Wayne Madsen
États-Unis
October 2003
After U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson threw cold water on the authenticity of documents attempting to show that Niger was negotiating the sale of yellow cake uranium to Niger, there was another, largely unreported, attempt to produce "smoking gun" documents purporting to show that Iraq received uranium from another African country -- the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Wilson made a trip to Niger on behalf of the CIA in February 2002. At about the same time he and US Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick concluded that allegations of Nigerien involvement with Iraq were incorrect and the Nigerien documents emanating from Italian sources were crude forgeries, the same Office of Special Plans elements within the Pentagon and their State Department allies attempted to produce another set of false documents, according to well-placed US intelligence sources speaking on the condition of anonymity. In July 2002, documents on CIA letterhead were "discovered" in a Nairobi hotel room. They described attempts by Mai Mai guerrillas in Bukavu in the DRC to negotiate the sale of uranium to Saddam Hussein's government. The discovery of the documents in Nairobi came after Wilson, CIA weapons of mass destruction experts -- including Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson -- and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research concluded that there was no evidence to support the allegation that Iraq was shopping for nuclear materials in Africa -- a charge later leveled by President Bush in his January 2003 State of the Union address.
The "discovery" of the CIA documents -- clearly forgeries like the Niger documents -- were leaked to the press, including Le Soir in Belgium. Their leak was followed by the release of a British government dossier describing Iraq's attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. The DRC government later produced photocopies of original false Bukavu documents -- on which the bogus CIA documents were based -- offering Iraq (or any other high bidder) 9 kilograms of "superior quality" uranium from Mai Mai units in the eastern DRC. U.S. intelligence sources maintain that the Nairobi and Bukavu documents were crude forgeries produced after then-Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Walter Kansteiner III met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame in Kigali on January 15, 2002. The plan was to blame the DRC for providing uranium to Iraq in an attempt to destabilize Kabila and justify the continued presence of Rwandan troops in eastern DRC. Iraq's complicity in obtaining uranium in DRC would then be bolstered by the Niger "evidence" lending credence to Saddam's nuclear "ambitions."
Kansteiner, who recently announced he was leaving his post, was assisted in the operation by his deputy, Charles Snyder, a former US Special Forces officer who was involved in covert operations in Sierra Leone and is tied to the neo-conservative elements within the Pentagon.
The false Congolese and CIA documents were going to be used to support allegations that Iraq obtained uranium from the DRC and then be used to frame DRC President Joseph Kabila, said a US intelligence source who has served in Africa. In addition, DRC uranium was going to be smuggled out of DRC via a covert smuggling route operated by white Zimbabwean businessman John Bredenkamp, according to the source. The uranium was then going to be "salted" at facilities in Iraq to prove Iraq had a nuclear weapons program.