OCT-05:IRAQ/WMD:LIBBY INDICTMENT/SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME(BKGRDR)

fwd-5-Nov-2005

L.LIBBY/WHITEHOUSE AIDE INDICTMENT(SBS)

www.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2005-11-02#

SBS/DATELINE/Archives - November 02, 2005

The Plame Game

Last week's indictment of Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, US Vice-President
*** Cheney's chief of staff is the most serious political scandal to
hit the Bush White House in its 5-year reign. Now, with enquiries
continuing, there's speculation the controversy will embroil Karl
Rove, the President's key policy advisor. For George Bush and ***
Cheney, the whole affair has become a simmering political volcano. In
a moment, Dateline will talk with Martin Walker, the Washington editor
of United Press International, about the political fallout from the
case. But first, here's Thom Cookes who's been working on the
background to this tawdry political tale.

12:34 secs


REPORTER: Thom Cookes

It is January 2003 and President Bush is making his State of the Union
address. It's one of the most important speeches he makes each year
and he's using it to again build the case for invading Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

And it was this claim that Saddam was trying to build a nuclear bomb
from African uranium that was central to the case for war.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: We will confront them with focus and clarity
and courage.

It has since been revealed that the claim was based on documents that
were crude forgeries. But the way these documents were used to
construct a case for war was the start of a murky campaign to deceive
the public and discredit anyone who stood in the way.

The story actually starts in late 2001. For more than a year before
the State of the Union speech, US intelligence agencies had been
receiving - and dismissing - similar reports about Iraq trying to buy
uranium from Niger, in central Africa. This declassified US Senate
investigation details how various agencies downplayed the initial
reports, including the State Department calling them "highly suspect".

But Vice-President *** Cheney and his staff were looking for any
fragments of information to back the case for war in Iraq. He'd taken
a personal interest in the Niger reports and demanded that they be
reinvestigated. In February 2002, Joe Wilson, a former US ambassador
with contacts in the region, was sent to Niger.

JOE WILSON, FORMER US AMBASSADOR: Well, I went because I was asked to
go by the CIA who told me a request had come in from the office of the
Vice-President that they check out an allegation that was based on
purported documents or a memorandum of understanding or a memorandum
of sale - it wasn't clear which - between the Niger's government and
the Iraq government covering the sale of several hundred tons of
uranium yellow cake.

Ambassador Wilson reported back to the CIA that there was no evidence
whatsoever of any uranium deal.

JOE WILSON: My report was one of three reports from the field. There
was also a report from our Ambassador on the ground. We have an
ambassador on the ground and have had one virtually since
independence. And the third report was from a Marine Corps four-star
general who travelled down there also to look into this allegation and
came away with essentially the same conclusions that I had.

So by early 2002, the claims had been comprehensively dismissed, but
still the story would not die.

ELISABETTA BURBA, JOURNALIST ‘PANORAMA” MAGAZINE: So they wanted to
show that the Iraqi ambassador had gone to Niger also in 2001...

Later that year Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist at 'Panorama'
magazine in Milan, received an intriguing phone call from a source,
claiming he had documentary proof of the uranium purchase.

ELISABETTA: It was the beginning of October 2002, and a former source
of mine called me, saying that he knew which African country was
giving uranium to Iraq. To Niamey, the capital of Niger, and OK, we
have also here a telex and here another telex.

The source offered to sell the documents for 10,000 euros, claiming
that they came from within the Niger embassy in Rome.

ELISABETTA: Potentially it was a big story but, at the same time, it
was a dangerous story because what I had in my hands could have been
the smoking gun that everybody was looking for. I'd like the viewers
to remember that it was October 2002, and that there was this big
search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So all of a sudden
the proof arrives in my hands. I mean, it was too good to be true.

But Elisabetta was sceptical of the documents, and convinced her
editor to send her to Niger to check the claim personally.

REPORTER: When you went to Niger, what did you find?

ELISABETTA: Well, I didn't find anything. I added some elements to my
suspicion because there were many, many, many reasons to be doubtful
about this supposed traffic.

Deciding that the documents were just not plausible, Elisabetta and
her editor dropped the story. But not before passing the documents on
to the US embassy in Rome.

ELISABETTA: They could not say neither that the documents were false
nor that they were authentic.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: And we will answer every danger and every enemy
that threatens the American people.

Despite the doubts surrounding the documents, the claims had
apparently already found a willing audience in President Bush's
office.

PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH: The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

REPORTER: When you heard about President Bush's State of the Union
address in 2003, when he was talking about uranium, what did you think
when you heard that?

ELISABETTA: I jumped on my chair. I said "Oh, my God!

JOE WILSON: When it became apparent that that assertion was
substantiated only by these purported documents, which later turned
out to be... ..determined by the International Atomic Energy Agency to
have been forgeries, it became apparent that the US Government had
misled the American people and the Congress of the US and indeed the
world.

Joe Wilson was so incensed that he went public, revealing his secret
mission to Niger for the CIA. He wrote an article in the 'New York
Times' highly critical of the Bush Administration, accusing it of
burying his report and lying about the case for war.

