"Nigergate, French spymaster debunks Sismi version"

Here is an english translation from french. http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2005/12/1/12030/8816#2

Paris - The Direction Générale de la Sécurité extériéure (Dgse) is the French counter-espionage abroad. Alain Chouet was Vice-Director. Today he is enjoying his retirement in the country but - up to the summer 2002 - he was the man who handled the `Nigergate' on behalf of Paris. He says: "I know what happened. When it happened. How it happened. I guided the French intelligence in this affair. I made the decisions. I communicated and exchanged with the Americans all information concerning this case. At the time I was head of the Service de rensignment de sécurité, the Security and Intelligence Department, which is responsible for anti-terrorism, counter-intelligence abroad and counter-proliferation of mass destruction weapons".

Alain Chouet's story modifies the reconstruction of the affair given by the government and Sismi to Parliament in four main points.

The link is in Italian. FRom babel---

The story of Alain Chouet corrects in four essential points the reconstruction of the transaction offered to the Parliament from the government and the Sismi.

1) Rocco Martino, the vendifumo that it scatters makes documents, did not work for the Dgse as repeatedly (also to Republic) has reported the director of the Sismi, Nicolò Pollari.

2) the CIA is in possession at least a part of documents is made (distributed from Rocco Martino) before does not give the October of 2002, when they come delivered to the embassy American of Rome fromPanorama, but from four months, in summer.

3) Contrarily to how much Pollari and Letta (political authority of the intelligence) has reported, is not the French to transmit documents is made to Washington, but, to the contrary, they are the Americans who transmit those documents to the French and ask to verify of the reliability: the French verify and, sin from the July 2002, of it they denounce the infondatezza.

4) Rocco Martino, pedinato and photographed from the Sismi, enters in contact with the French single in the summer of 2002. A story of Alain Chouet reveals therefore rough the cosmesi of the truth, says therefore, of our government. It is hour of dargli the word. "my personal relationships with the Italians always have been optimal. For this still more they are astonished. Continuous to ask to me because the Sismi supports that behind this history we are. You story as the things have gone. It only landed to me to facts that I know personally ".

Alain Chouet holds to put in the first place in order given and protagonists. Substantial correction: the prologo of the "Nigergate" goes in scene in the summer of 2001, before the 11 september, at the hands of the Cia. "To the beginning of the summer of 2001, the Cia turns us a information as well as generic alarming how much. "the Iraq - Langley perceives - would be trying to acquire uranio from a Country African".

The Americans before add that to insospettirli it has been a travel, at least two years, of the ambassador iracheno near the Sede Saint in the Central African countries. The Americans, like praxis, do not reveal which it is the source of their information. Washington does not speak about Niger, but generically about Africa. The United States know that leaf in the former colonies does not move Africans francofone to ours insaputa. Above all in the field of the controproliferazione. For we, of the rest, that information, for how much generic one, is not a information like the others.

From Gulf War (1991) in then, France cannot allow itself that someone the accusations to underrate the programs of rearmament of Saddam Hussein. Therefore, when the Americans move in summer 2001, I tuck myself endured the sleeves. Assignment my men to put itself to the job in Africa. In Niger, obviously, but also in Namibia (you will understand soon because). The outcomes are of the all denied ones to you. To the end of August 2001, the allerta it is extinguished. After the attack to the Towers, between the september the 2001 and spring of the successive year, that information on the uranio nigerino returns to be an indistinct and insignificant noise of bottom. Then something happens... ".

For the Sismi this happens. The 21 september 2001, Gianfranco admiral Boats (predecessore of Pollari) sendes a cable to Langley with news of a happened transfer "in the ' 99 of staff iracheno in Niger during which they had been made also questions on the impoverito production of uranio in the two mines of the Country and on the modalities of export of that material". 15 October of that year insedia to the Sismi Nicolò Pollari. 18 October, with a letter of an average page and, Pollari explains to the Cia that "the news on the Niger arrives from a reliable source, even if it is not degree to estimate of the quality".

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