CIA Source Of Niger Forgeries? [Wilson forged docs before 2000 election?]

Folks, this post began as a look back on Wilson’s antics in 2003 based on his comments at the EPIC conference in June and a UVA speech in October 2003. It turned quickly into wild speculation about the Niger Forgeries and a plausible CIA role. As I was reviewing this material a year later with a much greater understanding of the players and events things Wilson said took on new meanings and hint at a scenario that weaves all we know into a cogent explanation. The post began here with the retrospective:

A good read out today on Plame from Clarice Feldman over at American Thinker. Clarice notes the comments of Wilson at the EPIC conference where he blew his own cover. To add to Clarice’s piece, I point folks to three posts I did on the EPIC gathering (McGovern’s talk, Wilson’s talk and their joint Q&A session) from the available audio(here, here and here).

It is interesting to see is Wilson’s dire predictions for Iraq three years later. The easy ones he got right were things like saying the Shia will rule southern Iraq. He had a lot if Duh! moments that day. The most pathetic one is his prediction the US would cut and run from Iraq and Israel.

What is interesting in the last audio tape is Wilson’s verbal repetition of the Rockefeller plan (from my earlier post):

Starting just around 12:30 into this 15 minute segment Wilson points out the administration was careful to only talk about uranium with respect to Africa initially. he says that until the story turned to Niger, and then the Niger angle was denied by state, it was difficult to make the case that the march to war was built on lies. Wilson admits, in his own words, that to attack Bush’s policies required the story to be about Niger and not Africa. Why? Well, because the forgery angle only applies to Niger, and the broader Africa angle has more substantiating intel and history.

Wilson also clearly states that people on the inside (CIA and others against the war in Iraq) could easily make the case if they could have been given voice. Which is what Joe Wilson would be doing in a few short days in the NY Times Op-Ed pages.

He goes on to say the story will have legs only if the press can make a profit, and to do that they need to make a scandal out of this issue. The guy is apparently telegraphing exactly what his little band of rogue agents planned. He is trying to lead the press and media to follow him in order to make a splash. He says “it would be great” if the press did make a scandal of this issue and he notes people are talking about the “I” word (impeachment).

Got that? Go listen to the audio and here Wilson expose the plan he and McGovern had cooked up. And realize this is before he outed himself in his Op-Ed. Back then he was all giddy about smearing the Bushies and winning the 2004 election.

Another interesting retrospective can be found here - Wilson in his own words from October 2003 at University of VA. Note that this is about the time Fitzg-Magoo was taking over the investigation. Wilson also could have been in Niger when the Iraqi delegation arrived. My original post on Wilson’s trips during this time is here.

Want some fun with this one? Note how Wilson puts himself at the scene of the crime about the forgeries. Recall that this was prior to the Senate investigation when Wilson was still pushing the idea he debunked the forgeries:

I was asked to go because I have a unique set of experiences to bring to the table on this issue. I had served there in the mid 1970’s. I had retained many ties and friendships including with the Niger Ambassador to the United States for the subsequent twenty-five years. When I was senior director for Africa at the National Security Council in the mid 1990’s, the government that was in place at the time of these purported documents covering the memorandum of agreement for the sale of Uranium from Niger to Iraq, that was the government that was in place when I was in the White House. I had worked very closely with them to try and move what was at the time a military’s dictatorship back to the Democratic side of the ledger. So, I knew these guys intimately. They were in Washington all of the time. I was out there both in government and in African government helping them.

It is sometimes forgotten Wilson worked for Niger and/or other African nations when he first went to Niger for Valerie and the CIA in 1999. He had access to the materials to make the forgeries. Another item to note re the forgeries:

I looked at the [Niger] bureaucracy and I found that because of the nature of the agreement and participation, nothing could happen that did not have the signatures of some key ministers in the government.

Emphasis mine. So, were the forgeries to fool Bush who had not even formally announced his run at the Presidency at this time? Of course not. Were the forgeries to set up Al Gore - the nominal winner of the 2000 elections? Possibly. Or were the forgeries meant for the Iraqi delegation to give them the idea they were entering into an agreement? That would make a lot of sense to a CIA effort trying to keep Saddam in the box. The source of those forgeries could still be Valerie’s CIA unit then.

Note Joe’s ‘miss speaking’ in detail about the Niger documents. Somehow he recalls with perfect clarity all sorts of known details, yet he keeps adding in details about documents that the CIA supposedly did not have at the time:

There were two other reports that were done at the same time as mine. One was the Ambassadors on the scene report and one was a report made by a fourth star marine corps general who made his way down to Niger and had taken a look at it. All three of us had concluded the same thing. It did not happen. We have information to the contrary. It cannot be authentic unless it contains three signatures. None of which were on those documents.

