The Bush Machine's New Lie

It's a sign of how panicked the Bush Gang have become that they are choosing to cling desparately to what appears to be a fairly flimsy lie.

Following Bush's White House meeting with Silvio Berlusconi this week, the Italian PM said Bush had confirmed to him that the US did not receive any intelligence on Niger yellowcake from Italian agencies. Given that US intelligence sources have previously indicated that they did get such information from the Italians, that sounded more than a little strange.

White House spokesman Scott McLellan has twice dodged questions on the subject.

Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's secret service, or SIMSI, was at a meeting on Sept. 9, 2002, where Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, was also present. Nobody at the meeting remembers the subject of the Niger hoax documents coming up. Or, to put it another way, they all say that they cannot remember that topic being discussed. But nobody is prepared to say "No, it was not discussed".

Pollari recently asked for a special closed-door session of an Italian parliamentary committee to clear things up. That session lasted 4 hours and just terminated a few hours ago.

Commission member Senator Massimo Brutti emerged to tell the waiting press that Italian secret services had warned the United States in January 2003 that the NigerGate dossier was fake. But then he called the press back to say that he had mis-spoken and that actually the commission was not told that the Italians had warned the Americans:

Commission member Sen. Massimo Brutti told reporters after the closed-door session that that the commission was told that the Italian secret services warned the United States in January 2003 that the dossier was fake.

But later, the senator called The Associated Press to retract that statement. He said that the commission was not told that the Italians had warned the Americans.

Brutti said he was confused by the barrage of reporters' questions when the lawmakers emerged from the briefing. He said when he had the opportunity later to check his briefing notes, he realized he had misspoke.

Brutti wasn't the only one who seemed confused:

Asked about Mr Brutti's claim at a press conference later, the chairman of the committee, Enzo Bianco, initially confirmed it but then said he was unable to comment for reasons of national security.

Come se dice, fiasco? You really have to wonder what is going on.

As with the Libby indictment, this is a situation where the right questions can be very revealing. An Italian journalist, Elisabetta Burba, has said she originally got the forgeries from Rocco Martino, a known SIMSI contact. Here are a few good questions from Josh Marshall:

1. If Martino forged the documents with no involvement by SISMI personnel, how did SISMI end up distributing transcriptions of the forgeries to the United States and other countries?

2. The Italian government now says they warned the Americans that the documents were forgeries in January 2003. But what exactly did they warn them about? According to the current story, the documents that the Americans had went from Martino to Elisabetta Burba to the US Embassy in Rome to the State Department. When exactly did the Italian government come into the picture in that chain of custody and how did they know we had the documents?

What Italian intelligence had done is give us reports in 2001 and early 2002 that were summaries and transcriptions of the documents. Was it their own earlier reports that they told us were based on forgeries? And if so, when did they learn that the information they gave us was based on forgeries?

3. If it is certain that Martino is the forger, and that he was acting on his own account, why has no action ever been taken against him?

So where exactly did these forged Niger documents come from? Pollari says they never came from SIMSI.

Where did they go? ''Suffice to say they didn't come to me. They didn't come to the NSC,'' Hadley said, referring to the National Security Council.

As with the Libby case, the key to understanding all this lies with people's motivation. Why would Elisabetta Burba lie? Why would Berlusconi lie? Why would Pollari lie? Etc etc...

It seems to me that there is a lot of clever wordplay going on here, a lot of smoke and mirrors, and that Bush & Co are just playing for time. Like I said, that is surely a clear sign of just how panicked they now are.

P.S. As for Libby, Juan Cole thinks his "Not Guilty" plea is a bad sign for Bush, indicating Libby will finger others involved. I disagree. I think Libby is going to stretch the court case out as long as possible (it won't sit again till February, for starters) until his Presidential Pardon comes through.