Deer Parnasokan,
I em a verry, verry welthy oil man. I hav made many, many moneys deeling with Saddam Hussein, but I am verry afrayd that the Natiuns United wil confisckate my moneys. I am needing thank you sume American who will allow me to diposit my many, many moneys in a banque Americain. If you help me out, I will give you all the baggettes you culd possibly eet, pluss tenne persent of all my many many moneys.
--Jacques Chirac
Paris who? Paris Hilton?
Oh, crud that Niger scheme from Chirac looks fake as all heck: I FORGOT TO PUT IT IN ALL CAPS!
Doubtful it's passed under FR radar screen, but you can try.
No kidding, I've been working on this for awhile:
My theory (#42)is that this was a collaborative effort by the French and CIA coordinated by Wilson. Jacqueline, (Joe's his second wife), was a French diplomat and may have provided the connections for Wilson to see the forged documents that were supplied by the French through the Italians. In other words it is possible that Wilson knew that the docs were forged because he was privy to the information that French wanted to discredit the British info on Saddam shopping for yellowcake and that Wilson's objective was the same. The French just happen to manage the yellowcake production in Niger.
Therefore, Wilson did not lie when he said he saw the documents.
Per a thread by Fedora:
French intelligence soon began a campaign to discredit the US case for war against Iraq. In 1999, French intelligence had begun investigating the security of uranium supplies in Niger, where uranium production was controlled by a consortium led by the French mining company COGEMA, a division of the French state-owned nuclear energy firm AREVA. At that time, Italian businessman Rocco Martino provided French intelligence with genuine documents revealing that Iraq was planning to expand trade with Niger. French intelligence took an interest in the documents and asked Martino to provide more information. In 2000 he used a contact in the Niger embassy in Rome to provide French intelligence with documents purporting that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. These documents were later exposed as forgeries;
< snip >
Since it is now also known that French intelligence was trying to push Martino’s forgeries on US and British intelligence, as simultaneously the Democratic National Committee was planning to discredit President Bush’s Iraq policy by accusing his administration of manufacturing evidence against Hussein’s regime, heightened suspicion is cast on Wilson’s use of the Niger investigation to discredit the Bush administration’s case for war.
What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa
Also, Rocco only "procured" the documents, he did not forge them. Fitzgerald went to Italy to investigate the Niger Embassy (in Rome) burglary...where the letterhead and seals for the forgeries were stolen. Ex-CIA agent (and coincidentally, an advisor to the Vatican in Rome),Vincent Cannistraro has stated that Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge were the actual forgers, but his account is the only one available that I can find on the subject. He has also pointed the finger at Michael Ledeen, but Ledeen has publicly made a statement that he had nothing to do with it and demanded an apology from Cannistraro.
In addition, despite what the MSM is reporting, the Italians released a press report yesterday saying they had nothing to do with the forgeries:
Italy denies role in fake documents on Iraq
This was also backed up by Rocco here
Cannistraro's "theory" falls apart when you consider that he:
1) blamed SISME (the Italians), which has proven to be wrong
2) bases his assumptions on a Dec 2001 Ledeen meeting, when Cannistraro himself was in Rome in Nov 2001, which would make him just as suspect.
I also discovered that Cannistraro worked directly with Clarridge during Iran Contra, so he has alot of nerve bringing that up in connection to Ledeen. Another interesting tidbit (#47) that I discovered is that Wolf and Clarridge worked with Aldrich Ames, who outed Plame to the Russians in the 90's. Coincidence? I think not. Cannistraro trying to kill two birds with one stone to cover his own carcass seems to be the more likely answer. 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.
Hersch also claims in the above linked article:
Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.A more reliable source, Joe diGenova claims it was a possible CIA coup as well. As does James Lewis in two articles, here and here
Two other names just crept into this...Niger Ambassador Adamou Chekou, who was in charge at the Embassy when the break-in and forgeries occurred and Wissam al-Zahawiah, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See. Seems Italian Intelligence was eavesdropping on these two and discovered their "hotline".
Did you read that carefully. Holy See? As in Vatican? Where Vincent Cannistraro is the security advisor?
Also take into consideration:
Wilson (as Ambassador to Gabon) had/has connections to the Gabon Chief of State, Omar Bongo, who was the chief African ally of the French oil company TotalFinaElf, a major beneficiary of the Oil-for-Food bribes. Prior to the Iraq War, they had a contract with Saddam's regime worth an estimated 12.5 to 27.0 billion barrels of oil reserves. Also he had connections via the Middle East Institute and Rock Creek, both of which are Saudi controlled.
Wilson's wife Jacqueline was also apparently a lobbyist for Bongo and it seems Wilson was pretty chummy with Saddam's weapons buyer, having dinner with him on the eve that Kuwait was invaded in 1990. She is now an advisor to Bongo, her picture from a 2005 conference can be found here That makes it very clear that there are connections to oil-for-food. No wonder Wilson can afford his lifestyle.
Okay, so how did Cannistraro know these fake documents were on their way to the U.S. government, unless he was involved in it?
bump
Cannistraro ping.
Please ping me when you do... thanks
Timeline problems with that...CBS interviewed him for 60 minutes twice in NY, supposedly in June and August of 2003 (when the National Guard story was supposed to run).
Besides, the Italians already were tracking him and the FBI, well...let's just say they still don't give a rat's patootie.
JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.
"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it." That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play. Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]
Please ping me when you post "The Rockefeller Connection”.
Thanks!
JJA: Look at page 76 of the Silberman-Robb Report. CIA had received three reports from "a liaison intelligence service" in late '01 and early 2002. "One of these reports explained that...during meetings on July 5-6, 2000, Niger and Iraq had signed an agreement for the sale of 500 tons of uranium." And the "liaison service" provided a "verbatim text" of the agreement. Got that? Not the document, but a text. They were keeping the documents to themselves, and they wouldn't tell us the source, because, they said, they were afraid of leaks.
ML: Right, that text is supposed to be the text of one of the forged documents.
JJA: Silberman-Robb doesn't say that, actually, although that's probably true. Everyone has assumed that the "liaison service" was Italian, but since the Italians did not have those documents in early 2002-nobody except the French and Rocco, the French agent, had them at that time-it wasn't them.
ML: So they weren't the "liaison service." It was...the FRENCH???
JJA: Voila! Or should I say, Ecco!?
bttt
Bump
Pinz
To: okie01 Hmmm...more likely Vincent Cannistraro, who tried to finger Ledeen for the forgeries. Source [http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/04/free_michael.php]
Interestingly enough, I have found so far that Cannistraro does alot of interviews in LA, where Doug said Wilkinson's phone numbers were based from. Whether he lives in LA, I have not been able to determine. If I remember correctly, Cannistraro is in cahoots with Larry Johnson in the VIPS. Something else I found that was interesting about Cannistraro:
He organized an interview with Osama bin Laden for ABC News in 1998.
Source [http://www.pewfellowships.org/seminars/2002/fall/vincent_cannistraro.htm] 147 posted on 07/27/2005 11:12:59 AM PDT by ravingnutter
Regarding the part in bold- I remember Ollie North a while back making a comment - I think it was in his newsletter- about how people in the press who had been involved with interviews of bin Laden in the past were not cooperating with US investigators hunting for bin Laden. North was disgusted by this.
Why do you think they didn't want Paris investigated?