CONTROVERSIAL NEOCON ADMITS He Worked at Magazine That Found Niger Docs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=163776Here's a couple key posts that show which direction we went:
stop the bleeding Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Thu Jan-19-06 03:29 AM
Response to Reply #48
51. All right I'll take a swing - Have you guys already seen this article??
Edited on Thu Jan-19-06 03:36 AM by stop the bleeding
it?
Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?-by Philip Giraldi,The American Conservative 11/25/2005 issuue
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.
Enter the ususal Suspects
The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain’s MI-6.
~snip~
Enter Michael Ledeen, the Office of Special Plans’ man in Rome. Ledeen was paid $30,000 by the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1978 for a report on terrorism and was well known to senior SISMI officials. Italian sources indicate that Pollari was eager to engage with the Pentagon hardliners, knowing they were at odds with the CIA and the State Department officials who had slighted him. He turned to Ledeen, who quickly established himself as the liaison between SISMI and Feith’s OSP, where he was a consultant. Ledeen, who had personal access to the National Security Council’s Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and was also a confidant of Vice President Cheney, was well placed to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State.
~snip~
On Jan. 28, 2003, over the objections of the CIA and State, the famous 16 words about Niger’s uranium were used in President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying an attack on Iraq: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Both the British and American governments had actually obtained the report from the Italians, who had asked that they not be identified as the source. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency also looked at the documents shortly after Bush spoke and pronounced them crude forgeries.
President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Vice President Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.
The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.
~snip~
At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.
It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.
The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.
*****
OK now me talking again, we know that based on L.A.'s reporting that Silvio Berlusconi is connected to Ledeen based this:
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http://rawstory.com/news/2005/American_who_consulted_fo...It was Burba's editor at Panorama, Carlo Rossella, who allegedly told her to take the documents to the U.S. embassy, despite her own requests to travel to Niger to further investigate the claims.
It was also Rosella who intervened when Burba requested to contact the White House after hearing the infamous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, dissuading her from contacting U.S. officials.
Rosella, intelligence sources say, could have been acting on the orders of Panorama's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's equivalent of Rupert Murdoch. Berlusconi -- who also happens to be the current Prime Minister -пїЅ was a supporter of President Bush leading up to the war.
Berlusconi was not immediately available for comment.
********************************************
now in last section of article this statement jumps out at me.
He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.
Who is this?? The ex-CIA Rome station chief. I have tried the almighty google and nothing I also tried wikipedia and whiffed.
I did reaquaint myself with the Iraqi National Congress via wikipedia and Chalabi and John Rendon(especially interesting with Panama and Gulf I) pop up on the Radar but nothing about a former Chief of Station from Rome.
So last question is this important or is this old news and I have just missed it in the mountain research?
robertpaulsen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Jan-23-06 03:45 AM
Response to Reply #63
64. Good timeline. But I think we should be looking at a FORMER station chief
Remember this article you posted:
At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.htmlWho are some former CIA station chiefs in Rome? This was a comment on an earlier link I posted:
I agree that there are other factors beyond and above CIA functionaries, although they have certainly supervised a lot of nefarious activity over the years. In particular, in recent years it seems that the NSC (the presidential National Security Council) has handled a lot of the "blacker than black" operations, while the role of the DIA and its SAPs remains much more obscure than the more visible CIA.
For the record, a bit of Googling reveals the following names of CIA station chiefs in Rome (presumably better Googling would produce more)
# James Angleton (OSS chief WWII to early 50's??)
# Mark Wyatt (1948 election payoffs)
# William Colby (1953-1958)
# Thomas Karamessines (early 60's)
# William Harvey Feb.1963--??
# Howard "Rocky" Stone 197?-75
# Duane Clarridge 1980 Ustica!!!!
# Jeffrey W. Castelli Rome Station Chief up to summer 2003
The are obvious gaps, especially between Dewey Clarridge and Jeff Castelli, as well as the incumbent. Note also that the (in)famous Ted Shackley was second in command in Rome in the early 70's. It's striking to note what a springboard to success the Rome station has been.
