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Welcome to the official website and blog for The Italian Letter, a book by Peter Eisner and Knut Royce that tells the exclusive story behind sixteen of the most important words in recent American history:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Praise for The Italian Letter:

“It’s 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. It’s not just about the 16 words. Everything that would go wrong is telegraphed in this incident.”

—Seymour Hersh

The Italian Letter “focuses principally on President Bush’s infamous 16 words in his January 2003 State of the Union address and how those words, clearly fallacious, were derived and then managed to stay in the speech. But the book conveys much more—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 Secretary of State Colin Powell, 2002–03

“This book is a much-needed and thorough investigation of this important subject by two well-known and well-thought-of journalists.”

—W. Patrick Lang, retired army colonel and former Defense intelligence officer; former senior adviser to Dick Cheney