Been following your close explication of these documents with great interest, and am struck again and again by how BAD the forgeries were. It seems that any one of us with access to Google and a photocopy machine could have done better. Given that one hypothesis is that ex-CIA agents were involved in their production, do you have any thoughts as to why they did such a bad job? Could it have been deliberate?
Posted by mamyaga at November 2, 2005 07:56 AMMamyaga,
I don't have a firm view yet on why the forgeries were constructed the way they were. There are, it seems to me, three competing theories at the end of the day behind the source/origins:
1. Individuals wanting to make a fast buck by trying to peddle these documents at a time when (after 9/11) there was increased focus on Iraq.
2. Individuals wanting to provide cover for the Iraq war by engaging someone to construct forgeries (only to discover later that the forgeries were done badly).
3. Individuals wanting to deliberately set up the CIA and others by spreading tall tales which would get exposed later.
Although a simplistic view may seem to support #3, the evidence increasingly does not. It has been reported recently that one of the men behind the forgeries tried to peddle them to the U.S. embassy in Rome well before Oct 2002 and essentially got thrown out. The fact that the Panorama journalist herself had serious doubts about their authenticity suggests that the forgers must have known that peddling them as-is to the CIA in an attempt to trick them would not be a successful enterprise. The evidence suggests strongly that someone knew they were bogus and fed only extracts that appeared to be plausible to the CIA and other agencies. This seems to point to #2, coupled with #1.
That said, I don't know which of these scenarios was the case, for a fact. As I sift through the intel and news reports I hope to get a better sense for this over time.
Posted by eriposte at November 2, 2005 08:20 AMwhy forge the documents with wrong information in the first place?
I think the Repubblica articles provide the answer: the forgeries were created by Rocco Martino with assistance from his old friend Antonio Nucera (SISMI WMD Division) and others as a quick hustle to make a few bucks by selling it to French Intelligence in early 2001. Rocco is a hack, a disgraced ex-SISMI agent low on funds, so the forgeries are consequently sloppy and amateurish. It wasn't the work of SISMI itself, which, even though Italian, would have the capacity to generate credible forgeries without so many obvious errors.
Then, after 9/11, Nicolo' Pollari (SISMI Director) realizes the forgeries (which he must have known about since Nucera works for him) could be useful to curry favor with a Bush administration now expressly intent on going to war with Iraq.
From my Italian Job Timeline:
Fall, 2001
— SISMI (Pollari) shows (?) - but does not give - the Dodgy Dossier to the CIA in Rome (Castelli).
— Rocco delivers the Dodgy Dossier to MI6
(quote from Nur al-Cubicle's translation of the first Repubblica Article:)
Fall 2001: General Pollari’s SISMI is in possession of a phony dossier assembled by Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera. They show it to the CIA while Rocco Martino delivers it to Sir Richard Dearlove’s MI6.
…
So why didn’t Rome put the lie to its ex-agent and snake oil salesman? Especially since the information in the dossier was vouched for by Pollari to Jeff Castelli, CIA station chief.
(end quote from timeline)
It seems clear that the October 15, 2001 CIA report came from the CIA station in Rome (or is it?). From what you write, it looks like either Pollari or Castelli or the two of them working together "cleaned up" some of the obvious mistakes in the forgeries for the report. Sending a "sanitized" report on the documents instead of actual copies of the obviously fraudulent documents back to the States lent more credence to the Yellowcake claims.
But Pollari's SISMI and the CIA in Rome could not correct the forged documents themselves because Rocco "Il Postino" Martino had already delivered copies to French intelligence in early 2001 and to MI6 in the fall of '01. Having different versions of the same documents floating around with different names and dates would not look good.
Posted by shystee at November 2, 2005 08:28 AM3. Individuals wanting to deliberately set up the CIA and others by spreading tall tales which would get exposed later.
I have a variation on this theory which I call the "Poison Pill". Basically there are Good Spooks and Bad Spooks in the US intelligence community. The Bad Spooks were willing to help Bush and the Neocons push the Iraq war by any means necessary. But the Good Spooks didn't like the Bushies and might have set them up: they did not create the Yellowcake Dodgy Dossier, but deliberately allowed it to get through their vetting process because they knew it would be eventually exposed as a crude forgery, thereby tainting everyone who had touted the Dodgy Dossier as evidence.
From my "Pillola Avvelenata" (Poison Pill in Italian) post:
Again, the deliciously tantalizing paragraph from my boy Sy Hersh’s March 31, 2003 article about the Niger Yellowcake forgeries.
“Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,” the former high-level intelligence official added. “It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.” (The White House declined to comment.)
Posted by shystee at November 2, 2005 08:52 AMDidn't Iraq buy yellowcake from Niger in the 80's. The letter referred to probably relates to this previous sale and was signed by the then appropriate person. So the statement is factually correct in the report. However, it is described in the most misleading way possible.
Posted by ed_finnerty at November 2, 2005 11:42 AMRoberts Doubts Yellowcake Lies "Relevancy"
Check out this nuggett Sen. Roberts
mumbled at the tailend of a Blitzer interview yesterday discussing his committees delay Phase II investigation:
[To]"figure out what somebody said two or three years ago, and was it justified by intelligence. I don't know the relevancy of that..."
That would explain the 18 month delay.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/01/sitroom.04.html
Among others, Justin Raimondo has identified the names of the forgers as former CIA officers Calarridge and Wolfe. His article cites a source inside the Italian Embassy familiar with the unedited Italian Parliamentary investigation report that was provided to Fizgerald. Since the Nigerian Embassy burglary occurred, and the forgeries were made before 9/11 (they would have to have been if they were "repoprted" by the CIA in October 2001) and since the White House was already planning an invasion of Iraq at the time the Defense Planning Guidance was published, just after the 2000 election, is it not plausible that the foregeries were planted by people associated with Feith, Leeden and Chalabi, who had been active for years on the project of invading Iraq? Martino may have made his money simply as a messanger.
Posted by madcow at November 3, 2005 12:44 AMSo maybe the poor quality is part of setting Martino up as a kind of stoogy fall-guy in case the uranium story fell apart. Seems to me that it would be less credible that some marginal fast-buck artist was at the bottom of the forgeries if they were too expertly done.
Posted by prostratedragon at November 8, 2005 05:22 AMSISMI AND SISDE (ITALIAN INTELLIGENCE) SPY ON IRANIAN GOVERNMENT
"The Italian government has never been in hostile actions against the Iranian government". Is the laconic communiqué of the Italian Government of 11 June 2008.
("Iran: Government, false allegations, never hostile actions")
The Italian government is telling so many lies? See also you as SISMI (Military Secret Service) spy in Italy companies controlled by the Iranian government. Until now (and until it is censored again) you can still do it on the site:
http://piemonte.indymedia.org/article/3566
In this site is published a confidential letter sent to the President of Italian Republic and 2 Directors of the Services Intelligence (SISMI and Sisde) from a 007 called Altana Peter. In this confidential letter refers to assignments (on behalf of SISMI) for intelligence activities against the Social Centers and all companies controlled by the Iranian government living in Italy (the secret service agent writes the name of the iranian company Nisco, IRASCO, IRITEC, IRISA, TEEN TRANSPORT, IRAN AIR, etc etc).
In this embarrassing context, the Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini moved quickly to say that Italy considers Iran as a reliable partner for the Afghan issue (the state of Iran by "rogue state" has suddenly become reliable?).
NOTE THAT THE IRANIAN ARE NOT AS STUPID AS THEN WE BELIEVE !!
Related link: http://piemonte.indymedia.org/article/4294