In July 2003, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan stated, "The truth now, we know, is that a forgery was put together to get this country into a war with Iraq, that forgery found its way into our intelligence agencies, it found its way into the State of the Union, and the president of the United States should show more indignation and outrage that this was done." Buchanan added, "Somebody in our own government knew very well that was a forgery, and they advanced it on up the line."
I go now to Seymour Hersh, who in 2003 wrote this: "Who lied to whom?" (Note: I do not agree with a lot of things in this article, specifically with the veiled accusation that British Intelligence had something to do "sexing up intel" - but as with everything - When you are trying to understand something you "eat the hay and spit out the sticks")
"The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei...A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded."
" 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,' the former high-level intelligence official added. 'It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.'
The question is - "Who is that somebody?"
Most of the comments I have read of this article link "agency" to US Administration. But "Agency" means - and always has meant in Intel Circles "CIA". The question is this. Did the CIA KNOW they were fake? More important, ask yourself, what office of the CIA would "this crazy report" have come through? More specifically to whom?
Now, hold that thought. Off to the WAPO Article of 2004 that referenced the Senate Intelligence Report and exposed Joe Wilson as a fraud:
" Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.
The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion."
Why is 1999 significant? Back to Seymour:
"The I.A.E.A. had first sought the documents last fall, shortly after the British government released its dossier. After months of pleading by the I.A.E.A., the United States turned them over to Jacques Baute, who is the director of the agency’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office.
It took Baute’s team only a few hours to determine that the documents were fake. The agency had been given about a half-dozen letters and other communications between officials in Niger and Iraq, many of them written on letterheads of the Niger government. The problems were glaring. One letter, dated October 10, 2000, was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a Niger Minister of Foreign Affairs and Coöperation, who had been out of office since 1989. Another letter, allegedly from Tandja Mamadou, the President of Niger, had a signature that had obviously been faked and a text with inaccuracies so egregious, the senior I.A.E.A. official said, that “they could be spotted by someone using Google on the Internet.”
This official told me that the I.A.E.A. has not been able to determine who actually prepared the documents. “It could be someone who intercepted faxes in Israel, or someone at the headquarters of the Niger Foreign Ministry, in Niamey. We just don’t know,” the official said. “Somebody got old letterheads and signatures, and cut and pasted.” Some I.A.E.A. investigators suspected that the inspiration for the documents was a trip that the Iraqi Ambassador to Italy took to several African countries, including Niger, in February, 1999. They also speculated that MI6—the branch of British intelligence responsible for foreign operations—had become involved, perhaps through contacts in Italy, after the Ambassador’s return to Rome."
Now the question: What was Wilson doing in Niger in 1999? That is besides the "Uranium issues". I wonder though, Did Joe happen to bring back, oh.. any Nigerian "letterhead" with him from his trip to Niger in 1999? Would have been real convenient if he did. In fact it would have been down right helpful for somebody "close" to Joe with connections to "Giacomo", could then really get things "cooking". Not muc, a little "date" here, a little "name" there, and "Presto!"
Maybe that would explain....
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters."
Yeah Joe, How did you know?
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