BREAKING: State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False (Jason Leopold)

[WilliamPitt]

A digitized copy of the original memo will be posted later this evening on this page:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041706Y.shtml

State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 17 April 2006

Eleven days before President Bush's January 28, 2003, State of the Union address in which he said that the US learned from British intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa - an explosive claim that helped pave the way to war - the State Department told the CIA that the intelligence the uranium claims were based upon were forgeries, according to a newly declassified State Department memo.

The revelation of the warning from the closely guarded State Department memo is the first piece of hard evidence and the strongest to date that the Bush administration manipulated and ignored intelligence information in their zeal to win public support for invading Iraq.

On January 12, 2003, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries," the memo dated July 7, 2003, says.

Moreover, the memo says that the State Department's doubts about the veracity of the uranium claims may have been expressed to the intelligence community even earlier.

Those concerns, according to the memo, are the reasons that former Secretary of State Colin Powell refused to cite the uranium claims when he appeared before the United Nations in February 5, 2003, - one week after Bush's State of the Union address - to try and win support for a possible strike against Iraq.

"After considerable back and forth between the CIA, the (State) Department, the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Association), and the British, Secretary Powell's briefing to the U.N. Security Council did not mention attempted Iraqi procurement of uranium due to CIA concerns raised during the coordination regarding the veracity of the information on the alleged Iraq-Niger agreement," the memo further states.

THE REST: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041706Y.shtml

[Nickster]

1. Drip,drip,drip,drip.......n/t

[madaboutharry]

2. This administration can not lead this nation

for nearly three more years.

[The Wizard]

32. Sure they can

deeper into the rat hole. They have failed to learn rule one. When in a hole, stop digging.

[panader0]

3. Even more damning evidence.... will anyone listen?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

4. The Only Thing I Don't Get Is,

if this was damning to them somehow, why has it been declassified?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

9. Maybe they didn't have a choice. It all seems to be coming out,....

...why does that seem to be a problem?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

15. What Are You Talking About? LOL

Seem to be a problem? :rofl:

Methinks you read into that post a wee bit too much lol.

I'm just wondering, legitimately, why it was declassified. I'd say we all have more than enough reason to question anything they put out, wouldn'cha say? Let's face it, they aren't exactly foreign to ulterior motives ya know? But regardless, I'm thrilled that bit by bit the truth is getting out there. What I want to see more than anything though, is OUR version of the DSM memos. I figure if Matthew Rycroft took the minutes for them, someone must've for us too right? What I wouldn't give to see what our version would contain.

[linazelle]

5. This is new? We knew that two years ago when condi lied.

What is the significance of this vs. previous news?

[WilliamPitt]

6. The...uh...newly declassified memo proving it, perhaps?

Having documented proof of what you've always known is helpful, especially during trials, hearings, etc.

Conyers for Speaker. :)

[linazelle]

16. OK Thanks. Just asking.

:hi:

[goclark]

21. I'll Drink To That!

Mr. Speaker!

That would be music to my ears....

:toast: :party:

[stop the bleeding]

29. Conyers for Speaker - Yes because when * and Darth Cheney

get impeached, then all we need is to have the DEMS when the House and - can you say President Conyers - now wouldn't that just set the world on it's head?

It could happen.......;)

[kpete]

7. the 16 words

unbelievable....wow!!! K&R

[joemurphy]

8. See, it wasn't a lie because we learned it from British

intelligence even though our own State Department felt what the Brits had was based on a forgery. Ergo, we must stop Saddam! Makes sense to me.

[helderheid]

10. well crap for crap!

:wow:

[converted_democrat]

11. Wow.. I know this IS a big deal, and I really do care, but this stuff is

really getting to be overwhelming.. Everyday there is something bigger than the last.

Edited because I wanted to..

[Mr_Spock]

12. You don't say...

:D

[Emit]

13. Copy of the memo on this thread

Posted here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=948537

[patdem]

14. Something VERY STRANGE here..when Colin Powell was Sec of State

he got VERY little press, and Condi who was then National Security Advisor she got lotsa press. Now that Condi is Sec of State she gets lotsa press and the NEW National Security Advisor - Hadley gets NO PRESS AT ALL EVER?

