This passage goes a long way in helping me confirm the mechanics of the creation of the Niger uranium hoax that I had described yesterday. Here is the translated version of the passage (emphasis mine):
So [Rocco Martino] asks for help form an old colleague at SISMI: Antonio Nucera. A Carabinieri (cop) like Rocco, Antonio is the Deputy Chief of the SISMI center in viale Pasteur in Rome. He’s chief of the 1st and the 8th divisions (weapons and technology transfers and WMD proliferation counterespionage, respectively, for Africa and the Middle East.
This section is very busy section at the end of the 1980s tailing the many agents which Saddam has deployhed around the world prior to the invasion of Kuwait. “With some success”, according to an Italian intelligence official who at the time worked for the division. The official recalls: "We succeeded in getting our hands on Niger code books and a telex from Ambassador Adamou Chékou to the Niger Foreign Ministry informing Niamey that Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, would be coming to Niger as a representative of Saddam Hussein."
I have been harping on this for some time, but this is the visit that the British falsely associated with uranium in order to peddle their "uranium from Africa" allegation, long after the CIA had given up on it. It was the British Government's last remaining claim - one that they continued to push in the mendacious Butler report, in its Conclusions, to cover-up their false allegation and to give George Bush some cover in the aftermath of the Joseph Wilson op-ed and the White House's retraction of the false Bush SOTU claim.
Prior to the appearance of the forged documents, the Al-Zahawi visit was known to have been unrelated to uranium (as the CIA effectively admitted, as IAEA noted in their March 2003 statement and as the Iraq Survey Group independently confirmed later in 2004). However, once a mention of Al-Zahawi's visit was deliberately introduced into the forged documents, with the visit being falsely linked to uranium, it gave the documents a veneer of plausibility (since the trip did occur), while allowing the forgers and the intelligence agencies to claim that this trip was about uranium, even though it was not. Further, because the visit itself occurred, it made it easy for the British to keep claiming that the visit had to do with uranium (with no evidence whatsoever) even after the Niger documents were revealed as forgeries. This was an easy allegation to make and it was easier to sell to the public because, unlike a uranium sale, one could simply allege that Al-Zahawi was "seeking" uranium without any documentary proof for it. That, folks, is how the "sought...uranium from Africa" hoax was perpetrated by the Bush and Blair administrations and extended perpetually by the British Government.
I'm not sure how valid the information on this blogsite is regarding British intelligence getting duped by the Italian forgeries, but it does provide an interesting explanation. It certainly provides some measure of validity--the forgeries show that Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, al-Zahawie was going to visit Niger, of which he did but for different reasons than the forged documents claim. British intelligence would certainly have known of the trip, and would have watched al-Zahawie. It would certainly also give the British a second claim of an intelligence source regarding Iraq's purchasing uranium, even though this claim is still linked to the original forgeries (Since the forgeries spelled out this link).
More to come to this puzzle.
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