Bad choice of term! The rhythm of "Watergate" absolutely begs one to mispronounce "Nigergate." Maybe some literate journalist will come up with a new way to refer to a scandal?
Boom!
Wonder if Joe Wilson managed to squeeze in a tea with Dr. Khan during his social-gala packed trip to Niger.
Would this be a clearer translation ?
Uranium from Niger for the Islamic Atom Bomb (Translation)
By Gian Marco Chiocci
il Giornale de Italia
Washington, November 30, 2005
The controversial “father” of Pakistan’s nuclear program was in Niamey
(Niger) on the very same days in which Saddam’s emissaries were present.
The network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan is a complex puzzle of shadow companies, straw men, university brains, religious individuals, businessmen, military and spies belonging to a government that continues to claim that it knows nothing, and has never known anything, about the traffic of centrifuges and know-how linked to the Islamic bomb.
Despite the arrest of the dispenser of atomic favours the organisation can still boast of ties throughout the world, but it’s in Africa, host to Islamic fundamentalism, that the situation seems to have escaped the 007’s in their search for suppliers of primary material, missile components and technology for the construction of weapons of mass destruction.
A recent intelligence lead takes us back to Niger, where Khan was a welcomed guest of the government and where his intermediaries continue to do business: the very same intermediaries who ,in 1999 made a fool of the French Secret Services charged with monitoring – through the multinational Cogema – the uranium mines from which some years before these intermediaries were able to illegally export 1,200 tons of yellow cake (yellow uranium oxide from which gas is extracted to be applied in centrifuges in order to be enriched) to Libya.
The very same Khan – according to official International Atomic Energy Agency data – bought a part of the 450 tons of (uranium) stored in Libya in exchange for arms and petrodollars to finance Islamabad’s nuclear program.
Khan worked for Pakistan and for anyone else looking for the precious pieces with which to make an atomic bomb.
Businessmen from Niger and the “architect” of the Islamic Bomb turn up in the notes of the secret services - who ,some time back indicated, amongst other things, the attempts made by Saddam’s emissaries to buy uranium from Niamey in the very same period in which, in Nigers capital, the Old Man of the DIY nuclear device, Khan, was present.
As was seen in Niger-gate the final report of the British Parliaments Commission, in July 2004, pointed out the passage in Niger of Iraqi officials in 1999 and mentions sellers of uranium who in 1999 and 2001 planned to sell uranium to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.
This information is in part similar to Ambassador Wilson’s report. The information puts Khan in Niger in that period, detailing how his scientific court, installed in the hall of the Grand Hotel du Niger, gave appointments to local emissaries and clients from every imaginable country on a daily basis: appointments where information, money and encrypted documents exchanged hands.
Secret Investigative notes refer in detail to how Khan and his scientific council made a series of visits to Niger and to the Direction of the Pakistani nuclear site of Khauta, visits made in February.
In 1998, and above all 1999, a series of encounters defined by nuclear anti-proliferation experts as highly suspect, were held in Niamey. It was here that the “doctor” had his atomic shopping base, the very same base as was used for trips to Sudan, Nigeria, Dubai, Casablanca (where he was received by the ambassador Kakar), Bamako or Timbuktu in Mali (February 98, Hotel Hendrina Khan), Chad where in February he visited the Shifa centre which had just been bombed by the Americans.
Again in February (there was) a visit to Mauritania where contacts were made with officials of the Republic of Congo and Somalia : countries reported by the CIA to the White House before the declarations made by George W. Bush in regards to Iraq :declarations in which the President mentions Africa, and not Niger, as the place in which Saddam was desperately seeking uranium.
While Rocco Martino was putting his hands on documents that evidenced agreements between the Niger government and Iraq for the supply of uranium ,at the very same time, and up until well into 2000, the strangest people on the earth were busy visiting Niger’s ‘Gran Bazar’ with Khan.
All of the intelligence agencies discovered the father of the Islamic Bomb seeking out money to satisfy the requirements of all those countries intentioned on counterbalancing Israel’s nuclear deterrent.
Between one trip and another Khan appeared again in Niger on February 22, 2000. He had been invited by the ambassador Brig Nisare. Khan arrived from Timbuktu, he had stopped over in Dubai where he remained with his right-hand-man Bukari Saied Abu Tair.
After the time necessary to meet with his men he left on the 24th for Sri Lanka with Nairobi, Kenya, as a final destination.
In fifteen days, on average, Khans visited ten African countries: always returning to Niger because – as was later discovered – his laboratories in Pakistan were going ahead with atomic powder from the mines in Niger (Pakistan produced around 745 kilos of enriched uranium capable of producing 40 nuclear bombs each with a 2,000 km range)
In 1999 Khan was discovered by the 007’s between Niger and Nigeria looking for fuel for a Chinese reactor.
From 1999 until today Khan’s network has suffered a series of setbacks but, according to intelligence analysts, in Africa’s fundamentalist countries Khan is continuing to function using lesser means.
Middlemen are finding fertile ground in the trafficking of double use components that are supposedly for civil use , but in reality intended for the enrichment of uranium for military purposes.
This is just one more subject the Bush admin. needs to explain to the American people. The CIA knows, foreign intel. knows, hell, the whole world knows and the average American knows squat. I for one am sick of being treated like a child and being kept in the dark!
