The New Niger Document

by emptywheel

The NYT has a story today about a declassified INR document--written in March 2002--that judged it unlikely Niger would provide Iraq with yellowcake.

A high-level intelligence assessment by the Bush administration concluded in early 2002 that the sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq was "unlikely" because of a host of economic, diplomatic and logistical obstacles, according to a secret memo that was recently declassified by the State Department.

Among other problems that made such a sale improbable, the assessment by the State Department's intelligence analysts concluded, was that it would have required Niger to send "25 hard-to-conceal 10-ton tractor-trailers" filled with uranium across 1,000 miles and at least one international border.

Apparently, Judicial Watch got the document along with "several hundred pages of other documents" and passed it onto the NYT. There's no sign of the document yet at Judicial Watch (as of 10:30 EST), although they have released their FOIA documents in the past (as they did with documents on Cheney's Energy Task Force).

The document is almost certainly related to a report written under the direction of then Director of the Office of Analysis for Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues Greg Thielmann titled, "Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely." The report was cited in the SSCI report, which told us almost as much as today's NYT story:

(U) 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. The assessment reiterated 1NR's view that France controlled the uranium industry and "would take action to block a sale of the kind alleged in a CIA report of questionable credibility from a foreign government service." The assessment added that "some officials may have conspired for individual gain to arrange a uranium sale," but considered President Tandja's government unlikely to risk relations with the U.S. and other key aid donors. In a written response to a question from Committee staff on this matter, the Department of State said the assessment was distributed through the routine distribution process in which intelligence documents are delivered to the White House situation room, but State did not provide the assessment directly to the Vice President in a special delivery. [emphasis mine]

Compare that with the NYT's description:

The review concluded that Niger was "probably not planning to sell uranium to Iraq," in part because France controlled the uranium industry in the country and could block such a sale. It also cast doubt on an intelligence report indicating that Niger's president, Mamadou Tandja, might have negotiated a sales agreement with Iraq in 2000. Mr. Tandja and his government were reluctant to do anything to endanger their foreign aid from the United States and other allies, the review concluded. The State Department review also cast doubt on the logistics of Niger being able to deliver 500 tons of uranium even if the sale were attempted. "Moving such a quantity secretly over such a distance would be very difficult, particularly because the French would be indisposed to approve or cloak this arrangement," the review said. [emphasis mine]

The dates are different (the NYT cites a March 4 date while this Thielmann report is dated March 1), but the memo mentioned in the NYT is almost certainly at least based on the Thielmann report.

So no new news, right?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Thielmann oversaw the report, but he almost certainly had the assistance of an unnamed INR analyst who figures strongly in the Niger saga. This might be the analyst on whose notes the famed INR memo was based (although I have my doubts). More tantalizingly, this might be the analyst who debunked the Niger forgeries as soon as he saw them in October 2002. If the identity of the analyst is clear--or even hinted--from the document, it may open another avenue of investigation into the Niger forgeries.

And then there are the other declassified documents. What else was Judicial Watch after? And why haven't they released them yet?

Update: Thanks to Jeff for alerting me that Judicial Watch now has this document available (PDF). It appears the document is the same or related to the document mentioned in SSCI. It also appears that earlier reports that this was a Thielmann document are not entirely accurate: the document is described as "INR/AA" analysis, which would be the Office for Analysis of Africa, a different INR office than the one Thielmann led. (Which also means it's less likely the Iraq analyst was involved in this report.)

The most interesting part of the report is the way it almost admits and deals with the date discrepancy that eRiposte has discovered. The document reads:

A CORRUPT FORMER PRESIDENT MAY HAVE NEGOTIATED WITH IRAQ [REDACTED] AT THAT TIME NIGER WAS RULED BY PRESIDENT BARE MAINASSARA, AN UNSOPHISTICATED AND VENAL INDIVIDUAL WHO WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN ABOVE TRYING TO SELL URANIUM TO A ROGUE STATE. BUT BARE'S PRESIDENTIAL GUARD KILLED HIM IN APRIL 1999. THE JUNTA THAT GOVERNED NIGER FOR THE NEXT NINE MONTHS RELINQUISHED POWER TO TANDJA'S FREELY ELECTED GOVERNMENT IN DECEMBER 1999.

And then it goes onto explain why Tandja would be unlikely to approve of such a purchase.

In other words, the document is saying the purchase might be plausible if it were said to take place a year earlier than alleged. But that if it were really to have taken place in 2000, under Tandja's watch, it was totally implausible.

In other words, this document appears to be saying that Mainassara might have begun negotiations, but that he was killed before he could finalize the deal.

