Sunday, April 10, 2005
Who Forged the Niger Documents?
From Ian Masters' interview with former CIA head of counterterrorism operations under Ronald Reagan, Vincent Cannistaro:
Masters: Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ... it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE—I’m not sure which one.
Cannistaro: It was SISME, yeah. ...
[D]uring the two-thousands when we’re talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn’t that anyone had a good source on Iraq—there weren’t any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.
Masters: Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion ...
Cannistaro: I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case ...
Masters: If I said “Michael Ledeen” ?
Cannistaro: You’d be very close . . .
