Freeper marron posted an intriguing theory on why the forged documents were created (marron, I remembered your post and just hunted it up):
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1167230/posts?page=28#28
***"I have always heard this, and this is certainly a common practice. But Niger is apparently wide open for uranium smuggling, with mines supposedly abandoned by the official mining company being operated by ostensibly private actors for sale on the black market (that doesn't sound like anything Wilson told us, does it...).
"Contraband uranium could be simply trucked over the frontier into Libya, or it could be shipped out through the same port with the legal stuff... if it had papers. Those papers would by definition be bogus. My understanding is that the papers in question were dismissed as forged because information that should have been typed was handwritten, and a national seal was hand drawn. That doesn't sound like a proper forgery, that sounds like someone making up some paperwork he considers good enough.
"That kind of bogus paperwork would itself be evidence of precisely the kind of smuggling we're talking about. If it was an intel agency's handiwork, it would be right, and it would even have the right signatures.
"At least theoretically. I just think we've been too quick to dismiss this paperwork just because its bogus. Of course its bogus, they're smugglers."
~snip~
End of marron's theory
There is another element that bothers me. Sending Wilson implies that the agency that is supposed to be pursuing these kinds of issues apparently does not have anyone on the ground in Niger, despite the apparent existence of a uranium black market there. And despite Al Qaeda's interest in the Mahgreb as sanctuary and base now that its other bases have become less secure.
Wilson's intervention reveals that the agency is not taking the region and the issue seriously. Sending a suit for a week is not how you penetrate a uranium smuggling operation. If thats what they think, that would be in itself evidence of incompetence. Instead they should deploy a couple of investment bankers to help the nouveau riche in the government to place their investment dollars, that would be a way to penetrate the business. Or let some of their rookies practice their craft following the trucks to Cotoneau, to see which ships they load into, that might be instructive. All they have done so far is to demonstrate their lack of assets in the region, and with it their lack of seriousness.