Did the CIA forge the Niger memo to damage WH credibility ???

[welshTerrier2]

somebody forged the now famours Niger document that allegedly showed that Saddam was trying to obtain yellow cake uranium from Africa ... the question is, who did and why did they do it ???

allegations about Saddam's trying to obtain these nuclear materials from Niger first surfaced in 1999 ... the charges were thoroughly investigated by a number of people and agencies and found NOT to be credible ... but the documents did not surface until 3 years later just before the vote on the IWR in October, 2002 ...

two possibilites seem to exist ... either the forger wanted to support the case for war or the forger wanted to weaken the case for war ... without going into all the details, it's also important to understand that a huge feud was going on between the CIA (which did not find the WMD allegations credible) and the Office of Special Plans (OSP) that was being run under the auspices of the White House ...

the documents about Niger uranium were awful forgeries ... it does not seem reasonable that anyone hoping to have them pass the necessary scrutiny would ever have believed they were authentic ... so ask yourself this: why would someone do such a horrible job forging these documents??? ... an article cited below by Seymour Hersh included the following:

One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told me, "These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking."

well, you could conclude they were just simply inept ... but at this level, this degree of incompetence wouldn't be my first guess ... and because of that conclusion, i'm discounting the likelihood that the Niger memo was written by someone supporting the IWR and the invasion of Iraq ... if you want to build a case for war, you need to do a better job than planting incredibly bad forgeries ...

so now what? why would someone plant such a bad forgery? my conclusion is that the document was forged by and planted by someone in the CIA ... but their goal was NOT to support bush's case for war; their goal was to tempt the OSP into using obviously bogus data to support their case ... someone in the CIA saw their agency under attack by OSP ... OSP and the WH politicized everything and refused to accept the findings of the CIA that challenged the case about WMD in Iraq ...

the Niger memo virtually dared the WH to use such outrageous forgeries ... the WH was eagerly looking for supporting evidence to its aluminum tubes argument (i.e. that they could be used to produce enriched uranium) ... the WH was desperate to strengthen its case about "mushroom clouds over NY" by linking the centrifuges (i.e. aluminum tubes) to the purchase of yellow cake uranium ... they were so intent to "fix the facts around the policy", as stated in the Downing Street minutes, that they were "ripe to be suckered" into using the Niger document ... the CIA may have realized that the document could become the "trojan horse" that would ultimately destroy the credibility of the WH case to invade Iraq ... the WH would be so eager to accept this "gift" that they would not realize the damage it held within ...

two copies of the document were sent from Rome where it was "discovered" ... one went to the State Department and one to the CIA ... the CIA immediately proclaimed the document a forgery ... the State Department, however, included it in a list of supplemental evidence provided to the UN ... George Tenet called the State Department and later wrote to them stating he believed the document was a forgery ... but the WH now had their proof ... and the CIA would later have their "plausible deniability" (i.e. "we tried to tell them it was bogus but they just wouldn't listen!!") ... a few months later, in spite of additional confirmation that the documents were forged, bush pushed ahead with his "this proves it" evidence and included references to the Niger memo in his State of the Union address ...

the trap had been baited and the mouse had taken the bait ... the only problem was that the war went ahead anyway ... but now, as the Iraq and Plame investigation deepens, perhaps those who took the bait, used the bait, and knew the documents were obvious forgeries will be held to account ...

and perhaps it was true that buried somewhere deep inside the CIA, a plan was hatched to discredit the WH by handing them evidence they couldn't resist using even though it was so obviously false ...

Comments ??

btw, please read these outstanding articles related to this subject:

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Niger_uranium
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,999737,00.html
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?030331fa_fact1

[Peachhead22]

1. IMO, Chalabi wrote it

To bolster the case for war.

[welshTerrier2]

2. the Iran Contra boys and Likud

other allegations pointed at either Michael Ledeen or someone "associated" with him ... this may have been done in conjunction with agents representing Israel ...

and certainly Chalabi wanted war ...

but this really smells like a CIA disinformation campaign to me ... they had expertise on the previous history of these allegations and could plant the forgeries perfectly into the "information pipeline" ...

and still, whoever did it, prepared such incredibly bad forgeries that its hard to believe players at that level wouldn't take more care to make their case ... this feels like someone wanted the evidence to be so bad that the WH could not come back later and say the documents were credible ... and the truth is, now they can't ...

[punpirate]

3. Who's been wanting to invade Iraq ever since...

... the fall of the Soviet Union? The neo-cons.

They're also the biggest liars around. Ledeen swears he had nothing to do with them, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know the people who did.

These forged papers first went into circulation in the intelligence community (in Italy) not long after Clinton ignored their 1998 "please invade Iraq, pretty please" letter.

I couldn't point you to the individual who did them. But, they were done by people who thought themselves to be a lot smarter than they actually are, and that smells to me of right-wing think tank.

Cheers.

[jobycom]

4. I don't buy the CIA as the forgers. A couple of thoughts

First, you know more than me about it, and you may be right, it just sounds wrong to me, because I don't think the CIA would have done quite THAT bad a job at forging, and because they waited until after the invasion to spring the trap. Even with Wilson's trip, there just wasn't enough effort before the invasion, it seems to me, to be a CIA attempt to derail Bush's invasion. To me, it seems that Wilson's trip was an attempt by the CIA to get caught up on the document, as if they hadn't seen it yet.

Second thought: the most likely culprits seem to be either a low-budget group trying to provoke an attack on Hussein, or an independent party trying to pass off a hoax for non-political reasons. The first possibility would be someone like Chalabi, as mentioned above, and that would fit the timeframe of the forgeries. If they were first found in 99, that's right after Clinton's refusal to invade or give support to the coup attempt in 98 (I think it was 98, I'm not as deep on this as you are). So a forgery by a group sympathetic to rebels in Iraq could have been made to either push Clinton and/or Congress to back the invasion, or could have been made to make Clinton look weak so Congress would over-ride him. Or maybe, in the minds of the rebels, just to give Clinton or Congress an excuse to invade if they really wanted to. That fits the timetable better than the CIA trying to forge something to embarrass the OSP.

