Nigergate II: The Strange Case of the Burglar Who Didn’t Want Money

The revelations in today’s Sunday Times that two employees of the Niger embassy in Rome forged documents apparently proving Niger was selling uranium to Iraq are unlikely to end the conspiracy theories that swirl around the Niger Affair, and not just because the investigation into the Plamegate affair will run and run. There are still a number of minor mysteries that require further investigation, particularly two burglaries in Rome, one at the Niger embassy over the 2001 New Year’s holiday and one at the home of the Niger consul on January 31, 2001. Both break-ins baffled the Italian police, not least because the burglar didn’t seem to be interested in taking any money.

Then there is the fact that some of the alleged Martino documents published in the Italian press appear to be different in a number of respects to the ones that were passed to the US embassy in Rome and eventually to the International Atomic Energy Authority which denounced them as fakes. How could this be? It makes you wonder whether, with the intelligence market drying up for the freelance peddlers of information, they have found an alternative market among elements of the Italian press.

But there might be something more sinister at work. Certainly the Italian authorities appear to think so, briefing darkly to their relatively few friends in the Italian press that the French are deliberately muddying the waters, implicating Italian intelligence officers in the affair to draw attention away from the fact that it was their agent, Rocco Martino, who put the documents into circulation in the first place. Martino was a French spy, run by the French secret service station in Brussels and paid a retainer of between 1,500 and 2,000 Euros a month for his services. If any intelligence service was responsible for the appearance of the forged Niger documents, so the argument goes, it was the French intelligence service, the DGSE.

I have always found the “blame the French argument” suspicious. It has been put to me on a number of occasions and I have never used it, or indeed believed it. Certainly the break-ins took place long before any of the controversy over Iraqi WMD. Bush was barely in office in January 2001. But my research into the Niger affair has uncovered a number of strange facts that suggest there may be more to the French involvement in the affair than I previously believed. An investigation of the various documents that appeared in the Italian press has apparently found that a number of them were faxed from French fax numbers, others were tracked in emails sent via a French server.

Then there is the source of a series of articles in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica critical of the Italian intelligence services. A lot of the information in the articles does not match the evidence I have obtained from very reliable sources, some of whom have a track record of persistently contradicting the pre-war intelligence long before it was discredited, and others who were involved in the leaking of the Downing Street Memos. I am sure the two La Repubblica journalists accurately reported what their sources said. But all sources have motives and not all of them are well-intentioned. The two La Repubblica journalists have just published a book called Il Mercato della Paura (The Market in Fear), which includes their account of the Niger story and cites their source as Martino.

But another Italian journalist, Dina Nascetti of the Italian news magazine Expresso, has described how she was approached with the story of the faked documents and decided not to use it, passing the sources on to the La Repubblica journalists. She described the people who offered her the story as “non-Italian diplomatic sources”. That could scarcely describe Martino but it would describe his employers, the DGSE. Could it be that the DGSE was the source for the La Repubblica stories? Could it be that those stories about the French that I found so difficult to believe were right after all? Could it be that the French manufactured some of the documents as part of a disinformation campaign designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Martino’s pursuit of a copy of a contract showing Niger supplying Iraq with uranium led to the affair in the first place?

Comments

[Tac]

"Rocco Martino, who put the documents into circulation in the first place. Martino was a French spy ..."
THIS IS NOT TRUE !!!
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY FALSE !!!

[Mick says: Sorry Tac but it is absolutely true and he has admitted it to an Italian magistrate. His CV is very well known now. He was run by the Brussels head of station. You have reproduced an article from the LA Times which does not say anywhere that he wasnt a French agent and a much more recent article in the same paper quotes a former senior French intelligence officer as confirming the fact that Martino spied for them.]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05303/596897.stm

Sunday 30 October 2005 By Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times

Italy entangled in 'yellowcake' papers scandal Opponents of Berlusconi accuse his government of a whitewash

ROME -- Secret meetings. Spies. Forged documents. Government denials. Burglary.

As Washington braced for a special prosecutor to announce indictments, Italy was reliving its own small but significant role in "Niger-Gate," the scandal that surfaced as the Bush administration made its case for war in Iraq.

If all roads lead to Rome, so do the rumors: Washington's current
problem with the leak of a CIA officer's identity has tentacles here.

Former US diplomat Joseph C. Wilson, whose wife was the CIA operative whose identity was leaked, was dispatched in 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from Niger, about the time
documents asserting exactly that surfaced in Rome.

