Josh Marshall: Very EXPLOSIVE news out of Italy

[CatWoman]

re: Niger/Uranium.

Stay tuned...............

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006825.php

[swag]

1. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5163335

[geek tragedy]

2. Here it is.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008117

<snip>In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo reveal how Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.

The La Repubblica article quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, general Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."

<snip>

[NashVegas]

3. Oh My

Lovely.

[chalky]

4. Let's give this a little kicky-poo!

n/t

[Neil Lisst]

I've been saying Hadley was in the middle of it ...

He's Condi's boy, or was back then.

What do you want to bet she stays overseas visiting other nations for the next year?

[EarlG]

8. Funny

So this turned out to be bunk:

Asked if Iraq was involved in 9/11, (Cheney) said, "We don't know."

"What the commission says is they can't find evidence of that," he said. "We had one report, which is a famous report on the Czech intelligence service, and we've never been able to confirm or to knock it down."

The uncorroborated Czech report, which has been widely disputed, alleged that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague before the attacks.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/06/18/cheney.iraq.al.qaeda/

But this turned out to be true:

Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.

The La Repubblica article quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, general Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/10/index.html#008117

Well I never.

[Catrina]

38. Excellent catch!!

So the public confirmation of the information on Niger and Iraq came from Cheney. You can't get a higher administratin official than that, except for Bush. WOW!!!

And if you could find that fascinating tid-bit of information, imagine what Fitzgerald must have found!!

Further down in this thread didn't someone show that Pollari was the Italian agent killed by US troops after he had rescued the Italian journalist? I'll have to check that again. This gets more and more interesting AND difficult to follow all the time.

[EVDebs]

46. Italian connections via book Spider's Web by Alan Friedman

are curious. Banco Nationale de Lavoro BNL in Atlanta GA and the only thing close to WMDs found thus far are US-made HMX/RMX and PETN
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-cornwell261004.htm

Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/17/1615235

""Now, I discovered this at the end of the 1980's when I was reporting for The Financial Times of London and we uncovered the scandal of more than $5 billion of American taxpayer backed credits that had been funneled by the Atlanta, Georgia branch of an Italian bank to Saddam Hussein with the full knowledge of the C.I.A. and later on of the White House, under the Bush administration. That’s because that bank, it later transpired, an Italian bank called B & L, its Atlanta, Georgia branch was being used to surreptitiously finance Saddam Hussein's purchase of both agricultural goods and weaponry. And the very frightening part of it is that this group of intelligence agents outside the government, but working with the blessing of the government as it later turned out with the blessing of people like James Baker and George Herbert Walker Bush, this organization of arms dealers and transshipment specialists continued to sell a whole variety of equipment to Saddam Hussein, including U.S. military rocket cluster bombs that were transshipped from Pennsylvania through Chile to Iraq, nuclear and chemical weapons technology, and missile technology and the United States didn't really do anything to stop this shipment because at the time the argument used by the C.I.A. and the White House was that if you allowed a limited amount of military weapons and technology to flow to Iraq, even though it was completely illegal against U.S. law, against international treaties, if you allowed this to happen, as an intelligence operation, the rationalization in the Bush administration went, then you could keep better track of what kind of weaponry Saddam was developing""

The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and fabricated intelligence too. The pretzel logic of Bushed-up intel agencies has spawned this bastard of a situation. The US taxpayer deserves better treatment.

[Ksec]

45. So it was regurgitated once and the bushies ate the vomit

after it had been known to be false intel.

Isnt that a crime?

[slaveplanet]

52. Crime?

It's murder....2000 + so far if yur countin muricans

and begs the question...if they lie so willingly bout this ...than 9/11 complicity is not so out of the question

[robbedvoter]

48. Remember Tenet refusing to take the fall for 16 words?

That was the first time we heard of Hadley (whi took the fall). Then came Richard Clarke.
It all fits.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. I said this before in another thread...

I hate explosive uranium news.

