Marshall Goes Public with the "Tectonic Plates" Story

[NashVegas]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

Today, the Sunday Times of London reports that the Italian middle-man who provided the notorious Niger uranium documents to Italian journalist Elizabetta Burba (she later brought them to the US Embassy in Rome, you’ll remember) was himself given the documents by the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI.

I can vouch for the accuracy of this account since I have been working on this story for six months. In fact, I interviewed the Italian middle-man in question two months ago at a restaurant in mid-town Manhattan -- the details of that interview I describe below.

[NMDemDist2]

1. not sure i get this...

so the Italian intelligence service forged and inserted the Niger docs? Why? Did the WH ask them to? Where is this story going?

:shrug:

[Pallas180]

2. sounds like a bit more Psy Ops to me..Marshall taken in?

.called cover Chalabi trail by Penta buddies.

[johnfunk]

3. Nope -- not taken in -- in fact...

... all roads lead to the blown cover of Valerie Plame and her sting operation. I'm 100% sure Josh is aware of this.

[warrior1]

4. kick

.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. So if I really want to know what this is all about,

I'll have to wade back into those incredibly long, slow-loading Plame threads with their 5000 posts?

Or at least read some of the summaries? Is that what you're telling me? That this story backs up the speculation on those threads that Valerie was not just outed as revenge, but in order to shut down her WMD investigation?

Holy shit. I was afraid of that.

On edit:

Gee, how'd you like the guy who investigated Iran-Contra & BCCI for the senate to be elected President? Wouldn't that be a hoot?

I'm even more scared than before about Kerry surviving until January 20.

[warrior1]

6. quote

We’ve also been working in collaboration on this story with an American TV network.

[Pallas180]

19. JACK - we're working on 1 big summary of the Plames - you'll

be happy, but it goes far further than Plame...it involves Khan
and the spread of WMD and excatly who supplied the "components"
for the nuke bombs which are now owned all over the middle east.

Is anyone looking at the VICE president?
Yah. More than the French are looking at him - and pappy too.

[Jackpine Radical]

34. Yeah. I've read enough of the Plame threads to know a little

about the Halliburton WMD story. Wow, it's gonna be something when this whole business busts.

The difference between now & Watergate (in addition to the fact that Watergate was a minor peccadillo in comparison) is that in the Watergate days, the story was sort of out there, with only the proof lacking for a long time, wlhile in this instance there seems to be no suspicion at all among the general public of what is about to happen.

[ramblin_dave]

7. What is the tectonic plates aspect to this story?

Is that Plame was about to expose the source of the forged Niger documents and that it's someone in the Bush regime? That's the only thing I see that would really be a bombshell.

[Tansy_Gold]

8. If so, why hasn't she done it?

n/t

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. If I remember correctly, Plame still works for the CIA and still has...

...to adhere to all of the laws and regulations regarding classified material. You can bet that the NeoCons have classified the information concerning the roots of this story.

[Pallas180]

22. cause she's cia & can't speak of anything she knows.

:hi:

[Rose Siding]

11. Someone would have been employing the Italian SISMI

Why would the Italians be going to the effort to introduce phony docs by such a circuitous route? Someone would have been behind their involvement. That must be the meat of the story and there is no shortage of evildoers to suspect. Chalabi? Cheney? :shrug:

[Rose Siding]

9. Light bulb, Eureka, siren moment...

snip>
At the time I wrote that post, I thought the story was going to appear in late June, thus my oblique mention of it on the site. It’s now slated to appear later this month.
...................

The *indictments*? The grand jury got extended- (media appeals?)

Could THAT be responsible for his publish date change? :bounce:

[TacticalPeek]

24. Veddy interestink.

And also: logical.

So much crime, so little time.

[milkyway]

32. I think you're right. For some reason, Josh won't publish until after

indictments are handed down.

[VolcanoJen]

10. Isn't this story more about the Italian "Security Consultant"...

... than anyone else?

I read Josh's account and the Sunday Times account, and although it's interesting, I find it hard to believe that anyone's going to pay much attention to this development. :shrug:

[Rose Siding]

12. I think only a portion of his story got scooped.

Don't you suppose he must know who's behind the Italian intel's efforts? It would have to be in order for him to think it would shake up Washington.

[VolcanoJen]

13. Well, that's what I'm hoping.

In order for me to believe this is a "tectonic plate-shifting" story, Josh and his colleague are going to have to show that the CIA or White House somehow solicited the documents from the Italian security agent.