The documents were determined to be forgeries, and Mr. Wilson said he found little evidence to back the claim. Yet the assertion was used in early 2003 by President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair
to illustrate the threat posed by the Iraq of Saddam Hussein.

Who exactly forged the documents, which included letters and purported contracts, remains one of the great insolved mysteries of the affair.

Speculation about how the papers were produced in Rome -- and complaints that the Italian government has done little to find out, or to come clean -- dominated political debate in Italy last week, especially in
the leftist newspaper La Repubblica, which has dedicated page after page of breathless prose to the matter.

Among its claims, La Repubblica has suggested that the head of Italy's military secret service, Nicolo Pollari, disseminated the false information to the Bush administration on orders from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a loyal ally eager to give Bush a helping hand.

La Repubblica reported, and Bush administration officials confirmed to the Los Angeles Times, that Mr. Pollari met with then-deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley on Sept. 9, 2002. Mr. Hadley later
took the blame for including the incorrect claim in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Pollari went directly to Mr. Hadley, as well as to other
administration neo-conservative contacts, because CIA agents
in Rome were rebuffing his overtures -- apparently not considering the documents to be credible, La Repubblica reported.

Mr. Pollari will go before a closed hearing of the Italian parliament this week to explain his role. The Berlusconi government has repeatedly
denied that SISMI, as the military intelligence service is known, fabricated the now-discredited dossier.

"The government flatly denies any truth to the allegations, as per our communiques issued in July 2003 and August 2004," an official statement said last week. The newspaper reports are "false and devoid
of all foundation," the government said.

The murky saga involves one Rocco Martino, an occasional Italian spy and businessman, who initially peddled the documents. He has told reporters over the last few years that he obtained the papers through a contact at the Niger Embassy in Rome (which, incidentally, was
burglarized in 2001) with the help of another officer from Italian military intelligence, and that he sold them to a French intelligence agency, with which he occasionally traded.

Through his lawyer, Mr. Martino declined an interview this week.
"The less I say, the better," the lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, quoted Mr. Martino as saying. The lawyer would only say Mr. Martino, who was questioned by Italian prosecutors last year, did not realize that the material was fake and did not obtain it from military intelligence.

Mr. Martino is a problematic figure. La Repubblica described
him as a "failed carabiniere [policeman] and dishonest spy" and a "double-dealer" who plays many sides of every fence and was fired from his job in the Italian Secret Service.

In 2002, the documents came into the hands of an Italian eporter,
Elisabetta Burba, working for the magazine Panorama, which is owned by Berlusconi, the prime minister.

Ms. Burba has not publicly identified her source, except to say he was a usually reliable "security consultant," and she declined to do so
again Thursday in an interview. But news reports have said Mr. Martino
was her source. On orders from her editor, she handed copies of
the documents over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Separately,
she traveled to Niger to check out the claims herself -- notably,
that Iraq was attempting to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from
the African country -- and concluded the report was not reliable.

Ms. Burba, now 43, is an experienced journalist who has worked
extensively in Africa, Bosnia and Kosovo. She said she wanted
to press ahead with efforts to investigate the case further and
determine who forged the documents, but her magazine never
published any additional reports.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05303/596897.stm

[JS Carpenter]

I'll be very surprised if history fails to find the name of Michael Ledeen in the chain of origin of this malodorous document — Ledeen, the Iran-Contra contact with Ghorbanifar; Ledeen, the elevator of Machiavelli to canonical status, complete with his Commandment to Dissemble; the old Italian hand — his absence is unimaginable.

[Michael Ledeen]

Sorry to give you a bad hair day JS Carpenter, but as I have said repeatedly, I have zero involvement in this matter. Nor does Machiavelli, so far as I know.

[goy]

Hi Mick,

There are a couple of problems with the following bit in today's "Forgers" piece.

"After the IAEA had dismissed the forged documents, the Americans disowned all the Iraq-Niger uranium claims. But the latest allegations are unlikely to end the row."

The Americans have not disowned all Iraq-Niger uranium claims. Facts surrounding this issue are easily found here: http://www.factcheck.org/article222.html .

Also, on the document that was verified, you have written, "[t]his did not constitute evidence that Niger had agreed to supply yellowcake but it did indicate Saddam was trying to obtain it."

The row, as you call it, began with President Bush's assertion that "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa". The document you reference, as well as other classified information available at that time which did not include the forgeries, supported that assertion.