(1 December 2005)
http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/esteri/nigergate/francia007/francia007.html
Original In Italian
Concepts:
Rocco Martino, Sismi, Cia, Americans, French, uranio, Alain Chouet, Dgse, Paris, nigerino, Italians, foreign country, reports, Niger, country.Summary:
PARIS - the Directorate-General of external Safety (Dgse) is the French counterespionage to the foreign country.
I have communicated and exchanged with the Americans the regarding information this case.
To the age of the facts I directed the Service de rensignement de security, the Department Emergency and Intelligence, that it has competence on anti-terrorism, counterespionage to the foreign country, against-proliferation of the crews of mass destruction ".
The story of Alain Chouet corrects in four essential points the reconstruction of the transaction offered to the Parliament from the government and the Sismi.
Continuous to ask to me because the Sismi supports that behind this history we are.
Substantial correction: the prologo of the "Nigergate" goes in scene in the summer of 2001, before the 11 september, at the hands of the Cia.
The Americans before add that to insospettirli it has been a travel, at least two years, of the ambassador iracheno near the Sede Saint in the Central African countries.
Assignment my men to put itself to the job in Africa.
In Niger, obviously, but also in Namibia (you will understand soon because).
After the attack to the Towers, between the september the 2001 and spring of the successive year, that information on the uranio nigerino returns to be an indistinct and insignificant noise of bottom.
The 21 september 2001, Gianfranco admiral Boats (predecessore of Pollari) sendes a cable to Langley with news of a happened transfer "in the ' 99 of staff iracheno in Niger during which they had been made also questions on the impoverito production of uranio in the two mines of the Country and on the modalities of export of that material".
In the February and March 2002, to Langley two relationships arrive from "a foreign service" others that confirm the track nigerina of the atomic rearmament of Saddam.
They deliver to us, of fact, all the information that after we will only discover - I emphasize, after we will discover - to be contained in the dossier of Rocco Martino and of which, in that moment, we have not still never felt to speak.
According to the Italian reconstruction and American those documents are not still in possession of the Cia, neither never have been in possession of the Sismi.
They have this for a year roba and they say it only now, after that already we have gone two times in Niger ".
However neither then, neither after, the Americans report to us from who have received that one roba.
Office in Lussemburgo with one cover society, the Security Development Organization, Office Intelligence to the 3 of Rue Hoel, Sandweiler.
Rocco Martino, for our Service, works therefore for Chouet.
The Sismi in order to confirm the circumstance has diffused to the press two photo of Rocco Martino to talk, "to Brussels", with a French agent of which the ago name, Jacques Nadal.
The Sismi accusation the French intelligence to have taciuto to the Americans the infondatezza of the dossier nigerino.
Indeed, it marks it the Sismi, the director of the controproliferazione of the ministry of the Foreign countries French, 22 November 2002, in the course of a reunion with civil employees of the Department of State, reports that France is in second possession of information which the Iraq has tried of procurarsi uranio in Niger.
The information, asserts the diplomatic French, has been verified and thought reliable.
Citing the relation of the Committee of control on the intelligence of the USA Senate, the Sismi supports that "only 4 March 2003, France perceives Washington that its information on the uranio are based on the same information in possession of Paris".
First: our ministry of the Foreign countries does not know what ago the Dgse.
It is a praxis that is not only worth for the French services.
According to: we have perceived the Cia in summer 2002.
Third party: fairies attention to the words of the USA relationship.
It does not say that France informs the 4 Americans March 2003.
The relationship says: "4 March 2003 the government American has learned that the French have based their analyses begins them on the uranio nigerino on same documents in possession of Washington".
And then, I would be more cautious to say that our ministry of the Foreign countries has supported that France had tests of an attempt of traffic of uranio.
In mine two years of commando to the Dgse it is capitato to me to meet George Tenet, then the director of the Cia.
I have participated to reunions between Paris and Washington.
According to the story of Alain Chouet, the French do not have null to that to make with Rocco Martino (the Sismi have sure to that to make with Rocco Martino).
No movement of Rocco Martino escapes to the Sismi when, in the summer of 2002, the vendifumo it meets for before turns the French agent (is not true, therefore, than the Sismi it knows who is Rocco Martino only in the summer of 2003).
They are the French, which the Cia it asks lumi in order to verify news had from the Italians, to refute them (and they are not therefore the Italians to refute to the Cia the news in possession of the French).
The Cia is in possession at least part goddesses documents of Rocco Martino puttinges with from one source del Sismi (the "Mrs." nell' embassy nigerina of Rome), controlled from colonel del Sismi (Antonio Nucera), already nel July del 2002.
The testimony of Alain Chouet scombussola the artificial version offered from the government to the inconcludente and submitted Committee of control parliamentarian and to the prosecuting attorney of Rome.
(Even if it were a government, I'm not sure we'd have the intestinal fortitude to reply in kind... making several hundred billion dollars pointless, in the end. However, when it isn't a government, even a hawk wanting to retaliate won't have a "legitimate" target, and we'll have to watch, impotently.)
"Bush lied" ping
Hmmmmm interesting in light of the recent fired leaker (Mary McCarthy) at the CIA.