What the Bolton Testimony Tells Us about the Niger Forgeries

by emptywheel

Update Summary for Pachacutec: In this post, I provide background that might be important background for the Niger forgeries. I speculate that the INR analyst who debunked the Niger forgeries worked in the Proliferation division of INR and reported to Beth Frisa. If I'm right, then the testimony Frisa provided in the Bolton nomination hearings--that Fleitz tried to get her INR analysts to report solely on the classification status of information and not the validity of the intelligence--might explain why the INR analyst apparently never shared his opinion that the forgeries were garbage. I also describe some testimony relating to Secure Compartmentalized Information. Apparently, Bolton's office was not following guidelines about logging classified documents when they were removed from the safe. This might be important to both the Plame inquiry and the Niger forgery case, since by not logging the documents, Bolton's people could hide the illicit distribution (or non-distribution, in the case of the Niger forgeries) of classified information.

When the Niger forgeries came into the US, they came in through one of the departments that reported to Bolton, Nonproliferation:

Also on October 11, 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Rome reported to State Department headquarters that it had acquired photocopies of documents on a purported uranium deal between Iraq and Niger from an Italian journalist. The cable said that the embassy had passed the documents to the CIA's                      SENTENCE DELETED                     . The embassy faxed the documents to the State Department's Bureau of Nonproliferation (NP) on October 15, 2002, which passed a copy of the documents to INR.

Nonproliferation is one of the then four departments under Bolton. At the time, it was headed by John Wolf, a former ally of Bolton who has since soured on him.

It strikes me as a bit odd that NP shared the documents with INR right away. As I've shown, Bolton Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz is a real enforcer to make sure things go to WINPAC right away. But for the moment, let's take that as it appears. The documents come into NP and a copy goes to INR.

Who Got the Forgeries

I'm fairly certain the forgeries were passed to an analyst in the Office of Analysis for Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues at INR. This is Greg Thielmann's former department. And Thielmann has admitted to have been responsible for the production of a report written in response to Cheney's inquiries about Niger.

In March 2002, Bradley reported, the White House received Thielmann's report, titled Niger: Sales of Uranium Is Unlikely.

This is the report mentioned in the middle of the discussion of Wilson's trip in the SSCI.

On March 1, 2002, INR published an intelligence assessment, Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely. The INR analyst who drafted the assessment told Committee staff that he had been told that the piece was in response to interest from the Vice President's office in the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal.

So we know this department had been dealing with the Niger question. It is likely, then, that this department was the lead department from INR on the Niger and Iraq question.

I'm going to guess that the INR analyst reported to Beth Frisa, the Proliferation Division Chief. Makes sense, given the subject matter. Plus, she's currently the only female supervisor in the group. I'm not sure whether the senior analyst named in the SSCI report here is the same as the supervisor, but whoever it is is clearly female.

Because the analyst who offered to provide the documents was on leave, the office's senior analyst provided the documents. She cannot recall how she made the documents available, but analysts from several agencies, including the DIA, NSA and DOE, did pick up copies at that meeting.

And (assuming things haven't changed too much at INR, which is a big assumption) there's only one other female candidate. So all of the rest of this analysis assumes that the INR analyst was in a department of INR working on proliferation reporting to Beth Frisa.

Which is one of the reasons the Bolton testimony offers some insight into the Niger forgeries. Because both John Wolf (PDF), then head of Nonproliferation under Bolton, and  Beth Frisa (PDF), this INR supervisor, testified. In addition, the Bolton testimony includes evidence about Bolton's attempts to prevent analysts from offering opinions that contradicted his and about Bolton's problem managing Secure Compartmentalized Information properly.

Bolton's Attempt to Prevent Others at State from Offering Differing Opinions

The SFRC staffers ask Frisa a number of questions about the role Bolton wanted INR analysts to play. She gives a fairly long answer on the role of intelligence analysts, stating that it is their role to review intelligence to make sure it represents the consensus of the Intelligence Community (IC) and to make sure it doesn't violate classification requirements. Then, a staffer asks if Bolton ever tried to change that role. Frisa says she doesn't remember him doing so.

