Luciano Monti

Italian security contractor.

Niger Uranium forgeries

Many of these past associations emerged in a recent episode revealed during my meeting with Luttwak: that he was shown the infamous Niger forgeries by a friend with the Italian intelligence agency Sismi, when he was working as a consultant to a Sismi contractor named Luciano Monti in the 2001-2002 time frame, but that he refused to back-channel them to the Bush administration. (He never agrees to back-channel intelligence, Luttwak said, and these looked like forgeries to him.) The allegations in the forgeries, of course, became one of the Bush White House’s most controversial casus belli for the Iraq war — and, after proven phony even on the eve of the invasion, among the most embarrassing and politically damaging for the president and vice president, who cited the bogus uranium allegations despite warnings from the CIA not to.

Regarding Sismi showing Luttwak the Niger forgeries: He was working at the time as a consultant to a Sismi contractor called APRI S.p.a. headed by Luciano Monti. "I was their consultant for methods,” Luttwak said, looking up the details in his income tax returns. (He mentions both Sismi director press aide Pio Pompa and former Sismi director Nicolo Pollari as contacts). He refused to back channel the documents to Washington, and would have nothing to do with them, and was later told they were determined to be forgeries, as he had thought. Perhaps others who got an early peak at them were not so scrupulous.

Affiliations

• SISMI
• APRI S.p.a.

Connections

• Edward Luttwak