Oh, by the way, Hadley took the heat for the 16 words, cause he FORGOT the CIA said it was bogus in a speach bush* gave...he never indicated the State Department told him they were FUCKING FORGERIES!

[joemurphy]

22. Nice to have a forgetful Deputy National Security adviser.

Um, well I knew someone told me that all that stuff about Iraq trying to get uranium was a forgery, but...heck...I just forgot. Y'see, I'm a busy man. I got a lot on my mind.

[susu369]

17. Humongous kick

:kick: :kick: :kick:

[stevedeshazer]

18. Is there 'hard evidence' that Bush knew and said the sixteen words anyway?

If it can't be shown that Bush saw the memo himself he will claim he didn't know - "plausible deniability" if you will - and nothing will happen in terms of accountability, no?

As important as this seems, I don't see a direct link to Bush.

Am I missing something?

[DemReadingDU]

19. Where is the outrage from the American people!

When are the majority of Americans going to wake up and revolt against this administration!

What does it take to get thru to them!

[Me.]

25. Outrage?

So far there has been so little that they all think they can do it again, this time in Iran & Syria. A new group has been set up and familiar names connected with the Plame matter, Hannah, Wurmser, Luti pop up again.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x953434

[NewJeffCT]

28. outrage overload?

To be honest, every day this administration does so many outrageous things that I think it's planned - from pillaging the environment, lying us into war, tax breaks for oil companies & millionaires, torture, spying on citizens, etc, etc - so much that it is almost impossible to keep up with for 99% of the people out there.

[hootinholler]

20. Where is our prosecutor!

This offense is now officially a slam-dunk with a fine and or 5 years!

The United States Code,Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 47, Section 1001
States:

1001. Statements or entries generally
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry;
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding.

(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.

IIRC, the SOTU is the only report named in the Constitution, which would make it required by law.

-Hoot

[vogonity]

39. The fact that it was in the SOTU...

Makes this a much bigger deal does it not? Not that lying us into a war was *small* or anyting. Since the SOTU was a Constititutionally mandated speech and not something that * was spouting off while clearing brush at his dirt farm, it seems that the potential crime committed is pretty high up there.

[hootinholler]

42. Absolutely it makes it an actual crime.

Not sure if it's a felony or a misdemeanor.

-Hoot

[peacetalksforall]

23. We figured it out so long ago, but this is a big deal. Seems like there

is not story here, but there is. Though it's not much to us, it's a very big deal with the Republican base (maybe not for the believe-anythings), but for the country club set and those who go to work requiring an elevator or a walkway from the parking lot at their industrial park - the ones who go to the fund-raising dinners and those who don't, but who do grab their checkbooks.

I feel kinda sorry for them.

Remember, Wilson met with the Ambassador to Niger (read State Dept.). Wilson already told us that she reported that the Embassy had already conducted a search for proof of a Hussein attempt to buy yellowcake, but found nothing and had reported it. So she and WIlson agreed on a plan to also cover people he had contacts with from his assignment there. (Paraphrased).

So the WH already had a negative report coming out of Niger before Wilson went there.

[WilliamPitt]

24. .

[Fiendish Thingy]

26. Can you say SMMMOOOKING GUN? n/t

[grytpype]

27. Iraq/Niger "a report of questionable credibility from a foreign source."

Oh my God, it's the Ford Memo!!!! I didn't think we would ever see it!!!!

This is a smoking gun document right here. BIG EFFIN TIME. Unbelievable revelations in this document.

Wilson's report was disseminated throughout the intelligence and policy communities!

Plame is identified as "Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD manager and wife of Joe Wilson!!!!

The memo basically laughs off the case for Iraq having a nuke program!!!

Says the Niger docs were determined to be forgeries early on!

Says the State Dept. INR considered the Iraq/Niger story "a report of questionable credibility from a foreign source" and "highly dubious."!

The CIA didn't think Wilson could get at the truth, INR vehemently disagreed!

NOTES FROM THE MEETIING WHERE PLAME INTRODUCED WILSON!!!!
especially check out the second paragraph on the argument at the Plame meeting about whether State could even do the job!
Then INR started laughing at the CIA people for even thinking that there might be something to the Niger Connection story!!



wow. just wow.

