Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by 8bitagent » Thu Nov 17, 2016 5:12 am
by Searcher08 » Thu Nov 17, 2016 5:28 am
82_28 » Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:36 am wrote:The strip malls are already here. Did you mean strip mines?
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 8:29 am
Pro-Donald Trump spokesman praises Muslim registry, cites Japanese internment camps as 'precedent'
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.2876766
Family Research Council's Starkly Anti-Gay Ken Blackwell Leading Trump's Domestic Transition Team
He was also accused of voter suppression while Secretary of State of Ohio.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/k ... l-anti-gay
Laura Ingraham, Right-Wing, Anti-Latino Pundit, Is Front-Runner for Trump Press Secretary
The White House press room could be a very hostile place for working journalists.
http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/l ... -secretary
GRAYZONE PROJECT
An Iranian Exile Cult Jockeying for War Could Have the Ear of Trump's White House
Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani are both backers of the Mojahedin-e Khalq regime change lobby.
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-projec ... hite-house
Former Terrorist Group To Enjoy Close Ties to Rumored Trump Cabinet
http://lobelog.com/former-terrorist-gro ... p-cabinet/
Chaos Reigns Over Trump Transition, Defense Secretary Pick
by Derek Davison
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition appeared to collapse into chaos on Tuesday, as infighting among his top advisers led to more turnover and slow progress on completing basic requirements. Trump’s transition team endured its second major shakeup in less than a week, when two of his top national security advisers, former Congressman Mike Rogers and consultant Matthew Freedman, were removed from their posts. The first shakeup took place last Friday, when Vice President-elect Mike Pence replaced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie as the head of the transition team (Christie remains on the team as Pence’s deputy). Several other members of the transition team were later removed in what a source told NBC News was a “Stalinesque purge” of anyone in Christie’s orbit.
Much of the chaos reportedly revolves around a personal rivalry between Christie, who was at one point believed to be on the shortlist to be Trump’s running mate, and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in-law and the publisher of the New York Observer. Kushner is believed to harbor a grudge against Christie, who prosecuted Kushner’s father for tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions in 2004, when Christie was a U.S. attorney—the elder Kushner took a plea deal and served two years in prison. Kushner reportedly talked Trump out of naming Christie as his running mate and is now reportedly conducting a purge of Christie allies from the transition team.
One place where the transition team’s struggles have become most apparent is over the position of Trump’s secretary of defense. Instead of talk coalescing around one or two of, the several candidates who have emerged over the past few days, the pool still seemed to be expanding. The two potential defense picks currently receiving the most discussion are Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who appeared to be the favorite earlier in the day, and Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, who reportedly has Pence’s support.
The Trump Loyalist
The 70-year-old Sessions is a long-time Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee who, in February, became the first member of the Senate to endorse Trump’s candidacy. After the endorsement he settled into a role as one of Trump’s national security advisers, praising Trump’s “wise” foreign policy instincts and his “emphasis on a more realistic, pragmatic foreign policy,” in particular with respect to improving U.S.-Russia relations. The latter point seems somewhat incongruous with Sessions’ past statements—in March 2015 he suggested that “Europe and the United States would have to unify and push back more firmly against Russian overreach” if the Minsk Agreement to end fighting in Ukraine were to fail. But Sessions has displayed a willingness to sublimate his own policy preferences in favor of Trump’s. For example, shortly before the election he extolled Trump’s plan to significantly increase defense spending despite Sessions’ own reputation as a budget hawk.
One issue on which Sessions and Trump clearly see eye to eye is immigration. Sessions, who has called for restricting even legal immigration to the U.S., is a major proponent of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and almost single-handedly derailed a bipartisan immigration (despite his efforts, the reform bill passed the Senate in 2013 and was later defeated in the House).
Although he has spent several years on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sessions has not really articulated any clear foreign policy views. He did vote against the Iran nuclear deal and termed it a “mistake” that could “create instability” and “lead to the proliferation of nuclear weapons” in the Middle East. He has not been a high-profile supporter of the Iranian exile group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) , as have several other national security figures involved in Trump’s transition, but he has participated in MEK-sponsored events in the past. Notably, Sessions is not a major recipient of pro-Israel campaign money, though there is also no record of him straying from a standard pro-Israel line.
