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.
Paperjam? Get Pam!
To clarify, these items were from the burglary in January 2001 of the Niger Embassy in Rome. Cannistraro's argument that it was Ledeen falls apart because the Italians (SISME) did not forge the documents and that is backed up by Martino's statements that he was employed by the French. Ledeen also issued a public denial and asked for an apology from Cannistraro. Also, one premise of Cannistraro's argument is that Ledeen was in Rome in Dec 2001. Well, Cannistraro was in Rome in Nov 2001, so doesn't that make him just as suspect? Then there is the curious factor about how the two people Cannistraro fingered for the actual forgeries...both of them, Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge, worked with Aldrich Ames, the guy who outed Plame in the 90's. Coincidence? I think not. I have suspected Cannistraro for a long time, just a bad feeling I have about him, he's trying waaay too hard to point the finger in the wrong direction...unfortunately for him, he has three fingers pointing right back at himself.
My theory, for what it's worth, Is that Wilson knew of the docs before British and American intelligence did. He said so himself, then he backtracked. That's one of Wilsons "lies" so often cited. That he said the docs were obviously forged when there was no way he could have known about them. I say he did know about them.
“I know [Wilson] very well also,” said Diatta. “And you know, something very strange—when he(Wilson) 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.
You’re right about the timeline and the uncovering of the documents. He’s been fully discredited in the congressional reports and in the news articles concerning his involvement with the documents.
You wrote: “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.
While I think everyone who reads up on him will agree with your first sentence, it is the second one that inspired me to begin this journey.
Thanks to the great work of ravingnutter and kcvl. The two of you have done much to flesh this issue out!
Paperjam? Get Pam!
Sorry, ADAF guy.
That's what I think as well and is what put me on his trail. The big problem is trying to see the forest among all the trees.
"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"
How do you know he didn't mention them? I haven't seen a text of his debriefing to CIA. He claims he didn't have a written report, which in itself seems strange. But when he was debriefed at CIA surely that would have been recorded. So anyway, where's the report?
I haven't tracked the Diatta quote to when it was first posted, but what is he referring to when he says "this matter"? Whether Iraq was seeking yellowcake in Niger?
It surely would have come out at the Senate hearings that Wilson "saw" these documents in Africa in Feb of 2002, and mentioned them in his "report" over 6 months before the CIA said they first saw them and turned them over to the IAEA for authentication.
The fact is that Wilson recanted on his statement to the Washington Post that he "saw" the documents in that early 2002 timeframe when pressed on the inconsistancy saying he was "confused."
I'd also say that if these documents were as easy to discredit as the article says (Google name search that any number of Freepers would have done automatically) it's mystifying to me that the CIA needed to turn to anyone to verify them. That smells mighty funny to me.
Feb. 18, 1999 - Vincent Cannistraro, former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, said: "Hijazi [Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey] went to Afghanistan in December and met with Osama, with the knowledge of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. We are sure about that. What is the source of some speculation is what transpired."
October 19, 2000 - "The Iraqis have wanted to be able to carry out terrorism for some time now," Mr Cannistraro said. "Their military people have had liaison with al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and could well have supplied the training."
Sep 2002 - The administration's attempt to link Iraq to terrorism has been criticized by former military, intelligence and national security officials who monitored terrorism in both Democratic and Republican administrations. "Is there any confirmed evidence of Iraq's links to terrorism? No," said Vincent M. Cannistraro, former head of the CIA's counterterrorism office.
Jan 2004 - Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director of counterterrorism operations and analysis, Vincent Cannistraro, agrees: "There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war. Now we've created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans.""
Say what? Shades of Scott Ritter...and we know Ritter was paid off.
As far as I know, the SISMI has nothing to do with it. I never, and I repeat never, said that Forte Braschi (SISMI's Rome headquarters) was involved, and certainly not that the Italian Government was involved.
The Italians have also denied this.
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?"
This has been my question all along. (I need to go back and read Congressman BillyBob's post again.)
Jen
Read up on those documents. They were obviose forgeries with the intent of being discovered as such to weaken the standing against action in Iraq. There were names of officials who werent in power in decades, and the language used was alledgely something out of a babelfish translation. Although the U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies had extensive amounts of information on Iraq's intention's of purchasing Uranium, by introducing these fake documents the anti-war types could succesfully argue that the allegations were based on forged documents. Here we are 3 years later, numerous U.K. and U.S. investigations later proving beyond a shadow of a doubt to the contrary, yet people are still saying that (just head over to DU). {sigh}
"Read up on those documents. They were obviose forgeries with the intent of being discovered as such to weaken the standing against action in Iraq. There"
I'm not trying to be argumentitive but asking a sincere question - if they were obvious forgeries why did President Bush reference them in the State of the Union?
Bush didn't, he used the information from the British White Papers they wrote up on their own.
The CIA couldn't refute them because the information came from the Brittons so they left the 16 words in the State of The Union Address.
The British sources were completely different and they still stand by them today.
That's an interesting angle I had not considered.
We need to recall that the Iraqis had purchased tons of yellow cake from Niger in the past hence the probability that they could have been looking for more was high.
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