Intel Probe: The Yellowcake Mystery (FBI did NOT interview Martino)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9938998/site/newsweek/

Intel Probe: The Yellowcake Mystery
—Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball

Newsweek
Nov. 14, 2005 issue - The FBI ended a two-and-a-half-year probe into the Niger uranium documents without resolving a key mystery: who forged papers used to bolster President Bush's case for war in Iraq? The bureau announced that the documents, purportedly showing attempts by Saddam Hussein's government to purchase yellowcake uranium, were concocted for financial gain rather than to influence U.S. foreign policy. But Sen. Jay Rockefeller, vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, had questions. Without more info about the "thoroughness" of the bureau's efforts, he said, "I cannot make a judgment on the accuracy of the conclusions.

The forged documents are a backdrop to the CIA leak case involving the wife of ex-diplomat Joe Wilson. The CIA sent Wilson in February 2002 to look into the Niger uranium issue after Italy's military-intelligence agency, SISMI, got copies of the forged papers and sent reports about them to the CIA and other Western intel agencies. But a senior bureau official, requesting anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, told NEWSWEEK the FBI never interviewed Rocco Martino, the Italian businessman who provided the documents to SISMI. Because there was no apparent violation of U.S. law, the bureau couldn't compel him to talk—even though he twice visited the United States last year to be interviewed by CBS's "60 Minutes." (The story never aired.) Last week Martino talked again, telling an Italian newspaper he played "a double, triple game"—working as a freelance agent for SISMI and French intelligence. Martino said he was instructed by a SISMI agent to pick up the docs from a woman at the Niger Embassy in Rome. "I was simply the deliveryman," he said, adding he had no idea the papers were fraudulent. Italian intel chief Gen. Nicola Pollari denied that his agency forged the documents, but claimed SISMI warned the United States the documents were fraudulent after Bush mentioned Saddam's interest in buying uranium from Africa in his January 2003 State of the Union Message...........

I have no problem believing Martino delivered the forged documents, as assigned. But it doesn't answer the more important questions: who produced the documents, and who paid him to deliver them?

Intelligence Committee investigation.

response #2, I was thinking that they are trying to distract by pointing to one fellow, and saying he did it for money. No kidding? Of course: he was paid to deliver the forged documents. That answers only a very limited part of the real question. Who would produced these documents, and pay to have them delivered? It would seem possible to narrow that one down. The current explanation seems rather Libby-ish.

question that is right in front of everyone's face.

Hello???

Why did they think there was a market for this?

Who was the market? Who paid him?

How did they produce them - with whose help? How did they get the stationary (the break-in), the specifics of how it was done and by who? etc.

I should have read farther down before posting. :blush:

it was Cheney's office, or people working for them, who produced the documents?

I think the forged documents were a complete inside U.S. job. I believe the same about the anthrax attacks, but that's another thread.

My beliefs, however, are based on gut instinct. I think the forgeries, or the ordering of the forgeries, are what prompted the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson in the first place.

I'm curious about your take on it all.

to who forged the Niger Documents.

I wonder why? :eyes:

This has been a truly pathetic display.

Oh, yeah, and 60 Minutes - hmmm - WTF is your problem?

I've already seen several references to it.

on the committee sides with the Dems--it may be a wash!

.....
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
(November 05, 2005 -- 01:29 AM EST // link)

"SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt."

That's what "a U.S. intelligence official who's closely followed the matter" told Knight-Ridder newspapers' Jonathan Landay for this article out this evening about the Niger forgeries.

Italian intelligence officials and parliamentarians put on a dog and pony show yesterday in Rome claiming that the Italian intelligence agency SISMI had no connection to the forgeries and did not pass on any of the bogus information contained in them to any other countries, including the United States.

But that's simply not true. Landay confirms what we first reported more than a year ago: that in late 2001 and early 2002 Italian intelligence sent reports to the US alleging that Niger was selling yellowcake uranium to Iraq. Those reports were based on the notorious forged documents, in some cases they were text transcriptions of the documents.

