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The CIA leak prosecutor refuses to turn over evidence to Lewis Libby. Watchers of the CIA leak investigation are buzzing over a series of letters between prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and lawyers for former Cheney chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. In the letters, contained in motions filed recently by Libby's defense team and released by the court, Fitzgerald steadfastly refused to reveal whether he has any evidence that Bush administration officials violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, or any other law by revealing the identity of CIA employee Valerie Wilson. Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction...

ehran, Iran, Jan. 09 – Iran is resuming suspended nuclear activities at its massive uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, the government spokesman Gholam-Hossein Elham said on Monday. Talking to reporters at a press conference in Tehran, Elham said, “As has been announced, nuclear research will begin today, and there is no legal obstacles barring this research”. “The suspension of our nuclear activities was voluntary and we have notified the IAEA of our intention to start it”, Elham added. The IAEA, the European Union and the United States had called on Iran to refrain from resuming suspended activities at Natanz, which...

Iran, in what has been regarded as a major step, has announced development of technology to separate uranium from its ore. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization has achieved indigenous capability to separate uranium from its ore, officials said. They said the technology, known as a mixer-settler, would enable the extraction of uranium from the mined ore to produce concentrated uranium oxide, or yellowcake. "The mixer-settler can be used effectively in the fuel cycle for producing zirconium and uranium," an Iranian engineer told state television on Jan. 1. "It minimizes the use of solvent and has a recycling mechanism." In 2003,...

Special Report New Attempt to Distract Niger Uranium Export Issue Away From Libyan Rôle Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. New attempts are being made by officials from Niger to obfuscate the political picture with regard to the supply of Niger-originating uranium to Iraq. However, there is now a growing possibility that the reality that Niger supplied uranium to Libya, and that Libya hosted the Iraqi strategic weapons programs from about 1998 onwards, will be openly acknowledged by US and UK governments in the near future. The exclusive reporting on this matter by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs — reporting...

Saddam's Shadow Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 Copyright 1997 Indigo Publications Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 SECTION: MINING; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO; N. 207 LENGTH: 787 words HEADLINE: Saddam's Shadow BODY: It's not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department's African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa. (Susan Rice, director for African...

Did the CIA Build a “Bridge to Nowhere” ? We’ve heard the mantra: “Bush lied-people died !” – so many times and in so many ways, a high percentage of the American people have actually come to believe it. One of the key issues was whether Iraq was seeking uranium to resume its nuclear weapons program. ( A previous attempt , which had progressed rather far, had been interrupted by an Israeli bombing raid on Saddam’s nuclear facilities,and by Gulf War 1.) It is my considered belief a small ,politically partisan “cabal” in the CIA furnished misleading intelligence to the...

In violation of CIA regulations that bar contact with reporters without permission, Joseph Wilson's agency-employed wife Valerie Plame apparently accompanied him to a breakfast meeting with New York Times reporter Nicholas Kristof in which they discussed the ambassador's controversial mission to Niger one month before Plame allegedly was "outed" by Robert Novak.In a WND column, investigative reporter Jack Cashill points to a "stunning admission" by Wilson in a January 2004 Vanity Fair magazine story that apparently has been overlooked.

Nigergate: All Ambassador Wilson’s lies Ambassador Wilson has a lot of strange friends: people that know and reveal top secret information to the foreign media, collaborators of foreign secret services and, last but not least, a number of disgruntled ex Cia officers. Once again Chiocci and Sechi at Il Giornale hit the nail on the head, this time round it’s Ambassador Wilson’s turn to be put under the spotlight. The following article, published Sunday, examines the Ambassador’s interesting ties to the French secret services and the anti-Bush cabal of ex Cia officers that go by the name of ‘VIPS’. Note...

Iran: Larijani Confirms Arrival of Yellow Cake Consignment at Esfahan UCF Mehr News Agency WWW-Text Friday, November 18, 2005 Tehran Mehr News Agency WWW-Text in Persian at 1106 GMT on 18 November carries a 1,500-word report on a news conference by Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, following the signing of a security agreement with Iraq in Tehran on 17 November. After reporting Larijani's remarks as outlined in referent item, the news agency notes: "Questioned about a report concerning the arrival of a consignment of yellow cake at Esfahan's UCF installation for processing, he (Larijani) said: This...

