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Is this the "French Connection" we were looking for?
Self | 30 October, 2005 | Paperjam

Posted on 10/30/2005 8:38:05 AM PST by paperjam

Okay, Freepers, I need your help here.

I think I may know what happened to get Wilson’s wife outed. For the most part I think I can prove it. I just need a little more information. The kind of stuff I can’t get to. But, I now know it all was a last ditch effort to stop the war before Saddam was captured in Iraq on 14 December, 2003

Please don’t go thinking I’m off my rocker, I don’t normally attempt investigative sourcing, but I do think there are legs under this story and they might begin here.


TOPICS: Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: cia; cialeak; d; espionage; josephwilson; niger; plame; plamegate
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To: paperjam; Fedora

I have to take back what I said about Jacqueline Wilson not esisting. I have found a picture of the elusive lady. It's located here:

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:GHzshh0403AJ:www.theafricachannel.com/corporate/news_062305_bs.html+Jacqueline+Wilson,+Gabon++&hl=en

It's dated June 23, 2005-10-30

Perhaps someone could make this a live link or post the picture so everyone can see what she looks like.


101 posted on 10/30/2005 11:46:07 PM PST by Albertafriend
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To: paperjam
"The only thing I can’t prove yet is how Jacqueline got to Wilson and if she did it both before he went and after the State of the Union address. That would prove everything. I think we need his phone records."

Jacqueline and Valerie and Joe Wilson all shared the same address.

102 posted on 10/30/2005 11:58:33 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: paperjam

10 25 05


Russo Martino, the man behind the forged documents indicating Saddam had purchased uranium from Niger, which Joseph A. Wilson falsely claimed he had seen and warned the Administration about, has come forward and admitted that he did this in the pay of France to undermine the British and American justification for the war in Iraq:


The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, “Giacomo”.

His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that – by commissioning “Giacomo” to procure and circulate documents – France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.

Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade “yellowcake” uranium from Niger, France was trying to “set up” Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.

Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy’s secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.

According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from “judicial and other sources”, Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours. Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy’s military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.


103 posted on 10/30/2005 11:58:42 PM PST by kcvl
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To: paperjam

Ms Jaquy WILSON, Conseiller du Président de la République, Delegation of Gabon, mission.gabon@ties.itu.int



Gabon has also maintained a three-year-old relationship with Jacqueline Wilson, the ex-spouse of a senior U.S. diplomat.

Wilson, according to her filings, receives tens of thousands of dollars for special projects and reports to President Omar Bongo's daughter, Pascaline Mferri Bongo.


104 posted on 10/31/2005 12:05:50 AM PST by kcvl
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Intelligence Brief, a newsletter published by former CIA officers Vince Cannistraro and Philip Giraldi


Philip Giraldi is a former military intelligence and CIA
counter-terrorism official


Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."

The leak was a way to "demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular".


In written testimony, he said that Vice-President Dick Cheney and his top aide Lewis Libby went to CIA headquarters to press mid-level analysts to provide support for the claim. Mr Cheney, he said, "insisted that desk analysts were not looking hard enough for the evidence". Mr Cannistraro said his information came from current agency analysts...


Other agency officials, who said they had been colleagues of Ms Plame when she was trained as a CIA agent, said the leak could do severe damage to the morale of the intelligence agencies. "The US government has never before released the name of a clandestine officer," said Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer. "My classmates and I have been betrayed."


Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst said the White House needed to authorise a more independent investigation. "Unless they come up with a guilty party, it will leave the impression that the administration is playing politics."



******


Larry C. Johnson left the CIA in 1989 and, thus, had no "need to know" Plame's status in 2003. Novak's CIA source was a CIA employee in 2003. If Plame were truly undercover in 2003, there's a good chance Novak's source would not even know Plame worked for the CIA. However, Novak's CIA source not only knew Plame worked at the CIA, the source readily confirmed that she worked at the CIA.

Rustmann noted Plame's status during the 1990s. He had since retired and no longer had the "need to know" Plame's status in 2003. Rustmann also noted that Plame's "ability to remain under cover was jeopardized by her marriage in 1998 to the higher-profile American diplomat."

