Italy Follows FBI in Re-opening Niger Document Investigation

[Rose Siding]

Niger Case Reopened. A few days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI has reopened its investigation into the origins of the Niger forgeries. Today, Italy's La Repubblica reports that the Rome prosecutor Franco Ionta has reopened his investigation into the origins of the Niger forgeries. Expected to testify? Alain Chouet, the former deputy chief of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), the French counter-espionage service. Chouet has told Repubblica in a recent interview some details that throw cold water over the Italian government's claim that it was the French who were behind the Niger forgeries caper (for one, Chouet says, the CIA came to the French to ask about the information in the forgeries in the summer of 2002 -- a few months before the Panorama journalist brought the forgeries to the US embassy Rome, and about the same time that forgeries middleman Rocco Martino first tried to sell the forgeries to the French services for $100,000. And the photo of Martino in the Brussels train station, in a white summer suit? All from the same summer. And who took that photo? Sismi.). In any case, the forces that shut down these two investigations previously haven't gone away. But there's a whole lot more that has become publicly known since then. (You can watch for an annotated translation of the Repubblica piece here).

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003226.html