[unschooler]

56. Scary.

:nuke:

[mod mom]

6. So if the neocons can be tied to the forgeries, wouldn't it be a case for

WAR CRIMES?

[Brotherjohn]

7. Marshall was earlier talking about how the article claims the forgeries...

... were done simply for money, and says how he doubts that (me, too). There are so many larger political motives that it seems implausible on its face. For starters, if they did it for money... WHO PAID THEM?

I'm guessing someone quoted in this "Repubblica" article (or a followup) point the finger directly at someone in the White House, or at least in U.S Government. That would be explosive.

[bpilgrim]

11. I'm sure the PNAC cabal paid 'GOOD' MONEY for the forgeries

and will be pissed if anyone blows their cover :evilgrin:



peace

[fishnfla]

9. Hadley's is Condi's cabana boy right?

There goes her VP spot.

Damn is there anyone left in the cabal to take her place.

I know! G. Gordon Liddy!

[Supersedeas]

50. Condi said, Someone in the bowels of the Admin may know something about

this Yellowcake. Ah, yes, indeed they do.

[shockingelk]

10. Marshall is on Al Franken today

and Al Franken is on now.

[MN ChimpH8R]

12. This all ties in to the neo-fascist Italian shadow intelligence

organization.

That group has contacts with neocon godfather and Rove buddy Michael Ledeen, and through Ledeen, other prominent neocon criminals. This is BIG, people. The whole plot may blow up - The upshot is that Chimpco obtained or manufactured forged documents used to convince this country to go to war. If Fitz can clearly paint the picture, this is Armageddon for the neocon cabal.

Justin Raimondo and others have reported about these connections

[merbex]

31. And THAT would be treason - there is another thread that

is nitpicking the definition for treason found in the Constitution

By forging documents that caused war to waged on America's wrongly identified enemy Saddam Hussein and Iraq and attention AWAY from our true enemy Al Queda =that gives aid and comfort to our enemy - Al queda

And it sure sounds like there were at least 2 witnesses to this act of treason which fits the other requirement

It's like that Supreme Court Justice's? remark about pornography:I know it when I see it

I think treason is the same way

I see it in the upper echalon of the Bush Administration

[EuroObserver]

58. KABOOOM. n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

13. Do you know how to say "secret" in Italian: SEGRETTI

Past is prologue, or some such.

:evilgrin:

[Jacobin]

39. Oh, my. As in Donald Segretti?

What a lovely co-inky-dink!!


:woohoo:

[dubyaD40web]

14. Kickity....and Nommed!

[Norquist Nemesis]

15. Niccolo Pollari was the SISMI killed in Iraq!!!! Edited: OOOPS!

Remember the intelligence official killed while saving a journalist that had been held hostage???

***ON EDIT: I can't read. LOL! Calapari NOT Pollari. *runs in shame*
http://www.channel4.com/news/2005/03/week_2/07_italy.html

Italy Mourns
Iraq



Published: 07-Mar-2005
By: Alex Thomson



A state funeral is held for the man who died saving a freed hostage from American fire in Iraq.



It's an honour usually reserved for the highest dignitaries. But today Italy accorded a full state funeral to Nicola Calipari, the intelligence officer killed in Iraq as he protected a freed female hostage from American gunfire.


<more>

[cmd]

16. Mama Mia

The plot thickens.

[stop the bleeding]

17. Great catch!!!!!!!!!!! Like this admin needs anymore pieces of the

conspiracy to be discovered.

You may want to piece some links and the story together and start a thread, if you don't then I might when i get home from work later.

This is worth discussing on it's own.

[Norquist Nemesis]

24. Sorry,

bad mistake. Although Italy wasn't happy about it at all.

[stop the bleeding]

26. Beat, I must be more careful, I guess that is what DU is for. Still

it was fun while it lasted!

[Fridays Child]

18. Huh? Nicola Calipari - Niccolo Pollari. Different people.

[Norquist Nemesis]

20. Yes, just caught my mistake. Thanks! :)

[Brotherjohn]

27. Good. If he were killed my head would start to hurt. This is getting...

... more and more complicated.