[stop the bleeding]

30. Yep - the laundry is coming out, the State is trying to cover their ass

just like the Retired Generals are doing to Rummy in response to Condi's comments a few weeks ago about the Iraq War being full of Tactical(Gens and Colonels) errors and the Military Brass is coming out and saying that it is an error in policy(Rummy and Condi).

The shit is getting deep every where in DC, I think there is even more than usual the perception that this WH, War, time in DC ect... will go down in American history as one of the darkest. I think people are doing whatever they can to clear their names or set the record straight.

Most fascinating dynamics right now in DC in regards to self preservation vs loyalty.


this last statement in the article says it all

"This was the very first time there was written evidence - not notes, but a request for a report - from the State Department that documented why the Niger intel was bullshit," said one retired State Department official.

"It was the only thing in writing, and it had a certain value because it didn't come from the IAEA. It came from State. It scared the heck out of a lot of people because it proved that this guy Wilson's story was credible. I don't think anybody wanted the media to know that the State Department disagreed with the intelligence used by the White House. That's why Wilson had to be shut down."

[King Coal]

31. Sadly, Will, this isn't going anywhere. Here's why:

The CIA is supposed to give information to the State Department, not the other way around. Bush will just say, "Who was I to believe? The CIA or the State Department?"

[chill_wind]

35. If I remember right

It took the PTB who concluded it was fake about 5 minutes to google it up on the internet.

[chill_wind]

33. Ahhhh yes....

And the FBI has had a very pointed and persistent lack of curiosity in the investigative aspects of all this. (ie Rocco Martino et al)

One guy who's done relentless coverage of this to date is JMM at Talking Points Memo. Here's a sample site search starting as far back as July 2003 on key words "niger forgery". What a timeline and a testimony to the abject disinterest of the Chairman Roberts Congress-- and most indicting of the state-run American MSM as well.

Congressman Waxman's site probably has a very useful timeline of documentation and unanswered letters and questions to the WH and to the Roberts/Porter Goss "Black Hole" of Senate Intelligence on this matter as well. He's been building an overall framework of documentation that may be very useful in impeachment of other proceedings for a long, long time.

But on this matter in particular, I think Joshua Micah Marshall wrote the book.

April 11, 2006, 01:26 PM EDT
Now that Romano Prodi's election in Italy appears to have been confirmed, many readers have written in to ask whether I think the impending change of government in Italy is likely to shake free any of the secrets about the...

April 09, 2006, 12:10 AM EDT
This new article on the Niger forgeries is now up online in Sunday London Times. The claim actually isn't a new one. It's been rattling around Italy for at least a year, and reported in a few Italian publications aligned...

April 08, 2006, 05:35 PM EDT
A number of readers have written in with this link to a Raw Story teaser about a piece on the Niger forgeries set to run in tomorrow's Sunday Times of London. It reads ... The LONDON SUNDAY TIMES' Michael Smith...

December 03, 2005, 01:30 AM EDT
A week ago we mentioned that the FBI was starting to back off their blanket exoneration of the Italian government for any role in the Niger forgeries affair. Now Saturday's LA Times reports that the Bureau has decided to 'reopen'...

November 23, 2005, 11:37 AM EDT
A few tidbits on the Niger story. There are some signs the FBI is starting to back off the earlier blanket exoneration they gave the Italian intelligence agency SISMI last year of any role in the Niger forgeries caper. Meanwhile,...

November 11, 2005, 12:17 PM EDT
Very interesting news out of Italy this morning, and news which appears to confirm a theory advanced recently by a poster at theleftcoaster.com (big coup for him, about which I'll explain more later). As you know, I've reported that the...

November 10, 2005, 10:19 AM EDT
The Italian Connection, Part III I discussed in installments one and two of this series my early reporting on the origins of the Niger forgeries and how we later learned the identity of, and made contact with, the man at...

November 07, 2005, 12:45 AM EDT
Here's a snippet from an Isikoff and Hosenball Newsweek update on the Niger-Uranium story and the FBI's curiously unthorough investigation. The FBI ended a two-and-a-half-year probe into the Niger uranium documents without resolving a key mystery: who forged papers used...

November 05, 2005, 09:39 PM EDT
More on the Silberman-Robb Report. As we noted below, the SR Report begins by stating that the commissioners were not authorized to investigate the use which policy-makers made of Iraq WMD intelligence. At other points, however, they say things that...