Mr. Levine: Do you recall any efforts by the Under Secretary or his office to change that approach to the clearance process and to limit INR's role, or the intelligence community's role, to issues of classification?

INR Supervisor: I don't recall any, specifically, no.

Mr. Januzzi: Do you recall Mr. Bolton's office ever asserting that it was their job to interpret the data and INR's role to transmit requests for clearance and to worry about sources and methods, or to assert that it was the role of the Under Secretary's office to interpret the data?

INR Supervisor: I don't recall anyone saying that. If someone did say that, I'm not sure I would agree with that.

But apparently, they have an email written to her (presumably by Bolton or Fleitz) arguing just that point.

Ms. O'Connell: There was an e-mail, in 2002.

Mr. Levine: To you.

INR Supervisor: Well, you work in INR long enough, you create a lot of things.

Now, Frisa several times testifies she doesn't remember an issue or event. She makes a joke, once, about not having Alzheimers. And she jokes about being a dinosaur, having served at INR since 1978. So this may very well be honest forgetfulness (note, if she is the senior analyst mentioned in the SSCI, she claimed forgetfullnes of how she distributed the Niger forgeries too).

But there are times she backs off making qualifications of Bolton's behavior when prompted by the SFRC staffers. For example, they ask how common these kind of intelligence disputes are. She says, in all her years in INR, they're fairly rare. But she refuses to characterize how many times they happened with Bolton. Whether because she wants to avoid getting Bolton in trouble, or because she wants to be scrupulously fair, she backs off saying too much about Bolton's treatment of intelligence.

There are several incidents mentioned when Bolton interceded with INR. The speech on Cuba that got Christian Westermann in trouble. A speech on Syria. A judgment on China. With the judgment on China in particular, Bolton seems to have been intent on preventing INR from sharing their opinion with Armitage.

INR Supervisor: That is correct. We were asked to make the analysis available to Mr. Armitage's office. We did so, and put a short cover note on it as we transmitted it to Mr. Armitage's office. And the same cover note we put on the document, we shared it with the other relevant functional and regional offices. The following day -- this all happened in the evening, if I remember correctly --

Mr. Januzzi: Do you recall what month?

INR Supervisor: No.

Mr. Januzzi: Do you understand Under Secretary Bolton's office expressed some concern about INR having attached its own comment to the WINPAC analysis. Is that correct?

INR Supervisor: Yes.

A pretty pathetic state of affairs, when the State Department's own intelligence bureau is not allowed to share its analysis with the Deputy Secretary. This is where Frisa's testimony gets sensitive. They twice go off the record when discussing this incident.

Mr. Januzzi: Were there other incidents in which either Mr. Fleitz or Mr. Bolton told you or others in your office that you supervised that they would rather not receive INR's comments or analysis on issues?

INR Supervisor: None that I'm aware of.

Ms. O'Connell: Can we go off the record?

[Discussion off the record.]

Mr. Foldi: We're back on the record.

Mr. Januzzi: I had one question about the WINPAC analysis. Do you recall which INR analyst was responsible for attaching the INR comment and transmitting that to the Deputy Secretary?

INR Supervisor: Yes.

Mr. Januzzi: Was that someone you supervised?

INR Supervisor: Yes.

Mr. Januzzi: Can you name that individual?

Mr. Foldi: We're not going to do that on the record. I don't mind getting the name, but don't do it on the record.

[Discussion off the record.]

Mr. Levine: Back on the record, please. Let us state, for the record, that several of us have requested to know the name of the analyst who received an e-mail from Mr. Fleitz objecting, apparently strenuously, to the inclusion of a cover memo with the WINPAC analysis that was sent to D. And we've been told that you are not prepared to allow the interviewee to name that person at the moment, and there's nothing we can do about that, but we do protest it.

So we can't know what they said to Frisa wrt other cases where Fleitz or Bolton objected to INR doing its job. And Foldi, a Republican staffer, prevents the SFRC from even learning the identity of the analyst upbraided by Fleitz.