Weird.

[Rose Siding]

14. I was thinking more along the line that...

the Italian SISMA, that first set the consultant guy up with the woman who they used to introduce the docs, was being used by someone to get them out there, and *that's* who Marshall is aware of.

I've been reluctant to hope the story had anything to do with Plame but as I noted in an earlier post, the timing of the release of Josh's piece sort of fits with what's going on in that case.

[NashVegas]

28. He Seems To Be

Or at least gives the impression.

[Eloriel]

30. Me too

I came back to the thread hoping to get some clue or inkling about how this is going to mean that tectonic plate shift Josh mentioned.

So far the biggest news, by far, is that some TV network might carry it? That could be interesting. But other than that -- and I'm passingly familiar with the endless Plame Investigation threads -- the whole thing is a big shrug to me. If nothing's brought Bush down so far, I don't see any particular promise in this.

[stickdog]

52. But that's the pattern. They get away with corruption on a massive scale

while something innocuous but illegal brings them down.

[Minstrel Boy]

15. Arch neocon Michael Ledeen consulted for Italian military intelligence

in the late 1970s, at the height of Italy's "strategy of tension": a campaign of false-flag terrorism designed to discredit the Italian left, waged by the fascist CIA asset Licio Gelli and his P2 lodge.

Ledeen is said to have been an "honorary member" of the lodge. When secret membership roles were published in the early 1980s, Silvio Berlusconi's name was found on it, long before he entered politics.

So, with P2 member Berlusconi in office, and neocon Ledeen's ties to the Italian far right and Italian intelligence, maybe this story comes into focus.

"...terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8249

From Asia Times:

"Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig.

"Over the next several years, Ledeen used his position as consultant to Haig, the Pentagon and the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan to boost the notion of a global terrorist conspiracy based in the Kremlin, whose KGB pulled the strings of all of the world's key terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html

"In 1980 he entered into a collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists who had staged the attack."
(excerpt from Herman/O'Sullivan's The "Terrorism" Industry, 1989, quoted http://billmon.org/archives/000653.html ).

From Barbara Honegger's October Surprise, more on Ledeen and P2:

"When the Italian police raided (P2 Lodge founder) Gelli's home in March 1981, it was Michael Ledeen who, at the instigation of Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, offered to buy the list of 953 P2 members in an apparent attempt to keep it from becoming public. Henry Kissinger had also reportedly sent Ledeen to Italy to try to squash an investigation into his and Haig's involvement in the founding of P2.

"On the morning of August 2, 1980, a massive bomb since linked to Gelli...exploded in the waiting room of the central train station in Bologna, killing 81 people and injuring 200 others. General Santorito, the chief of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, who was also reportedly a member of P2, testified in the wake of the bombing that it had been planned by the British-Swiss-American Montecarlo Comite, P2's "sister" organization based in Monaco. When P2 had come under increasing scrutiny in 1979, grandmaster Licio Gelli had reportedly made his base of operations the Montecarlo Comite.... Not surprisingly, reported members of the Montecarlo Comite are Gelli, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Michael Ledeen."

More here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=1313530

[Rose Siding]

17. He's a current contributing editor for National Review

http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200407261224.asp

Does he hold any official position now or does he just rub shoulders with power?

[Minstrel Boy]

20. It was a think tank war, and he has the biggest tank:

the American Enterprise Institute.

That he currently doesn't hold an official position doesn't diminish his influence.

[TacticalPeek]

25. His daughter helped screw up Iraq. That's quite a crime family.

Who's Who In The Coalition Provisional Authority

Special Baghdad edition

By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway

12/04/03: (The Washington Monthly) Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

more
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5338.htm

[Rose Siding]

36. Oh, good!

This does look like the tie-in then. Marshall said today he's been working on the story for 6 months.

[Pallas180]

23. BINGO - Lightbulb

when the indictments come out, wouldn't it be coincidental if
a bombing was planned to push it off the front page....

A Rove specialty.

[Octafish]

26. Ledeen helped frame Billy Carter & foist Ch-Ch-Chalabi

Ledeen's Way

Jim Lobe,  July 3, 2003

"I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties, but losing." - Michael Ledeen, March, 2003, in a lecture at the American Enterprise Institute (for more see GNN's EastCoast Bunker, April 1, 2003)

When the Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's closest advisor, regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst.