As we will hear later, it was this article that led to his wife being
disclosed as a covert CIA officer and eventually to the scandal now
engulfing Washington. But the forged documents themselves raise many
intriguing questions, like who forged them, and why did they receive
the credibility that the State of the Union speech gave them?

This is Rocco Martino, the man who tried to sell the documents to
Elisabetta Burba in Rome. He's a former Italian policeman and spy, and
makes a living peddling information to the highest bidder across
Europe. He's been on the payroll of various European spy agencies,
including SISMI, the Italian secret service.

REPORTER: What can you tell me about Rocco Martino?

ELISABETTA: Rocco Martino has omitted many information in this story.

REPORTER: Did you have any suspicions about Rocco for the fact that he
worked for SISMI? Did that lead you to question the documents in any
way?

ELISABETTA: You mean at the moment when I received the documents?
Well, I knew that he had worked for them, but it was such a long story
that at the moment, I didn't... I had a general suspicion in the
story, but I didn't put the two things together.

Several weeks ago, the Italian newspaper 'La Republica' did put two
and two together, claiming that SISMI had played a crucial role in the
dissemination of Rocco Martino's documents.

They claimed that SISMI had been ordered by Prime Minister Silvio
Berlusconi to help the White House back the case for war in Iraq, and
that the head of SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, had opened up a secret channel
of communications direct to the pro-war neo-conservatives in
Washington.

A spokesman for US National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley confirmed
that he had met with the SISMI chief in September 2002, but he denied
that uranium from Niger had been discussed.

It was Hadley who would later accept responsibility for adding the
reference to uranium from Africa to President Bush's State of the
Union address.

The Italian Government has denied that its secret service is in any
way involved with the forged Niger documents, and the head of SISMI is
due to testify tomorrow to the Italian Parliament about his role.

REPORTER: Certainly, there has been a lot of speculation that the
original genesis of the documents is the Italian Secret Service, that
have been willed into creation by SISMI, by the Italian Secret
Service.

JOE WILSON: And the question that one would ask is what would they
stand to gain by that, what would their motive be in doing it, unless
they were doing it on behalf of somebody else who did, in fact, have a
motive.

And in looking at this, who really had a motive in seeing that the US
went to war with Iraq? You can name half a dozen potential suspects,
beginning with the neo-conservatives here in the US. They were clearly
the biggest cheerleaders for this war.

The suggestion that the neo-conservatives in the administration were
involved in forging documents to prosecute a case for war is clearly
explosive. Although there's no concrete evidence, in a radio interview
earlier this year, former head of counter-terrorism for the CIA,
Vincent Cannistraro, supported an American origin for the forgeries.

VINCENT CANNISTRARO, KPFK RADIO INTERVIEW,APRIL 3rd 2005: "The Italian
intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring
information that was really being handfed to them by very dubious
sources - the Niger documents, for example, which apparently were
produced in the United States, yet were funnelled through the
Italians."

REPORTER: What do you think the ramifications would be if it was
demonstrated that there were American fingerprints on these documents?

JOE WILSON: Well, I don't know, but I believe there probably are
federal statutes that would make it a federal crime to mislead the US
Government into war. I would certainly hope so.

PATRICK FITZGERALD, SPECIAL PROSECUTOR: A federal grand jury, sitting
in the District of Columbia, returned a five-count indictment against
I. Lewis Libby, also known as 'Scooter' Libby, the Vice-President's
chief of staff.

Last Friday, Scooter Libby, one of the ultimate Washington insiders,
was indicted on charges of obstructing justice, lying under oath and
making false statements. The charges relate to the leaking of the
identity of Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA officer. This is a
serious crime under United States law. Plame's husband is former
ambassador Joe Wilson.

In July 2003, he wrote in the 'New York Times' that the Bush
Administration twisted intelligence to exaggerate the case for war in
Iraq.

JOE WILSON: A week after that an American journalist, an opinion
writer by the name of Robert Novak, wrote an article in which he
compromised the identity of a clandestine member of the Central
Intelligence Agency's spy operation and that person happened to be my
wife.

My speculation was that the article was written and was sourced back
to senior administration officials, by the way.

The indictment of Scooter Libby paints a compelling picture of the
Vice-President's staffers actively digging for dirt to discredit Joe
Wilson.

(MAN READS) "Libby spoke with a senior office of the CIA to ask about
the origin and circumstances of Wilson's trip, and was advised by the
CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and was believed to
be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip."

But under oath Libby had claimed that he only learned about Wilson and
his wife after speaking with reporters. This claim was dismissed by
the prosecutor as a lie.

REPORTER: Mr Rove, what's your mood today?

KARL ROVE: I'm going to have a great Friday and a fantastic
weekend. Hope you do too.

It was also expected that key presidential adviser Karl Rove,
frequently referred to as 'Bush's brain', would also feature in the
indictment. He's not named but the indictment tantalisingly refers to
"Official A" and his complicity in the affair.

For Joe Wilson, the whole saga reflects the White House's obsession
with muzzling its critics.

JOE WILSON: I believe it was an administration attempt to silence
others who might be willing to come forward and speak about their
concerns about the way intelligence had been manipulated or skewed for
political purposes.

Prosecutor Pat Fitzgerald has reminded Washington that the
investigation is not over yet and Scooter Libby is due in court
tomorrow to be formally charged.

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