The Story of the Forged "Niger Documents" as Explained by Me --->>>

[Stephanie]

Here is my version of the story, for those who are just tuning in now. Please feel free to add your revisions, corrections, and additional info.

We know the Bushites wanted to invade Iraq from the moment they took office. Their team had written policy papers about it beginning in 1998 (in the modern era - they had kicked around the idea since the 70's - google PNAC). There was an idealogical group within the administration, centered mostly in the Pentagon but also in Cheney's office, known as the neocons, that promoted the idea. They wanted to establish the U.S. as the lone superpower. They advocated American hegemony. They studied extremist intellectuals who instructed that lying to the masses, even lying to the King, was permissible, in service to a greater goal. They were self-deluded and grandiose and nowhere near as smart as they thought they were.

Anyway.

They wanted to invade Iraq and use that as a stepping stone to remake the Middle East. They only needed the opportunity that 9/11 provided. Immediately they began making their plans to invade Iraq at the earliest opportunity. But they needed a compelling story to tell the public.

They began promoting the idea that Iraq had WMD's and was a physical threat to the safety of Americans. They had no evidence on which to base this claim so they sifted through whatever they could find and seized at straws. They had intel reports steered around the CIA and fed directly to an office at the Pentagon called Office of Special Plans. This prevented the CIA from weeding out bogus reports before they reached a higher level. OSP "stovepiped" whatever they could find straight to the Bush administration.

The first reports of Iraq attempting to buy uranium from Niger were delivered to Bush when Berlusconi visited the US shortly after 9/11. They were sort of like a hostess gift. The Italian intel person on the trip handed over what they said was evidence. The evidence was -------> data from the forged Niger docs you have heard so much about!

Cheney was intrigued. He wanted to know more. He asked the CIA to follow up and check out the veracity of the assertion. The CIA tapped Joe Wilson to make a trip to Niger and ask around. Wilson returned and said the claim seemed specious.

Earlier than all this, some administration officials held secret meetings with some Italian intelligence officials. We don't know what they discussed.

Eventually the evidence itself, the Niger doc, made it's way into the hands of this Italian fellow Martino. An agent from SISMI told Martino maybe he could make some dough off info from this contact at the Niger embassy in Rome. So Martino got his hands on this document and passed it to the Italian journalist Ms. Burba. She took it to the American embassy for authentication. From there it went to the Bush administration.

And from that you get the famous "16 words" from the 2003 State of the Union, where Bush claimed that Iraq had recently sought to acquire significant quantitities of uranium from Africa. Regardless that the documents had been debunked as obvious forgeries by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ElBaradei, winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, and by many others as well. Officials who purportedly signed the docs were no longer in office at the time, etc. Very crude fakes.

The Bushites hung their words on the slimmest evidence. Evidence that they had to know was false. The question now is, did anyone in the Bush administration have a hand in fabricating those documents? There was a break-in in the Niger embassy and stationary and a seal were stolen. However the forgeries are very crude, which is kind of inexplicable.

Right now there is a huge investigation going on in Italy to determine the source of the forgeries. Fitzgerald is reported to have requested and received a secret Italian report on the case. It goes to the heart of the Plame outting.

It's all unravelling. The Bushites are powerless to control it. The Truth Will Out.

~Stephanie

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006896.php

(October 30, 2005 -- 11:45 PM EDT)

The Italian Connection, Part I

On March 7th, 2003, on the eve of the Iraq War, Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the UN Security Council that documents purporting to show that Iraq had purchased uranium ore from Niger were in fact forgeries. The documents had been provided to the IAEA by the United States. "Based on thorough analysis," said ElBaradei, "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents - which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger - are in fact not authentic."

-- Josh Marshall

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_30.php#006908

The Italian Connection, Part II

In the previous installment I described early reporting I did on the origins of the Niger forgeries – reporting which pointed strongly toward an Italian government role in the Niger uranium hoax.

-- Josh Marshall

[readmylips]

1. What did Rumsfelt know and when did he know it?

Yesterday there was an article about Rumsfelt denying he knew anything of Mrs Wilson's CIA status and didn't remember ever talking to Cheney about it. Yet the forged Niger papers were delivered to the Pentagon, Office of Special Plans, secret department setup by Rumsfelt. It's obvious Rumsfelt was running his own KGB department outside of USA's CIA department. How do you know when Rumsfelt is lying? When he answers questions with a smirk and laughter.

"They had intel reports steered around the CIA and fed directly to an office at the Pentagon called Office of Special Plans."