The Neocon Champion
Cotton is the neoconservative darling, Bill Kristol protégé, and—you guessed it—MEK ally. He is perhaps best-known for penning a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in early 2015, warning the Iranian leader that America would likely scuttle a nuclear deal after Barack Obama left office. His repeated efforts to undermine the Iran deal—bankrolled by substantial contributions from Kristol’s Emergency Committee for Israel and pro-Israel donors like Paul Singer and Sheldon Adelson—have been unsuccessful, but he may find it easier to accomplish that aim under a Trump administration.
Cotton is undoubtedly among the most militaristic of all Republicans in Congress, particularly when it comes to Iran, which likely explains his close relationship with major U.S. defense contractors. His decision to endorse Trump and even float his own name as a potential Trump running mate in May seemed to reflect a break between Cotton and Kristol, who never endorsed Trump and instead backed Evan McMullin’s independent candidacy. Nevertheless, his selection as defense secretary would represent a major outreach to “Never Trump” neoconservatives.
Cotton, incidentally, is also infamous for blocking Obama’s nomination of former Deputy White House Counsel Cassandra Butts to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas, simply to “inflict special pain on the president” over an unrelated grievance:
At another point Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, put a hold specifically on Butts and on nominees for the ambassadorships to Sweden and Norway. He had a legitimate gripe with the Obama administration over a Secret Service leak of private information about a fellow member of Congress, and he was trying to pressure Obama to take punitive action. But that issue was unrelated to Butts and the Bahamas.
Cotton eventually released the two other holds, but not the one on Butts. She told me that she once went to see him about it, and he explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama’s—the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates—and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.
Cotton’s spokeswoman did not dispute Butts’s characterization of that meeting, and stressed, in separate emails, that Cotton had enormous respect for her and her career.
After spending more than 820 days under Cotton’s block, Butts died of leukemia in May 2016.
Other Names in the Mix
Several other possible contenders for the top Pentagon job have been mentioned, and more may come up in the coming days. As of now, the most prominent alternatives to Sessions and Cotton appear to be former Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, former Missouri Senator Jim Talent, former Arizona Senator Jon Kyl, former CIA Director James Woolsey, California Congressman Duncan Hunter, and New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, who just lost her reelection bid.
All are firmly established in the neoconservative world—Talent at the American Enterprise Institute, Woolsey at places like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Committee on the Present Danger, Hadley from his service in the Bush administration. During her time in the Senate, Ayotte was a close ally of John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and was known for her ultra-hawkish views. Hunter endorsed Trump in February, becoming the second Republican Congressperson to do so, Woolsey and Talent both endorsed Trump toward the end of the race, Talent with seeming reluctantance, while Ayotte actually rescinded a previous endorsement of Trump in the wake of the “Access Hollywood” tape scandal. Kyl endorsed Marco Rubio during the Republican primary and has so far disavowed any interest in serving in Trump’s administration. Hadley did not make an endorsement, but neither was he critical of Trump despite the candidate’s rhetorical forays outside Republican foreign policy orthodoxy.
Of this group, only Hadley has ever articulated anything approaching a positive view of the Iran nuclear deal, though it would be hard to categorize him as a supporter. Woolsey, a consistent advocate for regime change, called the deal “worse than worthless.” Talent believes the deal should be “unraveled” as soon as possible. And Ayotte called the deal a “historic capitulation.” Woolsey has been an outspoken MEK supporter for several years, and when he was in the Senate Talent advocated for removing the group from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Kyl is a long-standing supporter of regime change in Iran, and in 2013 Hunter actually suggested striking Iran with nuclear weapons.
All six are unrepentant Iraq War backers (Hunter served in Iraq as a Marine, and Hadley, who was Bush’s Deputy National Security Advisor from 2001 to 2005, may have helped manipulate intelligence to strengthen the case for the war). Woolsey has written in support of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank, disingenuously suggesting that those settlements could one day become part of a Palestinian state when in fact their expansion displaces Palestinians from the land and is one of the key obstacles to creating such a state.
Sessions as Attorney General?
Sessions, a long-time member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who previously served as Alabama’s attorney general and as U.S. attorney for Alabama’s southern district, is also reportedly under consideration to serve as Trump’s attorney general. That would leave Defense open for one of the other candidates on the list, or possibly a dark horse like retired General Michael Flynn—though Flynn, as a recently retired officer, would need a waiver from Congress to become defense secretary and is seen as the likely pick to serve as Trump’s National Security Advisor. But on Tuesday, reports also began to emerge that current Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach may be the frontrunner for the attorney general post.
