Free Republic

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the...

WASHINGTON — The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion. The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war — and they led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger to investigate whether Iraq had sought the materials there. The ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, found little evidence to support such a claim, and the documents...

From the LA Times: WASHINGTON — The FBI has reopened an inquiry into one of the most intriguing aspects of the pre-Iraq war intelligence fiasco: how the Bush administration came to rely on forged documents linking Iraq to nuclear weapons materials as part of its justification for the invasion. The documents inspired intense U.S. interest in the buildup to the war — and they led the CIA to send a former ambassador to the African nation of Niger to investigate whether Iraq had sought the materials there. The ambassador, Joseph C. Wilson IV, found little evidence to support such a...

NIGERGATE: A FRENCH 007 ACCUSES THE CIA AND SISMI Il Giornale’s Marco Chiocci takes a look at the accusations made by the disgraced ex DGSE agent, Alain Chouet, in yesterdays Repubblica. The ex Spy master from Paris got his facts, faces and dates completely wrong. It’s interesting to see how a French socialist jumps at the opportunity to accuse the USA of deception. Unfortunately for Chouet the following article explains and exposes his and the Repubblica’s lies one by one. ARTICLE BEGINS -- A FRENCH 007 ACCUSES THE CIA AND SISMI WITHOUT ANY PROOF By GIAN MARCO CHIOCCI AND MARIO...

Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies Here follows an interesting article from the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. I make no comment at all other than ‘read it’. Very soon, under the title “The Rockefeller Connection”, I will post something revealing, something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned .. Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies Il GIORNALE 13 November 2005 By Gian Marco Chiocci and Mario Sechi October 9 2002, Rome. Elisabetta Burba, journalist with Panorama magazine, crosses Via Veneto. At the American Embassy someone is waiting...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

ROME - A journalist for an Italian news magazine has come forward, saying it was she who turned over to U.S. diplomats some documents purportedly showing that Iraq (news - web sites) wanted to buy uranium from Niger. The documents turned out to be forgeries. In an interview published Saturday, Corriere della Sera, a leading Italian daily, quoted Elisabetta Burba as saying her source "in the past proved to be reliable." The journalist, who writes for the weekly Panorama, refused to reveal her source.