Walker's World: Bush at bay (UPI)

[hang a left]

Walker's World: Bush at bay

By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

Fitzgerald's inquiry is expected to conclude this week and despite feverish speculation in Washington, there have been no leaks about his decision whether to issue indictments and against whom and on what charges.

Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove, President George W Bush's senior political aide, not for Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The first is that Fitzgerald last year sought and obtained from the Justice Department permission to widen his investigation from the leak itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime.

snip>

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r

[UpInArms]

1. Who did forge the Niger documents?

widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium

Did the downing of an airplane in Nigeria have any connection to this?

Are Michael Ledeen's fingerprints anywhere?

So many questions.

Fitzmas is coming.

see also:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1009-25.htm

Tell Us Who Fabricated the Iraq Evidence

excerpt:

A clue to the ancestry of these black arts can be found in 1980, when right-wing Republicans wanted Ronald Reagan elected. They publicised a story that Billy Carter, the then President Jimmy Carter's colourful brother, had received $50,000 (£28,000) from the Libyan government.

The story was always denied by the President and no evidence of the payment was found, but the story helped to elect Reagan. Its source? Sismi, and an associate of a man called Michael Ledeen.

Ledeen is an intriguing and enduring presence in the murkier parts of US foreign policy. He is an American specialist on Italy with a long-standing commitment to Israel. According to The New York Times, in December 2001, a few months after the CIA first heard the Niger claims, Ledeen flew to Rome with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian arms dealer, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin. In Rome they met the head of Sismi.

...more...

[MrBenchley]

2. Somewhat lost in the discussion of this

has been the obvious: that only those involved in the yellowcake fraud had any earthly reason to retaliate against Wilson for exposing the fraud....

[UpInArms]

4. that would definitely supply the motive

for outing Valerie Plame.

[MrBenchley]

10. It would....

which is why pundits have been so hinky about saying so out loud...

[leveymg]

6. Au contraire. What's coming out is the details of a plot to get the US

to invade Iraq using the nuclear pretext, a conspiracy that long predates Wilson's July 6, 2003 NYT op-ed piece. It isn't just about retaliation for that column.

We know that Scooter talked to Miller on June 23. The origins of the forged yellowcake docs go back to Franklin and Rhode's trip to Rome in late 2001 to meet with Michael Ledeen and Manoucher Ghorbanifar.

In between, came the WHIG push to war and the CIA's attempt to push back. The Plame outing was one of the White House offensives in this struggle. It would be more accurate to say that those who had motive in the Plame matter also had motive in the Niger forgery because they are the same ones who wanted the US to invade Iraq and Iran. That's a somewhat wider focus that Fitzgerald's orginal tasking, and it overlaps the Franklin OSP-AIPAC spy case, which is just another side of the same conspiracy.

Despite the efforts of WHIG to structure the crime so as to avoid prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (IIPA), outing Plame was a fatal error by the White House.

[MrBenchley]

9. It's coming out now...

But it was obvious when Novak published his column that only those involved in the forgery had a motive to "punish" Wilson...

[leveymg]

13. Anyone who stood in the way of the push to war was a potential target

Obviously, Wilson had been loudly dissenting from within, along with his wife. The WHIGs couldn't do much about Wilson, but Plame was an obvious target - outing her would provide a valuable object lesson to other CIA analysts to keep their mouths shut.

When you think about it, this was an incredibly stupid move that could only be made by those who were totally drunk with power -- or, who were acting according to a game plan that they didn't really understand.

I'm looking forward to seeing more of the details about the war between the neocons and the CIA-DIA-Pentagon loyalists. That's the real story.

[thinkingwoman]

12. Yes, it is

devastatingly simple.

Motive. Opportunity.

[MrBenchley]

36. As Americablog points out this AM

The day AFTER Wilson's op-ed appeared the White House announced that he was correct, the letter was a forgery, and the yellowcake claim ("16 words") should not have been included in the State of the Union speech....

So why would anybody need "revenge" unless they had been an active party to the forgery?

[leveymg]

3. Looks like Italian PM/media baron Berlusconi has his own Judy Miller

Her name is Elisabetta Burba. This is very interesting. From the same article, which is worth reading in its entirety:

In July 2003, (Amb. Joseph Wilson) wrote an article for The New York Times making his mission -- and his disbelief -- public.

