Here’s a snippet from an Isikoff and Hosenball Newsweek update on the Niger-Uranium story and the FBI’s curiously unthorough investigation.
The FBI ended a two-and-a-half-year probe into the Niger uranium documents without resolving a key mystery: who forged papers used to bolster President Bush’s case for war in Iraq? The bureau announced that the documents, purportedly showing attempts by Saddam Hussein’s government to purchase yellowcake uranium, were concocted for financial gain rather than to influence U.S. foreign policy …
But a senior bureau official, requesting anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity, told NEWSWEEK the FBI never interviewed Rocco Martino, the Italian businessman who provided the documents to SISMI. Because there was no apparent violation of U.S. law, the bureau couldn’t compel him to talkâeven though he twice visited the United States last year to be interviewed by CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Is that really how it is? Please.
As those of you who are following my on-going series of installments on this story know, I spent time with Martino during both of those visits to the US. And this line about not being able to compel him to testify is a crock.
I don’t know what the Bureau’s authority would have been in such a case. But whether they had any power to compel Martino to talk is irrelevant because they didn’t even try to contact him while he was here.
When Martino came to the US the first time last year, it was in early summer. His identity was then still a secret. At least it hadn’t yet been published anywhere. So there’s no way to know whether the FBI investigators would have known that this sixty-something Italian man flying into New York was a central player in the forgeries drama.
The second time he came, however, was in early August. And by that time his name had been splashed across papers in several European countries, as well as in the Financial Times, which of course you can find on newsstands in most large US cities.
He flew to New York under his own name. And no FBI, law enforcement or intelligence officials made any attempt to contact him during the several days he remained in the US.
There have now been a number of press reports about the alleged FBI investigation into the forgeries story. The Bureau has stated publicly that they have closed the investigation and that they did so after determining that there were no political motives behind the hoax, only a desire to make money. They made that determination without figuring out who forged them or even talking to the guy at the center of the story. And the reasons they’re giving for not talking to him are, frankly, bogus.
None of that adds up.
Something’s wrong.
