Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'

FT ^ | 06/27/04 | Mark Huband

[Pikamax]

Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war' By Mark Huband Published: June 27 2004 21:56 | Last Updated: June 27 2004 21:56

When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions.

The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed notepaper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.

The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war - that Iraq sought to buy uranium illicitly from Niger.

The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in its controversial September 2002 dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programmes. It still claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

But the US intelligence community, officials and politicians, are publicly sceptical, and the public differences between the two allies on the issue have obscured the evidence that lies behind the UK claim.

Until now, the only evidence of Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger had turned out to be a forgery. In October 2002, documents were handed to the US embassy in Rome that appeared to be correspondence between Niger and Iraqi officials.

When the US State Department later passed the documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog, they were found to be fake. US officials have subsequently distanced themselves from the entire notion that Iraq was seeking buy uranium from Niger.

However, European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.

These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a "scam", and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.

The fake documents were handed to an Italian journalist working for the Italian magazine Panorama by a businessman in October 2002. According to a senior official with detailed knowledge of the case, this businessman had been dismissed from the Italian armed forces for dishonourable conduct 25 years earlier.

The journalist - Elisabetta Burba - reported in a Panorama article that she suspected the documents were forgeries and handed them to officials at the US embassy in Rome.

The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer.

It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger's real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel.

The FT has now learnt that three European intelligence services were aware of possible illicit trade in uranium from Niger between 1999 and 2001. Human intelligence gathered in Italy and Africa more than three years before the Iraq war had shown Niger officials referring to possible illicit uranium deals with at least five countries, including Iraq.

This intelligence provided clues about plans by Libya and Iran to develop their undeclared nuclear programmes. Niger officials were also discussing sales to North Korea and China of uranium ore or the "yellow cake" refined from it: the raw materials that can be progressively enriched to make nuclear bombs.

The raw intelligence on the negotiations included indications that Libya was investing in Niger's uranium industry to prop it up at a time when demand had fallen, and that sales to Iraq were just a part of the clandestine export plan. These secret exports would allow countries with undeclared nuclear programmes to build up uranium stockpiles.

One nuclear counter-proliferation expert told the FT: "If I am going to make a bomb, I am not going to use the uranium that I have declared. I am going to use what I acquire clandestinely, if I am going to keep the programme hidden."

This may have been the method being used by Libya before it agreed last December to abandon its secret nuclear programme. According to the IAEA, there are 2,600 tonnes of refined uranium ore - "yellow cake" - in Libya. However, less than 1,500 tonnes of it is accounted for in Niger records, even though Niger was Libya's main supplier.

Information gathered in 1999-2001 suggested that the uranium sold illicitly would be extracted from mines in Niger that had been abandoned as uneconomic by the two French-owned mining companies - Cominak and Somair, both of which are owned by the mining giant Cogema - operating in Niger.

"Mines can be abandoned by Cogema when they become unproductive. This doesn't mean that people near the mines can't keep on extracting," a senior European counter-proliferation official said.

He added that there was no evidence the companies were aware of the plans for illicit mining.

When the intelligence gathered in 1999-2001 was thrown into the diplomatic maelstrom that preceded the US-led invasion of Iraq, it took on new significance. Several services contributed to the picture.

The Italians, looking for corroboration but lacking the global reach of the CIA or the UK intelligence service MI6, passed information to the US in 2001 and to the UK in 2002.

The UK eavesdropping centre GCHQ had intercepted communications suggesting Iraq was seeking clandestine uranium supplies, as had the French intelligence service.

The Italian intelligence was not incorporated in detail into the assessments of the CIA, which seeks to use such information only when it is gathered from its own sources rather than as a result of liaison with foreign intelligence services. But five months after receiving it, the US sent former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to assess the credibility of separate US intelligence information that suggested Iraq had approached Niger.

Mr Wilson was critical of the Bush administration's use of secret intelligence, and has since charged that the White House sought to intimidate him by leaking the identity of his wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA agent.

But Mr Wilson also stated in his account of the visit that Mohamed Sayeed al-Sahaf, Iraq's former information minister, was identified to him by a Niger official as having sought to discuss trade with Niger.

As Niger's other main export is goats, some intelligence officials have surmised uranium was what Mr Sahaf was referring to.

[Enchante]

And don't miss this companion piece by the same author:


http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1161341/posts

[Lancey Howard]

BUMP

[Enchante]

Now here's something weird - BOTH of the articles by Huband have been pulled from the FT website - or at least the links are dead. I hadn't looked for them before, because I read them from cached pages I found on Google, but they seem to be gone from FT. Does that mean they don't stand by those stories and backed away from them, or did someone get to them, or were they in danger with the UK's "Official Secrets Act" and backed away from their own reporting, or what??? Anyone know?

