Author: Tex MacRae

More fake “documents” used to push Bush’s war on Iraq, Newsweek reports:

The new report is only the latest chink in the armor of the alleged Saddam-Al Qaeda connection. Last year, the September 11 Commission found there was no “collaborative” relationship between the Iraqi regime and Osama bin Laden; one high-level Al Qaeda commander—who had been cited by Powell as testifying to talks about chemical- and biological-warfare training—later recanted his claims. But the Pentagon and Cheney’s office have been reluctant to abandon the case: in the months after U.S. and allied forces deposed Saddam, NEWSWEEK has learned, Iraqi informants approached U.S. intelligence personnel with what purported to be caches of documents proving that Saddam’s dealings with Al Qaeda were extensive. (One cache of documents even claimed that six of 19 of the September 11 hijackers had been trained to fly in Iraq.)

Current and former U.S. counterterrorism officials said that when officials at the Bush White House learned about the existence of documents linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, they became very excited and pressured intelligence agencies to work quickly to validate and decipher them. However, the CIA ultimately established that most key documents about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection turned over were faked—just like the documents purporting to show Iraqi purchases of uranium.

via Laura Rozen

So, the CIA managed to keep the Niger forgeries out of Bush’s Cincinnati speech of October 7, 2002 but the WHIGgers shoehorned this one in:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Though the Saddam-Al Qaida connection is generally scoffed at now and considered about as reliable as the Niger uranium myth, at the time they were trying to scare the American people into a war, the Bushies desperately needed to prove this connection. As the number of American war dead passes 2,000 and the unknown tens of thousands of Iraqi dead continue to mount, consider the consequences of this series of lies. Consider the wasted efforts of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, and then the ISG, searching the sand dunes of Iraq for imaginary WMD. Consider the frustrations of being sent on a deadly dangerous task purely on the basis of fake, worthless “intelligence.” As the Telegraph reported in April of 2004:

US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, “told us what we wanted to hear”.

“We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq,” the agent said.

“Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one.”

The sprawling US intelligence community is in a state of open political warfare amid conflicting pressures from election-year politics, military combat and intelligence analysis. The Bush administration has seized on Zarqawi as the principal leader of the insurgency, mastermind of the country’s worst suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages. He is held up as the most tangible link to Osama bin Laden and proof of the claim that the former Iraqi regime had links to al-Qa’eda.

However, fresh intelligence emerging from around Fallujah, the rebel-held city that is at the heart of the insurgency, suggests that, despite a high degree of fragmentation, the insurgency is led and dominated not by Arab foreigners but by members of Iraq’s Sunni minority.
[…]
Both President George W Bush and Tony Blair have, to varying degrees, conceded that intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction programme was misleading. But both continue to maintain that the continued violence since Saddam was ousted is because Iraq is now the front line in the war on terrorism.

Yet it now seems that the intelligence on which such claims are based is haphazard, scanty and contradictory

And now we know why. It was just more faked, cooked up propaganda, not “intelligence” at all. This is how the War Party “supports the troops.”

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber has translated part of today’s La Repubblica piece:

La Repubblica has another story today on the role of Italian intelligence in feeding bogus evidence on Niger to Hadley and others in the US and elsewhere. There’s one key piece of new information. UK intelligence claimed to have evidence independent of the forged documents, which showed that Iraq had indeed been trying to obtain uranium in Niger. According to La Repubblica:

This “evidence” has never been brought forward … “If it ever were brought forward,” said a source in Forte Braschi to la Repubblica, with a smile, “it would be discovered, with red faces, that it was Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980’s, and shared with our friend Hamilton McMillan.”

More analysis by Henry here.

I’m not sure exactly what the provenance of this Richard Sale (intelligence correspondent for UPI) article is, but it’s posted by Pat Lang on his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis and referred to here by Larry Johnson and here by Patrick Doherty of Tom Paine.com. Some highlights:

• Two top White House aides are expected to be indicted today on various charges related to the probe of CIA operative Valerie Plame whose classified identity was publicly breached in retaliation after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged the administration’s claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy enriched unranium from Niger, acording to federal law enforcement and senior U.S. intelligence officials.

  If no action is taken today, it will take place on Friday, these sources said.



• Although most press accounts emphasized that Fitzgerald was likely to concentrate on attempts by Libby Rove and others to cover-up wrongdoing by means of perjury before the grand jury, lying to federal officials, conspiring to obstruct justice, etc. But federal law enforcement officials told this reporter that Fitzgerald was likely to charge the people indicted with violating Joe Wilson’s civil rights, smearing his name in an attempt to destroy his ability to earn a living in Washington as a consultant.

  The civil rights charge is said to include “the conspiracy was committed using U.S. government offices, buildings, personnel and funds,” one federal law enforcement official said.



• The probe is far from being at an end. According to this reporter’s sources, Fitzgerald approached the judge in charge of the case and asked that a new grand jury be empaneled. The old grand jury, which has been sitting for two years, will expire on October 28.


• Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament nvestigationi into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq’s interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.

  They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC’s Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.
  

UPDATE: From Pat Lang:

An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.

Richard Sale

Laura Rozen has just posted a blockbuster article on the La Repubblica Niger forgery series:

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy’s military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.

