Forging the Forgeries: Italian Niger investigation (and FBIs?) a whitewash

[Wordie]

In a La Repubblica story entitled, Nigergate: The CIA confounded. SISMI "doctored" documents in the phony uranium dossier, published earlier this week, it was revealed that the earlier claims by the Italian government (and our own FBI), as a result of their recent investigation, left out one teensy bit of information: the forgeries themselves were later doctored! This clue to the larger story was discovered by a astute blogger, eriposte at theleftcoaster.com and picked up by the La Repubblica story (the paper mentions eriposte's work).

What does this mean? The conclusion that the forgeries were only a badly executed money-making scheme, as reported not long ago in the NYT and other national news outlets, turns out to be only a part of the story. Reports that the forgeries had somehow slipped by the Italian officials and arrived in the U.S. and slipped by OUR officials as well, and that it was all a huge and oh-so regrettable mistake, are revealed to be completely untrue, by the fact that SOMEONE doctored them, . That names, dates and other pertinant information were changed on the the transcripts of the forgeries indicates that SOMEONE knew they were forgeries BEFORE the information contained within them made its way to the the U.S., and ultimately into the President's SOTU speech.

La Repubblica and eriposte have demonstrated that the "money-making enterprise" explanation for the forgeries was a nothing more than a whitewash, meant to turn the whole issue of the Niger yellowcake forgeries, and hence, the issue of why we went to war itself, into an "oops" moment of no importance.

As DUers, we must not let this issue die.

Here's a translation of the La Republica article (with profound thanks to Nur al-Cubicle, who generously provides English translations of foreign press articles of interest to lefties on her blog): http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/

<snip>
Nigergate: The CIA confounded. SISMI "doctored" documents in the phony uranium dossier.

SISMI is familiar with the spectacularly phony dossier on the Niger uranium, assembled “by private motivation for lucre” by three characters on the SISMI’s payroll (Rocco Martino, Antonio Nucera and La Signora, who worked at the Embassy). SISMI is aware of the information contained the dossier. SISMI "doctors" the mistakes and absurdities contained in the documents. It does not entrust the dossier to the CIA but instead to a “field officer” of the Agency stationed in Rome, who is permitted to “view” the documents. The US agent scribbles a few notes resulting in the first report drafted in Washington. When the (false) news that Saddam is moving to acquire the bomb causes consternation (or joy) in the US intelligence community, Nicolò Pollari’s SISMI prepares a second report confirming the first, this time with the inclusion of a transcription of the Niger-Iraq agreement confirming “the credibility of the source (La Signora)”. With a third cable comes notification that finally, “500 tons of uranium have already been shipped to Iraq.” In the Nigergate affair, this is precisely what happened. Yet the Italian Government and the SISMI director stubbornly clings to the claim that Rome never sent a single document to Washington. They admit to having shared information with the American ally, but the point is this: Exactly what information did Italy share with the United States? It can be documented that our intelligence people, with the consent of the Italian Government, presented to the United States information which it knew to be not only falsified but so sloppily forged that is it necessary to remove some errors and to doctor others by means of the routine craftwork of clandestine services.

It isn’t that complicated to make decidedly false information appear to be true-or sufficiently true. As the cloak and dagger types know, "Disinformation relies on both the true and the false." This is the maxim which guides the cunning hand of Italian intelligence when it concocts, a month following 9-11, the swill of the uranium purchase in Niger by agents of Saddam Hussein. The half-baked frittata prepared by the Italians is a simple operation. For spies it should be child’s play to move a signature -a single signature- from one document to another. The Italian Job (the scam), as the Americans call it, would be more aptly named Three Card Monte (the three documents in question would be the cards) because it is carried out in plain view of everyone. More or less like the Purloined Letter of Edgar Allan Poe. The SISMI director admits - even in front of Italian Parliament - that on 18 October 2001 he forwards "information" to US intelligence confirming the “credibility of a source named La Signora, who in the past had already delivered “the genuine article” filched inside the Embassy of Niger in Rome, located at via Antonio Baiamonti No. 10.

SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari does not say what information he is guaranteeing (by vouching for La Signora) to the American ally. To uncover something more, you have to leaf through the US Senate report: Report on the U. S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. On Page 36, it reads:

Reporting on a possible yellowcake sales agreement between Niger and Iraq first came to the attention of the US Intelligence Community (IC) on October 15, 2002. The Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Operations (DO) issued an intelligence report (...) from a foreign government service indicating that Niger planned to ship several tons of uranium to Iraq (...). The intelligence report said the uranium sales agreement had been in negotiation between the two countries since at least early 1999, and was approved by the State Court of Niger in late 2000. According to the cable, Nigerois President Mamadou Tandja gave his stamp of approval for the agreement and communicated his decision to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The report also incicated that in October 2000 Nigerois Minister of Foreign Affairs Nassirou Sabo informed one of his ambassadors in Europe that Niger had concluded an accord to provide several tons of uranium to Iraq. (...).

We know that the “foreign country” is Italy. We therefore know that Rome vouches for four items of information: 1)The agreement between Niger and Iraq goes back to 1999; 2) the deal is approved by the State Court of Niger in 2000; 3)that Nigerois President Mamadou Tandja gave sanction to the sale and informs Saddam; and, 4) that Foreign Minister Nassirou Sabo informed his ambassadors in Europe of same.<unsnip>


As you can see, there are LOTS of very interesting questions raised by all of this. "Who" and "why" being only two.

Here's a link to the original article in La Republica: http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/esteri/nigergate

Josh Marshall of talkingpoints memo.com is compiling a Niger yellowcake timeline, if anyone has something to add, or would like to take a look at what they've got so far, you can visit the site, here: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/niger-uranium.php

And here is a link to the material by eriposte, to whom we all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude for such a detailed and fine analysis of the whole Nigergate problem: http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006009.php