Italy blames France for Niger uranium claim

[cal04]

A row has broken out between France and Italy over whose intelligence service is to blame for the Niger uranium controversy, which led to Britain and America claiming wrongly that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy material for nuclear bombs. Italian diplomats say that France was behind forged documents which at first appeared to prove that Iraq was seeking "yellow-cake" uranium in Niger - evidence used by Britain and America to promote the case for last year's Gulf war.

They say that France's intelligence services used an Italian-born middle-man to circulate a mixture of genuine and bogus documents to "trap" the two leading proponents of war with Saddam into making unsupportable claims. They have passed to The Sunday Telegraph a photograph which they claim shows the Italian go-between, sometimes known as "Giacomo" - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - meeting a senior French intelligence officer based in Brussels. "The French hoped that the bulk of the documents would be exposed as false, since many of them obviously were," an Italian official said.

"Their aim was to make the allies look ridiculous in order to undermine their case for war." According to an account given to The Sunday Telegraph, France was driven by "a cold desire to protect their privileged, dominant trading relationship with Saddam, which in the case of war would have been at risk".


The suggestion that Italy, driven by its government's support for America, had forged the documents to help to justify the war in Iraq, has caused a furore and has now led to the revelation of new information about "Giacomo". The Sunday Telegraph has been told that the man has a criminal record for extortion and fraud, but draws a monthly salary of €4,000 (£2,715) from the DGSE - the French equivalent of MI6 - for which he is said to have worked for the past five years.He had an expense account and received bonuses in return for carrying out orders allegedly given him by the head of the French services' operations in Belgium.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wuran05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/05/ixworld.html

[Rose Siding]

1. If it's in the Telegraph, can we assume it's to muddy the water?

France as fall guy? The first paragraph tries to limit those ultimately responsible to Italy and France.

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Damn. I knew all along it was Kerry's fault.

He looks French, ya know.

[allemand]

3. According to Josh Marshall the forged documents came from a SISMI officer

"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.

<...>

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.

<...>

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."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_01.php#003235

Marshall also states that "we’ve confirmed the key details of the story I outlined above independently." It will be interesting to see his reaction to this new Italian story.

[leesa]

4. I wouldn't believe anything in the Telegraph. This is a RW rag on a par

with Faux News

[Dover]

5. EVERYONE knew the documents were bogus. It's not like they were

pulling the wool over anyone's eyes. The documents were created as an EXCUSE for war, not as real incentive for war. Surely France (even though they tend to think so little of us) wouldn't actually believe they could pass those silly documents off without the information being discovered to be bogus by our intelligence, so this story has all kinds of holes in it. But then, consider the source.

No matter who created those documents, the point is they were used even after they were determined to be bogus. Now WHO is responsible for THAT?

[whirlygigspin]

6. ...as Bush goes up in the polls

This whole thing was invented by angry Bush hating democrats just to make our Pretzeldent look bad.

Stop the hate! you mean dems!

that's right, it's all Arafat's fault!

Hezbollah!!!!!!!!!!!

4 more years!

(i'm just about at the point of shooting my tv)