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19/09/04
- Irak
- Infos...
Intox... : Les armes fantômes de Saddam (voir Georges W. Bush, Tony Blair
et Sylvio Berlusconi), une tromperie de la France, bien sûr ! - Infos...
Intox... : Saddam's phantom WMDs (see Georges W. Bush, Tony Blair &
Sylvio Berlusconi), a France's deception, of course !...
Agent
behind fake uranium documents worked for France
Telegraph 19/09/04
"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..."
"...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..."
Lire également, Read also :
Rocco
lo spione
Panorama 16/08/04
"Un breve ingaggio nei servizi segreti
italiani e poi tanti anni di truffe e imbrogli nel sottobosco degli agenti
free lance. Finoal 1999, quando il sessantenne ex carabiniere venne messo
sotto contratto dagli 007 francesi. E sull'uranio che sarebbe stato
acquistato da Saddam costruì per loro un falso dossier. Costato molti
guai a Tony Blair e George W. Bush..."
French
Probe Led to 'Fake Niger Uranium Papers'
FT 02/08/04
"A French intelligence operation to safeguard Niger's uranium
industry and prevent weapons proliferation, inadvertently led to the
forging of documents relating to an apparent clandestine uranium trade
with Iraq, western intelligence officials say.
The operation, begun in 1999, reflected concern among several intelligence
services that rogue states may have been trying to procure uranium. France
was also concerned about the security of its own uranium supplies from
Niger,
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as well as
the security of the two French companies that control Niger's uranium
industry. Rocco Martino, an Italian businessman who has admitted that he
has made a career out of "selling information", has held regular
meetings with French intelligence officials in Brussels since at least
1999.
According to senior European officials, in 1999 he provided French
officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been
planning to expand "trade" with Niger. This trade was assumed to
be in uranium, which is Niger's main export. It was then that Mr Martino
first became aware of the value of documents relating to Niger's uranium
exports. He was then asked by French officials to provide more
information, which led to a flourishing "market" in documents.
He subsequently provided France with more documents, which turned out to
have been forged when they were handed to the International Atomic Energy
Agency by US diplomats. The exposure of the forgeries appeared to
undermine British government claims that Iraq had sought to buy uranium
from Niger. US officials have distanced themselves from the claim, though
the UK has insisted the forged documents were not part of their evidence.
According to senior intelligence officials, the forged documents were
produced with the involvement of people familiar with Niger, and were
created in 2000.
French officials have not said whether they know Mr Martino, and are
unlikely to either confirm or deny that he is a source. According to the
Sunday Times, which interviewed him under his pseudonym of Giacomo, Mr
Martino said the Italian foreign intelligence service, the SISMI, had
forged the documents and had arranged for them to be passed to him by an
official of Niger's embassy in Rome. Mr Martino, who has not returned
telephone calls since first contacted by the Financial Times a month ago,
has retained personal contacts with some serving and retired officers in
the SISMI since he briefly served in the intelligence services in the
1970s.
The Italian government yesterday strongly denied it had played any role in
the forging of the documents or their dissemination, saying the
accusations are "completely false". Its statement also implied
Mr Martino's claim to the Sunday Times that the documents were forged to
justify the decision to invade Iraq is highly dubious as the market in
documents - real or forged - was established several years before the war
was discussed.
Intelligence experts also say that if the documents had been forged by a
national intelligence service the quality would have been better and there
would not have been discrepancies in them that led to them being exposed
by the IAEA as fake.
One western intelligence official said: "This issue shows how
vulnerable intelligence services and the media are to tricksters like
Martino. He responded to a legitimate . . demand from the French, who
needed the information on Niger. And now he is responding to a new demand
in the market, which is being dictated by the political importance this
issue has in the US. He is shaping his story to that demand."
Talking
Points Memo, 8/1/2004
"Today, the Sunday Times of London
reports
that the Italian middle-man who provided the notorious Niger uranium
documents to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba (She later brought them
to the US Embassy in Rome, you’ll remember) was himself given the
documents by the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI.
I can vouch for the accuracy of this account since I have been working on
this story for six months. In fact, I interviewed the Italian middle-man
in question two months ago at a restaurant in mid-town Manhattan -- the
details of that interview I describe below..."
"...What’s long
been known about the Niger documents is that an Italian ‘security
consultant’ tried to sell them to an Italian journalist named Elisabetta
Burba. Burba’s editor
at Panorama,
in turn, instructed her to take them to the US Embassy in Rome. That is
how they came into the hands of the American government.
The question has always been, who’s the ‘security consultant’? Did
he forge the documents? And, if not, where did he get them?..."
"...So who's the 'security consultant'?