"The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me." "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric," noted the newspaper.

SNIP...

To Ledeen, whose own contacts with the mullahs in the Iran-Contra affair 15 years ago remain the source of some mystery, Iran is "the mother of modern terrorism." And terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence, which in turn enabled him to expose Billy Carter's dealings with the Muammar Gaddafi regime in Libya to the great satisfaction of Republicans, who were revving up their campaign against Billy's brother, then president Jimmy Car

CONTINUED...

http://www.guerrillanews.com/intelligence/doc2310.html


The BFEE WorkerTurd Ledeen's also been instrumental in foisting Ch-Ch-Chalabi. From the same brave journalist -- a REAL reporter:

COMMENTARY

Democracy a tool in neo-con hands

By Jim Lobe

Of the delusions that US neo-conservatives perpetrated in their drive to take the United States to war in Iraq, the most durable has been the notion that they are committed to the spread of Wilsonian democracy. As someone who has watched the neo-con movement over the past 30 years or so, I find this notion hard to accept.

My skepticism is based not only on their obvious selectivity. After all, one has only to look at their support for authoritarian regimes in Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Jordan - as opposed to their eagerness to invade Iraq in the name of bringing democratic rule there - to find some glaring inconsistencies.

Nor is it the fact that neo-conservatives pushed hardest for President George W Bush to cease dealing with Yasser Arafat, who, after all, was elected by a substantial majority of eligible Palestinian voters on the West Bank and in Gaza, that suggests a certain hypocrisy or blindness on the issue. Neo-con hardliners such as Richard Perle believe Palestinians should be denied self-determination altogether.

Without doubt, neo-cons have long professed a devotion to democracy. Indeed, their main argument in favor of a US strategic alliance with Israel - a central and persistent tenet of the neo-conservative creed over three decades - has been the Jewish state's status as the lone democratic outpost in a region of seething and hate-filled Arab autocracies.

CONTINUED...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FG27Ak02.html

EDIT: fixed head to foist

[KittyWampus]

33. #1- DU'ers Are The BEST At Digging Up Info

#2- Reading some of that info leaves me feeling sort of disturbed.

[starroute]

38. Where do Ledeen's loyalties really lie?

The United States? The Republicans? The CIA? SISMI? Israel? A party or parties unknown? Or nobody but himself?

http://www.eyeranian.net/2003/05/07,54.shtml

Ledeen has moved within the power structure and between Western governments according to opportunity, for personal advantage and perhaps also in pursuit of political ends that are not entirely clear. Although serving as a loyal agent of the U.S. state in Italy in the 1970s, his service in the Billygate affair was to the Republican Party. He was on the payroll of the Italian secret service agency SISMI in the early 1980s, but his manipulations in Italy caused the new head of SISMI to declare before Parliament in 1984 that Ledeen was an "intriguer" and unwelcome in Italy <6>. His attachment to Israel, reflected in his JINSA connection, may have influenced his pursuit of the hostage deal with Iran (Israel favored such a transaction), and his former boss in the Pentagon, Noel Koch, asserts that while Ledeen was in Italy the CIA station chief there took him to be "an agent of influence of a foreign government" <7>.

<snip>

Not only did the head of SISMI denounce him as an intriguer, but the authors of the Tower Commission Report concluded that the CIA should permanently terminate its relationship with Ledeen and his associate, Ghorbanifar. All of this, however, has not interfered with his status as a terrorism expert for the U.S. mass media. His connections are still potent, the right-wing and Israeli lobby are fond of him, he is glib and his "transparent crap" is therefore acceptable.

[starroute]

41. Ledeen as fascist -- somewhat tinfoil, but interesting

This is originally from a LaRouche source -- which, as always, means potentially interesting but take with a pinch (or even a handful) of salt. However, if true, it would shed a lot of light on the ideology behind what Ledeen is really up to:

http://www.cecaust.com.au/main.asp?id=culture/synarchism3.htm

Ledeen, the self-proclaimed "universal fascist," has long been under scrutiny by EIR researchers, as a man who has been in the midst of some of the dirtiest covert intelligence operations of the past 30 years. ... The first important influence on Ledeen's life was George Mosse, a German Jewish emigre, who had been on good terms with such Nazi leaders as Joseph Goebbels and Herman Goering. Mosse was so close that Goering offered to make his father an Aryan, and the family was permitted to leave Germany 15 minutes before the law was changed.