November 05, 2005, 01:29 AM EDT
"SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt." That's what "a U.S. intelligence official who's closely followed the matter" told Knight-Ridder newspapers' Jonathan Landay for this article out this evening about the Niger forgeries. Italian intelligence officials and parliamentarians...

November 04, 2005, 06:34 PM EDT
Yesterday, we brought you the news that in a closed-door Italian parliamentary hearing into whether Italian intelligence officials were involved in the Niger forgeries hoax, intelligence chief Nicolo Pollari brandished a letter from FBI Director Robert Mueller, which provided him...

November 03, 2005, 11:19 PM EDT
Finally, some good reporting on the Niger-Uranium-Italy story. There are a slew of nice nuggets in this piece in the Times. But this one may take the cake. This passage describes what happened at that closed-door parliamentary hearing in Rome...

November 03, 2005, 06:08 PM EDT
Curiouser and curiouser and curiouser and ... Remember how early today an Italian parliamentarian said that in January 2003 the Italian government had warned the US that the Niger docs were forgeries. Well, just out from AP ... Commission member...

November 03, 2005, 04:30 PM EDT
Let me suggest a few other questions to be posed in response to the new story the Italian government rolled out today to explain their involvement with the Niger uranium hoax. The current story, detailed in this updated report from...

November 03, 2005, 01:49 PM EDT
The AP story we noted earlier is now up on the web ... Italian secret services warned the United States months before it invaded Iraq that a dossier about a purported Saddam Hussein effort to buy uranium in Africa was...

November 01, 2005, 11:07 PM EDT
The Italian Connection, Part II In the previous installment I described early reporting I did on the origins of the Niger forgeries ? reporting which pointed strongly toward an Italian government role in the Niger uranium hoax. I started reporting...

November 01, 2005, 01:45 PM EDT
The name of Stephen J. Hadley (first term Deputy National Security Advisor and now National Security Advisor) has come up again and again in the Niger-uranium story. In early 2002 Hadley was tasked with shutting down the unauthorized meetings Harold...

October 31, 2005, 02:32 PM EDT
Question of the day. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is in Washington today. Later this week Berlusconi's intelligence chief will be questioned before a closed session of a committee of the Italian parliament about allegations he was responsible for using back...

October 30, 2005, 11:45 PM EDT
The Italian Connection, Part I (ed.note: At various points over the last two years, I've discussed here at tpm reporting I've done on the origins of the Niger forgeries. I've never put all the reporting in one place; and until...

October 30, 2005, 10:45 AM EDT
At the Washington Post online yesterday, Jeff Morley raised the possibility that last year's Dan Rather/National Guard papers scandal may have prevented CBS's 60 Minutes from airing a story on the origins of the Niger forgeries. Referring to Elisabetta Burba,...

October 28, 2005, 11:37 AM EDT
Now, about that FBI investigation into the origins of the Niger forgeries, discussed by Doug Jehl in his piece in today's Times. (Apologies to longtime readers of the site who will be familiar with much of what follows.) Jehl reports...

October 28, 2005, 11:13 AM EDT
Today's LA Times story on the Niger forgeries contains the following passage ... 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...

October 28, 2005, 10:45 AM EDT
It's funny how things become news a year or more after they're first reported. About that long ago, this site first reported that while the Niger forgeries themselves first appeared in Rome in October 2002 that the foreign intelligence service...

October 27, 2005, 01:54 PM EDT
Berlusconi government lying, but how much? As the AP reports, the Italian government is "categorically" denying any complicity in the Niger fraud. The Italians, says the AP, deny any "direct or indirect involvement in the packaging and delivery of the...

October 26, 2005, 11:14 PM EDT
Silvio's comin' to town? Eagle-eyed TPM Reader PP sent me this ABC News political calendar which includes this detail ... Oct. 31, 2005: President Bush hosts Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the White House for a meeting and lunch,...

October 26, 2005, 04:56 PM EDT
More on today's installment of the La Repubblica series. This is a very rough translation of one passage from today's piece. The reference to the 'Atlantic Monthly' actually refers to two reporters from the Washington Monthly (that's small magazine publicity...

October 26, 2005, 02:06 PM EDT
Pollari on the ropes? Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation may not be the only game in town when it comes to the now-quickly-evolving Plame/Niger/uranium forgeries story. As we discussed with you at the time, last year the Italian government and its intelligence...

