Posted on 07/14/2003 9:57:21 PM PDT by Dont Mention the War
Last September 24th, as Congress prepared to vote on the resolution authorizing President George W. Bush to wage war in Iraq, a group of senior intelligence officials, including George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, briefed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Iraq's weapons capability. It was an important presentation for the Bush Administration. Some Democrats were publicly questioning the President's claim that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction which posed an immediate threat to the United States. Just the day before, former Vice-President Al Gore had sharply criticized the Administration's advocacy of preëmptive war, calling it a doctrine that would replace "a world in which states consider themselves subject to law" with "the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States." A few Democrats were also considering putting an alternative resolution before Congress.
According to two of those present at the briefing, which was highly classified and took place in the committee's secure hearing room, Tenet declared, as he had done before, that a shipment of high-strength aluminum tubes that was intercepted on its way to Iraq had been meant for the construction of centrifuges that could be used to produce enriched uranium. The suitability of the tubes for that purpose had been disputed, but this time the argument that Iraq had a nuclear program under way was buttressed by a new and striking fact: the C.I.A. had recently received intelligence showing that, between 1999 and 2001, Iraq had attempted to buy five hundred tons of uranium oxide from Niger, one of the world's largest producers. The uranium, known as "yellow cake," can be used to make fuel for nuclear reactors; if processed differently, it can also be enriched to make weapons. Five tons can produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a bomb. (When the C.I.A. spokesman William Harlow was asked for comment, he denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger.)
On the same day, in London, Tony Blair's government made public a dossier containing much of the information that the Senate committee was being given in secret - that Iraq had sought to buy "significant quantities of uranium" from an unnamed African country, "despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it." The allegation attracted immediate attention; a headline in the London Guardian declared, "african gangs offer route to uranium."
Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq's attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq.
On December 19th, Washington, for the first time, publicly identified Niger as the alleged seller of the nuclear materials, in a State Department position paper that rhetorically asked, "Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their uranium procurement?" (The charge was denied by both Iraq and Niger.) A former high-level intelligence official told me that the information on Niger was judged serious enough to include in the President's Daily Brief, known as the P.D.B., one of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the American system. Its information is supposed to be carefully analyzed, or "scrubbed." Distribution of the two- or three-page early-morning report, which is prepared by the C.I.A., is limited to the President and a few other senior officials. The P.D.B. is not made available, for example, to any members of the Senate or House Intelligence Committees. "I don't think anybody here sees that thing," a State Department analyst told me. "You only know what's in the P.D.B. because it echoes - people talk about it."
President Bush cited the uranium deal, along with the aluminum tubes, in his State of the Union Message, on January 28th, while crediting Britain as the source of the information: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." He commented, "Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide."
Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. "The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic," ElBaradei said.
One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, "These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking."
The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency's Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.
It took Baute's team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that "they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet."
The large quantity of uranium involved should have been another warning sign. Niger's "yellow cake" comes from two uranium mines controlled by a French company, with its entire output presold to nuclear power companies in France, Japan, and Spain. "Five hundred tons can't be siphoned off without anyone noticing," another I.A.E.A. official told me.
This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. "It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just don't know," the official said. "Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted." Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6 - the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations - had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador's return to Rome.
Baute, according to the I.A.E.A. official, "confronted the United States with the forgery: 'What do you have to say?' They had nothing to say."
ElBaradei's disclosure has not been disputed by any government or intelligence official in Washington or London. Colin Powell, asked about the forgery during a television interview two days after ElBaradei's report, dismissed the subject by saying, "If that issue is resolved, that issue is resolved." A few days later, at a House hearing, he denied that anyone in the United States government had anything to do with the forgery. "It came from other sources," Powell testified. "It was provided in good faith to the inspectors."
The forgery became the object of widespread, and bitter, questions in Europe about the credibility of the United States. But it initially provoked only a few news stories in America, and little sustained questioning about how the White House could endorse such an obvious fake. On March 8th, an American official who had reviewed the documents was quoted in the Washington Post as explaining, simply, "We fell for it."
The Bush Administration's reliance on the Niger documents may, however, have stemmed from more than bureaucratic carelessness or political overreaching. Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997, after an impasse over U.N. inspections. Then as now, the Security Council was divided, with the French, the Russians, and the Chinese telling the United States and the United Kingdom that they were being too tough on the Iraqis. President Bill Clinton, weakened by the impeachment proceedings, hinted of renewed bombing, but, then as now, the British and the Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to, among other things, spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program - part of its Information Operations, or I/Ops - was known to a few senior officials in Washington. "I knew that was going on," the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts. "We were getting ready for action in Iraq, and we wanted the Brits to prepare."
