Posted on 07/31/2004 6:19:44 PM PDT by Shermy
THE Sunday Times has tracked down a mysterious middleman who was a key figure in the notorious Niger uranium hoax before the Iraq war, writes Nicholas Rufford.
Speaking to a reporter in a cafe in Brussels last week, he claimed he had been an unwitting dupe in the scam, which embarrassed both Tony Blair and George W Bush over Saddam Hussein’s phantom weapons of mass destruction.
The middleman, an Italian who uses the name Giacomo, is a small-time tipster said to have worked for Italy’s armed forces and intelligence services. He says Sismi, the Italian foreign intelligence service, used him to disseminate fake documents purporting to show Saddam had tried to buy uranium for nuclear bombs from Niger.
“I received a call from a former colleague in Sismi,” Giacomo said. “I was told a woman in the Niger embassy in Rome had a gift for me. I met her and she gave me documents. Sismi wanted me to pass on the documents but they didn’t want anyone to know they had been involved.”
He came into possession of a bundle of telexes, letters and contracts that appeared to show Saddam had struck a deal with Niger for 500 tons of uranium ore, enough when refined to make several weapons.
Giacomo said he regretted the hoax but had believed the documents were genuine when he passed them to intelligence contacts and a journalist. The hoax had far-reaching effects. Presenting his dossier on Iraq’s weapons in September 2002, Blair accused Saddam of seeking “significant quantities of uranium from Africa”.
Bush reiterated the charge in his state of the union speech. When Giacomo’s documents were discredited by the International Atomic Energy Agency last year, George Tenet, then director of the CIA, apologised.
The British government and MI6 claim, however, they have independent evidence of Iraq’s “Niger connection”.
The latest story.
Ping you too.
Loftus has been talking about this for 6+ months. The Niger story is, and always was, true.
I haven't heard anything about the tests that we were supposed to be running on the nuclear material we took from Al Tuaitha to Oak Ridge - testing it along side the stuff from Libya to see if the nuclear signature matches.
The reporter knows his true identity I take it, yet doesn't verify if what he says is true? No wonder the media sucks.
Why the fakeroo?
Scumbag media.
The Brits have been saying since May of last year they had other evidence than the forgeries. The Hutton Report confirms.
BTW, I find this Italian-meeting-in-Brussels story fishy too. Revenge on his Italian masters?
The story could be bogus. Here's the problem. We think the Italian Intel had the docs back in early 2002 and made reports about them. Then in late 2002 someone gave the docs to a journalist for "Panorama" who passed it to the American embassy in Rome. (Mention in the Senate Intel. Report)
Now read this:
"Giacomo said he regretted the hoax but had believed the documents were genuine when he passed them to intelligence contacts and a journalist."
And someone called him to go to the Niger embassy? That's how secret docs are passed?
Story is fishy. I think Josh Marshall caught wind of it a while back, and though I don't agree with him much, he did predict this story was weak, and I agree - so far.
"Why the fakeroo?"
Well, I've read everything including that it was purposeful disinfo in plan to blemish good intelligence.
The Senate Intel report is interesting. Though these documents are fakes, it's unclear if they were all, or at all, the documents the early 2002 reports were based on.
Then there's the French thing they they knew about them "initially" implying they had other intel about Niger, including taps on their own citizens running Niger mines.
Then there's the whole Joe Wilson campaign...seemed almost coordinated.
I'm still smarting over the LAST Nigerian scam. How was I supposed to know not to give them my bank account number? They had all this money and NO account to put it in. For 10% (about 12.5 million)I was going to be on easy street for helping them out. No more trusting Nigerians for me.
Too add, why didn't the Italians turn over the docs to the Brits and Americans in early 2002? Why just supply reports about the documents (if they're exactly the same).
And this guy's story is bogus, the more I think of it. The timing and the Italian journalist story just don't add up.
Just an attempt to down play or eliminate the findings that Niger and Iraq attempted a "yellow cake" deal.
We did not rely on this phony report. Several European intelligence agencies have confirmed the real attempt by Iraq to get yellowcake.
Some of these newspapers really are run by losers.
Someone needs to point out to them that Butler's report a week ago confirmed that these "faked documents" were not even in existence when the British made their determination about Libya. They were about as important as the sixth car that runs over a dead frog.
.
The story just won't die...and it keeps coming back in a different configuration. Just like it did during most of 2003. The story kept circulating, until it found a permutation that got traction (specifically, the Plame Name Blame Game).
I think we can surmise who is keeping it alive. But let's address another question: who created the forgeries in the first place, and to what end?
Start with the foreknowledge that whoever did it evidently wanted these "forgeries" to be found out and discredited. Otherwise, why mistake the names and dates? I can think of three potential sources who would benefit:
1. Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- as disinfo, in order to discredit any charge that they were purchasing yellowcake (as they indeed were, from smugglers working some "played out" Niger mines).
2. The French -- as disinfo, to cover any French involvement in the smuggling operation (from mines which were owned and operated by French companies).
3. A CIA faction -- as disinfo, in a political trap designed to ensnare the sitting POTUS. Whether to force a war with Iraq...or to pull the legs out from under said war...is unclear.
One thing's for sure: there was nothing in it for the Italians. Either in originating or distributing the material.
I'm disinclined to include the smuggling operation itself as a suspect. It would seem that their sole interest would be in operating under the radar -- there would be no purpose served by calling attention to their activities.
One thing about the smuggling operation, though. They were extracting ore from mines that were closed and no longer commercially feasible. But one doesn't mine "yellowcake", which is a refined concentrate of uranium oxide. In order to produce "yellowcake"...
The uranium ore processing is lixiviation in piles (static). After being crushed, the ore is placed in piles and irrigated with a sulfuric acid solution for the removal of uranium contained therein.This technique spares the grinding, mechanical agitation and filtration phases enabling, besides a significant reducion in investments, a lower cost operation, in view of the reduced number of equipment and operational units involved. The uranium concentration is made through the extraction process by organic solvents followed by precipitation separation, drying and packing in drums.
This doesn't sound like something one would be able to do in one's kitchen or bathtub. Especially, if one had to do it in a Nigerien kitchen or bathtub. Thus, we can't exclude the involvement of a large French commercial entity (or the French government).
The fact that the document was a hoax does not change the fact that Saddam did in fact try to get uranium from Niger. It's just a red herring.
Thanks; it'll be very interesting to see how this develops.
I've been analyzing it on the assumption that it was most likely coordinated between Saddam, French intelligence, and Blair and Bush's domestic enemies in their countries' respective intelligence communities. A corollary of this hypothesis would imply that Wilson had some ally within Italian intelligence--either from the Italian branch of the CIA and/or from another intellience agency with a liasion to or agent within Italian intelligence (could in theory be French [since Wilson's deepest ties seem to be to French Africa], old KGB or East German connections, etc.). It'd be interesting if it'd be possible to identify which Italian political factions supported Blair and Bush's political enemies during the Iraq debate and whether any of these have connections with Wilson or one of the other players--Berlusconi's certainly gotten a lot of flack for supporting the Coalition.
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