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.
Wilson will probably punch out Al Gore for inventing the internet when all of his bs is dumped back on him.
Stuff like Wilson's coup participation is exactly why the rats killed Able Danger.
bttt
The first public mention of Wilson's mission to Niger, albeit without identifying him by name, was in the New York Times on May 6, in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof. Kristof had been on a panel with Wilson four days earlier, when the former ambassador said State Department officials should know better than to say the United States had been duped by forged documents that allegedly had proved a deal for the uranium had been in the works between Iraq and Niger.
Wilson said he told Kristof about his trip to Niger on the condition that Kristof must keep his name out of the column.