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CounterPunch
March 10,
2003
A CIA Analyst on Forging
Intelligence
Whose Deliberate
Disinformation?
By RAY CLOSE
Retired
CIA analyst, Near East Division
There was a small but very important passage in
Mohammad Elbaradei's testimony on behalf of the U.N.'s International
Atomic Energy Agency before the UNSC last week that cries out
for further investigation: "With regard to uranium acquisition,
the I.A.E.A. has made progress in its investigation into reports
that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger in recent years. This
investigation was centered on documents provided by a number
of states that pointed to an agreement between Niger and Iraq
for the sale of uranium between 1999 and 2001.
"The I.A.E.A. has discussed these
reports with the governments of Iraq and Niger, both of which
have denied that any such activity took place. For its part,
Iraq has provided the I.A.E.A. with a comprehensive explanation
of its relations with Niger and has described a visit by an Iraqi
official to a number of African countries, including Niger, in
February 1999, which Iraq thought might have given rise to the
reports.
"The I.A.E.A. was able to review
correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of
Niger and to compare the form, format, contents and signature
of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related
documentation. Based on thorough analysis, the I.A.E.A. has concluded,
with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents,
which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transaction
between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore
concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded."
On Saturday, March 8th, the Washington
Post reported under the headline "Some Evidence on Iraq
Called Fake" that the documents in question had been given
to the U.N. inspectors by the British Government and "reviewed
extensively by U.S. intelligence." The documents were then
forwarded to the I.A.E.A. by the U.S. Government, an action clearly
implying that in Washington's opinion they constituted reliable
intelligence. A similar stamp of authenticity must have been
implied in the case of the British Government's actions. Such
is certainly the impression that would be gained by the United
Nations recipients, knowing that the documents had been "reviewed
extensively" by U.S. intelligence experts. However, after
the I.A.E.A. determined through its own "outside experts"
that the documents were bogus, the U.S. and British governments
were reluctantly compelled to acknowledge that they had both
been the victims of an elaborate deception operation. One unnamed
(but hopefully red-faced) U.S. official was honest enough to
admit to Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick that "We
fell for it." In a curious display of unwarranted courtesy,
an I.A.E.A. spokesman graciously informed the Washington Post
that his agency did not blame either Britain or the United States
for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good
faith", he said.
The following questions immediately occur
to anyone with experience in the area of covert technical operations
("Department of Dirty Tricks"), and to everyone else
with a modicum of common sense:
1. The fabrication of false documentation,
especially what purports to be official correspondence between
the agencies of two different governments, is a major undertaking
for any professional intelligence service or criminal enterprise.
This is obviously most true when the perpetrator intends to accomplish
an extremely important purpose and so anticipates that his work
will be carefully scrutinized by competent experts. The job
requires extensive and time-consuming research, reasonably advanced
technical skills, and a high level of motivation. It would not
be attempted by anyone whose intentions were frivolous. All of
these factors would be accentuated in a case such as this, where
the political costs of exposure of deliberate fraud would be
very high.
2. Unless accomplished with a high degree
of skill, the counterfeit quality of the documents in this case
should have been quickly obvious to the British and American
intelligence services, and the contents should have been dismissed
immediately as a trivial diversion. Surprisingly, however, according
to the Washington Post story, the forgeries contained "relatively
crude errors" that gave them away. This clearly points to
one or the other of two possible conclusions:
a. The technical services departments
of MI-6 and CIA (historically reputed to be credible rivals to
the KGB and Israel's Mossad for technical sophistication) are
in fact incompetent. If they manufactured the forgeries themselves,
they did a careless and clumsy job. On the other hand, if they
merely evaluated the authenticity of the documents as a means
of determining whether the information contained therein was
valuable intelligence for their own governments, they obviously
showed an equally appalling lack of professional skill. They
"fell for it", we are informed.
b. The only other explanation that I
can think of is that the British and American intelligence services,
despite having figured out that the documents were crude forgeries,
nevertheless decided to pass the information to the U.N. inspectors
anyway, knowing that they would serve conveniently to mislead
the I.A.E.A. into thinking that this was documentary evidence
supporting US-UK claims that Iraq has made illegal attempts to
acquire nuclear resources. (Of course, intelligence services
can be incredibly obtuse sometimes. Note the recent public admission
by the British that the famous "dossier" of evidence
against Iraq, glowingly praised by Colin Powell in his testimony
to the Security Council, consisted mainly of hearsay plagiarized
from the work of a California graduate student.)
3. Somebody has engaged in the criminal
act of manufacturing false evidence. If it has been done once,
it may well have been done before. The issues under consideration
are matters of war and peace, life and death for perhaps thousands
of people. How much more despicable could a crime be? And yet
our government and that of Great Britain seem more bemused than
concerned. Shouldn't Congress be alarmed that our intelligence
service, on which we are so dependent these days, is so incompetent
or so inured to the corruption of the national intelligence process
as to tolerate the deliberate or careless introduction of false
evidence into a process so critically important to our national
security and to the credibility of the United States? Those responsible
for this humiliating fiasco should be exposed and discredited
--- for the good of our country.
4. The Washington Post story is also
a testament to the flaccid quality of American investigative
journalism these days. It apparently never occurred to any reporter
how important it would be to know exactly who it was that forged
the documents in the first place. Here was an organized effort
to spread extremely significant disinformation to at least two
governments, and through them to the Security Council of the
United Nations, that might have a direct influence on a momentous
decision about war and peace.
5. Immediately, a host of other specific
questions come to mind. Who were the "outside experts"
consulted by the I.A.E.A. who correctly spotted the falsity of
the Iraq-Niger correspondence (and exposed the incompetence of
MI-6 and CIA in the process)? Were they governments, or private
agencies? Where located? By whom controlled?
Elbaradei reported that these documents
were provided to the I.A.E.A. by "a number of states."
Very interesting. Any other government besides the British and
American? Did "a number of states" provide identical
counterfeit documents to the U.N. inspectors, representing those
documents as reliable "intelligence"? Did each of those
states originally obtain the documents from the same source?
When the information was passed by the British and Americans
to the United Nations, was the original source identified? Or
did MI-6 and CIA claim the necessity to protect "sensitive
sources and methods". (Wouldn't it be interesting to learn
that in this case that same familiar claim was made? What would
that do to the credibility of other intelligence provided by
us to the United Nations? This is not a trivial question. If
the United States is accused of either careless indifference
or deliberate corruption in matters of this import, what does
that do to our reputation and to our image as "leader of
the free world"? Or is Brady Kiesling right --- it only
matters that others fear our power?
It would make no sense to suppose that
a neutral or non-governmental entity would go to the trouble
and expense of falsifying documentation and then convincing "a
number of states" to deliver that evidence to the I.A.E.A.
Quite clearly, the more one thinks about this intrigue, the
more obvious it becomes that someone was responsible for a deliberate
intelligence disinformation campaign targeting the United Nations
with an aim toward padding the evidence supporting an American-British
invasion of Iraq. That is a world-class criminal act, a felony
of historic proportions, by any definition.
We should not let it be swept under the
carpet.
Ray Close
was a CIA analyst in the Near East division. He can be reached
at: close@counterpunch.org.
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