"Yellow-cake" from Niger: the Italian angle
Nur al-cubicle, a gifted linguist as well as dedicated blogger, has a lengthy post up that translates for us non-Italian-speaking lowlifes the first half of a lengthy piece in La Repubbblica on the gang of slimeballs in Italy (and Luxemburg) who put together the two stories on the yellow-cake from Niger and the aluminum tubes that, between them, played such a big part in helping the Bush-Cheney administration jerk the world into war.
Fabulous work (once again), Nur!
Nur gives a full translation of the first half of the Repubblica piece. A quick version of the second half can be found here. And yes, it does indeed mention that veteran sleaze-bag from the neo-con, extremist pro-Israeli camp, Michael Ledeen.
Many, many thanks, Helena. I continue to refine the translation--haste produced a few oopsies.
Part II is here:
The Yellowcake Dossier was not the work of the CIA.
I'm working on the 3rd piece in the series by by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica which I'll post later today.
This is hilarious--posters over at TalkingPointsMemo call the phony dossier the half-baked frittata!
Here's a synopsis on the yellowcake forgeries:
The forgeries were originally put together in Italy, before 9-11, as a favor to a down-and-out Italian bozo of a double agent, who wanted to scam the French. Copies were filed away at SISMI (Italian Military Intelligence). After 9-11, the crude forgeries were brought out of the archives and dusted off in the effort to help Dubya build his bogus case for war after Berlusconi told his intelligence man to dig something sensational up.
SISMI sends a "postman" to Britain with the forgeries to pass them on to MI6. This is not straightforward--the "postman" poses as a vendor of stolen intelligence. Simultaneously, SISMI shows a second copy of the forgeries to the CIA Station Chief, Jeff Castelli, who writes a report and forwards it to Langley, where it gets buried.
The frustrated Italians are casting around to figure out how to get past the CIA, when the same "postman" sells the forgeries to Berlusconi's weekly news magazine, Panorama. [Ah, but is the sale "accidental"?] The editor thinks he's made an important intelligence find and forwards the forgeries to the US Embassy in Rome. But Panorama also prints the story and the forgeries are foisted on the CIA again--by way of the embassy and the story published in Berlusconi's magazine.
The forgeries are handed out in a National Security meeting, and the four CIA agents who attend then lock up the clumsy forgeries in a safe, where they hoped they'd be forgotten. So in the end, the Prez had no choice but to claim that the British held the crucial (koff) "evidence".
As much diffidence as I bear for the CIA, I have to say that the agency heroically tried to prevent the use of crude forgeries by genunine US agencies and institutions. As a result, the nefarious backchannel, "stovepipe", was the documentary conduit for war.
This adds perspective to the announcement of Patrick Fitzgerald. I’m piecing this whole thing together on my own and I ran across this article. Someone needs to publish a time-line that leads back to the forgeries. It’s important that the U.S. public, and indeed the world, know the truth. The truth is more important than the indictments, which are afterall, suject to a legal and not a moral standard.
I am surprised that so far no one has dared to utter who was the ultimate culprit who planted the story about the "yellow cake" from Niger and tried to pass it on as "Italian pasta". To paraphrase a wise French detective of time past I would say:"Cherchez la Mossad". For those who do not know or have short memory, Mossad planted similar false evidence that led to the bombing of Libya.
Then there's the theory that the fake documents were planted with the exact intention that they eventually be discoved as fakes. The purpose of this was to discredit the notion in the media that Niger was involved in selling nuclear materials at all. Then the other 3 countries who, along with Iraq, had been negotiating a purchase, could go back to their wheeling and dealing without the eyes of the world on them.