La Repubblica expose: they say Niger forgery story starts with Ledeen.

[Wordie]

The US media just isn't reporting this, but La Repubblica is! Note that Ledeen is also the foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove.

(This site is providing translations - note that I have no way of confirming the accuracy of the translations:
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/10/sismis-war-in-iraq-iranian-connection.html )

"The story of Italian military intervention in Iraq begins when the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, sponsored by Defense Minister Antonio Martino, debarks in Rome with Pentagon men in tow to meet a handful of “Iranian exiles.” The meeting is organized by SISMI. In an Agency “safe house” near Piazza di Spagna (however, other sources have told us it was a reserved room in the Parco dei Principi Hotel).

Twenty men are gathered around a large table, covered by maps of Iraq, Iran and Syria. The big cheese are Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans, Michael Ledeen of the AIE, a SISMI chief accompanied by his assistant (the former is a balding man between 46 and 48 years of age; the latter is younger, around 38, with braces on his teeth) and some mysterious Iranians.

Pollari confirms the meeting to La Repubblica...

[Bob3]

1. oh what a tangled web we weave

when we are bastards yes?

[Wordie]

6. LOL...Ledeen sure is! eom

[IChing]

2. There is our guy again wordie

Can you find our old thread on this guy?

This guy is the creeps for a balding man 46-48



http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/ledeen/ledeen.php

[Wordie]

8. I was worried for a moment he was gonna slip back into the shadows! eom

[Teaser]

3. Nur-al Cubicle is very reliable.

I believe it's "Paper Tigress" from DailyKos, who used to do the translaged Italian updates on Iraq there.

[Wordie]

10. Very interesting...I figured they were reliable, but glad for confirmation

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. I wonder if Nicola Calipari was one of the SISMI people

at the meeting? Maybe that's why they had to kill him?

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. He sure fits the discription

[Wordie]

20. That idea is very disturbing to me, but I've heard others wonder about it

too. If you find any links with definitive info, make sure to post them.

[Boo Boo]

7. And the U.S. government (not just civilians in the Pentagon) knew

that these guys were over there playing games, because both the Ambassador to Italy in Rome, and the CIA Station Chief sent cables back to their respective offices asking what the hell was going on. Hannah was the guy that supposedly told them (Franklin, Rhode, Feith...) to cease and desist, but, then again, he's the guy that got the resulting "16 words" into the SOTU speech (or at least took the blame).

Man, this thing is so close to blowing wide open.

Faster, please!

[Wordie]

9. msm does not seem to report the Ledeen (and Rove?) connection

and, I've read elsewhere that our ambassador to Italy and the CIA did not know until a few days later that the meeting had taken place. However, I'm not certain where I read that, so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the statement (if you want a link, I'll go search for one - let me know).

[Boo Boo]

11. The story I read was that the Ambassador found out at a dinner

with Ledeen, and the Italian(s)---Ledeen was an old acquaintance of the Ambassador's---and they (Ledeen and his pal(s)) started discussing their prior meeting. The Ambassador was stunned, because that sort of thing is way outside of standard operating procedure. If Rhode and Franklin wanted to meet with members of a foreign government they were, as a matter of government policy, to notify the CIA Station Chief. That's when the cables went out.

I've no idea about the time frame between the original meeting and the dinner with the Ambassador.

[Wordie]

12. That's just what I read. Do you recall where you read it?

...and I seem to recall that the time frame was quite short: a few days or a week. Not positive on that though.

[Boo Boo]

17. As a matter of fact, I do!

Josh Marshall, et al for Washington Monthly:

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

[Wordie]

13. Why Ledeen should be exposed, too.

Read this again:
<snip>
"The story of Italian military intervention in Iraq begins when the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, sponsored by Defense Minister Antonio Martino, debarks in Rome with Pentagon men in tow to meet a handful of “Iranian exiles.” The meeting is organized by SISMI. In an Agency “safe house” near Piazza di Spagna (however, other sources have told us it was a reserved room in the Parco dei Principi Hotel).

You see, the story of UNITED STATES military intervention begins at the VERY SAME PLACE, doesn't it? And if you read a lot of what Ledeen has written, the connection is so obvious, that he would be involved in something like this, and use any means available to him to advance his cause.

Try reading some of what he's written about, and what's written about him:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Lede...
<snip>
"From creative destruction to total war, the guiding beliefs of the most aggressive foreign policymakers in the George Walker Bush administration may originate in the works of an influential yet rarely seen neoconservative."

"Most Americans have never heard of Michael Ledeen, but if the United States ends up in an extended shooting war throughout the Middle East, it will be largely due to his inspiration."

"Ledeen's ideas are repeated daily by such figures as Richard Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Dundes Wolfowitz. His views virtually define the stark departure from American foreign policy philosophy that existed before the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001. He basically believes that violence in the service of the spread of democracy is America's manifest destiny. Consequently, he has become the philosophical legitimator of the American occupation of Iraq.

"Quotes from Ledeen's works reveal a peculiar set of beliefs about American attitudes toward violence. 'Change -- above all violent change -- is the essence of human history,' he proclaims in his book, Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules Are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago. In an influential essay in the National Review Online <2> (http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/ledeen092001... ) he asserts, 'Creative destruction is our middle name. We do it automatically ... it is time once again to export the democratic revolution.'

Ledeen is one of the major reasons we are in Iraq, imho. (Not the only one, but a major player, both philosophically and in terms of actual actions that got us there.)

