Good work, eriposte. This is precisely the sort of reporting that right wing apologists should be reading before they try to pass this off so easily.
Posted by Matt Langer at November 5, 2005 12:35 PM
now the momentum is gathering.
the central question is how could the niger uranium info have possibly made it up to the white house -- to the office of the vp, to the national security council, to the office of president? how could the docs on which this info was based have made it past the highly trained intell guards in the state dept, the cia, the dia, the fbi?
answer? they did not. the docs were "hand carried". here i am speaking metaphorically.
a related question -- why would italian intelligence put together such a clumsy forgery? surely that would leave a bad impression about simsi with other professional intell organizations.
answere. simsi did not; at least not as an organization. individuals in simsi with contacts to individuals in the us probably assisted in manufacturing the docs.
the phrase "hand-carried" refers to the likelihood that selected members (fellow travelers) of the "we need to sell getting rid of sadaam to the american people" group in, say, the white house, AEI, the cia, state dept, dia, saw that despite the barriers the docs ran into within u.s intell organizations, the docs were "carried" around theose obstacles.
was the arrow of cause from simsi in italy to the white house?
answer. no there was no arrow of causality. there was a circulation (a gulf stream you might say)from the white house to europe and back. the need and desire for info began in the white house, was transmitted to europe by radical allies of white house officials, and floated back to the white house as a (temporarily) useful product.
just a you cannot have a mess like the judy miller mess at the nytimes unless those at the top are sponsoring and protecting it, so you cannot have a preposterously fake intell survive scrutiny from trained pros in us intell organizations unless someone in the white house was spopnsoring and protecting the message in the fake docs.
Posted by orionATL at November 5, 2005 04:20 PMIf it matters....SISMI, Italy's military intelligence, is largely a fascist oganization. SO sayeth Juan Cole. It is not Italy's only intelligence organization. The other two agencies had nothing to do with the Nigergate forgeries...imagine that.
SISDE
CESIS
http://www.juancole.com/2004/09/harold-rhode-and-bernard-lewis-classic.html
http://www.juancole.com/2004/08/rocco-martino-i-am-source-of-false.html
http://www.juancole.com/2004_08_01_juancole_archive.html
Posted by Nur al-Cubicle at November 5, 2005 05:30 PMThe docs are even worse than you describe. Imagine the $1 bill with a smiley face instead of George Washington. That's how bad the Niger seal at the top of the letterhead was. It was a crude hand drawn emblem that beared no relation to the official seal.
Posted by sd at November 6, 2005 02:47 AMThat $1 bill you have in your hand? It's a fake. A rather obvious one - can't imagine why yoyu didn't catch it.
It has a photograph of George Washington.
Posted by Libby Sosume at November 6, 2005 07:24 PMGood catch. But I believe that some reports have said that the documents that were transferred (handcarried, if you will) to the U.S. weren't the actual forgeries, or even direct copies of the actual forgeries (as I understand it), but instead were translations of the forgeries, and as such might they may not have been readily recognizable as forgeries. The seals and other identifying material wouldn't necessarily have been available for inspection, only the text, if I am correct in my understanding.
Of course, this could easily be a CYA sort of situation as well. Having only translations, rather than the originals, may have been a planned manner of achieving deniability.
Posted by Wordie at November 12, 2005 01:00 AMDear eriposte:
At the time I posted the above comments, this one article of yours was the only one I had read. Can you imagine my chagrin over the comments I posted as I begin to read the rest of your series?
It is amazingly deep and well-thought out. Kudos to you for your insight and exceptional work on this. You are lighting the way.
Posted by Wordie at November 13, 2005 12:14 AMThe stamped date for the letterhead matched when Britain last had an embassy there. The PR firm Hill & Knowlton ran an office for publicity in Niger for Britain and staffs many functions in the same capacity for the UK today.
H&K runs PR and does staffing for the Brit embassy in Prague where the fake Atta rumor was started. They have business functions in the Vatican City and Rome, area that have reference or background dealing with the supposed claims. The same firm ran up Saddam incubator atrocities to get the republican base behind intervention in Desert Storm when polls were against it.
"The facts were being fixed around the policy..."
Posted by Mr.Murder at March 25, 2006 01:21 AM