A few comments. First, when constructing the timeline, I did my best to be fair to the authors' writing (with quotes, brackets, ellipses and so on), but I'm sure I have accidentally plagarized a ton of stuff.
Almost nothing in the timeline is my own work--it's all by other authors--please go read the original articles. Also, I read a few of the articles cited on Nexis and cannot find public links--sorry to do that to you. I've included adequate bibliographic info on these articles; please let me know if you find a link to something I could not.
Second, I have little of substance on a number of key subplots: Chalabi-Iran dealings and spying; the legitimate diplomatic discussions between the State Dept. and Iran; the Plame investigation; very-recent developments (stuff printed within the past few days), etc. These matters interest me a lot, but this turned out to be a bigger project than I'd intended and my records on those topics are somewhat limited, so I left adding those "dots" for a later date.
I would be most grateful for any links to things you think I should consider adding. Better links to similar articles are also welcome.
Finally, I've tried not to make any mistakes, but I'm sure there are plenty. I promise as much mojo as I am allowed to distribute to anyone who corrects me or clarifies something that's ambiguous. Happy Labor Day.
1996 Relations between al Qaeda and Iran begin to deteriorate.
October, 1997 IAEA "issued a definitive report declaring Iraq to be essentially free of nuclear weapons."
Summer, 1998 "Iran and the Taliban almost went to war following the killing by Taliban soldiers of ten Iranian diplomats and a journalist in the basement of Iran's consulate in Mazar-e-Sharif"
Dec. 1998 UN Inspectors leave Iraq.
1999 Rocco Martino (Giacomo), "provided French officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been planning to expand 'trade' with Niger. This trade was assumed to be in uranium, which is Niger's main export.... He was then asked by French officials to provide more information.... He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to have been forged."
1999 State Department lists the MEK as a terrorist organization.
Feb., 1999 Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, Wissam al-Zahawie, travels to Niger and three other African nations.
2000 At this time, "[T]he forged documents were produced with the involvement of people familiar with Niger."
Early 2000 SISMI establishes its method of "anonymously" feeding feeding disinformation to the "security consultant" (a.k.a. Giacomo, Rocco Martino, ... the guy who would ultimately disseminate the Niger documents): through a woman in the Nigerien Embassy, who--allegedly unbeknownst to Giacomo--worked for SISMI. Giacomo supposedly pays the source 500 euros per month for information. Marshall writes, "Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa."
Jan. 2, 2001 "Staff at Niger's embassy in Rome reported a break-in. Papers were strewn about the building, but only some perfume and a watch appeared to have been stolen. Shortly afterwards documents began to circulate in the intelligence community. Some referred to the visit of Zahawie to Niger and were clearly genuine. Others, which purported to be an agreement between Iraq and Niger for the supply of uranium yellowcake, were fakes" ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004).
Early summer, 2001 "[A] career official assigned to a Pentagon planning office undertook a routine evaluation of the assumption, adopted by Wolfowitz and Feith, that the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, could play a major role in a coup d'état to oust Saddam Hussein."
Sept. 9, 2001 Iran angered by the assassination of anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Sept. 11, 2001 9/11 (duh).
Shortly after Sept. 11 The C.I.A. gets intelligence from SISMI, "about a public visit that Wissam al-Zahawie, then the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, had made to Niger and three other African nations ... in February, 1999.... Inside the American intelligence community, [the intel is] dismissed as amateurish and unsubstantiated."
Late 2001 SISMI adds the forged Niger-Iraq uranium documents into the mix of genuine, visas-and-stuff documents their agent at the Nigerien Embassy has been passing to Giacomo (the information purveyor). Italian intelligence also begins distributing summaries of these documents to western intelligence agencies (including Britain, France, and the US).
Around this time "Without being precise about dates, Giacomo said: 'I received a call from a former colleague in Sismi. I was told that a woman in the Niger embassy in Rome had a gift for me. I met her and she gave me documents. Sismi wanted me to pass on the documents but they didn't want anyone to know they had been involved. It was the Italians and Americans together who were behind it. It was all a disinformation operation'.... Giacomo says that he passed the documents to 'contacts', but will ... [only name] Elisabetta Burba" ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004).