There is no evidence Fleitz and Bolton intervened similarly with the Niger documents. But Frisa provides evidence that, on at least three occasions, Bolton had tried to prevent INR from sharing their opinions about intelligence.

Something similar happens at NP. Wolf is asked about what happens when Bolton's opinion differed from Wolf's. He describes that Bolton used two tactics to make sure his views held sway.

Mr. Januzzi: And was that Mr. Bolton's practice? Did he attach his own views, or did he simply try to turn off NP's views --

Mr. Wolf: Both.

Mr. Januzzi: -- and prevent them from being transmitted to the Secretary?

Mr. Wolf: Both.

This seems to be the source of Wolf's disenchantment with Bolton--these contentious fights over policy. And one topic of these fights was what materials to hand over to the UN in the lead-up to war.

Mr. Wolf: In talking about different memos, I have to say that it wasn't only -- quite often, it wasn't only a problem within the Department, it was a problem in the interagency. But the inspection process for pre-Iraq was a protracted debate about what, when, and how we would give to the U.N.

Finally, Wolf mentions three cases (one of them being Rex Ryu) when Bolton tried to get someone disciplined for basically disagreeing with Bolton.

Again, there is no evidence this relates to the Niger forgeries. But between Frisa and Wolf, it's clear Bolton and Fleitz routinely attempted to intercept opinions or information they deemed to threaten Bolton's stance. That suggests it's possible that Bolton prevented the INR analyst who identified the Niger forgeries as fakes from disseminating his opinion. Which might explain why no one at WINPAC they they were obvious fakes until eight months affter the INR analyst identifies them as fakes.

Bolton's Problem with SCI

The vetting of intelligence was one of two sources of contention between INR and Bolton's office. The other dealt with the proper handling of Secure Compartmentalized Information (SCI). There is evidence that Bolton's office did not follow security guidelines when using SCI.

Greg Theilmann is the first person to bring up the way Bolton's office treated SCI. His interview was not public testimony, though. Reference to it appears in the Thomas Fingar (then Deputy Assistant Secretary of INR) testimony.

Brian McKeon: In conversations with Greg Thielman, who was an Office Director, he has had some recollection that at some point in the period when he was there, people in INR were getting frequent calls from policy bureaus under T, saying, "Hey, we've got this SCI document, it's been left here by the Agency, can you come get it?" And Thielman says he was concerned enough about it that he asked his people to start documenting this, and saying, "We should report this to DS, because they have the lead on this." And I think part of his concern was, after the political troubles and the episodes of the late '90's with INR, that INR might be taking the fall for something that it had nothing to do with. Do you have any knowledge of any of this?  (32; emphasis mine)

Fleitz was also asked several questions about this. He seems to want to blame the security violations on INR.

FREDERICK FLEITZ: Documents like that had to be kept in an SCI safe, and we had an SCI safe in INR which Greg Tillman had provided to us, so we could keep documents like this under the security regulations.

JANICE O'CONNELL: But they would have been locked in with INR, wouldn't they? Under building procedures?

FREDERICK FLEITZ: The problem at that point in time is that INR was not logging in every document into the SCI SCIF. Now that document, that procedure changed when DS took a more -- DFC took control of the documents, but very strict procedures were put in place some time after this episode occurred. And it is possible that, for example, sometimes an SCI document INR would bring for Mr. Bolton to read at this time, and we would say, "We'd like to keep that," and it would be then place in the Bolton safe in INR. At the time it wasn't logged it, it was just put in the safe, but there was a point in time we were informed that it was necessary that every piece of paper in that safe had to be logged on a piece of paper, and we had our staff do it, so it is possible that in January and February of 2002, there were documents in the SCI safe in INR that were being protected, but may not have been officially logged in. That is not to say INR didn't know about them, but they may not have been official documents.

EDWARD LEVINE: But did INR automatically have access to documents that were put in that safe, or did they merely put them in for you?