[Laura PourMeADrink]

2. Stephanie. Good synopsis, in English. What I have been curious

about is the timing of the receipt of the Niger forgeries. There is a Scottish journalist who wrote about this and he is looking at his notes to get back to me.

El Baradeii, when he heard that the US had evidence of Saddam seeking to reconstitute its nuclear program, was immediately sceptical (late 2002). He repeatedly asked the US to hand over those documents to him to authenticate. The administration held them for weeks upon weeks. In fact, they were not turned over to IAE until the beginning of February !! Ha - conveniently a week or so AFTER the SOTU address.

This seems uber suspicious to me. It was like the knew all along that they were fake, doesn't it? BUT they needed to hold the documents until Assclown could make a case for it on TV.

[Stephanie]

4. Did you read Josh Marshall's Part I above?

It's very curious that Italy based their 2002 report on these documents. Let me know what you find out from the Scottish journalist - what paper?

[Laura PourMeADrink]

7. Neil Mackay, Sunday Herald, "Niger and Iraq-The War's Biggest Lie"

from July 13, 2003

Excellent article

http://www.sundayherald.com/35264

[BrotherBuzz]

16. Neil Mackay is also credited with uncovering PNAC

Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President



By Neil Mackay

(15 September 2002)


A SECRET blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a 'global Pax Americana' was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), George W Bush's younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.'

The PNAC document supports a 'blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests'.

<more>

http://www.sundayherald.com/27735

[myrna minx]

3. Thanks Stephanie.

Great synopsis. It ain't over. It's far from over. We are just starting to see the sweater unravel. :bounce:

[Catherine Vincent]

5. Thanks Stephanie.

<Right now there is a huge investigation going on in Italy to determine the source of the forgeries. Fitzgerald is reported to have requested and received a secret Italian report on the case. It goes to the heart of the Plame outting.>

Is this mentioned in the indictment? Or is there a link stating that Fitzgerald request this report?

[Stephanie]

9. Yes, here are some earlier threads & stories on this from LBN >

____________________________________

Walker's World: Bush at bay

By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

Fitzgerald's inquiry is expected to conclude this week and despite feverish speculation in Washington, there have been no leaks about his decision whether to issue indictments and against whom and on what charges.

Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove, President George W Bush's senior political aide, not for Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The first is that Fitzgerald last year sought and obtained from the Justice Department permission to widen his investigation from the leak itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime.

snip>

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1873296


___________________________________________________



http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html

Forging the Case for War

Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?

by Philip Giraldi

From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story. That she was exposed in an attempt to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is clear, but the drive to demonize Wilson cannot reasonably be attributed only to revenge. Rather, her identification likely grew out of an attempt to cover up the forging of documents alleging that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

What took place and why will not be known with any certainty until the details of the Fitzgerald investigation are revealed. (As we go to press, Fitzgerald has made no public statement.) But recent revelations in the Italian press, most notably in the pages of La Repubblica, along with information already on the public record, suggest a plausible scenario for the evolution of Plamegate.

Information developed by Italian investigators indicates that the documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian intelligence service. It also reveals that the introduction of the documents into the American intelligence stream was facilitated by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), a parallel intelligence center set up in the Pentagon to develop alternative sources of information in support of war against Iraq.

The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain’s MI-6.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1890916

_________________________

NYT: F.B.I. Is Still Seeking Source of Forged Uranium Reports

A counterespionage official said Wednesday that the inquiry into the documents, which were intended to show that Iraq was seeking uranium for a nuclear weapons program, had yielded some intriguing but unproved theories. One is the possibility that associates of Ahmad Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who was a leading champion of the American campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, had a hand in the forgery. A second hypothesis, described by some officials as more likely, is that the documents were forged at Niger's embassy in Rome, in a moneymaking scheme. The official said the matter was being investigated as a counterintelligence case, not a criminal one.
....
The continuing inquiry into the source of the forged documents has been conducted separately from the investigation by the special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald into the leak case, which has to do with whether Bush administration officials committed crimes related to disclosing the identity of Mr. Wilson's wife, an undercover C.I.A. officer.

Law enforcement officials say they do not believe that the two issues are related. The documents were among the sources of President Bush's claim in a 16-word passage of his State of the Union speech in 2003, later retracted, that Iraq was seeking to obtain uranium from Africa.