The Cambridge-educated Mosse, who would become Ledeen's teacher at the University of Wisconsin, taught Ledeen that despite its "perversion" by anti-Semitism, Fascism ought to be scientifically studied, because the Geist (soul) of Western countries had been suffocated and could only be revived through Fascism or Nazism. It is reported that while Ledeen was working on his Ph.D., he was blackballed for having joined—under Mosse's influence—a cell of the Israeli intelligence-linked movement associated with Vladimir Ze'ev Jabotinsky, whom Israeli leader David Ben Gurion referred to as "Vladimir Hitler."

<snip>

But an even more important mentor to Ledeen was Renzo de Felice, an advocate of the Jacobin Revolution in France which led to the emergence of the first modern Fascist, Napoleon Bonaparte. De Felice did not hide his Fascism, as he wrote in The Illuminati and Revolutionary Mysticism, 1789-1900: "There is something in common between my Jacobins and a certain kind of Fascism.... Fascism wanted to achieve the transformation of society and the individual ... a new phase in the history of civilization."

After researching in Italy from 1966 to 1967, where he met scions of the Venetian oligarchy who are "magicians" in cultural warfare, Ledeen wrote: Universal Fascism (1972); "Italian Fascism and Youth," Journal of Contemporary History, July 1969; "Fascist Social Policy," in The Use and Abuse of Social Science, ed, Irving Louis Horowitz; and, among others, Fascism, An Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice, by Renzo de Felice, which includes an interview with Ledeen.

[starroute]

43. A second source on Ledeen's fascism

I've posted here at DU any number of times complaining that the Bushies aren't really fascists -- they're just in it for the money and don't have that old-fashioned ideological yargh. But Ledeen, it seems, is a genuine fascist in every sense of the word.

http://worldwarfour.blogspot.com/2004_06_01_worldwarfour_archive.html

While writing for the far-right, CIA-sponsored newspaper Il Giannola Nouvo in 1972, Ledeen unleashed an ideological projectile titled Universal Fascism. This followed post-fascist revisionists Camillo Pellizzi and Renzo de Felice (Ledeen's then-tutor) in eulogising Italy's early fascist period as a great "failed revolution". For Pellizzi, the unreconstructed fascist academic, Mussolini's march on Rome had promised to inaugurate "an era of youthful genius and creativity" - the foundation of a revolutionary state that would inspire a new pan-European Order. (According to the revisionist line, this was thwarted only by Mussolini's megalomania and doomed dive behind Hitler.) Ledeeen followed Universal Fascism with Gabriele D'Annunzio – The First Duce (1977) - an extended account of D'Annunzio's 1919 Fiume occupation. During his 18-month "lyrical dictatorship" D'Annunzio provided the "second" Duce with tactical and aesthetic inspiration: the balcony address and Roman salute, quasi-religious symbolism and uniformed militarism, as well as the Imperial lunge, all bore D’Annunzio’s signature. Ledeen’s hagiography revealed his own hand: morality and legality ditched in favour of action and aggression and internationalism, a reductive and Romantic vision of far-right revolution.

<snip>

In this new anti-fascist warrior mode, Ledeen zeroed in on Iran as the theofascist state writ large. There is more than a little truth in this (and as for terrorism: who do you think pays Hizbollah's bills, for example?). With almost comic exaggeration, Ledeen now fired on his two most controversial former alliances, as if to smother past sins, rather than absolve them. Except in one important way he didn't.

In an oped published on October 17 2003 ("Defeating Fascism, Again") he couldn't help but sneak an admiring backward glance at the early Il Duce revolution. "Fascism foresaw a transformation of man from a supine servant of modern bourgeois society to a creative warrior who would transform the world in his new image," he wrote, in a near-yearning paean to D'Annunzio and de Felice, which also consciously echoed his own reveries of "creative destruction." This line brazenly united the Founding Fathers with Mussolini: the ideals of Italian fascism and the American Revolution remaining equally potent, to the point of conflation. ... The Nazis, the Mullahs, the bin Ladenists, even China (with mind-crippling analytical contortion, Ledeen likes to call China "the world's first mature fascist state"!) are all examples of congealed, repressive, quasi-religious, life-denying systems or movements. Meanwhile, the Italian ideal maintained by Pellizzi and de Felice - a National revolution-of-will - became, for Ledeen, an occluded component in a new formulation of democracy.

