"Macbeth" and the Forged Documents of Niger
The White House Scandal Grows Ever More Grave
A modern opera produced by the German theater company Oper Frankfurt was performed last week at the Lincoln Center Festival in New York City.1 The opera "Macbeth: three nameless acts (after Shakespeare)", was directed by Archim Frey. Juxtaposed to the images depicting the bloody deeds of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were words describing Macbeth:
"Your face shall feign innocence, The eye shall be blind to what the hand shall do."
These words provide an artful way to describe the current scandal in the U.S. White House. The President and his advisors continue to feign their innocence. They didn't know. Their hands did the deeds, but their eyes, they claim, were blind. They couldn't see what their hands would do.
In the past few weeks, however, the world has begun to see more and more clearly what the hands of the U.S. administration have done. On Wednesday, July 16, 2003, the Italian newspaper La Repubblica published copies of the forged documents the U.S. government had given to the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as proof of Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons capacity. The Italian newspaper pointed out the crude nature of the forgeries. Among the discrepancies in the forged documents were the fact that one letter was addressed to the President of Niger, but also his signature was included as the author of the document. Another document was on the stationary of a Niger Ministry with the signature of a person who had last been in the Ministry more than 10 years earlier.
The White House claims that they only got these documents in October of 2002 and four months later gave them to the IAEA in February 2003. It only took the IAEA a few days, in contrast, to recognize these documents as forgeries. In their Report to the U.N. Security Council on March 7, 2003, the IAEA identified the fraudulent nature of the documents. This was still several weeks before the U.S. government went to war against Iraq (The U.S. Government Case for War in Iraq Based on Forgery and Lies).
In the period before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, much of the U.S. media encouraged the U.S. government's rush to war. More recently, however, the U.S. media has begun challenging the use of forgeries and other misrepresentations as Bush's legal justification for the war. Only a few of the media reports, however, point to the serious nature of the crime being examined. Just as Oper Frankfurt's "Macbeth" appears on the stage with a knife soaked in blood, representing the symbol of his foul deeds, so the U.S. administration's war against the Iraqi people is appropriately symbolized by manifold knives dripping with the blood of Iraqi civilians and of U.S., Iraqi, British, and other soldiers who have been injured or killed. Most recently a British scientist and advisor to the British government, David Kelly, died as a result of abuse from the British government to justify its collaboration with the U.S. government in the war against Iraq.
Thus there is a need to look carefully at the details of how the war against Iraq has been allowed to happen. What means were used to to blind the eyes of those who carried out these foul deeds?
U.S. Congressman, Henry Waxman, has raised questions about the forged Niger documents since March 2003. This focus points to a number of speeches in which the U.S. President falsely charges that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger. These charges were included in administration speeches despite CIA and U.S. State Department intelligence officials objections. Robert Joseph2, of the National Security Council, has been named as a liaison between the White House and the CIA in one such incident. There are reports that he argued to include the allegation that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa in the President's State of the Union speech.
Did the Bush administration try to create the appearance of an Iraqi nuclear weapons capacity to use as a legal pretext for the war against Iraq? Articles by Seymour Hersh in the "New Yorker" in the March 31, 2003 (Who Lied To Whom?) and May 12, 2003 (War and Intelligence) issues describe the controversy between the official intelligence bodies in the U.S. and the creation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The charge of this special office, it appears, was to create a pro war analysis for the President's office, regardless of the data and analysis of the official intelligence services.
Similar offices are reported to have been created in the British government, and in the Israeli government. In the U.S., the OSP functioned without the oversight and procedures that the official agencies had to comply with. This was an office outside of Congressional oversight provisions.
How could forged Niger documents circulate inside the U.S. government for several months without being detected? Why weren't they recognized as forgeries and the source of the forgeries sought, rather than presenting them as evidence to the IAEA in February 2003?
In early March 2003, the IAEA identified these documents as forgeries. Learning about the forged documents and the way the allegations of Iraq's nuclear weapons capacity had been used to make the case for a war against Iraq to the U.S. Congress and the U.S. people, some Congressmen called for a government investigation to learn where such documents came from and how they could be presented as legitimate documents to the IAEA (see also Why A Special Prosecutor's Investigation Is Needed To Sort Out the Niger Uranium And Related WMDs Mess). The FBI ignored the request for an investigation. Instead the U.S President declared war on Iraq.
An investigation into the source of these documents and the course of their use in the U.S. government is still being requested. Congressman Waxman has sent a letter to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. House of Representatives. He outlines four areas of inquiry to be investigated. The questions he proposes include:
- "(W)hat are the details about when the United States received and how it evaluated the forged evidence....?"
- "(W)ho was responsible for the repeated attempts by Administration officials to use the bogus evidence?"
- "(H)as the White House attempted to conceal what it knew about the evidence?
- "(W)hy hasn't the President dismissed or otherwise sanctioned the responsible White House officials?"
Along with several other Congressman, Waxman has also initiated a bill in Congress to establish an independent commission to examine the intelligence about Iraq and the representations made by executive branch officials. What is at stake is the nature of U.S. intelligence institutions and of the Presidency itself (see Is Lying About The Reason For War An Impeachable Offense?).
These institutions are limited in their authority and function by constitutional and legal provisions. If such institutions fall into the hands of those with a private, self serving agenda, they are likely to try to circumvent the limits on their authority. If this is not challenged and stopped, it can bring great harm to the U.S. and the world.
There are those who claim that the 16 words in Bush's State of the Union speech which charge that Iraq as seeking to buy uranium from Africa, are a trivial matter, not worthy of attention. To the contrary, the revelations of the past three weeks where the press has focused on these words, show that they form the centerpiece of the U.S. government's effort to make a legal justification for violating the sovereignty of Iraq. More than ever, there is a need for the gaze of eyes from around the world to focus on the hands of U.S. government officials and to not allow their eyes to be blinded again.
Meanwhile, we continue to hear Condoleeza Rice, the U.S. National Security Advisor, and George W. Bush, himself, claim they didn't know that there were forged documents being used as the evidence for their claims of Iraq's efforts to buy uranium oxide from Niger. Like Lady Macbeth in the Oper Frankfurt production, Rice erroneously seems to believe that, "For shame. My Lord, none shall dare to call a King to account." ("Macbeth Three Nameless Acts")