Today, author Carlo Bonini will be at FDL to discuss his book Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror
On January 2, 2001, the Niger embassy in Rome was robbed. Little was missing-a wristwatch, perfume, embassy stationery, and a stamp bearing the official seal of Niger.
The outcome of the petty burglary would have catastrophic implications.
The stolen stationery and stamps were used to create forged documents claiming Iraq sought to purchase uranium for nuclear weapons. The Italian military intelligence service, SISMI, passed the documents to the White House, where they were cited by President Bush in his State of the Union speech as reason to go to war with Iraq.
Reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe D'Avanzo broke the story, and in Collusion, they take it even further.
Traveling throughout Europe and America, they uncover that the conspiracy behind "Nigergate" stretches beyond the CIA and SISMI to include the cooperation of numerous national intelligence agencies, and "black propaganda" specialists like Ahmad Chalabi, in an all-out manipulation of the war on terror.
They also uncover the startling weaknesses of such spycraft-numerous bunglings, outrageous expense accounts, mistaken abductions, and absurd misinterpretations of evidence.
The discussion begins at 2:00pm Pacific / 5:00pm Eastern at FireDogLake.