Nur al-Cubicle

This Part III of the investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica.

THE INVESTIGATION : Nicolò Pollari knew that the equipment purchased by Saddam Hussein was not destined for nuclear use. But when he is at the White House, he avoids mentioning it.

Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam

The bizarre Panorama scoop is accepted as fact and included in the dodgy dossier.

The story of the Italian involvement in manipulating the justifications for war against Iraq is one of dates on the calendar. We have already looked at of a few of them. And it is a date once again that unravels and reveals Chapter Two of the Great Scam.

The date is September 9, 2002. That day, in the rooms of the National Security Council, a very strange (if you believe in the principle of institutional transparency) and secret meeting takes place.

Why is the director of Italian national intelligence meeting a White House Administration official? It would be natural for Nicolò Pollari to meet with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be quite an ordinary event if the director of SISMI were meeting with Italian administration officials but very bizarre indeed if turns out to be administration officials of a foreign country, even if an ally. In this meeting there were Cabinet officials and under secretaries. So, just what is discussed with Stephen Hadley?

Stephen Hadley is no third-rate underling in the White House. Today he is National Security Advisor. In 2002, he is deputy to Condoleezza Rice and a node in the parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] desired by Dick Cheney to justify the war on Saddam Hussein. He is the man who, among other things, is responsible for the sixteen words pronounced by George W. Bush in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address announcing the basis for on Iraq.

We know that Hadley, together with Pollari, does a lot of thinking about weapons of mass destruction. And it’s reaonable to ask exactly what Pollari does know on the score of the Niger uranium on the 9th of September 2002. As he himself admits, Pollari knows everything. He has been apprised of sordid adventure of Rocco Martino. His own men were up to their necks in it. He is familiar with the role played by SISMI deputy chief Antonio Nucera, who lends a hand to snake oil salesman Martino. On this day, Pollari is facing a choice for which he has all the elements: to tell Rice’s deputy that the White House had better forget about the uranium story, because it’s a hoax and that the Martino-Nucera duo are imposters, or to reinforce the convictions of the American ally through a little shrewd silence. So what does Pollari choose to do? To find out, we had better take a look at Pollari’s comportment relative to different subject of conversation with Hadley: The nuclear centrifuge dossier.

Barely 24 hours before, on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller reports on the nuclear threat posed by Baghdad on the front page of the New York Times. In the last 14 months, writes the reporter, Iraq has sought to acquire aluminum tubes which, according to US officials, are destined to be used as rotor sheathing for centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

On September 9, 2002, seated in front of Stephen Hadley, Pollari has the means to address even this aspect of the issue. SISMI claims that it has documentary proof of the acquisition of aluminum tubes by Iraq. But let’s take a look what he’s talking about.

These are 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. This is the preferred material for low-cost missile systems (each tube costs approximately $17.50). There are made with an extremely hard alloy which makes them suitable as rotors for a centrifuge capable of separating fissile uranium from non-fissile uranium. It is not simple process because thousands of centrifuges (16 thousand) are needed and they must withstand synchronous rotation as extremely high speed.

As we now know, the CIA and the very cautious Secretary of State, Colin Powell, are convinced that dual use material is employed Iraq’s nuclear program. Powell draws on is military experience. He says: I am not an expert in centrifuges, but as a military veteran, I ask myself this: why are the Iraqis are so busy in acquiring these tubes which, if they were rockets, would disintegrate soon after launch?

Incredibly, the objection remains un-cross-examined even after the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (where uranium for the US nuclear arsenal is enriched using centrifuges) annihilate Powell’s theory. The Oak Ridge people say that the tubes are too narrow, to heavy, too long and likely to split if used as centrifuge components. They conclude with: Those tubes are used for manufacturing a specific type of artillery shell.