This all suggests that Plame's superiors moved her to a desk job at Langley shortly after her marriage to Wilson. If someone drives to work at Langley day after day for several years, she's not doing a good job of hiding her identity.

Speaking of good jobs, Plame worked in the area of WMD proliferation during the very same years the CIA claimed Iraq had WMD. One has to wonder how much she contributed to getting things wrong.


105 posted on 10/31/2005 12:35:10 AM PST by kcvl
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To: Albertafriend

Ms Jaquy WILSON

106 posted on 10/31/2005 12:38:02 AM PST by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")
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To: kcvl
Other agency officials, who said they had been colleagues of Ms Plame when she was trained as a CIA agent, said the leak could do severe damage to the morale of the intelligence agencies. "The US government has never before released the name of a clandestine officer," said Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer. "My classmates and I have been betrayed."

Did he just out himself?

107 posted on 10/31/2005 12:39:30 AM PST by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")
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To: McGavin999

I find it rather interesting that Valerie is supposedly out of the country at the moment...in France.


108 posted on 10/31/2005 1:05:53 AM PST by IrishRainy
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To: paperjam
There is another, persuasive, report that it was Libya, not France, behind the forged documents. See Reports of French Involvement in Niger-Iraq Uranium Case Not Reliable (Libya Forged Documents), an FR post on 10/31/2005.
109 posted on 10/31/2005 2:56:19 AM PST by ThePythonicCow (To err is human; to moo is bovine.)
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To: kcvl
This all suggests that Plame's superiors moved her to a desk job at Langley shortly after her marriage to Wilson.

Joe has told the world he learned of her identity on the third date during a heavy makeout session. Crass alert, but I will restate this in everyday terms.

Joe Wilson is married. Separated, but still a married man. He meets younger, tighter blonde. They go out. On the third date he is getting ready to have sex with her and she tells this married man she has none for such a short time him she is a spy.

I would think that is a no-no in the agency.

Rustmann also noted that Plame's "ability to remain under cover was jeopardized by her marriage in 1998 to the higher-profile American diplomat."

Joe has a big mouth. I am wondering if she was brought back because her higher-profile American diplomat husband could not keep his mouth shut.

110 posted on 10/31/2005 3:14:14 AM PST by Protect the Bill of Rights
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To: paperjam
Very interesting.


111 posted on 10/31/2005 4:04:36 AM PST by arasina (So there.)
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To: paperjam
Doing a search on the DC property address, I came across this. It may be posted elsewhere. I cannot vouch for the facts in the articles, but a few statements caught my eye [bold mine].
==========================
The Price of Oil: Plame Worked for "Brewster Jennings," a CIA Front Company

The following posting was previously reported by Media Mayhem on Decebmer 28, 2003.

....The CIA is sometimes known for its spooky humor. Brewster Jennings was one of the founders of Socony -- Standard Oil Co. of New York -- now Mobil Oil. My guess is that the rift between the CIA's Plame and the Bush Bund has more to do with oil than uranium.

Jenning's namesake, who runs Westwind Investment Corp. in Durango, Col., laughs off any connection to the current scandal to his great grandfather. Maybe some enterprising reporter, with time to kill, should check out Westwind. In 1993, there was another company using the same name out of Singapore.

permanent link posted by C.D. : 1:40 PM....

=====================
It may be a coincidence, but I am not one to decide, so I will throw it out there. ( from http://mediamayhem.blogspot.com/2004_05_30_mediamayhem_archive.html a site I know nothing about)

112 posted on 10/31/2005 4:05:54 AM PST by Protect the Bill of Rights
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To: AliVeritas

ping


113 posted on 10/31/2005 4:20:00 AM PST by maggief
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To: paperjam
A Big Thumbs Up for IVote2 for providing the STATEMENT BY GEORGE J. TENET from 11 July, 2003

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2003/intell-030711-cia01.htm

There is a sentence in the second paragraph that makes Wilson out to be suspect about his statement of seeing the forged documents.

