"Really BIG News" - - The CIA Got the Niger Documents!!! - - by emptywheel

[kpete]

January 24, 2007
The CIA Got the Niger Documents!!!
by emptywheel

Here's the holy shit no one has noticed from yesterday. Here's the version of the INR memo introduced in court yesterday: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/files/inr_memo_trial_evidence.pdf

You'll note in the last paragraph of the second page--it says, "These documents, which were sent to Washington via both CIA and Department channels..."

This is really big news. The CIA got the forgeries. But all this time, they've been saying CIA only got the forgeries through State.

Nope. They had their own copies. And still didn't analyze them until after it was too late.

Also note that it says that INR "may" have concluded the forgeries were forgeries earlier than January 12. This is totally disingenuous--they say they've looked at emails, but they clearly are ignoring the email the INR analyst sent back in October 2002. Huh. Still reading this, but it's time to go to the Court House.

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/

[NewJeffCT]

1. you mean, they lied? (gasping) I'm shocked

I hope I don't need the 'sarcasm' smilie on that one...

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. The dam is breaking

Hang on, this is just the beginning.

[tanyev]

4. Ruh-roh.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

3. the fact that they had them AND did not check their progeny,

is either willfull neglect, professional malpractice or showing great obedience to their lord and master, Darth Cheney

[KoKo]

5. What's the INR?...sorry...so many acronyms....

and I can't keep track of them. Thanks for the post on this!

[starroute]

19. From a NextHurrah entry of a ways back...

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/07/why_bolton_woul.html

As the WaPo describes it:

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post. . . .

The memo was drafted June 10, 2003, for Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who asked to be brought up to date on INR's opposition to the White House view that Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa. . . .

On July 6, 2003, shortly after Wilson went public on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Post and the New York Times discussing his trip to Niger, the INR director at the time, Carl W. Ford Jr., was asked to explain Wilson's statements for Powell, according to sources familiar with the events. He went back and reprinted the June 10 memo but changed the addressee from Grossman to Powell.

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. How can we know what the CIA did on its own when Cheney was in there

micromanaging them? The only person responsible for the CIA's complicit involvement is Tenet. I think he was too much of a teamplayer during the Bush Administration, and not so much during the Clinton Administration.

Yet, he, like Louis Freeh did in his time, is going to walk away from this without our knowing his full involvement.

Stooges, the both of them.

[pberq]

7. Kick & Nominated

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

8. I thought this was clear in Richard Clark's book

The CIA and Tenet had specifically removed the Niger assertion that was contained in some speech that was given in October because they had debunked it .

I thought Tenet was pissed off to find out that someone had re-inserted it, those "sixteen words" back into the SOTU. My opinion was that he just threw in the towel on fighting it again because he must have known that they were doing this consciously. This is one reason that I have no regard for Tenet whatsoever and certainly don't think he should have gotten the Medal of Freedom as his reward for his complicity.

That's what makes the sixteen words so incredibly dangerous, because it proves that they KNOWINGLY lied and led the country into a false war. Why do you think they got so twisted with Joe Wilson. THEY knew what they had done, even though we didn't.

Someone tell me if my recollection on this is wrong. I think this is all in Richard Clark's book the name of which I forget.

[Imagevision]

34. they KNOWINGLY lied and led the country into a false war

[calimary]

36. You'll know them by their increasingly long noses.

I am SO glad this is starting to come out.

I'm not sure where I first heard/read about this, but we've all seen a whole lot of this stuff, going back to 2002, somewhere on the "internets" - either via here or Buzzflash, either the UK Guardian or regarding a book like Richard Clarke's - what stands out in his book to me, to this day (I never did get all the way through it), was how he was grabbed within a day or so after 9/11 by bush who looked him straight in the eye and said "Iraq!" And exhorted him to find or otherwise come up with whatever would tie 9/11 to Iraq and Saddam. Around then, too, don't forget - rummy was ordering people to "go massive. Sweep it all up" as far as whatever they could find out (reliable and thoroughly vetted OR NOT) that would lead to the same linkage conclusions. It might also have been in some investigative work in Commondreams or something. We have all seen/read this stuff before. Long ago, too. Including stuff about the White House Iraq Group and people stovepiping raw intelligence directly into cheney's office. And the super secret/sneaky Office of Special Plans (what a funky title THAT is!) that was a catch-all type of clutter can for EVERYTHING possible that might forward the Let's-Go-Fuck-With-Iraq campaign. And WHIG's reliance on "sources" that the CIA had long ago vetted and declared as bogus - the Curveballs and Ahmed Chalabis (Chalabi being one who was playing both ends against the middle - with Iraq AND IRAN). It was all over the place.

