America'Sedition has just published an original translation of the newest La Repubblica article on the Italian government's involvement in the Niger Forgeries.
One of may interesting new facts:
[T]hose mysterious aluminum tubes--the Americans thought they were parts for nuclear centrifuges--are in reality Italian artillery shells. The fact is, even in this instance, that the Italian government withheld information from the United States.
- The government denies any "direct or indirect involvement in the creation and transmission of a false dossier on Nigerian uranium. In fact, as the director of SISMI admits, two Italians created these false documents: the vice-chair of SISMI headquarters on Viale Pasteur in Rome and a former collaborator with the secret service created them with information obtained from Italian agents (again admitted by the director of SISMI). On October 15, 2001 (as confirmed by the United States senate) SISMI sent the CIA its first "report" including all of the information contained in the false dossier written by these two individuals. The director of the CIA has admitted before the U.S. Senate that his office had "been informed of documentary evidence on Niger by the Italian secret service at the end of 2001). We don't know how to define "direct" or "indirect", but we know what "conspiracy" means.
- For quite some time, the director of SISMI has suggested that it was the French government, against the war and anxious to see the Bush administration unmasked, that was the original source of the dossier. This is an assertion that has found no support for two years. On the contrary, according to the U.S. Senate, the French government warned Washington on March 4, 2003 that the dossier on uranium was false. There was no trace of an equivalent warning from the Italian government, even if the intelligence was known to have been inaccurate. Similarly, those mysterious aluminum tubes--the Americans thought they were parts for nuclear centrifuges--are in reality Italian artillery shells. The fact is, even in this instance, that the Italian government withheld information from the United States.
- On September 9, 2002, the director of SISMI, Nicolò Pollari, met Stephen Hadley, the #2 at the National Security Council (NSC). After the publication of La Repubblica's investigation, this meeting was confirmed by the Los Angeles Times and American Prospect by Frederick Jones, spokesman for the NSC. La Repubblica maintains that this secret meeting suggests that the Italian government had promised, along with the Bush administration, a parallel mission to "construct" reasons for justifying the invasion of Iraq--illegitimate work that supported the illegitimate creation of an alternative intelligence network ordered by Dick Cheney put into action by Paul Wolfowitz and yes, Stephen Hadley.
[Much more at AmericaSedition]