So on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller portrays the aluminum tubes as “a smoking gun.” The next day, Pollari is seated in front of Stephen Hadley. So what does he tell him? Pollari keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t reveal what he knows about the aluminum tubes, which are the source of so much concern (or even enthusiasm) for the Bush Administration. The shame is that those 7075-T6 tubes, 900 millimeters long, 81 millimeters in diameter, 3.3 millimeters thick, are well-known hardware to the Italian Army. They are 81-mm rocket artillery shells used in the Medusa air-to-ground missile system installed on Italian Army and Navy helicopters. In reality, the Iraqis are merely attempting to reproduce weaponry with which they became familiar during the long years of economic, military and nuclear cooperation between Rome and Baghdad. (Iraq’s top army and air force officers trained in Italy during the 1980’s). Saddam’s General Staff needs to duplicate them, so to speak, because their inventory is stockpiled outdoors and is now corroded. That was the reason behind the new anodized aluminum tube purchases.

Why does Pollari not utter a word? If you ask Greg Thielmann, ex-chief of the State Department Intelligence Service, he’ll tell you: But seriously, haven’t you yet understood why the chief of Italian military intelligence did not provide us with any indication that would have allowed us to definitively discard the notion that the tubes would be used in someone’s nuclear program? Well, I have an idea for you. SISMI, like the CIA and the entire Anglo-Saxon intelligence community, is ready and willing to satisfy the hawks in the US Administration. Thielmann’s assertion echoes like a shotgun blast. And the dates will yield solid confirmation.

September 8, 2002: Judith Miller casts the first stone.
September 9, 2002: Hadley meets Pollari
September 11, 2002: Stephen Hadley’s office contacts the CIA for authorization to allow the President of the United States to use the information on the sale of Niger uranium in a public address. Specifically, as the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, the request made to the CIA at the behest of the National Security Council asks George Tenet in writing if George W. Bush is authorized to say, "Iraq has made several attempts to acquire aluminum tubes for use in its uranium enrichment centrifuges. We also know that over the last few years, Iraq has restarted its attempts to acquire large quantities of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake--the necessary component for enrichment processing." The CIA gives its permission but on October 7th in Cincinnati, Ohio, the authorized words are not found in the President's speech.

The day before the address, Langley recommends that the statement be expunged. The intelligence is weak. One of the mines mentioned in the intelligence source as a site used for the extraction of uranium is flooded. The other mine is under the control of the French authorities.

What the devil was Pollari up to? The twisted yellowcake affair and now the centrifuges are tangled up around Rocco Martino’s phony documents. Who did what to whom and where and why? To get to the bottom of it, we have to address these questions and take another look at the words quoted above. The Italians know that Rocco Martino is a creep. They are aware that the only authentic papers in the dossier are stale intelligence pulled out of SISMI’s WMD archives. Pollari takes the lie off the leash and lets it trot around the globe. He does not have Rocco Martino “busted” when he knocks on the door of MI6. Instead, Pollari credits Martino as “a reliable source”. He does not put the damper on the enthusiasm of Michel Ledeen and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. He simply sits there in silence as the imbroglio simmers. In fact, when he does open his mouth, he neither extinguishes nor disappoints American hopes. This is what happened in the case of the aluminum tubes. Following a “brilliant operation”, SISMI enters into material possession of the tubes. It’s a military intelligence victory. But even the lowest grunt would understand that the tubes must be Italian—they are shells from the Medusa-81 aircraft missile defense system. SISMI is well aware of this. Yet on September 9, 2002, Pollari maintains a reserved silence in the presence of Hadley. And he does more than that.