Oct. 7, 2001 The war in Afghanistan begins.
Nov. 14, 2001 Richard Perle cites the defector Hamza and renews discussion of, "the possibility that, with enough time, Saddam Hussein would be capable of attacking the United States with a nuclear weapon."
Dec., 2001 State Department's INR gives Powell a report saying (in words of Greg Thielmann), "there is no persuasive evidence that the Iraqi nuclear program is being reconstituted."
Early December, 2001 "Formally sanctioned" 3-day meeting in Italy with Ghorbanifar and Iranians, "in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism." MORE: The meetings are arranged by Michael Ledeen: "Ghorbanifar called me, and at first I said, 'Are you insane?'" ... "But he said he could arrange meetings with Iranians with current information about what Iran was doing. It wasn't information coming from him. He was just arranging the meetings;" Tenet, Armitage, and Hadley are all aware of the meetings. MORE: Franklin, Rhode, and Ledeen attend, as do Nicolo Pollari (head of SISMI) and Antonio Martino (Italian Minister of Defense). [Rumsfeld would, on Aug. 8, 2003, pretend to confuse this meeting with the Paris meeting (of June 2003) when answering a reporter's question.]
Dec. 12, 2001 US Ambassador to Italy (Sembler) learns of the recent Ghorbanifar et al. meeting and informs the Rome CIA chief--the two inform their superiors in Washington.
Jan. 30, 2002 "[T]he CIA published an unclassified report to Congress that stated, 'Baghdad may be attempting to acquire materials that could aid in reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program.' A week later, Colin Powell told the House International Relations Committee, 'With respect to the nuclear program, there is no doubt that the Iraqis are pursuing it.'"
Early February, 2002 Stephen Hadley a the NSC, "sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities [i.e. the Ghorbanifar meeting in Rome]" (by this time, Hadley had received multiple accounts of the Dec. 2001 meeting--from the CIA, State, and from Tenet personally. Tenet had been contacted privately by the head of SISMI, Pollari, who also attended the meeting.)
Early spring, 2002 According to Hersh: the SISMI report on Niger is stovepiped to Cheney who asks his CIA daily briefer to look into it; Cheney is not pleased with the CIA's response and asks them, "to review the matter once again."
Late February, 2002 Joseph Wilson flies to Niger for his 8-day mission.
March, 2002 "Chalabi's defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals.... A routine settled in: the Pentagon's defector reports, classified 'secret,' would be funnelled to newspapers, but subsequent C.I.A. and INR analyses of the reports--invariably scathing but also classified--would remain secret."
June, 2002 MI6 receives an intelligence report, "saying Saddam is trying to buy uranium in Niger" ("Foreign Office and MI6 face new Iraq inquiry," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 15, 2004).
June, 2002 "[A]n Egyptian, an Iraqi, and a high-level U.S. government official," meet secretly in Rome to discuss Middle East affairs; Ghorbanifar, "arranged that meeting after a flurry of faxes between himself and DoD official Harold Rhode."
July, 2002 "Ledeen again contacted [Amb.] Sembler and told him that he'd be back in Rome in September to continue 'his work' with the Iranians;" Sembler contacted Washington, "and Hadley again went into motion telling Ledeen, in no uncertain terms, to back off."
July 5, 2002 "A senior law enforcement official and administration sources told the Sun [in late Aug., 2004] that the Franklin investigation stems from a two-year FBI probe into who leaked top secret war plans for Iraq published by the New York Times on [this date]."
Aug., 2002 Iran expels 16 al Qaeda fighters to Saudi Arabia; Iran has now caught (crossing the border from Afghanistan) and expelled (to their countries of origin) 500+ al Qaeda fighters in 2002.
Aug. 7, 2002 Cheney says, "What we know now, from various sources, is that he [Saddam] . . . continues to pursue a nuclear weapon."
Aug. 26, 2002 "Cheney suggested that Saddam had a nuclear capability that could directly threaten 'anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.' He added that the Iraqis were continuing 'to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago.'"
