Laura Rozen: "The (Niger forgeries) Report that Wasn't"

For weeks in the run-up to the Libby indictment last Friday, reports swirled in the blogosphere and some wires. They contended that CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had “widened his probe” to include investigating the origins of the Niger yellowcake forgeries themselves. They spoke of Fitzgerald getting ahold of a secret Italian parliamentary report that reportedly fingered a gang of American neoconservatives and aides to Ahmad Chalabi as being behind the Niger forgeries.

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There’s just one problem: Not only has Fitzgerald not received such a report or even indicated he has any interest in one. There is no Italian parliamentary report, published or unpublished, on the Niger forgeries. In fact, until today, there has been no Italian parliamentary investigation of the Niger forgeries, or the claim promoted by the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi to the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Iraq was seeking vast quantities of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

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A reporter with the Italian newspaper Repubblica, which published a blockbuster series on the origins of the Niger forgeries last week, said that he heard rumors of such a report while in Washington this past summer, and went back to Italy and checked them out with his sources. He was left scratching his head. Not only is there no such report, there is as yet no such Italian parliamentary investigation. Sismi’s director Nicolo Pollari was interviewed by the Italian parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence services on Thursday, in a closed-door session.

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The Italian military intelligence organization Sismi reported that Iraq had signed a contract to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger to the CIA in October 2001 and February 2002. It also reported those claims to Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the MI6, which reported them back to Washington. A motley crew including a senior Sismi officer, a former Sismi officer turned intelligence peddler (Rocco Martino), and a Sismi asset at the Niger embassy in Rome were identified by Repubblica as having collaborated to assemble the Niger forgeries, after staging a robbery on New Year’s Day 2001 to get official Niger embassy letterhead and a diplomatic codebook. Martino reportedly sold the dossier of forgeries to the French, the British, attempted but failed to sell them to the American embassy in Rome, and to an Italian reporter working for a Berlusconi owned magazine.

Much more at the link:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002983.html

Now It’s About The Niger Forgeries

Saturday, 29 October 2005, 4:57 pm
Opinion: Jason Leopold

Rove And Cheney Are Now Caught In Fitzgerald's Web. Will They Go Down Too?

By Jason Leopold

Now it’s about the Niger forgeries.

On Friday, after securing a five-count criminal indictment against Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, for lying to a grand jury about what he knew and when he knew it in regard to the outing of a covert CIA agent, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald plans to pursue broader conspiracy charges against Cheney senior White House officials, and top officials at the State Department and the National Security Council.

Fitzgerald's further inquiries may finally shed light on how the Bush administration came to use erroneous intelligence that claimed Iraq tried to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger, lawyers involved in the two year old investigation said.

While many federal officials and the media have long speculated that Fitzgerald was not only looking into the identity of administration officials who leaked undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson to a handful of reporters, it was only recently that those rumors were confirmed.

According to a court filing posted on the website of Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating who leaked the name of undercover CIA agent to reporters, was interested in questioning New York Times reporter Judith Miller about the CIA agent or whether she discussed Iraq's alleged efforts to purchase uranium from Niger.

"On August 12 and August 20, 2004, grand jury subpoenas were issued to reporter Judith Miller and her employer, the New York Times, seeking documents and testimony related to “conversations between Miller and a specified government official occurring between on or about July 6, 2003 and on or about July 13, 2003, concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium .” the filing made by Fitzgerald last year states.

CONTINUED...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0510/S00316.htm

... word that the Italian "Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino, has been convoked to appear before the Copaco. The oversight committee does not feel that the government’s role has been sufficiently clarified."

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002986.html

So back in July, Director Mueller (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/international/europe/04italy.html) sent a letter to the Italian government providing them with a complete and definitive exoneration of any involvement with the forgeries. A year ago Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6073449/site/newsweek) reported that the US hadn't received permission from the Italian government to interview (Rocco) Martino -- that despite the fact that Martino travelled to the US twice in the summer of 2004.

Did the FBI interview Martino before making a conclusive judgment about the forgeries, who created them and why?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006925.php

... Uranium Documents

November 4, 2005 by ELAINE SCIOLINO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, Nov. 3 - Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three lawmakers said Thursday.

The spymaster, Gen. Nicolò Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, disclosed that Mr. Martino was the source of the forged documents in closed-door testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said.

Senator Massimo Brutti, a member of the committee, told reporters that General Pollari had identified Mr. Martino as a former intelligence informer who had been "kicked out of the agency." He did not say Mr. Martino was the forger.

The revelation came on a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it had shut down its two-year investigation into the origin of the forged documents.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/international/europe/04italy.html?pagewanted=print

An aside in the AP story about Italian efforts to warn the US that the Niger forgeries were fake notes: "The uranium ore, known as yellowcake, can be used to produce nuclear weapons." One important subplot of the whole Wilson/Niger affair is that this is wrong. The key (and false) factoid about Iraq's nuclear program that the administration was pushing was that if Iraq got its hands on some weapons-grade uranium it could have a nuclear bomb in about a year. As Brendan Koerner has explained the yellowcake Saddam didn't buy from Niger wasn't the right stuff anyway:



Those are the hard parts of the process. ....

http://houseoflabor.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/11/3/141116/023

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 government is spinning like crazy on this one. But the real story seems ready to bubble out.

Link to Landay's article:

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13085306.htm

TPM link:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006931.php

... minister's brother), has published a story today based on an interview with Niger forgeries middleman Rocco Martino. And what does Martino say? The same thing Repubblica reported before. That he was a freelance ex Sismi agent. That it was Sismi colonel Antonio Nucera who called him saying to go to the lady at the Niger embassy in order to get "something." And that he didn't know the documents he received were forgeries, when he sold them on, originally to the French. So two big points here: According to Martino, his Sismi colonel friend Antonio Nucera *came to him* and set him up with the Sismi asset at the Niger embassy. And secondly, Rocco Martino says, he didn't forge the documents, he was just the postman.

Is it possible the 8th division of Sismi, the counterproliferation division, of which Nucera is reportedly the #2 guy, was doing its own kind of operation? Also keep in mind, that in all of the interviews he has given, Martino has been consistent in saying that this whole transaction was set in motion as early as 1999/2000. In fact, as I understand, he received the documents/forgeries *over time* from the Sismi asset at the Niger embassy in Rome. All of it occurring before Nicolo Pollari became Sismi director in October 2001.

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Much more from Laura Rozen at the link:

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002995.html

... testify is a crock.

As those of you who are following my on-going series of installments (http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_10_30.php#006908) on this story know, I spent time with Martino during both of those visits to the US. And this line about not being able to compel him to testify is a crock (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9938998/site/newsweek).

I don't know what the Bureau's authority would have been in such a case. But whether they had any power to compel Martino to talk is irrelevant because they didn't even try to contact him while he was here.

When Martino came to the US the first time last year, it was in early summer. His identity was then still a secret. At least it hadn't yet been published anywhere. So there's no way to know whether the FBI investigators would have known that this sixty-something Italian man flying into New York was a central player in the forgeries drama.

The second time he came, however, was in early August. And by that time his name had been splashed across papers in several European countries, as well as in the Financial Times, which of course you can find on newsstands in most large US cities.

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More at the link:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006939.php