I found this from the Crooked Timber blogsite:
As various bloggers have noted, the Italian paper La Repubblica seems to have a scoop on the sources of the famous forged Niger documents, and the role played by the Italian intelligence services. Laura Rozen has a summary article in the Prospect, but there's some additional detail in the original article. For the benefit of non-Italian readers, I've done a quick translation of the relevant bits and put it below the fold. Two health warnings. First, this is a rough and ready translation. I'm not a professional, and there may well be a few inaccuracies (please point them out in comments if you spot them). Second, La Repubblica is, as Italian newspapers go, a trustworthy publication, but like all Italian newspapers, it's surrounded by a swirl of politics and special interests. I'm obviously not in a position to attest to the veracity of its claims, but at the least, they're very interesting.
It's a fact that on the eve of the Iraq war, and under the supervision of the diplomatic advisor to the Foreign Ministry, Gianni Castellaneta (today ambassador to the USA), the director of SISMI organized his agenda in Washington with the staff of Condoleeza Rice, who was National Security Adviser to the White House at that time. La Repubblica is able to document this two track process between the government and Italian intelligence. At least one of these "barely official" [molto poco istituzionali] meetings of Pollari's was, according to secret service agents, the "creation of a system" that would bring together government, intelligence and public affairs [informazione].
To summarize: Nicolo Pollari's SISMI wanted to substantiate the [case for] the Iraqi acquisition of raw uranium to build a nuclear bomb. The game-plan was rather transparent. "Authentic" documents relating to an attempted acquisition in Niger (old Italian intelligence from the 1980's) were the dowry of the second-in-command of CISMI's Roman headquarters (Antonio Nucera). They were bundled together with another fabricated document through a simulated burglary on the Nigerien embassy (from which they had gotten headed notepaper and seals). The documents were shown by Pollari's men to CIA station agents, and at the same time, a SISMI "postman" by the name of Rocco Martino was sent to Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6 in London.
turning to the second chapter of the Great Swindle, organized in Italy, to build the case that military intervention in Iraq was necessary. The Italian report on uranium
The CIA analysts thought the first report "very limited" and "without the necessary details." INR analysts in the Department of State assessed the information as "highly suspect." The immediate impact on the American Intelligence community wasn't very gratifying for Pollari. Gianni Castellaneta advised him to look in "other directions" too, while the minister of Defence, Antonio Martino invited him to meet "an old friend of Italy's." The American friend was Michael Ledeen, an old fox in the "parallel" intelligence community in the US, who had been declared an undesirable person in our country [Italy] in the 1980's [editorial note; I understand that this claim was contested when it was made by Sidney Blumenthal]. Ledeen was at Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowiz to gather intelligence that would support military intervention in Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi told La Repubblica : "Pollari got a frosty reception from the CIA's station head in Rome, Jeff Castelli, for this information on uranium. Castelli apparently let the matter drop [lascia cadere la storia]. Pollari got the hint and talked about it with Michael Ledeen." We don't know what Michael Ledeen did in Washington. But at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinced Dick Cheney that the uranium trail intercepted by the Italians had to be explored top to bottom. The vice-president, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tells it, once again asked the CIA "very decisively" to find out more about the "possible acquisition of Nigerien uranium." In this meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly said that this piece of intelligence was at the disposition of a "foreign service."
So, Gianni Castellaneta of the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the director of SISMI--Pollari per chance--were working with NSA Condi Rice in gathering intelligence favorable to President Bush to sell the war in Iraq to the American public. Pollari's SISMI was given the task to build this case for the Iraq war by spicing up some old Italian intelligence documents regarding Iraq's purchase of uranium in the 1980s. These old intelligence documents were being held by SIMSI's Antonio Nucera. But since the documents were old, they would have been rejected by the CIA. So, these 1980s documents were bundled together with some new forged documents using the Nigerian embassy's stationary and seals. Pollari gave the documents to the CIA in Rome, while Rocco Martino sent another set of documents to Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6 in London. So who ordered this scam? Was it Castellaneta? Pollari? Or could it be a higher-up, such as the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi? Did Condi Rice know of this scam?