Aug. 28, 2002 Reports in Aug., 2004 will say things like: "[the] FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians ... has been going on for more than two years": This date is 2 years before those reports broke, so the FBI investigation was ongoing at this time. MORE: "At the Pentagon, before [its 2004] disclosure, only Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and department lawyers had been informed of the investigation...." MORE: "[Rice and Hadley at the NSC] were apprised of the FBI counterintelligence investigation of AIPAC as a possible conduit for information to Israel more than two years ago."
Sept., 2002 MI6 receives an intelligence report, "saying Saddam is trying to buy uranium in Niger. It is assumed this report is independent from [the similar report of June]" ("Foreign Office and MI6 face new Iraq inquiry," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 15, 2004).
Sept. 8, 2002 Cheney says, "We do know, with absolute certainty, that [Saddam] is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon;" Condi Rice says, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.".
Sept. 14, 2002 Bush says, "Saddam Hussein has the scientists and infrastructure for a nuclear-weapons program, and has illicitly sought to purchase the equipment needed to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."
Sept. 24, 2002 "[T]he British government issued a dossier dramatizing the WMD threat posed by Iraq;" the IAEA begins asking "Washington and London for their evidence of Iraq's pursuit of African uranium."
Sept. 28, 2002 By now, the "BBC had begun investigating leaks from the British national security establishment claiming that the dossier was based on hyped intelligence."
Oct. 1, 2002 "US intelligence agencies released a top-secret NIE to the White House and Congress. The NIE mentions the Niger reports as well as claims about attempts to purchase uranium in Somalia and Congo. The only doubts were raised in a footnote noting the State Department's skepticism."
Oct. 9, 2002 Elisabetta Burba--who works for a Berlusconi-owned magazine--hands the Niger documents over to three Americans at the embassy in Rome (also at: "Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004).
Oct 15, 2002 State Dept. INR receives a copy of the forged Niger documents (including a "companion document" mentioning, "some type of military campaign against major world powers... [including] both Iraq and Iran ... being orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome.") (PDF)
Early winter, 2002 This is when Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski escorts "some Israeli generals" to Douglas Feith's and, unlike the post 9-11 policy for ambassadors and everyone else, the generals don't have to sign in.
Nov. 5, 2002 The midterm elections.
Dec. 7, 2002 "[T]he Iraqi regime provided the U.N. Security Council with a twelve-thousand-page series of documents in which it denied having a WMD arsenal."
Dec. 19, 2002 "[The State Department asks], 'Why is the Iraqi regime hiding their Niger procurement?' It was the first time that Niger had been publicly identified;" the IAEA presses Washington for "actionable evidence" of the Niger connection.
2003 Sometime this year is when Larry Franklin allegedly, "turned over a draft presidential directive on policy toward Iran ... to two people affiliated with the Washington-based American Israel Public Affairs Committee."
Jan., 2003 "[Imad Hage was] briefly detained by the FBI at Dulles Airport in Washington when a handgun was found in his checked luggage." MORE: "A handgun registered to Maloof was found in the possession of Imad el Hage, a suspected arms dealer."
Jan. 28, 2003 Bush says, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Feb., 2003 Douglas Feith's office receives messages from, "Iraqi intelligence officers [attempting] to open last-ditch negotiations with the Bush administration through a clandestine communications channel;" the messages originate with Lebanese-American businessman Imad Hage and come to the Pentagon via Michael Maloof; the messages reportedly say, "[The Iraqis] wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had WMD, and they offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search.... the Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. At one point ... the Iraqis pledged to hold elections."
Feb. 4, 2003 The IAEA learns of the existence of the forged Niger documents and receives copies of them; Niger is not mentioned the next day in Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security Council; within a few weeks, the IAEA has concluded the documents are bogus.
Feb. 5, 2003 Colin Powell brandishes anthrax, among other things, at the the UN.
Early March, 2003 Richard Perle meets Imad Hage in London to discuss Hage's information about a possible Iraqi deal to avoid a war; the CIA denies Perle permission to meet the Iraqis involved; "Mr. Perle said he found it 'puzzling' that the Iraqis would have used such complicated contacts to communicate 'a quite astonishing proposal' to the administration."
