Bolton…again

https://original.antiwar.com/smith-grant/2019/05/19/lesson-from-fbis-niger-uranium-forgeries-file/

by Grant Smith

An analysis of 640 pages of FBI investigatory records obtained by IRmep under the Freedom of Information Act reveals how the FBI Director limited Senator John D. Rockefeller’s urgent 2003 written demand for accountability over faulty Iraq war intelligence into a narrow overseas investigation. The released files, originally scheduled for declassification on December 31, 2028 document how FBI special agents from the Washington Field Office trailed Niger uranium sale forgery suspects in European regions where they held little jurisdiction – but were not allowed by FBI Director Robert Mueller to pursue any officials in their own back yard that twisted dubious intelligence to support the US invasion of Iraq. The lesson is clear. Despite subsequent years of Senate investigations into pre-invasion claims that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, Americans are still vulnerable to the misuse of real and fabricated intelligence deployed by unscrupulous US government officials seeking to plunge the nation into war.

To justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, White House officials repeatedly used dubious intelligence to publicly make accusations that Iraq had a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The most compelling accusation was that Iraq secretly sought to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger to refine and produce nuclear weapons. It was compelling because Iraq had only one plausible use for uranium – making nuclear weapons.

Wissam al-Zahawie, an Iraqi diplomat stationed at the Vatican traveled to Niger’s capital Niamey on February 1, 1999. Al-Zahawie solicited the Niger government’s support for lifting UN trade embargoes imposed against Iraq after the Persian Gulf War (Iraq War I). In the year 2000 Rocco Martino, a former Italian Carabinieri policeman, was allegedly asked by Italian intelligence agency officer Antonio Nucera if he was interested in earning money. Martino accepted and was placed in contact with Laura Montini, an Italian intelligence (SISMI) agent working inside the Niger embassy in Rome, who began passing documents about a Niger sale of uranium to Iraq – allegedly the true purpose of the Wissam al-Zahawie trip – for Martino to shop around to his European intelligence agency clients. The documents had been faxed from Niger phone numbers, presumably so that French, British and other electronic eavesdroppers could pick them up. By the end of the year 2000 a UK intelligence commission derived from the forgeries a report claiming, “unconfirmed intelligence indicates Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium.” UK later released a White Paper claiming Iraq “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa, despite having no active civil nuclear power programme that could require it.”

By the summer of 2001, Martino assembled an entire dossier of Niger uranium documents based on forgeries from stolen Niger embassy papers and SISMI intelligence files. Their centerpiece was written in French on Niger government stationary stamped “confidential.” This fake July 27, 2000 letter was from Niger’s President to Iraq’s, signed with the seal of the President of Niger. It read, “I have the honor of referring to accord No. 381-N1 2000, concerning the provision of uranium, signed in Niamey on the 6^th of July between the Government of the Republic of Niger and the Government of Iraq…” The letter described future shipments of 500 tons of yellowcake uranium. Different compilations of the Niger dossier circulated in Europe, some with handwritten corrections of the most obvious errors, with an asking price of up to $100,000 euros. On October 15, 2001 the CIA Rome station received SISMI reports of a Niger uranium deal with Iraq, and passed the information to Washington with the caveat that it was uncorroborated.

Americans were subsequently bombarded by US officials in the runup to the US invasion of Iraq with Niger uranium sale claims. Vice President Richard Cheney set the stage, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on March 14, 2001 that Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. On December 7, 2002, Iraq declared to UN weapons inspectors it did not have a nuclear weapons program. But State Department Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton oversaw the official US response, issued on December 19, 2002 charging Iraq with omitting its “efforts to procure uranium from Niger.”…

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