US says South Sudan plot papers crude forgeries

Juba. (NMG) Documents referring to a CIA plot to target South Sudan government officials are “crude forgeries,” a State Department official said on Monday.

A May 26, 2015, letter supposedly written by a CIA officer and circulated last week in a few media outlets in Juba describes 10 South Sudanese individuals as “High Value Targets whose Termination will be acceptable at all counts and should be considered priority”.

Read: Juba claims US plotting to destabilise South Sudan 

In a second purportedly leaked letter, a “deployment officer” with DynCorp International, a US police-training contractor, confirms receipt in Juba of three surface-to-air missiles.

These “Spyder” weapons are to be kept in the custody of the UN Mission in South Sudan “until they are used,” adds the letter dated February 10, 2016, and addressed to CIA Director of Intelligence Richard Hoch.

“Look at the typos and other errors,” the State Department official advised on Monday in an email responding to the African Review's questions about the documents' authenticity.

The official declined to specify examples of such mistakes, saying: “These help us to identify forgeries.”

Neither of the letters appears to have been written by a person well versed in the American form of English. Each includes random capitalisations of words, reflecting a flawed understanding of the principles of English composition.

The DynCorp letterhead affixed to the 2016 communication from the company's “deployment officer” misspells the name of the city where DynCorp is based.

The company's headquarters are in McLean, Virginia —not “McLeon”, as listed in the apparently forged document.

The acronym for the United Nations Mission in South Sudan is also misspelled in this letter. It is written incorrectly as UNIMISS rather than UNMISS.

In addition, it is highly unlikely that the CIA would send information to DynCorp via Federal Express, a commercial delivery service, as the 2016 letter indicates was done.

Moreover, it is unclear why the CIA or DynCorp would be writing letters at all in an age when electronic communications have largely supplanted the print-on-paper method of transmitting information.

“Those individuals behind the forgeries are not looking out for the interests of peace in Southern Sudan,” the State Department official said.

That remark echoed a statement issued on Sunday by Deputy State Department Spokesperson Mark Toner.

“We are not planning, nor will plan, to target any government or military leaders; nor will we import special military equipment with the goal of destabilising South Sudan,” Mr Toner said.

“Any suggestion that the United States has done so or will do so is false, baseless and not in the interest of peace in South Sudan,” the State Department spokesperson added.

“We want to make clear to the people and the government of South Sudan that the United States has no plan for offensive action in their country.”