I thought that I would bump this for a quick refresher on the Joe Wilson lied story.
France pays forger to fabricate "yellowcake" documents
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:Case against aides (doesn't have leg to stand on. (Valerie Plame case) (MUST READ: NO CRIME) --Depends on what you mean by "produced"...Rocco just received the documents, he did not forge them. Read on:Jacqueline, (Wilson's 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. It has been reported that she was a "cultural counselor" for the French Embassy, which some say is code for she was doing undercover work.
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.
IOW, he didn't lie in his first statement...he saw the documents.
And Fedora has contributed this:
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
Wuli also just posted a timeline thread asking the question about how Joe Wilson saw the documents before they were turned over to the CIA and other questions. It also validates the theory that he saw them in advance:
Joe Wilson's Lies, A Timeline - Who Forged the Documents?
Then if you connect the dots between the article,Was the Joe Wilson Valerie Plame Affair a CIA Plot?and the article New York Times: CIA Leaked Plame's Name, you come away with all the makings of French/CIA coup attempt. George Tenet was Novak's first source, he was the administration official that was described as "no partisan gunslinger" by Novak.
It also validates the article by Seymour Hersch (who we normally dismiss as a leftie moonbat):
“Who produced the fake Niger papers? There is nothing approaching a consensus on this question within the intelligence community. There has been published speculation about the intelligence services of several different countries. One theory, favored by some journalists in Rome, is that [the Italian intelligence service] Sismi produced the false documents and passed them to Panorama for publication.
“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.”
The stranger that approached Novak? Larry Johnson, Ex-CIA. And if my theory is correct, Vincent Cannistraro, another ex-CIA agent, who is a security consultant to the Vatican in Rome, engineered the break-in at the Niger Embassy there, where the letterhead and seals were stolen for the forgeries.
I just hope Fitzgerald is following the path. The final nail...it was kind of funny that I have been "warned" that I should not pursue this research by someone in a private freepmail. Too bad...I ain't skeered... : )
42 posted on 10/25/2005 4:07:33 PM EDT by ravingnutterSome related files here:Proof that Rove was Right
various FR links & stories | 06-27-05 | the heavy equipment guy
Michael Ledeen's colleagues at National Review join the chorus of laughter and derision inspired by James Bamford's ridiculous effort in Rolling Stone, spinning a conspiracy theory involving Michael and the Bush administration. I wrote about the silliness yesterday, and today Andrew McCarthy and Mark Levin take up Bamford's piece:
In a screed Rolling Stone is passing off as journalism, James Bamford becomes the latest in a growing crowd of hacks to smear our friend Michael Ledeen.Up until now, the fiction recklessly spewed by disgruntled intelligence-community retirees and their media enablers — some of whom have conceded that the claim is based on zero evidence — has been that Michael had something to do with the forged Italian documents that, according to the Left’s narrative, were the basis for President Bush’s “lie” in the 2003 State of the Union Address that Saddam Hussein had obtained yellowcake uranium (for nuclear-weapons construction) in Africa. Of course, Michael had utterly nothing to do with the forgeries (the source has actually been identified); the forgeries were not the basis for the president’s statement; the president did not claim Saddam obtained yellowcake — merely that intelligence reports indicated that Saddam had sought to obtain it; and the British intelligence reports that actually were the basis for the president’s statement were true (the Brits stand by them to this day). But hey, why let the truth get in the way of a good story?
Naturally, the Italian forgeries make a cameo appearance in Bamford’s just-released hit piece. His anxious reprise of the distortion has Italian intelligence telling the Bush administration that Saddam had obtained uranium in West Africa, which becomes the source of the president’s State of the Union assertion. But, aside from being wrong, Bamford’s recitation makes no sense. We understand Italian intelligence denies ever having said any such thing. Obviously, though, if (a) it had said such a thing, and (b) that information had been the basis for the president’s assertion, then Bush would have said Saddam obtained uranium. Instead, he said Saddam had merely inquired about uranium — and in Africa, not, as Bamford claims, West Africa. This is exactly what was alleged by the British intelligence reports — the president’s real source.
That's just the appetizer, McCarthy and Levin run rings around Bamford's paranoid fantasies, demonstrating several places where Bamford uses suppositions as fact and then bases his conclusions on them.
McCarthy and Levin save the best argument for last, as I did. Bamford says that Ledeen and the neocons bought into Manucher Ghorbanifar's implication that Saddam Hussein was hiding in Iran -- in December 2001. Incredibly, Bamford seems unaware that Saddam Hussein was in charge of Iraq in December 2001, and in fact remained so until April 2003. Not only that, but this supposed journalistic expert on the Middle East and intelligence work appears ignorant of the fact that the Iranians hated Saddam Hussein with a vengeance for his oppression of the Shi'a in Iraq and his brutal war against them in the 1980s.
And the editors of Rolling Stone have yet to issue any kind of correction or explanation for this farcical exposition by Bamford.
Read the entire NRO article. Also, I will be interviewing Michael Ledeen about this story and other developments in Iran tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network at 2 pm CT. Be sure to tune us in.
UPDATE: Hiding in Iran. Fixed the typo, thanks to Russ in the comments.