October 26, 2005, 12:45 PM EDT
More coming momentarily on the third installment from Italy's La Repubblica, more details on how SISMI floated bogus cover stories to hide their role in the Niger forgeries, cover stories (implicating the French, for instance) eagerly gobbled up by the...

October 26, 2005, 10:30 AM EDT
Berlusconi government issues carefully worded quasi-denial of complicity in Niger forgeries hoax. Relies on Roberts and Butler Reports for back up....

October 26, 2005, 01:58 AM EDT
Coming tomorrow: Sen. Roberts' (R-KS) broken promise to complete the Senate Intel Committee Iraqi WMD inquiry after the 2004 election, what remains unrevealed in the fall 2003 Joint State-CIA IG Report into the Niger forgeries, and is it not time...

October 25, 2005, 09:25 PM EDT
As I hinted at in this post from earlier this evening, in his 2003 State of the Union address President did not say "Iraq purchased uranium from Niger" or even that "the British say that Iraq purchased uranium from Niger."...

October 25, 2005, 02:59 PM EDT
A number of you have written in with some version of the following question. If the Niger forgeries only surfaced in Rome in October 2002, what was the earlier information that prompted the CIA/Dick Cheney to dispatch Joe Wilson to...

October 25, 2005, 01:43 PM EDT
With all that appears to be coming out of Italy today about the origins of the Niger forgeries and efforts to get them directly to the White House by bypassing the CIA, don't forget that the White House in concert...

October 25, 2005, 12:41 PM EDT
I mentioned yesterday that the Italian daily La Repubblica ran a story reporting alleged new details about the origins of the Niger/uranium forgeries. Today they followed up with a second part of their report which, if accurate in its particulars,...

October 24, 2005, 03:55 PM EDT
Interesting news out of Italy. I'm told Monday's edition of the Italian daily La Repubblica has an article on Niger forgeries. And this one says the culprits are Rocco Martino, the Italian woman who works in the Niger embassy in...

October 24, 2005, 11:37 AM EDT
Okay, there's clearly something to this. Martin Walker of UPI is now reporting that ... 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...

October 18, 2005, 04:16 PM EDT
A question about the story beneath the story, the origins of the Niger forgeries and who covered up the trail. The FBI was tasked with investigating the origins of the forgeries, who forged them and why. That was in March,...

July 29, 2005, 03:51 PM EDT
For those of you following the news of John Bolton's "inaccurate" answers to the Senate regarding the State-CIA Niger forgeries investigation, we've just posted a couple updates over at TPMCafe. Click here to see the exact text of the questions...

July 29, 2005, 12:39 AM EDT
It's amazing how the mind works. Of all the things for John Bolton to forget about, he forgets that he was interviewed for the Joint State-CIA IG Report on the Niger forgeries. Here's a question, though. My impression is that...

July 28, 2005, 08:37 PM EDT
Apparently, according to the AP, the State Department is confirming Sen. Biden's claim that John Bolton failed to tell senators that he was interviewed in the joint State/CIA IG probe into the US government's use of the forged Niger papers....

July 25, 2005, 09:50 PM EDT
Late-Breaking Pat Roberts Egregious Hackery Update! Sen. Pat Roberts (R) prevented the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from making any inquiry into the origins of the Niger forgeries. His reason was that there was an on-going FBI investigation and he...

July 25, 2005, 07:39 PM EDT
Good catch by Kos. Sen. Roberts doesn't have time to investigate the manipulation of prewar intelligence, the Niger forgeries or the Plame disclosure. But he does have time to investigate how the CIA uses 'cover' in its clandestine operations. And...

July 24, 2005, 10:20 PM EDT
What a sad state we've come to. I've told you many times how Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a shame to the office, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House...

July 18, 2005, 05:54 PM EDT
Is it peculiarly tragic or perhaps not-so-peculiarly tragic that Christopher Hitchens ends up an apologist for, among others, Karl Rove, latter-day practitioner of the peculiarly Southern version of smash-and-trash politics honed by his mentor Lee Atwater and other such worthies?...

October 21, 2004, 04:20 AM EDT
There's a buzz now about why the House Intelligence Committee still hasn't received a copy of a CIA inspector general's report which examines the Agency's performance during the run-up to the Sept. 11 attacks. Democrats suspect it's being held up...

