you moonbats make my head hurt with all them "facts." Clenis Clenis Clenis!

ah now this is getting interesting.

so, if i understand correctly,

the idea, the possibility, that iraq was secretly importing nigerian urnamium originated internally within the u.s. government and was expressed externally to the french by the cia.

this happened prior to sept 2001.

that is not inconsistent with the view that the bush admin, cheney/rumsfeld/"neocon" alliance in particular, intended to generate a casus belli to justify removing hussein.

so i guess one question you are looking to answer is: who (individual or group) started the ball rolling within the u.s. government in summer, 2001 (or earlier)?

if you can tease out identities and details from the carefully disguised/hidden facts available, you ought to get a pulitzer - whether reporter or no.

Brilliant. Well researched, factual and concisely written. This topic has been of interest to me for sometime, but frankly, my research keeps coming up against a wall.

Read Saddam's Secrets the newly released book by Iraqi Gen. Georges Sada. Saddam planned WMD attacks on Israel. He was also working hard to make or purchase nukes. He had big plans for all of us. Check out what a Saddam insider has to say before you question Iraq's WMD program. The man who has killed more Arabs had BIG plans and wasn't finished yet.
Gen. Sada points out that Sec. Albright was a joke with her, "paper rattling" and Bill Clinton's response to terrorism, or lack of it, was viewed as weakness.
Hey, what does Sada know? He was only there.

i got all this leftover crow. you guys want?

Sorry, I don't do ebonics.

Read Sada's book and find out where the WMDs went.

In late November, another uranium report hit Washington. This time, a special agent from the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, working counterintelligence operations in the French port of Marseilles, had received a phone call from a West African businessman. The caller said 20 barrels of Niger yellowcake were in a warehouse in Cotonou awaiting shipment to Iraq.

'Bout time somebody in the MSM mentioned this guy.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Secretive_military_unit_sought_to_solve_0105.html

This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.

“They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them,” the UN source said. “Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that ‘Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?’”

Re: Sada. I guess they found somebody.

>>> Bout time somebody in the MSM mentioned this guy

Yup. That's going to be in my next series FMJ. I've been sending feelers to some journalists about it.

Are you aware of any articles published that talk about the origins of uranium claims emanating from the period prior to 9/11/01?

eR: one of the threads that put this whole story earlier than 9/11 was the fact that the forgeries were probably birthed from the papers that were taken in the burglary on the Iraqi embassy somewhere between Dec 29, 2000 and Jan 1, 2001. Nur al-Cubicle related the following from the Italian press:

This story, like a mundane spy thriller, begins with a burglary--the fifth-floor apartment in No. 10 Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome’s Mazzini Quarter. The thick steel-plated door defends the offices of the Embassy of Niger. A gloomy corridor runs from the offices of the political attaché from that of the ambassador. On a night sometime between 29 December 2000 and 1 January 2001, the usual “persons unknown” are frantically searching for something, turning the embassy inside-out. Papers are strewn everywhere and file cabinets have been opened. When early on January 2, the Second Secretary for Administrative Affairs, Arfou Mounkaila, reports the theft to the Carabinieri in the Trionfale precinct, he admits that the burglars behaved bizarrely. A lot of ado and trouble for nothing. With the exception of a steel Breil watch and three small vials of perfume, the “thieves” took nothing. Or so it seemed. Today, if you stop by the embassy and ask a few questions about the curious theft, a courteous woman with a big smile will tell you this: It all began here, it all started with that break-in.

It seems reasonable to believe that if the burglary was done so as to create the forgeries, then this was part of the longer termed plot to give a reason to take out Saddam. After all, Scott Ritter noted that they were planting false stories in the press starting back in 1998 to build the case for war against Iraq.

Mary,

You are correct that this story per se traces back a long time, but what I'm trying to get at is this: who was the CIA's contact that first alleged an Iraq-Niger uranium deal or interaction relating to uranium in Spring or Summer 2001.

The alleged burglars and the Martino/La Signora/Nucera/Maiga cabal has been looked at - and will hopefully be looked at more closely. But I want to also direct focus to the question of who else was specifically aware of the forgeries (or plans to cook up something like that) in Spring or Summer 2001 who had access to U.S. intelligence to spread the uranium rumor prior to September 2001. Was it one of the four (seems somewhat unlikely) or someone directly connected to one or more of the four and who also had ties into U.S. intelligence or the Bush administration?

eR -

I'm not aware of any earlier than Sept. 2002 (around the time Tony Blair first discloses the uranium intelligence to the British parliament). But it's tough finding specific articles because a search for "Niger uranium" or "Africa uranium" comes up with about a bazillion hits, most of them bloggers ranting about Valerie Plame. Damn those bloggers!

Speaking of journalists, anyone interested in the 'West African businessman' story might want to contact the NCIS office in Marseille, France, and try to chase down the guy who took the original phonecall. The number of the NCIS Marseille field office is listed in the following pdf. (Page 239)

http://www.cert.mil/misc/dcio.pdf

Mary,

BTW, it's unlikely the Niger embassy break-in of 2000/2001 was done to create the forgeries specifically. The author(s) of Docs 3, 4 and 5 did not have access to accurate info about Niger. They had to use names, letterheads, seals, etc. that were fifteen years out-of-date. It's not until Doc 2 that we see updated Niger info. It doesn't make a lot of sense that the forger would break into the Niger embassy to aid his forgery, but only use the stolen information in one of his documents.

It's more likely that Sismi (Italian military intelligence) broke into the Niger embassy simply to confirm Wissam al Zahawie's trip to Niger in 1999. Sismi only provided the stolen information to the "Niger forgery cabal" after Docs 3, 4 and 5 were already done. That's why Doc 2 is improved. Sismi provided the cabal feedback so to speak.