Waxman: State Department Gags Analyst Who Warned Of Niger Forgery

[IChing]

Three months before President Bush uttered his infamous 16 words, claiming there was evidence that Saddam Hussein was building a nuclear weapon, a State Department analyst named Simon Dodge had determined that the evidence for the claim was likely fraudulent.

odge emailed his assessment to fellow intelligence analysts in October 2002, and then again in January 2003 (two weeks before Bush’s State of the Union), saying the documents supposedly from Niger were “probably a hoax” and “clearly a forgery.”

According to Oversight and Goverment Reform Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), the State Department is now refusing to let Dodge speak to Waxman’s staff, despite the fact that Dodge has indicated he is “willing to cooperate fully” with the investigation.

In a letter to Condoleezza Rice today, Waxman charges that the State Department is “imped the Committee’s investigation into why President Bush and other senior Administration officials, including yourself, cited forged evidence in building a case for war against lraq.”

member of your legislative office informed Committee staff that you were prohibiting Mr. Dodge from meeting with Committee investigators. This official claimed that allowing Mr. Dodge to speak with Committee staff would be “inappropriate” because the Committee voted to issue a subpoena to compel your attendance at a hearing on your knowledge of the fabricated evidence.

I assume that your legislative staff was acting without your authorization in this matter. It would be a matter of great concern - as well as an obvious conflict of interest - if you had directed your staff to impede a congressional investigation into matter that may implicate your conduct as National Security Advisor.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/04/rice-waxman-letter/

[magellan]

1. Okay, so what happens if Dodge speaks to Congress anyway?

[IChing]

5. Bill Moyer's Journal even covers this tonight on PBS

Bill Moyer’s Journal “Forged Intelligence Documents”
Airdate: Friday, May 4, 2007 at 9:00 p.m. EDT on PBS.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050307U.shtml
(Check local listings at http://www.pbs.org/moyers )

“Italy’s foremost investigative reporter, Carlo Bonini, takes viewers on the trail of forged intelligence documents that the Bush administration used to help make a case for war.”

[magellan]

7. Thank you for the reminder!

I'll be watching.

[originalpckelly]

8. OMG! Thanks IChing, I've been following this story...

and personally, I think Bush and/or Cheney were somehow involved in the original forgery of these documents.

I think that's why they went after Plame, and that's probably why they'll do anything to keep the investigators from finding out info on this, it would have to result in their impeachments or resignations from office.

[IChing]

11. This is as big of a story as "Goodling" taking the 5th except it is a gag

Waxman is so methodological he seems to know exactly where to go and what buttons to push.

[Supersedeas]

14. too bad the complicit GOP/Media Establishment can't do some responsible journalism

[burrowowl]

24. KUNM PBS 9:00 MDT for New Mexicans! eom

[Gregorian]

2. Gag, lie, spin, recycle.

It was a concerted effort. When Ashcroft wasn't busy dressing statues, he was busting Tommy Chong and gagging Sibel Edmonds.

Now we find out Simon Dodge was also gagged in order to forward a similar agenda.


To the Hague!

[Blackhatjack]

3. Condi must feel the noose tightening every day... Waxman will not let go!

Condi needs to resign along with Gonzales. Both have earned time behind bars, but we will accept their resignations as a start.

[lonestarnot]

4. Impeding an investigation... isn't that called obstruction?

[IChing]

12. This administration sure does enjoy obstructing justice

These are the same people who think if you’re not doing anything wrong,
you shouldn’t mind being spyed on

think about it

[lonestarnot]

17. Yes. If they'd smell their own asses for about 1/2 hour, they'd resign.

[EST]

6. Can we start using the word "LIE" and "LIAR," now?

The house and senate members are so stupefyingly careful about using derogatory language to describe the administration or each other-a requirement on the floors, of course-but the lies are being proven again and again.

Makes it hard to breathe.

[IChing]

9. I think "Lie" or "Liar" are better than hearing

"I don't recall" and "I don't remember".

[magellan]

10. "Lie" and "Liar" are certainly better than

..."misled" and "mistakes have been made".

[peacetalksforall]

13. I'm now a rabid impeachment pusher - but Cheney first.

I'm starting to feel very sorry for all the Dem House and Senate leaders to voted for this war. I feel sure they met and made a collective decision (with some not agreeing). They pulled off a political joint effort that the world won't recover from through many decades, if we can recover.

