Prior to the 1996 coup, U.S. relations with Niger had been excellent. We had provided food shipments during the droughts, and we had helped them defend themselves against Libyan aggression. Niger had even sent soldiers to fight alongside our troops during the first Gulf War. Thus, this suspension of normal relations and assistance was difficult for both sides. But nothing was going to change for the better until the ruling military junta left office and a representative civilian government was restored. When I was senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1997 to 1998, I met frequently with Niger’s prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki, and other senior officials. I had known some of these men for twenty-five years, and our long experience with one another helped them to understand my perspective when I pressed them to work toward the reinstatement of a civilian leadership government so we could ease the restrictions on assistance.
After I retired from the U.S. government in 1998, I traveled to Niamey at the personal invitation of then-President Mainassara to participate in a cultural festival in the Sahara Desert outside the northern Nigerien town of Agadez. But there were other reasons than just the festival for my trip. I went prepared to engage with Mainassara in unofficial discussions on how to cede power, also at his request. Mainassara was not inherently a bad man, just badly out of his depth. Of modest stature, he was reserved and thoughtful, but he had allowed himself the delusion of believing he was his country’s savior. When he had staged his coup in 1996, the political class had been embroiled in never-ending squabbles that paralyzed the country. Niger’s precarious economy could ill afford the luxuries of endless debate.
Mainassara, a paratrooper widely regarded as his country’s most respected soldier, sought to re-create himself in the image of the country’s first military dictator, Seyni Kountche. Kountche had been revered in Niger for his tremendous discipline and national commitment during the droughts that ravaged the country in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a man of ascetic tastes, and no hint of scandal or personal corruption had tainted his twelve-year rule. After his death from illness in 1987, the country had floundered from one poor president to another.
As much as he tried to project himself as the new Kountche, however, Mainassara’s failures were evident to all. He careened from one political disaster to another, including rigging elections to hold on to power. With such deficiencies of character and vision, Mainassara was incapable of taking the actions required if his country was ever to regain the much-needed support of the U.S. and European countries.
It was only a matter of time before the ills of the country manifested themselves in a new political crisis. Coups in African nations occur with depressing regularity, and Niger was no exception. The coups that had brought both Kountche and Mainassara to power had been largely bloodless, with the deposed presidents arrested and jailed, but not killed. It came as a shock, therefore, when in April of the year following our meeting, while walking to his airplane to travel to an international meeting, Mainassara was mowed down in a hailstorm of machine-gun fire from his own security detail. His violent death left everyone in Niger and abroad fearful for the country’s political future.
I returned to Niamey in 1999 not long after Mainassara’s assassination and met with his successor as president, Major Daouda Malam Wanké, at the request of the same civilian prime minister, Ibrahim Mayaki, with whom I had worked so closely during my time at the National Security Council. Mayaki, a political activist and scion of one of Niger’s leading families, had played a bad hand as well as anybody could have during the period, managing the government bureaucracy and services and seeking international economic support while trying to persuade the military junta to return to their barracks. He became a good friend in the course of my efforts to help him move the soldiers out of the presidential palace and out of politics.
At Mayaki’s urging, I gave Wanké a crash course in what he would need to know if he was going to succeed as chief of state. There was no question, I told him, that so long as he held the office of president, he would be treated as a pariah by the West, as well as by many of his fellow African leaders. Military coups were unacceptable to Niger’s development partners, and his African counterparts would recoil from dealing with the man who had been personally responsible, in his capacity as head of the Presidential Guard, for the death of his predecessor. The only way he could ever hope to gain even a measure of international respect would be to restore civilian rule to the nation as soon as possible, and such a plan would, of course, require that he step down as president.
I was frank: “Whoever is elected as your successor will be very nervous with you in the background, fearing that you will do to him what you did to Mainassara if he does not meet your expectations. You should plan to retire from the army and leave the country for a decent interval to give him time to solidify his power and rule.”
A year later I met Wanké again, at the airport in Niamey, just after the presidential election that seemed to promise the return of civilian politicians to power. He was on his way to neighboring Nigeria to meet with that country’s leaders to thank them for their assistance and support during the transition. He had heard that I was in town and had expressly asked that I come to meet with him at the airport.
There, mingling with the diplomatic corps summoned to bid farewell to the president every time he left the country and welcome him every time he returned, I was culled from the herd of ambassadors and ministers by one of Wanké’s aides. Under the harsh stare of Hussein al Kuma, the Libyan ambassador, a man who had been in Niamey for fifteen years, and who was widely suspected of everything from financing rebellions in the north of the country to trying to rig the recent presidential election, I was escorted to the president’s private salon. The president greeted me warmly. After a ceremonial glass of tea, he recalled our previous meeting in his military compound and said: “You see by the elections that I have done everything you said needed to be done.”
I agreed that he had led a remarkable political transition.