[Mick says: I think you seem to have misread my piece. That is precisely the point I am making. There was evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. It is a point I have in fact made in all my reporting of this issue, which goes back a very long time. This is just the first time we knew what the intelligence was that was regarded by both the DGSE and MI6 as evidence that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger.]

"This springs from the mission of Joseph Wilson, a former American ambassador, who was sent to Niger to check the uranium claims."

Wilson was not sent to Niger. He was planning a trip to Niger and was asked to check on the issue while there. You also neglect to mention that Wilson's wife has been identified as the person who suggested Wilson for the task, and that this is what brought her into the row. See the bottom of p. 39 here for information that confirms both of these important details:

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13jul20041400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/s108-301/sec2.pdf

[Mick says: This url is the Niger section Senate Intelligence Committee Report which in fact from pages 39-41 details the discussions within the CIA's Counter-Proliferation Division on the merits of "sending the former ambassador to Niger" and never at any point suggests that he was going there anyway. That he was sent is I am afraid not in doubt.]

"Wilson dismissed the possibility of Iraq obtaining uranium and publicly attacked Bush’s claims."

Wilson was not a CIA analyst. He was not privy to all information held by intelligence agencies and had nothing other than his own very limited information on which to base this assumption. He then anonymously leaked information based on his unwarranted assumptions to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post in a politically motivated effort to discredit the President's assertions - assertions which were, as we see above, completely warranted.

I have discussed this issue at length here: http://www.agoyandhisblog.com/index.php?s=ASS-U-ME

"The White House retaliated, with officials briefing journalists that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. Naming an undercover agent is illegal in America."

This statement assumes facts not in evidence. The CIA has steadfastly refused to identify Plame as an "undercover agent". Contrary to popular misconception, not everyone employed by the CIA is an "agent".

[Mick says: I agree and if the CIA openly said she was an undercover officer they would be committing the same crime the White House briefer(s) committed. But it has been confirmed off the record to a number of authoritative US journalists and indeed to the Sunday Times.]

"Last week, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former aide to Cheney, told the inquiry into the leak that the vice-president ordered the briefings and that Bush had authorised them."

This statement is an obfuscation of the facts. Plame's status WAS NOT an element of the briefings discussed in Fitzgerald's findings filed last week. And you do your readers an enormous disservice in asserting that it was.

[Mick says: I would have been if I had said that but I didnt. I said Bush authorised the briefings, not the naming of Plame. In fact in the final sentence, I said: "It is not clear if they authorised the leaking of Plame’s name...". Thaks for the comment though Goy. I am very eager to get comments from both side of the divide on this.]

[Trammell]

The Court filing by Fitzgerald made no mention of Plame's name. But why would it, as Libby is not indicted for that crime? Rather he is charged with perjury and obstruction.

Fitzgerald is a lawyer who must deal with legal technicalities, as well as not showing his complete hand on any other investigations on which he is currently working.

The rest of us are sitting in the court of public opinion, where common sense should prevail.

We all know, if we have been paying attention to the Plame investigation, that Karl Rove and Dick Cheney were out to tear "the Democrats" apart, as they believed that Joe Wilson and his wife were a team working against the Bush administration. (Talk about Paranoid!)

We have also seen what this administration is capable of doing to anyone they perceive as an enemy to their causes.

Common sense tells us, therefore, that selective leaking became a way to take down "enemies."

Josh Marshall, who has been keeping an eagle eye on Nigergate, says that the "investigation" is an attempt at another cover-up. I tend to believe him from what I have read and heard from sources in D.C.

The Neocons, in and out of government, were behind this foreign policy nightmare from long before Junior was ever elected; strike that, selected.

Common sense says that there was an understood policy of "getting Wilson," no matter what they had to leak. That, in my mind, includes the childish, stupid Plame leak.

It is not about the good of the country with these people. It is about making real their hallicination of redrawing the middle east and having arab state's loyalty, whether fear induced or not, to the U.S.. They believe they can just create reality and the rest of us can jolly well live in it and like it.

They should re-think that belief, or Civil War in Iraq will be the least of their worries.

[Mick says: This is a very good post. I do agree with most of your comments here Trammell. But I will take issue with the Italian cover-up theory. I have seen Marshall's comments on his blog today. He is entitled to his views on the Italian investigation. Heaven knows the Italians haven't helped themselves. If they have evidence of French duplicity they should publicise it or lodge a complaint with the European Commission. We over here are supposed to be part of one Europe after all.

