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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
EXCLUSIVE
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In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush declared the infamous sixteen words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The claim was central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as a basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger. But there was one problem: the document was a fake. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we speak with the authors of two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the Niger story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” [includes rush transcript - partial]
It was one of the key justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
- President Bush: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Bush’s smoking gun evidence would quickly unravel and ignite a political firestorm that reached the highest levels of the US government. The story behind the forged document stretches from Italy to Niger to Iraq and deep into the corridors of the US intelligence community and the White House itself. The document played a key role in the chain of events that led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the CIA leak case.
And its effect continues to reverberate today. Congressmember Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently formally requested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before a committee hearing next week regarding the false Iraq-Niger claims.
Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive: two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” He is an investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome, and he joins us in our firehouse studio. Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” He joins us from Washington, D.C.
- Peter Eisner. Veteran foreign correspondent. He is currently an editor at the Washington Post. He is co-author of “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.”
- Carlo Bonini. Investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome. He is co-author of “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.”
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
AMY GOODMAN: It was one of the key justifications for the US invasion of Iraq.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush made the statement in his January 2003 State of the Union address. Those sixteen words were central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as the basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq's purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger.
But there was one problem: the document was fake.
Bush’s smoking gun evidence would quickly unravel and ignite a political firestorm that reached the highest levels of the US government. The story behind the forged document stretches from Italy to Niger to Iraq and deep into the corridors of the US intelligence community and the White House itself. The document played a key role in the chain of events that led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the CIA leak case.
And its effect continues to reverberate today. Congressmember Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently formally requested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before a committee hearing next week regarding the false Iraq-Niger claims.
Today, in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the story. His new book is called Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror. He is an investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome. He joins us in our firehouse studio. Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent. He’s currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is called The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq. He joins us from Washington, D.C. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!
I want to begin with Carlo Bonini. When did you first learn about this story?
CARLO BONINI: It was summer 2003, where there had been at the time few -- I mean, few reports from US that probably the smoking gun regarding the weapons of mass destruction was some way fabricated in Italy. And all of the sudden in the summer of 2003, we got these documents, these fake documents, and we found --
AMY GOODMAN: How did you get these fake documents?
CARLO BONINI: Well, a search gave us these documents. We had the chance to see how the documents were badly faked. And the most surprisingly thing was that we had the chance to identify the person who had a main role in faking the documents. And the name of this guy was Rocko Martino, a former Italian SISMI agent.
AMY GOODMAN: SISMI?
CARLO BONINI: SISMI is the Italian CIA. It’s the secret service, the counterintelligence service. And Rocco Martino made his way, and his documents made their way to the White House and to the sixteen words.
AMY GOODMAN: How? First, did you know him before?
CARLO BONINI: No. No. This guy came out of the blue. I mean, at least we never -- I mean, we didn't know the existence of him. But it was quite clear after a while that Rocco Martino didn't act by himself. I mean, the Italian job was not only by him. Rocco Martino could count on the complicity of the Italian SISMI. It was thanks to the Italian SISMI that at the beginning the content of the fake documents could be shared with the CIA, and it was because of Rocco Martino’s old friendship with an Italian reporter that the documents in the fall 2002 could be shipped to US through the US embassy in Rome.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Eisner, can you take it from there? And also place this in the context of when this happened in relation to President Bush uttering those sixteen words.
PETER EISNER: Well, in fact, Amy, the CIA and other members of the intelligence community had heard from SISMI in the first few days after 9/11, which was saying that there was information that they didn't specify about possible uranium purchases or attempts to buy uranium in Niger, and the CIA solicited more information from SISMI. And by early 2002, they actually had a version of one document saying that this had taken place.
Many parts of the CIA, from the outset, as early as September and October of 2001, simply did not believe that Iraq, for various reasons, was attempting to buy uranium or, in fact, trying to restart its nuclear program -- didn't need to buy uranium in Niger, because it already had uranium. Second of all, SISMI was not providing the source. It was not saying how it was getting the information. And third of all, they tended to doubt SISMI, in any case, because it's got a reliability problem among Western intelligence agencies. So, well before, more than a year before President Bush's State of the Union message, it was gravely doubted by key members of the intelligence community that it could have been that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium.
AMY GOODMAN: Would you agree, Carlo Bonini, with this assessment of SISMI having a problem with credibility in Western intelligence?
CARLO BONINI: I do agree. I do agree, and I think that the Nigergate story, as well as other stories, can prove it. Also, what Peter was saying, the problem with SISMI was that also -- I mean, along this complicated story called Nigergate, SISMI played a very untrusty role. We heard before that Bush relied on British intelligence. The problem is that it was the same hand feeding different mouths. I mean, Rocco Martino was feeding the British, was feeding the Americans, was feeding the French. That is the problem. I mean, the SISMI didn't ring the bell when it was the time to ring the bell. SISMI simply let the story go ’til January 2003, when it was too late.
AMY GOODMAN: Peter Eisner, talk more about who Rocco Martino was.
PETER EISNER: Rocco Martino was a failed former policeman, Italian policeman, a sometimes agent -- and that is, outside the house of SISMI -- who sometimes was able to provide nuggets of information to journalists and certainly was also working as a freelance for other intelligence agencies, even the French, or working for or providing them information for a stipend.
Rocco Martino approached a journalist named Elisabetta Burba at the Milan news magazine Panorama on October 7, 2002, and said he had some great material, a hot tip about Iraq and uranium, if she was interested. And that was how he first surfaced in this story. Elisabetta Burba and others at her magazine had heard of Martino before. They had gotten information from him before. They had paid him before. And she took a look at his documents, had immediate doubts, brought it into her editors, and started investigating.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. When we come back, her response when President Bush gave that State of the Union address in 2003 and talked about Saddam Hussein trying to get uranium from Niger. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We'll be back with these two reporters who have both documented these stories in two explosive books: Peter Eisner’s The Italian Letter, Carlo Bonini’s The Collusion. Stay with us.
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