Kerry'sFrenchFriends Bhind Fake Uranium

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Kerry'sFrenchFriends Bhind Fake Uranium
17
Mon, 09-20-2004 - 12:54am
Agent behind fake uranium documents worked for France
By Bruce Johnston in Rome
(Filed: 19/09/2004)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/19/wniger19.xml

The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.


The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, "Giacomo".


His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that - by commissioning "Giacomo" to procure and circulate documents - France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.


Italian diplomats have claimed that, by disseminating bogus documents stating that Iraq was trying to buy low-grade "yellowcake" uranium from Niger, France was trying to "set up" Britain and America in the hope that when the mistake was revealed it would undermine the case for war, which it wanted to prevent.


Italian judicial officials confirmed yesterday that Mr Martino had previously been sought for questioning by Rome. Investigating magistrates in the city have opened an inquiry into claims he made previously in the international press that Italy's secret services had been behind the dissemination of false documents, to bolster the US case for war.


According to Ansa, the Italian news agency, which said privately that it had obtained its information from "judicial and other sources", Mr Martino was questioned by an investigating magistrate, Franco Ionta, for two hours. Ansa said Mr Martino told the magistrate that Italy's military intelligence, Sismi, had no role in the procuring or dissemination of the Niger documents.


He was also said to have claimed that he had obtained the documents from an employee at the Niger embassy in Rome, before passing these to French intelligence, on whose payroll he had been since at least 2000.


However, he reportedly also added that he had believed that the documents in question were genuine, and to have never suspected that they had been forged. "Martino has clarified his position and offered to deliver to the magistrates the documents which confirm his declarations," his lawyer, Giuseppe Placidi, told Ansa.


It was not possible to contact Mr Martino through his lawyer yesterday. Contacted by The Telegraph, Mr Ionta politely declined to comment, but did not deny that the questioning had taken place. The Interior Ministry in Rome, which had also expressed keen interest in the Telegraph article, refused to comment on the matter.


Mr Martino is said by diplomats to have come forward of his own accord and contacted authorities in the Italian capital following the earlier article in the Telegraph. They said he had written a letter of resignation to the French DGSE intelligence service last week.


According to an Italian newspaper report yesterday, members of the Digos, Italy's anti-terrorist police, removed documents from Mr Martino's home in a northern suburb of Rome on Friday afternoon.


"After being exposed in the international press, French intelligence can hardly be amused or happy with him," one western diplomat said. "Martino may have thought the safest thing was to hand himself over to the Italians." Investigators in Rome suspect that Mr Martino was first engaged by the French secret services five years ago, when he was asked to investigate rumours of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He is thought to have then been retained the following year to collect more information. It was then that he is suspected of having assembled a dossier containing both real and bogus documents from Niger, the latter apparently forged by a diplomat.




Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Mon, 09-20-2004 - 3:15pm
Wrhen, you've said in the past that you've got a set of cojones and this last post proves it. Once again, you've declared yourself the winner of a past argument based on absolutely nothing but your own assertions. When you were going through all those old posts, did you come across the one where I challenged you on all of this, at length and with references? You never replied and became sort of rude. Does this exchange ring a bell with you?:

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/iv-elpoliticsto/?msg=2767.237

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elpoliticsto&msg=2767.272

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elpoliticsto&msg=2767.280

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elpoliticsto&msg=2767.285

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elpoliticsto&msg=2767.292

http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elpoliticsto&msg=2767.295

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Mon, 09-20-2004 - 8:18pm
I think it might be because Kerry "looks French." Makes sense, no?
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2004
Tue, 09-21-2004 - 10:43am
Looks French? He looks more like an animated wax figure to me.... His expression is always the same..... I guess too much botox...LOL
iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 09-21-2004 - 7:17pm

<<You never replied and became sort of rude. Does this exchange ring a bell with you?: >>


Sure. One of the tactics you love is to pick something to death. We'd already been back & forth a number of times, & I'd already spent several hours debating with you, which was enough.

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 09-21-2004 - 7:18pm

And too much tooth whitening!

Renee ~~~

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-17-2004
Tue, 09-21-2004 - 11:56pm

The point is that these documents made their way into international intelligence through the French government, eventhough they were supposedly such bad forgeries they were easier to spot than Dan Rather's ANG memos.


It also begs the question of what France's intention was in sharing them with the UK & US. They certainly weren't acting as if they believed Saddam had an active nuke program as the Nigerian docs would indicate, yet they passed them on to other intelligence agencies as if they were reliable.


It feeds into some of the speculation that was around when the docs were first revealed to be forgeries; namely that a country, which did not support intervention in Iraq,

Renee ~~~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-31-2003
Wed, 09-22-2004 - 12:14am
Not true. You were going 'round and 'round with bailyhouse - the exchange you posted in this thread -- and I stepped in with one post. You never responded. Please find this lengthy debate on Niger we supposedly had.

<>

True. Since then the 2002 NIE, which you were touting as gospel, has been exposed as the most important breakdown in US intelligence ever.

If the facts are what you're interested in, then it's completely disingenuous to say you'll stand by your old facts until they're proven wrong, and then wait for new ones to happen by. Isn't that just what the Bush administration is accused of? Fixing on a "truth" and then trying to drum up an ever-shifting cast of "facts" which support it?

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