"There was no mention in the report of forged documents -- or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all."

It's a good read of the CIA taking the blame for getting the 16 words wrong in the SOTU Address 2003 or a refresher of the events if you've seen this before. The published date was 11 July 2003.

In case you’d like to read the State of The Union Address for yourself, please go here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html

Wilson’s original article in NYT is here: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm

He had this to say; (As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)

Here's Novak's original article in Townhall: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2003/07/14/160881.html

In it, he says this: "Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man."

He outed Valerie in this statement here; Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

He goes further to say this: All this was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post June 12 that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report.

Here is the original post by Walter Pincus: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A46957-2003Jun11&notFound=true

Pincus had this to say: After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the [envoy's conclusions] was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.my emphasis added (did Walter intend to say this of the envoy or was he overreaching?)

continues…However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said.

Novak then comes back with another article addressing his first one and the furor it caused here: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2003/10/01/168398.html

Novak goes on to say this: The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush's Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

He goes on to say this: During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, [who is no partisan gunslinger.]

my emphasis added (many take this statement to mean George Tenet) continues... When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

On July 12, 2004, Clifford D. May wrote a nice piece titled: Our Man in Niger seen here: http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200407121105.asp In it, he writes this gem: The Senate report says fairly bluntly that Wilson lied to the media. Schmidt notes that the panel found that, "Wilson provided misleading information to the Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'"

The problem is Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: "The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."

How the hell did Wilson know anything about any documents?

114 posted on 10/31/2005 5:48:49 AM PST by paperjam
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To: kcvl; popdonnelly
I'm here...just was gone for the weekend, hubby doesn't like me Freeping on the weekends. Speaking of Cannistraro, he also slipped up...from my files:

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.

Relevent excerpt:

Two former C.I.A. officials provided slightly different accounts of what happened next. “The Embassy was alerted that the papers were coming,” the first former official told me, “and it passed them directly to Washington without even vetting them inside the Embassy.” Once the documents were in Washington, they were forwarded by the C.I.A. to the Pentagon, he said. “Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false—until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed.”

The documents were just what Administration hawks had been waiting for. The second former official, Vincent Cannistraro, who served as chief of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, told me that copies of the Burba documents were given to the American Embassy, which passed them on to the C.I.A.’s chief of station in Rome, who forwarded them to Washington. Months later, he said, he telephoned a contact at C.I.A. headquarters and was told that “the jury was still out on this”—that is, on the authenticity of the documents.

Remember...he is Ex-CIA, how could he be privy to these documents before they were vetted? This would have been classified info, and he no longer had a "need to know". It has also been said that the "stranger" Novak met on the street was Larry Johnson. With paperjam's info backing up my TotalFinaElf connection, it all makes sense.
115 posted on 10/31/2005 6:05:38 AM PST by ravingnutter
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To: Verginius Rufus
I don't think that is the same person...she seems to still be using the Wilson name as far as I can tell. I also just came across a complete list of the Wilson clan from 1992. I won't post it here except as a link, as it also includes their children's and his parent's and brother's names.Click here. It is about halfway down the page. It says her middle initial is G., maybe for Giorgi?
116 posted on 10/31/2005 6:36:10 AM PST by ravingnutter
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To: ravingnutter


Niger ambassador, Joseph Diatta



“I know [Wilson] very well also,” said Diatta. “And you know, something very strange—when he went to Niger in February 2002, I was myself in Niger and we had a meeting in my house and we spoke about this matter. So, it was not a secret mission.



Wilson went through the Niger Embassy to get a visa to Niger. The current Ambassador is Joseph Diatta, whom Wilson has known since the early 1970's and his first FSO posting. He got an ordinary visa quickly.


******



July 20, 2003

FORGED DOCUMENTS UPDATE....So who was it that forged those Nigerien documents that started this whole mess? It's a bit of a sideshow, to be sure, but today we get a step closer to the answer. Apparently they came from an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba, although her ultimate source is still unclear:

Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, quoted Elisabetta Burba as saying her source "in the past proved to be reliable." Burba, who writes for the weekly Panorama, refused to reveal her source.