OK, if the Niger forgeries were actually created by the CIA for or around Joe’s 1999 trip to give to the Iraqi’s to make them think they had a uranium deal - that would explain why Joe Wilson kept ‘tainting’ his stories about Niger with these forgeries. We have speculated that the 2003 trip was to tell people to lay low since there were two other efforts underway and the IC felt Joe’s trip was redundant. But what if Joe’s trip was to tell the Niger folks who ran the country during the military coup d’etat from May 1999 to January 2000 to keep mum about the forged uranium sale! Well, this post has taken an interesting turn. I think I now see how all this could make sense seemlessly and without grand conspiracy theories until Joe joins the Kerry campaign. I will leave Wilson to pass sentence on himself and the CIA

If they [the Bush administration] lied about this, what else might they have lied about? For two, who is going to believe the President of the United States next time when he goes before the world and when he goes before the American people and when he goes before the Congress of the United States and says we have a real weapons of mass destruction problem here. Who is going to believe him?

Who is going to believe a former ambassador who hides the fact he is working for the opposing party when he lies about Niger Forgeries? Well, Joe I for one believe you when you said you knew about the forgeries in 2002 and knew they were fake. I believe you. And I believe you helped create those forgeries because they might contain the signatures of your Niger buddies from 1999 - don’t they? The forgeries come from the time period of 1999 possibly, and could have been a trick the CIA played on Iraq. I believe you went to Niger in 2002 to remind your cohorts that the CIA wanted the forgeries kept QUIET from the Bush administration’s investigation. And I think you, Val, Ray McGovern and others thought what a perfect use for these forgeries once Iraq was conquered and the forgeries useless to their original mission! Why not bring down a Presidency?

We know the forgeries were in a safe in Valerie’s CIA unit from October of 2002 onward. Wonder if there was a chance they were in the safe in Oct 2000? Or October 1999? What if those documents were in Valerie’s CIA unit’s safe from BEFORE the 2002 trip to Niger?

All rampant speculation of course and I have no proof. But I would think EPIC audio and UVA transcripts would make wonderful additions to Team Libby’s case. And I would expect some deep searching into the CIA information control documents that cover the contents of safes used by certain people in certain units. I would guess when word broke about the Niger forgeries in 2002, some in the CIA might have had to expose something in a controlled manner internally.

Addendum: Has anyone noticed it is impossible to find news reports on Nigers amazing transition from Military Coup d’Etat to democratic controlled government in less than a year from 1999-2000? I have been trying to find articles on who attended the big celebration after the transition which included many Dignataries - and one Joe Wilson. I find it strange that the new government, seated finally in January 2000, was not in the news?

More On CIA As Source Of Niger Forgeries

In this post from yesterday I noted that if one were to take Wilson at his word in 2003, before he backtracked on his very detailed claims about the Niger forgeries, and you also noted that Wilson took two trips to Niger for the CIA (1999 and 2002), there is a plausible scenario where the CIA and some supporting Niger officials (who Wilson knew) could be the source of the forged Niger documents. In this scenario the forgeries were possibly used to ensare the Iraqis, whose delegation visited Niger around the same time Wilson did in 1999, and who met with Wilson’s contact PM Mayaki. CIA disinformation efforts against Iraq would not be illegal or immoral. But of course trying to turn the products of those efforts against a sitting President using a gullible and pliant press would be.

Reader Crosspatch has found some interesting material that support this claim (plus much more from readers in the comments of the previous post). It is from blogger Alec Rawls at Error Theory who noticed in April of this year a serious discrepency within the CIA’s story regarding the Wilson Gambit in May 2003:

A story that warrants more attention is “Iraq, Niger, And The CIA,” by Murray Waas, published this February in National Journal. Waas claims to have sources that have provided him with some details about the CIA’s June 2003 internal memo that withdrew the agency’s earlier assessment that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Niger.

Waas claims that work on the CIA memo was instigated White House uproar over the Nicholas Kristof article in the New York Times in May 2003 where Wilson…

In May of 2003, the public did not know who the unnamed envoy to Niger in Kristof’s article was, but the CIA certainly did, and they knew he was lying. Thus the CIA memo should have nabbed Wilson, identifying him as a traitor who had been caught spreading malicious disinformation about classified intelligence in an attempt to smear the President and undermine America’s war effort.

That is actually a very telling and important discrepency. The CIA should have known the Niger Forgeries could not have been in their possession when Wilson went to Niger in 2002 - which was Wilson’s claim. So why not say so? A year later the story told to the Senate was that the forgery was placed in Valerie’s CIA CPD unit in October and forgotten until they pulled it out months later. Starting from the Senate Report, Section G: Thee Niger Documents, Page 57 through 59:

On October 9, 2002, an Italian journalist from the magazine Panorama provided U.S. Embassy Rome with copies of documents8 pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction.

