Regards, Ivan
Posted on 09/18/2004 5:24:14 PM PDT by MadIvan
The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.
The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".
His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.
Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.
Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy's secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.
According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from "judicial and other sources", Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours. Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy's military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.
He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000.
However, he reportedly also added that he had believed that the documents in question were genuine, and to have never suspected that they had been forged. "Martino has clarified his position and offered to deliver to the magistrates the documents which confirm his declarations," his lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, told Ansa.
It was not possible to contact Mr Martino through his lawyer yesterday. Contacted by The Telegraph, Mr Ionta politely declined to comment, but did not deny that the questioning had taken place. The Interior Ministry in Rome, which had also expressed keen interest in the Telegraph article, refused to comment on the matter.
Mr Martino is said by diplomats to have come forward of his own accord and contacted authorities in the Italian capital following the earlier article in the Telegraph. They said he had written a letter of resignation to the French DGSE intelligence service last week.
According to an Italian newspaper report yesterday, members of the Digos, Italy's anti-terrorist police, removed documents from Mr Martino's home in a northern suburb of Rome on Friday afternoon.
"After being exposed in the international press, French intelligence can hardly be amused or happy with him," one western diplomat said. "Martino may have thought the safest thing was to hand himself over to the Italians." Investigators in Rome suspect that Mr Martino was first engaged by the French secret services five years ago, when he was asked to investigate rumours of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He is thought to have then been retained the following year to collect more information. It was then that he is suspected of having assembled a dossier containing both real and bogus documents from Niger, the latter apparently forged by a diplomat.
In September 2002 Tony Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant quantities" of uranium from an undisclosed African country - in fact, Niger. US President George W Bush made a similar claim in his State of the Union address to Congress four months later, using information supplied by MI6.
The International Atomic Energy Agency expressed doubts over some of the documents' authenticity, however, and declared them false in March 2003.
In July, the White House withdrew the president's claim, admitting that it was based on inaccurate information. British officials still say that their intelligence about Iraqi uranium purchases was supported by a second, independent source.
Regards, Ivan
Ping!
Hey, anyone know where Amb. Wilson and his trophy bride are? Can she type?
Why would France be baiting us anglos into action it publicly decries?
Insanity?
Or trying to polarize nato, and gain esteem in the EU?
Seems confusing to me. Or confused.
Any ideas?
Fake documents are here and there and everywhere!
Why is the question..to whose benefit...for what purpose?
Wilson and wife were the first people who popped into my mind, too!
fyi
In this case the benefit was to the frogs. If the info turned out to be false when presented by the U.S. and Britain, then no war in Iraq(so they hoped and planned). This would have protected their financial deals with Saddam, and maintained the secrecy in the UN oil for food program in which they were heavily involved.
If only the Pentagon had run these memos past Buckhead and Tanker KC, first.
I have finally been pushed over the edge...
I no long want to see France punished...
It would be better to see her destroyed, if the events do not cause internal corrections and the expulsion of Chirac.
Semper Fi
I have finally been pushed over the edge...
I no long want to see France punished...
It would be better to see her destroyed, if the events do not cause internal corrections and the expulsion of Chirac.
Semper Fi
So, this appears to confirm that the intelligence Italy did provide earlier about Iraq and Niger was as separate advertised - not related to these documents at all.
Need more info. I'm very skeptical that the Bush admin would rely on one dubious source and vouch for it on such an important issue -- as is being implied.
I wonder what this independent verification is that Blair is referring to...
Can someone confirm this? I understand that our decision did not rely on this fake Italian report. We had other agencies in Europe independent confirming that Saddam was actively seeking yellowcake.
hi Ivan,
You are to generous to these slimy, socialist, traitorous, back-stabbing, pond scum.
When the Islamo-fascists hit them...and they will...let them stew in their own pot.
Investigators in Rome suspect that Mr Martino was first engaged by the French secret services five years ago, when he was asked to investigate rumours of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger.
In other words, the rumors that uranium trafficking was going on in Niger preceded the forged documents. The French took it seriously enough that they investigated, hired this guy to prowl around and see what he could come up with.
This could be the case for a few reasons:
It could be at least one French intelligence official really was concerned and tried to find out more.
Or it could be the French wanted an investigation in order to figure out the source of the leaks and have it excised so the rumors would stop.
Or ... who knows. There's a reason for the concern since it turns out Libya was indeed obtaining uranium from Niger, in spite of the former Ambassador Wilson's proclamation that illicit trade couldn't occur because the security was too good.
Well, well, well.
Some of our intel did come from the Italian Sismi- but it was't the intel later provided through Giacomo through the French.
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self-ping
Giancomo wasn't in Europe. He was working part time at a Kinko's in Texas. What scum. The French fake documents, the Democrats fake documents, the only difference is that the Dems have better technology. They use Microsoft 1972 and the French use a person. Of course, their deception lasted longer than two hours.
This has been all over the networks in the two weeks since you saw this in the Telegraph. Just like the oil for food scandal.
I'm a bit out of touch. I don't have a television at the moment, as I'm on assignment in Arizona on the Navajo reservation. The location I'm at doesn't even have local tv service, lol.