South Africa offers yellowcake, enrichment tech to Iran's nuclear program South Africa has offered to be a supplier of nuclear material and technology to Iran. Iranian officials said Pretoria has offered to transfer material and technology to help Teheran's nuclear program. They said the South African offer would be restricted to activities permitted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and supervised by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "We are in the process of negotiating on the modalities of this participation," said Javad Vaidi, an official from Iran's Supreme National Security Council. On Nov. 5, Iran approved a resolution that would enable...

NEW YORK After months of complaints from what he calls “bloggers on the right,” among others, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has posted at his paid TimesSelect page a clarification on his now-famous, but somewhat flawed, column that played a central role in the still-enveloping Plame/CIA leak case. Kristof said the reasons for correcting the record now were that the Libby indictment had revived interest in the May, 6, 2003 column -- and he has been pressing for Vice President Cheney to “tell all” about the case so “here's my effort to do the same.” It came just hours...

GIS Special Topical StudiesIraq War 2003: Background, Lessons and Follow-On Return to main GIS index page  Return to Iraq War index page September 8, 2004 Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not ReliableAnalysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. Reports in The Sunday Telegraph of London on September 6, 2004, cited Italian sources as having alleged that French Government officials were behind the creation of a dossier of largely forged documents which had highlighted the purchase of uranium by Iran from Niger. The documents were subsequently shown to have included forged material, thus discrediting the US policy...

FROM: JULY 18, 2005 Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken. Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss’s long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte. Judging by Director Goss’s remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA “experts” in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame’s outfit –...

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France. The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo". His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents -...

Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not Reliable Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily September 8, 2004 Wednesday September 8, 2004 Wednesday LENGTH: 3171 words HEADLINE: Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not Reliable BODY: Analysis. By Gregory R. Copley, Editor, GIS. Reports in The Sunday Telegraph of London on September 6, 2004, cited Italian sources as having alleged that French Government officials were behind the creation of a dossier of largely forged documents which had highlighted the purchase of uranium by Iran from Niger. The documents were subsequently shown to have included forged material, thus discrediting...

It was one of the biggest of the American pre-war blunders. Iraq, documents showed, had tried to buy uranium from Niger. The papers, though, soon proved to be false. But who forged them? Now, a new article in an Italian newspaper says that the Italian government was heavily involved. Remember the Niger "yellow cake" scandal? Back in the days before the US invasion of Iraq, nobody except of course the UN weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq, was really sure whether Saddam had the Bomb or not. US President George W. Bush was desperately looking for some shred of...

Flirting with Fascism Neocon theorist Michael Ledeen draws more from Italian fascism than from the American Right. By John Laughland On the antiwar Right, it has been customary to attack the warmongering neoconservative clique for its Trotskyite origins. Certainly, the founding father of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, wrote in 1983 that he was “proud” to have been a member of the Fourth International in 1940. Other future leading lights of the neocon movement were also initially Trotskyites, like James Burnham and Max Kampelman—the latter a conscientious objector during the war against Hitler, a status that Evron Kirkpatrick, husband of Jeane, used...

ROME - The head of Italy's military secret services will be questioned by a parliamentary commission next week over allegations that his organization gave the United States and Britain disputed documents suggesting that Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa, officials said Tuesday. Nicolo Pollari, director of the SISMI intelligence agency, will be questioned on Nov. 3 by members of the commission overseeing secret services, said Micaela Panella, a commission spokeswoman. She said Pollari asked to be questioned after reports Monday and Tuesday in the Rome daily La Repubblica claiming SISMI passed on to the CIA, U.S. government officials...

Russo Martino, the man behind the forged documents indicating Saddam had purchased uranium from Niger, which Joseph A. Wilson falsely claimed he had seen and warned the Administration about, has come forward and admitted that he did this in the pay of France to undermine the British and American justification for the war in Iraq: The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, “Giacomo”. His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that...

An Open Letter to the Press: Tell the Truth About Joseph Wilson10/24 07:50 PM I sent an e-mail like this to a reporter who is covering the Plame investigation. I'll let you know if I get a response. In the meantime, feel free to send this e-mail to reporters you see peddling Wilson canards: Why do you and many other reporters persist in using the following stock description Joseph Wilson: Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who became a critic of the administration's Iraq policy by disputing the possibility that Saddam Hussein's regime sought to buy uranium fuel from...