Fitzgerald meets with Judge

It was Loftus who said that the Niger story was an established piece of intel, mostly via the Brits. It was like an 8 out of 10 on the "slam dunk" scale. Then, this new "mega" evidence shows up, these documents from Italy spelling the whole thing out. With that, the story goes from an 8/10 to a 10/10 and gets visiblity all the way up the US intel chain.

But the documents are forgeries. And when that is "discovered", the entire story is discredited. Its easy of course - you make a claim, you have these documents, they turn out to be forgeries, so the claim is thus trashed. But the documents were planted into the intel stream as a "poison pill" to discredit what was otherwise a good piece of intel. Loftus always said it was the French who did this, because french apparachiks served as the liasons between Iraq and Niger in the yellowcake deal.

Now, whether this can be proved - and whether it can be shown that this scheme links back to elements in the US - who knows. I have my doubts that Fitzgerald can crack that nut (if he even is looking at it, which is also very doubtful) - too many roadblocks, evidence trails destroyed, etc.

yes, but Loftus was also the guy telling us that the forged documents were planted to discredit the story. But I agree with you that Loftus was tipping off the mechanism by which this was going to play out, while at the same time saying it was a pack of lies (because the documents were planted). So he's on both sides of the issue (as always!).

Loftus is a little whacky (as many of us know). Remember that he also promised that Bush would have a "slam dunk" when the uranium from Al-Tuwaitha was going to be shown to be chemically identical to the material Libya gave up - showing that the Libyan nuclear program and the Iraq program were one in the same. That story dissappeared.

But I only post this information (Loftus and Batchelor were talking about this almost from the beginning) because as these stories about investigations regarding the Niger documents and Italy surface in the current time frame, this claim becomes noteworthy again.

We known for a long time exactly what Berger took and why...pay close attention to the last para on the Clarke/Kerrick memo. From Ashcroft's testimony:

The NSC's Millennium After Action Review declares that the United States barely missed major terrorist attacks in 1999 — with luck playing a major role. Among the many vulnerabilities in homeland defenses identified, the Justice Department's surveillance and FISA operations were specifically criticized for their glaring weaknesses. It is clear from the review that actions taken in the Millennium Period should not be the operating model for the U.S. government.

In March 2000, the review warns the prior Administration of a substantial al Qaeda network and affiliated foreign terrorist presence within the U.S., capable of supporting additional terrorist attacks here. [My note: AD info?]

Furthermore, fully seventeen months before the September 11 attacks, the review recommends disrupting the al Qaeda network and terrorist presence here using immigration violations, minor criminal infractions, and tougher visa and border controls.

Post #745

It falls directly into the AD timeline. In that same post, I note that what Sandy Berger stole was the versions of the after action report:

The missing copies, according to Breuer and their author, Richard A. Clarke, the counterterrorism chief in the Clinton administration and early in President Bush's administration, were versions of after-action reports recommending changes following threats of terrorism as 1999 turned to 2000. Clarke said he prepared about two dozen ideas for countering terrorist threats. The recommendations were circulated among Cabinet agencies, and various versions of the memo contained additions and refinements, Clarke said last night.

Therefore, they were never provided to the Commission, as evidenced by the Commission Report footnotes (#769):

46. NSC email, Clarke to Kerrick,“Timeline,”Aug. 19, 1998; Samuel Berger interview (Jan. 14, 2004). We did not find documentation on the after-action review mentioned by Berger. On Vice Chairman Joseph Ralston’s mission in Pakistan, see William Cohen interview (Feb. 5, 2004). For speculation on tipping off the Taliban, see, e.g., Richard Clarke interview (Dec. 18, 2003).
And to what does footnote (46) refer? On p. 117, Chapter 4, we find this:

Later on August 20, Navy vessels in the Arabian Sea fired their cruise missiles. Though most of them hit their intended targets, neither Bin Ladin nor any other terrorist leader was killed. Berger told us that an after-action review by Director Tenet concluded that the strikes had killed 20–30 people in the camps but probably missed Bin Ladin by a few hours. Since the missiles headed for Afghanistan had had to cross Pakistan, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was sent to meet with Pakistan’s army chief of staff to assure him the missiles were not coming from India. Officials in Washington speculated that one or another Pakistani official might have sent a warning to the Taliban or Bin Ladin. (46)
How about that? How many times have we heard Clinton say that he missed Bin Ladin by just a few hours? Yet the after-action report is missing, so the Commission relied on Sandy Berger's testimony.

Then the Clarke/Kerrick memo peaked my interest and I found this (#784):

Clarke was nervous about such a mission because he continued to fear that Bin Ladin might leave for someplace less accessible. He wrote Deputy National Security Advisor Donald Kerrick that one reliable source reported Bin Ladin's having met with Iraqi officials, who "may have offered him asylum." Other intelligence sources said that some Taliban leaders, though not Mullah Omar, had urged Bin Ladin to go to Iraq. If Bin Ladin actually moved to Iraq, wrote Clarke, his network would be at Saddam Hussein's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to find him. Better to get Bin Ladin in Afghanistan, Clarke declared.

Kerry and crew could not afford to have this info come out before the election.

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