Over the next year, a former American intelligence officer told me, at least one member of the U.N. inspection team who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips - data known as inactionable intelligence - to be funnelled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. "It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn't move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world," the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area. The British propaganda scheme eventually became known to some members of the U.N. inspection team. "I knew a bit," one official still on duty at U.N. headquarters acknowledged last week, "but I was never officially told about it."
None of the past and present officials I spoke with were able to categorically state that the fake Niger documents were created or instigated by the same propaganda office in MI6 that had been part of the anti-Iraq propaganda wars in the late nineteen-nineties. (An MI6 intelligence source declined to comment.) Press reports in the United States and elsewhere have suggested other possible sources: the Iraqi exile community, the Italians, the French. What is generally agreed upon, a congressional intelligence-committee staff member told me, is that the Niger documents were initially circulated by the British - President Bush said as much in his State of the Union speech - and that "the Brits placed more stock in them than we did." It is also clear, as the former high-level intelligence official told me, that "something as bizarre as Niger raises suspicions everywhere."
What went wrong? Did a poorly conceived propaganda effort by British intelligence, whose practices had been known for years to senior American officials, manage to move, without significant challenge, through the top layers of the American intelligence community and into the most sacrosanct of Presidential briefings? Who permitted it to go into the President's State of the Union speech? Was the message - the threat posed by Iraq - more important than the integrity of the intelligence-vetting process? Was the Administration lying to itself? Or did it deliberately give Congress and the public what it knew to be bad information?
Asked to respond, Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, said that the agency had not obtained the actual documents until early this year, after the President's State of the Union speech and after the congressional briefings, and therefore had been unable to evaluate them in a timely manner. Harlow refused to respond to questions about the role of Britain's MI6. Harlow's statement does not, of course, explain why the agency left the job of exposing the embarrassing forgery to the I.A.E.A. It puts the C.I.A. in an unfortunate position: it is, essentially, copping a plea of incompetence.
The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei. The former high-level intelligence official told me that some senior C.I.A. officials were aware that the documents weren't trustworthy. "It's not a question as to whether they were marginal. They can't be 'sort of' bad, or 'sort of' ambiguous. They knew it was a fraud - it was useless. Everybody bit their tongue and said, 'Wouldn't it be great if the Secretary of State said this?' The Secretary of State never saw the documents." He added, "He's absolutely apoplectic about it." (A State Department spokesman was unable to comment.) A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded.
"Somebody deliberately let something false get in there," the former high-level intelligence official added. "It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up." (The White House declined to comment.)
Washington's case that the Iraqi regime had failed to meet its obligation to give up weapons of mass destruction was, of course, based on much more than a few documents of questionable provenance from a small African nation. But George W. Bush's war against Iraq has created enormous anxiety throughout the world - in part because one side is a superpower and the other is not. It can't help the President's case, or his international standing, when his advisers brief him with falsehoods, whether by design or by mistake.
On March 14th, Senator Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, formally asked Robert Mueller, the F.B.I. director, to investigate the forged documents. Rockefeller had voted for the resolution authorizing force last fall. Now he wrote to Mueller, "There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." He urged the F.B.I. to ascertain the source of the documents, the skill-level of the forgery, the motives of those responsible, and "why the intelligence community did not recognize the documents were fabricated." A Rockefeller aide told me that the F.B.I. had promised to look into it. 
