The Left Coaster:Treasongate: The Niger Forgeries v. the CIA Intel Reports - Preliminary Conclusion: An Italian Job

This is a preliminary conclusion (pending further investigation) to a series (see Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6) focused on comparing the CIA intel reports on Niger to the corresponding contents of the relevant Niger documents (mostly forgeries) to understand how the forgeries were "mainstreamed" and to what extent Italian intelligence (SISMI) was complicit in this affair.

This part provides the likely explanation for how (and to some extent, why) the forgeries got "mainstreamed" despite their obvious bogus nature. The discussion is broken up into the following sections.

1. Preface

2. Background

3. Analysis

3.1 Scenario 1

3.2 Scenario 2

3.3 Likely Scenario

3.4 Motive

4. Conclusion

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1. PREFACE

There are four equally important aspects to the Niger/uranium scandal.

(i) Who forged the bogus Niger documents and why
(ii) How the bogus Niger documents were "mainstreamed" and why
(iii) How and why the false uranium from Africa claim really got into Bush's State of the Union claim
(iv) The cover-up of the false SOTU uranium claim that led to the expose of Valerie Plame's identity and "Scooter" Libby's indictment

I have covered items (iii) and (iv) previously in my detailed analysis and reports on the British Butler and Taylor Reports, the Senate (SSCI) Report, the Robb-Silberman report, the report of the Iraq Survey group and the Valerie Plame expose (key links are consolidated here). Press coverage of item (i) has recently picked up and I provided a tentative synopsis on this in Part 6 of this series. What has been substantively lacking in most media coverage to date is the the question of why and how the forgeries got "mainstreamed" [item (ii)]. This series has been focused on this specific aspect - to particularly understand how the claims in a bunch of documents which were deliberate, obvious, third-rate fakes got so easily assimilated into the original intelligence reports from the CIA until sometime in late September-early October 2002.