On September 12, 2002, Panorama magazine hits the newsstands. In a lengthy article titled, War with Iraq? It has already started, decisive yet unverified revelations on Iraqi nuclear rearmament are made to the world. So far, no one has started talking about uranium, let alone 500 tons of the ore. It will be Tony Blair to mention it first, but not until September 24, 2002--two weeks following the meeting between Pollari and Hadley and twelve days after Panorama’s scoop. Inside the 50-page British government document, London affirms that Iraq has attempted to acquire uranium from Africa. Blair insists that Iraq has attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from an African nation despite the fact that he has no civilian nuclear program which would require it. Even today, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw continues to repeat that the “Italian dossier” was not the basis behind Blair’s words and that MI6 is in possession of previously acquired intelligence. Yet such intelligence “evidence” has never been produced. If it were to come out--a source at Forte Braschi tells La Repubblica, it would be easily discovered with a little sleuthing that that the “evidence” is in fact stale Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend, Hamilton Mac Millan.

So there has been no loose talk which might reveal Italian responsibility in the yellowcake affair. Only silence. We’ve seen how SISMI maintains silence. But poor SISMI is not alone. Although perfectly informed, none of the protagonists in this sordid affair talks. Panorama clams up. When the editorial board of Panorama, owned by the Italian head of government, is called upon to reconstruct its contacts with Rocco Martino (who tried to sell the hoax to Segrate), it omits the recollection that the information contained in the bogus dossier was already published a month earlier. The Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine inexplicably shares the documents only with the US Embassy in Rome bit not with the Italian government. He does not bother verify the document with the excellent resources of the Italian intelligence agency which, as September’s scoop shows, has access to it. He has no interest in relating, as a second possible worldwide scoop, that the evidence on which the war is based is false. As you would expect, Palazzo Chigi is silent. The role of Silvio Berlusconi’s diplomacy advisor, Gianni Castellaneta, has been key in mediating the relations between Italy with the parallel conduit [“Stovepipe”—Nur] that Dick Cheney creates with financing from Ahmed Chelabi’s Iraqi National Congress to funnel intelligence “edited” by the Office for Special Plans which is then distributed to the media by the “Iraq Group,” which is seen in action in the Judith Miller-New York Times affair. But has anyone heard Castellaneta utter one word? And who has ever offered Mr. Castellaneta a public forum to allow him to do so?

Also silent is Gianni Letta. When the truth on the bogus Italian dossier surfaces, the Deputy Secretary of Intelligence, contrary to what one reads in inaccurate government memos, invokes state secrecy. Letta insisted that no documentation would be forthcoming for Parliamentary scrutiny because Italian intelligence sources would be compromised. But what sources? Rocco Martino, the bad cop, the crooked spy, the double-crosser? Or would that be Antonio Nucera, the deputy director at SISMI’s viale Pasteur offices who filches (or is compelled to filch) stale intelligence from the division archives to assemble the package?

Now that the cat is out of the bag, they obviously have to come up with something after such a long silence. Pollari makes his move in the summer of 2004. Once taciturn, all of a sudden he becomes loquacious. He even opens the doors to his modest office in Palazzo Baracchini. We find him in a darkened office behind a desk with papers piled high. Papers here, papers there, papers everywhere. To his left, there is another desk covered with dossiers like so many pebbles on the beach. On August 5th, 2004, he tells La Repubblica: I can’t trust anyone. I have to read all the papers myself! Pollari seems agitated. He feels Atlantic Monthly reporters breathing down his neck. He’s holding in his hand an interview request from CBS Television received through the Italian Embassy in Washington. He asks us: What do these people want of me? Who’s talking to them? The CIA? The FBI? A CIA leaker? An enemy of the FBI? He knows that Rocco Martino has been buttonholed by a producer for 60 Minutes and he’s afraid that Martino might confess in front of the microphones--provoking a personal catastrophe for him. Pollari has to find an exit from the impasse he’s in and it seems that he’s found one. He tells La Repubblica: It was the French of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure who tried to dupe the Americans. We are not involved in any way. He pulls out from a folder an item that looks like it belongs in a Power Point presentation. (It’s yellow, red, purple, blue and green). The document purports to prove the “role of French intelligence in the Niger affair.” But it is not convincing. Today, it falls flat. Time has shown the substantial groundlessness of a connection to the French. That bird has flown. In fact, as the US Senate report shows, two weeks prior to the invasion, on March 4th, 2003, the French informed Washington that that the documents were forged because it transpired that they were the same documents that Rocco Martin had previously pawned off on Paris.