The CIA rejected the documents. Now this gets interesting. '"The immediate impact on the American Intelligence community wasn't very gratifying for Pollari. Gianni Castellaneta advised him to look in "other directions" too, while the minister of Defence, Antonio Martino invited him to meet "an old friend of Italy's." The American friend was Michael Ledeen"' Because the CIA rejected the documents, Castellaneta told Pollari to shop the documnets around. Defense Minister Martino told Pollari to show the documents to Michael Ledeen. "Ledeen was at Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowiz to gather intelligence that would support military intervention in Iraq." Ledeen was working for Paul Wolfowiz. Wolfowiz was with the Office of Special Plans, who was certainly shopping for proof to make the Bush case for going to war in Iraq. You can bet that what Pollari had was hot stuff for both Ledeen and Wolfowiz.
So the Italian intelligence provided the CIA with forged documents. The CIA rejected those documents, after which the Italians then went through the back door to give the documents directly to the White House. [A]t the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinced Dick Cheney that the uranium trail intercepted by the Italians had to be explored top to bottom. The vice-president, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tells it, once again asked the CIA "very decisively" to find out more about the "possible acquisition of Nigerien uranium." In this meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly said that this piece of intelligence was at the disposition of a "foreign service." Cheney didn't say what foreign intelligence service these documents came from--If the CIA knew that they came from Italy, the CIA would immediatly claim they were bogus since the CIA had already seen these documents. But the White House gets these documents, and it is almost too good to be true. It is definitive proof that Iraq was purchasing uranium from Nigeria. VP Cheney orders the CIA to investigate this intelligence, even though the CIA knew that these documents were forgeries. And to make these documents seem more credible, Rocco Martino gives them to a Panoram journalist, allowing them to be published and to provide more credibility to them through public opinion.
And there's more:
Pollari could concentrate on another essential aspect of his stratagem. Promoting SISMI and himself, extracting the proceeds of his secret labour over a year. After returning from his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari sought a hearing from the parliamentary committee that oversees the secret services. There were two hearings. In the first, the director of SISMI maintained "We don't have documentary evidence, but we do have information that a central African state has sold pure uranium to Baghdad." Thirty days later, Pollari said, "We have documentary evidence of the acquisition of natural uranium by Iraq in a central-African republic."
Pollari had to get the Italian intelligence services to back his plan. So first, he says there were no documentary evidence at a parlimentary committee meeting, but then later on says that he had documentary evidence. Pollari lied to his parlimentary committee overseeing his intelligence service. And finally there is this:
Pollari still had the problem of how to convey the fake document to Washington without leaving any of his fingerprints. The SISMI "postman," Rocco Martino, who had already knocked on MI6's door, contacted the Panorama correspondent, Elisabetta Burba, and tried to sell her the document. Burba correctly checked the information in Niger, she concluded that the story didn't stand up. But the editor of the weekly, Carlo Rossella, enthusiastic that he might have found, as his staff describe it, a "smoking gun," sent her with the document to the American embassy, as the "highest source for verification."
Pollari had sent Rocco Martino to give the documents first to MI6, and then to the Panorama's reporter. Now this is also interesting. Carlo Rossella told Panorama's reporter Elisabetta Burba to send the documents to the American embassy. In my previous blog post, I noted that Carlo Rossella was a favorite of Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi. Did Berlusconi (or someone in his office) tell Rossella that these documents were important to his agenda of helping sell the Iraq war on behalf of President Bush?
The more I read into this, the more I'm starting to ask if this is a scam that was created by both the Italian intelligence, and someone in the U.S. government? Why would Italian intelligence go about trying to deceive American intelligence with these forged documents? And these documents were poor forgeries--the CIA outright rejected them. And yet, Pollari was able to end run these through directly into the White House, where Cheney ordered the CIA to investigate this intelligence lead that the CIA knew was a fraud. So we come back to the question of who started this scam and why? One obvious "why" answer would be to provide documented proof that Iraq was purchasing materials to make WMDs, and this was the reason for President Bush to go to war in Iraq. But who created this fraud? It had to be someone high up in the Italian government, who could order Italian intelligence to play out this scheme. Was it Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi? Did Berlusconi order Castellaneta to find or make-up proof as a means to help President Bush? Did President Bush personally ask Berlusconi for help in marketing his war? Where does Hadley and Rice fit in on this? We know that Hadley and Pollari met on September 9, 2002 and that three days after, the Pomona story on the forged documents was published. Did Pollari tell Hadley of these documents? And if so, did Hadley know that these documents were forgeries--did he check with the CIA?
Such a puzzle.
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