But by then Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for the Italian magazine Panorama (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) had been contacted by a "security consultant" named Rocco Martoni, offering to sell documents that "proved" Iraq was obtaining uranium in Niger for $10,000. Rather than pay the money, Burba's editor passed photocopies of the documents to the U.S. Embassy, which forwarded them to Washington, where the forgery was later detected. Signatures were false, and the government ministers and officials who had signed them were no longer in office on the dates on which the documents were supposedly written.

Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and almost certainly criminal.

[txaslftist]

15. Neocon dumbasses

I get these Nigerian E-Mails all the time, telling me to pay $10,000.00 to open an account so that money from the Nigerian Ministry of whatever can be wired in there so I can make a killing on my share.

I assumed anyone with intelligence would know better than to buy into a Nigerian E-Mail scam.

[understandinglife]

32. Josh Marshall and La Reppublican, today, revealed the name of ...

.... the SISMI colonel (Antonio Nucera) who purportedly passed the forged Niger documents to Rocco Martino (mysterious "Mr X").

For reference:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5151583&mesg_id=5152417

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006819.php

Whether Antonio Nucera actually passed the docs to Martino is not independently confirmed as best as I can tell. But, Josh Marshall definitely confirms that Martino revealed SISMI Antonio Nucera to him.


Peace.

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Here's the key - Franklin

and supposedly Franklin has been cooperating with the investigation.




There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.

Where all this leads will not be clear until Fitzgerald breaks his silence, widely expected to occur this week when the term of his grand jury expires.

[grasswire]

7. except for one thing...

McNulty is a Bush FIXER. He was instrumental in the Florida recount, for example. He coached Ashcroft through his confirmation process, for another example. He is totally on the Bush TEAM. I cannot see that he would have the integrity to follow the facts and the law if the facts and the law were going to bring down Bushco.

[leveymg]

11. I would like to see Fitz take over both cases.

The Dems should be pushing strongly for this after indictments are released in the Plame case.

[MADem]

20. If this touches the administration, McNulty will have to recuse, just like

Alberto did. He is too wired in to both Bush and the GOP structure.

It could end up that the janitor has to take it!!!

[leveymg]

8. The question is, has Franklin been a cooperating witness for the FBI

from early 2002, if not the beginning?

But, as far as gaining prosecutions in the Plame and OSP-AIPAC cases, that detail may not actually be so important. He's undoubtedly told everything he knows to the Bureau and both prosecutors. It's all on the record, waiting to be introduced at later trials.

If I were Cheney, Libby, Rove, or any the others involved, I would be putting my affairs into order. When all this stuff gets broadcast to the unknowing American public, I can't see how Bush will be allowed to get away with pardons. It will wreck the GOP for years to come.

They're going to jail for years.

[PurityOfEssence]

14. What a hideously written and subtly slanted piece of tripe

He can't even get Joe Wilson's name right; it's not "James" Wilson.

He also perpetuates the false assertion that Valerie Plame was instrumental in getting her husband sent over there. As if that's not enough, he says that the inspectors of the '90s agreed that Hussein had a reconstituted chemical/biological program and even a nuclear one. This is not the case. There was much doubt about this, and thorough skepticism about the nuclear claim. To say that these inspections "demonstrated" that all this was happening makes it sound as if it's conclusive, which it specifically was NOT.

The references to the French and German intelligence agencies also makes it sound like they were convinced of the chemical threat, when neither group was anything more than stating the possibility, and doing so with consistent qualifiers.

This man is an idiot. Yes, he puts together a fairly thorough distillation, but the bias is obvious and his prose is leaden.

THIS is the standard for the highest ranks of journalism in this country? This is amateur hour.

[bobbieinok]

34. UPI is owned by the Moonies....HThomas quit UPI when they bought it

[ray of light]

16. Walker's World: Bush at bay

Walker's World: Bush at bay
By MARTIN WALKER
UPI Editor

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

Fitzgerald's inquiry is expected to conclude this week and despite feverish speculation in Washington, there have been no leaks about his decision whether to issue indictments and against whom and on what charges.

Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove, President George W Bush's senior political aide, not for Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The first is that Fitzgerald last year sought and obtained from the Justice Department permission to widen his investigation from the leak itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime.
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r

[electropop]

17. The Regime is so screwed.

They are all running around like madmen (no surprise there) stabbing each other in the back, trying to deflect the blame. Too late.

[Rose Siding]

18. Marshall at TPM is calling this "big news"

He and Laura Rosen have followed the Italian forgery closely

(October 24, 2005 -- 11:37 AM EDT // link)
Okay, there's clearly something to this. Martin Walker of UPI is now reporting that ...

that NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government. Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

Now, some of you have pointed out in your emails that this is the Moonie UPI and don't know what to think of it on that basis. But whatever you think of UPI, Martin Walker is Martin Walker and he brings his own credibility with him.

So what is this Italian report? A blockbuster dossier or a cursory recitation of known facts? Unlike some other recent reports, Walker doesn't say. Fitzgerald's interest in obtaining such a dossier is big news in itself certainly, whatever specifics might have been obtained. But what's in it? What might Fitzgerald have discovered?

My reporting on this from Italian sources has always suggested that the Italian government had been much, much less than aggressive in its pursuit of the facts in this story. Certainly, that was the case with the separate judicial inquiry in Rome.

An even more interesting question is how the Italians might have dealt with what they found since at least some factions within SISMI, Italian military intelligence, are almost certainly implicated in the documents affair.

Rocco Martino is the Italian 'security consultant' who attempted to sell the documents to journalist Elisabetta Burba in October of 2002. When I interviewed Martino in New York last year he named a SISMI colonel and a female Italian national who works at the Nigerien embassy in Rome as his sources for the documents. The SISMI colonel proved, shall we say, unwilling to be interviewed. But in a separate interview the woman, who is herself a longtime SISMI asset, eventually conceded her role in the transaction.

More to come later.

-- Josh Marshall

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006817.php

[Rose Siding]

21. SISMI Colonel Antonio Nucera was IDd by Martino as source of documents

By an Italian paper today, also sourced by Marshall...

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006819.php

Interesting news out of Italy.

I'm told Monday's edition of the Italian daily La Repubblica has an article on Niger forgeries. And this one says the culprits are Rocco Martino, the Italian woman who works in the Niger embassy in Rome and the SISMI operative Martino named as his ultimate source. The motive, says Repubblica, was money.

I've never named the SISMI colonel whom Martino said he (indirectly) got the documents from. But now Repubblica has. So I will too: his name is Antonio Nucera.

(You see I've linked the story above. I haven't read the Italian original. I've only had the contents related to me. So let me put that small caveat to the entire post.)

My experience with this case, going back almost two years now, is that whenever damaging new information was about to come out on the forgery mystery, the Italian government-cum-intelligence agencies put out substantial new information about what happened mixed with disinformation aimed at throwing people off their trail. And when I say 'their trail', I mean the complicity of Italian intelligence in the documents hoax itself.

This fits in very well with that pattern.

Could this latest story be true? Anything could be. But I'd be highly, highly skeptical.

What I can confirm is that Antonio Nucera, the SISMI colonel, was the SISMI operative whom Martino identified from beginning as the source of the documents.

More shortly.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006819.php

[shanti]

19. in this case

the crime seems to be much worse than the coverup, but who's counting? :shrug:

[salvorhardin]

22. FYI: UPI and Washington Times are both owned by the Moonies

Why not choose a better source?

[Nancy Waterman]

23. Bush at Bay (NATO sources confirm Fitz looking at forgeries)

http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20051023-104217-9679r

The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources. This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

snip

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

snip

There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.

snip

If Fitzgerald issues indictments, then the hounds that are currently baying across the blogosphere will leap into the mainstream media and whole affair, Iranian go-betweens and Rome burglaries included, will come into the mainstream of the mass media and network news where Mr. and Mrs. America can see it.

[jrthin]

24. Gawd, I hope Fitz

has 24/7 bodyguards.

[maximovich]

25. WOW

This may be larger than most realize. If there ever has been any indication of this investigation being extended, this may be it!

Merry Fitzmas<----I like!

