So who forged the uranium documents?

The thread on Joe Wilson got me thinking about this, but I didn’t want to start a hijack. Besides, this question deserves its own debate.

Here’s the timeline, as posted in the other thread:

Here’s how we know the documents were forged (from The New Yorker 03/31/03):

More here.
So who forged the documents? The article suggests it was British intelligence, but leaves the question open, also mentioning The Iraqi exile community, the Italians and the French (??) as suspects. More detail on those theories here. After two years of investigation of the matter, the FBI seems to have come up with bupkis.

Who had a motive? This seems fertile ground for conspiracy theorists, so surely there must be plenty of ideas around. Here are some possible suspects, starting with those mentioned by The New Yorker:

  1. British intelligence. (Were the British really that eager to go to war?)

  2. The Italians. The Italians may have been the conduit for the documents but I’d be surprised if they were the source. No motive. (Though there is the notion that the Italians were conned into buying the documents by a grifter who forged them.)

  3. The French. Huh? What possible motive would the French have? Well, according to the Italians, the French wanted to trick the US into making unsupportable claims, thus making supporters of war look foolish. Cite. Seems implausible.That’s a plan that could (and did) backfire, if its goal was to keep the US out of a war with Iraq.

  4. Iraqi exiles. Plausible. One can at least see their motive. And it would explain the amateurish quality of the documents.

(on to the conspiracy theories…)

  1. Iranian intelligence. The US goes to war, takes out the hated Sunni/Baathist regime in Iraq and opens the door for Iraq’s Shiite majority (who will presumably be friendly to their ideological brethren in Iran).

  2. Israel. A US war against Iraq helps Israel deal with its most formidable enemy in the region. On the other hand, the faked documents sound amateurish. Not what you’d expect from Mossad.

  3. US Intelligence. The Bush administration needed casus belli. Did US operatives try to create documents that would justify war? Not likely. The US seems to have been suspicious of the documents all along. (Which is why Wilson was sent to investigate.)

  4. [Your theory here.]

So who forged these documents? And why? And why haven’t they been traced to their ultimate source by now?

This is the key point I think, and to my mind the two most obvious suspects are the American neocons, with their hands on the levers of power in Washington, and the righ-wing Israelis. I don’t see the others having such a red-hot interest in justifying war against Saddam.

Add into the theory, a Nigerian looking to make a quick buck threw together some really really bad forgeries and sold them to someone who wanted so badly to believe that they were real, that he accepted them as fact. That answers the question of who forged them. Now we have the question of who’s the rube that accepted them.

I refer the interested reader to Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo, without which no citizen can hope to remain well-informed.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

In today’s installment, he discusses these points and offers some insight gained on his own.

Joe Bob 'Luc says “Check it out!”

I’d say 8) Someone looking to cash in on the various intelligence groups paranoia about Iraq’s possible nuke program. At a guess the forger (or someone associated with them) received a large chunk of cash for their efforts. I doubt whether the actual forgery was done by any of the other groups (the only plausable one I’d say is Iran…and even there I don’t see what they would gain by it).

It doesn’t really answer the question, but here is what factcheck has to say about the whole 16 words by Bush and the yellow cake thing:

It seems to me that someone just wanted to cash in on a good thing. Having been several times to Africa I can well imagine someone in Niger catching wind of British and US intelligence sniffing around after Saddam and, well, accomidating them by telling them what they most wanted to hear.

-XT

This subject was extensively covered by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. The articles have been translated by bloggers. It was discussed in the following Kos diary: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/29/211121/82

Here’s the summary posted by dailykos user “smintheus”:

I find that very plausible. And it didn’t “backfire” at all: the US was going to go into Iraq, period. If they hadn’t had those documents, they would have found something else.

The French were trying to keep the US out of Iraq, but that was a tactical goal. France’s larger strategic aim is to reduce the US’s power and influence in the world, and to expand their own via various inter- and supra-national organizations. In that light, making the US and it’s vaunted intelligence agencies look like saps in front of the world is a great thing. It’s especially good if you can find a way to let the right people know or suspect that you were the one that did it.

I’m not saying that’s what happened; but I find it more plausible than some of the possibilities you’ve outlined.

I didn’t see your post before mine, but if that Italian story is correct, you nailed it…