Niger Uranium Rumors Wouldn't Die (LA Times tries to support 'Joe the Liar')

That October, shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the CIA heard from another intelligence service that officials in Niamey, capital of Niger, had agreed to "ship several tons of uranium to Iraq," according to a 2004 report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Wilson and the U.S. ambassador to Niger concluded that a sale, although possible, was highly unlikely.

"It was a French-owned mine, so any Nigerien government deal would have to go through the French company," he said. "Secondly, the size of the sale would have an impact on the national economy. The number of trucks would have been at record highs. They couldn't do it secretly."

Moving the yellowcake would require "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor trailers," the analysts wrote. "Because Niger is landlocked, the convoy would have to cross at least one international border and travel at least 1,000 miles to reach the sea."

Later that month, the British published a report on Iraq's pursuit of weapons that said "there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

It is also unclear why British intelligence has not withdrawn its claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa.

British intelligence officials have said their information was based on more than one source, and that they didn't see the forged documents until March 2003. A British parliamentary report later concluded the British analysis was "credible."

What? 25 trucks hard to hide?

Joe Wilson, as part of his business, worked with Niger. Why? According to Joe...Gold:

"I have a number of clients, and basically we help them with their sort of investments in countries like Niger," explains Wilson. "Niger was of some interest because it has some gold deposits coming onstream. We had some clients who were interested in gold.... We were looking to set up a gold-mine company out of London."

http://www.jimgilliam.com/2004/01/vanity_fairs_profile_on_joseph_wilson_and_valerie_plame.php

Well, look at Nigers main exports....

"Trade (2002 est.): Exports (freight on board--f.o.b.)--$387 million. Types--uranium, livestock, cowpeas, and onions."

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5474.htm

Well gold isn't in the list, but uranium is,

And those who find it hard to believe that Iraq would buy yellowcake from Niger...Iraq already had 500 tons of yellowcake from Niger in its possession...

"By April 2003, when the U.S. invaded Iraq, Saddam Hussein had stockpiled 500 tons of yellowcake uranium at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant south of Baghdad."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/17/171214.shtml

Joe somehow came into money and worked for John Kerry...

"But now Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV — he of the Hermes ties and Jaguar convertibles — has been thoroughly discredited. Last week's bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report concluded that it is he who has been telling lies.

Another former government official told Wilson that Iran had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998. That's the same year that Saddam forced the weapons inspectors to leave Iraq. Could the former official have meant Iraq rather than Iran? If someone were to try to connect those dots, what picture might emerge?

But based on one op-ed declaring 16 words spoken by the president a lie, he transformed himself into an instant celebrity and, for a while, it seemed, a contender for power within the chien-mange-le-chien world of foreign policy. That dream has now probably evaporated. It is hard to see how a President John Kerry would now want Wilson in his inner circle. But if he desired to return to Gabon or Niger I, for one, would not be among those opposing him."

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200407121105.asp

Wilson isn't a whistleblower...he appears to be a traitor. To the old media, Joe is a hero, but to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, he is a proven liar.

From Justoneminute.com:

"

The LA Times reprises the history of Niger uranium rumors, but we have homed in on their description of the genesis of Joe Wilson's trip:

The Pentagon report quickly drew the attention of Cheney, who asked his CIA briefer for more information.

The agency responded by sending Wilson, a retired diplomat who previously had gone to Niger for the CIA, to Niamey in February 2002. The CIA didn't send its own operative because the agency considered it "a wild goose chase," said a former senior intelligence official.

Wait a second - a "former senior intelligence official" is suggesting that the CIA went with Joe Wilson rather than Jack Bauer because they did not take the request seriously?

No way. Well, OK, maybe a little way - per the SSCI Ms. Plame did apprise her hubby of the proposed trip with the news that there is this "crazy report" they would like him to check out.

But still - the notion that this trip was not taken seriously by the CIA, and that Wilson did not exactly represent the creme de la creme of investigative sleuths, is an old White House talking point. Which "senior intelligence official" is parroting it now - State, CIA, DIA, where?"

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/02/no_respect_joe_.html

This appears to be a story being triggered by machinations of the ex-Clintonistas and the anti-Bush CIA wing. The ex-CIA expert is Paul Pillar, now a Prof at Georgetown and writing "I told them so, but they didn't listen to me" articles for Foreign Affairs. see http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2004/09/27/13146.html

He appears to have been one of the targets of Porter Goff's housecleanings at the CIA.

The reality is that for a couple of million dollars you can buy almost anything from anyone in Africa (or in Boston for that matter). 25 10 ton trucks is nothing to hide. Cover it with asphalt and you have a road crew building a 3 or 4 mile stretch of road. As someone noted the Brits are still maintaining it is so, because it is so.

The whole article is poorly researched - and is simply supporting conclusions already made. It fails to address a key component of the entire story, namely, that Wilson is a liar and a fraud.

My hope is that the Administration is lining up for a big offensive on all these false stories prior to the 06 elections.

There's some really good commentary on this article from Jerry Pournelle, from here:

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view401.html#Friday

"I note in the LA Times today an article about yellowcake, Wilson, Plame, and the usual Bush-baiting bushwa. It supposedly tells the story of the yellowcake rumor that would not die (and which the Brits believe to this day). It also gave information that perhaps the LA Times didn't know it was giving.

The article several times quotes CIA officials who speak on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to reporters. Later in the article one of the CIA officers who speaks anonymously because he isn't authorized to talk to reporters tells the reporters that the Brits wouldn't give the CIA any information about their sources. The reporters don't draw any conclusions from that, but I'd say it's all pretty obvious. The CIA leaks like a sieve, starting with Wilson who publishes articles about his confidential reports. The Agency has always had a liberal world-saver bent. Don Hamilton used to have goody two-shoes Agency people in his Matt Helm stories: parodies, but a lot more realistic than many know.

Now that isn't universally true, of course, but there has always been a strong leftist streak in the CIA inherited in part from its OSS and State Department cookie pusher roots. (Recall that Adolf Berle, head of State Dept. Security, was told by Whittaker Chambers about communist infiltration of State, and dutifully filed his notes without bothering to report this to anyone or do anything about it. Years later Alger Hiss was at Yalta as a top aide to Roosevelt. If you don't know what happened at Yalta, read Churchill's accounts.)

My thanks to the LA Times for pointing out why most intelligence agencies decline to cooperate with us by sharing sources.

It's only fair to point out that the Brits had a communist agent in Washington, and we used to show him all kinds of stuff about sources inside the USSR until one day we no longer had any sources inside the USSR."

From the Butler Report:

It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in 1999. The British Government had intelligence from several different sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.
The Butler Report affirmed what the British government had said about the Niger uranium story back in 2003, and specifically endorsed what Bush said as well.
By extension, we conclude also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was well-founded.

From the Senate Committee:

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported July 7, 2004 that the CIA had received reports from a foreign government (not named, but probably Britain) that Iraq had actually concluded a deal with Niger to supply 500 tons a year of partially processed uranium ore, or "yellowcake." That is potentially enough to produce 50 nuclear warheads.

The Senate report said the CIA then asked a "former ambassador" to go to Niger and report. That is a reference to Joseph Wilson -- who later became a vocal critic of the President's 16 words. The Senate report said 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."

He (the intelligence officer) said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting.

Both the US and British investigations make clear that some forged Italian documents, exposed as fakes soon after Bush spoke, were not the basis for the British intelligence Bush cited, or the CIA's conclusion that Iraq was trying to get uranium.

FactCheck.org

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.