[bpilgrim]

26. wooHoo!

peace

[twaddler01]

27. WOW is right

there is a lot of stuff going on right now....keep up the good work on getting the news to us before the tv does. Go DUers! :toast:

I see the administration falling soon! :nuke:

[carolinalady]

28. I'm not so sure the sheeples will care that they were duped

even if this info is brought out by the msm. Then they would have to admit they were wrong, and I don't think that is ever going to happen. I only hope those that aren't part of the true conservative block rise to the occassion and finally stand up for justice.

[Peace Patriot]

29. carolinalady, I think you may be underestimating the breadth and depth

of loathing of this Bush junta by the great majority of Americans. This progressive majority is reflected in the issue polls over the last two years (not to mention in Bush approval polls). The issue polls show that a great majority of Americans oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range, and have for some time. You name it. The Iraq war. Torture policy. The deficit. Social Security. Women's rights. He has not convinced anybody of anything, for all their intense propaganda.

What has happened, though, is that the war profiteering corporate news monopolies have given the rightwing minority a BIG TRUMPET with which to promulgate their views way out of proportion to their numbers, so that the members of the progressive majority often think they are alone--isolated, "I'm the only one." Too many people are plugged into this propaganda/brainwashing machine, even if they don't agree with much of what they hear. They are fooled by the ILLUSION that these lying, stupid fascists and their mindless newsstream of Bushisms, airbrushed war and trivial nonsense actually represents anybody in America, other than a minority of whackoes that have always been with us. The illusion is what our Corporate Rulers think of us, or what they want us to become, not what we are.

In any case, I think that the truth about Treasongate--if it in fact comes out--will be accompanied by another coming out, or awakening, of all those lonely, seemingly isolated progressives and Kerry voters, who will increasingly discover that they are by no means alone, and are in fact the disempowered, unrepresented and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED majority.

And I hope they will next--and quickly--find out exactly HOW they were disenfranchised, and take action to recover their right to vote from the likes of Diebold and ES&S, rightwing Bushite corporations who have gained control over the tabulation of our votes, in the new electronic voting machines, with "TRADE SECRET," proprietary programming code.

Then maybe we can get our country back.

--------

Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

Info: http://www.votersunite.org, http://www.UScountvotes.org, http://www.TruthIsAll.net.

[badgervan]

30. Ledeen

The name Michael Ledeen has been popping up all over the place lately. Where there's smoke.....

[Critters2]

31. Indict someone already!

I hate that pre-Fitzmas anticipation! Oh, well, half the time I don't get what I really wanted anyway. *sigh* It prolly won't be Karl.

[bobbieinok]

35. Ledeen wants America to be able to "efficiently dominate subject peoples"

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Michael_Ledeen#Ledeen_on_the_importance_of_America_being_able_to_.22efficiently_dominate_subject_peoples.22

Ledeen on the importance of America being able to "efficiently dominate subject peoples"

Michael Ledeen wrote the introduction to "From Caesar to the Mafia - Persons, Places and Problems in Italian life (http://print.google.com/print?id=KgWMrPDcOQgC&lpg=xvi&pg=0_1&sig=2liVfLZnXddOV7bOy75ynnaHqNM)" by Luigi Barzini. Ledeen admiringly quotes a passage from the book:

This... is the problem of many successful republics, whose simple virtues make them strong enough, at one point, to conquer other people and assume imperial responsibilities. How can men, who are dedicated to liberty and the defense of their own independence, efficiently dominate subject peoples, without damning their own soul?. <10> (http://print.google.com/print?id=KgWMrPDcOQgC&pg=xvi&sig=8MQy2naVGwhcDLo6SxuwByu0hMM)

Ledeen then makes this comment on Barzini's question:

And there, in two lovely sentences, is the conundrum the United States must solve if we are to have a second successive American Century. Luigi knew that. It's why he took the time to craft those lines. <11> (http://print.google.com/print?id=KgWMrPDcOQgC&pg=xvi&sig=8MQy2naVGwhcDLo6SxuwByu0hMM)


the bibliography shows that Iran is a major target for him

[MN ChimpH8R]

37. Ledeen is the figure that ties it all together

The "we will rule the world" imperialism of the neocons and the Chimp WH. Ledeen, who is one of the most evil people on the planet, is a good buddy of Rover and also has tentalcles connected to AIPAC. He was one of the godfathers of neocon-ism. None of this happened by accident.

[carolinalady]

33. Great perspective. Thanks. n/t