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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.

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

But Ex-CIA did...from my notes:

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.

Here is my complete file:

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?

And speaking of al Zahawie, he was also apparently clairvoyant:

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?]

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.

The way this is unfolding, I don't think I am too far off the mark. BTW, the Niger Embasy burglary was "On a night sometime between 29 December 2000 and 1 January 2001", so it couldn't be before that.