As always, I make no claim to infallibility, and the above list could well be "off" on dates, etc. Corrections and additions are welcome.
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/7/20/2096/60605I found the gap between Clarridge and Castelli, and a whole lot more:
Earlier this week here on Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo, based on a secret source, broke the story and revealed that Patrick Fitzgerald is indeed following the question of the origin of the crudely forged documents and the identities of Michael Ledeen's former CIA friends. Fitzgerald, he says:
"'has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document,' the former CIA officer tells me:
'Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi.'
Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, 'he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi." The former CIA officer says Wolf "was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop...'
My source tells me that 'Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty,' the prosecutor in the AIPAC case. There are plenty of links between the two investigations: they are, in a sense, the same investigation, since many of the same people are involved. McNulty is delving into a single aspect of the cabal's activities, while Fitzgerald seems to have broadened his probe to include not only the outing of Plame, but also the origin of the Niger uranium forgeries and other instances of classified information leakage via the vice president's office.
more...
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=P2452_0_1_0Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge. I think this is where the truth about the Niger docs lies!
Emit Donating Member (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author Click to view this author's profile Click to add this author to your buddy list Click to add this author to your Ignore list Mon Jan-23-06 09:43 PM
Response to Reply #68
71. Also, remember the rumors that Fitzgerald
was looking into these guys?
Thanks to a letter of February, 2004 in which Fitzgerald asked for and obtained expanded authority, the Special Prosecutor is now in possession of an Italian parliament investigation into the forged Niger documents alleging Iraq's interest in purchasing Niger uranium, sources said.
They said that Fitzgerald is looking into such individuals as former CIA agent, Duane Claridge, military consultant to the Iraqi National Congress, Gen. Wayne Downing, another military consultant for INC, and Francis Brooke, head of INC's Washingfton office in an effort to determine if they played any role in the forgeriese or their dissiemination. Also included in this group is long-time neoconservative Michael Ledeen, these federal sources said.
http://www2.boomantribune.com/story/2005/10/26/105036/8...On a side note, not to be too tangential, and as you are probably aware, but others might want to know:
The INC (Iraqi National Congress )was essentially created by the Rendon Group, which is basically a propaganda firm hired by the US Government (and others):
Shortly after the September 11 attacks on Wall Street and Washington, the Pentagon gave Rendon a $100,000-a-month contract to track anti-U.S. foreign news reports, offer advice on media strategy and plant pro-U.S. stories in web, print and television. In 2002 when the Pentagon tried to create the Office of Strategic Influence to spread misleading stories in foreign countries, Rendon was the contractor they had in mind. President Bush ultimately disappeared the Office after a storm of protest from the media and the public at large, but in retrospect one wonders if the administration simply renamed the project.
~snip~
Not surprisingly, the INC (best known for its founder, Ahmed Chalabi, a now disgraced member of the Iraqi Governing Council) was created by the Rendon Group, according to a February 1998 report by Peter Jennings of ABC News which showed that the Rendon Group spent more than $23 million dollars under contract with the CIA. According to ABC, Rendon invented the name for the Iraqi National Congress. Indeed Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker magazine says the Rendon Group was "paid close to a hundred million dollars by the CIA" for its work with the INC.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11486And Francis Brooke used to work for Rendon (they were the ones who staged the bringing down of the Saddam statue during the 'Shock and Awe' period early on in the war, if I remember correctly):
Francis Brooke worked in the mid-1990s on the Rendon Group's anti-Iraq campaign in London at a salary of $19,000 a month. He subsequently became the chief assistant in Washington to Ahmad Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Rendon_GroupSome of the INC's intelligence on Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's supposed ties to militant Islamic groups are reportedly funneled directly to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney by Francis Brooke, the DC lobbyist for the group. Brooke will later acknowedge that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. “I told them , as their campaign manager, ‘Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that's what the Bush administration is interested in.’ ” Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, “a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm.”
People and organizations involved: Francis Brooke, Frank Gaffney, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Douglas Feith...
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?entity=fr...http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=163776