But no document was every pulled out of an Italian file to put a stop to Dick Cheney’s impetuosity. Like the Italian government, SISMI knows that its intelligence on Iraq was complete hogwash. Silence—as if the entire Italian government establishment has been stricken mute. Silence on the part of the majority is understandable but must the opposition be silent in the face of manipulations that lead to war? The only recorded act is a request by a commission of inquiry presented by L’Unione [Romano Prodi’s leftist coalition--Nur] but it was merely bureaucratic ass-covering, because once issued, it was promptly forgotten. Meanwhile, in the United States, three independent investigation have been launched into CIA-gate, Niger-gate and a conspiracy lead by Larry Franklin, an official inside the Office of Special Plans. But in Italy there is not even a trembling leaf in the breeze. If you are enterprising enough to arrange a meeting with Rome Public Prosecutor Franco Ionta to discover, just out of curiosity, what ever became of the investigation of Rocco Martino, he’ll tell you: Yes, I investigated Martino. A fraudster. It took me half an hour to take his deposition. But what did you expect him to say to me? I put in a request to close the case with the Giudice per le indagini preliminare [judge handing the preliminary investigation]. It was just lot of buffoonery. . Yes indeed, but Italian buffoonery that is going to die in silence, ignored by the politicians, the intelligence community and the judiciary. That’s how things work in Italy.

:::End of series:::

Part Two of the investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica.

INVESTIGATION / SISMI Director General Nicolò Pollari travels to the States to corroborate the purchase of nuclear material by Saddam Hussein.

Pollari travels to Washington to present his version of "the truth"
The Yellowcake Dossier was not the work of the CIA.

For SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, the rules of his profession are unequivocal. He tells La Repubblica: I am an intelligence chief and my only institutional partner in conversation following 9-11 was CIA Director George Tenet in Washington. Obviously, I held conversations solely with him. But is it really true that our cloak-and-dagger people worked solely with the CIA? Or did they work as part of the clandestine effort undertaken by the parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] created by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz within the Iraq War Group, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and the office of the National Security Advisor—all determined to produce the evidence for “regime change" in Baghdad.

It is a known fact that on the eve of the war on Iraq and under the guidance of Palazzo Chigi Diplomacy Advisor Gianni Castellaneta (today Italian Ambassador to the United States), SISMI chief Pollari organizes his appointment book in Washington with the help of the staff of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. La Repubblica has documented the dual channel used by the Italian government and by Italian intelligence. According to intelligence agents, in at least one of the backdoor meetings in which Pollari participated, the the creation of a conduit took place linking government, security agencies and intelligence.

Brief synopsis: Pollari’s SISMI wants to give credence to the story of acquisition of uranium ore for the purpose of building a nuclear bomb. The scheme is transparent. The “authentic” papers concerning an attempt to acquire uranium in Niger (stale Italian intelligence left over from the 80’s) are a legacy of a former SISMI Deputy Chief in Rome, Antonio Nucera. They are bundled up together with other worthless documents assembled helter-skelter after a simulated burglary of the Niger Embassy (embassy letterhead and stamps are taken). The documents are exhibited by Pollari’s men to the CIA Station Chief in Rome while SISMI’s "postman", a certain individual by the name of Rocco Martino, delivers a copy to Richard Dearlove’s MI6 in London.

That's the baseline snapshot. We’ll now provide the second chapter of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam orchestrated in Italy to provide the pretext for the invasion of Iraq. We reintroduce Greg Thielmann, former director of the US Department of State's intelligence bureau, who encounters the Italian report on the uranium on his desk. He does not recall the precise date.