September 22, 2004, 04:31 PM EDT
In Newsweek this afternoon, Mike Isikoff and Mark Hosenball have a piece that touches on the fact that the FBI still hasn't managed to interview Rocco Martino, the guy at the center of the forged Niger uranium documents story. They...

August 01, 2004, 04:24 AM EDT
Today, the Sunday Times of London reports that the Italian middle-man who provided the notorious Niger uranium documents to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba (she later brought them to the US Embassy in Rome, you?ll remember) was himself given the documents...

July 17, 2004, 11:49 PM EDT
This post will take us admittedly deep into the weeds of the Iraq-Niger saga. But if you can handle the detail, let's proceed. As we've noted several times recently, both the Senate intel committee report and the recent "Butler Report"...

July 14, 2004, 08:01 PM EDT
So back to our topic at hand. The newly-released Butler Report -- a rough analogue in the UK to the Senate intel report out last week -- not only exonerates Tony Blair's government for the claims included in the Iraqi...

June 30, 2004, 03:15 AM EDT
I'm never sure with William Safire where the line is between Safire the snookered and Safire the snookerer. Nor am I sure which is the case in this instance. (With so many permutations of snookerhood I need a language maven...

June 28, 2004, 02:57 AM EDT
By the time you read this post you'll likely already know that today's Financial Times makes stunning new claims about alleged sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq. In brief, the main article in the FT makes two points ......

February 10, 2004, 12:31 AM EDT
There's little doubt now that Plame investigation is heating up. Tomorrow's Washington Post has a piece with a run-down about the who's been before the Plame grand jury and who's been interviewed by the FBI. The Times' piece says that...

December 18, 2003, 09:46 AM EDT
In Newsweek today there's another nice piece of debunkery by Hosenball and Isikoff. Today, the latest phony 'finding' about Mohamed Atta's ties to Saddam, first published by Con Coughlin in The Telegraph and then picked, with willful credulity, by a...

October 31, 2003, 10:12 AM EDT
Let?s put another piece of the uranium forgeries puzzle down on the table. This time the issue is timing. First, we already know that in the first couple days of October 2002 Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba got a call from...

September 18, 2003, 06:39 PM EDT
As of about six this evening in Washington, DC we got the first of what I'd call serious gusts. But so far not too much more than that. In any case, neither wind nor rain nor any of that...

July 25, 2003, 02:21 PM EDT
In the previous post I noted the section of Steve Hadley's White House Q&A in which he said that Condi Rice had received the memo calling the Niger-uranium story into question . Then I contrasted it with her earlier...

July 10, 2003, 03:23 AM EDT
Is he kidding? Here's a clip from John Lumpkin's Wednesday evening AP story ... Rumsfeld, in a terse exchange with Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said he learned only "within recent days" that the Africa claims were based on faulty...

July 09, 2003, 03:34 PM EDT
I had planned on publishing part two of TPM's interview with Kenneth Pollack at the end of this week. But the first couple questions in that second part deal with the controversy surrounding those bogus Niger uranium documents. And...

July 08, 2003, 09:03 PM EDT
The most interesting bit of reporting I've seen today on the White House's concession about the fraudulence of the Niger-uranium documents comes at the tail end of a wire story from Reuters ... A U.S. intelligence official said ...

July 08, 2003, 12:38 PM EDT
Some military jets are equipped with the ability to toss off a cluster of flares in mid-flight to throw off heat-seeking missiles. I think that's what Ari Fleischer and the White House were doing yesterday when they admitted that...

July 07, 2003, 12:06 PM EDT
Okay, I have to confess. I came up a little short on the Niger-uranium exchange Ari Fleischer had this morning in the gaggle. I was going to come up with something clever to say about it or point out...

You can read each of the above articles here:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/mt/mt-search.cgi?search=niger+forger&search.x=0&search.y=0

[chill_wind]

38. *Everybody knew at every step of the way.*

At the Center for Cooperative Research:

“Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false—until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed.”