No, we didn't rely on the fakes. But the MSM and the Democrats sure as hell did for their propaganda campaign. It was a scorched earth campaign and extremely effective. Just about everyone in the country believed it.
We've seen a lot of orchestrated propaganda campaigns the last couple of years among the media and the Democrats. Interesting that the French seem to be involved as well. You can bet they worked with the DNC in setting this up and breaking the story.
You fixin to move to Texas Ivan? You're picking up on the lingo there pardner.
:-)
Ouch! That must hurt. The French managed forgeries that were better than the Dems. How ever will they live this down?
If the Dems cannot even surpass the French, they have no business applying to lead this country against the terrorists.
The joke of it all is that Iraq's trade mission to Niger was not a secret, so I don't know why Bush bothered to credit British intel for information that is essentially public.
In 1999 Iraq sent Ambassador Zahawie to Niger to hold conversations. Zahawie is famous for advocating the development of nuclear weapons by Arab states. Since Niger is not known for many exports aside from uranium, since Iraq has previously bought uranium from Niger, its not difficult to draw conclusions.
Wilson claimed at one point that Baghdad Bob also made a trip to Niger, and Nigerien officials also claimed that they had been contacted by Iraqi businessmen.
Wilson, and Niger, claimed though that neither Niger nor France would ever be involved in illicit sales of uranium.
But of course, since Libya has given up its nuclear program, we now know that they were buying their uranium from Niger, and hence, France.
Why would France be investigating uranium sales they themselves would be involved in? The idea that they would be plugging leaks makes sense. The fake documents were handed over to the US by France, and then exposed as fakes by a French member of the IAEA. This had the effect of discrediting a story that was not only true but public. And it very nearly brought down Bush at a time that he was preparing a war that France very much wished to derail.
It doesn't take a long memory to recall that France had maybe a hundred billion dollars on the line in Iraq's oil industry, and most of the high tech weaponry our guys came up against was French built and of recent vintage, some of it shipped immediately prior to the invasion.
France is not our friend.
Well done.
Why isn't Kofi criticizing this complicity/coverup in nuclear proliferation and is instead ragging on Bush for removing Saddam? Oh, yeah...
Thanks for the ping!
So, this appears to confirm that the intelligence Italy did provide earlier about Iraq and Niger was separate- as advertised - not related to these documents at all.
BuMp
The British case was not based on the forged memos. (In spite of the press' best efforts- coached on by people like Ambassador Wilson- to make it seem so.)
So was there really no deal between Saddam and Niger in buying low-grade uranium from them???
The US didn't say there was a deal concluded, though some intel we had received indicated the deal had been concluded, though the intel only indicated the uranium made it as far as Niger's neighbor, Benin. Benin is where uranium from Niger goes to be shipped abroad. You will note that Bush's speech only said the UK had intel that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. He didn't say Iraq bought uranium, only that it sought it. Even so, this is a concern because one of our arguments for war against Iraq was that it intended to reconstitute its weapons programs the moment sanctions were lifted and the inspectors had given up.
Anyway, our intel we had that indicated Iraq's uranium was sent to Niger mentioned its destination being a warehouse in Benin. The Navy received this intel from a human source, not from any documents. It in turn passed the intel on to the CIA, along with contact information to reach the source for followup. Problem is, for whatever reasons, the CIA never followed up, never contacted the source. Even the much touted award-winning investigator Joseph Wilson didn't contact the source...
This Benin intel predates the forged documents and does not relate to them nor do they relate to it. It may be good intel or maybe it wasn't- either way, no followup occured.
Iraq has worked with Libya in the past on WMD (Libya has it share of Iraqi engineers, BTW... ). It is possible that Iraq may have purchased uranium and had it delivered to Niger in order to avoid the inspector's eyes. We do know that Libya did acquire uranium from Niger, and this is in spite of Wilson's claims that the security was too good for uranium to be smuggled. So why couldn't Iraq obtain it if Libya could? And is it possible that Iraq obtained the uranium, Libya took delivery, and both countries engaged in joint research and processing of it in Libya, out of the eyesight of the UN? Thee are reports that it did that.
Why am I NOT surprised?
This story is getting really interesting.
That tears it. The next time France gets invaded, the conqueror has to KEEP that damned country!
Wilson sheepishly admitted that wasn't true, among many things he said that made him a media celeb briefly.
That's the first rule of foreign policy - never, EVER help the French. The British Empire began to decline as soon as this rule was ignored.
America is still suffering from having ignored this rule in Vietnam, in the form of having to listen to Kerry drone on and on about it.
Regards, Ivan
I can see why Kofi Annan and friends are railing about the US right now...
Wonder what sort of stunt they are going to pull next.
I find myself wondering just when France started playing this game, which makes me curious what picture would emerge from charting a side-by-side correlation of the growth of the US/France rift since the 1950s (and especially since the early 90s) with the growth of French ties to Russia, China, the German left, Iraq, and Islamofascist groups.
What did Dan Rather know, and when did he know it?
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