Plus, I'd rather a living breathing body so there's at least a chance of corroboration.

[smoogatz]

19. Crazy. That's just CRAZY.

It had all the earmarks of an intentional killing. They whacked him.

[Norquist Nemesis]

22. No, I got it wrong.

Need more coffee I guess.

[FreedomAngel82]

30. It all makes sense now

[sniffa]

21. ooh, another thread of the sweater is unraveLing

it's hard to keep up.

[CatWoman]

28. hiya Sniff

:hi:

I feel like Monty Burns: "EXCELLENT"

:D

[sniffa]

32. hi catwoman

:hi: :hug:

i'm keep tripping up over each new crack in the dam.

[Skidmore]

23. So where does Bolton fit into this?

[Marie26]

34. It's got to be the White House Iraq Group

Cheney, Libby, Rove, Stephen Hadley, & Condi were all members. This group's sole mission was building a case for war with Iraq. To do this they used shady intelligence that the CIA/NSC would have rejected. Bolton also was a neocon & made sure to get a direct feed of any intelligence coming into the CIA so he could cherry-pick enough to make Iraq seem dangerous. Bolton was also a buddy of Chalabi. Bolton visited Judith Miller in jail. They're all part of a circle - Chalabi fed bad info to Bolton and the WHIGs, Libby & Bolton fed it to Miller for NY Times headlines. Chalabi was allegedly involved in forging the Niger documents - on whose orders? Bolton was close to both Chalabi & the WHIGS & could have asked him to make some evidence to have it presented to the WHIGS.

[donkeyotay]

37. The intercepts

Either the CIA leaked its own operation or someone intercepted it. Someone who was looking over the CIA's shoulder, data mining, combing the raw intelligence for the right answers.

[ourbluenation]

25. Holy Macaroni! I can't stand it. It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas

Everywhere you go!!!

[Beetwasher]

29. It All Comes Together, It's All One Piece

The Niger forgeries were shopped directly to the WH.

[Captain Hilts]

33. This and Office of Special Projects in Pentagon avoid CIA

They knew the CIA wouldn't go for any of it.

Yet, the CIA has, so far, taken all the blame.

[MN ChimpH8R]

43. Which gives the spooks no incentive

whatsoever to bail out anyone affiliated with Chimpco, as if they needed any more reason to hate the neocons. I wonder who in the Agency spoke to Fitz.

[Captain Hilts]

44. B-I-N-G-O. nt

[rateyes]

35. If all of this is true..

and Fitz can prove it...."Goodbye yellowcake road where the dogs of society howl".....and goodbye Republican party...and, we will finally be on the way to taking back our country and cleaning it up.

[Marie26]

36. This is a good article

This blog does a really good job of tieing all these threads together (IMO). It's sort of incredible how complex all this is.

Niger Uranium Forgery
Mystery Solved?: http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681

[readmoreoften]

40. Kicked and recommended.

Whoa, so we can't even get our own intelligence agencies to fabricate things for us? No wonder why Bush 'cleaned house' of 'liberal' agents.

[donheld]

41. Keep us posted

Sounds good.

[RSchewe]

42. Recommended, posted a piece he did on this yesterday. Fascinating. n/t

[Disturbed]

47. "Yet, the CIA has, so far, taken all the blame."

Not exactly! Tenet tried in several speeches to worm his way out of the "Slam dunk" comment. He made a deal with Bushco to go along with the WMD fraud and must've known that the CIA would be scapegoated when after three investigation and millions were spent and none were found. He was caught in a bind because he lied under oath to Congress which was ingored. When Tenet tried hard to discredit Ahmed Chalabi, he was warned to back off but he didn't do so. That is why he was fired. His deal was that he would not be charged with lying to Congress and be given the Medal of Freedom if he resigned and kept his mouth shut about the WMD fraud.

[robbedvoter]

49. Tenet refused to take the fall for the yellow cake! Quite publicly!

So, Hadley was the designated scape goat. And between Woodward and Tenet, I'll go with tenet (re: slam dunk). I believe the book was a smear job - hence posted on W's campaign site.