“I am now off to Nigeria on a state visit to celebrate this success,” he continued. “But I am also going to inspect and take possession of the keys of my new house there. I will be spending most of my time in Nigeria in private business. As you suggested, I am leaving Niger so that my successor does not have to worry about me. Nobody else knows.” He broke into a huge smile at the idea of sharing the secret with the one person who had dared to confront him soon after his arrival in power, and to press on him a scenario for leaving power. We embraced, and I left, winking at the wondering Libyan as I passed.
In short, I knew the country—its uranium industry and its leadership—intimately.
Therefore, it was not surprising that the CIA thought my observations and opinions on Niger worth soliciting. It was my first time inside the Agency in several years. The CIA campus covers several acres nestled in a wooded glen, isolated from the hustle and bustle of the neighboring suburbs. Beyond the forbidding security gate guarding the entrance, a tree-lined lane meanders to the visitor’s parking lot next to the Agency’s original building. The front entrance is made of highly polished marble and glass, and one proceeds through it toward the inner courtyard, where a statue commemorates the codebreakers who achieved such momentous success in World War II. There is also a memorial to fallen intelligence operatives, recognized not by name but by stars on the wall, their anonymity preserved even in death.
It is a poignant reminder that security precautions do not end even with death. Protection of the identity of CIA officers is a sacred responsibility. Compromising the officer means compromising a career, a network, and every person with whom the officer might have ever worked. Slips of the tongue cost people their lives.
I was escorted to a meeting room in the basement, down a long nondescript corridor devoid of decoration, past a series of cubicles with shoulder-high dividers occupied by people busy at their computers, the hum of the air circulation system audible above the quiet.
&nb
sp; Inside the conference room, there was one change since my last visit: gone was the battleship gray of chairs and tables past. The furniture now was in lighter pastel colors, the idea obviously to create a more cheerful ambiance. It was still drab.
The participants in the meeting were drawn from the intelligence community’s experts on Africa and uranium, and included staff from both the CIA and the State Department. As I shook hands with a group of mostly young men and women, a couple of them mentioned that they had met me at previous briefings over the years. I did not know any of them personally nor did I recognize anyone by name or by sight. They were interested and interesting professionals but as anonymous as you would expect in a bureaucracy that places a premium on secrecy and discretion. That said, they were a knowledgeable and dedicated fraternity of public servants, and I was struck by their commitment and their professionalism, toiling in obscurity so that the rest of us can be safe.
My hosts opened the meeting with a brief explanation of why I had been invited to meet with them. A report purporting to be a memorandum of sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq had aroused the interest of Vice President Dick Cheney. His office, I was told, had tasked the CIA to determine if there was any truth to the report. I was being asked now to share with the analysts my knowledge of the uranium business and of the Nigerien personalities in power at the time the alleged contract had been executed, supposedly in 1999 or early 2000. The Nigeriens were the same people I had dealt with during and after my time at the National Security Council, people I knew well.
The report, as it was described to me, was not very detailed. For example, it was not clear whether the reporting officer—not present for this meeting—had actually laid eyes on the document or was simply relaying information provided by a third party. The amount of the uranium product—a lightly processed form of uranium ore called yellowcake—involved was estimated to have been up to five hundred tons but could also have been fifty, suggesting that the account had been written from memory (and an imperfect one at that) rather than with the document at hand. It would have been of keen interest to me to know who might have signed the contract on behalf of the Niger government, but no information was provided on this either.
I was skeptical, as prudent consumers of intelligence always are about raw information. Thousands of pieces of data come over the government’s transom on any given day, but a lot belongs to the category of “rumint,” rumors passing as fact, no more reliable than Bigfoot sightings. Rumint is a necessary if unfortunate reality in a world where many people will sell you what they think you want to hear, as opposed to simple facts.
The American intelligence business makes use of many different sources and methods in order to arrive at a reasonable picture of the truth in a given situation. No one source provides all the answers, but taken together they contribute to a clearer picture of what is going on. To help decision makers figure out what is wheat and what is chaff, a phalanx of analysts sift through all the bits of information, weighing each one against what else is known, forming hypotheses against which to test it, inviting people like me to share their experience.
The CIA is devoted to this task, but there are also organizations within the State and Defense Departments that provide additional expertise and deliberate redundancy. The goal is to give decision makers the best possible background for formulating policy. The welfare of the nation depends on it.
Since my most recent visit to Niger had been two years earlier, the background I could supply was not about the current situation. However, the former Nigerien minister of mines, the man overseeing the industry at the time of the alleged sale, was a friend of mine. When I had seen him on my last trip, we had discussed the uranium mining sector of the national economy, but we had not talked specifically about any sales to countries outside the consortium of companies from four nations—France, Germany, Spain, and Japan—that, with Niger, own the concession. The organization and ownership of the Nigerien mines had not changed over the quarter-century they had been operating. Niger had not actually sold uranium on its own since the collapse of the uranium market in the mid-1980s, when a major Canadian mine began producing uranium at a far lower cost. Niger’s mines were located in the middle of the Sahara Desert, far from ports and even farther from customers.
