La Repubblica: Martino a bad forger, but fools international spy agencies?

The original article was published today in La Repubblica (which publishes only in Italian) here:
http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/esteri/nigergat...
"Il Sismi assolto dal Copaco troppi i dubbi sul Nigergate"

As few DUers are fluent in Italian, I am posting a translation from the blogger, Nur al-Cubicle, here: http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com /
Out of gratitude for the translation, I did include Nur's introduction to the article (the first paragraph) in addition to the four paragraphs allowed by copyright rules.

My comments:
We have been bombarded with recent news reports that say the Niger uranium document forgeries were the result of a spy-turned-bad, Rocco Martino, who needed money and so forged these documents to peddle to whomever was interested. The Italian government, after Fridays hearings, and our own FBI claim to have reached this conclusion. In this article, La Repubblica pokes holes in their stories.

<snip>
Oversight Overlooks the Obvious

Italy's Comitato parlamentare di controllo sui servizi segreti (COPACO) or Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee has whitewashed, er, absolved SISMI of any wrongdoing in the Nigergate Affair. La Repubblica's Giuseppe Davanzo reports:

SISMI knows about the imbroglio but does not warn anyone. Five hours of hearings for Pollari before the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee.
COPACO absolves SISMI. Too many gaps in the Nigergate Affair.
The committee members believe that there was only one "dossier" fabricated by Rocco Martino yet this fraudster managed to hornswoggle everyone and start a war.

Complete and formal exoneration—assuming there has been a genuine investigation or at least an appreciable and coherent interrogation--yet there are reasons to doubt that this is the case. For five hours, SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, seated next to Gianni Letta (whose job at Palazzo Chigi is to oversee Italy’s intelligence services) related, explained, exhibited documents and recalled, or so it seems. It’s the Nigergate affair, which could not possibly involve Forte Braschi. It’s the brainchild of Rocco Martino. He’s the fraudster who fabricates the “dossier” and with extraordinary genius is able to hustle the entire Western intelligence community (if you exclude Israel’s Mossad) by snaring the bumbling nitwits employed as spies for America’s CIA, France’s DGSE, and Britain's MI6. Not to mention the Italians, who didn’t see anything, didn’t suspect anything and didn’t hear anything about the dealings of the ex-SISMI collaborator and bosom buddy of a SISMI colonel, Antonio Nucera, who, just “because”, decides to help Rocco make a little money by introducing him to a SISMI “asset” employed at the Embassy of Niger, La Signora. It’s just a plain old Italian-style swindle, an “Italian Job”, a clip from a film starring Stan Laurel, Goofy and Cruella DeVille. It doesn’t matter if the trio is somehow able to build the case for the clear and present danger of an Iraq nuclear program and to formally justify a war. SISMI has nothing at all to do with it, Why, it should be cleared any implication. This is the music from center-Right to center-Left to the radical Left. To the members of Parliament, there are no gaps, no contradictions and just one little, insignificant hiccup in the SISMI director’s reconstruction of the events.

Maurizio Gasparri of the Allianza Nazionale : SISMI's actions were entire correct from both an internal and international standpoint in the Nigergate affair. Gigi Malabarba of Rifondazione comunista raises the ante: No document sent from SISMI to the United States concerning Saddam’s Niger uranium. Inquiries were carried out by the Italian judiciary and by the FBI, which formally closed the case on the affair with its letter of July 20, 2005. Massimo Brutti of Democrazia Sociale is willing to provide a detail or two: Since the 1990’s, SISMI has been in possession of intelligence on the possible trafficking of uranium between Niger and Iraq and has shared all this information allied clandestine services, but never claimed that the information was trustworthy or that there had been actual trafficking going on. Committee Chair Enzo Bianco of the Margherita Coalition: We would like our intelligence people to know that we appreciate their work. SISMI should be allowed to work in a climate of maximum serenity. The rest is politics.

An unexpected moment of surprise came when Fabrizio Chicchitto of Forza Italia claimed that the war on Iraq was thrust upon Britain and the United States because, if France and Germany hadn’t give the impression that Saddam Hussein could escape armed intervention, then a peaceful solution would have been possible. Silvio Berlusconi would agree with that. At the opposite pole is, naturally, Massimo Brutti: SISMI never vouched for nor had any relationship with the forged dossier assembled by Rocco Martino. The problem for the DS parliamentarian is Berlusconi. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers stood right here in the Senate and told us that that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that the dictator would have to be removed by force. There is a small void of political responsibility between a government pushing for war and the intelligence which this same government possessed. For this reason I have asked the Defense Minister, Antonio Martino, be summoned to appear before the Intelligence Oversight Committee. So with an imprecise schedule which everyone would like to know, Antonio Martino will soon give testimony to COPACO.

Thanks Wordie, for translating. This is all news to me. And I see that La Repubblica is exonerating its own Mr. Martino.

However, I do believe I read that Berluscolini said something to the effect, that "Bush promised me billions in oil revenue".

Somehow, I think the Italians are up to their butts in this mess.

and only on him, are not to be trusted. They are poking holes in the angle that says it was all Martino who is responsible for Niger-gate (which the Italian hearings tried to say, and our FBI).

One quite interesting point that La Repubblica makes is that the Italian official hearing results are telling us Martino was so intelligent that he was able to fool experts in the intelligence communities of several countries, yet, at the same time, it appears that he was not intelligent enough to recognize that the forgeries he had produced were so crude and unconvincing that they could be quickly identified as forgeries. It seems unlikely that both these things are true, doesn't it? There are contradictions in the official line we are hearing. In other words, the official story just doesn't add up.

And I also posted earlier this week a report that after the Italian hearings on Friday which said he had done the forgeries, Martino had once more told a news reporter (on Saturday) that he had not done them.

And, btw, I didn't do the translation. It was Nur al-Cubilcle (blogger that I credited in the post).

This article deserves a good read-through.

"Kick"

1. THE FIRST PART OF THE ARTICLE SHOWS THE CRUDE FORGERIES THAT ARE THE "NOBLE CAUSE" FOR WHICH WE ARE FIGHTING AND, SOME OF US, DYING IN IRAQ.

2. THE SECOND PART IS A DETAILED TIMELINE OF HOW FIXED INTELLIGENCE BASED ON THE FORGERIES GOT US INTO THE IRAQ WAR -- ALSO HOW LEWIS LIBBY (NOW INDICTED) AND OTHERS HAVE ATTEMPTED TO COVER UP THE USE OF FORGERIES.

I am dedicating each forged page to a couple of the foreign countries involved in making and pushing these forgeries, and thus pushing the US into the Iraq war.

More serious crimes have been committed here than Lewis Libby (Cheney's assistant) fibbing to the FBIers. Some American citizens may be liable for treasonable crimes in connection with the procurement and transmittal of these. Then there are the additional crimes of covering up these original crimes (crimes like Libby is charged with). Some people are certainly liable for the unnecessary deaths of 2000-plus US soldiers in a trumped-up war based on these forgeries. Not to mention the genocide against 100,000 civilians, including victims of heinous white-phosphorous bombs in the pogrom against Fallujah in November 2004. God bless America! Why? Join the Army and be all the murderer you can be.


http://www.phxnews.com/fullstory.php?article=27992