Synopses & Reviews
The so-called Italian letter is a package of allegedly forged documents that seem to be based on articles stolen from the Nigerian embassy in Rome in 2001. The document was nonetheless adopted by the Bush administration as a basis for going to war with Iraq, even though the letter has been widely dismissed by a variety of key players in the U.S. Intelligence Community years before President Bush cited it in his 2003 State of the Union speech.
Eiser, a Washington Post editor, and Royce, a legendary investigative reporter in Washington, have produced a work that takes readers from Italy, to Niger, to Iraq, and into the Washington offices of the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and inside the White House itself, to show that the document was a forgery. They suggest that this was not a case of finding out too late that certain intelligence information was faulty, but rather that the Bush administration used information it knew to be false to convince the Congress and the American public that Saddam Hussein was seeking materials to make a nuclear bomb. While news accounts and several books have exposed bits and pieces of this effort, this is the first book to offer a comprehensive, detailed account, relying on sources within the American Intelligence Community along with documents and human sources from all over the world, many of them exposed for the first time.
Key players in a true-life drama that continues to unfold including Scooter Libby, Joseph Wilson, Dick Cheney, George Tenet, and even George W. Bush, occupy this stage with such lesser known figures as Italian journalist Elisabetta Burba and an intelligence freelancer named Rocca Martino.
Review
"The best account so far of one of the enduring mysteries of the Bush White House and its race to sell the Iraq war to the American public." -Seymour Hersh, author of Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib The Italian Letter "conveys…the duplicity, subterfuge, propaganda, and outright lies that helped sell many Americans on the need to invade Iraq. Read the book and weep for our democracy."-Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell
Synopsis
Like Barbara Tuchmans 1958 classic,
The Zimmerman Telegram, about the decoded German wire that drew the United States into WWI, this explosive account by two award-winning investigative journalists traces the road to war in Iraq by following the intrigue surrounding the forged intelligence document offered as proof that the African country of Niger was prepared to supply Saddam Hussein with uranium for nuclear weapons. As the next presidential election approaches and frustration over the continuing deaths in Iraq continues to mount, this page-turning narrative—now available in paperback—provides fresh insights for a nation hungry for greater understanding of the Iraq War and the letter that altered the course of contemporary history.
About the Author
PETER EISNER is deputy foreign editor at the
Washington Post. The
Posts coverage of the 2004 Asian Tsunami, which he coordinated, won an award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. Also author of
The Freedom Line, a winner of the 2004 Christopher Award, Eisner lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
KNUT ROYCE was a major contributor to three Pulitzer Prize-winning stories in three different decades before joining the Center for Public Integrity as a senior fellow. He has won numerous journalism awards, and was named by the Washingtonian as one of the two best investigative print reporters in the nations capital. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.