FREDERICK FLEITZ: It was an INR safe, they had the combination, they would put things in for us. Usually, the procedure would be, we would flag something in the pouch, in Mr. Bolton's SCI pouch that INR brought up to his office, and say, "We would like to save this," sometimes we would order things through INR and they would be brought and put into the SCI safe. (emphasis mine)

Later, when asked about it directly, Fleitz admits some of the these documents were handled improperly. But again, he seems to want to blame it on interdepartmental tensions between Bolton's shop and INR--and on INR directly.

BRIAN McKEON: Let me ask my question. Did Mr. Tillman, or anyone else in INR, ever express a concern to you about how Mr. Bolton or the front office, T front office, was getting intelligence and procedures for carrying or storing classified information that were not being followed?

FREDERICK FLEITZ: Mr. Tillman was never happy that there was an Agency person on Mr. Bolton's staff. I think that's because INR understandably liked being the exclusive source of classified information and advise on intelligence questions to policy officials, but Mr. Bolton wanted a broader source of intelligence, he wanted to use INR's talents, plus tap into the talents of WINPAC. And Mr. Tillman actually tried to stop, for several month, me actually being on his staff, because he didn't want an Agency person there. Eventually, it was worked out anyway, and we have a pretty good security record. I don't know what Mr. Tillman's talking about, there were no security violations recorded in an instance like that, not that we haven't had them, we get a lot of material. Mistakes were made, but nothing of the nature that he's talking about that resulted in any violations. That we had a safe, an SCI safe in Mr. Tillman's area, I don't doubt it was left open, or not secured, at the end of the day, once or twice. Greg closed it when he did his routine security procedures at the end of the day, it took some time -- when you have new people to teach them security procedures -- and one of my responsibilities was to make it clear to T staff to be very careful. Mr. Tillman never filed a security violation against us. If anything serious had happened, I think he might have.

BRIAN McKEON: But, were Agency briefers coming over and leaving documents?

FREDERICK FLEITZ: Agency briefers leave documents all throughout the building, but an Agency person comes over and gives a briefing, they frequently leave stuff behind. They're not supposed to, but it happens with every Bureau.

Let me try to explain the significance of this. As I understand it, when you take something out of an SCI safe, you log it. This makes it easy to ensure that only people cleared for that compartment access that information. And it's a safeguard that such information will not be used improperly. If the documents are not logged, it makes it a lot easier to use the information for nefarious reasons. Say, for example, that you wanted to out a NOC? Well, if you didn't log the document identifying her as a NOC when you removed it from the safe, it would be a lot harder to track down how her identity was disseminated. Or, say you wanted to make it appear that some crummy forgeries had been distributed properly by putting them into a safe after the fact? A lot easier to do if documents are not always logged properly.

I'm not saying either of these things occurred. But the easiest way for us to find out whether they did or not--by looking at the logs--is not reliable in this case.

Bonus Rex Ryu Speculation

There's one more interesting bit. People have always wondered why the Niger claim made it into SOTU but not Powell's UN speech. What did Powell know that Bush didn't? There may be an explanation for Powell's greater skepticism to be found in the Bolton testimony.

One of the problem cases reviewed in the Bolton hearings is that of Rex Ryu. Ryu had the Iran and Iraq accounts in NP in 2002. And one day, he received a cable from IAEA or UNMOVIC without passing it on immediately to Bolton's office. Bolton accused Ryu of lying to him, of hiding that he had received the cable. When Wolf investigated the incident, he found it had no merit. Ryu was eventually transferred out of NP and currently works for Dick Lugar. In any case, it seems Ryu was another one of the people who Bolton suspected of being disloyal simply because he disagreed with him. But in his case, his disagreements are almost certainly about Iran and Iraq (because that was his account).

According to Larry WIlkerson's and Wolf's testimony, Ryu was very closely involved in the vetting process of Powell's speech. Is it possible Ryu recognized the problems with the Niger documents back in October, when they came in? Is it possible he knew the INR analyst's opinions of them? Is it possible he knew full well that Powell shouldn't include the Niger claim in the UN speech? It would offer one explanation...