The ‘security consultant’ is a small-time information peddler who buys
and sells information in the netherworld of diplomatic, intelligence and
media circles in Rome. His clients include foreign intelligence services
and also the Italian media. He is himself a former member of SISMI.
He received the forged documents from a current SISMI officer who works in
the division specializing in weapons proliferation..."
"...In early 2000, the ‘security consultant’ was approached by a
former colleague from SISMI whom he'd known for some twenty five years.
This current SISMI officer told him that he had a source in the Nigerien
Embassy in Rome, that they (i.e. SISMI) had no more use for her, but that
she could be a source of valuable information for him if he put her on a
monthly retainer. They were washing their hands of her, he said. But she
could be of use to him.
The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to
pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came
into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the
material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt
primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and
Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security
consultant's' longstanding clients.
What wasn’t clear at the time, however, was that SISMI hadn’t washed
their hands of this Niger Embassy employee at all. She remained a SISMI
asset. In fact, the relationship which the SISMI officer had set up was
intended to serve as a conduit through which SISMI could conceal its role
in the dissemination of what proved to be disinformation.
This was how the forged documents came into the security consultant’s
hands.
You’ll remember that most of the papers in the bundle of Niger-uranium
documents that arrived at the US Embassy in Rome were actually authentic.
It was only a subset of the documents --- those specifically related to
the alleged Niger-Iraq transactions and a couple others --- that were
bogus.
In late 2001, the SISMI officer brought the Niger Embassy employee a
packet of documents --- those later identified as forgeries --- and
instructed her to slip them in with the other documents she was providing
to the ‘security consultant’ on an on-going basis.
She mixed those documents in with authentic documents which she had access
to in the course of her work at the embassy. She then passed those
documents --- again, a mix of authentic and forged ones --- to the
‘security consultant’.
The Financial Times article led to a surge of articles and
commentary suggesting that the forged documents were only a minor part of
the case for the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. But, as we've noted
earlier, that's a willfully misleading account, one which both the
Butler Report and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report helped
to further.
Contrary to arguments that there was lots of independent evidence of
uranium sales between Iraq and Niger, US government sources have told us
that almost all of the important evidence derived from the phony
documents. Specifically, it came from summaries of the documents Italian
intelligence was distributing to other western intelligence agencies --
including those of the US, Britain and France -- in late 2001 and 2002.
The US has long known that the Italians had the forged documents in their
possession at least as early as the beginning of 2002. And what we've
uncovered is that at the same time Italian intelligence operatives were
surreptitiously funnelling copies of the documents to this document
peddler with the knowledge that he would sell them to other intelligence
services and likely to members of the Italian press.
Now, a few more notes on the ‘security consultant’. The Financial
Times story said that he “had a record of extortion and deception
and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least
twice.” Several of the particulars here are incorrect. But he does
have a criminal record. And I’m told by a very reliable source that he
is now trying to sell his the detailed version of his story to members of
the British press for 30,000 euros. Whether he's successful in doing so
we'll probably find out in the next few days..."
Italian
spies ‘faked documents' on Saddam nuclear purchase
The Time of London 01/08/04
"THE Sunday Times has tracked down a mysterious middleman who was a
key figure in the notorious Niger uranium hoax before the Iraq war, writes
Nicholas Rufford.
Speaking to a reporter in a cafe in Brussels last week, he claimed he had
been an unwitting dupe in the scam, which embarrassed both Tony Blair and
George W Bush over Saddam Hussein's phantom weapons of mass destruction.
The middleman, an Italian who uses the name Giacomo, is a small-time
tipster said to have worked for Italy's armed forces and intelligence
services. He says Sismi, the Italian foreign intelligence service, used
him to disseminate fake documents purporting to show Saddam had tried to
buy uranium for nuclear bombs from Niger.
"I received a call from a former colleague in Sismi," Giacomo
said. "I was told a woman in the Niger embassy in Rome had a gift for
me. I met her and she gave me documents. Sismi wanted me to pass on the
documents but they didn't want anyone to know they had been involved."
He came into possession of a bundle of telexes, letters and contracts that
appeared to show Saddam had struck a deal with Niger for 500 tons of
uranium ore, enough when refined to make several weapons.
Giacomo said he regretted the hoax but had believed the documents were
genuine when he passed them to intelligence contacts and a journalist. The
hoax had far-reaching effects. Presenting his dossier on Iraq's weapons in
September 2002, Blair accused Saddam of seeking "significant
quantities of uranium from Africa".
Bush reiterated the charge in his state of the union speech. When
Giacomo's documents were discredited by the International Atomic Energy
Agency last year, George Tenet, then director of the CIA, apologised.
The British government and MI6 claim, however, they have independent
evidence of Iraq's "Niger connection".
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