the CIA has been acting independently of the elected President of the U.S., and that Bush had reason to fear it. He said the CIA had engaged in “hidden management of the criminal justice system and the news media.” In effect, he is saying that the CIA is pulling the strings behind the scenes, and that reporters following the Wilson/Plame storyline are CIA puppets. He went on to say that the CIA also “triggered the investigation” into the CIA leak about Valerie Wilson by itself leaking. That is, the CIA leaked to the press the fact that it had requested an investigation.
Hoagland also declared, “One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.”
The thing about the reporters following the story being puppets is something I have been saying for quite some time. The more I learn the more it looks like a certain group of CIA employees have decided to use their skills and training in an operation aimed at their own country and it is much larger than just Plame-Wilson. Add CIA skilled individuals, Soros and Heinz money, a group of sympathetic journalists, and a PR agency connected to a gaggle of agitprop cells of all different sorts and it looks like an operation with more people and resources than some of the operations they run in foreign countries. Probably bigger than anything we are doing in Iran if you add up all the people in the various “Center for this” and “Institute for that” cells that are trotting out sources for the puppet journalists.
Want to know what their next agitprop issue will probably be? It looks like they are trying to portray Bush’s signing statements he records in the Federal Register concerning opinions of line items in bills he signs is going to be portrayed as an attempt to circumvent the law even though nobody in the administration is claiming the statements have any weight of law. They are simply the “sense of the President” recorded for posterity. Stories from two different journalists, one in Boston and one in San Francisco have appeared in the last week. Both quoting the same sources. Another media issue to discredit the administration being done in a way that smells just exactly like a lot of other stories.
This is big, and it is probably also illegal. Are CIA agents allowed to run “hobby” operations inside the US on CIA time?
Doggone it, messed up closing a link 🙁
Awsome, AJ. It makes sense. Joe was definitely spouting off about knowing what was in the documents, but was he doing so before the IAEA made their disclosure? If not, he probably only attributed things to himself to make himself seem more important than he was.
This scenario would make an awsome story if you were so inclined to write the book. Tom Clancy could only wish for this kind of plot.
fixed?
I have hintet at a CIA role in the forgeries before, but it would seemingly have had to involved French intelligence for it to be plausible.
I think the forgeries came about as a counter-intelligence operation that went horribly wrong. Then later, they proved useful in setting up the USA on a false charge in front of the whole world when the IAEA blew the whistle on them. The funny thing is, it seems no one in the IC really cared about the Niger forgeries. They were still relying on the British intelligence which came from France, and additional information about other African countries. The forgeries didn’t show up until October 2002, and after that, the French confirmed to the US again in November that they had intelligence indicating that Iraq was seeking uranium.
Of course, that could have just been a huge lie to setup the US into believing it and then sneaking the forged documents in the back door through Plame’s division. Remember, Tyler Drumheller, one of the newest heroes of Larry Johnson and CBS, claims that the Rome station chief who worked for him said they were bogus right away. But for some reason, they were sent on and the CIA’s DO kept them in their little vault.
Then after Bush referenced uranium in his SOTU, the State Department or another agency gave up the documents to the IAEA, most likely knowing that they would be discovered to be forgeries. In fact, State’s INR was the one who argued most of all that the documents were probably a hoax. So why did they give the docs to the IAEA then? Couldn’t they have just said, wait, these docs are hokey, sorry…?
Nope, because that wouldn’t have provided the public humiliation of the IAEA declaring them to be false. Wonder if Marc Grossman had anything to do with that…. working at State and all….
I don’t think Wilson knew anything about the documents, at least the signatures and all that crap, until the IAEA talked about it. I think he was trying to take credit for that retroactively. It seemed like a wonderful story to leak anonymously to the press.
What’s interesting to me is that at some point, it became known that it was the Italian intelligence service that had been the original source of the reporting on Niger. This was “redacted” in the SSCI report, but as I have shown on my blog, it wasn’t done well enough and it was easy to crack that it said “Italian”.
The French have also tried blaming the whole thing on the Italians, even it was a man on their payrolls, Rocco Martino, who procured them. Was the CIA division also blaming the Italians through the SSCI report? Did the French and a division inside the CIA set up the Italians?
Lots of questions, few answers.
Is the CIA behind the Niger forgeries? What was Wilson’s role?…
It is interesting that AJ Strata has the following post up today as I’ve been letting the idea of the CIA being behind the forgeries that started this whole CIA/Niger/Wilson trip/Plame outing/forgeries debacle percolate around in my brain for a long t…
Trying to repost the one above that had the bad anchor because I think the article is really interesting:
I found this article from last year to be interesting too:
Here we have a columnist for a major paper saying that the CIA has been acting independently of the elected President of the U.S., and that Bush had reason to fear it. He said the CIA had engaged in “hidden management of the criminal justice system and the news media.” In effect, he is saying that the CIA is pulling the strings behind the scenes, and that reporters following the Wilson/Plame storyline are CIA puppets. He went on to say that the CIA also “triggered the investigation” into the CIA leak about Valerie Wilson by itself leaking. That is, the CIA leaked to the press the fact that it had requested an investigation.
Hoagland also declared, “One lesson available in this story is that amateurs are no match for the CIA in disinformation campaigns. The spies are far better at operating in the shadows than you politicians will ever be. They have a license to dissemble.”
The thing about the reporters following the story being puppets is something I have been saying for quite some time. The more I learn the more it looks like a certain group of CIA employees have decided to use their skills and training in an operation aimed at their own country and it is much larger than just Plame-Wilson. Add CIA skilled individuals, Soros and Heinz money, a group of sympathetic journalists, and a PR agency connected to a gaggle of agitprop cells of all different sorts and it looks like an operation with more people and resources than some of the operations they run in foreign countries.
If the formatting chars mess this up from the copy source, I give up.
The Timesonline article linked to by DubiousD said it was an “official investigation” but it does not directly say who conducted it. Also, the guy who wrote it is a lefty.
“According to Nato sources, the investigation has evidence that Niger’s consul and its ambassador’s personal assistant faked a contract to show Saddam Hussein had bought uranium ore from the impoverished west African country.”
Did NATO conduct the investigation? How trustworthy are the sources?
“According to the sources, an official investigation believes Adam Maiga Zakariaou, the consul, and Laura Montini, the ambassador’s assistant, known as La Signora, forged the papers for money.”
This could be another head fake.
Also, have you ever considered the possibility that Wilson, Plame and the CIA WMD group were actually brokering deals in uranium? I have not seen conclusive evidence either way, but it seems quite possible to me.
After all, Wilson is a guy who would trade his mother for a Rolex and then try to blame it on her.