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.
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