"I realized that this could be a worldwide scoop, but that's exactly why I was very worried," Burba was quoted as saying. "If it turned out to be a hoax and I published it, I would have ended my career."

....Corriere della Sera quoted the journalist as saying she went to Niger to try to check out the authenticity of the documents. Burba told the paper that she was suspicious because the documents spoke of such a large amount of uranium — 500 tons — and were short on details on how it would be transported and arrangements for final delivery.

On her return, she said, she told Panorama's top editor that "the story seemed fake to me." After discussions at the magazine, which is owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Burba brought the documents to the U.S. Embassy.

"I went by myself and give them the dossier. No one said anything more to me, and in any case the decision not to publish it was already taken — with no further way to check out the reliability of those papers, we chose not to risk" it, she said.


******

September 23, 2004 by MSNBC

The Story That Didn’t Run
Here’s the Piece that ‘60 Minutes’ Killed for Its Report on the Bush Guard Documents

by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball


snip


A team of “60 Minutes” correspondents and consulting reporters spent more than six months investigating the Niger uranium documents fraud, CBS sources tell NEWSWEEK. The group landed the first ever on-camera interview with Elisabetta Burba, the Italian journalist who first obtained the phony documents, as well as her elusive source, Rocco Martino, a mysterious Roman businessman with longstanding ties to European intelligence agencies.


Although the edited piece never ended up identifying Martino by name, the story, narrated by “60 Minutes” correspondent Ed Bradley, asked tough questions about how the White House came to embrace the fraudulent documents and why administration officials chose to include a 16-word reference to the questionable uranium purchase in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech.

But just hours before the piece was set to air on the evening of Sept. 8, the reporters and producers on the CBS team were stunned to learn the story was being scrapped to make room for a seemingly sensational story about new documents showing that Bush ignored a direct order to take a flight physical while serving in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.


"This is like living in a Kafka novel,” said Joshua Micah Marshall, a Washington Monthly contributing writer and a Web blogger who had been collaborating with “60 Minutes” producers on the uranium story. “Here we had a very important, well-reported story about forged documents that helped lead the country to war. And then it gets bumped by another story that relied on forged documents.”

Some CBS reporters, as well as one of the network’s key sources, fear that the Niger uranium story may never run, at least not any time soon, on the grounds that the network can now not credibly air a report questioning how the Bush administration could have gotten taken in by phony documents. The network would “be a laughingstock,” said one source intimately familiar with the story.


The delay of the CBS report comes at a time when there have been significant new developments in the case—although virtually none of them have been reported in the United States. According to Italian and British press reports, Martino—the Rome middleman at the center of the case—was questioned last week by an Italian investigating magistrate for two hours about the circumstances surrounding his acquisition of the documents. Martino could not be reached for comment, but his lawyer is reportedly planning a press conference in the next few days.

Burba, the Italian journalist, confirmed to NEWSWEEK this week that Martino is the previously mysterious “Mr. X” who contacted her with the potentially explosive documents in early October 2002—just as Congress was debating whether to authorize President Bush to wage war against Iraq. The documents, consisting of telexes, letters and contracts, purported to show that Iraq had negotiated an agreement to purchase 500 tons of “yellowcake uranium from Niger, material that could be used to make a nuclear bomb. (A U.S. intelligence official told NEWSWEEK that Martino is in fact believed to have been the distributor of the documents.)

Burba—under instructions from her editor at Panarama, a newsmagazine owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi—then provided the documents to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in an effort to authenticate them. The embassy soon passed the material on to Washington where some Bush administration officials viewed it as hard evidence to support its case that Saddam Hussein’s regime was actively engaged in a program to assemble nuclear weapons.