[90-percent]

15. feel sorry for those that voted for the war?

NO FUCKING WAY!

I'm an average internet user with no influential connections or means to see the intelligence data our congress sees.

If I had enough info before this war to know it was bogus, surely the same capacity TO THINK must be expected of our elected leaders.

FUCK 'EM if they don't know how to think or reason! JUST FUCK 'EM!


-95% Jimmy

[peacetalksforall]

16. I've had three years of ranting and raving against them. I wanted

everyone to know how wrong they were and how I would not support anyone who did this unless I was forced to vote for them as I was for Kerry. Now, it is so in your face obvious that they were wrong. And each day gets worse.

Then, earlier today I heard on commercial corporate propaganda tv that someone had come up with the idea of re-voting. I wanted to scream. Maybe there is something beneficial about it, but it better not be that those fools who voted for Bush (no matter how they wanted to phrase what they voted for) figured out some way to wiggle out of their votes. I was so upset, that I started to feel sorry for them - especially if there are as many people like myself who feel this disdain.

Obviously, you're one who feels like I do.

Then, throw in the Patriot Act AND ITS RENEWAL!

Wellstone:
First Vote in the Senate - Against Iraq War I
Last Vote in the Senate - Against Iraq War II

Feingold:
Only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act.

[H2O Man]

18. Very important.

Thank you for posting this.

[IChing]

19. Welcome, which brings up the question Who is Simon Dodge? -

From the book "Hubris"
http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0307346811-0


"In October 2002, a file of documents from the U.S. embassy in Rome arrived on the desk of one of the State Department's senior nuclear proliferation analysts. The papers had been handed over by an Italian journalist, who had been given them by an informer who had, in turn, obtained them from a mysterious source in the embassy of Niger. The documents purported to show that Niger had signed a July 2000 deal to supply Iraq with 500 tons of yellowcake uranium — about one-sixth of the African country's annual production and a key ingredient in a uranium-enrichment process that could provide Saddam Hussein's regime with a nuclear bomb.

As Simon Dodge of the State Department's intelligence bureau began to review the documents in Washington, he soon concluded that they were fakes. One of the papers described a secret meeting in Rome at which representatives of Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Libya and Pakistan formed a joint 'plan of action' to defend themselves against the West in alliance with 'Islamic patriots accused of belonging to criminal organizations.' Dodge later told Senate investigators that he considered the claim 'completely implausible,' or, as Michael Isikoff and David Corn put it, 'something out of James Bond — or maybe Austin Powers.' Niger embassy stamps, palpably fake, linked the 'plan of action' document to those depicting the Iraq deal.


The papers are a hoax, Dodge e-mailed colleagues.

This was not what most in the White House wanted to hear. By October 2002, when Dodge began examining the Niger documents, the Bush administration was already accelerating its drive for war against Iraq. An authoritative demolition of one of the most dramatic parts of that case — that Baghdad was building a nuclear weapon — was deeply unwelcome and, coming from the diplomats at the State Department, viewed with particular suspicion by Vice President Cheney's office. Partly by accident (the CIA merely put its copy of the 'obviously forged' Rome papers in a vault and left them there) and partly because it simply did not want to know, the White House remained in denial about the unreliability of the whole Niger uranium story. Fatefully, the president would use the claim in his State of the Union address in January 2003. It was the principal basis for the administration's repeated rhetorical flourish that the Iraqi smoking gun might 'come in the form of a mushroom cloud.' And it was a phony.

http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-0307346811-0

[BeHereNow]

20. Let me guess... One of the invisibles behing the curtain? N/T

bhn

[Marrak]

21. It's obstructing justice...

Waxman's on record, for all to see, and moving forward.

[IChing]

22. Dodge did not work for her at the time he worked in state.

She cannot legally gag him
claiming the executive privilege crap

No doubt you are right, obstruction of Justice.

I think Waxman knows
what went down which could lead to impeachment
but taking the important steps to nail them.

[Jackpine Radical]

25. Yes, I agree. Waxman is being very careful & methodical.

He's building a case that will stand. His approach clearly indicates that he knows where he is going and how to get there. You may want the cathedral RIGHT NOW, but you can't have it that way. The bricks have to be laid one at a time, according to a blueprint.

[mnhtnbb]

23. Go, Waxman!