Comments

[Pachacutec]

wow - what an opus.

Amazing work.

Small request: when you do these extended research pieces, can you include somewhere a summary of conclusions?

[SaltinWound]

Great synthesis, thanks.

[obsessed]

>summary of conclusions

I'm with Pacha - a few "in other words"'s and a short summary would make it a lot easier not to miss any key points.

thanks!

[emptywheel]

Btw,

After having written this, I wonder whether it DOES make more sense that these were passed onto INR. It's pretty clear there are sane people in NP.

It weakens the argument (one I've made for a while) that these came into Bolton's shop to postpone their eventual debunking). I mean, they would kind of have to go to NP, because of the topic. But if he was supposed to prevent their distribution, he dropped the ball a bit.

But it may be that the Rex Ryu's of the world are sane people (by all accounts Ryu is a phenomenal analyst). And they want to consult with other sane people before making up their minds about stuff, like dodgy documents.

[mainsailset]

All this points to the relevance that there must always be consequences that are encorced. The rules, laws and directives are in place and whenever they are not followed, people die and a country wanes.

[Pachacutec]

OT, but have you assembled some large networks map or org charts? If you have, it seems like that itself would be good to publish, to help all kinds of further research.

[Pachacutec]

Just saw the update: That summary seems to capture it, now that I've been through it all.

Thanks. It helps to get a sense of where it's all headed as I work my way through.

[orionATL]

this seems like a nice start on the north american side of the niger forgeries distribution and use problem.

you've teased out a lot from the little info these operators have left behind.

kind of like figuring out what the dinosaur looks like from the few bones left.

[eriposte]

EW,

This is interesting, but there is a substantial point on which we appear to differ in our take on the evidence.

You say: "Which might explain why no one at WINPAC [knew?] they were obvious fakes until eight months affter the INR analyst identifies them as fakes."

I'm not sure why you say eight months (a typo?) but the documents were distributed to one or more people in the CIA well before that. We know that for a fact because the SSCI Report points out [page 62] that the "CIA received copies of the foreign language documents on January 16, 2003." (quite possibly someone at the CIA may have had it earlier, but let's leave that aside for the moment). In the next sentence, the SSCI Report says, "Two CIA Iraq WINPAC analysts told Committee staff that after looking at the documents, they did notice some inconsistencies." They claim dubiously that "it was not jumping out at us that the documents were forgeries." This can mean anything.

My point is that WINPAC knew more than they divulged to the SSCI. All it would have taken for anyone seeing the forgeries was to check a few names and dates and compare them to the original CIA Niger reporting. That would have told them this was screamingly bogus.

Also, it is completely unbelievable that the CIA would receive documents in Oct 2002 that seemed to back up the uranium claim in their intel reports and completely ignore it and pretend it is totally not important. That doesn't pass the smell test. I will try and cover these points in greater detail in my next series on the forgeries.

[travelite]

ok, so, WHO DELETED THE SENTENCE! i am dying to know!
BTW, huge fan here! you do remarkable work!

[travelite]

oops! apologies to all, a bit behind the curve just now. still a big fan!

[Smokestack]

A truly first-rate post here. Glad to see EW driving a Mack Truck through this critical alleyway.

Showered as we are in propaganda, we need to work extra hard to stay focused on the big picture. Which chiefly means: Yellowcake Forgeries. The Achilles' Heel of the Neocons. The Plame situation should be seen mainly as a searchlight pointed at this big picture.

If the genesis and distribution of these strangely amateurish forgeries can be precisely linearly plotted, at some point, the world will be a much healthier place. Though Fleitz may beg to differ.

Keep on truckin!

[QuickSilver]

EW, I hate to post something off-topic, but regarding the Viveca Novak/Luskin testimony, have you considered this?

Viveca Novak may have heard that Rove was Cooper's source from someone who knew about the internal Time e-mail on July 11th, 2003, and not from Cooper himself. Given Viveca Novak's position, I think she was MORE likely to know about Rove's conversation with Cooper from someone who knew about Cooper's e-mail to Kelly, rather than from Cooper himself.