It was among the reading I did that has led me to post occasionally along with MANY others here who were even more supremely well-informed who somehow knew the score early-on, while everybody in the White House and on Capitol Hill was pushing a pack of lies - and others were eagerly swallowing them whole. And many of us have since said "well, if WE could know this stuff, and know enough to oppose the war before it started, WHAT THE HELL was wrong with these people who should REALLY have known all the lies and the dirt - enough REALLY to oppose the war, and even stop it before it could start. If WE knew... blah-blah-blah. Well, it was out there and a lot of us here and elsewhere in the progressive arena knew this stuff early on, we were among the millions who rallied and marched and protested and formed human peace signs on Antarctic ice floes and in the sand on Santa Monica Beach. We knew enough to try to stop this shit and we're civilians. WHAT DOES THAT SAY for our so-called reps and others with an inside track, who sat there with their thumbs up their asses or on their knees to bush/cheney or huddling in fear away from cheney/libby/rove? Same thing for our stupid-ass media, the fabled White House Press Corpse.

What's been done is criminal. Yes, Gordon Smith. It MAY INDEED "even be criminal." The people directly responsible really MUST be held accountable, and there must be serious consequences for this shit. Because if there isn't, and these lying, greedy, murderous assholes are allowed to skate off into the sunset without answering for their crimes, that will telecast to future "leaders" that THEY can do the same shit, too, and get away with it. AND WORSE. And they'll be able to point DIRECTLY to this and say - SEE? There's precedent for this. PLENTY of it. And nobody said squat or did anything to stop it. So it really must not have been so wrong. It mustn't have been such a big deal. Otherwise they woulda done something about that back then. We HAVE to check, AND correct this shit, too.

WE KNEW. EVERYBODY who gave a damn and wanted to find out the truth COULD find it, or enough of it to reach the correct conclusions about the bogusness of this war. What the FUCK was wrong with those in power - who could, and did not?

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. They got so twisted with Wilson

because he had the balls to go to the press with his story and told the rest of us the truth about what he didn't find in Niger.

[Clinton_Co_Regulator]

9. K+R

:yourock:

[ItsTheMediaStupid]

10. I don't remember the source, but the Niger forgeries were peddled all over DC

Initially, the CIA pros took one look and said, "Pass". Apparently the people handling these documents were known for spreading false information. Maybe it was somebody with the Iraqi National Congress (Chalabi) or the Italian intelligence agencies. But the CIA pros didn't believe a word of it.

The forgeries were presented to the White House as well, where the WHIG guys were more interested.

IIRC, the Niger reference ended up in the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate due to interference by political appointees at the CIA. The career analyst's didn't want it included, but the appointees outranked them.

These appointees were under pressure from Cheney and WHIG to juice up the intelligence.

This is where the argument that "everybody was wrong about WMDs" breaks down. They knew it was BS, because they had to force the career spooks to include it in the NIE.

Then Porter Goss took over the CIA and a lot of the professionals out of the agency. I wonder if there were forced out as retaliation for trying to stop the use of the Niger forgeries.

The fact that the docuemnts were presented to State isn't that surprising. The providers of this information were quite persistent in showing it to our government.

[donkeyotay]

23. And from October, 2002, the UN was trying to get a look at the documents

They didn't receive them until shortly before bush achieved his war, and by then it was "too late" to stop Shock and Awe.

The UN said it only took them a couple of hours and the Internet to find errors that clearly labeled them as fake, nothing that any intelligence agency wothy of the name would have fallen for.

Deliberate deceit, not like he swallowed some bad intell like some bad chile.

[seemslikeadream]

11. Y'all think that's all they were doing--faking documents?

from Peace Patriot

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=22859&mesg_id=25691

And why were the Niger docs such bad forgeries--wrong dates, wrong names--that real intelligence agents exposed them in what, 24 hours?

I suspect that the Niger docs were intended to be "crude" forgeries (as they are often called)--that is, easily detectable. In the WMD-planting theory of Traitorgate, the Niger forgeries were intended to draw the CIA into a known position of no-nukes in Iraq. And the CIA was then to be discredited, when nukes (procured by infamous Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, who attended the Rome meeting with the head of SISMI and Ladeen in late 2001), were "found" by the US troops who were hunting for them in Iraq after the invasion. This "find" of WMDs in Iraq was also intended to cement Bush's and Blair's political positions. But something went wrong. Somebody interfered with that nuke movement. And that is what the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings were all about. That was Plame/B-J's job--WMD counter-proliferation. This theory explains why there was such a panic in the White House in the week of July 7-14--with so many top Bushites involved in potential treason, and calling six reporters in one week to get Plame outed. It smells of panic (--that their plot was about to be disclosed). It also explains why they didn't out just Plame (July 14) but proceeded with the SECOND outing (July 22) of the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network, putting all of its covert agents/contacts at risk of getting killed, and disabling all projects. The latter was an excessive measure--far beyond any political motive of punishing Joe Wilson for his dissent--and carried added risk of treason charges. It was the counter-proliferation NETWORK they were after, possibly because they weren't sure who had foiled their nefarious scheme to plant phony WMD evidence in Iraq, so they outed everybody (by Novak publishing the company name, Brewster-Jennings in a followup column). (A possible candidate for discovering their dirty plot was David Kelly, the Brits' WMD expert who was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances four days after Plame was outed; his computers and office were searched and, four days later, the entire B-J network was ADDITIONALLY outed by Novak.)

