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UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 1 (UPI) -- The International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council its inspectors have found new traces of enriched uranium in Iran. The discovery marked the third instance that highly enriched uranium was found at an Iranian facility, but the IAEA said the nuclear fingerprint on the new discovery does not match that found on earlier samples, which the agency had concluded came from contaminated equipment from Pakistan, The New York Times reported Friday. The 6-page IAEA report did not identify where the uranium might have originated or whether it was connected to a secret...

fighting wordsPlame OutThe ridiculous end to the scandal that distracted Washington.By Christopher HitchensPosted Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2006, at 1:02 PM ET I had a feeling that I might slightly regret the title ("Case Closed") of my July 25 column on the Niger uranium story. I have now presented thousands of words of evidence and argument to the effect that, yes, the Saddam Hussein regime did send an important Iraqi nuclear diplomat to Niger in early 1999. And I have not so far received any rebuttal from any source on this crucial point of contention. But there was always another layer...

A new assessment of Iran's nuclear program by the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency says that, as early as 1995, Pakistan was providing Tehran with the designs for sophisticated centrifuges capable of making bomb-grade nuclear fuel. It also finds evidence that, as of the mid-August, Iran had assembled and tested the major components for 70 of the machines, which it showed to inspectors from the agency. But the report, issued to members of the agency on Wednesday as a confidential document, provided no new evidence of the kind of covert programs that the agency has discovered in the last...

Valerie Plame Wilson, the woman at the center of the CIA-leak investigation, says she played no role in sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. “She vehemently denies that she had anything to do with suggesting Joseph Wilson do this,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, the Duke University law professor who is representing the Wilsons in their recently filed lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, top White House adviser Karl Rove, former vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, and ten unidentified co-defendants. “She has said to me that she...

The documents seized in the FBI raid on the offices of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) remain unread by Justice Department investigators, pending a federal Appeals Court ruling scheduled for August 27. [snip] But we already know a bit about the charges and some of the alleged partners of Congressman Jefferson. Two people have pleaded guilty to bribing him.

by Mark Finkelstein July 17, 2006 - 21:58 Will the left wing please make up its mind as to the danger posed by conservative talk-show fans? As documented by MRC, in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, liberals like Bryant Gumbel pointed the finger at conservative talk radio: "Right-wing talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh . . . and others take to the air every day with basically the same format: detail a problem, blame the government or a group, and invite invective from like-minded people. Never do most of the radio hosts encourage outright violence, but the extent...

COMPETITION between the supercharged growth economies of India and China for long-term secure uranium supplies is heating up, with India's state-owned Nuclear Power Corp revealing it has approached uranium companies in Australia and Canada. NPC chairman S.K. Jain said NPC was seeking joint ventures in $US1.2 billion ($A1.57 billion) investments. He said NPC had approached companies in Australia, the world's biggest holder of uranium, and Canada, the world's biggest producer. "Many uranium mines are not being fully exploited today" and they would be expanded because of demand from India and China, Mr Jain said in a phone interview from Mumbai....

If Mary O. McCarthy should ever be so desperate as to need a character witness, or to require one so badly that she must stoop to my level, I declare in advance that I shall step forward pro bono. I am quite willing to accept that whatever she did or did not do or say about the surreptitious incarceration of al-Qaida suspects overseas (and let's not prejudge this), she did it from the most exalted motives.

IAEA acts to clean up Iraq atom site, 1,000 at risk Mon Apr 24, 2006 7:15 PM BST Printer Friendly | Email Article | RSS VIENNA (Reuters) - The International Atomic Energy Agency has begun a drive to clean up the former Tuwaitha nuclear site in Iraq where radioactive residue poses a health risk to 1,000 nearby inhabitants, the nuclear watchdog said on Monday. Residents of Ishtar village near Tuwaitha, 20 km (12 miles) south of Baghdad, are exposed to contaminated rubble left by aerial bombing and looting during and after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein,...

CIA officer Mary McCarthy was fired for leaking a possibly trumped-up story about a secret network of CIA-run prisons in Europe. Ms. McCarthy’s pattern of political donations, her Clinton administration White House service, and her extensive network of ties to other important Clintonista figures has set off a blogstorm of data mining and speculation. One aspect of her background so far comparatively unexamined is her West African uranium connection. She served in a key government position concerned with West African nations producing yellowcake uranium at the same time that Joseph Wilson was working in the area. The two may be...

BAGHDAD, 25 April (IRIN) - The Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced on Monday that some 1,000 people living near the former Tuwaitha nuclear site faced serious health risks from lingering radiation. Tuwaitha, situated some 20 km south of the capital, Baghdad, "is one of a number of sites in the country identified as needing decommissioning or remediation, where radioactive material was used or waste buried," according to an IAEA statement. Residents of the nearby Ishtar village, for example, are exposed to levels of radiation higher than normal, the agency noted, which – in the case of prolonged exposure...

by Mark Finkelstein April 7, 2006 That didn't take long! Back in the MSM's Watergate heyday, it took a while for a steady drumbeat of revelations, stories and allegations to gather sufficient momentum. The pace has apparently quickened in the modern liberal-media world. On this morning's Today show, Matt Lauer, speaking of the allegation that President Bush authorized the disclosure of information by Scooter Libby, asked Chris Matthews: "scale of 1 to 10, [where] 10 is a deal-ender, where does this fall?" Matthews didn't hesitate: "heading to 10." Even Lauer seemed taken aback: "Really, that big?" For good measure, Matthews...

An Italian man from the margins of the global spy game has emerged as a central figure in the FBI's probe into the faked documents behind the Niger 'yellowcake' scandal. Was Rocco Martino trying to aid the case for the Iraq war?

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.