But he also said the Sunday Times article must be inaccurate because it says "the documents go from the Nigerien Embassy to Martino, to the French and then to the UK." Since I have been writing the complete opposite of this for the past three years, and have stuck with that position in this article - please go back and read it now and see where it says what Marshall ludicrously claims it says - you'll have to excuse me if I reserve judgement on his "eagle eye", indeed on his ability to make any sort of rational or informed analysis of the affair at all.

As for the sources in Washington, I am afraid that there have been a whole series of claims made by people in Washington that present a skewed view of the reality. The CIA really didn't like being cut out of the French intel supply chain. I have a suspicion that there is a good deal of penis envy here. No-one likes being proved wrong by the French.

But any analysis of the affair that doesn't accord with the Butler Inquiry is a nonsense and I have seen very few reports in the US press that do take that inquiry seriously, largely it seems because of erroneous briefings from people in Washington, although given the current corrupt nature of US politics I do wonder why anyone takes anything said in Washington seriously.

This is turning into a blog posting in its own right and perhaps I might have to go there at some stage, but Butler is the bible here. It certainly doesn't come anywhere near the whole story, because under its remit it only deals with the British end, and it is typically restrained in its criticism of Blair - although to those who understand the language of Britain's civil service it is a damning indictment that ought on its own to have brought Blair down.

Nevertheless, it ought to be the starting point for anyone trying to get to the bottom of this affair. It is the onlyr one of the inquiries that saw all the evidence, including the Zahawi letter. Anyone who starts out from the view that Butler is a whitewash, as most US analysts on the liberal left seem to do, has entered an Alice in Wonderland world far removed from reality. They are starting from the wrong place and it doesnt matter how good their directions are from there, having started from the wrong place they must therefore always end up in the wrong place.]

[Jeff Davis]

Michael Ledeen, or (more likely)someone posing as him writes:

"Sorry to give you a bad hair day JS Carpenter, but as I have said repeatedly, I have zero involvement in this matter.

Yo, Mikey. What with the Straussian/Neocon repudiation of ethics as naively restrictive, and their/your historic, enthusiastic, and masterful embrace of lying to achieve their/your aims, your denial has zero credibility.

[Mick says: I'm sorry Jeff. I deleted the last sentence of your post. I don't want to be prissy but please treat anyone posting here with respect. They have come up front, just as you have, with their comments. Right or wrong they are entitled to their views. There is no doubt that was Michael Ledeen. I have his email and the poster was using the right one. He is also saying exactly the same thing as he said to Larisa Alexandrovna in an extensive - and very interesting - interview with Raw Story.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/Conversations_with_Machiavellis
_ghost_Denials_mark_0307.html

The meeting in Rome had nothing to do with Iraq, it was about how to deal with Iran. I believe him. It worries me, but I believe him. You'll probably have seen the reports on Iran in today's Sunday Times and Washington Post and Seymour Hersh has written about it too in the New Yorker. Perhaps we should stop worrying about Niger and get on with worrying about what stupid plans the administration now has to bomb Iran.]

[Prissy]

Michael,

I am glad you are not involved. But you can see why your name came up.

You may be a stodgy ole' "conservative"- but at least you are polite one.

I like to give credit where credit is due.

[Mick says: We have got a few Michaels posting here so I had better explain this one is addressed to Michael Ledeen.]

[goy]

Hi Mick -

You're welcome, and thanks. To your response -

"This url is the Niger section Senate Intelligence Committee Report which ... never at any point suggests that he was going there anyway. That he was sent is I am afraid not in doubt."

Please read the report again. You have missed the line which reads:

"...[Wilson's] wife mentioned to her supervisors that *** her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future *** and might be willing to use his contacts in the region." [my emphasis]

QED - his trip was already planned. He was not *sent*.

[Mick says: Sorry Goy that was an earlier trip not the one in question.]

As for corroboration regarding Plame's covert status, if it's from some "anonymous official", you'll have to forgive this reader's skepticism. My notion of "common sense" is a bit more rigorous than Trammell's - mine does not extend to making blind assumptions based on the word of a nameless and unaccountable eidolon who, via anonymity, is free to claim whatever they like.

Finally, regarding your assertion that the President authorized the leak of briefings outing Plame. First, nothing could be more plain than the implication contained in the following two paragraphs.

"The White House retaliated, with officials *** briefing journalists *** that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent. Naming an undercover agent is illegal in America.

