Italian lawmaker backtracking on his previous statement. According to this latest Reuters report on Pollari's appearance before the Italian parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence services today, committee member Sen. Massimo Brutti's original contention that Italy warned the US government in January 2003 that the basis of the Niger yellowcakes was false, has become murkier. Reuters reports:

Italy's spy chief Nicolo Pollari firmly denied on Thursday passing bogus documents to the United States before the Iraq invasion that purported to show Baghdad had sought uranium from Niger.

But it was not clear whether his Sismi military intelligence agency had warned allies about the forgeries.

Lawmakers emerging from the closed-door parliamentary session with Pollari said that the so-called Niger dossier was being peddled by an ex-Sismi collaborator, who has been investigated by Italian magistrates.

Sen. Massimo Brutti initially told reporters that Sismi had warned the United States about the bogus documents around the same time as U.S. President George W. Bush gave his 2003 State of the Union address, making the case for war.

"At around that time, they (Sismi) said that the dossier did not correspond to the truth," Brutti said. He later backtracked, telling Reuters that since Sismi never had the documents, it could not comment on their merit.

Bush had mentioned in his speech that Iraq had sought African uranium, but he cited British intelligence -- not Italian -- as the source of his information.

Brutti said he believed that Britain had another source for its intelligence, beyond the Niger documents.

The head of the parliamentary oversight committee, Enzo Bianco, declined to comment on the issue. An assistant said he would need to first review a transcript of the 5-hour-long testimony to see whether Sismi had warned allies...

So, did Sismi warn the US government, or not? Why the confusion over whether it happened or not? And if it did, when, and who specifically in the US government was alerted?

And when are the Brits going to explain what their other sources were, or confess they didn't have them?

Update: An Italian friend suggests that what should have been asked of Pollari is, if Sismi had enough information to tell the IAEA in January 2003 that the Niger docs were forgeries, then presumably, it had the forgeries. When, how and from where did Sismi get the fake documents?

And as the information Sismi had been sending to the CIA and other allied intelligence services since October 2001 was actual transcriptions of what turned out to be the forgeries, then how early did Sismi get them? He suggests this may explain why Sen. Brutti backtracked from his earlier statement.

Update II: I met with Sen. Brutti when I was on one of my reporting trips to Italy last year, and he is pretty well respected in Italy among people I talked to. What explains the passivity of Italian opposition party members like Brutti, an old leftist, to getting to the bottom of any Italian role in the Niger yellowcake issue? Italian friends suggest that Sismi is one of the most highly politicized intelligence agencies anywhere, and Italian politicians fear if provoked it could intervene, for instance, in upcoming elections to harm perceived political enemies. It sounds a bit paranoid and outlandish, but who knows, the push-back from Sismi has been a bit intense on this particular story.

Posted by Laura at November 3, 2005 05:16 PM