"Hadley Is Gonna Bring Down This President"

[Hissyspit]

As a reply in sabra's thread: "Sunday Times: Security adviser named as source in CIA scandal (Hadley)," the following was posted by sofa king. I told him I thought it was post of the day, and am posting it as its own separate thread (without his permission, so sue me:-). I figure he has finally gone to bed, anyway). I and others apparently have found it very succinct, insightful and significant:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1936405&mesg_id=1936405

"Hadley is gonna bring down this President."
Posted by sofa king

Say the name often, and get to know it well. It's becoming obvious that Bob Woodward's little juke-move this week was very fortuitously timed.

What influence did Hadley's disclosure have on the outing of Valerie Wilson? Probably none. Like Woodward said, it doesn't really matter that much.

But Mr. Hadley is VERY important in the huge, disgusting crime which lies beneath the mere outing of Valerie Wilson. Hadley was the guy in charge of the rogue intelligence meetings with Italian agents, and was warned by the CIA to stop them. Hadley appears to be the guy who arranged for those document forgeries to be delivered. Hadley is the guy who overrode George Tenet's objections and placed the uranium sentence in the State of the Union Address.

And guess who promoted Mr. Hadley for doing all of that highly unprofessional, unethical, and illegal stuff? That's right, the President himself gave Hadley Condoleeza Rice's old job when she moved to the State Department. Criminal conspiracies try to keep it all in the family, and that's just what happened here.

Hadley is the last guy in between the President and the abyss. Now the press is on to him, and they are in the enviable position of being able to advance a criminal case against the White House while the White House is trying to kill the investigation before it starts.

They're not going to get away with it now. Now that Hadley is part of Plamegate, it's going to be easy for the press to lead the public straight into the false justification of the war, and the fact that the President rewarded him for producing forged documents.

Thank you, Mr. Woodward.

[leveymg]

1. If you can establish that Hadley was Ledeen's WH contact, then I'll

accept that he really was a (one of several) responsible party for "the 16 dirty words", and perhaps was also Woodward's first contact.

Until then, he's just a cut-out and sword-faller for Cheney.

[UpInArms]

10. here's some interesting reading

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-2018

excerpt:

October 29, 2001: Necon Scholar: ‘This Is Total War’ Complete 911 Timeline
Michael Ledeen, speaking at an event sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, states: “No stages. This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there. All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq ... this is entirely the wrong way to go about it. If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war ... our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

People and organizations involved: Michael Ledeen




December 2001 US confrontation with Iran
The Bush administration sends two Defense officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, to meet with Iranians in Rome in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism. The offer had been back-channeled by the Iranians to the White House through Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms trader and a central person in the Iran-Contra affair, who contacted another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. Ledeen passed the information on to his friends in the Defense Department who then relayed the offer to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Hadley expressed no reservations about the proposed meeting and informed George J. Tenet, the director of the CIA, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. According to officials interviewed by the New York Times, the United States Embassy in Rome was not notified of the planned meeting as required by standard interagency procedures. Neither the US embassy nor CIA station chief in Rome learn of the three-day meeting, apparently attended by both Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, until after it happens. When they do catch wind of the meeting, they notify CIA and State Department headquarters in Washington which complain to the administration about how the meetings had been arranged.

People and organizations involved: Harold Rhode, Condoleezza Rice, Michael Ledeen, Stephen Hadley, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Larry Franklin, George Tenet

...more...

(go to link for more imbedded links)

[rodeodance]

14. his name keeps popping up all over the place. He has to be involved

somehow-----fitz has a job on his hands yet.

[lonestarnot]

2. Waiting and definitely watching!

<>

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. "Now the press is on to him"

which means he has nothing to worry about.

[No Exit]

4. I sincerely hope the poster is right.

God knows, SOMETHING'S got to bring down this "president" before we end up like the Germans--having to apologize for our government's atrocities, for the next 100 years.

[Hubert Flottz]

16. RE: "having to apologize"

First the Germans were bombed flat! Bush has turned the WORLD against us, just like Hitler turned the world against Germany. America's great war winning industrial strength, has been outsourced to a point where, we will soon be at the rest of the world's mercy!

Installing Democracy/New world Order in the rest of the "heathen" world, like Bush and Blair have tried to do, is like the "Good Scout," helping the old lady across the street, that doesn't want to go across the street.

A "Good Scout" don't shit too close to the trail and Bush/Blair have shat right in the middle of the path to the One World Government/world slavery plot! Much like Hitler did when he went for the Nazi's "World Order", when he started WWII, these two despots have laid all their cards out on the table and the bluff/"New World Order" isn't working again, like it didn't work for the Nazis.

Bushco's America is just asking for a serious asskicking like Hitler brought down on the Germans.

[Straight Shooter]

5. Hadley had big ambitions but was in a lesser-known role

He knew he would be rewarded. He did not believe he would be ensnared in a trap of his own making.

We shall see what happens. Personally, I've always looked at Hadley with great suspicion. I can't explain why, but my gut tells me there is no dirty deed too low for him if he thinks it will advance him to a greater position of power or curry favor with those who hold more power.

