Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies

Here follows an interesting article from the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. I make no comment at all other than ‘read it’. Very soon, under the title “The Rockefeller Connection”, I will post something revealing, something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned ..

October 9 2002, Rome. Elisabetta Burba, journalist with Panorama magazine, crosses Via Veneto. At the American Embassy someone is waiting for her. The very same day in London The Guardian publishes an article in which Vincent Cannistraro, an ex CIA officer, refers to “manipulated information” which, he alleges, is on its way to the highest echelons of the American Government. Cannistraro points a finger towards the “hawks in the Pentagon” as being behind the disinformation.

While Cannistraro is busy speaking to the Guardian Rocco Martino’s false documents have as yet to reach the American Embassy, the State Department, the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the IAEA and the Italian SISMI. At the time of Cannistraro’s interview only the French DGSE have the false documents. How did Cannistraro know what was about to happen? Cannistraro is not the only ex CIA officer who foretells the events, in fact Nigergate is a plot in which bloggers, spies and Liberal journalists are all playing the very same game. Cannistraro’s foretelling the future is but the first of a series of the many, too many, coincidences in the Nigergate affair.

In Washington, as in the European capitals, mid October sees the discussions regarding military intervention in Iraq reach their peak. Nobody seems to doubt that Saddam Hussein is a menace, not even the France which is against the war, already in possession of the false documents and already in contact with the freelance spy Rocco Martino who will eventualy assume the role of “postman”. The French President, Jacques Chirac, in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper, L’Oriente le jour, published on October 16 2002, declared that “today a certain ammount of evidence leads to believe that in these last four years, that is in the period in which the weapons inspectors were absent, the country continued its re-arming program”. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Democrats side with Bush in favour of armed intervention. On October 10 2002 Hilary Clinton made her comments in regards to Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons. The same for John F. Kerry: “I will vote in favour of authorising the President to use force if necessary in that I believe that arsenals of weapons of mass destruction represent a real and grave threat to our security”. Amongst others voting “yes” was Senator John D. Rockefeller, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who today promotes the Italian connection in the false documents obviously forgetting his own words at the time: “there is proof that Saddam is working aggressively to develop nuclear arms which will probably be ready in five years”. Words that Rockefeller seems to have forgotten today at a time when he is asking the FBI to re-open the inquiry into the Italian front. Alongside him stands Congressman Henry Waxman, another who voted “yes” to the use of force. Yesterday Waxman returned once again to attacking the FBI for not having interrogated Rocco Martino during one of his two trips to America, the first to be interviewed by CBS (in vain because the interview was never aired). The polemic because the Director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller III, signed a letter which closed once and for all the Italian front: the letter states that there was no plot to influence American foreign policy. The letter completely overturns the conspiracy theory advanced by the american bloggers and copied by La Repubblica which punctually interviews the Democrat Senators who were all for war yesterday but today are so full of regret that they want to place the very FBI under the spotlight, the same FBI that they applaude for having investigated Lewis Scooter Libby for his involvement in CIA-Gate. It’s true, the FBI could have interrogated Rocco Martino, had they been able to find him. Reliable information from the States points to Martino’s having been assisted by CBS before leaving Italy and having then been helped to hide. True? False? We will know during the next few days. There are no mysteries surrounding Martino’s “non interrogation”. In Italy SISMI made all of it’s information available to the Americans, adding in a letter to Mueller the hope that “our collaboration will continue along the same lines well into the future”.

The declerations made by Waxman to La Repubblica would appear somewhat singular. But just who is Waxman? The Congressman is linked to the millionaire Lyndon La Rouche, another exponent of the Democrats who, in Italy, are active through Movisol (International Movement for Civil Rights - Solidarity) and in the United States through the Executive Intelligence Review, which, on June 13 2003, circulated the following piece of disinformation: “according to EIR intelligence sources the Niger documents were produced inside the Niger Embassy in Rome and were passed to the Italian Carabinieri (Military Police) who then, without commenting at all, passed the documents to the British MI6 and the CIA”. Basing himself on this disinformation Waxman wrote a letter to Bush demanding an explanation, none ever arrived due to the simple fact that the EIR scoop was totally baseless. No trace of the Carabinieri, no trace of British or Americans. Nothing at all. All that remains is a network of spies, anti-Bush giornalists and Democrat Senators who all seem to forget two or three things: Rocco Martino was a spy employed by the French; Niger is an ex Frech colony; the French control the extraction of uranium in Niger; the French had the dossier containing the false documents in the autumn of 2000; in regards to the forgeries France remained silent, never telling the Americns a word about the forgeries, until after the IAEA disclosed all.

Question: why don’t all of the highly allert Democrat Senators, beginning with Rockefeller, ask the FBI to investigate Paris?