[Enchante]

Sorry for the series of posts, but I'm going to park the text of both articles here (as I found it in Google cached pages) since something weird is going on with these articles and the FT website.

http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:5weGdXtMFSMJ:cshink.com/iraq_had_talks_on_uranium.htm+libya+niger+uranium&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=2

---

Intelligence backs claims Iraq had talks on uranium

June 28, 2004
Financial Times
Mark Huband, Security Correspondent

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, according to senior European intelligence officials.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

These claims support the assertion in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

The claim that the illicit export of uranium was under discussion was widely dismissed when letters referring to the sales, apparently sent by a Nigerien official to a senior official in Saddam Hussein's regime, were proved by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be fakes. This embarrassed the US and led the administration to reverse its claim.

But European intelligence officials have confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

Officials said the fake documents, which emerged in October 2002 and have been traced to an Italian with a record for extortion and deception, added little to the picture from human intelligence and were only given weight by the Bush administration.

According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Although the European intelligence material suggests a proactive role by the sellers of the uranium, intelligence officials say that Iraq actively sought supplies.

Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, circumventing official export controls. "The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources," an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said.

The UK government used the details in its Iraq weapons dossier after concluding that it corresponded with other information it possessed, including evidence gathered by GCHQ, the eavesdropping centre, of a visit to Niger by an Iraqi official.

In spite of evidence that the illicit market supplied at least two of the five countries, it is unclear whether talks with Iraq led to exports being made.

© Copyright The Financial Times Ltd

---

Evidence of Niger uranium trade 'years before war'

June 28, 2004
Financial Times
Mark Huband

When thieves stole a steel watch and two bottles of perfume from Niger's embassy on Via Antonio Baiamonti in Rome at the end of December 2000, they left behind many questions about their intentions.

The identity of the thieves has not been established. But one theory is that they planned to steal headed note paper and official stamps that would allow the forging of documents for the illicit sale of uranium from Niger's vast mines.

The break-in is one of the murkier elements surrounding the claim - made by the US and UK governments in the lead-up to the Iraq war - that Iraq sought to buy uranium illicitly from Niger.

The British government has said repeatedly it stands by intelligence it gathered and used in it

[shield]

bttt

[ladyinred]

Too bad people don't even want to know the truth isn't it?

[Fedora]

So why are both the US gov't and the MSM so completely incapable of resolving these issues for the public???

As far as the US government, my guess is we're honoring our nondisclosure agreement with the foreign intelligence agencies that generated the information.

[Enchante]

Sure, but can't someone have the sense to go back to such sources and re-negotiate, say that it's really really important to clear this up in the public because not only has US credibility been grossly and falsely impugned but it puts a dark shadow over the credibility of all western intel agencies? It is particularly important to explain the real facts in light of ongoing dangers with Iran, North Korea, etc. and the need for the publics of various nations to know that intel agencies do have some competence. OK, I suppose if it's the French who have been promised confidentiality, well they could not care less.....

[Fedora]

OK, I suppose if it's the French who have been promised confidentiality, well they could not care less.....

That's mainly what I was getting at. . .

Even if we twisted the French's arm on it, there'd still be concerns about not exposing, say, MI6 assets by declassifying something. There was stuff from World War II that wasn't declassified for 50 years because of this type of problem.

I think there was an attempt to get around the problem around July 2003 by leaking Martino's French connection to certain reporters in the UK. That had some effect, but unfortunately the whole story about that can't be told/verified without the French confirming Martino's work for them and declassifying their files on it, which naturally they're not going to do. I think we'd have to get a source inside French intelligence to cooperate to really get the whole story leaked out. Maybe someone in the Italian press can do it--the Italians have been doing the best job of covering this IMO.

[kabar]

If any one of the following is indeed true, it would prove beyond a shadow of doubt (what is obvious to those willing to think) that Joe Wilson's absurd 'mission' was a set-up, designed to come up with only one (wrong) answer.

Disagree. Wilson did not come up with any conclusive answer. In fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Report, Wilson brought back denials of any Niger-Iraq uranium sale, and argued that such a sale wasn't likely to happen. But the Intelligence Committee report also reveals that Wilson brought back something else as well -- evidence that Iraq may well have wanted to buy uranium. Wilson reported that he had met with Niger's former Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki, who said that in June 1999 he was asked to meet with a delegation from Iraq to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between the two countries.