But the Niger component of the White House case for war quickly imploded. Asked for evidence to support President Bush’s contention in his State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa, the administration turned over the Niger documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Within two hours, using the Google search engine, IAEA officials in Vienna determined the documents to be a crude forgery. At the urging of Sen. Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI launched an investigation into the Niger documents in an effort to determine if the United States government had been duped by a deliberate “disinformation” campaign organized by a foreign intelligence agency or others with a political agenda relating to Iraq.

So far, the bureau appears to have made little progress in unraveling the case. “The senator is frustrated by the slow pace of the investigation,” said Wendy Morigi, the press secretary for Senator Rockefeller, who was recently briefed on the status of the FBI probe.

One striking aspect of the FBI’s investigation is that, at least as of this week, Martino has told associates he has never even been interviewed by the bureau—despite the fact that he was publicly identified by the Financial Times of London as the source of the documents more than six weeks ago and was subsequently flown to New York City by CBS to be interviewed for the “60 Minutes” report.

A U.S. law-enforcement official said the FBI is seeking to interview Martino, but has not yet received permission to do so from the Italian government. The official declined to comment on other aspects of the investigation.

The case has taken on additional intrigue because of mounting indications that Martino has longstanding relationships with European intelligence agencies. Martino recently told the Sunday Times of London that he had previously worked for SISMI, the Italian military-intelligence agency, a potentially noteworthy part of his resume given that the conservative Italian government of Berlasconi was a strong supporter of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. A French government official told NEWSWEEK that Martino also had a relationship with French intelligence agencies. But the French official rejected suggestions from U.S. and British officials that French intelligence may have played a role in creating the documents in order to embarrass Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The French never disseminated the documents because they could not establish their authenticity, the French official said.

Martino has told Burba and others that he obtained the phony documents from an Italian woman who worked in the Niger Embassy in Rome. He was in turn put in touch with the woman by yet another middleman who, according to Burba’s account, had directed Martino to provide the documents to “the Eygptians.” Some press reports have suggested the still unidentified middleman who put Martino in touch with his Niger Embassy source was in fact a SISMI officer himself.

Burba, who has twice been interviewed by the FBI but never gave up Martino’s name, said she had been cooperating with the CBS team on the story in hopes of getting to the bottom of the matter. But now, with the “60 Minutes” broadcast postponed, she is no longer confident that can ever happen. Meanwhile, she said she is fed up with Martino who has “lied” to her and provided contradictory accounts to other journalists.

“I’m disappointed,” she told NEWSWEEK. “In this story, you don’t know who’s lying and who’s telling the truth. The sources have been both discredited and discredited themselves.



******


In 2005, Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, when asked by Ian Masters if Ledeen was the source of the forged memo that claimed that Iraq had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger replied "you'd be very close."[2]

In an interview on July 26, 2005, Cannistraro's business partner and columnist for the American Conservative magazine, former CIA counter terrorism officer Philip Giraldi, confirmed to Scott Horton that the forgeries were produced by "a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy." When Horton guessed whether that was Ledeen, Giraldi confirmed it and added that the ex-CIA officers, "also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing."[3]


Burba, the Italian journalist who eventually brought the forgeries to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, got them from an unnamed Italian “security consultant.” His name turns out to be Rocco Martino, a retired SISMI operative.


It has sometimes been suggested in the Italian press that Martino himself is the forger. But he told us a different story — one that was corroborated by another participant in the handling of the documents. Martino told us that the documents came from a still-serving SISMI colonel, whom he named..."

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson has strongly implied that Ledeen is the one.


Another former CIA agent, former head of counter-terrorism under Reagan, Vincent Cannistraro, has answered the question of whether Ledeen was involved with, "You'd be very close."

The Berlusconi weekly "Panorama" published an article by Elisabetta Burba in which she tells her version of how she got the Niger documents, realized they were false, and on advice from her editor-in-chief, turned copies over to the US Embassy in Rome in October 2002. She asserts that she received seventeen pages of documents and a Niger codebook from 1967

Attached are copies of the forged Nigerien documents published in Italy 27 July 2003.


http://www.dcpages.com/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=10923




When Burba met with the man, he showed her the Niger documents and offered to sell them to her for about ten thousand dollars.