Cannistraro’s foretelling the future is but the first of a series of the many, too many, coincidences in the Nigergate affair.

No kidding, I've been working on this for awhile:

My theory (#42)is that this was a collaborative effort by the French and CIA coordinated by Wilson. Jacqueline, (Joe's his second wife), was a French diplomat and may have provided the connections for Wilson to see the forged documents that were supplied by the French through the Italians. In other words it is possible that Wilson knew that the docs were forged because he was privy to the information that French wanted to discredit the British info on Saddam shopping for yellowcake and that Wilson's objective was the same. The French just happen to manage the yellowcake production in Niger.

Therefore, Wilson did not lie when he said he saw the documents.

Per a thread by Fedora:

French intelligence soon began a campaign to discredit the US case for war against Iraq. In 1999, French intelligence had begun investigating the security of uranium supplies in Niger, where uranium production was controlled by a consortium led by the French mining company COGEMA, a division of the French state-owned nuclear energy firm AREVA. At that time, Italian businessman Rocco Martino provided French intelligence with genuine documents revealing that Iraq was planning to expand trade with Niger. French intelligence took an interest in the documents and asked Martino to provide more information. In 2000 he used a contact in the Niger embassy in Rome to provide French intelligence with documents purporting that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. These documents were later exposed as forgeries;

< snip >

Since it is now also known that French intelligence was trying to push Martino’s forgeries on US and British intelligence, as simultaneously the Democratic National Committee was planning to discredit President Bush’s Iraq policy by accusing his administration of manufacturing evidence against Hussein’s regime, heightened suspicion is cast on Wilson’s use of the Niger investigation to discredit the Bush administration’s case for war.

What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa

Also, Rocco only "procured" the documents, he did not forge them. Fitzgerald went to Italy to investigate the Niger Embassy (in Rome) burglary...where the letterhead and seals for the forgeries were stolen. Ex-CIA agent (and coincidentally, an advisor to the Vatican in Rome),Vincent Cannistraro has stated that Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge were the actual forgers, but his account is the only one available that I can find on the subject. He has also pointed the finger at Michael Ledeen, but Ledeen has publicly made a statement that he had nothing to do with it and demanded an apology from Cannistraro.

In addition, despite what the MSM is reporting, the Italians released a press report yesterday saying they had nothing to do with the forgeries:

Italy denies role in fake documents on Iraq

This was also backed up by Rocco here

Cannistraro's "theory" falls apart when you consider that he:

1) blamed SISME (the Italians), which has proven to be wrong

2) bases his assumptions on a Dec 2001 Ledeen meeting, when Cannistraro himself was in Rome in Nov 2001, which would make him just as suspect.

I also discovered that Cannistraro worked directly with Clarridge during Iran Contra, so he has alot of nerve bringing that up in connection to Ledeen. Another interesting tidbit (#47) that I discovered is that Wolf and Clarridge worked with Aldrich Ames, who outed Plame to the Russians in the 90's. Coincidence? I think not. Cannistraro trying to kill two birds with one stone to cover his own carcass seems to be the more likely answer. Equally suspicious is the Hersch article, where Cannistraro and another unnamed agent state the exact route the documents took and Cannistraro actually admits that he called the CIA about the documents before they were proven to be false. This begs the question...just how did Cannistraro know about the documents before they were vetted? Sounds a whole lot like Wilson's slip-up about seeing the documents.

Hersch also claims in the above linked article:

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

A more reliable source, Joe diGenova claims it was a possible CIA coup as well. As does James Lewis in two articles, here and here

Two other names just crept into this...Niger Ambassador Adamou Chekou, who was in charge at the Embassy when the break-in and forgeries occurred and Wissam al-Zahawiah, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See. Seems Italian Intelligence was eavesdropping on these two and discovered their "hotline".

Did you read that carefully. Holy See? As in Vatican? Where Vincent Cannistraro is the security advisor?

Also take into consideration:

Wilson (as Ambassador to Gabon) had/has connections to the Gabon Chief of State, Omar Bongo, who was the chief African ally of the French oil company TotalFinaElf, a major beneficiary of the Oil-for-Food bribes. Prior to the Iraq War, they had a contract with Saddam's regime worth an estimated 12.5 to 27.0 billion barrels of oil reserves. Also he had connections via the Middle East Institute and Rock Creek, both of which are Saudi controlled.

Wilson's wife Jacqueline was also apparently a lobbyist for Bongo and it seems Wilson was pretty chummy with Saddam's weapons buyer, having dinner with him on the eve that Kuwait was invaded in 1990. She is now an advisor to Bongo, her picture from a 2005 conference can be found here That makes it very clear that there are connections to oil-for-food. No wonder Wilson can afford his lifestyle.

Source: Posts 21 and 22

From one of piasa's posts:

JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.

"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it." That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play. Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]

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