[starroute]

46. A Paleocon take on Ledeen's fascism (and the New World Order)

In response to what scotxyz says below, I didn't know about any of this stuff until I picked up on what Minstrel Boy said about Ledeen's ties to the Italian far right and started Googling for more. I never expected all the explicit fascist associations to pop out, and I'm more than a little freaked that they have.

The quotes below are from a piece in Pat Buchanan's "American Conservative" magazine -- which often has surprisingly sensible things to say, especially when speaking, as in this article, for "the antiwar Right."


http://www.amconmag.com/06_30_03/feature.html

Indeed, Ledeen criticizes Mussolini precisely for not being revolutionary enough. "He never had enough confidence in the Italian people to permit them a genuine participation in fascism." Ledeen therefore concurs with the fascist intellectual, Camillo Pellizi, who argues—in a book Ledeen calls "a moving and fundamental work"—that Mussolini’s was "a failed revolution." Pellizzi had hoped that “the new era was to be the era of youthful genius and creativity”: for him, Ledeen says, the fascist state was “a generator of energy and creativity.” The purest ideologues of fascism, in other words, wanted something very similar to that which Ledeen himself wants now, namely a “worldwide mass movement” enabling the peoples of the world, "liberated" by American militarism, to participate in the "greatest experiment in human freedom." Ledeen wrote in 1996, "The people yearn for the real thing—revolution."

Ledeen was especially interested in the role played by youth in Italian fascism. It was here that he detected the movement’s most exciting revolutionary potential. The young Ledeen wrote that those who exalted the position of youth in the fascist revolution—like those who argued in favor of his beloved "universal fascism"—were committed to exporting Italian fascism to the whole world, an idea in which Mussolini was initially uninterested. When he was later converted to it, Mussolini said that fascism drew on the universalist heritage of Rome, both ancient and Catholic. No doubt Ledeen thinks that the new Rome in Washington has the same universalist mission. He writes that people around Berto Ricci—the editor of the fascist newspaper L’Universale, and a man he calls "brilliant" and "an example of enthusiasm and independence"— "called for the formation of a new empire, an empire based not on military conquest but rather on Italy’s unique genius for civilization. … They intended to develop the traditions of their country and their civilization in such a manner as to make them the basic tenets of a new world order."

<snip>

As Ledeen shows, the Italian fascists expressed their desire “to tear down the old order” (his words from 2002) in terms that are curiously anticipatory of a famous statement in 2003 by the Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. In 1932, Asvero Gravelli also divided Europe into "old" and "new" when he wrote, in Towards the Fascist International, "Either old Europe or young Europe. Fascism is the gravedigger of old Europe. Now the forces of the Fascist International are rising." It all sounds rather prophetic.

[blm]

47. Fascism/corporatism. That is the BFEE goal.

I am spreading this info to other forums.

Please get this out there, folks.

Grazie, MinstrelBoy. Again.

[starroute]

16. Here's something interesting on the Italian end

http://warincontext.org/editorials/bogusdossier.htm

Like a spy story not too long on imagination, the tale began with a break-in. The apartment was on the sixth floor at 10, Via Antonio Baiamonti, in Rome's Mazzini district. The door was sturdy and armored, and it protected the offices of Niger's embassy in the capital. A gloomy corridor ran between the political adviser's offices and the ambassador's room. On a night between 29 December 2000 and 1 January 2001, the usual "persons unknown" were haphazardly hunting for something, turning the embassy upside-down: papers strewn everywhere, drawers turned inside-out, closets opened. When the second secretary for administrative affairs, Arfou Mounkaila, reported the theft to the carabinieri at the Trionfale precinct, early in the morning of 2 January, he had, nevertheless, to admit that the thieves had behaved in a somewhat odd manner. Much ado, and trouble, about nothing. With the exception of a Breil steel watch and three small phials of perfume, the "thieves" had taken nothing. Or so it appeared. If you knock on the embassy's door now and ask a few questions about that odd theft, you get a smile from a courteous lady and the following words: "It all began there; it all began with that theft."

The article isn't completely clear on what the authors think actually did happen, but the implication is that the break-in was the first act in the train of events that led to the appearance of the forged documents a year later.