[EVDebs]

51. Bob Woodward is an intelligence shill from day one with Sen Bennett

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/sonoma/07.03.97/scoop-9727.html

"I have told Woodward everything I know about the Watergate case, except the Mullen Company's tie to the CIA."--Robert F. Bennett, testifying before House Special Committee on Intelligence, July 2, 1974.

Robert Bennett was the head of Robert R. Mullen and Co., a CIA front headquartered in the very same building as the CIA's Domestic Operations Division. The Mullen Co. did legitimate PR work; it also did PR for other CIA fronts and provided cover abroad for CIA operations. Bennett's most notable employee was Howard Hunt, a former chief of covert actions for the Domestic Operations Division of the CIA.

In 1970, Hunt retired from the CIA and accepted a job with the Mullen Co. the very next day. CIA Director Richard Helms had personally requested the company to hire Hunt. Shortly thereafter, Hunt landed a second gig, working with former FBI man G. Gordon Liddy's secret Special Investigative Unit at the White House.

What gives? Was Robert F. Bennett the famous Deep Throat?

Nah.

Most serious students of the case now consider Deep Throat a composite of several sources. Some of the cloak-and-dagger stuff is just goofy: for example, Woodward's signal to meet was given from his apartment balcony--which in reality faced an interior courtyard. Bennett was simply a Watergate figure who spun the case for himself successfully. Beyond the Post, CIA memos indicate Bennett also actively reframed the Watergate story away from the Mullen Co.'s CIA purposes for the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Star, Time, and Newsweek.

So whatever happened to this Robert Bennett guy? Did he disappear, wind up in jail, or die creatively, like so many CIA operatives? Nope. Today, he's a U.S. senator, just like his father.

According to Roll Call, Bob Bennett, R-Utah, is now the eighth richest of the 535 members of Congress, with a personal fortune exceeding $30 million.

Public Citizen's 1996 rating of Bennett's willingness to serve the public, as opposed to large corporate donors, was zero out of 100. On environmental issues, the League of Conservation Voters give him another zero. On issues like increased military spending, limiting corporate liability, and dismantling welfare, the American Conservative Union gave him a 96.

As to his past affiliation with the CIA and place in the Watergate saga, Bennett's official bio is silent. Then again, Bennett is a politician these days. He was probably more likely to tell the whole truth when he worked for the CIA."

What about Woodward and 'the truth' ?

[seemslikeadream]

53. Translation of part 1 and 2 of La Repubblica

http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/berlusconi-behind-fake-yellowcake.html

Double-Dealers and Dilettantes--the Men Behind Nigergate Were All Italians.

The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger (1) for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe(2). The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or centrifuges) were the Italian government and Italian military intelligence. La Repubblica has attempted to reconstruct the who, where and why of the manufacture and transfer to British and American intelligence of the dodgy dossier for war.

They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002. In a lengthy investigative piece for the New York Times, Miller reported that Saddam could have built an atomic weapon with those aluminum tubes. These were the goods that the hawks in the Bush administration were expecting.

The "war dance" which followed Judith Miller’s scoop seemed like "carefully-prepared theater” to an attentive media-watcher, Roberto Reale of Ultime Notizie (The Latest News).

Condoleezza Rice, who was then White House Security Advisor, said on CNN: We don’t want the smoking gun to look like a mushroom cloud. A menacing Dick Cheney told Meet the Press that We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his technical and commercial capacities to acquire the material necessary to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. This was the beginning of an escalation of fear.

26 September 2002: Colin Powell warns the Senate: The Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium is proof of its nuclear ambitions.

19 December 2002: The information on Niger and the uranium is included in the three-page President’s Daily Briefing prepared each day by the CIA and the Department of State for George W. Bush. The ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, added his stamp of approval: Why is Iraq dissimulating its purchase of Niger uranium?

more


http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/25/la-repubblica-scoop/

....

