Treasongate: The Niger Forgeries v. the CIA Intel Reports - Part 5: The State Court of Niger

by eriposte

This is the next part of a series (see Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) focused on comparing the CIA intel reports on Niger to the corresponding contents of the relevant Niger documents (mostly forgeries) to understand how the forgeries were "mainstreamed" and to what extent Italian intelligence (SISMI) was complicit in this affair. This part focuses on a self-contradiction in the CIA claims - and questions about a related Niger forgery Doc 5 - which raises additional questions on what "intel" the CIA saw and when they saw it. (Do keep in mind, as you absorb the information in this series, that the CIA directly admitted that (mis)information from the forged Niger documents was the basis of the three original Niger intel reports.)

This post is focused on the following claim in the first Niger intel report from the CIA dated 10/15/01, per the SSCI Report (bold text is my emphasis):

The intelligence report said the uranium sales agreement had been in negotiation between the two countries since at least early 1999, and was approved by the State Court of Niger in late 2000. [page 36]

Three days after that report, the CIA issued an intelligence product on the above intel. As the SSCI Report notes:

Only the CIA wrote a finished intelligence product on the report (Senior Executive Intelligence Brief [SEIB], Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts, October 18, 2001). Regarding the Niger reporting the SEIB said:

According to a foreign government service, Niger as of early this year planned to send several tons of uranium to Iraq under an agreement concluded late last year. Iraq and Niger had been negotiating the shipment since at least early 1999, but the state court of Niger only this year approved it, according to the service. [pages 36-37]

Notice the change?

• On 10/15/01, it is stated that the State Court of Niger approved the alleged uranium deal in late 2000.
• On 10/18/01, it is stated that the State Court of Niger approved the alleged uranium deal in [early] 2001.

It is difficult to believe this was just an inadvertent error because the first report specifically used a qualifier for the year 2000 ("late 2000"), and the report from three days later changes the date to 2001. In the latter case, the context of the sentence ("early this year") indicates that the qualifier for 2001 was 'early' 2001. So just replacing 2000 with 2001, or vice versa, wouldn't make them consistent.

What does the Niger forgery corresponding to the above claim say?

That forgery is Doc 5 - the fake "Annexe 1" to the fake uranium sales agreement - wherein the State Court of Niger allegedly "approved" the deal. Doc 5 says this (translation by Cryptome, bold text is my emphasis):

- THE STATE COURT, CALLED UPON TO GIVE HIS ADVICE ACCORDING TO THE 20TH ARTICLE OF ORDONNANCE # 74-19 OF THE 5TH OF JULY 2000, REGARDING CREATION, COMPOSITION, ATTRIBUTION AND WORKINGS OF THE STATE COURT, MET IN THE CHAMBER OF THE COUNCIL IN THE PALACE OF THE SAID COURT ON WEDNESDAY JULY 7, 2000, AT NINE O'CLOCK

Remember, the CIA did possess some or all of the contents of fake Doc 5. How do we know that? Well, they indirectly admitted it in the Senate (SSCI) report:

The foreign government service did not provide the DO with information about its source and the DO, to date, remains uncertain as to how the foreign government service collected the information in the three intelligence reports...The only mistake in any of the reports regarding dates, is that one date, July 7, 2000, is said to be a Wednesday in the report, but was actually a Friday. [page 47]

Now, perhaps July 2000 can loosely be called "late 2000", but July 2000 certainly isn't early 2001. The question is: what happened between October 15, 2001 and October 18, 2001, that prompted the CIA to change the year of the alleged State Court approval? Did the CIA raise the obvious concern about "Wednesday, July 7 2000" with their source and get some "clarification" in response, with a different date? Or did the report on 10/18/01 inadvertently pick up the 2001 date from a different (unsurfaced) document (after all, the 10/18/01 report refers to Niger's alleged plans in early 2001, which is not in Doc 5) which specified a different date of (alleged) approval by Niger's state court?

I don't know. But this, along with everything else I have discussed in this series, also calls for further inquiry into what the CIA and SISMI knew and when they knew it.