Uranium from Africa and the Niger Forgeries: When did the CIA first receive copies of the Niger uranium forgeries? - Part 5: 2001
by eriposte
[This is part of my ongoing coverage on the uranium from Africa matter; click here to read a consolidated synopsis of my overall findings]
This is the next part of a series (Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 4A) focused on obtaining an answer to the question of when the CIA (in the U.S.) first received copies of (some or all of) the Niger uranium forgeries. In this part we go back in time to the year 2001, when the SISMI-affiliated peddler of the Niger forgeries - Rocco Martino - made at least one attempt to sell the bogus Niger documents to the CIA in Rome in 2001. Very little is known to-date about this incident even though it likely played a very significant role in what subsequently transpired on the Niger uranium matter. I will therefore recount the information that is available on this and tentatively discuss its implications. As it turns out, this is perhaps an opportune time for this post in view of last week's article published by Craig Unger in Vanity Fair; however, let me add that this post was mostly completed a while back and I just got around to publishing it (although I somewhat preempted these findings in a brief note earlier). As always, all emphasis in quoted portions is mine.
1. Background
2. Analysis
3. Conclusions
1. Background
Let's start with this post by Laura Rozen from late Oct 2005:
Just confirmed with a former US intelligence official who was briefed on it at the time that a surprising claim in this Washington Post story tonight is indeed true: that Rocco Martino was a walk-in to the US embassy Rome and tried to sell the Niger forgeries to them, months before the Italian reporter Elisabetta Burba brought them to the embassy at the direction of her editor at her Berlusconi-owned magazine. (My source thought he remembered Martino's walk in occurring in the early spring of 2002, but wasn't positive). The CIA Rome station chief reportedly threw Martino - and the forgeries - out.
In a follow-up post, Laura published a correction and confirmed that the Martino walk-in actually occurred in Fall 2001 - although she did not specify if this was before or after SISMI's 10/15/01 report to the CIA on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal:
Just learned that the Rocco Martino walk-in to the US embassy in Rome with the forgeries was in the fall of 2001. (He was thrown out by the CIA station chief at the time, along with the forgeries).
Here is the relevant extract from the article by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post (whose article Rozen cited):
The chain of events that led to Friday's indictment can be traced as far back as 1991, when an unremarkable burglary took place at the embassy of Niger in Rome [this year, 1991, is wrong - it was 2001; see correction below - eRiposte]. All that turned up missing was a quantity of official letterhead with "Republique du Niger" at its top.
More than 10 years later [i.e., in 2001], according to a retired high-ranking U.S. intelligence official, a businessman named Rocco Martino approached the CIA station chief in Rome. An occasional informant for U.S., British, French and Italian intelligence services, Martino brought documents on Niger government letterhead describing secret plans for the sale of uranium to Iraq.
The station chief "saw they were fakes and threw [Martino] out," the former CIA official said. But Italy shared a similar report with the Americans in October 2001, he said, and the CIA gave it circulation because it did not know the Italians relied on the same source.
Note that Gellman's article has since been corrected on an important date (h/t de Gondi at European Tribune):
An Oct. 30 article about the disclosure that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative gave an incorrect date for a burglary at Niger's embassy in Rome, when official letterhead stationery was stolen. The burglary occurred in 2001, not 1991.
Tom Hamburger et al. of the Los Angeles Times also mentioned the 2001 Martino walk-in. Here's the relevant snippet from their article (emphasis mine):
[A] former CIA official said that in fact the U.S. had been offered the same documents in 2001 but had quickly rejected them as forgeries.
The key passage of interest here is this one in the Gellman article:
The station chief "saw they were fakes and threw [Martino] out," the former CIA official said. But Italy shared a similar report with the Americans in October 2001, he said, and the CIA gave it circulation because it did not know the Italians relied on the same source.
The last sentence makes it clear that the Martino walk-in occurred pretty close to, if not, earlier than October 2001. The implications of this are pretty significant.
2. Analysis
There is clear evidence that the peddler of the Niger forgeries, Rocco Martino, walked in to the U.S. embassy in Rome sometime in 2001 and tried to sell the bogus documents to the CIA station chief. One report indicates that this incident occurred in 2001, another report indicates that it occurred in Fall 2001, and a third says it was close to (or before) October 2001. As far as I can tell, the CIA's Rome station chief at the time of this incident was Jeff Castelli. After all, Castelli was the one who received the initial Niger uranium reports from SISMI in Fall 2001 and was allegedly not impressed with the quality of SISMI's first report. I'll return to this point in a moment.
Here's what's really interesting in Gellman's article:
The station chief "saw they were fakes and threw [Martino] out," the former CIA official said. But Italy shared a similar report with the Americans in October 2001, he said, and the CIA gave it circulation because it did not know the Italians relied on the same source.
The last sentence makes it clear that the CIA was aware of the Niger forgeries around the time they received the SISMI Niger uranium reports in Oct 2001. This doesn't necessarily mean that Langley had copies of them at the time or that they knew the specific details of names/dates in the forgeries, but it does mean that Langley was aware, at the minimum, that bogus uranium claims associated with Iraq and Niger were circulating in a dossier in Italy.
