The phony letter - where did it come from?

[DaveE]

I have my theory, that it was planted by some who wanted to go to war. No proof obviously. This is an interesting read.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17902403/


"It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong...."

[Porsche-O-Phile]

CIA.

[widebody911]

I worked some "connections" and obtained a copy of the letter:

DEAR HONORABLE MR HUSSEIN

I HOPE THIS LETTER FINDS YOU IN GOOD HEALTH. MY NAME IS OBUKO NUGABI, SON OF THE LATE HOOGOBOOGO NUGABI, FORMER MINISTER OF MINING OF NIGERIA WHO CAME TO AN UNTIMELY DEMISE, BEING EATEN ALIVE BY RABID HOWLER MONKEYS. I COME TO YOU FOR HELP TODAY IN THE MATTER OF MOVING 75.000 TONS OF URANIUM YELLOWCAKE OUT OF THE COUNTRY, FOR WHICH YOUR PAYMENT WOULD BE 10.000 TONS TO DO WITH AS YOU SEE FIT.

PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS SO THAT WE MAY BEGIN OUR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.

[K. Roman]

Originally posted by widebody911
I worked some "connections" and obtained a copy of the letter:

DEAR HONORABLE MR HUSSEIN

I HOPE THIS LETTER FINDS YOU IN GOOD HEALTH. MY NAME IS OBUKO NUGABI, SON OF THE LATE HOOGOBOOGO NUGABI, FORMER MINISTER OF MINING OF NIGERIA WHO CAME TO AN UNTIMELY DEMISE, BEING EATEN ALIVE BY RABID HOWLER MONKEYS. I COME TO YOU FOR HELP TODAY IN THE MATTER OF MOVING 75.000 TONS OF URANIUM YELLOWCAKE OUT OF THE COUNTRY, FOR WHICH YOUR PAYMENT WOULD BE 10.000 TONS TO DO WITH AS YOU SEE FIT.

PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS SO THAT WE MAY BEGIN OUR BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP.

that was hilarious!

[techweenie]

If you follow the route of the forged Niger documents from Italy to the U.S., you will see that the documents were offered to the CIA and rejected multiple times, and then -- in a breach of protocol -- were taken to a senior Bush administration official, directly by the Italian equivalent to the CIA.

Somebody went to a lot of trouble to get obviously forged documents into the administration's hands.

I for one, do not think this was a CIA or even a Bush administration falsification. But it was a shred of (poor) evidence that came along at the right time for the administration's policy needs.