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Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them. Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his...

September 3, 2007 -- TEHRAN - Iran's president claimed yesterday that his country is now running 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for its nuclear program - a long-sought goal that could add momentum to efforts to impose new U.N. sanctions on the Islamic republic. The claim is at odds with a report by the U.N. nuclear-watchdog group Thursday that put the number at close to 2,000. The International Atomic Energy Agency said enrichment had slowed and Iran was cooperating with its nuclear probe, which could fend off calls for a third round of sanctions. "The West thought the Iranian nation...

Sean Hannity shows you the secret CIA documents that reveal the truth about Joe and Valerie Wilso. Sunday, August 12 at 9 p.m. ET

March 26, 2007, 0:00 a.m. A GOP Congressman Asks Questions About Valerie Plame Wilson’s Testimony Georgia’s Lynn Westmoreland wants more details about the decision to send Joseph Wilson to Niger. By Byron York When Valerie Plame Wilson testified recently before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, just two Republicans — out of 17 on the committee — bothered to show up. Ranking Republican Rep. Tom Davis asked few questions and seemed largely uninterested in the matter. The only other Republican to appear, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, showed more interest but appeared not to have mastered the details...

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16. In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the...

If some people imagined a verdict in the criminal trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr. would calm the political passions surrounding his fate, they may have forgotten two words with a combustible history: presidential pardon. The 11 jurors had barely pronounced Mr. Libby guilty of obstruction of justice and perjury on Tuesday when a new donnybrook broke out. “Now President Bush must pledge not to pardon Libby for his criminal conduct,” declared Senator Harry Reid, the Senate majority Leader, a stance echoed by other Congressional Democrats, editorial writers and bloggers on the left. On the right, The Wall Street Journal...

CIA agent's naming led to giant hoax by Bush foes Fred Barnes September 15, 2006 THE rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now that there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly there was no smear campaign against former US ambassador Joseph Wilson for criticising President George W.Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country - by the media,...

In 2005, the mainstream media seemed shocked when a number of news sources, including WorldNetDaily.com released a report about an "American Hiroshima" plot against the United States by Al-Qaeda The plot calls for Al-Qaeda to detonate nuclear weapons on American soil, having arrived over the Mexican border with the assistance of MS-13 gang members. The report claims Al-Qaeda has already obtained a large number of nuclear weapons currently being maintained by Pakistani and Russian scientists. Why the shock? In November 2002, this author provided similar and nearly identical information to the American public and intelligence agencies compiled from private and...

It turns out that the person who exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame was not out to punish her husband. WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an...

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...