Replies

It is my contention that the big story in Niger is French uranium smuggling.

The visit to Niger by Iraqi officials, which Wilson neglected to mention publicly but reported privately, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Plame's belief a priori was that the very idea of uranium smuggling in Niger was "crazy", at least according to her husband, who may or may not be reporting her beliefs accurately (since almost nothing else he has said is true, you have to allow for the possibility that she is as much his victim as anyone else).

In his own words he has said that the very idea of illicit uranium sales was impossible, because (a) France is a responsible country and wouldn't do that (b) Niger is our ally in the war on terror and wouldn't do that and (c) IAEA monitoring made it impossible.

The truth was "(d) other". IAEA was not monitoring Niger's mines for several reasons. They weren't allowed to, they didn't have the manpower, and yellowcake is supposedly too low purity to be worthy of their interest. All this according to the IAEA itself.

And, as we now know, Niger was shipping uranium under the table. This seems to have not aroused the interest of anyone in the mainstream press. It didn't arouse the interest of anyone at CIA, either, since this episode exposes the fact that CIA had no one on the ground in Niger investigating the story. And when the story began to come out, they sent a guy who would make the story go away.

Wilson's fake investigation coincides with the commissioning, handing over, and exposure, of the fake documents paid for by France and produced by Niger, which were used to undermine Bush's remarks. Wilson claimed to have seen them, although he later backtracked when it was pointed out that he couldn't have legally seen them.

So Wilson's claim to have debunked the Niger story is in tandem with France's effort to debunk the story, a story which was in fact true. And lets be very clear; with reference to Bush's remark at least, it was true and Wilson knew it was true when he wrote his denial.

So is the big story that Wilson covered up Iraqi contacts with Niger? Or is it the fact that CIA's WMD experts covered up French and Nigerienne uranium smuggling? Were they incompetent, and didn't know about it, or did they prefer not to know? We have caught the CIA phonying up a story, and almost no one is interested. For those who believe that CIA's WMD people got it wrong in Iraq, this episode might be instructive. They definitely got it wrong in Niger. The only question is the degree of willful complicity.