At the end of the briefing—after I’d answered questions on topics ranging from security arrangements to transportation routes for the yellowcake—I was asked if I would be willing to travel to Niger to check out the report in question, which, if credible, would be very troubling. As the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein before his army was driven from Kuwait, I knew it was critical to maintain the containment that the U.S., with the U.N.’s help, had thrown over his military ambitions since the end of Desert Storm in 1991. If he was breaking out of his box, it was a very serious matter indeed.
I wanted to help my government learn about it, but before answering their question, I had to point out the obvious: “I am not a spy; I did diplomacy, not clandestine, in my career.” I wanted them to understand that I didn’t know the tradecraft of spying and had never in my life carried a suitcase full of cash to pay for information. Moreover, I could hardly be described as having a low profile in Africa. During my stint at the National Security Council, I had been one of the principal architects of President Clinton’s historic trip to that continent in 1998, and as one of the few senior American officials to speak fluent French, I had often been interviewed for Francophone African newspapers and magazines. Niger was one of those countries where I was well known.
The fact was, though, I did know the officials who would have made the decisions and signed the documents, if the sale had really taken place. Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick had arrived just as the new elected government was taking power. Her current contacts were undoubtedly excellent, but since most of the officials of the former military regime had by now melted back into private life, she could not know those potentially useful figures as well as I did.
We discussed whom I might see and what questions I would pose were I to undertake the mission. We plotted it out, as if we were moving pieces on a game board, with a number of possible outcomes, trying to determine whether there was any value in such a trip. I did not know at the time that other American officials were also looking into the matter. For my part, I made it clear that I would require the approval of both the Department of State and the ambassador before traveling. I also stipulated that I would have to be open with my contacts, not concealing the fact that I was traveling on behalf of the U.S. government. I would accept reimbursement from the CIA for my expenses, but I expected no wages for my time. At the conclusion of my trip, the Agency would receive my oral report. As the two-hour meeting ended, my hosts said they would make a decision and get back to me soon, and I told them I would need adequate advance notice to clear my calendar and make the necessary arrangements.
A few days later, I was asked to go to Niamey. Within hours, I went over to the State Department to see the assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, Walter Kansteiner, and his principal deputy. I had known Walter since I’d served on the National Security Council and had admired his leadership of the Bureau of African Affairs in the State Department. Under Walter, morale in his bureau was high, and progress had been made in resolving conflicts from Sierra Leone in the west to Sudan in the east. This was impressive, since resources for Africa were always scarce and the Bureau was chronically underfunded and undermanned. Embassy staff had been reduced and intelligence assets had been largely withdrawn from Africa after the end of the Cold War, as the CIA focused on other targets; this had left our embassies without an essential capability. To fill the gap, different approaches had been tried, including the mounting of temporary intelligence “platforms” whenever crises emerged. But considerable time is required to develop good intelligence, with the obligatory cultivation of contacts, relationships, and networks, all being parts of the equation. Quick fixes rarely work, as they depend on
untested sources and offer only a partial picture of any given situation. Despite the inherent difficulties, Walter was managing his portfolio with purpose and aplomb. He agreed to my trip and contacted Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick, who also agreed to it.
A visa was easy to obtain, as I had been friends with Niger’s envoy to America, Joseph Diatta, and his family since my time in Niamey in the mid-1970s, and worked closely with him when I was in government. Now there remained only the travel arrangements.
There were only two flights a week to Niamey from Europe, and they arrived within eight hours of each other. The flight I took arrived in the evening, the other got in the following morning. Both planes would depart later the same day, which would have left me in Niamey for only twelve hours. If I waited for the next week’s flights, I’d be in town for eight days—far longer than necessary for the task, but realistically my only option.
The plane settled into a long slow turn, easing first west toward the sun setting over the scruffy Sahelian buttes and mesas bordering the Niger River, then dipping back to the east. The brown river meandered through the city and under the John F. Kennedy Bridge, the only crossing point for the capital’s 750,000 inhabitants and the lifeline for food and supplies arriving from the Atlantic Coast via Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The banks of the river with their truck gardens stood in bright green contrast to the muddy water. One last turn, and we were on final approach.
As I looked down at Niamey, I could see the camel caravans crossing the bridge. They arrived every morning laden with firewood, the principal cooking fuel, gathered through the destruction of the few remaining stands of trees and bushes in the country. Deforestation had been one of the most serious development problems we had identified when American aid was first brought to Niger thirty years earlier. Peering through the smoke-charged haze at the camels, I couldn’t help but think that we still had not helped them solve the problem.
The Politics of Truth_Inside the Lies That Put the White House on Trial and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity Page 2