La Repubblica's Scoop, Confirmed (Hadley met with Italy intel).

[rodeodance]

edited, i meant hadley to be in the subject line. sorry.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=10506

> La Repubblica's Scoop, Confirmed
> By Laura Rozen

>
> Tuesday 25 October 2005
>
> Italy's intelligence chief met with Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley just a month before the Niger forgeries first surfaced.
>

> The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt later turned out to be crude forgeries, created on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents - and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.
>
> In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as Sismi, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. Sismi had reported to the CIA on October 15, 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax.
>
> Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then - Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones confirmed the meeting to the Prospect on Tuesday.
>
> Pollari told the newspaper that since 2001, when he became Sismi's director, the only member of the US administration he has met officially is his former CIA counterpart George Tenet. But the Italian newspaper quotes a high-ranking Italian Sismi source asserting a meeting with Hadley. La Repubblica also quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."

[speedoo]

1. Libby or Hadley?

I think you need to edit your post headline.

[rodeodance]

4. thanks, I edited the subject line. my mind is buzzing today.

[RedEarth]

2. Very interesting ... hopefully we will find out who forged the documents

...sounds like Stephen Hadley might have some inside knowlege.

[rodeodance]

5. "That direct White House channel" is the most damaging!!(for the WH).

....The Sismi chief's previously undisclosed meeting with Hadley, who was promoted earlier this year to national security adviser, occurred one month before a murky series of events culminated in the US government obtaining copies of the Niger forgeries.

The forged documents were cabled from the US embassy in Rome to Washington after being delivered to embassy officials by Elisabetta Burba, a reporter for Panorama. She had received the papers from an Italian middleman named Rocco Martino. Burba never wrote a story about those documents. Instead her editor, Berlusconi favorite Carlo Rossella, ordered her to bring them immediately to the US embassy.

Although Sismi's involvement in promoting the Niger yellowcake tale to US and British intelligence has been previously reported, the series in La Repubblica includes many new details, including the name of a specific Sismi officer, Antonio Nucera, who helped to set the Niger forgeries hoax in motion.

What may be most significant to American observers, however, is the newspaper's allegation that the Italians sent the bogus intelligence about Niger and Iraq not only through traditional allied channels such as the CIA, but seemingly directly into the White House. That direct White House channel amplifies questions about a now-infamous 16-word reference to the Niger uranium in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address - which remained in the speech despite warnings from the CIA and the State Department that the allegation was not substantiated.

[rateyes]

3. The article doesn't mention Libby...

does mention Hadley.

[rodeodance]

6. it is Hadley. and as the article says--another piece to this puzz.e

..News of the secret meeting between the Italian Sismi chief and the White House deputy national security adviser - during the period when the White House was assembling its flawed case for war - provides an important new piece of that puzzle.

[rodeodance]

7. also see this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x168667

[Metta]

8. The fat is in the fire. Let's see if Congress buries it alsongside DSM.

Lack of moral compass rides again.