NYT:Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Docs

[DeepModem Mom]

Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent as Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
Published: November 4, 2005


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....

***

Mr. Martino has long been suspected of being responsible for peddling the false documents. News reports have quoted him as saying he obtained them through a contact at the Niger Embassy here. But this was the first time his role was formally disclosed by the intelligence agency....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/04/international/europe/04italy.html

[daleo]

1. Who did he forge them for?

Forging documents on spec seems unlikely - my guess is, this was done on a contract basis, for some parties who wanted to foment war. I wonder who that could be?

[Wordie]

6. I read some story about how he was out of work for a time and he needed

money, so he forged them, because he knew that there was a concern about the uranium trade in Niger. Somehow, it seems a little too convenient, as he had talked previously about having passed them on, but not having done them himself.

This might, however, explain why they were very bad forgeries. AND, it still doesn't explain why, being such bad forgeries, that they came to play such a part in the rationale for going to war.

[Pirate Smile]

2. This part just pisses me off to no end.

"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. "



:spank: :banghead: :spank: :banghead: :spank: :banghead: :spank: :banghead: :spank: :banghead:

[Old and In the Way]

4. Another "Mission Accomplished"

Never found the anthrax perp
Never found the inside traders on UA/AA stock.

Mueller will get his Medal of Freedom, I'm sure.

I hope the Democrats demand that the FBI appear and explain exactly why they didn't interviw this guy when he made 2 trips here last year.

[Nihil]

7. Yep, another winner!

> Never found the anthrax perp
> Never found the inside traders on UA/AA stock.

Aren't you glad that your country's intelligence services are doing
so much to protect you?

And still millions can't see it ...

[mazzarro]

3. The Italian Parliamentary hearing was nothing but a whitewash

It is hardly believable and purely aimed at deflecting blame from SISMI.

[callady]

5. Duane Claridge

Michael Ledeen-Stephen Hadley-David Wurmser-Dick Cheney
Them's the ones.

Martino is a patsy

[ItsThePeopleStupid]

14. you are right and this is a whitewash

Justin Raimondo:
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."
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681

[bluedeminredstate]

8. Remember people from Feith's office,

and I don't remember specifically who it was, got in trouble for going to Rome in late 2001 to meet with Ghorbanifar (sp?), the arms dealer from Iran-Contra? This was done without permission of the CIA and it caused a minor dustup before the press dropped it. Italian intelligence was involved IIRC...
Just a thought, but I do remember Feith and Italian intel cozying up. He was such a nutball hawk that I wouldn't put anything past him to get his war on!

[fjc]

9. Ok, I'm confused. Could someone here comment on

the report of the Senate Committee on Intelligence issued in July of 2004? Here's a link:

http://web.mit.edu/simsong/www/iraqreport2-textunder.pdf.

This report very pointedly raises questions on the veracity of Mr. Wilson and this whole episode of "forged documents." None of the recent news reporting on this issue, particularly after Mr. Reids forcing of a closed door session over Iraq, even mentions this report and its findings. Anyone out here able to shed some light on this?

[UpInArms]

10. background info:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/25/163421/97

excerpt:

No one knows for sure what exactly came out of this meeting in Rome. According to several news sources, they focused on Iran and the ability of the United States to affect regime change<7>. An important person who was not present at the meeting was an Italian named Francesco Pazienza, a former SISMI official. He and Ledeen went way back when they stirred the Billygate Affair into controversy. This was when, in 1980, Ledeen accused President Carter's brother, Billy, of having met with Yasser Arafat in Libya in 1978. It is now known that Ledeen collaborated with Pazienza to drum up this false story. Pazienza was then indicted in an Italian court (with Ledeen as an unindicted co-conspirator) for luring President Carter's brother Billy into a compromising relationship with Qaddafi during the 1980 presidential campaign. During the trial, Pazienza revealed that Ledeen performed work for SISME and had dealings with Pazienza outside of the Billygate Affair<8>.

