Reply #124: Wikipedia on the origin of the document [View All]

[BurtWorm]

The documents were given to US intelligence, not British. There's no mention of Britain not giving over evidence to IAEA.

So it's your word against Wikipedia, the Butler report, the SIR, etc. Who to believe....? :shrug:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery


Soon thereafter, the documents became generally accepted by the press as falsified. In July 2003, conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan stated, "he truth now, we know, is that a forgery was put together to get this country into a war with Iraq, that forgery found its way into our intelligence agencies, it found its way into the State of the Union, and the president of the United States should show more indignation and outrage that this was done." Buchanan added, "Somebody in our own government knew very well that was a forgery, and they advanced it on up the line." <2>

By late 2003, the trail of the documents had been partially uncovered. They were obtained by a "security consultant" (and former agent of the precursor agency to SISMI, the SID), Rocco Martino, from Italian military intelligence (SISMI). An article in The Times (London) quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy, after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004.) Martino later recanted and said he had been misquoted, and that SISMI had not facilitated the meeting where he obtained the documents.

Martino, in turn, offered them to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba. On instructions from her editor at Panorama, Burba offered them to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in October, 2002. <3>

It is as yet unknown how Italian intelligence came by the documents and why they were not given directly to the U.S. In 2005, Vincent Cannistaro, the former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, expressed the opinion that the documents had been produced in the United States and funneled through the Italians:

The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein . . . . <4>

In an interview published April 7, 2005, Cannistaro was asked by Ian Masters what he would say if it was asserted that the source of the forgery was former National Security Council and State Department consultant Michael Ledeen. (Ledeen had also allegedly been a liaison between the American Intelligence Community and SISMI two decades earlier.) Cannistraro answered by saying: "you'd be very close." <5>

In March 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed not to open a Congressional investigation of the matter, but rather asked the FBI to conduct the investigation. As of September 2004, the FBI had not yet interviewed Martino, claiming they were awaiting permission from the Italian government to do so. <6> However, Martino is known to have been in New York in August 2004. <7>

On July 14, 2004 the British Government released a report called "A Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction" commonly referred to as the Butler Report. The report calls President Bush's statement regarding Niger "well founded." The Butler Review made the following conclusions on page 139:

a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi officials visited Niger in
1999.
b. 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.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as
opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government
did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British
Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact
of the forgery does not undermine it.
In September 2004, the CBS News program 60 Minutes decided to delay a major story on the forgeries because such a broadcast might influence the 2004 U.S. presidential election. A CBS spokesman stated, "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election." <8>