2003 : (JOURNALIST CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS REPORTS THAT IRAQI FOREIGN MINISTER TARIQ AZIZ OFFERED A HUGE BRIBE TO A SENIOR WEAPONS INSPECTOR) Rolf Ekeus. BTW, maybe the guy Christopher Hitchens mentioned in 2003: "I know of at least one incontrovertible case where a senior inspector was offered a huge bribe by Tariq Aziz himself: The man in question refused the money, but obviously not everybody did." ------http://slate.msn.com/id/2078512 15 posted on 03/11/2005 6:51:08 PM PST by Shermy
FEBRUARY 2003 : (REPORT : MOHAMMED FAROUQ ALI ROUB & PLF/IRAQI POISON PLOT : WMD, POISON PLOTS, IRAQ , PLF, IRAQ) WHILE President Bush is being urged to provide proof of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, Israel has its own proof that Iraq is ready to use deadly poison in terrorist attacks. "I was told to be ready to spread poison in the major Israeli water pipelines, the River Jordan or the Lake of Galilee," said Mohammed Farouq Abu Roub, a former junior officer in Palestinian intelligence. "I got these instructions in Iraq, where I was given thousands of dollars to carry out mega-attacks." Abu Roub, 29, was quoted by Israel's largest newspaper, Yediot Aronoth, speaking from his prison after being arrested in a botched effort to dispatch a homicide bomber to Israel. Details of the Shin Bet's lengthy investigation of Abu Roub had already been passed on to the US, sources told The Post. ----------- "IRAQ'S THUG BARES EVIL POISON PLOT," by URI DAN, New York Post, February 2, 2003
FEBRUARY 14, 2003 : (SOUTH AFRICA TO AID IRAQ IN DISMANTLING WMD IT ALLEGEDLY DOESN'T HAVE? )(snip) South Africa will send experts in dismantling weapons of mass destruction to Iraq as part of Pretoria's bid to avert war, President Thabo Mbeki said in his state of the nation address today.
The intervention follows a visit to Baghdad by Aziz Pahad, the Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, and comes ahead of today's crucial report-back by United Nations weapons inspectors to the Security Council in New York. Addressing a special joint sitting of Parliament, Mbeki said it was hoped the UN report-back "will not serve as a signal to some that the time has come to unleash the fury of war".
"As we speak, a number of our citizens are preparing to travel to Iraq. These are the experts who led our country's programme to destroy our nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction, as well as the missiles for the delivery of these weapons in conditions of combat."
The work they had done had resulted in South Africa becoming an international example of best practice in disarmament, he said. South Africa voluntarily disarmed its weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s. Pretoria had proposed to Iraq and to Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General that these experts share South Africa's experience with Baghdad, Mbeki said.
"I am pleased to inform the Honourable Members that Iraq has accepted our offer, which we have already discussed with the leadership of the weapons inspectors. "We trust that this intervention will help to ensure the necessary proper co-operation between the United Nations' inspectors and Iraq, so that the issue of weapons of mass destruction is addressed satisfactorily, without resort to war." - "SA to send its nuclear experts to Iraq: Mbeki," http://www.sabcnews.com/politics/government/0,1009,52970,00.html., February 14, 2003, 11:15
MARCH 2003 : (BATTLE OF IRAQ BEGINS)
APRIL 25, 2003 : (RUMSFELD BRIEFING COMMENTS ON UPCOMING INTERROGATION OF IRAQI DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER TARIQ AZIZ - See OIL FOR FOOD, JEAN-MARIE BENJAMIN, GEORGE GALLOWAY, JAMES ABOUREZK, NICK RAHALL, BAGHDAD TRIO, SHAKIR AL KHAFAJI, GLENCOR ETC...) [Deputy Prime Minister Tariq] Aziz, meanwhile, may know where other senior officials wanted by the United States are hiding, officials said. As a longtime associate of Saddam, he may also have details on some of the Iraqi president's long-term planning.
Aziz "clearly is a very senior person and was in that regime, and we intend to discuss with him whatever he's willing to discuss with us," Rumsfeld said. -- "Iraqi intelligence agents held,"AP via TheAge.com.au, April 26 2003
MAY 2003 : (JAMES ABOUREZK FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST PROBUSH.COM - See N.I.O.N. , CNSS, ADC, Iran, Hezbollah) In May, former Sen. James Abourezk (D-SD) filed a $5 million lawsuit against a website operator who included him among a group of "traitors." The website, www.ProBush.com, lampoons liberals from the entertainment industry and politics who have been vocal in their opposition to the war in Iraq or critical of President George W. Bush.
Some of the others on the list are Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as well as actors George Clooney, Susan Sarandon, and Janeane Garafalo and the country music group, the Dixie Chicks.
While the website disclaimer states that the list is a parody and is not to be taken seriously, Abourezk claims that he has been defamed. In his lawsuit he states that ProBush.com's statement "is intended to injure" his standing in the community... asked how Abourezk came to be on the "traitor" list, Marino explained, "These are the signers of the famous 'Not in Our Name' petition against the war. He was alphabetically at the top of the list."
---- "20-Year-Old Republican Website Owner Sued by Former Democrat Senator, " By Jeff Gannon Talon News, July 31, 2003
[* I guess praising Hezbollah didn't damage Abourezk's standing in the community?]