The second possibility is that the forgery was done by a third party trying to impress an intelligence agency, or to get some reward (money, access, whatever) for turning them over, or for some private corporate reason we can't even begin to guess at. Maybe the target dupes weren't even an intelligence agency but some business venture somewhere.

That's not to say that the CIA didn't put this into the pipeline again at some later date. If they knew of the documents, they could have reintroduced them, maybe to the British or Italians or wherever, in an attempt to plant bad evidence, either to sabotage the invasion or undermine the OSP or just to use as a weapon against Bush when they needed it. It could even have been British intel, couldn't it? Maybe they were setting up Bush to fail, trusting that someone would uncover the forgery in time to stop the invasion, since they couldn't talk sense into their own government. Or it could have even been something joint between the Brits and the CIA--wouldn't that be interesting, having two intelligence agencies in two different countries working to thwart their governments?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I yield to your better knowledge, I'm just guessing at this from the incomplete information I've picked up here and there.

[welshTerrier2]

5. interesting analysis ...

please don't "yield to my better knowledge" ... i'm just speculating here ... and i'm basing my analysis on two key points:

1. the documents were so awful that they wouldn't have convinced anyone they were real and
2. there was a major feud over the Iraq evidence between the CIA and OSP ...

i think both of these things are facts !! how we interpret them is wide open ...

i just wanted to clarify something you said in your post ... you referred to the "timeframe of the forgeries" as being around 1998 or 1999 ... i don't think we can know that ... the original allegations about Saddam and Niger surfaced in 1999 but the forgeries may not have been made and planted until 2002 ... that's what i believe the case to be based on what i wrote in the OP ...

most responses thus far seem to believe the forgeries were made to support the war ... that certainly is the conventional wisdom ... to believe this, though, you also have to accept the high level of incompetence of whoever wrote them ... from the paragraph i cited from Hersh's article, i don't accept that ...

i wrote the post to stimulate reflection on the issue; i have no idea whatsoever if my theory is right ... i do, however, think it's worth considering ...

[jobycom]

6. I think they were earlier than that.

I've been going off this basic explanation, though I had heard it somewhere other than the blog I've clipped here. But it puts the transfer of the documents to the Italians in late 2001, and they were part of a much larger packet of documents that weren't forged, implying they were on file for a while. Not necessarily so, but that's sort of the implication. I've always thought that they were documents forged for some other reason that wound up in these files and then were given to the Italians. That's what I thought had happened. It could be all wrong. Who knows which of the lies we've been told is actually true? It's even vaguely possible that the documents were forged to back up something the forger believed to be true, like the Donation of Constantine of the Middle Ages.

Anyway, this is the link:
In early 2000, the ‘security consultant’ was approached by a former colleague from SISMI whom he'd known for some twenty five years. This current SISMI officer told him that he had a source in the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, that they (i.e. SISMI) had no more use for her, but that she could be a source of valuable information for him if he put her on a monthly retainer. They were washing their hands of her, he said. But she could be of use to him.

The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security consultant's' longstanding clients.

What wasn’t clear at the time, however, was that SISMI hadn’t washed their hands of this Niger Embassy employee at all. She remained a SISMI asset. In fact, the relationship which the SISMI officer had set up was intended to serve as a conduit through which SISMI could conceal its role in the dissemination of what proved to be disinformation.

This was how the forged documents came into the security consultant’s hands.

You’ll remember that most of the papers in the bundle of Niger-uranium documents that arrived at the US Embassy in Rome were actually authentic. It was only a subset of the documents --- those specifically related to the alleged Niger-Iraq transactions and a couple others --- that were bogus.

In late 2001, the SISMI officer brought the Niger Embassy employee a packet of documents --- those later identified as forgeries --- and instructed her to slip them in with the other documents she was providing to the ‘security consultant’ on an on-going basis.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_01.php

[welshTerrier2]

7. there is no proof the forgeries were part of the original bundle

good research, jobycom !!

here's another pretty good source of information on this: http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Rocco_Martino

i don't think we have any credible evidence that the forgeries were originally part of the larger packet of documents ... once that packet was stolen, all bets are off ... the forgeries could have been added to the packet at any time ...

i will say that if the forgeries did exist back in January, 2001, my theory would not make any sense ... i just don't think we have enough evidence to draw that conclusion though ...

[jobycom]

8. Aha!

That's the essence of the matter, then. When did the Italians get them, and when were they forged? If they were added to the bundle later, then your theory gains even more plausibility. If they were in the original bundle, it gets weaker, though there is no telling what the CIA knew about Bush's plans by the end of 2001.

Even if the documents were forged earlier, the CIA could still have re-released them, so to speak, for exactly the reasons you suggest. They don't have to be the forgers for that to work. Covert operatives are trained to make use of natural, existing ground cover.

[LynnTheDem]

9. Ahmed CHALABI. A known forger. A bush buddy. OSP.

[reprehensor]

11. OSP

I'll second that. Wouldn't be suprised if Douglas Feith did it personally.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

13. Certainly him or the circles he travels in

The Leeden-Chalabi-Ghorbanifar axis of bullshit.

[H2O Man]

10. One would need

to know when the documents came into being, and compare that to the date the US invaded Iraq, before it would be possible to decide if your theory might be true. After finding out those dates, any possibility of the theory being true disappears.

[MiniMe]

12. IMHO, it was the White House to justify the war on Iraq n/t