[Hissyspit]

8. Interesting DailyKos diary on this and Fitzgerald investigation:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/11/19/204259/16

[Straight Shooter]

12. Thanks, Hissyspit. I'll check it out.

:thumbsup:

[UTUSN]

6. WOODWARD = WH Lackey - Sat on Story, Released It Both to Help WH

Yesterday on FauxWatch, the Faux ripoff of CNN's Reliable Sources, the token Lib, Neil GABLER, said, "WOODWARD sat on the story for two years while it helped the White House, then he came forward WHEN IT HELPED THE WH. He's a WH *lackey*!!!"

[Hissyspit]

7. Wow, he got in a good dig. I, myself, couldn't find myself able to step

foot in a Faux News studio.

[burythehatchet]

9. Medal of Freedom, here I come!! - Stephen Hadley

[Stephanie]

11. Josh Marshall has written extensively on this point >

Search his blog for analysis dating back more than a year. He has recently been following the La Republicca articles on the case.

www.talkingpointsmemo.com

[rodeodance]

15. yes, The La Republicca articles are worth reading.

[Wilms]

13. kick n/t

[EFerrari]

17. The term "National Security Advisor" means nothing at all, then,

does it?

Or it is one of those Orwellian things, "national insecurity deviser"?

[sofa king]

18. Thank you, Hissyspit.

I only just learned how to search my own posts. Sometimes, I am a regrettably slow learner. I would like to reply to some of the readers here.

leveymg says: "If you can establish that Hadley was Ledeen's WH contact, then I'll accept that he really was a (one of several) responsible party for "the 16 dirty words", and perhaps was also Woodward's first contact.

"Until then, he's just a cut-out and sword-faller for Cheney."

leveymg deserves congratulation for cutting straight to the quick of the matter, and as such I think it is deserving of a full reply. As others in this thread have noted, Josh Marshall has been leading the charge on this story. Here's what he has to say:

The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. (According to UPI, Ledeen was then working for Feith as a consultant.) Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians... The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington.

The meeting was a source of concern for a series of overlapping reasons. Since the late 1980s, Ghorbanifar has been the subject of two CIA "burn notices." The agency believes Ghorbanifar is a serial "fabricator" and forbids its officers from having anything to do with him. Moreover, why were mid-level Pentagon officials organizing meetings with a foreign intelligence agency behind the back of the CIA -- a clear breach of U.S. government protocol?

According to U.S. government sources, both the State Department and the CIA eventually brought the matter to the attention of the White House -- specifically, to Condoleezza Rice's chief deputy on the National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley. Later, Italian spy chief Pollari raised the matter privately with Tenet, who himself went to Hadley in early February 2002. Goaded by Tenet, Hadley sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities. Hadley then contacted Sembler, assuring him it wouldn't happen again and to report back if it did.

I added some links to give some background on the key players. The last paragraph quoted above is the important one, because it implies that Hadley had some sort of authority over Ledeen. The full Washington Monthly article is here:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html

It is unclear at this point why George Tenet was such a pushover for the Bush Administration, but it's no longer in dispute that he was. In July, 2005, the New York Times reported that Tenet's own sword-falling act was in fact written by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, with help from Hadley:

"Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby Jr., were helping to prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been included in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier. They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet."

(As quoted by Josh Marshall http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_07_17.php">here)

However, that act didn't wash. My personal recollection of this time is unclear, and I'd like to come back to this in a moment, but first I need to link to the overlapping admission two weeks later by Mr. Hadley himself, on July 22, 2003:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030722-12.html

Here's where my recollection fails me, and why this is important. Back then, I distinctly recall reading an article from roughly this time in which George Tenet was reported to have told Senate investigators that the White House "manipulated" the CIA into taking reponsibility for the uranium scandal. I remember this well because the word "manipulated" set off alarm bells in my head. That's what they were going to impeach Nixon for (among other things), manipulation of an intelligence agency. Regrettably, I lost my printout of that article and I have never been able to find it since.

I think this is why Hadley was forced to take responsibility for the action.

I hope that answer wasn't too long and confusing. I'll try to summarize here: Reports suggest that Hadley had some sort of authority over the mid-level Pentagon meetings with Italian intelligence. George Tenet tried to kill those meetings by telling Hadley to knock it off. Hadley said he would stop the meetings, but didn't, and eventually he met with Italian intelligence officials himself (and according to some rumors, with Condoleeza Rice in attendance), most importantly in September, 2002, just a month before the forged documents themselves fell into the hands of the White House. After the invasion ended and the occupation began, the forged documents took on major importance, and Rove, Libby, and Hadley conspired to throw Tenet under the bus for it. Tenet appears to have started fighting back.

This is the second prong of the two-pronged attack the White House launched in response to the phony intelligence. The other prong was the burning of Valerie Wilson. Mr. Hadley is now implicated in both, as are Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

I'm sorry, I need to take a break here. Please let me know if this response is sufficient, and by all means, tear at it! We need to arrive at a better understanding of what happened here, and the best way to do that is to expose any flaws in my logic or understanding of what's going on here.