JUNE 10, 2003 : (INTERIM UNMOVIC CHIEF NAMED, WAS THE LEADER OF THE IAEA TEAM WHICH CERTIFIED SOUTH AFRICA'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS PROGRAM DISSOLUTION) U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed UNMOVIC Deputy Executive Chairman Demetrius Perricos to take over as acting head of the commission July 1, when Blix retires. Perricos was the commission's director of planning and operations for three years prior to his appointment in January to the body's number two post. The Greek native joined the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1972 as a safeguards inspector and led the team that certified the dissolution of South Africa's nuclear weapons program.He also worked in Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War -"Interim UNMOVIC Chief Named ," U.N. release, June 10
JUNE 2003 mid : (CAIRO, EGYPT : US UNDERSECRETARY OF STATE BOLTON WARNS EGYPT ON ITS INVOLVEMENT WITH IRAQ & NORTH KOREA ON MISSILES & WMD PROGRAMS) The United States has again launched an examination of Egypt's missile and weapons of mass destruction programs. U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton held talks over the weekend in Cairo with Egyptian leaders on a range of what U.S. officials termed were sensitive subjects. They said the issues included Egypt's WMD and missile programs and Cairo's cooperation with Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea.
"All of the testimony and evidence found in Iraq have shown significant Egyptian involvement in Iraq's missile and WMD programs," a U.S. official said. "The issue has become too big to ignore without undermining the credibility of the administration."
- "U.S. QUESTIONS EGYPT ON WMD, MISSILES ," by Middle East Newsline staff, Middle East Newsline, 6/17/03
JULY 2006 : (JAMES ABOUREZK'S ADC SUES THE US GOVERNMENT OVER "FAILURE TO PROTECT AMERICAN CITIZENS FROM FIGHTING IN LEBANON" ----- See DEMOCRATS, ABOUREZK, CNSS, NION, HEZBOLLAH, IRAN) WASHINGTON — A leading Arab-American advocacy group has sued the U.S. government, claiming that it failed to protect American citizens from the fighting in Lebanon. The lawsuit, filed Monday on behalf of about 30 American citizens by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee [ADC], alleges that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld did not take all possible steps to secure the safety and well being of U.S. citizens when fighting erupted between Israel and Hezbollah guerillas. The committee is asking the U.S. District Court in Detroit to order the U.S. government to request a cease fire and to stop shipments of weapons or any other military support to Israel during the evacuation of U.S. citizens from Lebanon.(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...----------Arab-American Group Sues U.S. For Slow Lebanon Evacuation Fox News ^ | July 24, 2006
JULY 28, 2003 Monday : (UN : UN EXPANDS MONUC MANDATE -- SOUTH AFRICAN, BANGLADESHI & INDIAN TROOPS IN CONGO - see COLTAN, URANIUM)The expanded force will include troops from South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan and India. ''They have already been lined up to go to eastern DRC,'' Annan said. ... MONUC's new mandate also gives peacekeepers the authority to take all ''necessary means'' to protect U.N. personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, as well as civilians and humanitarian workers ''under imminent threat of physical violence''. One expert said Monday that a peacekeeping force in the DRC must have sufficient authority to both defend itself, and more importantly, to help disarm combatants, thereby protecting the civilian population. The 53-member African Union (AU) must step forward and play an integral role in resolving the DRC crisis, said Bill Fletcher Jr, president of Washington-based TransAfrica Forum. ''The South African government has played a critical role, but this needs to be expanded to the AU (African Union) as a whole,'' Fletcher said in an interview. ''One important step would be the use of African troops in the DRC rather than European,'' he added. ----- "U.N. Authorizes Military Force in Congo ," Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service (IPS), July 28 -- yahoo.comnews, July 29, 2003
OCTOBER 4, 2003 : (TARANTO, ITALY : FIVE CONTAINERS FROM THE SHIP BBC CHINA ARE SEIZED; THEY CONTAIN A COMPONENT USEFUL FOR MAKING CENTRIFUGES - EVIDENCE OF LIBYA'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM, QADEER KHAN NETWORK)
NOVEMBER 2003 : (REPORT : AL QAEDA REP IBRAHIM ABD BOUGHT URANIUM FROM CONGOLESE MEN AT A MEETING IN HAMBURG GERMANY BACK IN MARCH 3, 2000) An al-Qaida representative bought enriched uranium capable of being used in a so-called dirty bomb from the Congolese opposition in 2000, according to a French newspaper report.