Kobach has little or no public profile when it comes to foreign policy or national security. But he is an anti-immigration zealot who has already joined Trump’s transition team, so his selection would not be terribly surprising. Ultimately the decision may come down to which post Sessions himself prefers—Trump seems to highly value loyalty in selecting cabinet members, and he may feel some obligation to reward Sessions for being one of his first high-profile endorsers. If Sessions winds up at Justice, Kobach could be under consideration to head the Department of Homeland Security.
Two Very Unlikely Candidates for State
Three more names surfaced on Tuesday in connection with the position of secretary of state. Richard Armitage served as deputy secretary of state under Colin Powell during George W. Bush’s first term, while Henry Paulson served as Bush’s secretary of treasury from July 2006 through the end of Bush’s second term. Considering that both Armitage and Paulson publicly supported Hillary Clinton during the campaign, they each seem like the longest of longshots to take a role in Trump’s administration.
The third candidate is California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who is reportedly considered a “fallback” candidate in case ethics concerns keep Trump’s first choice, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, from taking the job. Rohrabacher is another major MEK supporter and champion of regime change in Iran. His views on the Iraq War—which he voted to authorize but now considers “a mistake”—and on Russia seem to fairly closely mirror Trump’s.
Given the state of anarchy into which the Trump transition seems to have descended, many more candidates for these offices will likely be bandied about before any actual selections are made.
http://lobelog.com/chaos-reigns-over-tr ... tary-pick/
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 6:29 pm
Thursday, November 17, 2016
byCommon Dreams
Meet the Islamophobic Black-Ops Master Likely to Head Trump's National Security Team
Flynn, who has suggested killing the families of suspected terrorists is okay, has been called "the embodiment of Donald Rumsfeld's view that the world is the battlefield"
byLauren McCauley, staff writer
Amid the many rumored reports of President-elect Donald Trump's likely cabinet picks, one name that has risen to the surface is seriously concerning observers of the foreign policy arena.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn is the "leading contender" to become Trump's national security advisor, one of the top posts in the White House, MSNBC reported Thursday.
"A source familiar with the Trump transition says that all signs point to Lt. General Michael Flynn," reported Kristen Welker, though "nothing is finalized."
The powerful post, which does not require Senate confirmation, is currently held by Susan Rice under President Barack Obama and formerly by Condoleeza Rice under George W. Bush.
Welker noted that Flynn is a "controversial figure in his own right who has been known to eschew 'political correctness'," who, like most of the rumored appointees, is also a "Trump loyalist who stayed by the GOP candidate's side even as other national security experts sharply criticized him during the campaign."
Though Flynn is better known for his radical declarations against Islam—for instance, saying that he is "at war with" the religion, calling it a "cancer," tweeting that "fear of Muslims is rational" (and writing a book to that effect), and insinuating that killing the families of suspected terrorists is acceptable—perhaps more concerning is his ambition to act on those beliefs.
As former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn was "one of the most influential figures in the dramatic post-9/11 expansion of the role of U.S. Special Operations forces globally," Intercept reporter Jeremy Scahill wrote in September.
Scahill continued:
Along with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Adm. William McRaven, Flynn was the embodiment of Donald Rumsfeld's view that the world is the battlefield. Flynn, who ran the elite Joint Special Operations Command's intelligence operations, is still revered as a legend within the military intelligence world.
[...]
After 9/11, Flynn was on the knife's edge of the intelligence technology that would be at the center of the mounting, global kill/capture campaign. In both Iraq and Afghanistan, Flynn and JSOC waged secret wars within the broader conventional wars and dramatically expanded the pace of night raids. Central to this strategy was taking prisoners and extracting information from them as quickly as possible.
The seriousness of his record prompted Lizz Winstead, co-creator of "The Daily Show," to quip:
Follow
Lizz WinsteadVerified account
@lizzwinstead
Michael Flynn chosen as Trump's national security adviser. In other news, just start waterboarding yourself to cut out the middle man.
Though he was ousted by the Obama administration in 2014, "ironically," Scahill noted, "it was Flynn whose black ops programs laid the groundwork for President Obama's 'counterterrorism' strategy in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and, increasingly, Syria and, once again, Iraq."
