Italian ex-spy suspects security "parallel structure" behind "Nigergate" BBC Monitoring Europe - PoliticalSupplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring November 9, 2005 Wednesday
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
November 9, 2005 Wednesday
LENGTH: 1523 words
HEADLINE: Italian ex-spy suspects security "parallel structure" behind "Nigergate"
BODY:
Rocco Martino, who said he was an agent of the Italian Military Intelligence and Security Service (SISMI), has broken his silence on his role in the "Nigergate" affair. According to press allegations, SISMI played a role in the presentation of fake documents on Iraq's alleged intention to acquire nuclear materials from Niger. Martino's "clarifications" contradict SISMI Director Nicolo Pollari's testimony and adds to the conviction "that the SISMI knew of the dossier's existence and declined to tell allied intelligence about its phoniness", Il Giornale says. "SISMI tailed him [Martino], photographed him and eavesdropped on him" - the paper says in quotation marks. Martino also spoke about "a parallel structure, an internal SISMI faction" whose purpose was murky, as the paper puts it. "His tale will not gladden the hearts of the architects of the hoped-for, highly provisional, childish cover-up", the paper says. The following is the text of report, with commentary, on an Il Giornale interview with former SISMI informer Rocco Martino: "Fresh suspicion on SISMI emerges from Martino's self-defence", published by Italian newspaper La Repubblica on 6 November:
Rocco Martino, the conman at the bottom of the "Nigergate" affair [alleged Italian secret service role in the presentation of fake documents on Iraq's alleged intention to acquire nuclear materials from Niger], has broken cover, in a few sentences bringing down the house of cards that, in the somewhat ingenuous intentions of both government and opposition, was miraculously supposed to conceal the murky business.
"My role in the episode is really small. It is true that I was working for the French. But I was also working for SISMI [(Italian) Military Intelligence and Security Service], Rocco Martino said. Just two days ago, Gianni Letta [prime ministerial undersecretary] (who wields political authority over Italian intelligence) and Nicolo Pollari (SISMI director) described him as the - sole - source behind the phoney dossier and the "postman" who had sent the cock-and-bull story around the world. Rocco Martino, with his wretched spy's life made up of scams that came to a sticky end, emerges from the government's account as a wizard of disinformation so smart that he pulled the wool over the eyes of the Americans in the CIA, the British in MI6, and the French in the DGSE [Foreign Security Headquarters], though not the SISMI, Pollari swears, which knew nothing at all about him.
Even without going into the bulk of the "Nigergate" story, it is really hard to believe such a yarn, and yet - despite the incongruencies, silences and omissions - the Parliamentary Supervisory Committee on the Intelligence Services [COPACO] agreed last Thursday [3 November] (with the sole exception of Giuseppe Caldarola) to swallow the unpalatable brew, pronouncing the SISMI's reconstruction "exhaustive" and the SISMI's and the government's conduct "correct". It was only to be expected that Rocco Martino should be unwilling to carry the cross on his own.
He has broken his silence and entrusted to Il Giornale a number of clarifications that contradict Nicolo Pollari's testimony, reopen the question of who cobbled the forgery together, and impart fresh thrust to the conviction that the SISMI knew of the dossier's existence and declined to tell allied intelligence about its phoniness, vouching, on the contrary, for its authenticity.
The SISMI director has always maintained that it was Rocco Martino who begged a friend of his, SISMI Colonel Antonio Nucero, for help, and that the generous colonel put him in touch with a SISMI source ("the lady") at the Niger Embassy. Rocco Martino's version of events was different. "I was a SISMI informer," he recounted. "My service contact was Colonel Antonio Nucera. One day, Nucera called me and said: 'Would you be interested in meeting a source who works at an embassy?'" Of course, Rocco Martino had no objection. He entered into contact with "the lady." They worked profitably together. They filched cipher books, messages, and 17 letters that Martino handed over to the DGSE agents (who were paying him a regular salary). This was prior to 11 September, when the Italian service was headed by Admiral Battelli and the centre-left was in government.