Last week, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former aide to Cheney, told the inquiry into the leak that the vice-president ordered *** the briefings *** and that Bush had authorised them." [my emphasis]

*Please* don't try to tell me that these two paragraphs occur in sequence purely by accident, or that you can't see how "briefing" connects the two statements, leaving the clear impression that the President authorized leaks regarding the identity of Valerie Plame.

Second, the "final sentence" you refer to above (i.e., "It is not clear...") was apparently edited out after you wrote the piece - it appears nowhere in the online version of the article in question.

[Mick says: You're right of course they don't appear together by accident but neither do they say the President authorised the naming of Plame, nor am I trying to imply that, as my last sentence makes clear. But thanks for your erudite response which added the word Eidolon to my vocabulary, and for those who like me didn't study Greek and don't know what it meant, the Oxford Concise Dictionary has it as an unsubstantial image, spectre or phantom.]

[Chuck Unsworth]

In the light of some of the above perhaps it could be clarified as to whether these discussions are about the content of the Times Online article (as published) or Mick's earlier post.

Interesting though much of the detail may be, the political effects are likely to be limited - except perhaps as part of painting an overall picture of mendacity within various regimes and their intelligence services. But then we knew that already, didn't we?

The original consideration in all of this was whether Iraq (Saddam Hussein) was in the business of attempting to acquire the means of production of nuclear devices. Frankly, I would have been surprised if the Iraqis and many other countries actually were not. Why, given their stated aims and positions, would they pass up on any chance to strengthen their cause?

Arising from this there is the question as to the 'Coalition' intentions in terms of dealing with other regimes. Personally I doubt that Bush will wish (maybe have the temerity) to invade or nuke Iran, although he'll certainly want to appear to be having a dramatic effect on Iranian policies and actions. But I think he and his colleagues may have misjudged the opposition. The Iranians will not be a pushover and will have learnt much from watching what has been going on next door.

What America has probably learned is that even small groups of determined individuals can have huge effects. What it should learn - if it has not done so already - is that most conventional military action, and some diplomatic action, is not viable as a means of supression, elimination or even containment of such threats.

Then there are all the other countries who are acquiring, or have acquired, such weaponry and delivery systems. After all, there are other Continents to consider and let's just also remember where the oil comes from....

[Gridlock]

Mick,

Care to address the criticisms levelled here:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008174.php

Gridlock

[Mick says: Happy to do so Gridlock!

Talking Points which the url above will take you to is a website featuring Josh Marshall. For our UK readers who don’t know his work. Josh Marshall is a liberal-left US blogger and journalist who has been working on this story for a couple of years, cultivating a reputation as an expert on it. His website solicits comments on his blogs but doesn’t actually publish them underneath the blog as we do on this site. So there isn’t any chance of his claims being contradicted or queried openly on his blog unless he allows in a guest blogger. He has set his stall out on the same “the Italian Secret Service SISMI were to blame for absolutely everything” line which has been adopted by some sections of the Italian press.

This is what he told his readers about the Sunday Times/TimesOnline article in the very early hours of Sunday morning. (Ten minutes past midnight. I’m glad he was so eagerly anticipating it!)

“There are a slew of holes in this story; and you don't need to be too deep into the arcana of the story to see them.

“First, consider Nucera's role. He's a colonel in SISMI, Italian military intelligence. He puts the two key players together. They're also former SISMI employees. But that's just a coincidence. Neither Nucera nor SISMI have any role in what happened. He was just trying to help out a couple old friends.

“Montini actually says different. She gave an as-yet-unpublished interview in which she alleges that Nucera provided her with the forgeries, with the instructions to turn them over to Martino.”

Well that’s an easy claim to make isn’t it Josh? There's this interview. I’t’s not going to be made public but trust me it’s true. Well actually it is true. Montini did indeed give such an interview to CBS and as Josh must surely know, since he was working with CBS on the story, she also gave CBS another interview in which she said something completely different. This is Martino in his testimony to the Italian examining magistrate.

“When it was ascertained that the documentation was phony, I demanded explanations of Mrs Montini, who, to tell the truth, was very evasive on this point. I know CBS journalist [Anna] Matranga had two interviews with the lady. In the first, Mrs Montini reportedly said that I was to blame, whereas in the second, I understand she said that the phony documentation had been passed to her by Colonel Nucera.”

