Italy denies faking Niger documents
Italian secret service names 'occasional spy' as source of forged documents.
Italy's chief of military intelligence Thursday named Rocco Martino, an "
occasional spy," as the source of the forged documents that said Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from Niger.
The New York Times reports that Mr. Martino has "long been suspected" of being the person responsible for "peddling" the documents on the Iraq-Niger connection that were ultimately proved to be false.
In a day of extraordinary developments, the
Times says that Gen. Nicolo Pollari told a closed-door meeting of a key Italian parliamentary committee on secret services that Rocco Martino was "a former intelligence agency informer who had been
kicked out of the agency." Gen. Pollari did not name Martino as the forger.
News reports have quoted [Martino] as saying he obtained [the documents] through a contact at the Niger Embassy [in Rome]. But this was the first time his role was formally disclosed by the intelligence agency. Neither Mr. Martino nor his lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, [was] available for comment.
Pollari also told the Italian committee that no Italian intelligence officers were involved in the forging or distribution of the documents. According to a senior Italian lawmaker, Pollari also told the group that Martino had told a prosecutor in Rome that he was working for the French intelligence service, not Sismi (Italian intelligence). A French intelligence spokesman in Paris would not tell the Times if Martino was a French intelligence agent, but called Pollari's comments "scandalous."
Newsday reports that La Repubblica, whose original series of articles a week ago alleged that Italian intelligence had been involved with forging the documents, has also named Martino as the
originator of the documents. The newspaper reported that Martino had "produced the forgeries from letterhead and stamps he purloined from Niger's embassy in Rome in 2000."
According to La Repubblica, SISMI's earliest attempts to disseminate the false documents occurred in late 2001, when forgeries personally corroborated by Pollari were sent to the CIA station chief in Rome after the Sept. 11 attacks." SISMI purported the truth of documents it knew to be false," prompting the CIA to dispatch former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger in 2002 on a fact-finding mission that came up empty, La Repubblica reported.
Having failed to convince the CIA, the report said, Pollari took the phony intelligence straight to the Bush administration, arranging a Washington briefing with Stephen Hadley, then deputy national security adviser. Hadley confirmed Wednesday that the meeting had occurred but denied getting fake documents from Pollari on Hussein's alleged uranium purchase. Hadley said he consulted with staff members to "
refresh my memory" before reaching this conclusion.
Former and current US intelligence officials have said that after the 9/11 attacks, Italian intelligence did send reports to the US that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger that could be used for nuclear weapons. Sismi confirmed that it had sent information about Iraq's attempts to buy Niger's uranium as early as the 1990's "but it never said the information was credible."
The
Associated Press reports that commission member Sen. Massimo Brutti created a sensation when he emerged from the meeting and told reporters that the Italian secret service had warned the US in January of 2003 that the documents were forged. But he later called AP to "
retract and clarify" his statement.
Brutti said what he meant to say was that the commission was told that a Sismi official, contacted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna about the dossier, told the UN agency that "those documents didn't come from Sismi, they weren't produced nor supplied by Sismi."
"Our [intelligence services] were not involved," Brutti said the briefing was told.
President Bush included the allegation about Iraq seeking the uranium in his January 2003 State of the Union address, accusing Iraq of pursuing banned weapons of mass destruction programs.
Also Thursday,
The New York Times reported that the FBI confirmed a report in an Italian newspaper that the Italian government had received a letter from Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, in late July, expressing the highest appreciation for Italy for its cooperation with the investigation.
The letter added that the cooperation had given the FBI proof that the documents were produced and disseminated by one or more people likely for monetary gain, and ruled out the possibility that the Italian service had intended to influence American policy.
Also...
•
Lawmakers rebuke Pentagon buyers for rising weapons costs (
Marine Times)
•
Indifference to Israeli aggression makes US policy look imbalanced (
Daily Star, Lebanon)
•
A battle joined with the Pentagon's upper echelon (
Knight Ridder)
•
Student protesters attack Iraq war (
Minneapolis Star-Tribune)
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