[blm]

14. LeDeen has been pulling these type of ops for over 3 decades now.

He was a big help to Poppy Bush planting stories in foreign press to get little wars and other guerilla actions started in whichever little country was targeted.

[Wordie]

15. Ledeen and "Billygate" (President Carter's brother)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Michael_Ledeen
<snip>
Ledeen's Role in "Billygate" Affair

In articles in The New Republic (1979 and 1980) and others reprinted in the Atlantic Constitution and Now (a UK magazine), Ledeen, then opinion editor for Washington Quarterly, accused the President's brother, Billy Carter, of having met with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and George Habash, a PLO military leader, in Libya in Oct. 1978. Ledeen's article also accused Carter of having accepted loans and expense money from the Libyans. "More Adventures of Billy Carter," TNR, Feb. 10, 1979; "Preposterous Emissaries," TNR, Aug. 2, 1980 (http://www.tnr.com/arch/search.mhtml)

In an "unusal public deposition" to counsel of a Senate subcommittee investigating Billy Carter's ties to with Libya, Ledeen testified that he believed the president's brother was "one pawn in an ambitious influence-peddling scheme." Ledeen told Senate investigators that his sole source for the information was Michele Papa, a Sicilian lawyer who Ledeen claimed was a Libyan agent. Billy Carter denied meeting Arafat and having received a $50,000 payment from the Libyans. "Billy Source Described," The Washington Post, Oct. 29, 1980, p. A-4 (http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost_historical/130652822.html?did=130652822&FMT=ABS&FMTS=AI&date=Oct+29%2C+1980&author=&pub=The+Washington+Post++(1974-Current+file)&desc=Billy+Source+Described)

Various sources have repeated charges that far from merely reporting on Billy Carter's meetings in Libya, Ledeen collaborated with Italian intelligence sources to use Billy Carter's ill-conceived trip to Libya to create an "influence peddling scandle."

[Roland99]

16. Some articles on Ledeen and his daughter, Simone. >>>>>

Money for Nothing

Billions of dollars have disappeared, gone to bribe Iraqis and line contractors’ pockets.
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_10_24/cover.html



Serving Two Flags
Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Administration
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5788.htm

In 1983, on the recommendation of Richard Perle, Ledeen was hired at the Department of Defense as a consultant on terrorism. His immediate supervisor was the Principle Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, Noel Koch. Early in their work together, Koch noticed with concern Ledeen's habit of stopping by in his (Koch's) outer office to read classified materials. When the two of them took a trip to Italy, Koch learned from the CIA station there that when Ledeen had lived in Rome previously, as correspondent for The New Republic, he'd been carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel.

Some time after their return from the trip, Ledeen approached his boss with a request for his assistance in obtaining two highly classified CIA reports which he said were held by the FBI. He'd hand written on a piece of paper the identifying "alpha numeric designators". These identifiers were as highly classified as the reports themselves....which raised in Koch's mind the question of who had provided them to Ledeen if he hadn't the clearances to obtain them himself. Koch immediately told his executive assistant that Ledeen was to have no further access to classified materials in the office, and Ledeen just ceased coming to "work".

In early 1986, however, Koch learned that Ledeen had joined NSC as a consultant, and sufficiently concerned about the internal security implications of the behavior of his former aide, arranged to be interviewed by two FBI agents on the matter. After a two hour debriefing, Koch was told that it was only Soviet military intelligence penetration that interested the Bureau. The follow-on interviews that were promised by the agents just never occurred.

Koch thought this strange, coming as it did just months after the arrest of Naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard on charges of espionage for Israel. Frustrated, Koch wrote up in detail the entire saga of Ledeen's DOD consultancy, and sent it to the Office of Senator Charles Grassley, then a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which had oversight responsibility for, inter alia, the FBI.

A former senior FBI counter-intelligence official was surprised and somewhat skeptical, when told of Koch's unsuccessful attempts to interest the Bureau in an investigation of Ledeen, noting that in early 1986, the Justice Department was in fact already engaged in several on-going, concurrent investigations of Israeli espionage and theft of American military technology.

7 Habits of Highly Effective Imperialists

Self-help for those who oppose self-rule http://www.amconmag.com/2004_10_11/cover.html

By contrast, today, is there any American clever enough to see the wisdom of dividing Iraq into three parts, so as to make all three mini-states—Sunni, Shia, Kurd—dependent on the U.S. for border protection? Evidently not. And in any case, we’re still fighting two out of three of these groups 18 months after liberating them. Feith & Co. navigated by “moral clarity,” not by historical or political landmarks. According to an August report in Rolling Stone, one U.S. Army colonel, a veteran of Middle East work, fluent in Arabic, was interviewed by Feith for a possible job. During the session, Feith looked down at his résumé, “I see you speak Arabic,” Feith said. When the colonel nodded, Feith snapped, “too bad” and dismissed him. To make matters worse, the Feithians appointed their unskilled friends and relatives—Michael Fleischer (brother of Ari) and Simone Ledeen (daughter of Michael)—to prominent positions in the Coalition Provisional Authority. After a few months of sightseeing and war profiteering, such folks have mostly come home—not Effective.

And an article from Ledeen's own hand:

Lying into the Mirror
Misunderstaning the war on terror.
http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200405211643.asp

:puke:

[Wordie]

18. Yeah...just what happened to all those lost billions in Iraq, anyway? nt

[Wordie]

19. kick