emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing". In a second interview with Horton, Giraldi elaborated to say that Ledeen and his former CIA friends worked with Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress. "These people did it probably for a couple of reasons, but one of the reasons was that these people were involved, through the neoconservatives, with the Iraqi National Congress and Chalabi and had a financial interest in cranking up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and potentially going to war with him." Current and former Italian intelligence employees The suggestion of a plot by CIA officers is countered by an explosive series of articles in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo report that Nicolò Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002. SISMI had reported to the CIA on 15 October 2001, that Iraq had sought yellowcake in Niger, a report it also plied on British intelligence, creating an echo that the Niger forgeries themselves purported to amplify before they were exposed as a hoax. Pollari met secretly in Washington on 9 September 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons. What may be most significant to American observers, however, is La Repubblicas allegation that the Italians sent the bogus intelligence about Niger and Iraq not only through traditional allied channels such as the CIA, but seemingly directly into the White House. That direct White House channel amplifies questions about the 16-word reference to the uranium from Africa in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address—which remained in the speech despite warnings from the CIA and the State Department that the allegation was not substantiated. Aftermath In March 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice-chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, agreed not to open a Congressional investigation of the matter, but rather asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct the investigation. In 2003, unidentified "senior officials" in the administration leaked word to columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. The CIA requested