Via the Left Coaster blog, this snippet from a piece in the UK’s Private Eye magazine illuminates the mystery of how the Niger uranium forgeries came to be incorporated in the U.S. intelligence stream:
“When the US State Department finally gave international weapons inspectors its ‘evidence’ that Saddam was trying to buy uranium from the African State of Niger in 2003, they held back the one document even their own analysts knew was ‘funky’ and ‘clearly a forgery’. Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency quickly discovered that all the papers were fake, but they did this by spotting errors that had slipped passed the State Department and CIA: The fact that the US government handed over the whole bundle of what became known as the ‘Niger Forgeries’ except the one paper they recognised as a hoax suggests they were trying to pass off documents they knew were phoney as the real thing.”
The neocons are crying “McCarthyism” in response to demands that Congress investigate charges that we were lied into war. However, somebody in our government knew these documents were forgeries, and nonetheless utilized them to make the case for war. When the IAEA exposed them as fraudulent, the FBI initiated an investigation — which soon ran up against the brick wall of this administration’s unwillingness to pursue the matter. What I want to know is why is it left to Private Eye to do the job the FBI ought to be doing?
What did U.S. government officials know about the Niger forgeries, and when did they know it? When we get an answer to this question — or if we can even get Congress and our law enforcement agencies to ask it — we’ll be a lot closer to knowing who lied us into war.