The British Connection in La Repubblica

This is also from the blogsite Crooked Timber:

La Repubblica has another story today on the role of Italian intelligence in feeding bogus evidence on Niger to Hadley and others in the US and elsewhere. There’s one key piece of new information. UK intelligence claimed to have evidence independent of the forged documents, which showed that Iraq had indeed been trying to obtain uranium in Niger. According to La Repubblica:

This “evidence” has never been brought forward … “If it ever were brought forward,” said a source in Forte Braschi to la Repubblica, with a smile, “it would be discovered, with red faces, that it was Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980’s, and shared with our friend Hamilton McMillan.”

As best as I can piece this together, the timeline that La Repubblica is arguing for goes as follows. Italian intelligence collected [genuine] information that Hussein was trying to obtain raw uranium at the end of the 1980’s, before the First Gulf War. This information was stored by the branch of Italian intelligence dealing with weapon proliferation issues. When the invasion of Iraq was imminent, this information was brought out from the archives, and bundled together with fake documents in order to make the latter look more legitimate. This dossier was then circulated to UK and US intelligence. The latter didn’t bite at first, causing the director of Italian intelligence to use back channels to Hadley and to Wolfowitz via Ledeen. UK intelligence did bite, either then or later. UK intelligence later claimed that it had a source of intelligence independent from the faked documents saying that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium. However, according to La Repubblica the ‘independent’ source was also from Italian intelligence, and related to efforts by Hussein’s regime to obtain uranium in the 1980’s. Hence, it was for all intents and purposes irrelevant to the question of whether Hussein was trying to obtain uranium in post-sanctions Iraq.

And now we come to President Bush's famous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union Speech:

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

So the big question is, where did the British government get its intelligence regarding Saddam's purchasing of uranium from Africa? Was it from the forged documents that SISMI sent over? Was British intelligence completely duped by this stuff? Remember--the CIA didn't bite at this stuff! Then there's this question of British intelligence finding a source that was independent of the forged documents saying Saddam was buying uranium from Africa. The Brits have not said what that source was. Repubblica claims that the independent source was also from Italian intelligence and the fake documents--perhaps the Panorama magazine story? We know that Panorama's editor Carlo Rossella sent reporter Elisabetta Burba to the American embassy with the forged documents. Could Rossella have also contacted the British with this intelligence information? What is this other source of information?

More to come.