WHO FORGED THE IRAQI URANIUM DOCUMENTS?

Vincent Cannistaro, former CIA head of counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National Security Council under Reagan, thinks he knows who fabricated the documents that showed that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium for a nuclear program:

Q: Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims — particularly the 16 words in the President’s State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ... it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE—I’m not sure which one.

A: It was SISME, yeah. ...

[D]uring the two-thousands when we’re talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn’t that anyone had a good source on Iraq—there weren’t any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

Q: Do we know who produced those documents? Because there’s some suspicion ...

A: I think I do, but I’d rather not speak about it right now, because I don’t think it’s a proven case ...

Q: If I said “Michael Ledeen” ?

A: You’d be very close . . .