Back to the Niger forgeries

Remember the forged Niger "yellowcake" documents? They're kind of important, since, y'know, they helped to ignite the war and all that.

In September of 2004, just as people began to make serious inquiries into the origin of these fakes, and just as the truth started to come out, a conservative Italian writer named Renato Farina (a director of the right-wing journal Libero) published a piece which claimed to finger the real culprit: France.

And what about our Rocco Martino? He’s in America. It was he who took the French the first authentic documents regarding Niger to the French in 1999. They got greedy. In the autumn of 2000 he bought on their commission the false ones.

The right-wingers loved this claim -- in fact, the above translation comes from a Free Republic site.

Farina's piece is disinformation. Martino, a shady fellow who makes his living selling bits of intel detritus to various spook-shops, first tried to pass off the decidedly less-than-authentic docs to the French. They didn't believe 'em. Later, various neocons and SISMI-related individuals in Italy -- this is where the name "Michael Ledeen" usually gets a mention, although he denies any connection -- decided to use the same docs to buttress the U.S. case for war. (SISMI, as you know, is Italy's CIA.)

The documents were obvious frauds, but the conspirators didn't care. They probably felt that after an easy win in Iraq, no-one would look into the origins of the conflict. After America won the Spanish-American war, only historians asked hard questions about what happened to the Maine.

We now know (thanks in part to Laura Rozen and eriposte of the Left Coaster) that Renato Farina, the guy who wrote the "blame France" disinfo piece, was a SISMI agent all along, working under journalistic cover. Although Libero is a small rag, Farina is nevertheless described as a Berlusconi "insider."

According to Renato Farina, a Berlusconi insider and deputy editor of the conservative daily Libero, the two leaders [Bush and Berlusoni] sometimes trade favorite passages from the Bible. "Berlusconi is definitely a man of faith," Farina says. What's missing, however, is what Farina called "a sense of personal sin." "I told him once that God will forgive many things for a single act of mercy, and Berlusconi shot back: 'I don't need to be forgiven for anything. All I've ever done is work hard.'"

Good lord, does that arrogant crap sound like Berlusconi or what? eriposte has more:

Also discovered were receipts of payments made to a right-wing "reporter" Renato Farina (of the small Libero newspaper) allegedly to enlist Farina's "services" as a spy against Spataro and as a paid propagandist to propagate SISMI's denials on their involvement in the CIA rendition of Abu Omar. It appears SISMI head Nicolo Pollari himself was part of this latter scheme.

Spataro is the magistrate investigating the CIA operatives who kidnapped cleric Abu Omar in Italy. Farina acquired information from him under the pretext of an interview.

Farina appears to have lied not only to his readers, but to the court investigating the Abu Omar affair. In this country, we use the term "perjury" to describe that sort of thing; I don't know the Italian word for it.

So what lessons do we draw from this?

1. It's time to take stock: How many "Farinas" do we have here in America? For example, should we cast a suspicious eye at the Freepers who translated and publicized his work?

2. Note the clever design of this disinformation campaign. In his "blame France" piece, Farina named Rocco Martino, who really was involved. And Martino really did bring Niger docs to the French. Good disinformation is not lying; it is the cunning admixture of fact and fiction.

"Farina" means flour, which is appropos, since he seems to have been in it for the bread. "Birch" is also a good nickname, considering his politics (although few Italians would know about the JBS). Believe it or not, this appalling fabricator actually poses as a Christian.

At the end of his disinfo masterwork, Farina had the audacity to ask: "And the French? They should reply to two little questions. What use did they make of the documents in the autumn of 2000 and in october 2002? And: aren’t they ashamed?"

As though France wanted this war! Sorry, Birchie -- it was your pals, Berlusconi and Bush, who made bloody use of that forgery. Aren't you ashamed?