What does that mean? That the whole Niger-Iraq uranium fairy tale started with bogus intelligence from Italy.

The Italian governmnet is spinning like crazy on this one. But the real story seems ready to bubble out.
-- Josh Marshall

not because of it.

Occasionally, the depths to which the integrity of our Government has sunk just kind of jumps out and slaps you in the face - even though we are already aware of most of it.

- 9/11
- anthrax
- voter fraud
- leakers
etc, etc, etc

man, would it stand to reason that he would be willing to say who paid him?

because they might find the trail leads to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue....

http://www.juancole.com /
Wednesday, November 02, 2005



Newsday's article has this tantalizing sentence: Roberts "cited two possible roadblocks: the half-done job of analyzing more than 500 prewar intelligence claims and probing the role played by Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy who pushed vigorously for an invasion of Iraq based on flawed intelligence."

Laura Rozen has reported on the stalled state of the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of Feith and his "Office of Special Plans," as well as of meetings by Feith employees Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode with Iranian arms dealer and notorious fraudster Manucher Ghorbanifar in Rome (with the Italian Defense Secretary and the head of Italian Military Intelligence also in attendance). When Rockefeller brought up the possibility that the Rome meeting was illegal, Feith and his office abruptly ceased cooperating in the investigation. Feith has now left the Pentagon for private life, presumably to forestall further investigations of his activities in manufacturing a case for the Iraq War. His Iran desk officer, Lawrence Franklin, has pleaded guilty to espionage for Israel via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

So how might the investigation of Feith's office (which is apparently dead in the water given that the Republicans on the committee would probably decline to issue subpoenas) delay the phase two conclusions that Roberts should be producing? Feith and the Office of Special Plans were central to these conclusions. If he and his employees are stonewalling, and if Roberts won't subpoena them or threaten them with contempt of Congress, then it is hard to see how any progress can be made.

A proper Senate investigation offers the tantalizing possibility of a Unified Field Theory of the Iraq War fraud. That is, Feith's Office of Special Plans, Franklin's Pentagon espionage cell on behalf of the Likud Party in Israel, and Libby's campaign against Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame Wilson could all be shown to be inter-related. At the center of the conspiracy were a group of hawks determined to set the United States in motion to fight wars against Iraq, Syria and Iran; for the Neoconservatives among them, these wars would leave the Likud Party free to pursue its expansionist ambitions.
posted by Juan @ 11/02/2005 06:33:00 AM

It's true, everything is interrelated here.

Because there was no apparent violation of U.S. law, the bureau couldn't compel him to talk—even though he twice visited the United States last year to be interviewed by CBS's "60 Minutes." (The story never aired.)

This was posted earlier on DU.

Fri Nov-04-05 05:12 PM
Response to Original message
12. New American Conservative article links forged docs to Defense Dept


Edited on Fri Nov-04-05 05:16 PM by wishlist

Interesting new article that someone in another thread posted link to earlier. This author thinks U.S. officials were involved in the trail of the forged documents and that targeting Wilson was part of cover up of the forged document trail.

"The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress."

___________________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates,

http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html

(FITZGERALD UPDATE): Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much

-........
UPDATE): It seems from this article that Fitzgerald has turned his attention directly to the Niger Forgeries themselves!


Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report: now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald asked for and "has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document," the former CIA officer tells me:

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."

And there's more:

my source tells me that "Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty," the prosecutor in the AIPAC case.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/145557/54

that was pushed aside to make room for the faked Bush Nat'l Guard papers?

Seems like they would have a word to say here. Niger this, Niger that. It's like they don't exist.

excited and frustrated? It seems we are so close-one thread away from unraveling everything. One man..one piece of evidence. One little break..somewhere..this could be it. If there was proof that the White House Iraq Group..Cheney's little band of merry war makers- could be connected to the forgery by absolute evidence that they had it delivered and or made with their full knowledge that it was a forgery-it would be the end.

And my conclusion is this was possibly the most simple and likely explanation for risking the outing of Plame-to protect this secret. Maybe they were trying to do much worse..but this certainly seems to be easier to prove.