However, it was not until after the attack on the towers and the Pentagon that the phoney dossier took on deadly importance. Martino, too, was aware that, with the United States anxious for regime change in Baghdad, the papers in question had become as valuable as a blank check. He set to work, spreading the dossier about.
On whose behalf? If Il Giornale is right, SISMI missed not a move of Martino's. "From 1999 to the summer of 2004," the con man had "30 or so contacts with his (DGSE) minder, whose logistics base was at 65, Rue Ducale in Brussels": "SISMI tailed him, photographed him, and eavesdropped on him. Everything he handled was duplicated, microfilmed, and analysed." "Everything," of course, but never the phoney "Nigergate" dossier, sad to say.
Who, in Martino's shoes, would not feel used? By the French? "Maybe," Martino said, but that did not strike him as the real question: "I was used by the person who gave me the stuff ("the lady"), who was linked in some way to a SISMI guy (Colonel Nucera)." However, the "feeling" the con man had was that "Pollari had nothing to do with it."
Rocco Martino wondered who had put the documents in question together. "I did not put that stuff together," he said. "I did not even know where Niger was. What happened upstream and downstream from me I do not know."
The man suspected everyone. Could Antonio Nucero, the SISMI colonel, have put them together? "It was probably not he who put the forgery together, but I no longer trust anybody at this stage." Above all, he did not trust "a parallel structure, an internal SISMI faction." Rocco Martino did not say what structure, to whom it reported, or its purpose. He was just eager to repeat that "it is true, I was working for the French, and yet I was also working for the SISMI. Was I a double agent? All right, yes, it is true: double, triple, quadruple. It is all true. But at a particular juncture my Italian service contact told me: I can offer you someone who can help you, a source doing it out of a desire to earn more."
To recap, Rocco Martino was a SISMI informer. A SISMI colonel offered to put him in touch with a SISMI "source". The "source" handed him a telex and 17 forged letters: There was also a "memorandum of understanding" and an "agreement" that were supposed to provide documentary evidence to the effect that Saddam [Husayn] was getting his hands on 500 tonnes of uranium ore (yellowcake).
Rocco Martino, who was relentlessly tailed by the SISMI for five years, did not put the dossier together himself (indeed, had he done so, the SISMI, which was shadowing him, would have blown his cover as soon as the scandal broke). So who wrapped up the "package"? Martino did not know. All he knew was that his contacts belonged to the SISMI and that there was a "structure" within the SISMI whose purpose was murky.
The tale told to Il Giornale is interesting. It provides more than one confirmation of the La Repubblica report and reveals a detail or two that, in time, may prove crucial. Above all, however, it prevents the dust from vanishing under the carpet at the wave of a magic wand. Rocco Martino is the conman he is, and yet his tale will not gladden the hearts of the architects of the hoped-for, highly provisional, childish cover-up. The most prominent figures among them must necessarily be named.
Franco Ionta is the Rome prosecutor who is in charge of the probe into the phoney dossier. He questioned Rocco Martino in half an hour, as if he lacked the curiosity, the questions, and the will to do so. Quick as a flash, he filed for the case to be dropped, wreathing it in the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office fog. Palazzo Chigi [Italian prime minister's office] could (should) have demanded a judicial investigation on political and military espionage charges (Article 257 of the Criminal Code), but it lifted not a finger.
SISMI should, given the direct involvement of two pawns (a colonel and an informer) on its payroll, at least have set an internal inquiry in motion, not least to find out how a man can be shadowed, photographed, and eavesdropped on and everything he touches duplicated without it being noticed that what he is handling and distributing is a phoney dossier that is driving the whole Western intelligence community crazy.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation , some of whose high-ranking officers now claim to have had their work obstructed by the Italian authorities, although it is a fact that Rocco Martino travelled to the United States on two occasions without being questioned. The COPACO, or Parliamentary Supervisory Committee on the Intelligence Services, brought the curtain down on the case in a single session with a rash "political ruling", whereas the tale pieced together by the La Repubblica probe still seems to be in its early stages.
Source: La Repubblica, Rome, in Italian 6 Nov 05 pp 10-11
LOAD-DATE: November 9, 2005