The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq (Hardcover)

by Peter Eisner (Author), Knut Royce (Author) "The 43rd president of the United States, George Walker Bush, entered the halls of the Capitol promptly at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on January..." (more)
Key Phrases: uranium intelligence, uranium shopping, seeking uranium, United States, White House, Saddam Hussein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

About the Author

PETER EISNER is deputy foreign editor at the Washington Post. The Post’s coverage of the 2004 Asian tsunami, which he coordinated, won an award from the American Society of Newspaper Editors. He is also author of The Freedom Line, a winner of the 2004 Christopher Award. He 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 nation’s capital. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (April 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594865736
• ISBN-13: 978-1594865732
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #658,377 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent story of the lead up to the Iraq War, April 29, 2007

By	Louie's Mom "Compulsive Reader" (Dallas) - See all my reviews

I'm a news junkie, read several news websites, watch CNN, read the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. Still there were surprises for me in this book regarding the misuse of intelligence by both the White House and the intelligence agencies themselves. It also offers excellent insight as to the workings of some of our allies' intelligence agencies. Trust me, you WON'T be bored. The authors interviewed current and former US intelligence personnel and the book appears very well sourced.

17 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Stunning Indictment for Bush Inc, April 15, 2007

By	Tom Markus "rural" (Houston, TX) - See all my reviews

I found the book to be frightening in its accuracy and detail. What we are slowly finding out is that the Bush Administration literally tried to float a world war on pure ideology and to heck with public advisement. Each chapter is meticulously footnoted and and cross-referenced. There can be no other conclusion than that crimes were committed. The author has tremendous courage to reveal these facts as others like him have become targets of a vindictive Administration out for retaliation.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fairly thin on the purported topic, June 14, 2007

By	J. Lewis (Lake Oswego, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have read most of the books on how and why the US went into Iraq and how badly we botched it up once we got there. I found this book interesting and there was some valuable new information, but I came away knowing little about the Italian letter I hadn't already read elsewhere. The central question of who wrote it and why went unanswered, beyond the belief that it originated within SISMI. It's an interesting book if you don't know the story, but unsatisfying if you do and desire to know more.