[starroute]

18. And this may be another piece of the puzzle

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/07/when_in_rome.html

Kevin Drum notes that the sections of the Senate report dealing with the Iraq-Niger forgery are a mass of redactions. It's not all redacted, however, and I did pick something up that I hadn't seen before. Page 58 states:

The INR nuclear analyst told the Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the documents was that a companion document -- a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium -- mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as "completely implausible." Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document , the analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.

So that's how INR first got on the scent. Now unlike formatting problems, this isn't the kind of thing a forger would do by mistake.

And as we see, trying to include evidence of an Iran-Iraq plot degraded the credibility of the uranium forgery. One must concluded, then, that the forger was trying to get people to believe in the existence of an Iran-Iraq conspiracy. A completely implausible theory indeed, though one Michael Ledeen's been peddling for years. And Ledeen seems to get a lot of his "information" on this front from Italy. See my previous post on this. And Laura Rozen noted in response that while Italian Military Intelligence (SISMI) "provides to its friends little snippets of intelligence that confirms what its friends want to hear" the Italian government is, in fact, extremely soft on Iran and is aware of "several alleged front companies for Iran to acquire" dual-use technology while doing nothing to crack down on them. Interesting times....

[warrior1]

27. kick

.

[starroute]

37. More -- Harold Rhode and Manucher Ghorbanifar

http://www.needlenose.com/pMachineFree2.2.1/comments.php?id=P645_0_1_0
December 7, 2003

Back in late October, Joshua Marshall began tossing around hints about who might have forged documents suggesting that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger, back when the Bushites were trying to scare us with mushroom-cloud images. A few days later, he posted a follow-up underlining the notion that those documents were consciously created to help that scare campaign.

Then, however, Marshall went silent on the subject . . . until today. At the end of a brief post on questionable contacts between the neocons in the Defense Department and Iran-Contra scam artist Manucher Ghorbanifar, he writes, "make a note for future reference about where that first meeting took place." That sent me checking the New York Times article he was referring to, which said, "The secret meetings were first held in Rome in December 2001." Guess what city the forged Niger uranium documents turned up in? That's right, Rome.

<snip>

As noted in August by both Marshall and the Washington Post, one of the Pentagon aides who met with Ghorbanifar in Rome has been a primary contact point between the Defense Department and Chalabi. As Marshall notes, the aide in question, Harold Rhode, is also a charter member of the neocon-empire club who looked forward to the U.S. ousting Saddam Hussein and dominating the Middle East long before September 11th gave them the excuse.

And from the comments:

But why Rome? -- Well, as noted in a Newsday article by Knut Royce and Tim Phelps from Aug. 8 of this year http://www.why-war.com/news/2003/08/08/secretta.html "Rhode is a protegé of Michael Ledeen, a neo-conservative who was a National Security Council consultant in the mid-1980s when he introduced Ghorbanifar to Oliver North... and others in the opening stages of the Iran-contra affair." Now, what a coincidence -- Ledeen has deep connections with Italy, and specifically, the Italian far right.

[Snazzy]

45. Here's that

CONFIDENTIAL

REPORT ON THE MEETING REALIZE WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PLAN OF ACTION "GLOBAL SUPPORT"

Our group, which met today June 14, 2002, at 4 PM in the residence of the Iraqi ambassador, via della Camillucia n° 355 in Rome has determined as follows:

The group directed by the ambassadors of Niger, Sudan, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Iran have decided that "Global Support" which is composed of specialists belonging to different military corps of the allied countries will be active immediately.

We are convinçed that the high profession of the military belonging to "Global Support" are qualified with considerable experiences and very diversified in the sectors of defence and security and without a doubt they are responsible for the tasks assigned to them.

The Global Support (our group) is active worldwide, in all areas and extreme climates.

The competences of the members of Global Support are the following:

- Our support will above all be extended to:
governments submitted to an embargo;

governments continually suspected, and without just cause, of producing nuclear, bacteriological, chemical weapons; governments accused, without just cause, of international terrorism;

Islamic patriots accused of belonging to criminal organizations, to cells having non-existent ramifications;

SEAL OF THE EMBASSY IN ROME OF THE REPUBLIC OF NIGER


-----

http://cryptome.quintessenz.org/mirror/niger-docs2.htm

Note it's not just Iran and Iraq, but neocon fantasies could extend to all of those as easily.

Also keep in mind G8 in July 2001--all of the current assholes were over there too, making pals, and actually discussing Iraq (IAEA meeting at the event I think).

