1 Boring Old Man

New America Media, Special Investigative Report

… According to the influential Rome-based La Repubblica, Carlo Rossella – at the time editor-in-chief of Berlusconi’s Panorama, one of Italy’s largest weeklies – delivered the dossier in the autumn of 2002 to the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Rossella’s actions were puzzling because its top investigative reporter, Elisabetta Burba, was in the midst of discounting the file as a gross falsification. Besides directing Panorama, Rossella – once a foreign policy advisor to Berlusconi – had been considered a candidate to direct RAI, Italy’s state broadcasting system. A more direct connection to Berlusconi is Giovanni Castellaneta, current Italian ambassador to the United States and Berlusconi’s former national security adviser.

According to La Repubblica, Nicola Pollari, the head of SISMI, tried to dispel the CIA’s misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers and failed. Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice’s chief deputy and currently national security advisor. The meeting took place on Sept. 9, 2002, in the White House, and has been confirmed by White House officials.

It was after this meeting that the story of the yellowcake uranium ore from Niger took off. In late September, CIA director George Tenet and Secretary of State Colin Powell cited the attempted yellowcake purchase from Niger in separate classified hearings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In advance of President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address, Hadley asked for the CIA’s approval to include the Niger claim in the president’s speech. Even though the CIA had explicitly excised the claim from a prior address given by the president and now repeated its misgivings to Hadley, Bush ended up saying in his speech that, "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Bush attributed this intelligence to the British government. No mention was made of any connections between the Italian and American governments …

In the last week, I’ve been vacationing in the Outer Banks, and my only political thoughts have been about the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Phase II Report – specifically the part about Michael Ledeen. Shortly after 9/11, Ledeen and his old Iran-Contra pal Manucher Ghorbanifar got together a meeting in Rome between themselves, two Iranians, two US DoD representatives, and an un-named member of a foreign Intelligence Agency [presumabely SISMI, the Italian Secret Police]. The meeting was in December 2001. It is well covered in the Phase II SSCI Report.

The lingering question isn’t about this meeting approved by Steven Hadley and Paul Wolfowitz. It’s about the Niger Yellowcake Uranium forgeries, also from Italy. These forgeries were put together by Rocco Martino and several assiciates before 9/11. The documents preported to show a Uranium Ore sale to Iraq [550 Tons]. The forgeries were debunked by the French Government and disappeared from view. After 9/11, they resurfaced. They were passed to the U.S. Embassy in 2002, then "Nicola Pollari, the head of SISMI, tried to dispel the CIA’s misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers and failed. Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice’s chief deputy and currently national security advisor." Pollari continued to play Hadley along in spite of the C.I.A.’s misgivings and these forgeries became the cornerstone of Bush’s Cassus Belli for Invading Iraq.

So the lingering question is why did the Italian Secret Service actively work at pawning off these forgeries to the U.S. as legit? Reasons given vary. The article above suggests the motive was a helecopter contract for Italy. Others say that Italian President Berlusconi wanted to get in good with George Bush. However, none of those explanations make sense to me. I find it inconceivable that the Italian government would be a party to such a hoax without being asked by our government to do it.

Moving on circumstantial evidence alone, many of us think that Michael Ledeen, a man with no official position in our government, must’ve asked the Italians to do it [in cahoots with un-named Administration Officials]. He was in Rome in December 2001 meeting with Iranians, the despicable Manucher Ghorbanifar, two DoD representatives, and a representative of SISMI. SISMI actively played us with the Niger Forgeries. Our government has never vigorouly pursued this obviously outrageous piece if international intrigue.