Based on what Wilson told them, CIA analysts wrote an intelligence report saying former Prime Minister Mayki "interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the (Iraqi) delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales." In fact, the Intelligence Committee report said that "for most analysts" Wilson's trip to Niger "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal."

Senate Intelligence Report

I still say that Wilson's second trip to Niger at CIA expense was the same as the first one, i.e., a contrived boondoggle by Wilson and his wife to have the USG pay for his trip to conduct personal business. It was only after the fact that Wilson saw an opportunity to use the trip to further his own ambitions, which included helping Kerry defeat Bush. There is also no doubt that the CIA felt that they were being used as the scapegoat for 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Iraq based on the "slam dunk" conclusion that Iraq had WMD. The Wilson trip could thus be used by the mid-level CIA types against Bush.

[Enchante]

"Disagree. Wilson did not come up with any conclusive answer."

Oh, I certainly agree with you there - if anything his oral report lent some modest support to the concern that Iraq WAS interested in uranium from Niger..... BUT I was referring above to how he has portrayed his bogus 'report' in his July 6, 2003 NY Times op-ed and in many media appearances - he has left the public and the MSM with the overriding impression that he thoroughly debunked the possibilty that Iraq was seeking uranium at all.

[kabar]

Yes, Wilson was lying and everyone knows it. The WP distanced itself from Wilson in an editorial after the Senate report came out. The MSM knows the truth. Like so many other issues, the debunking appears once and is forgotten while the original and inaccurate charge lives on.

Bush's "16 Words" on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn't Lying Two intelligence investigations show Bush had plenty of reason to believe what he said in his 2003 State of the Union Address.

[Grampa Dave]

"Now here's something weird - BOTH of the articles by Huband have been pulled from the FT website - or at least the links are dead. I hadn't looked for them before, because I read them from cached pages I found on Google, but they seem to be gone from FT. Does that mean they don't stand by those stories and backed away from them, or did someone get to them, or were they in danger with the UK's "Official Secrets Act" and backed away from their own reporting, or what??? Anyone know?"

Thanks for posting those articles on Free Republic. What may be happening is Grampa Dave's reality warning, when we find some that can be used by our side on another web site, if legally possible, we need to post it on Free Republic. Then we need to store it on our computers and send ourselves emails with the data.

[piasa]

Most news sites don't keep articles indefinitely. Some move them to online archives that you have to pay a fee to get into, while others simply don't keep up articles online past a certain date.

[Enchante]

Yeah, I figure that's the explanation - but it does seem odd to me that when editors and reporters preen themselves on writing "the first draft of history" they wouldn't take care to see that their work is easily and reliably available to researchers on the web (sometimes it's a hopelessly bad draft, but these articles seem to be important to the real historical record).

[DocRock]

The I.A.E.A. Refused to Let U.S. Forces Remove 500 Tons of Uranium From Tawaitha, Iraq, May 22, 2004

San Diego Union Tribune

[piasa]

JUNE 2004 : (IRAQ : US DEPT OF ENERGY REMOVES 1.8 TONS OF LOW ENRICHED URANIUM FROM AL TUWAITHA, WHERE IRAQ HAD BEEN CONDUCTING NUCLEAR RESEARCH) Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons development program at the time of the U.S. invasion in March 2003, chief U.S. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer has told Congress.
... Duelfer testified that Iraq was "preserving and expanding its knowledge to design and develop nuclear weapons." One Iraqi laboratory "was intentionally focused on research applicable for nuclear weapons development," the top weapons inspector said. ...
Most of the recent nuclear research took place at Iraq's notorious al Tuwaitha weapons facility, where Saddam had stockpiled over 500 tons of yellow cake uranium ore since before the first Gulf War.
Iraq was also in talks with North Korea on the possibility of importing a 1,300 km missile system, the ISG chief revealed. Foreign missile experts were working in Iraq in defiance of U.N. sanctions, and had helped Iraq redesign the al-Samoud missile.
Saddam's 500-plus-ton uranium stockpile was being monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the same agency that had responsibility for monitoring North Korea's nuclear program throughout the 1990s. In October 2002 Pyongyang stunned IAEA inspectors with the announcement that it was ready to produce nuclear weapons.
In June of this year [2004], the U.S. Energy Department removed 1.8 tons of low-enriched uranium from al Tuwaitha.
Ivan Oelrich, a physicist at the Federation of American Scientists, told the Associated Press at the time that the low-enriched uranium stockpile could have produced enough highly enriched uranium to make a single nuclear bomb.
--- "Iraq Survey Chief Duelfer: Saddam Was Developing Nukes," Newsmax, Thursday, Aug. 5, 2004 11:37 a.m. EDT, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/8/5/114239.shtml