Wayne Madsen Report

October 26, 2005 -- More details are emerging from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica concerning the backdooring of forged Niger documents into the White House and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans by a special cell operating inside the Italian intelligence agency SISMI. The essential element of the Italian revelations is that Nicolo Pollari, the head of SISMI, went around CIA Director George Tenet to establish a personal liaison with then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Douglas Feith, Pentagon and National Security Council consultant Michael Ledeen, and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Pollari bypassed his own SISMI chief in Washington, Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo, an expert on WMD proliferation, to ensure forged Niger documents and other tainted intelligence on Iraqi weapons went directly to Rice and Ledeen through the Italian ambassador to Washington, Gianni Castellaneta, a Pollari loyalist. During the summer of 2002, Castellaneta set up a meeting between Pollari and Rice, a meeting at which phony intelligence on Iraqi WMDs was allegedly transmitted by the Italian official.

Grignolo had excellent relations with the CIA's Deputy Director for Operations James Pavitt (who was Valerie Plame Wilson's ultimate boss). The outing of Plame, Brewster Jennings & Associates, and the emaciation of the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division by Porter Goss loyalists is seen by intelligence officials in Washington and Rome as a blatant attempt to expose and ruin an untainted source of intelligence on WMD proliferation, thereby setting the stage for more phony WMD intelligence "finds" and a possible nuclear terrorism event.