“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” - George W. Bush (from his 2003 State of The Union Address)

Mitchell Wade founded the defense contracting firm MZM Inc. MZM, which Wade started in 1993, did not report any revenue from prime contract awards until 2003 but starting in May 2002 they were awarded contracts in the tens of millions of dollars which then grew to well over $150 million.

Wade bought Randy "Duke" Cunningham's house in Del Mar, California for $1,675,000. It was further reported that the yacht that Cunningham lived on while he was in Washington was owned by Wade.

Cunningham was a member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and shortly after the purchase, Wade began to receive tens of millions of dollars worth of defense and intelligence contracts.

The Army National Ground Intelligence Center (the NGIC) is where Mitchell Wade's MZM got its start, by hiring relatives of top NGIC officials, and then the NGIC officials themselves.

When intelligence agencies discovered Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes, they disagreed whether those tubes were for conventional battlefield rockets, which is what the purchase contract said, or parts of a centrifuge for enriching uranium and making a nuclear bomb.

NGIC advised the CIA that the tubes were for enriching uranium, while the nuclear weapons experts at the Department of Energy (which makes U.S. nuclear weapons), along with those at the State Department, said they were the wrong specs for a centrifuge but were perfect for rockets.

This technical disagreement should have been referred to the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, but instead was given to a mysterious contractor. This contractor (a "red team" as the Robb-Silberman report called them), whose name the SSCI Report thought important to block out, produced in exactly 1 day a detailed report that interestingly agreed with the CIA WINPAC analyst's conclusions on the aluminum tubes. The identity of the contractor is certainly of great interest.

This contractor's role was described in the Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence (Part A) dated 7/4/04. Part of the report where the contractor's identity was DELETED:

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Contributing to the CIA's analysis for the extensive September intelligence assessment was an analysis performed by an individual from DELETED who were working under contract with the CIA at the time to provide broad-based technical advice DELETED. The CIA WINPAC analyst, DELETED, requested in September 2002 that they perform an analysis of the tubes. SENTENCE DELETED

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Rather than go to the nonpartisan experts they would normally use, they went to this contracting firm associated with the NGIC. That firm gave Bushco precisely the report they wanted.

Was MZM the Contractor?

1. MZM had a contract with NGIC at the time.

2. It was an NGIC contractor who gave this assessment.

3. Two MZM consultants worked for the Robb-Silberman commission that didn't name MZM directly.

4. BusinessWeek reported that MZM was involved in assessing Saddam's nuclear program.

5. The then-CEO of MZM (Wade) is a corrupt Republican partisan deeply involved in a system of bribery.

So what does this all mean in relation to Karl Rove and the firing of Carol Lam?

Prosecutor Carol Lam of San Diego put Rep. Duke Cunningham behind bars for the worst case of bribery in Congressional history - $2.3 million. She took her investigation deep into congressional appropriations process -- kicking off a continuing probe into the dealings of former Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis. She also followed the trail into the heart of the Bush CIA. Lam's investigation of Duke Cunningham's bribes led her to MZM. Naturally, Lam would want to know which contracts MZM got for its bribes. If MZM got the contract from the CIA to lie about the aluminum tubes, Lam would have discovered that - or gotten dangerously close to discovering it.

The aluminum tube contract was no ordinary contract - it was one of the two most important "facts" supporting the crucial Bush-Cheney-Rice-Tenet-Powell claim that Iraq was building nuclear weapons and therefore had to be invaded.

BIG SOTU LIE #1

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Libby found guilty on 4 counts in connection with this lie. Libby was Cheney and Rove’s fall guy according to his own defense team and the jury that convicted him.

BIG SOTU LIE #2

“Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.”

There was a very powerful group of people whose job was to sell the Iraq War to the American people - the White House Iraq Group (WHIG).

The members were Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, Andrew Card, James R. Wilkinson, Nicholas E. Calio, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Michael Gerson.

Scooter Libby, Stephen Hadley, and Mary Matalin were intimately involved with Plamegate. Condi Rice famously warned of the "smoking gun" that could be a "mushroom cloud." Michael Gerson was Bush's top speechwriter and the person who put both uranium lies into the State of the Union.

And who was the chair of this powerful group?

Karl Rove - the man who fired Carol Lam.