It is very easy to see why neither of these interviews have ever been published or aired. CBS is after all a professional news organisation. It could not be sure which was true, and its journalists must have suspected - as Martino was no doubt also telling them - that given her willingness to blame the other two likely culprits, Montini might herself be to blame.

Then there were the legal implications. Colonel Nucera could sue CBS if it aired the interview that accuses him of complicity, and given that they would also have to provide the court with the interview that accuses Martino, they could be pretty sure they would lose.

Sorry Josh. I think I prefer the interview with the Italian authorities where Montini knows that if she tells a lie she is picking the Go to Jail card. Do not pass go. Do not collect your 500 Euros.

Not a very honest point to make was it Josh? And your next point please:

“Here's another point to consider. If the Italians really have this all figured out, and if the Italian government isn't implicated in any way, why have Montini, the Nigerien consul and Martino never been arrested or accused of any crime? Each is now in Italy. No charges have ever been brought against any of them.”

Sorry Josh it’s one of those things that most people know before they become reporters. The consul hasn’t been arrested because he’s a diplomat. He’s got diplomatic status, and just in case the Italians decided to throw him out, he was moved to the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation, also in Rome of course but his being part of a UN organisation makes chucking him out that much more difficult. Still it’s early days. Once the election’s over and the Italian press start following up the Sunday Times story, it could well happen. As for Montini and Martino, they cooperated with the Italian investigation for a reason, and what precisely do you charge them with anyway? Neither of them actually got any money for the documents so it wasn’t actually a criminal fraud.

And your next point Josh. Come on you must have a better shot than that. Hit me with everything you’ve got!

“There are various other holes and contradictions in this story. But there's one big one that you only need to read the papers to see. According to the story in the Times, the documents go from the Nigerien Embassy to Martino, to the French and then to the UK. Martino later sells them to an Italian journalist just a few months before the war.”

Er, sorry Josh. You’ll have to run that past me again. I said what?

“The documents go from the Nigerien Embassy to Martino, to the French and then to the UK.”

Sorry Josh I said nothing of the sort. Come on now buck up. Pay attention. What I actually said was the forged documents were passed to the US embassy by an Italian journalist. It was background. It’s not new Josh. Come on. You’ve been following the story. It’s well recorded.

As for the French, I said the French turned the forged documents down when Martino first produced them, again it’s not new, Josh it’s background. As for MI6, they never saw the forged documents until they were passed to the UN.

What I also said, and this is new, was that some time in 2002, the French obtained another document - not from Martino, his arrangement with Montini was long dead by now. This was obtained from another source that had to be protected very carefully. It was a letter to someone in the Niger government from the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, which was dated July 6, 2000 and specifically spoke about obtaining uranium. We know that in the summer of 2002, a copy was passed to MI6 by the French who refused to allow the Brits to pass it to the Americans and insisted on an agreed interpretation that it showed Saddam had “sought” uranium from Niger. So sorry, I didn’t say what you claimed I said. Was that just a mistake Josh, or were you trying to bamboozle your readers like you were with the bit about the interview?

The trouble is Josh that you have hitched your wagon to the patently inaccurate claim that the forged documents constituted the only intelligence backing the idea that Saddam had tried to get uranium from Niger. Despite all the evidence to the contrary you have convinced yourself that “it was all fruit of the same poison tree. The phony documents was all there ever was behind the Niger canard.”

So you and I could never agree on this, because it’s very well established that the British had “unconfirmed intelligence” going back to 1999 that Iraq had an interest in acquiring uranium from Niger but it was not backed up by substantive evidence until the French produced conclusive evidence that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger - the Zahawi letter - some time in the summer of 2002, either June or September. From that point on, there was copper-bottomed evidence, described by the Butler Inquiry – the only one of all the various inquiries to have seen it - as “credible”. Butler also deemed the joint DGSE/MI6 assessment to be “well-founded” and said that it had nothing to do with the forged documents. Of course, you will now claim that the Butler Inquiry was a cover-up, it’s your only way out. But at least readers of this blog will know the truth.]

[Seixon]

Michael Smith,

I'm glad you have decided to start blogging. It provides better access to you, the journalist with all the sources, and provides a better dialogue about what the facts may be.

I deplored your coverage of the Downing Street Memo, and your insistence that the Bush administration's bombing of Iraq constituted the beginning of the war. This is due to the fact that the Clinton administration bombed Iraq just as much, and you selectively cut off the months in which bombing by Bush died down to give the reader a false impression that the bombing continued unabated.