So when Viveca Novak spoke to Luskin back in early 2004, before Rove's first grand jury appearance, she may have telegraphed the fact that there was internal Time e-mail memorializing Rove's conversation with Cooper. And that's a LOT more information than simply saying that she heard around the office that Rove was Cooper's source... This may be one of the crucial details that Fitz wanted to learn: did Viveca Novak talk to Luskin about the Time e-mail? If she did, what did she say of it? At the very least, knowledge of that internal Time e-mail would have indicated to Luskin/Rove that the upcoming Supreme Court battle was not just about a reporter, but about a news organization battling to keep its records private. (Until this past summer, all the public knew about was that Cooper had "notes" that Time was refusing to turn over, not that there was internal e-mail involving other reporters/editors at Time.)

If Viveca Novak talked about the existence of internal Time e-mail, Luskin/Rove would have known that once the Supreme Court appeal was lost in June 2005, there was no reason for Cooper to go to jail, because the internal Time e-mail itself was going to show that Rove told Cooper about Mrs. Wilson's CIA identity. I think this is why Luskin/Rove let Cooper off the hook, in fact.

I am confident Fitz is going to explore just what Viveca Novak knew about that internal Time e-mail, and what she conveyed to Luskin of its contents (and when). I have a hunch that this internal Time e-mail is what her deposition was all about...

Again, apologies for going off-topic...

[emptywheel]

eR

You're right. Eight months is incorrect. Three.

I'm not saying WINPAC shouldn't have known. I'm saying something is giving them plausible deniability for not having examined the documents earlier. Now if Repubblica is right and CIA received copies in summer 2002, then it's even more incriminating. But it doesn't change the fact that CIA needs to be able to pretend they weren't forgeries earlier than January (with the January date, they could still "plausibly" claim they were pursuing the matter after they received copies, as they apparently did.

One of the reasons I'm so suspicious of their SCI processes at WINPAC is because of the SOTU discrepancy. Foley was insistent an early draft of SOTU included the Niger claim. Joseph says no. Apparently WINPAC files back Joseph's story (while Condi's blabbermouth backs Foleys). If someone was not logging stuff in WINPAC's safes, then it would make it fairly easy to remove early drafts of SOTU. And Niger forgeries.

And remember, our main focus on this has always differed. You've been proving what they had to reasonably have known. For the most part, I've been looking at how they built their cover story. Which is why the question of distribution is more critical to what I'm doing. I don't doubt some of the people at CIA knew very early these were fakes. But if the documents were really circulating, they risked exposure by those who weren't in on this.

QS

I honestly think Vivnovka learned of Cooper's source from the Wash bureau chief of Time James Carney. Just gut level feel. But I think he was outspoken on this earlier, and since the Vivnovka thing has broken, he has been silent, Kelly has been taking the lead. And Kelly described Carney as being one of the people who knew of the identity (plus himself and Cooper), but said the identity wasn't guarded as closely as it should have been.

Now, I imagined he would have just revealed the identity. But perhaps Vivnovka found the email...

[eriposte]

EW,

I didn't mean to minimize the work you are doing in any way. It is very important to explore the other aspects of the issue - including the issue of distribution - and the cover story....which you are doing very well. I was just saying that we have a difference in the issue of whether someone at the CIA saw this earlier or not. There was clearly a cover-up going on regardless.

Thanks...

[emptywheel]

eR

Oh, I didn't take it as such. But it's something I'm very aware of. You and I look at this totally differently, so you keep track of some details (well, all details) and I keep looking at other things. I think the two approaches are very complimentary.

[jwp]

EW and Eriposte,

write books

as far as code word materials go, very shocking behavior -- regardless of whether they had ulterior motives. Where was the security officer? Any violations would usually be written up. There should be a paper trail -- or a story about why there is no paper trail.

Fact of a paper trail somewhere may be why the violations were mentioned, and casually downplayed, as you quoted.