… Embassy officers provided copies of the documents to the CIA’s [REDACTED]

…on October 11, 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Rome reported to State Department headquarters that it had acquired photocopies of documents on a purported uranium deal between Iraq and Niger from an Italian journalist. The cable said that the embassy had passed the documents to the CIA’s [REDACTED]

The embassy faxed the documents to the State Department’s Bureau of Nonproliferation (NP) on October 15, 2002, which passed a copy of the documents to INR.

(U) Immediately after receiving the documents, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst e-mailed IC colleagues offering to provide the documents at a previously planned meeting of the Nuclear Interdiction Action Group (NIAG) the following day.

(U) On October 16, 2002, INR made copies of the documents available at the NIAG meeting for attendees, including representatives from the CIA, DIA, DOE and NSA. Because the analyst who offered to provide the documents was on leave, the office’s senior analyst provided the documents. She cannot recall how she made the documents available, but analysts from several agencies, including the DIA, NSA and DOE, did pick up copies at that meeting. None of the four CIA representatives recall picking up the documents, however, during the CIA Inspector General’s investigation of this issue, copies of the documents were found in the DO’s CPD vault. It appears that a CPD representative did pick up the documents at the NIAG meeting, but after returning to the office, filed them without any further distribution.

To unravel this puzzle we need to know that there were possible mixes of forgeries from different sources. A commentor on the previous post asked about reporting about forged documents from the Niger Embassy employees. Well the Senate report notes two documents: the document consumating the sale of the uranium, and a bizarre document that seems to be the one that couuld have from an amatuer forgery attempt. (Page 58):

(U) The INR Iraq nuclear analyst told Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the documents was that a companion document - a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium - mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran, and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerian Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as “completely implausible.” Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document, the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.

Emphasis mine. I think it was this strange, conpsiracy theory laden, companion document that is the subject of some of the reporting about forgeries out of Italy, etc. Primarily because the forged document that Wilson discusses has a much longer history than implied from the section above. You need to go back quite a few pages to get the origin of the Niger sale (starting at the beginning of section II, subsection A, Page 36):

Reporting on a possible uranium yellowcake5 sales agreement between Niger and Iraq first came to the attention of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) on October 15, 2001.

… The intelligence report said the uranium sales agreement had been in negotiation between the two countries since at least early 1999, and was approved by the State Court of Niger in late 2000.

These events precede the Rome handover of documents by 1-3 years! In fact, they predate Wilson’s second trip to Niger (while overlapping his first trips). Recall that the coup d’etat was May 1999, and the Iraq delegation supposedly came in June of 1999 and Wilson sometime in June and July. The handover from the military coup leaders to the newly elected government was January 2000. So any documents from this period could have the name of the transitional military government - which the Niger ‘forgeries’ did. Since this purported agreement spanned the military and civilian governments, then there is reason for various names to be associated with it. But the reporting from this period is pretty firm:

According to the cable, Nigerien President Mamadou Tandja gave his stamp of approval for the agreement and communicated his decision to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The report also indicated that in October 2000 Nigerien Minister of Foreign Affairs Nassirou Sabo informed one of his ambassadors in Europe that Niger had concluded an accord to provide several tons of uranium to Iraq.

We know Wilson went back to Niger in 2000, after the change over to civilian rule (he says so in his UVA talk in October 2003). Wilson admits he goes back to Niger AND that he works for ‘the african governments’ - probably Niger itself. So, where the names as bad as Wilson claimed? Well, what did Wilson claim (Page 44)?

Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal.

Emphasis mine. The question is what names for what time period! If people assumed only the civilian leaders in the 2000 government were to sign then yes. If you realize and note the transitional military government then no, the names are not all that off, as one IC analyst testified:

There were no obvious inconsistencies in the names of officials mentioned or the dates of the transactions in any of the three reports. Of the seven names mentioned in the reporting, two were former high ranking officials who were the individuals in the positions described in the reports at the time described and five were lower ranking officials. Of the five lower ranking, two were not the individuals in the positions described in the reports, however, these do not appear to be names or positions with which intelligence analysts would have been familiar. For example, an INR analyst who had recently returned from a position as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Niger told Committee staff that he did not notice any inconsistencies with the names of the officials mentioned. The only mistake in any of the reports regarding dates, is that one date, July 7, 2000, is said to be a Wednesday in the report, but was actually a Friday.

I note that date because it shows on something July 7th, 2003. The time period when a final agreement could have been etablished if the Niger parliament was going to ratify it later that year. In any event, the Niger Forgeries look more and more like something that was around a lot longer than October 2002. There is a foreign intelligence agency referenced as the early source of this information - which can only be 5-6 letters long given the redaction size. It could be the ‘French’ intelligence agency, but ‘Italian’ and ‘British’ is too long. Whatever it is, I am shocked no one in the CIA tried to get a copy or look at documents purporting to cover the sale of large amounts of uranium to Iraq. How is it we have years and years of reporting this event and no hard evidence in hand? No one asks even once for it? Hard to believe.

Posted by AJStrata on Tuesday, May 9th, 2006 at 10:10 am.

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