Finally, some good reporting on the Niger-Uranium-Italy story.
There are a slew of nice nuggets in this piece in the Times.
But this one may take the cake. This passage describes what happened at that closed-door parliamentary hearing in Rome today …
Committee members said they were shown documents defending General Pollari, including a copy of a classified letter from Robert S. Muller III, the director of the F.B.I., dated July 20, which praised Italy’s cooperation with the bureau.
In Washington, an official at the bureau confirmed the substance of the letter, whose contents were first reported Tuesday in the leftist newspaper L’Unità . The letter stated that Italy’s cooperation proved the bureau’s theory that the false documents were produced and disseminated by one or more people for personal profit, and ruled out the possibility that the Italian service had intended to influence American policy, the newspaper said.
As a result, the letter said, according to both the F.B.I. official and L’Unità , the bureau had closed its investigation into the origin of the documents.
The F.B.I. official declined to be identified by name.
So back in July, Director Mueller sent a letter to the Italian government providing them with a complete and definitive exoneration of any involvement with the forgeries. A year ago Newsweek reported that the US hadn’t received permission from the Italian government to interview Martino — that despite the fact that Martino travelled to the US twice in the summer of 2004.
Did the FBI interview Martino before making a conclusive judgment about the forgeries, who created them and why?