In Washington - After the documents arrive in Washington, they are reviewed by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and within days its analysts conclude that the papers might be fakes. On October 16, the INR distributes the documents to the CIA and several other US intelligence agencies with the caveat that the documents are of “dubious authenticity.” Vince Cannistraro, former chief of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, will tell Seymour Hersh that the CIA did not immediately recognize that the documents were forged. However, other sources will claim that like the INR, the CIA quickly saw that the documents were not authentic. A senior Central Intelligence Agency official will tell Knut Royce of Newsday that the CIA “had serious questions about from day one.” The agency “had accounts <(see October 15, 2001) (see February 5, 2002) (see March 25, 2002)> of them and that was close enough. We didn’t take it that seriously to begin with. ... We didn’t put a lot of stock in these reports from Niger. We didn’t rush around to get the actual documents.” Likewise, a US intelligence official will tell the New York Times that CIA officials were always suspicious of the Niger documents. And Hersh's anonymous CIA source also says the papers were quickly assessed as fakes. “Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false—until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed.”

An extensive timeline and repository of facts, stories and details- on this hoax and much more.

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq&specific_allegations=africaUraniumClaim

[redqueen]

34. Thanks for the link.

:)

[myrna minx]

36. Here we go. We now have the paper trail.

:bounce:

[grytpype]

37. megakick

[Supersedeas]

40. and where is the CHATTERING class - more Holloway, more Duke Lacrosse

[chill_wind]

44. Katie and Tom's baby....

All the really VITAL state of the world stuff!

[Lindacooks]

41. To use the same 'strategy' the repukes use,

President Clinton's lie was only eight words. So chimpy's lie was twice as bad!!

:sarcasm:

[madmark]

43. if not a smoking gun, evidence of reckless disregard of the truth and

collosal bad judgment. Of course what is the most aggravating about all of this is that I, and many others (like 40% of the damn country) knew that Iraq was not a threat or linked to Al Quada at the ffing time even though we had no inside access to national intelligence assets.

[flyarm]

45. connecting some dots...

CONNECTING THE DOTS....

I HAVE KEPT THIS STUFF IN MY FILES..IN CASE THIS EVER CAME OUT..FLY

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

IN NOV 2003 A STATE DEPT WORKER SUPPOSEDLY COMMITTED SUICIDE JUMPING FROM THE STATE DEPT IN WASHINGTON...

John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7,2003. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal....
now look at this...........see :

Kokal's former boss, the recently retired chief of INR, Carl W. Ford,

AFTER FIRST ARTICLE GO READ THE SECOND ONE POSTED FROM YESTERDAY TRUTHOUT (the bottom article i am posting)......

this article is about Kokals death , dated November 20, 2003 FROM THE WILDERNESS..

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal.html

State Department officials dispute official State Department communiqués that said Kokal was not an analyst at INR. People who know Kokal told the French publication Geopolitique that Kokal was involved in the analysis of intelligence about Iraq prior to and during the war against Saddam Hussein.

Another INR official, weapons expert Greg Thielmann, said he and INR were largely ignored by Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and his deputy, David Wurmser, a pro-Likud neo-conservative who recently became Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser. Kokal's former boss, the recently retired chief of INR,

***** Carl W. Ford, ****recently said that Bolton often exaggerated information to steer people in the wrong directions.

PLEASE READ ENTIRE ARTICLE..

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

see *** areas i marked for you! i can not put all in context here you must read the entire article !! this article is from APRIL 17 2006 By Jason Leopold FROM TRUTHOUT


A Truthout article http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041706Y.shtml

State Department Memo: '16 Words' Were False
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Monday 17 April 2006

see digitialized memo here:
http://truthout.org/imgs.art_01/fordmemo.pdf

snip:****
The memo was drafted by

******Carl Ford Jr.*****, the former head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in response to questions posed in June 2003 by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, about a February 2002 fact-finding trip to Niger that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson undertook to investigate the uranium claims on behalf of the CIA.


snip:

Powell requested further information from his aides.******Ford ****went back and retrieved the June memo, re-dated it July 7, 2003, and sent it to Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage.

The Sun reported that the memo contained no direct reference to Plame Wilson's CIA status being marked as "secret" despite the fact that the word "secret" is clearly marked on every page of the INR memo.

The memo does not say that the State Department alerted the White House on January 12, 2003, about the bogus uranium claims.

snip:

But the memo's author,**** Carl Ford,***** said in a previous interview that he has no doubt the State Department's reservations about the Niger intelligence made its way to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.