To review, false documents created by Cheney could have been delivered down the chain from Douglas Feith to Larry Franklin, who was working for Feith. Franklin could have easily taken it with him to Rome and dropped it off with Michael Ledeen, who once worked for the Italian intelligence services, SISMI . He was literally on their payroll. Ledeen still has substantial ties to the Italian intelligence community, speaks fluent Italian and continues to write on Italian politics. On April 3, 2005, CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro actually implied that Ledeen was at least partially behind the creation of the forged documents<9>. Then on July 26, 2005, "Cannistraro's business partner and columnist for the American Conservative magazine, former CIA counter terrorism officer Philip Giraldi, confirmed to Scott Horton that the forgeries were produced by 'a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy.' When Horton guessed whether that was Ledeen, Giraldi chuckled and replied 'you'd be very close.' Giraldi added that the ex-CIA officers, 'also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing.'" <10>

Pazienza's possible involvement doesn't just stem from his relationship with Michael Ledeen. After being removed from SISMI after his conviction, a secret Italian intelligence agency picked him up. This group is called Propaganda Due, or P-2. Originally an Italian Masonic Lodge established in 1877, it grew in the 1960's to become an organization whose membership included Italyâ€TMs most rich and powerful. In March of 1981, the head of the organization had his house raided and the Italian police found a complete roster of P-2 in his home. One of the names on that roster was Silvio Berlusconi, who would become the Italian Prime Minister that supported the Bush Administration in its drive for war in Iraq<11>. This is well documented in a Wall Street Journal article dating back to August 7th and 8th of 1985. Another prominent member of P-2 is Rocco Martino, who was recruited out of SISMI. In 2000, Martino contacted, "a SISMI source, a 'lady' who worked at the Niger Embassy in Rome, could provide Martino with information in exchange for which Martino pays the Nigerian 'lady' 500 euros/month."<12> It isn't entirely clear if Martino was working for SISMI, P-2, both or on his own. On January 2nd, 2001, the Nigerian embassy was broken into. All that was taken was some letterhead and seals.<13> By late 2001 (around the time of the secret Rome meeting), Martino has the fully forged documents from the Nigerian lady, then hands them over to an Italian reporter, Elisabetta Burba. She worked for the magazine Panorama, which just happens to be owned by Silvio Berlusconi. According to a post on Daily Kos, "Burba shows the documents to her boss and requests to arrange a visit to Niger. Her boss, editor-in-chief Carlo Rossella, who is known to have ties with the Berlusconi government, insists that she first turn copies over to the U.S. Embassy, which she did on October 9th. Burba's trip to Niger proved that the documents were fake and even that the companies allegedly involved were too small to make a transaction of that size. Something the French would have known had they been behind the forgeries."<14>

...more...

[donkeyotay]

11. so, basically international crime families are running the world

The mafia isn't just Italian, and the business isn't just drugs. War is where the real money is. How can democracy hope to win against gangsters?

[IndianaGreen]

13. The Bush crime family is running the US

and they are not alone.... (whisper: Illuminati)

[emad]

12. Italy 'warned Saddam intelligence was bogus' : Guardian

John Hooper in Rome
Friday November 4, 2005
The Guardian


Italian intelligence warned the United States about bogus information on Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions at about the time President Bush cited them as a crucial reason for invading Iraq, an Italian parliamentarian said yesterday.
Massimo Brutti of the opposition Left Democrats made his claim to reporters after listening to evidence from Italy's chief spymaster, General Nicolo Pollari, in the latest episode to undermine the motivations for the Iraq war.

The Italian government of Silvio Berlusconi was and remains a key ally of the Bush administration. Italian intelligence has been linked to a dossier alleged to have been forged by an Italian that purported to show that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium from Niger to make nuclear weapons.


In his State of the Union address in January 2003 President Bush repeated a similar claim to bolster his case for war. "At about the same as the State of the Union address," Senator Brutti told reporters after listening to Gen Pollari's evidence, the Italian intelligence services "said that the dossier didn't correspond to the truth".
Gen Pollari was testifying to parliament's intelligence oversight committee about the alleged involvement in the dossier of the Sismi secret services that he leads.

Asked about Mr Brutti's claim at a press conference later, the chairman of the committee, Enzo Bianco, initially confirmed it but then said he was unable to comment for reasons of national security.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,12576,1627509,00.html