Thielmann recounts the events of autumn 2001 in generalities. But the precise date may prove revealing: it is October 15, 2001. On that date three events are woven together to produce an astounding coincidence: Nicolò Pollari is appointed to head SISMI by the Italian government on September 27, after serving as Number Two at CESIS (a coordinating intelligence agency at Palazzo Chigi). Silvio Berlusconi is finally invited to the White House by George W. Bush. October 15 marks the date of the first CIA report on the evidence assembled by the Italians. It’s impossible to say if all this is coincidence, but one cannot ignore the context: The Italians possess a burning desire score a win. After his bungling remarks on the Clash of Civilizations, Berlusconi is encountering problems in getting an invitation from the White House, under fire from moderate Arab regimes. Pollari is eager to quickly get in step with Premier and the new course of action. The new chief at the SISMI section in charge of WMD, Colonel Alberto Manenti (direct superior of Antonio Nucera), wants to put himself on the same page as the new SISMI director. It is a known fact that Bush shows the West Wing’s Rose Garden to Berlusconi and the CIA acknowledges, as reported by Russ Hoyle (who has been analyzing the conclusions of the US Congressional Investigation Committee) that Italian intelligence has some neatly prepackaged information with a pretty bow on the box: Negotiations (between Niamey and Baghdad) on the purchase of uranium have been ongoing since the start of 1999; the sale [of uranium to Baghdad] was approved by the Niger Supreme Council in 2000. No documentary evidence is offered to show that any shipment of uranium has occured. CIA analysts consider the report to be “somewhat limited” and “lacking in necessary detail”. Intelligence and Research analysts at the US Department of State qualify the intelligence as “highly suspect.”

The first contact with the American intelligence community is not particularly gratifying for Pollari but it is still highly useful. The SISMI director, who is no fool, surveys the landscape and the players of the ongoing behind-the-scenes battle in the American Administration between those who stress caution and pragmatism (the US Department of State and the CIA) and those who are looking for an excuse to start a war (Cheney and the Pentagon), which is already on the drawing board. However, when the SISMI director returns to Italy, he perceives a similar battle underway in Rome. Gianni Castellaneta advises Pollari to look in other directions, while Defense Minister Antonio Martino tell Pollari to expect a visit from an old friend of Italy.

This old friend is Michael A. Ledeen, a veteran of American parallel intelligence conduits, who had been previously declared persona non grata by Rome during 1980s. [Likely because of kidnapping of Abu Abbas, orchestrated by Ledeen and Oliver North, and the attempted "extraordinary rendition" of Abbas through Italy--Nur.] Ledeen is in Rome on a mission from the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz to collect intelligence which would support a war on Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi [equivalent to Langley, VA, the headquarters of the CIA--Nur] tells La Repubblica: On the subject of intelligence collected on the uranium purchase, Pollari gets the cold shoulder from CIA Station Chief Jeff Castelli. Apparently, Castelli has dropped the matter entirely. Taking a hint, Pollari discusses the matter with Michael Ledeen.... No one knows what prompts Ledeen to return to Washington. But at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinces Dick Cheney that the uranium trail picked up by Italian intelligence should be explored in closer detail. As the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, a determined Vice President makes request to the CIA to take another look into “the possible acquisition of Niger uranium." During a meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly states that a crucial piece of intelligence is held by “a foreign intelligence agency”.

The parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] over at the Pentagon circulates “new information” according to which there exists an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the supply of 500 tons of uranium per year. The technicians at the Department of State raise an eyebrow at the report--500 tons of uranium! An exaggerated quantity! The report is manifestly devoid of all plausibility. Every independent report ordered following the circulation of the Italian memorandum indicates that the Niger uranium mines at Arlit and Akouta can yield at most 300 tons per year. But time is growing short. George Tenet, stung by the intelligence gaps of 9-11, grins and bears it but becomes incredibly unreceptive when State Department intelligence controverts him, recounts Greg Thielmann to La Repubblica, by saying that the intelligence collected in Rome is inconsistent, that the uranium story is phony and that a bunch of things contained in the report are fabricated.