Really, I think it needs to be explained WHY the Niger forgeries were so bad. If what many suspect is true, that it was the Rome 2001 meeting, where the forgeries were concocted, they had the head of Italian intelligence involved--and they couldn't create GOOD forgeries? Then there's all that song and dance about people insisting that the Niger/Nuke allegation be put BACK in Bush's speeches, even after several agencies had proved them to be forgeries. Why do that? According to this theory, it had to be done--Bush had to say it--to set the context for discrediting and purging the CIA. when the planted nukes were "found" in Iraq, after the CIA said there weren't any--then the Bush Junta would be justified in purging all the honest professionals in that agency.

It's a quite interesting theory, and has held up well as more details have come out. And it has emotional truth. The evident panic among the Bushites to out Plame (why the rush? why call six reporters?). (This may be connected to something that was told to Tony Blair on July 7--that David Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--Hutton Report. Kelly had already been whistleblowing to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war WMD intel. What MORE did he know? If it was this--that he knew of the plan to plant the weapons--it would explain the panic and rush to out Plame and Brewster-Jennings, to silence or kill anyone else who knew.) On the emotional front, there is also the likelihood that the Bush Junta, rabid NeoCons like Ladeen, and Ghorbanifar (who hated the CIA), would not just forge documents for the political purpose of convincing the American people, and the world, that the war was justified, but would engage in the further deception of planting the weapons. Does anyone doubt that this is the sort of thing they would do? It seems a "natural" for them--especially with so much riding on a "find" on WMDs in Iraq. And, if they had such a scheme, what happened? Why didn't it go forward? I think it's a good bet that this is what Cheney and Libby are REALLY covering up--not just their participation in outing CIA agents, but the REAL reason why they did it.

[halobeam]

13. thanks for the great post.

I need a refresher here and there.

[starroute]

20. There may have been some attempt to tie Iran in

See Larisa Alexandrovna's piece at http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Backchannels_used_to_bypass_U.S._government_0111.html where she talks about Ghorbanifar, Curt Weldon, and their claims about the Iranians having stolen enriched uranium from Iraq before the invasion.

I've never found this story anything better than murky, but apparently Rumsfeld made the CIA spend a lot of time running around in the Iraqi desert, looking for evidence that never turned up. If there really had been an attempt to plant stuff, it would at least explain why Rumsfeld was so insistent on finding it.

[durtee librul]

31. Oh hell,

Rummy is an old man. He probably forgot where he put the WMD's - between the geriatric set of Cheney, Novak and who the hell knows who else, the weapons were probably planted (Cheney still says Saddam had them in the CNN interview tonight) and the damn fools forgot where they put them.

[Old and In the Way]

21. You've been all over this story from the very beginning.

This really does make a lot of sense. I have long suspected that Ladeen was involved in creating the forgeries, but I hadn't made the connection to a preemptive strike against the CIA. Planting the WMD would seem to carry its own level of risk though...how does one acquire enough weapons to make it look like a program and create an evidentiary path that leads it back to Iraq? I'm not saying these PNACer's wouldn't attempt such a sophisticated plan to deceive the citizens of the US...but I can think of a lot of ways that such a plan could go wrong in a hurry. Thing is, there has to be people who have direct knowledge of this attempted act and I sure would like them to be telling this Congress what they know about it.

[Junkdrawer]

22. Betcha dollars to doughnuts that's EXACTLY what happened...

Great post! :thumbsup:

[denidem]

24. Maybe that's why Iraqi institutions were allowed to be looted...

so that in the ensuing chaos, no one would be able to trace the "planting" of the nukes/wmd. I've always wondered about and been appalled by the sheer destruction of the government offices, libraries, universities, not to mention cultural treasures.

Allowed to be looted may be to understated...encouraged to be looted and destroyed may be more correct. After all, Rummy said it.
"Stuff happens."

[DoYouEverWonder]

38. The US made sure they protected the oil fields

but they left the doors wide open to Saddam's weapons stockpiles.

