Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: E ora ci si occupi dell'uranio fantasma

Magari anche qui da noi. Sinistra? Se ci sei...
Namib
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http://thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/Comment/JoshMarshall/102705.html
Congress keeps ducking Niger investigation
By Josh Marshall
As Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal probe grinds on, we shouldn't forget
that a congressional inquiry into the Valerie Plame outing and the
Niger uranium forgeries has never really started grinding at all.
So with that in mind, let's run down a short to-do list of things that
need doing if and when Washington ever decides to get serious about
getting to the bottom of this caper.
First, how about the investigation Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman
of the Senate intel panel, promised a year ago?
Chairman Roberts has been the great ally of the White House in
covering up the administration's bad acts on the WMD and
flawed-intelligence fronts.
He got the Democrats on his committee to agree to split up the
Senate's Iraqi WMD investigation -- investigate flawed intelligence
before the 2004 election, investigate political manipulation of
intelligence and other administration bad acts after the election.
Like Lucy with her football, once the election was safely past, Sen.
Roberts announced that his committee couldn't make time for the
promised second phase of the investigation.
"It's basically on the back burner," Roberts said about phase two of
the investigation in a speech in Washington last March.
"The bottom line is that [the White House] believed the intelligence,
and the intelligence was wrong."
Now more than a year has passed, and nothing.
No doubt Sen. Roberts believes his political fortunes are secure.
But the same doesn't apply to all of those on his committee.
Committee members Sens. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) and Olympia Snowe
(R-Maine) are both up for reelection next year.
If they chose to buck Roberts's stonewalling, they could force the
matter in concert with committee Democrats.
And what of the Democrats?
What are they doing to press the matter?
That brings us to another matter, the phantom FBI inquiry into who or
what groups were behind the Niger forgeries.
How about a real criminal inquiry?
Soon after the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed the Niger
papers as forgeries in February 2003, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
asked for an FBI investigation into the papers' origins.
Not long after, Sen. Roberts agreed to join him in the request.
It was on the basis of the subsequently launched FBI investigation
that Roberts's committee specifically ruled out any investigation of
the origins of the Niger forgeries or anything else about them before
they came into U.S. government hands in late 2002.
But as I wrote in my July 28 column on this page, that investigation
appears to have been cursory at best.
Key players received only scant interviews.
And the man at the center of the scam -- Rocco Martino, the Italian
"security consultant" who attempted to sell the forged documents to a
reporter in Rome in late 2002 -- was never interviewed at all.
FBI sources have told reporters that there's been no interview with
Martino because they haven't been able to secure the Italian
government's permission to speak to him.
But Martino twice traveled to the United States in the summer of 2004,
and no attempt was made to speak with him then either.
What it all amounts to is that the Senate intel panel passed up a
chance to investigate the Niger forgeries because the FBI was
allegedly already on the case.
But it seems the FBI never got on the case in any serious way --
something Sen. Roberts would at least have been in a position to know.
It looks very much like another Roberts bait-and-switch, like
splitting up the WMD probe so as to push all scrutiny of the White
House until after the 2004 election.
Last but not least, the Italian paper La Repubblica has been running a
series this week on the alleged complicity of the Italian intelligence
agency SISMI in the creation and distribution of the forgeries.
Repubblica has pointed the finger of blame at a man named Nicolo
Pollari, the head of SISMI and a close ally of Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi.
And they have also reported (and the National Security Council has
subsequently confirmed) that Pollari held a secret meeting in
Washington on Sept. 9, 2002, with then-Deputy National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley.
That's less than a month before the forgeries appeared in Rome and
right about the time the White House was fighting with the CIA over
whether President Bush could publicize the Niger uranium claim.
The Italian Parliament takes the charges seriously enough that Pollari
has been called to testify before the relevant oversight committee on
Nov. 3.
How about us?
When do we here in America get serious about getting to the bottom of
this hoax?

Nov. 3.
E allora?
-Stefano

 E allora?
wait and see.
com'era la storia che non scommettevi per paura di portarmi via i soldi?
ROTFL!!!!
-- 
bogie
--
Membro del Luigino Fans Club
*Non ho paura delle urla dei malvagi, ma del silenzio degli onesti*
Martin Luther King (credo)

sicurezza?
Perche' non interessava a nessuno un incontro del genere?
-Stefano