The documents he gave her were photocopies. There were twenty-two pages, mostly in French, some with the letterhead of the Niger government or Embassy, and two on the stationery of the Iraqi Embassy to the Holy See. There were also telexes. When Burba asked how the documents could be authenticated, the man produced what appeared to be a photocopy of the codebook from the Niger Embassy, along with other items. “What I was sure of was that he had access,” Burba said. “He didn’t receive the documents from the moon.”


******


A British Telegraph journalist in Niger recently reported that the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Herman Cohen, had told Niger’s president to stay quiet on the uranium issue. Diatta is quick to address the potentially damaging media report, pointing out that Cohen is also a lobbyist for the Nigerien government and frequently travels to Niger to brief the government on his work in Washington.

“I know Ambassador Cohen very well,” Diatta said. “Ambassador Cohen went as a private person, not as an official of the U.S. government. It is normal for him to go to Niger and speak about his job with my government.”

The former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, is another key player who helped debunk the claim that Niger sold uranium to Iraq. In 2002, he was sent by the U.S. government to check out the uranium allegations, and he reported back that it was highly unlikely that any such transaction had taken place—a fact apparently not absorbed by the White House until after the president’s State of the Union address.

“I know [Wilson] very well also,” said Diatta. “And you know, something very strange—when he went to Niger in February 2002, I was myself in Niger and we had a meeting in my house and we spoke about this matter. So, it was not a secret mission. Everyone spoke about this secret CIA mission. I don’t understand why there is so much noise about this visit to Niger.

“Ambassador Wilson was requested by the CIA to go to Niger, yes, but he accomplished this for his government without any problem. He told everyone that he was sent by the U.S. government on the uranium issue, without any secrecy,” Diatta said.


117 posted on 10/31/2005 6:47:14 AM PST by kcvl
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To: kcvl

“No, no. I don’t think so,” Diatta said. “Our prime minister said to a journalist from the British Telegraph that it was impossible that the forgery was made in our embassy in Rome,” he added, referring to the Embassy of Niger in Rome, which has been mentioned as a suspect because the first page of the forged documents appears to be a genuine letter from the embassy advising Niger’s government of a visit to the country by the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican. --- "Uranium Controversy Raises Niger’s Profile," by Sean O’Driscoll, Sept 2003, http://www.washdiplomat.com/03-09/a2_03_09.html as retrieved on Jun 14, 2004 10:48:06 GMT by Google


118 posted on 10/31/2005 6:52:45 AM PST by kcvl
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To: kcvl

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”.


119 posted on 10/31/2005 6:56:00 AM PST by kcvl
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To: paperjam
True to form, Wilson comes back announced that the Niger documents were forgeries and that no sales of Yellow-Cake occurred.

Check your timeline. Wilson's trip to Africa was in the spring of 2002. The forged documents did not surface until the fall of 2002 and were quickly discredited by the IAEA. Bush uses the British sourcing in his SOTU address in January of 2003. The Iraq invasion was in the early spring of 2003. Wilson starts leaking to the press in May and writes his op-ed talking about the "forged documents" in June of 2003.

There is the possibility that Wilson saw the documents before he made his report to the CIA on his trip, but if he did, he didn't mention them. By the time he was talking to the press in June 2003, the forged documents were common knowledge and were not what Bush based his SOTU remarks on.

Most likely possibility, IMHO? Wilson is a pathological liar and mixed what was common knowledge, (the existence of forged documents) with a distorted version of what he actually told the CIA a year earlier in order to puff up his resume. The other possibility, that Wilson saw the documents before he made his report and failed to mention them, makes him part of the forgery scheme -- i.e. working for the French.

I can believe either, but I think the former is the most likely. The guy has shown that he will lie about most anything and if he weren't anti-Bush, the media would have torn him to tiny bits long ago.

120 posted on 10/31/2005 7:08:59 AM PST by Ditto ( No trees were killed in sending this message, but billions of electrons were inconvenienced.)
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