[diane in sf]

35. check this out...

also I am looking for another article I had stashed about people attempting to smuggle arms/bombs into Iraq thru Turkey and getting caught and stopped--the article dropped out of sight very quickly, but I thought it could be a Neocon operation.

I'm attempting to put a link just below here, but this is my first time.

<http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/26/23727/338>

Re: What It's Like (4.00 / 2) (#26)
by Richard Steven Hack on Oct 27, 2005 -- 05:44:22 AM EST



Interesting commentary.

I think it's important to realize that the issue at stake is likely to be far more than a "retaliation outing".

Rumor has it that there is a far more serious reason for the Plame outing than "retaliation" - or at least retaliation against Joe Wilson.

The rumor is that Plame's CIA group was closing in on the people who forged the Niger documents - and they were shut down to protect the people we now are fairly sure were the forgers: Michael Ledeen, a couple CIA agents - and possibly all under the orders of Dick Cheney. The result of the shutdown supposedly compromised a hundred CIA undercover agents and interrupted a fairly successful WMD operation that was buying nuclear materials on the black market and thus removing them from that market.

The more serious rumor is that the Russian-Israeli Mafia was incensed at the success of Plame's operation, and using their Israeli connections to the neocons in the Pentagon and White House, got the operation shut down.

And THAT would be major treason against the United States.

And if the LeakGate investigation gets that far, it's "game over" for a lot of people around Bush.

Especially if what Sibel Edmonds, the FBI whistleblower, has said is true: that "senior elected government officials" are involved with Middle Eastern and Central Asian organized crime groups involved in drug and weapons smuggling.

Is it possible that we see here an overlap, not merely with the AIPAC spy scandal, but with the reasons why Edmonds was gagged in the name of "foreign relations" and "national security"?

Stay tuned.

[seemslikeadream]

39. THANKS

:hi:

[formercia]

12. More shit coming in under the radar.

..like the Friday news dump...

[sakabatou]

14. Jeebus

How many more brown stains are we gonna have?

[Just-plain-Kathy]

15. K&R

[LynnTheDem]

16. And it was the CIA that told bush NOT to make his bullshit Niger claim.

Just don't let the rightwingnuts blame this shit on the CIA; the CIA repeatedly warned bush AGAINST bush's lies.

George W. bUsh IGNORED the CIA's warnings.

George W. bUsh nowingly lied America to war.

[Blackhatjack]

17. Is It Possible the Failed Plan A has now become Plan B w/Iran as the Target?

Obviously the attack on Iran is way past the planning stage, pieces are in place just like a chess board, and all that is needed is the first move. If there were 'planted' nuclear materials or delivery devices, that could be the same starter for the war with Iran that they were trying to effect with the failed planting of WMD with Iraq.

Little noticed by the MSM is a blurb that North Korea is 'helping' Iran produce nuclear weapons.

Add to that, our government says Iran has blocked 36 United Nations IAEA inspectors from entering Iran, and then the follow up statement that this is 'evidence' that Iran is not complying with UN directives and sanctions. What is not revealed is that a long list of inspectors was presented to Iran, and out of that list they designated only 36 who they would deny entry, which was provided for in the agreements between Iran and IAEA.

The US overruns a defacto Iranian consulate, takes Iranians prisoner, lowers the Iranian flag, and accuses them of backing and directing terrorists in Iraq.

Raids into Iraq, and explosions in the area of their major oil fields are occurring.

Taking all of this into account, any Iranian 'response' will be characterized as an 'attack' on US forces and our interests.

[seemslikeadream]

18. Little noticed by the MSM also - We've bombed Somalia TWICE now

oh and have troops on the ground there

[ktlyon]

25. missed the first time

strike two?

[seemslikeadream]

26. yep

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2701165

[teryang]

27. The outing of Plame is a fall back scheme

it may have served several purposes but the ultimate purpose is to take down the Bush regime if necessary by more powerful forces.

they are holding back for some reason. I guess they figure things aren't bad enough. Oil prices are going down. The dollar is reaching 85.

The Plame incident is the emergency eject ripcord for the ruling class. It's the only check they have on the bushista clan. All they need to do is make one witness an offer that can't be refused and the entire administration is out the door like a bad nightmare.

[brettdale]

28. its not big

Because the mainstream media wont report it.

[Supersedeas]

29. thanks for linking this kpete

[crickets]

30. K&R

for the post as well as the "don't miss" discussions in comments. DU is amazing.

:dem:

[porphyrian]

32. Heh heh heh... - n/t

[godless]

33. It was my understanding that the documents were supplied by

a discredited Italian journalist who had first tried to foist them off as authentic to her publisher. I have also been told that it was none other than Condi herself that delivered the Lira and took possession of the original fakes.