Pollari is a very clever man, they say at Forte Braschi, and so he understands that to work the uranium story in Washington he cannot go to the CIA alone. He has to go through, suggest Palazzo Chigi and the Italian Defense Minstry, the Pentagon and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The hint might have been meant as malicious (in the world of espionage, that's often the case), but we can confirm the "alternate conduit" which Pollari creates in Washington through a snapshot and a meeting.

This is the snapshot. Pollari is in Washington. He arranges a meeting with George Tenet and, as happens frequently, his presentation is to be given in a reserved conference room at a hotel close to Langley. An attendee at the meeting tells La Repubblica: Pollari’s English must not have been very polished, so a female interpreter is used between him and Tenet. There’s an embarrassing upshot. In the course of exchanging pleasantries, George reveals some information from al-Qaeda concerning Italy which the Agency has gathered from prisoners at Guantanamo. Tenet expects at least a smile or possibly a nod of gratitude. A stony face stares back at him. If at first Tenet found Pollari unpleasant, he now finds him untrustworthy. What what strikes everyone seated around the conference table is the extreme marginalization of Pollari's station chief in Washington. This bizarre behavior is intriguing. In 2002, the SISMI station chief in Washington is Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo. He possess extensive background in WMD, an excellent relationship with the CIA and the respect of CIA Number 2, Jim Pavitt. A source at Forte Braschi recalls: The truth is that we did not want to keep the CIA out of our business but Pollari distrusted Grignolo, whom he believed was too cozy with Langley—so he blocked Grignolo’ every move. He forced him, so to speak, into the useless function of background checks on SISMI new hires, who might have spent some time in the United States.....During those months, serious contact takes place elsewhere—through Condoleezza Rice, through Ledeen and through the Office of Special Plans run by Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith. It is Castellaneta who arranges a meeting for Pollari in the offices of the National Security Advisor at the White House. When did they meet and what did they say? What did you expect them to be talking about in the summer of 2002? Weapons of mass destruction! When did the meeting take place? That’s my business…but all you have to do is to is check the visitors' roster and archived flight plans between Ciampino [Rome’s military airport--Nur] and Washington.

Here in Rome, it’s difficult for us to access those flight plans. We had better luck in Washington. An Administration official told La Repubblica: I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolò Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, deputy to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As with October 15, 2001, September 9, 2002 was a day marked by several coincidences. On that day, the Italian magazine Panorama was coming up on the editorial deadline for its 12-19 September issue. As one might typically expect from Rocco Martino (the SISMI "postman" in the Yellowcake Affair), he contacts a reporter from the magazine (Carlo Rossella was Editor-in-Chief at the time) in October to sell him the phony dossier. No one seems to remember that in the 12-19 September 2002 issue, coinciding with Pollari’s meeting with Hadley, Panorama publishes a planetary scoop entitled, War with Iraq? It has already begun. The Panorama article mentions “a delivery of half-ton of uranium”: The men of Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency, acquired the ore through a Jordanian middleman in far-away Nigeria, where a few traders succeeded in smuggling it after stealing it from a nuclear depot in a republic of the former USSR. The cargo containing 500 kilograms of uranium was then docked at Amman and afterwards shipped overland in a 7-hour journey to its final destination: the al-Rashidiyah plant 20 km north of Baghdad, recognized as a site for the production and processing of fissile material. And further along in the article: The alarm concerns Germany, where in the past Iraq had attempted to purchase technology and industrial parts from the firm, Leycochem....and even the much sought-after aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges.