The question of who forged the documents remains of intense interest on Capitol Hill, where Senators Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, and John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, have received classified briefings on the status of the F.B.I. inquiry. The two are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the intelligence committee.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28niger.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=1883652

_____________________________

[Catherine Vincent]

14. Thanks sugar.

And for your prize I give you this------>

:D

[Junkdrawer]

6. Seymour Hersh's classic "The Stovepipe" will put it into context...

Still the best backgrounder on exactly what went down in Cheney's office leading up to the Iraq War, it describes how hard the NeoCons worked to exclude the CIA and to proffer their version of Saddam's WMDs:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[underpants]

8. Okay, some questions

First, I remember reading some former CIA type say that he asked some other ex-CIAs were W got that from and they said the Niger document and he said "Oh that piece of crap?" . I don't remember where I read this but I thought that the Italian document was years old and a running joke inside DC.

Also I remember Al Baradei saying that a google search (yes a google search) took about 10 minutes to show that this document was complete BS-wrong letterhead and foreign minister from 10 years ago.

Am I remembering this wrong?

[Stephanie]

10. someone posted a link to jpegs of the docs

Maybe we can find it again - they are online. Just looking at the state seal and comparing to the original makes it obvious that they are crude forgeries.

[LisaLynne]

11. Here's a link I found in about 2 seconds to ...

the forged docs.

http://cryptome.org/niger-docs.htm

Please tell me that's a joke. I mean, it IS a joke, but not the funny kind. It looks like something that should be on The Onion. Although, they'd do a much better job.

Edited to add: And thanks, Stephanie. Good run down. :thumbsup:

[Stephanie]

12. thanks! that's the one I was thinking of but couldn't remember

[underpants]

13. I remember ABC reporting that they did a google search

and it took them .3 seconds to find 10,000 links about how fake the documents were.

Something like that.

[MellowOne]

15. They needed 9/11 or a "Pearl Harbor" to get things in motion

Supposedly BushCo ignored 52 warnings about terrorits attacks in our country. Some included flying planes into buildings. Some feel there is a connection.

[H2O Man]

17. Well done!

One of the things that republicans cling to is the, "But the British still think that Iraq was trying to purchase the yellow cake from Niger." It is worth noting that the IAEA had requested that England make their "evidence" available for examination. The British intelligence services refused to provide the IAEA with the requested evidence, even though England was bound, by international agreement, to do so. If they were convinced that their evidence was good, they would have provided it.

As a side note, one might find the activities of John Bolton, taken to unseat the head of the IAEA in this same time frame, of interest.

[H2O Man]

20. I agree. n/t

[Stephanie]

21. you agree with you?

:rofl:

[H2O Man]

22. Yes.

I had hoped you would notice what I wrote. Even posted something similar on another post about that charmer, Mr. Bolton.

[Stephanie]

23. Well did you see the new article from Raw Story?

A Bolton aide named Fleitz on loan from CIA provided Plame's name. Never heard of him, have you?

This article posted above has the info about England not providing evidence:

http://www.sundayherald.com/35264

xx
S

[donkeyotay]

18. I'd like to add a point or two to your synopsis

W. Patrick Lang's "Drinking the Kool-aid is a good reference piece and reminder that yellowcake was not the only lie told for war. In reviewing the piece I came across this timely quote from Sen. Pat Roberts:

"Why on earth didn't let the inspectors in and avoid the war?" - Sen. Roberts quoted by Paul Krugman in NYTs, Feb. 6, 2004.

Lang goes on to say, "The answer to his question is simple: Saddam did let the inspectors in, at a level of cooperation that was unprecedented. The question that Senator Roberts should really be asking is, Why didn't it matter?"

. . .

Another issue is the focus on Italy. Well, bad intell was, apparently, all over the place including Britain. The Senate report (part 1) did not mention Israel by name, but it characterized an "assumption train," and the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said that several of the assumption train's cars were made in Israel (as per the article, citation follows). The report goes on to discuss the issue of various intell agencies playing a circular game that involved not recognizing that the different sources were, in fact, coming from the same source.

From an article "Senate Report on Iraq Intel Points to Role of Jerusalem, by ORI NIR, July 16, 2004.
http://www.forward.com/main/article.php?ref=nir200407141106

. . .

And last point, the timing of these Italian meetings should be checked against some of the neocon meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar. Seems that someone (don't have at my fingertips who) met with him in Dec 2001, and then Karen Kwiatkowski mentions Ledeen meeting him later. But ties like these, along with ties to known forgers like Chalabi give a lot of ground to cover.

[Stephanie]

19. Karen Kwiatkowski!

Now there's a name that deserves a second look. I'd forgotten all about her.