Mods please note! The original article was published today in La Repubblica (which publishes only in Italian) here:
http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/esteri/nigergate/pollar/pollar.html"Il Sismi assolto dal Copaco troppi i dubbi sul Nigergate"
As few DUers are fluent in Italian, I am posting a translation from the blogger, Nur al-Cubicle, here:
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/Out of gratitude for the translation, I did include Nur's introduction to the article (the first paragraph) in addition to the four paragraphs allowed by copyright rules.
We have been bombarded with recent news reports that say the Niger uranium document forgeries were the result of a spy-turned-bad, Rocco Martino, who needed money and so forged these documents to peddle to whomever was interested. The Italian government, after Fridays hearings, and our own FBI claim to have reached this conclusion. In this article, La Repubblica pokes holes in their stories.
<snip>
Oversight Overlooks the Obvious
Italy's Comitato parlamentare di controllo sui servizi segreti (COPACO) or Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee has whitewashed, er, absolved SISMI of any wrongdoing in the Nigergate Affair. La Repubblica's Giuseppe Davanzo reports:
SISMI knows about the imbroglio but does not warn anyone. Five hours of hearings for Pollari before the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee.
COPACO absolves SISMI. Too many gaps in the Nigergate Affair.
The committee members believe that there was only one "dossier" fabricated by Rocco Martino yet this fraudster managed to hornswoggle everyone and start a war.
Complete and formal exoneration—assuming there has been a genuine investigation or at least an appreciable and coherent interrogation--yet there are reasons to doubt that this is the case. For five hours, SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, seated next to Gianni Letta (whose job at Palazzo Chigi is to oversee Italy’s intelligence services) related, explained, exhibited documents and recalled, or so it seems. It’s the Nigergate affair, which could not possibly involve Forte Braschi. It’s the brainchild of Rocco Martino. He’s the fraudster who fabricates the “dossier” and with extraordinary genius is able to hustle the entire Western intelligence community (if you exclude Israel’s Mossad) by snaring the bumbling nitwits employed as spies for America’s CIA, France’s DGSE, and Britain's MI6. Not to mention the Italians, who didn’t see anything, didn’t suspect anything and didn’t hear anything about the dealings of the ex-SISMI collaborator and bosom buddy of a SISMI colonel, Antonio Nucera, who, just “because”, decides to help Rocco make a little money by introducing him to a SISMI “asset” employed at the Embassy of Niger, La Signora. It’s just a plain old Italian-style swindle, an “Italian Job”, a clip from a film starring Stan Laurel, Goofy and Cruella DeVille. It doesn’t matter if the trio is somehow able to build the case for the clear and present danger of an Iraq nuclear program and to formally justify a war. SISMI has nothing at all to do with it, Why, it should be cleared any implication. This is the music from center-Right to center-Left to the radical Left. To the members of Parliament, there are no gaps, no contradictions and just one little, insignificant hiccup in the SISMI director’s reconstruction of the events.
Maurizio Gasparri of the Allianza Nazionale
: SISMI's actions were entire correct from both an internal and international standpoint in the Nigergate affair. Gigi Malabarba of Rifondazione comunista raises the ante: No document sent from SISMI to the United States concerning Saddam’s Niger uranium. Inquiries were carried out by the Italian judiciary and by the FBI, which formally closed the case on the affair with its letter of July 20, 2005. Massimo Brutti of Democrazia Sociale is willing to provide a detail or two: Since the 1990’s, SISMI has been in possession of intelligence on the possible trafficking of uranium between Niger and Iraq and has shared all this information allied clandestine services, but never claimed that the information was trustworthy or that there had been actual trafficking going on. Committee Chair Enzo Bianco of the Margherita Coalition: We would like our intelligence people to know that we appreciate their work. SISMI should be allowed to work in a climate of maximum serenity. The rest is politics.
An unexpected moment of surprise came when Fabrizio Chicchitto of Forza Italia claimed that the war on Iraq was thrust upon Britain and the United States because, if France and Germany hadn’t give the impression that Saddam Hussein could escape armed intervention, then a peaceful solution would have been possible. Silvio Berlusconi would agree with that. At the opposite pole is, naturally, Massimo Brutti: SISMI never vouched for nor had any relationship with the forged dossier assembled by Rocco Martino. The problem for the DS parliamentarian is Berlusconi. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers stood right here in the Senate and told us that that Saddam Hussein had WMD and that the dictator would have to be removed by force. There is a small void of political responsibility between a government pushing for war and the intelligence which this same government possessed. For this reason I have asked the Defense Minister, Antonio Martino, be summoned to appear before the Intelligence Oversight Committee. So with an imprecise schedule which everyone would like to know, Antonio Martino will soon give testimony to COPACO.
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