This is a repost of quotes I posted from his book from another thread.
Chapter 3 Behind the "Mushroom Cloud"
I am adding now page 225: "The Administration could offer little or no recent first hand intelligence to contradict the IAEA's 1997 conclusions" ( on nukes in Iraq, unlikely)
Hersh's book "Chain of Command" boiled down to this:
Just as robertpaulsen quotes page 226:
Fall 2001: CIA receives intelligence report from SISMI, from Italy about the public visit of Wissam al-Zahawie to Niger in 1999.
CIA finds the report to be not credible
(Note: This visit was so not newsworthy that the papers only ran a photo.)
Cheney does not like the analysis
Libby, Wolfowitz and Bolton bacame increasingly sectretive regarding Iraq's WMD intelligence, "there was a reluctance to let the military and civilian analysts on the staff of intelligence."
February 2002 CIA send Mr. Wilson to Niger. "He was known as an idependent diplomat who had put himself in harm's way to help American citizens abroad."
Mr. Wilson was not shown any documents, but was told "of a purported memorandum of agreement"
adding now:
"Wilson told me he was informed at the time that the mission had come about because the Vice President's office was interested in the Itallian intelligence report." (p229)
In Niger "Wilson also learned that there was no uranium available to sell: it had all been pre-sold to Niger's Japanese and European consortium partners. (p229)
March 2002 former WH official: "It was understood by many in the WH, Bush had already decided, in his own mind, to go to war." (p229)
Late summer 2002 WH sharply escalates the nuclear rhetoric
( in late July/August 2002 WHIG is formed)
(DSM)
September 2002 The British dossier mentioned Iraq's pursuit of African uranium.
(There we go)
IAEA unsuccessfully starts to seek information on evidence of the uranium claim from Washington and London.
October 2002 Elisabeth Burba, reporter for Panorama receives documents from an Italian businessman and security consultant. He gave her 22 pages of documents mostly written in French, some with the letterhead of the Iraq Embassy to the Holy See.
Burba asks the editor in chief Carlo Rossella that she wanted to go to Niger to verify the story. "At that point, however, Panorama's editor in chief, Carlo Rossella, who is known for his ties to the Berlusconi government, told Burba to turn the documents over to the American Embassy for authentication." (p232)
and so she did.
(Why not their own intelligence agency! this smells)
Burba did travel to Niger and found "that the shipping companies and banks were to small and ill-equipped to handle such a transaction."
"Two former CIA officials provided slightly different accounts of what happened next. "The embassy was alerted that the papers were coming", the first former official told me, "and it passed them directly to Washington without even vetting them inside the embassy". Once the documents were in Washington, they were forwarded by the C.I.A. to the Pentagon, he said. "Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false-until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed.
The second former official, Vincent Cannistraro, who served as chief counterterrorism operations and analysys, told me that the Burba documents were given to the American Embassy, which passed them on to the C.I.A.'s chief of station in Rome, who forwarded them to Washington." (p232-233)
( Me's post #151: “In an interview with the former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, Vincent Cannistaro, he was asked if the documents on Iraq's purchase of uranium from Niger came from Italian intelligence to which he answered in the affirmative.
Now, Mr. Cannistraro did the documents come from Ms Burba or the Italian intelligence?!)
December 7, 2002, Iraq provides a 12,000 page report to the UN Security Council denying having a WMD arsenal.
Jan 2003 State of the Union speech: Bush "credits" British intelligence for the Niger uranium.
March IAEA El Baradei publicly debunks Niger documents.
"The senior I.A.E.A. investigators, as we have seen took only a few hours, with the aid of Google, to determine that the papers were fake" (p235)
Further Sy Hersh delves into who fabricated these docs, and he details the British M16 having had a propaganda program against Iraq since 1997 the source a former Clinton WH official. it says "among other things, spreading false information."
Another explanation provided by a former senior intelligence official, is that some CIA guys got so fed up and deliberately planted this forgery to embarrass Cheney & Co, but it got out of hand.
Overall, I believe Blair (&Co) Berlusconi (&Co) and Bush (&Co) are complicit in fabricating intelligence, misleading the public in order to justify and start an illegal war.
I actually think the Niger docs were the creation of Rove & Associates Advertising a.k.a WHIG.
So Mr. Wilson stepping up and revealing the lie, and possibly Ms Plame being in WMD circles being in the way is the reason the WHIG propaganda team outing her.
Perhaps Bolton being part of this inner circle, was holding Powell ill-informed at the State dept. I remember Powell not being included in many of the administration talks.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3988991#4013513
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