Today’s exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.

Pollari told the newspaper that since 2001, when he became Sismi’s director, the only member of the U.S. administration he has met officially is his former CIA counterpart George Tenet, but the Italian newspaper quotes a high-ranking Italian Sismi source asserting a meeting with Hadley. La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official saying, “I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley.”

Go read! For additional context, see this Gordon Prather article in AntiWar.com today. From Fixing and Forging :

In late 2001, the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service had informed the CIA that the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican had reportedly attempted on a visit to Niger to arrange the purchase of yellowcake.

There was, at that time, no documentation.

In February 2002, Wilson and others went to Niger and reported back that the Italian report was without foundation.

Hence, in early October 2002, CIA Director Tenet asked that a reference to the alleged purchase of yellowcake by Iraq be removed from a speech President Bush was to give on Oct. 7.

Guess what happened next.

The “documentation” for the arranged purchase of yellowcake by Iraq from Niger was delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome on Oct. 9.

The next day, Congress approved the Joint Congressional Resolution Authorizing the Use of U.S. Armed Forces Against Iraq.

And Bush, Cheney, and Condi Rice began referring to the Niger documents as proof that Saddam Hussein was reconstructing his nuclear weapons program.

The documents were provided to the International Atomic Energy Agency in March 2003, and within hours were determined to be forgeries.

Days later, Bush invaded Iraq.

UPDATE: Henry at Crooked Timber has done a translation of the actual La Repubblica article.

The confirmation that Patrick Fitzgerald is indeed investigating the forged Niger uranium documents introduced to the Bush Administration through Italy, first broken by AntiWar.com’s Justin Raimondo is now appearing in multiple “MSM” reports. On October 19, 2005, Justin wrote:

Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report: now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. “Bulldog” Fitzgerald asked for and “has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document,” the former CIA officer tells me:

“Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi.”

Among other major media outlets, UPI’s Martin Walker reports:

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.

The second is that NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald’s team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald’s team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush’s closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair’s aides has “sexed up” the evidence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Still, Walker doesn’t appear to have tumbled to the logical explanation of why Fitzgerald’s probe into the outing of CIA undercover agent Valerie Plame leads him to the Niger forgeries. Mark Kleiman is in the same boat. In speculating about the selection of documents Fitzgerald has posted on his new website, Kleiman writes:

On the other hand, his selection of documents does seem significant. As against the GOP spin that he was appointed to look into violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, he has the original letter giving him “all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department’s investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity” and a second letter written shortly thereafter specifying that his authority extends to any criminal attempt to frustrate that investigation.

But note that none of the documents on the site gives Fitzgerald any authority over the wider question of who made up and peddled the Nigerien yellowcake story, or the still wider question about how the administration hyped the threat of an Iraqi nuclear weapons acquisition program as part of its sales pitch for the war.

Apparently Frank Rich suggested on Meet the Press today that the case might go in that direction. Ain’t gonna happen. Surely if Fitzgerald were moving that way, he would have asked for authority to do so, and would have added that request and the response to it to his webpage.

There is an explanation for why Fitzgerald’s existing authority covers the Niger forgeries, which Kleiman and Walker miss, which is explained in Justin Raimondo’s column today:

Everyone assumes Libby and his co-conspirators were really after Wilson, but this now seems unwarranted, especially in light of Fitzgerald’s reported focus on the Niger uranium forgeries. If this question of the forgeries is now within Fitzgerald’s purview, it opens up the possibility that the conspirators really were after Plame on her own account. If Plame and her associates were hot on the trail of whoever forged the Niger uranium documents, by neutralizing Brewster Jennings & Associates the Libby cabal closed one possible route to uncovering their schemes – and opened up another one.

Read the rest.

One of the most puzzling questions about the Plame-outing scheme has always been why? How stupid and petty is it to “discredit” Wilson with lame charges of nepotism and wife-sponsored boondoggles? A flat-out hit job on the CIA for getting too close to the Niger forgeries is far more in character for the Bushistas.

Oh, and that mysterious “third man?” My money is on Grover Norquist.

UPDATE: Well, isn’t Jane Hamsher’s post interesting?

Via The Editors at The Poorman, this post at The Tattered Coat is a must read.

…Daniel has been silenced, against his will. And not only has he been silenced — he has been forced to publicly declare himself “a supporter of the administration and of her policies.”

A stop-lossed soldier angry that he is still serving in Iraq, seven months beyond his original enlistment agreement, Daniel is no longer free to post on his blog.

Read the entire thing, but here’s a sample of Daniel Goetz’s writing, from July 04, 2005:

S.O.S.

We – the forlorn Atlas, who bears the burden of lofty decisions – salute you, the free. May this day be a blessing to you and yours as you celebrate your freedom from the clutches of tyranny and strife. May your beer be as cold as the hearts of your enemies and your fireworks carry the zeal of your patriotism.

On this day, may you not be napalmed by an invading Army. May you not be tortured for a parking violation. Today, may your hometown not be bombed. When you sit down to eat tonight, may armed men not barge into your house and search your wife’s underwear drawer. May you not be zip-tied, marched outside, beaten and shot in the face.

God Save America.

God, save America.