Talk about beating a deceased horse not to mention shooting fish in a barrel, but not having anything else useless to do, I decided to see how long it would take me to prove the notorious Iraq-Niger Uranium documents were forged using google and a modem.

I'm embarassed to say that I have been at it for almost two hours (while also cooking and eating dinner). My error was to download the CIA Fact Book for the year 2000 with a modem. Then I found out that it listed only the president and prime minister of Niger.

Oddly when looking for the documents themselves google sent me to Italian investigative journalists Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D’Avanzo. I happen to be a fan of theirs. I think they are the best investigative journalism team in Italy (the competition isn't very fierce). In this page they mainly quote Seymour Hersh' article in the New Yorker (not available for free on the web).

Some of their stuff is available translated into English. I'm not sure how much, but their reports on the Berlusconi government would be amusing to people who don't find the Bush administration absurdly dishonest enough.

The main facts are
"As Seymour Hersh wrote in The
New Yorker on 31 March 2003, "One letter, dated
October 10, 2000 (the memorandum of understanding
between Niger and Iraq -- La Repubblica editor's note)
was signed with the name of Allele Habibou, a [Niger]
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, who had
been out of office since 1989. Another letter (dated
27 July 2000 -- La Repubblica editor's note) [...] had
[...] a text with inaccuracies so egregious [...] that
'they could be spotted by someone using Google on the
Internet.'" It might also be added that 500 tonnes
of pure uranium is such an enormous quantity that it
should have aroused the suspicions of anyone familiar
in any way with the country and the commodity
concerned, and also that the letter dated 30 July 1999
refers to deals struck in Niamey on 29 June 2000, and
that the 27 July 2000 letter to the president of Niger
bears his own stamp and signature."

Yep sounds like a forgery which would fool intelligence analysts all right. I knew that the documents were obvious forgeries but I only really knew about the minister coming out of retirement to sign (with the title that was his no longer). While looking for facsimilies of the documents (haven't found them) I tried to check how hard it would be for the CIA to pick up that the so called foreign minister of Niger was not the current foreign minister in 2000. That's how I got tangled in back issues of the CIA world fact book (zip files with no index).

After an hour and a half of downloading files which turned out to be maps and flags I realized that the fact book would not contain the information I wanted. Fortunately I was searching as I downloaded and got to the highly relevant page which is unfortunately a bit too recent.

Finally finally I just went to http://www.cia.gov. Notice first page front and center what's new at the CIA contains a weekly entry "Posted updated Chiefs of State and Cabinet Members of Foreign Governments ... ". This is by far the most common item on the "What's new" section which is the most visible part of the CIA web page. I don't think the CIA is obsessed with cabinets, I just think that is the only thing they do which is so non secret that they share it with the public.

Now it seems that an organization which posts weekly updates on who is minister of what all over the world should be able to notice that something was signed by a "minister" who had been retired for over 10 yearsd doesn't it ?