Among his other foreign policy views, Flynn is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and "portrays Iran as the source of many of America's national security problems," according to CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen.
Another point of concern is Flynn's relationship with the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which he has reportedly been paid to lobby on behalf of, raising "ethical concerns" and "cast[ing] doubt on his suitability for public office," according to David Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Human Rights.
And keeping in line with some of Trump's other appointees, namely chief strategist Steve Bannon, Flynn has used his platform to amplify rhetoric of the alt-right movement.
Ultimately, Scahill predicts, "Flynn's presence in Trump's corner means that a very sophisticated, accomplished assassin could end up in a position of tremendous authority."
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/1 ... urity-team
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 9:11 pm
Run, Run for Your Lives!
ByJOSH MARSHALLPublishedJULY 11, 2016, 7:53 PM EDT 41612 Views
In recent editions of the Trump for President Dumpster Fire reality show, we've been seeing the name of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who was forced out in 2014 over policy clashes with Obama administration officials and went on to become a top Obama critic since leaving the military. He has reportedly been an informal campaign foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump for some time now. Now he's rapidly emerged as a leading vice presidential contender. It seems so serious that after yesterday saying that he was pro-choice and creating a instant firestorm on the right, he today 'clarified' that he's actually pro-life.
But enough of all that, stop the presses: I've just uncovered information that almost certainly proves that Flynn is completely nuts.
You may have seen mention that Flynn is the author of a book called Field of Fight about ISIS and the war on terror. So far, so good. But wait. Look at the highlighted portion of the cover here!
He cowrote this book with Michael Ledeen!
If you know who Michael Ledeen is, I probably don't have to say anymore.
If you don't, Michael Ledeen he is a PhD in history and philosophy who's been kicking around DC for decades, playing a minor but significant role in the Iran-Contra scandal but generally remaining on the fringes of the neoconservative foreign policy movement because his ideas are too dark, too cynical and too fascistic.
In case you think I'm using the word loosely, not at all. Ledeen is genuinely a man of ideas and letters. It's just that the ideas tend to be a bit evil or post-moral in a functionally equivalent way. Ledeen's key intellectual influence was the Italian fascism or neo-fascism he came into contact with during his time in Italy during the 1970s. Without getting too deep into the story, Ledeen was part of a movement to distinguish 'fascism' as a set of ideas, an intellectual movement from the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. A bit further afield this was an effort to distinguish between Mussolini's fascist movement from the national socialist movement of Adolf Hitler to the north - an argument that is not without some true merit.
Ledeen's mission was to salvage what he took to be the revolutionary and liberationist core of fascism from the historiographical and ideological disgrace to which it has largely been consigned for decades. If you're interested in more you can look up names like Giovanni Gentile, Gabriele D'Annunzio and a whole list of others, some genuine thinkers, others craven lickspittles. In any case, without putting too fine a point on it or being too arch, much of Ledeen's life's work has been dedicated to creating what lefty historians sometimes call a 'usable past' for fascism.
Of course, people are interested in a lot of things and there are some interesting poets and philosophers on the fringes of the early fascist movement. Mussolini himself is a fascinating figure - brilliant in many ways though I think fundamentally an opportunist and frequently a charlatan. If these were mere intellectual pursuits it would be one thing. But Ledeen's signature qualities during almost four decades in Washington have been the profoundest cynicism, arcane conspiracy theory creation and a generalized desire to embroil the US in foreign wars. Through much of the aughts he was most memorably known as the author of a wild conspiracy theory that held that basically all terrorism, across all sectarian, national and ideological divides was run by a series of interconnected 'terrorism families' on the model of the 1950s era La Cosa Nostra.
He was, as I mentioned, a key player in the Iraq-Contra scandal, a major advocate of the Iraq War who managed to end up arranging secret meetings in Rome in late 2001 between Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar and Bush administration officials looking for evidence against Saddam Hussein. That whole latter episode is still too little explained or understood.
