Plame, Niger, and forged documents … oh my

October 24, 2005

How broad are Patrick Fitzgerald’s interests? This broad.

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NATO intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

Depending on the extent to which Fitzgerald pursued this, what he found, the overall accuracy of this UPI report, it suggests the Plame scandal may end up encompassing quite a number of Bush-related program activities.

…NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald’s team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald’s team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush’s State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated.

Obviously, there are plenty of questions to which there is no publicly-available answer, not the least of which is what the unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry actually says.

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that Fitzgerald isn’t in a position to start charging White House officials for their possible role in the Niger fiasco. The UPI report says this angle “opens the door” into Bush lying his way into a war, but if so, the door is only open a crack. As Mark Kleiman notes today, “the charges themselves will have to be limited to blowing Plame’s cover and covering it up, because that’s the limit of Fitzgerald’s terms of reference.”

At a minimum, it suggests that a) Fitzgerald is being extremely thorough; and b) he’s getting a complete picture of the Bush gang’s motivations for smearing Joseph Wilson in the first place. Stay tuned.

I would be in favor of opening an inquiry into allegations that there was a criminal conspiracy to commit fraud against the US Government (forged documents), the United States Congress (Bush notification indicating Saddam was linked to 9/11) and the American People (denied the facts and lied to repeatedly by government officials before a very important election).

Do you think Bush would have bombed Niger? Clinton bombed Sudan when he found out about connections to bin Laden.

  • Isn’t UPI owned by the Moonies now? To me, that puts it on the same credibility level as World Net Daily. Just sayin…

  • Isn’t UPI owned by the Moonies now?

    It is, but the story was written by Martin Walker, who’s credibility is strong.

    The report, in other words, is from a reliable journalist, if not a reliable wire service.

  • Let me expand on something I wrote yesterday.

    I think the documents may come into play as part of Fitzgerald’s case for obstruction of justice or purgery. To understand why this could be the case, you have to go back to the pre-history of the “Plame Game”.

    In May and June of 2003, before he published his NYTimes Op-Ed piece Wilson had been an anonymous source for two Kristof columns in the Times, one on May 3, 2003 and the other on June 13, 2003 ; a Pincus column in the Washington Post on June 12, 2003; and a Judis/Ackerman article in The New Republic on June 30, 2003. The source in these columns claimed that the Niger documents were forgeries and that he had proved them so. Here is the relevant passage from May 3 Kristof column.

    Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons…

    I’m told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president’s office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

    The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy’s debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted—except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.

    Wilson admitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he was the source for the Pincus column. However, he never saw the documents. His explanation for the claim that he made to the Pincus is in the committee report.

    The former ambassador said that he may have “misspoken” to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were “forged.” He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself.

    Bob Somerby (link below) has done a very good job of reporting all of this.

    It was in the period, while Wilson was talking to reporters on background that the push back against him began. Keep in mind that the likely defendants in this case claim that their contact with reporters was to warn them off of the story that Wilson was peddling. For this defense of their actions to hold up under scrutiny it must be shown that they were unaware that the documents were forgeries. Although the March 2003 IAEE report said the documents were indeed forged, the defendants-to-be could claim they did not believe that report.
    Fitzgerald may have looked into the possibility that the soon to be indictees were aware of the dubious nature of the documents independent of the IAEE report. In fact, one possibility is that the White House cabal was responsible for the forgeries. Hence their push back against Wilson was in fact a cover-up of that crime.

    We will soon enough know if this is how it will turn out.

    http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh102105.html

  • If the report is true, it leads to many questions
    about his investigation. His authority includes
    “. . . violations of any federal criminal laws related
    to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure,
    . . . ” so, depending on how you interpret the
    word “related,” his reach could extend pretty
    far. But wouldn’t we have heard something?
    More witnesses. Perhaps a request to the
    Attorney General to extend his authority, based
    on information already received. I don’t think
    this has happened. And surely, he’d need
    to extend the grand jury if the scope widens,
    and I don’t think he’s going to ask for that at
    the last moment.

    Maybe the door to Pandora’s Box has
    opened just a crack, but unless Patrick
    Fitzgerald has found some way to bull
    his way through it, you can be sure
    the Republicans will slam it shut,
    permanently, once he’s finished.

  • I’m guessing that, as a prosecutor, Fitzgerald constantly has his eye on the Theory of the Case that will convince jurors to convict. Remember, the point of indicting is to try and convict criminals. It doesn’t end with the indictment.

    Fitzgerald may not be expanding his inquiry because he wants to bring additional charges. He may simply believe that it is necessary to develop the entire story, since a jury might not convict on Espionage Act charges, much less perjury charges, unless the jury has been convinced that the leaks and the perjury were conducted to further nefarious purposes rather than national security.

    Unless you tie in Chalabi, the yellowcake mess, etc. a jury may acquit.

  • I’m not so sure Mr. Kleiman is right. From the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (which cover grand juries):

    Rule 8. Joinder of Offenses or Defendants

    (a) Joinder of Offenses.

    The indictment or information may charge a defendant in separate counts with 2 or more offenses if the offenses charged — whether felonies or misdemeanors or both — are of the same or similar character, or are based on the same act or transaction, or are connected with or constitute parts of a common scheme or plan.

    Do any of us believe that the use of the Niger forgeries and the subsequent plan to cover that up, which involved in part exposing Valerie Plame are not part of a common scheme?

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