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Rome -- After growing a mustache, he has now also grown a beard, and a thick one at that, but it is not phony like the ones that stereotype secret agents are alleged to sport. "Giacomo o' spione" ("James the spy" in southern Italian dialect) is the name favored by newspapers engaged in telling the spy story (previous two words in English in original) in which he is the leading player in connection with a hoax dossier on alleged uranium trafficking between Niger and Iraq. After being questioned by Assistant Public Prosecutor Franco Ionta, he agreed to make a confession to Il Giornale in a downtown bar. Almost as though he were organizing an (illegal) rave party (previous two words in English in original), 66-year-old Rocco Martino from Tropea, a "free-lance intelligence" (previous three words in English in original) agent as he likes to style himself, constantly shifted the venue of our rendez-vous, in keeping with his need to put people off the scent after a month of dangerous living around the world, in his capacity as a much-wanted key player in a mystery story involving the 007's of Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and which is partly responsible for the US military operation in Iraq.

(Martino) I did not know that it was a hoax, and there is proof of what I say. I have been engaged in intelligence (previous word in English in original) for many years, offering my cooperation to various intelligence services including the French, about whom a great deal has been said and about whom we will be talking later on. The hoax began one day when a Nigerian (as published) Embassy source who had proven to be reliable on previous occasions and who had contacts also with the collaborator of a SISMI (Intelligence and Military Security Service) aide, passed on to me a whole lot of information. It is true that that information included some references to a uranium traffic between Niger and Iraq. What did I do at that juncture? I passed it on to the French secret service, with which I am in touch and by which I was remunerated. I passed it on also to Panorama, which assessed it in order to study it, dispatching a reporter to Niger and turning the file over to the US Embassy in Rome for cross-checking.

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(Martino) The female journalist told me that the trip to Niger had not produced any real confirmation, and also the French confirmed to me that the reports I had passed on to them were groundless. But at that juncture the beans had been spilled. The file was circulating, the reports contained in it were going around the world, and Bush and Blair were talking about those documents, albeit without actually mentioning them. I turned the television on and I did not believe my ears...

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(Martino) I reached a preliminary agreement with the Sunday Times for interview that was never conducted. We talked about this and that, including the SISMI, but only to say that my source on the uranium traffic was the same as the source of an Italian intelligence service aide. As far as I know, the SISMI has nothing to do with it. I never, and I repeat never, said that Forte Braschi (SISMI's Rome headquarters) was involved, and certainly not that the Italian Government was involved.

The truth is that I have been duped, manipulated, used. I would like to figure out why they chose me; I do have some idea, but without any evidence one gets nowhere.