March 7, 2003 At the UN, Mohamed ElBaradei says, "Based on thorough analysis, the IAEA has concluded with the concurrence of outside experts that these documents which formed the basis for the report of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic."
March 19, 2003 Bush announces the beginning of major combat operations in Iraq.
April, 2003 This is around the time when Larry Franklin became interesting to the FBI by unexpectedly walking in on that FBI-monitored AIPAC lunch (based on this Newsweek: "nearly a year and a half ago").
April 11, 2003 "Jafar Dhia Jafar, a British-educated physicist who coördinated Iraq's efforts to make the bomb in the nineteen-eighties, and who had direct access to Saddam Hussein ... [tells debriefers], 'I know all the scientists involved, and they chat. There is no WMD.'"
May, 2003 Bush announces the end of major combat in Iraq. US renews complaints that Iran is harboring al Qaeda people.
May, 2003 "[Michael] Maloof, who has lost his security clearances, was placed on paid administrative leave by the Pentagon, for reasons unrelated to the contacts with [Imad] Hage." MORE: "Maloof, was stripped of his security clearance ... after the FBI linked him to a Lebanese-American businessman under investigation by the FBI for weapons trafficking. A handgun registered to Maloof was found in the possession of Imad el Hage, a suspected arms dealer."
May 22, 2003 "Iranian officials announced that they had several unnamed al Qaeda operatives in custody and proposed a trade with the United States to return MEK leaders to Iran."
Summer, 2003 "[T]he Bush Administration directed the Marines to draft a detailed plan, called Operation Stuart, for the arrest and, if necessary, assassination of [Moqtada al-Sadr]. But the operation was cancelled, [a] former [US] intelligence official told [Seymour Hersh], after it became clear that Sadr had been 'tipped off' about the plan."
June, 2003 The Paris meeting, where Rhode, meets with Ghorbanifar and others: The Pentagon maintains (until this text is updated) that this meeting, "was the result of a 'chance encounter;'" though, Ghorbanifar says the meeting was planned. The meetings do not have approval from the White House; article speculates that the Rome Embassy learned about the meetings from Embassy officials [n.b. that last link, confusingly, has a key date wrong] MORE: The meetings prompt Powell to complain to Rumsfeld and Rice; "The White House instructed the Pentagon to halt meetings that do not conform to policy decisions."
June, 2003 "Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, [denies] that MI6 was influenced by 'forged' documents, telling a parliamentary committee ... that the British intelligence community was unaware of their existence 'at the time when the September [2002] dossier was put together'" ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004).
July, 2003 Israel warned the US, "that the American-led occupation [in Iraq] would face a heightened insurgency--a campaign of bombings and assassinations--later that summer.... Israeli intelligence assets in Iraq were reporting that the insurgents had the support of Iranian intelligence operatives and other foreign fighters, who were crossing the unprotected border between Iran and Iraq at will."
July 6, 2003 Joseph Wilson writes, "What I didn't find in Africa" (his NYT op-ed about the Niger claim).
July 13, 2003 Dr. Rice says, "Had there been even a peep that [CIA] did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence . . . it would have been gone."
July 14, 2003 Robert Novak writes, "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
Early Aug., 2003 Colin Powell complains directly to Donald Rumsfeld about Feith's policy shop conducting missions that counter U.S. policy.
Aug., 2003 "Rumsfeld issued new policy guidance on meetings between Pentagon civilians and Iranian figures that required all meetings that might be construed as controversial or counter to American policy to be cleared with the undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith."
Aug. 2003 NCRI, the political wing of the MEK reveal, "two undeclared sites in Iran--a heavy water production facility at Arak and a massive underground uranium enrichment complex at Natanz that the NCRI and Washington say was intended to produce highly-enriched uranium for weapons" [link actually says "Aug. 2002," but that is wrong]. MORE: "Tehran says it had informed the [IAEA] of the Natanz facility months before the Mujahedeen made their announcement. The IAEA has confirmed Tehran's version."