It’s a fact that on the eve of the Iraq war, and under the supervision of the diplomatic advisor to the Foreign Ministry, Gianni Castellaneta (today ambassador to the USA), the director of SISMI organized his agenda in Washington with the staff of Condoleeza Rice, who was National Security Adviser to the White House at that time. La Repubblica is able to document this two track process between the government and Italian intelligence. At least one of these ‘barely official’ meetings of Pollari’s was, according to secret service agents, the ‘creation of a system’ that would bring together government, intelligence and public affairs .

To summarize: Nicolo Pollari’s SISMI wanted to substantiate the the Iraqi acquisition of raw uranium to build a nuclear bomb. The game-plan was rather transparent. ‘Authentic’ documents relating to an attempted acquisition in Niger (old Italian intelligence from the 1980’s) were the dowry of the second-in-command of CISMI’s Roman headquarters (Antonio Nucera). They were bundled together with another fabricated document … through a simulated burglary on the Nigerien embassy (from which they had gotten headed notepaper and seals). The documents were shown by Pollari’s men to CIA station agents, and at the same time, a SISMI ‘postman’ by the name of Rocco Martino was sent to Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6 in London.

turning to the second chapter of the Great Swindle, organized in Italy, to build the case that military intervention in Iraq was necessary. … the Italian report on uranium …

… The CIA analysts thought the first report ‘very limited’ and ‘without the necessary details.’ INR analysts in the Department of State assessed the information as ‘highly suspect.’ … The immediate impact on the American Intelligence community wasn’t very gratifying for Pollari … Gianni Castellaneta advised him to look in ‘other directions’ too, while the minister of Defence, Antonio Martino invited him to meet ‘an old friend of Italy’s.’ The American friend was Michael Ledeen, an old fox in the ‘parallel’ intelligence community in the US, who had been declared an undesirable person in our country in the 1980’s . Ledeen was at Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowiz to gather intelligence that would support military intervention in Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi told La Repubblica : “Pollari got a frosty reception from the CIA’s station head in Rome, Jeff Castelli, for this information on uranium. Castelli apparently let the matter drop . Pollari got the hint and talked about it with Michael Ledeen.’ We don’t know what Michael Ledeen did in Washington. But at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinced Dick Cheney that the uranium trail intercepted by the Italians had to be explored top to bottom. The vice-president, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tells it, once again asked the CIA ‘very decisively’ to find out more about the ‘possible acquisition of Nigerien uranium.’ In this meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly said that this piece of intelligence was at the disposition of a “foreign service.”

… Forte Braschi says that “Pollari was incredibly cunning – he knew that it wasn’t enough to rely on the CIA to push the uranium story. It was necessary to work, as Palazzo Chigi and the Department of Defence had indicated, with the Pentagon and with the National Security Adviser, Rice. … An administration official has told La Repubblica “I can confirm that on September 9 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley, the deputy to the National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice.”… SISMI’s ‘postman,’ Rocco Martino contacted a journalist for a weekly newspaper – edited by Carlo Rossella – to sell her the documents at issue. … Panorama had a worldwide scoop. Title “The War? It’s already begun,’ it spoke of ‘half a ton of uranium.’ … The government asked. The intelligence service gave. The media spread it. The government confirmed it. It was an old disinformation technique from the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger of the threat. Terrify and convince public opinion of it.

more

[annabanana]

54. and the planting of *crappy* forgeries

was because they were screw-ups in a hurry?

[newspeak]

55. I can't believe I'm saying this

there's some white hats at the CIA and they were not buying the Niger documents. I believe there are some in the CIA that are very much American, instead of corporate stooges. You all be safe and let's get our country back!!!!!

[jazzjunkysue]

57. Isn't that a Rove move: He's stolen letterhead many times, starting in col

college. There was a story about him inviting people to a fake party on someone else's letterhead. I think he's done that while in the white house, too. Isn't that where the fake AWOL papers came from?

Rove needs some new moves: Probably ones that keep his ass to the shower wall......