Although there is a discrepancy in the location (Nigeria and not Niger—a lapsus calami?) and the story is somewhat of a fairy-tale (contraband from the USSR is transported all the way to Africa by truck), what is essential here is to notice that in the Panorama article, the recipe (so to speak) has all the right ingredients needed for war: the 500 tons of uranium which make its way from Africa to Baghdad, and the aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. One could reasonably conclude that the scam churned in Italy could be accurately superimposed on the allegations made in the CIA-gate/New York Times affair. The government has but to ask and the media gets on the stick. The government then confirms what’s in the media. It’s an old disinformation technique from the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger posed by the enemy. Terrorize and influence public opinion--this time with Italy involved as an accessory. The magazine that spreads the poisonous disinformation is owned by PM Silvio Berlusconi, who controls intelligence in Italy and who wants to become the close ally of George W. Bush, who in turn wants to go to war.

You could say that with the terrain prepared in advance, Pollari is able concentrate on another essential aspect of the operation: promoting himself and SISMI by cashing in on a year’s worth of cloak-and-dagger work and pulling the wool over the eyes of Parliament by carefully manipulating information and revelations which should have been subject to careful reconstruction accompanied by corroborating documentation--and not the wall of silence of the State (which Italian PM Gianni Letta lamented on July 16, 2003).

Back from his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari was debriefed by an Italian Parliamentary intelligence oversight commission. They summon him twice. In the first session, the SISMI director maintains: We had no documentary proof; only information that a central African nation sold uranium ore to Baghdad. Thirty days later, Pollari says: We had documentary proof of the acquisition by Iraq of uranium ore from a central African nation. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment from German and possibly Italian manufacturers. Once out of maw of Parliament, Pollari is still confronted with the problem of conveying the phony dossier to Washington without leaving a trail of fingerprints. He lucks out. SISMI “postman” Rocco Martino, who has already left a package on the doorstep of MI6, contacts Panorama correspondent Elisabetta Burba and attempts to sell her the dossier. But is it the snake oil salesman’s idea—or that of Antonio Nucera—or is someone else behind it? Mrs. Burba rightly double-checks the Niger information. She concocts an undercover investigation on dinosaurs—from the Oranosaurus nigeriensis to the Afrovenator abakensis.

In the meantime, a reliable source comes along. Elisabetta does what a reporter has to do—with rigor and tenacity. She concludes that the story is baseless and refrains from publishing a single sentence. But unknown to her, it’s already out of her hands--because the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Carlo Rossella, entralled with the possibly having found—as he tells his staff--a smoking gun, has forwarded the documents to the US Embassy in Rome, which he regards as the best source of confirmation. Does Pollari notify Berlusconi’s publication, Panorama, which is patting itself on the back over the uranium scoop, that the information is bogus? It appears that he did not. And this is how Jeff Castelli and the CIA came to find on their plate the half-baked frittata which they have been refusing to eat for nearly a year. The documents are such crude forgeries that they must be hidden from scrutiny lest they rain on Dick Cheney’s parade. The arrival of the documents in Washington occurs through the back door. They are distributed on October 16, 2002, to the various intelligence agencies by the US Department of State during a routine meeting which four CIA officials attend. But not one of the CIA men is able to recall how they came into possession of the documents or how they came to know of them. Mysteriously, the Italian forgeries are “misplaced” at Langley for three months and it is only after an internal audit ordered by the Inspector-General that they are found inside a safe in the Anti-Proliferation Section. This is the first Italian lunge-and-parry. The uranium hoax inflated with the aluminum tube chicanery. But that is another story.

To be continued...

Joshua Landis has this to say about the Syria crisis and Saad Hariri's request for an international trial of suspects fingered by the Mehlis Report:

The Syrian regime will not come apart as Washington is hoping. That is what I believe. The Mehlis situation is a big transformation of US-Syrian relations and puts the two in a whole different territory. A court of law is nowhere to carry out diplomacy. Deals cannot be made and compromises cannot be reached once the court is assembled. And for all intents and purposes the court has been assembled. The world has been promised that the perpetrators of the Hariri murder will be punished. President Asad has not been directly implicated, but the rest of his family has been. Trying to separate him from them will require fratricide. He won't do it. He cannot do it.