Aug. 1, 2003 "[I]n an interview about the possibility of a deal to get the al Qaeda operatives in return for disbanding the MEK [Colin Powell says,] 'Using the appropriate interlocutors, we are in touch with the Iranians on both of those issues'"
Aug. 8, 2003 Rumsfeld says he just got briefed on the Newsday story; "[M]y understanding is that some--one or two Pentagon people were approached by some people who had information about Iranians that wanted to provide information to the United States government, that a meeting did take place--this was more than a year ago-- that such a meeting did take place, and the information was moved around the interagency process to all the departments and agencies, and it dropped.... [T]here wasn't anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further.... [E]veryone in the interagency process, I'm told, was apprised of it, and it went nowhere."
Aug. 8, 2003 Bush says, "Well, we support the aspirations of those who desire freedom in Iran."
Aug. 8, 2003 Newsday breaks big story: "Pentagon hardliners [at least Rhode and Franklin] pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal [Ghorbanifar]; it was Ledeen who reopened the Ghorbanifar channel with Feith's staff; [Ledeen says] "I'm not going to comment on any private meetings with any private people.... It's nobody's business;" the immediate objective of the Pentagon hardliners appears to be to, "antagonize Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them."
Aug. 8, 2003 The State Department bans "MEK activities in the United States."
Aug. 9, 2003 WaPo's Bradley Graham and Peter Slevin report on another meeting with Ghorbanifar in June [2002] in Paris: "an unplanned, unscheduled encounter." They also report that "Pentagon staff members held one or two other meetings with Ghorbanifar last year in Italy."
Aug. 13, 2003 Iran's Khatami says, "Whenever we find al Qaeda members, we arrest them. This group has as much hatred and enmity toward Iran as it does the U.S."
Aug. 14, 2003 As the recent spate of news trails off, Ledeen writes: "And so the journalists in Washington ran around chasing their own very short tails for several days until they concluded a) that people talking to people isn't much of a story and b) it seems to be about turf, not anything serious, and c) it really doesn't lead anywhere."
Sept. 2003 This is nearly a year before the NYT writes (on Aug. 30, 2004), "a covert national security investigation [the Franklin matter, at least] conducted by the FBI" has been going on, "for nearly a year."
Early Sept., 2003 Three FBI agents interview Elisabetta Burba abut the Niger documents story.
Sept. 11, 2003 "Tehran now says it will extradite some al Qaeda suspects to unspecified 'friendly countries' and will try those [who] cannot be extradited, if they are guilty of crimes against national security.... [T]he MEK continues its radio broadcasts into Iran from Iraq, for nine hours a day, and it reportedly is also providing intelligence to the U.S. military."
Oct., 2003 "Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said ... that Washington is not interested in governmental change in Tehran and is open to dialogue if the al-Qaeda issue is resolved;" "[No MEK] have been prosecuted or turned over to Iran--as the US demands Iran do with al Qaeda suspects. Iran says it is unwilling to cooperate on al Qaeda as long as the United States does not take similar steps on the MEK."
Mid-October, 2003 Beginning now, "the Pentagon's analysts on Iran have had no meetings with Iranian democrats, and there are none planned."
Oct. 20, 2003 Seymour Hersh publishes "The Stovepipe." Kenneth Pollack tells Hersh, "[the Bush people] "dismantle[d] the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them."
Late November, 2003 The US and Europe agree on a plan to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons program. "The resolution at the International Atomic Energy Agency avoided a new U.S.-Iran showdown through a compromise."
Dec. 4-5, 2003 "Jordan's King Abdullah is quietly trying to broker a deal that would lead Tehran to surrender about 70 al Qaeda operatives, including the son of Osama bin Laden, in exchange for U.S. action on the largest Iranian opposition group now based in Iraq according to U.S. and Middle East officials."
Dec. 7, 2003 "'We and others have made clear what Iran needs to do: hand over al Qaeda members to the United States or their country of origin,' Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said yesterday."
Dec. 22, 2003 Newsweek reports a number of fantastically hilarious things Ghorbanifar told them in a Nov. interview ("You won't be surprised if you find that Saddam Hussein is on one of the Iranian islands," for example). Also, "Ghorbanifar says he continued to communicate with Rhode, and sometimes Franklin, by phone and fax five or six times a week until shortly after the Paris meeting last summer. (The Pentagon says any such contacts were sporadic and not authorized by top officials) ... A Defense official says any discussion that Ghorbanifar had with Pentagon experts about regime change was a 'one-way conversation.'"