Which would explain why you send Wilson to Niger. State can explain to you very easily why Tandja (and the 2000 alleged signing date) is totally bogus. But you need to send someone like Wilson, who had ties to the two previous regimes, to determine whether the negotiations ever actually began.

I'm sure eRiposte will have more on this ... and perhaps will make more sense of the timing supposed by the INR document.

Update 2: See eRiposte for a tempering of my claim here. As he says, there is no indication that INR recognized the problem with dates. I do think, however, that INR found the claim that Tandja would be involved in this unbelievable, and therefore questioned the notion of a deal started in 1999 and consummated in 2000.

Comments

[emptywheel]

One more thing. Regardless of the date of this document (March 1 or March 4), it was definitely written without input from Wilson's trip. Wilson returned from Niger on March 4 and was debriefed on March 5.

[Monzie]

Might Wilson have phoned or emailed from Africa?

[emptywheel]

He might have. But he wasn't taked to talk to Tandja's government (and pointedly avoided stepping on the Ambassador's toes by doing so). His job was to talk to the prior government, who were in power in 1999. Furthermore, he conducted the trip at the beheast of CIA, not State. He did brief Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick just before he left, but it's unlikely such a report would make it back to a different department of State in time to appear in the report.

It appears that the report relied on the Ambassador's and General Fulford's earlier meetings with the government as well as general knowledge about the country.

Which is not to say that the other documents refer to Wilson. But it's unlikely this did.

[Jeff]

Judicial Watch has now posted the document, and it is indeed the INR report or some version of it. I can't tell if there's any indication of whether the INR analyst you mention was involved. It does, however, have an interesting mention of the alleged sales agreement of July 2000, saying it is improbable any such agreement was signed with Tandja's knowledge -- the report INR (and the CIA) were responding to evidently said that the agreement was signed with full support from Tandja. This is explicitly to say that the INR was casting serious doubt on the intelligence report, and the implication is that if the sales agreement indicated the support, and therefore knowledge of, Tandja, it is improbable that the document was authentic. I can't remember, was Tandja supposedly one of the signers of the document? Or how is he referred to in it, if at all?

It's interesting that this bit quoted in the SSCI report -- "some officials may have conspired for individual gain to arrange a uranium sale," -- is not in the unclassified version of the document. Presumably it is part of what is redacted at the end of #35 in the document.

[Jeff]

On a related note, sort of, abc's The Note today says

The grand jury looking into the CIA leak was meeting at 9:00 am ET.

I've heard nothing else about this, and can't tell if the Note is reporting that the grand jury did in fact or that the grand jury was scheduled to meet, which they reported last Wednesday too, although it's impossible to know if it actually happened and seems like it didn't.

[emptywheel]

Jeff

They may also me noting that the Grand Jury is meeting, without knowing whether Fitz has anything to present to them. After all, they do serve on other cases.

Thanks a ton for letting me know that this is up at Judicial Watch.

[eriposte]

EW,

I was waiting to see the actual document (from Judicial Watch) before posting on this. Thanks for the link. I will study the document tonight...

[JohnLopresti]

Interesting question by contributor above, whether telephone call by Wilson, during timeframe that might have lodged in the datamining filter.
Sidelite now two weeks old, maybe illuminating a one-month prior article EW, different topic, at Waas' site. Maybe you have seen that followup article by MW.

[eriposte]

EW,

Just took a look at the document.

This paper was written after the "second" (technically third) Niger intel report from the CIA in Feb 2002 - which is the one that appears to have explicitly made the Wissam Al-Zahawi - uranium link.

Your observation that "this document appears to be saying that Mainassara might have begun negotiations, but that he was killed before he could finalize the deal" is close to the mark. (I would have added, "....finalize the deal, if there was really one.") Mainassara is being brought in to the discussion because Wissam Al-Zahawi met him when he went to Niger in early 1999.

The paper also appears to refer, indirectly ("internal legal review"), to the alleged State Court of Niger approval of the deal on "Wednesday July 7 2000".

The declassified portions of this paper suggest to me that the author of this paper did not see the actual forgeries and did not get the complete transcriptions with dates, but likely just the edited versions. There is no indication in the declassified portions that the author figured out the obviously fake information in the reports.

[Jeff]

ew - Your explanation about the grand jury made perfect sense, until I just heard Don Gonye (sp?) on NPR explain that Fitzgerald empaneling his own grand jury back in December or whenever it was was a different matter from just using a sitting grand jury. I have no idea if that's right, but the implication was pretty clear that when the grand jury meets, they're dealing with Fitzgerald's case. Which of course doesn't mean that Fitzgerald himself had to be there, as he evidently wasn't.