Anyways, enough about that.

Your recent article seems to be close to what I have thought all along. However, I must ask you a few questions where it seems there is some inconsistency.

The SSCI report says that the CIA issued a report on October 15, 2001 detailing an uranium sales agreement. The details provided matched what was eventually printed in the forged documents.

Now, how does this fit into your story? The intel came from a foreign government service. Who? If the French had dismissed Martino when he came with the forgeries, who was it that gave this report to the CIA?

According to the sloppy redaction of the SSCI report, it was the Italians. See the sloppy redaction here: http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2005/12/why_out_italy.html

Could this be the result of a French misinformation campaign to finger the Italians as the source of the information? But wouldn't that indicate that the French gave the CIA the information contained within the forged documents?

In fact, reading the Niger section of the SSCI report really gets the gray cells going with this new information.

The first intelligence report on the uranium deal came from the DO on October 15, 2001. Then the DO came with another report on February 5, 2002. This included the details from the forged documents. A CIA analyst asked the DO about their source for this information and they said it came from a "very credible source".

On or after February 12, 2002 Cheney read a DIA report based on DO's reporting. He asked for a response from WINPAC. WINPAC produced a Senior Publish When Ready assessment (SPWR021402-05 - can you get a hold of this with a FOIA request??) in response to this with limited distribution. Yet, the CIA gave the Vice President a separate version of the same assessment which differed and named the source for DO's reporting as [redacted].

So... Why would they name the source of the information differently to the Vice President?
[No. They're not saying it differently, it's just the CIA is actually naming the service in the second report but just saying it was a foreign government service in the first.]

Interesting that all of these reports were coming out of DO, the same place where Valerie Plame was working. Even more interesting, Plame offered up her husband to go to Niger on February 12, 2002 - the same date as the SPWR assessment was published by WINPAC. Then the next day, CPD, the division of DO where Plame worked, asked [redacted] about their idea to send Wilson to Niger, and asked them about any more information on the uranium reports. Plame then asked her husband if he would go after CPD decided to send him, saying it was a "crazy report".

A "crazy report" that originated from within the same directorate where she worked.

Where did the DO get this from? The French? The Italians? Wilson indicated in interviews that it was the Italians, as the clumsy redaction of the SSCI report reveals. Something which the DO reports officer had never told him.

Did his wife leak classified information to him?

Anyways, I am most interested in just who the source for the DO was in October 2001 and February 2002. You say that the French rejected the forgeries, then one would have to conclude that it was the Italians who gave the information to the CIA... or?

[Mick says: The Italians did pass information and you read my previous article on this and pulled apart the redaction yourself so you know this already but my understanding is that they did not have any documents saying this. They knew this information was around but they couldn't confirm it. They were just throwing it into the pot and hoping that someone would come up with an answer as to whether or not it was true. That is the way these things work and if they had any documents they would have passed them on to the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee (SIC) report would have said it. The SIC report talks of a "verbatim text" of the deal between Iraq and Niger for 500 tons. Sadly there are two lines redacted before this reference and the bulk of a line after it. Can you get into them? So where have the Italians got this from? I don't know for sure but the information clearly matches the fake documents so how to explain it?

We can only speculate. My guess is that Martino is rattling around in a cage trying to make some money out of his documents which he now knows are fake, the French told him so in October 2000. He's lost his nice little earner out of the Niger embassy and he needs to make some money. By now its the beginning of 2002 and he knows there is a market in information on Iraq. The press is full of talk about US intentions to invade Iraq. So he takes the documents to the Italians to try to sell the info to them. He won't let them have the documents themselves because he knows if he does they'll say the same thing as the French. He just lets whoever he meets from SISMI copy out the detail of the contract but no more. Which is why the Italians have this detail that they just arent sure about and pass it on.

While we're into idle speculation, a lot of people have asked my why the consul would have put the wrong minister on the contract. I think they are looking at it from the wrong direction. How many non-Nigeriens know the identity of any Nigerien politician? If you weren't a Nigerien official you would have to look the name of any Nigerien politician up and would therefore get it right. But if you were a Nigerien official you might very well ask yourself, who was the minister then? Oh I know it was such and such and get it wrong. {Since posting this, something else more likely has occured to me, see my response to Des Moines on the Nigergate I post.) But this is all speculation. I am much more interested in facts that have been checked out properly and in your sloppy redaction techniques. What else have you managed to reinstate?]