In sworn testimony an unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has told investigators looking into the murders of two Congolese opposition figures in France in December 2000 that he attended a meeting earlier that year at which the uranium was sold, the Lyon-based Le Progres reported.
The man "described a meeting which took place on 3 March in (the German city of) Hamburg between some Congolese men and an Egyptian by the name of Ibrahim Abd," the newspaper said.
It quoted the man as saying, "I realised it was al-Qaida." According to Le Progres, the Egyptian was able to acquire two bars of enriched uranium 138. ------ "Al-Qaida 'bought uranium' in Congo; Bin Ladin's network alleged to have 'dirty bomb' capability ,"AFP via Aljazeera, Friday 14 November 2003, 19:18 Makka Time, 16:18 GMT
DECEMBER 2003 : (UN SUPRESSED REPORT THAT REVEALED THAT RWANDA & UGANDA WERE STILL ARMING TERRORIST GROUPS IN THE CONGO- See COLTAN, URANIUM, GEMSTONE TRADE) ... it emerged that the UN Security Council suppressed a chapter from a UN report revealing that Rwanda and Uganda were still arming militias in Congo. It added that senior members of both governments were continuing to loot their neighbour. Britain refuses even to consider sanctions against either country. Others are getting their slice of the action too. Senior Tanzanian ministers are said to have armed Burundian rebels who are terrorising the South Kivu region of Congo. -----------------"The agony of a traumatised nation heard in the cries of a beaten child," The Daily Telegraph ^ | 3rd January, 2004 | Adrian Blomfield
(* My note: just a bit of trivia : Iraq backed Uganda's wars on its neighbors ... couldn't have been to get access to uranium in the future, right?)
* My note: remember Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein offering the Zambian leader a place on the "Council of 12 Wise Men" back before saddam hid in the spiderhole?
DECEMBER 26, 2004 : (REPORT : WMD INVESTIGATIONS : INVESTIGATORS FOUND URANIUM ENRICHMENT EQUIPMENT IN SOUTH AFRICA-- See Qadeer Khan Network, Islamic Bomb) There is no shortage of tantalizing leads. American intelligence officials and the I.A.E.A., working separately, are still untangling Dr. Khan's travels in the years before his arrest. Investigators said he visited 18 countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, on what they believed were business trips, either to buy materials like uranium ore or sell atomic goods.
In Dubai, they have scoured one of the network's front companies, finding traces of radioactive material as well as phone records showing contact with Saudi Arabia. Having tracked the network operations to Malaysia, Europe and the Middle East, investigators recently uncovered an outpost in South Africa, where they seized 11 crates of equipment for enriching uranium.---------" As Nuclear Secrets Emerge in Khan Inquiry, More Are Suspected," New York Times ^ , Dec 26, 2004
OCTOBER 22, 2005 : (TANZANIA : CUSTOMS OFFICIALS DISCOVER SHIPMENT OF URANIUM 238 WHICH HAD BEEN SMUGGLED FROM THE LUBUMBASHI MINES IN CONGO IN A SHIPMENT OF COLTAN DESTINED FOR KAZAKHSTAN VIA THE IRANIAN PORT OF BANDAR ABBAS) Tanzanian customs officials told The Sunday Times it was destined for the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas, and was stopped on October 22 last year during a routine check. ... A senior Tanzanian customs official said the illicit uranium shipment was found hidden in a consignment of coltan, a rare mineral used to make chips in mobile telephones. The shipment was destined for smelting in the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, delivered via Bandar Abbas, Iran’s biggest port. “There were several containers due to be shipped and they were all routinely scanned with a Geiger counter,” the official said. “This one was very radioactive. When we opened the container it was full of drums of coltan. Each drum contains about 50kg of ore. When the first and second rows were removed,the ones after that were found to be drums of uranium.” In a nuclear reactor, uranium 238 can be used to breed plutonium used in nuclear weapons. The customs officer, who spoke to The Sunday Times on condition he was not named, added: “The container was put in a secure part of the port and it was later taken away, by the Americans, I think, or at least with their help. We have all been told not to talk to anyone about this.” ----------- "Iran's plot to mine uranium in Africa," Jon Swain, David Leppard and Brian Johnson-Thomas, The Sunday Times (U.K.), 08/06/06,
piasa - you have got to write a book. Your research is more indepth and puts together some names that previously weren't connected with each other.
Thanks for the ping!
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