An article in "The Times" (London) quoted Martino as having received the documents from a woman on the staff of the Niger embassy (located in a tiny apartment in Rome), after a meeting was arranged by a serving SISMI agent. Martino later recanted and said he had been misquoted, and that SISMI had not facilitated the meeting where he obtained the documents. It was later revealed that Martino had been invited to serve as the conduit for the documents by Col. Antonio Nucera of SISMI, the head of the counterintelligence and WMD proliferations sections of SISMI's Rome operations center.