Here's another implication of the sentence that I've quoted above: The CIA would not have given the Italian (SISMI) reports circulation had it known that the Italian claims were based on the forgeries.
This observation has significant implications that have not been recognized in most of the reporting on the Niger uranium matter to-date.
For Langley to have known about the Fall 2001 Martino walk-in, two things must have been true. First, Castelli must have alerted Langley that the incident occurred and that someone tried to peddle documents asserting an Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Second, Castelli must have obviously informed Langley that those documents were bogus. For him to have made the latter determination, he (or his staff in Rome) would have had to read some of the documents, at the minimum, and recognize what was specifically fake about the documents (wrong names/dates perhaps?). It is not a stretch to assume that Castelli would have communicated at least some of his findings to Langley. This assumption is also reasonable considering that Langley had been hearing rumors of possible uranium sales to Iraq in the preceding months, and it would have been natural for Castelli to transmit some of the information he gleaned from the forgeries (in 2001) back to CIA headquarters, warning them that some of the rumors the IC was hearing may be linked to these or other such documents. That, in turn, would have had the effect of planting a strong seed of doubt within the CIA about any Niger-Iraq uranium claims emanating from SISMI.
Indeed, the CIA did have some doubts about SISMI's reporting. Those doubts may explain why the SISMI director, following SISMI's initial report(s) to the CIA, decided to send a communique to the CIA on October 18, 2001 (something that was not mentioned in the SSCI Report) confirming the “credibility of a source named La Signora", to assure the CIA that they had sent them trustworthy information on the Iraq/Niger uranium deal. In reality, not only was the SISMI-affiliated La Signora one of the individuals implicated in the generation and/or dissemination of the forgeries, some individuals in SISMI were deliberately fabricating claims or removing or changing information in the forgeries to transmit "cleaned up" allegations to the CIA to make the CIA believe that the allegations were "credible".
The barely reported facts surrounding the Martino walk-in and the October 18, 2001, SISMI communique, are therefore revealing because they add to the evidence that shows that the CIA harbored significant doubts about the veracity of the Niger uranium claims from day one and tried, repeatedly in the ensuing months, to validate those claims through communications with their overseas agents and other foreign intelligence agencies. In doing so, the CIA must have been trying to rule out the possibility that the Niger uranium reporting was ultimately from the same forgeries that Martino tried to shop to the CIA station chief in Rome in 2001. It is no surprise then, that the former DGSE Vice-Director Alain Chouet got the impression that the CIA was in possession of at least some of the Niger forgeries in summer 2002. As I discussed in the previous part of this series, Chouet's claim that the CIA had some of the forgeries in summer 2002 has not been independently validated, but even if Langley did not possess copies of the forgeries at that time, the evidence indicates that they knew enough about their existence and contents even as early as Fall 2001 for them to be skeptical about the Niger uranium reporting from SISMI and elsewhere.
P.S. There are a couple of things I am not discussing much here. One is the fact that the CIA's knowledge of the forgeries provided additional motive for the individuals in SISMI who were complicit in deliberately mainsteaming the forgeries and the Niger uranium claims in late 2001 and early 2002, to make it appear as if the uranium claims were credible and separate from the claims in the forgeries. The other aspect is the detail surrounding Jeff Castelli's role in Oct 2002 vis-a-vis the forgeries - this is murky ground that will hopefully get cleared up over time.
3. Conclusions
There is limited reporting to-date which indicates that the CIA was aware of the Niger forgeries around the time they received the SISMI Niger uranium reports in Oct 2001. This doesn't necessarily mean that Langley had copies of the forgeries at the time or that they knew the specific details of names/dates in the forgeries, but it does mean that Langley was aware, at the minimum, that bogus uranium claims associated with Iraq and Niger were circulating in a dossier in Italy. A former CIA official has also confirmed that the CIA would not have given the Italian (SISMI) reports circulation had it known that the Italian claims were based on the forgeries. This observation has significant implications that have not been recognized in most of the reporting on the Niger uranium matter to-date.
The barely reported facts surrounding (a) Rocco Martino's attempt to peddle the Niger forgeries to the CIA station chief in Rome in Fall 2001 and (b) the October 18, 2001, SISMI communique to the CIA trying to put the CIA's concerns about the credibility of the Niger uranium claims to rest, are revealing because they add to the evidence that shows that the CIA harbored significant doubts about the veracity of the Niger uranium claims from day one and tried, repeatedly, to validate those claims through communications with their overseas agents and other foreign intelligence agencies. In doing so, the CIA must have been trying to rule out the possibility that the Niger uranium reporting was ultimately from the same forgeries that Martino tried to shop to the CIA station chief in Rome in 2001. It is no surprise then, that the former DGSE Vice-Director Alain Chouet got the impression that the CIA was in possession of at least some of the Niger forgeries in summer 2002. As I discussed in the previous part of this series, Chouet's claim that the CIA had some of the forgeries in summer 2002 has not been independently validated, but even if Langley did not possess copies of the forgeries at that time, the evidence is clear that they knew enough about their existence and contents even as early as Fall 2001 for them to be skeptical about the Niger uranium reporting from SISMI and elsewhere.