[Rose Siding]

29. .

[Swede]

31. You guys are great. I am so glad I found Democratic Underground.

[trumad]

35. kick

[Joanne98]

39. Group think, group think

or else the intell agencies are packed full of criminals. When is the Italian PM up for re-election. They need to get rid of him.

[fizzana]

40. I'm thinking there might not be that much to the story after all

Josh Marshall has gone from "a shift in the tectonic plates" to "create quite a stir in Washington". Maybe he's being a bit more coy now there's a considerable difference in the descriptions.

[redstateblues]

54. Tectonic Plates Shifting? This Story Has Been Overhyped

It is important that we stay mentally tough and not count on these potential bombshells to carry the day. This and the Plame Outing are not going to explode in time to help us much I'm afraid. Maybe I'm being negative but I spent hours reading the Plame Thread getting my hopes up. I think they will be able to run the stall until this doesn't affect the election

[Snazzy]

42. Timing is critical

So the Italian govt. floats the Niger/Iraq thing, not some flaky ex-spook, but the SISMI. That's the Marshall story.

When? According to the Senate report it all started October 15, 2001 (actual documents not appearing for a few more months, closer to When Wilson went there).

One of the forged documents attempts to put the Iraqi ambassador to Rome there 'buying' yellowcake the week before 9/11.

See the documents: http://cryptome.quintessenz.org/mirror/niger-docs3.htm

In other words, while NY and the Pentagon is still smoking, Italy is trying to float Iraq as trying to go nuke. And that trip before 9/11 maybe intended to make us think that Iraq had foreknowledge of the attacks.

Hopefully Marshall's magazine piece will tell us who here put SISMI up to this--they didn't come up with on their own. Instantly they were going after Iraq, not Osama, much like Rummy said.

[Snazzy]

49. And remember the Hersh theory

That the CIA did the forgeries, or allowed them to be made and passed in order to expose the Office of Special plans being a bunch of cherry-picking amatures. Which, might add, seems to be exactly what happened.

From Hersh:

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’” These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

“They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go—to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,” my source said. “They thought it’d be bought at lower levels—a big bluff.” The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration, who would be unable to resist flaunting them at a press conference or an interagency government meeting. They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. “It got out of control.”


http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[scottxyz]

44. This is an amazing thread

Who needs Tom Clancy novels when we have such gripping current events? I feel like I get the equivalend of Joan Didion's novel "Democracy" about once a week on DU now. (Joan, if you're out there, the Plame/WMD/Halliburton story would make a great new novel. Just suggesting.)

Thanks to everyone who posted such amazing links on Ledeen in this thread. (How do you all find them so fast? This looks like more than just googling, you guys seem to have had these thinks hanging around in your files.)

I had heard his name before, here and there. By the end of today I suspect I will have taken my first steps towards becoming a Ledeenologist.

[trumad]

48. Hey scottxyz

You do know that DU is comprised of only on e individual??? ME!

That's right, I am everyone on this forum and I only allow one other poster to post here on DU..YOU! That's cause I like you.

So Don't thank everyone...thank me..;-)

[wishlist]

50. So the million dollar question is did the neocons plant it or did ex-CIA?

In a nutshell, were the forged documents planted by ex-CIA in order to expose the administration's misuse of intelligence and embarrass and discredit the WH (an improbable rumor Hersh heard) or were the forged documents planted by Ledeen or a Ledeen-influenced neocon knowing that the WH would use the forgeries to bolster the case for war since the WH wasn't vetting intelligence through proper CIA channels and the documents wouldn't be exposed as forgeries at least until the war was launched. I think the second possibility makes the most sense and may explain the Administration's recent disinformation campaign.

Edited to ask, BTW, what was ever found out about the forged documents used to smear that prominent British politician who opposed the war. I believe he sued the Christian Science Monitor for running the story about documents found by the coalition in Baghdad showing he got payoffs. Then those documents were proven to be fakes.

[shraby]

51. Isn't it possible that the CIA "used"

Leeden to do the Niger paper thing to cover their tracks?

By the way, google Ghorbanifar..he was an arms dealer.

[wishlist]

53. My guess is neocons are behind the falsified documents, not CIA

I do not think the Hersh CIA rumor holds water, instead that water cooler rumor may have been planted by the administration to make the CIA the fall guy so that Bushco could continue blaming the CIA for faulty intelligence.