February 28/29, 2004 Stephen Green publishes "Serving Two Flags"--a brief (though very long) history of crooked neocons and their shady dealings--at Counterpunch.
May, 2004 "Chalabi has been part of the FBI investigation at least since a raid [this month] by Iraqi officials on the Baghdad compound of Chalabi's party, the INC. Classified U.S. intelligence material was found in that raid.... [in] spring, U.S. officials alleged that Chalabi and a senior INC official had passed critical intelligence to Iran...."
Early June, 2004 The IAEA, "issued its fifth quarterly report in a row stating that Iran was continuing to misrepresent its research into materials that could be used for the production of nuclear weapons."
June 17, 2004 Joshua M. Marshall announces his "tectonic plates" story is in-progress.
June 21, 2004 Seymour Hersh writes, "Israeli intelligence and military operatives are now quietly at work in [Iraqi] Kurdistan, providing training for Kurdish commando units and, most important in Israel's view, running covert operations inside Kurdish areas of Iran and Syria."
June 22, 2004 FBI agents interview Stephen Green and ask, "about several current or former Pentagon officials such as Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Michael Ledeen, and Stephen Bryen.... [and] a couple other Office of Special Plans people, including Harold Rhode. Ironically, about the only name that didn't come up was Larry Franklin."
June 30 "Transfer of sovereignty" in Iraq.
July, 2004 A source tells Laura Rozen that, "Larry Franklin called him and asked him to meet.... Franklin had intelligence on hostile Iranian activities in Iraq and was extremely frustrated that he did not feel this intelligence was getting the attention and response it deserved."
July 19, 2004 The Guardian quotes Bill Clinton in a recent interview with David Frost, "There is no evidence that the CIA told the president or the White House that Saddam Hussein had gotten uranium yellow cake from Niger, or was close to having a nuclear weapon...."
Early August Laura Rozen's source tells her this is when, "he was visited by two agents of the FBI, who were asking about Franklin."
Aug. 1, 2004 Sunday Times (London) breaks the story on "Giacomo" (Rocco Martino), the source of the bogus Niger documents. Giacomo offers proof, "of an Italian government-inspired plot to frame Iraq for clandestinely trying to acquire nuclear material;" the newspaper refuses to pay what Giacomo requests for copies of his proof ("Tracked down," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 1, 2004). Soon afterwards, Josh Marshall reports that he's asking 30,000 euros for the information.
Aug. 1, 2004 The Italian government ... strongly denied it had played any role in the forging of the documents or their dissemination, saying the accusations are 'completely false.'"
Aug. 2, 2004 "French officials have not said whether they know Mr. Martino [a.k.a. Giacomo], and are unlikely to either confirm or deny that he is a source."
Mid August This is several weeks before the stories broke saying things like, "The Pentagon official [i.e. Franklin] under suspicion of turning over classified information to Israel began cooperating with federal agents several weeks ago..."
Aug. 15, 2004 "Suspicions are growing in the Foreign Office that the two sources on which MI6 based its conclusion were in fact the same, tainted source.... It has now been established that Rocco Martino, the middle-man, was a paid informant of the French government at the time he supplied the papers" ("Foreign Office and MI6 face new Iraq inquiry," by Nicholas Rufford and Nick Fielding, Sunday Times (London), Aug. 15, 2004).
Aug. 27, 2004 CBS News reports, "the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to--in FBI terminology--'roll up' someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon."
Aug. 31, 2004 "Iran has arrested dozens of spies, including several who passed secrets about its nuclear program to its enemies.... most of those arrested were linked to the Iraq-based Iranian opposition group the People's Mujahideen Organization (MKO).... [NCRI, the MKO's political wing] denied that any NCRI or MOK informers had been arrested.... [Iran] did not say when the arrests took place...."
Sept. 2, 2004 "FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe.... [T]he bureau appears to be looking into other controversies [including:] how the INC, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger."
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