In a fascinating touch, back in May Ledeen was attacking critics like Robert Kagan who were calling Trump 'fascist' but, in a notable and predictable twist, on the theory that Trump wasn't really good enough for the fascist label. "For Mr. Kagan (surprisingly and disappointingly praised by Bret Stephens)," writes Ledeen, "fascism is little more than any political movement led by a charismatic strong man ... Mr. Kagan doesn’t discuss the revolutionary aspect of fascism. Italian fascists claimed to be able to unleash the creative powers of a “new fascist man,” while the Nazis advocated the superiority of the Aryan race. Neither concept is to be found anywhere in Trumpism either in theory or practice."
Basically, if you see an idea and it looks sensible but find out Ledeen is involved, it's definitely not sensible and is in fact probably some harebrained plan half crazy, half evil that you want nothing to do with. When Ledeen's involved, there's always trouble.
I haven't read Flynn's book. But the fact that he co-wrote the book with Ledeen - and since Flynn is a retired general and Ledeen an accomplished writer I figure it's largely Ledeen's work - he must either be in the thrall of various wild and dangerous ideas or under the malign influence of someone who is the generator of various wild and dangerous ideas.
Seriously, if Flynn's in with Ledeen, he's trouble.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/run ... your-lives
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 9:21 pm
LEDEEN!
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives ... /index.h...
HADLEY NAMED. La Repubblica has a dynamite series this week on the origin of the yellowcake forgeries. Laura Rozen reports:
With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leaks investigation, questions are again being raised about the murky matter that first led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House came into possession of discredited Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq sought uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.
The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt turned out to be crude forgeries on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.
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."
Laura will have more on this story later today.
and this
JANUARY 2001 BREAK-IN AT NIGER EMBASSY
At night, between the first and second of the January 2001, a mysterious thief came to the embassy of Niger in Rome and into the residence of the counselor in charge. It turned out that some letterhead and seals (see photocopy) were missing. A second dossier on Niger-Iraq trade soon came into Martino’s hands, one that included references to uranium trafficking. Martino claims he got it from embassy personnel and that he thought it was authentic.
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... coni-beh...
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
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... -war-in-...
Monday, October 31, 2005
SISMI's War in Iraq: The Iranian Connection
Carlo Bonini and Giuseppi d'Avanzo are at it again. Another three-part blockbuster exposé on the involvement of Italian Military intelligence inside Iraq.
Part I: From Chelabi to Iranian Agents--SISMI's War in Iraq
A strategic summit in Rome with the Pentagon.
ROME: He’s another politico-military intelligence chief. He’s a SISMI man. He makes his way slowly down the narrow hallway of the bar at the Hotel Eden in via Ludovisi. He stops to admire the sky and the attractive skyline of Rome in the April sun (it is 22 April 2003) through the hotel’s large windows. He looks elegant in his Chairman's Committee grisaille. . He selects a table at the center of the terrace. The waiter walks over and solicitously takes his order. The gentleman orders a freshly-squeezed orange juice and a double espresso. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began on the night of 19-20 March, thirty-three days earlier.
Today, as Silvio Berlusconi reveals that he never supported the military intervention in Iraq, it is fitting to tell the story of how our country, Italy, although allegedly opposed to war as our Premier now claims, was an active protagonist in war preparations and operations.
We will reveal the different arrangements and plans of action, as well as who planned them and with whom they were planned.
For us Italians, recounts the high-ranking SISMI official to La Repubblica, the war on Iraq was already underway in the days before Christmans, 2002. He smiles. He is animated with a glint of excitement in his eyes and for once seems seems to have no qualms about letting his personal satisfaction slip from behind a frozen mask.
Our man is too disciplined to crow about his successes and too stubborn to be discouraged by defeat. He tells us: It was a novelty, a revolution for our intelligence services. Never before in its history has SISMI been so prominently involved in military ground operations and a major role in planning a war campaign, to boot. The Italian Government? Of course our work was authorized by the Italian Government—are you joking? It was real war, not an exercise! The twenty men we sent to Iraq were risking their lives. He pauses. The espresso arrives. He sips it slowly, his eyes half-closed with satisfaction.
He continues. Twenty men from three SISMI departments were involved: Intelligence, Operations and Counterterrorism. They were divided into small groups which were to operate in and around the areas of Kirkuk, Baghdad and Basrah using outlandish disguises. Each unit was unaware of the identities and the mission of the others. Each unit was ordered to operate within a sector of territory and to work with intelligence “assets” who had already been selected and trained. The objectives were twofold: To identify Iraqi defenses and to evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi armed forces.
If combat was less intense than expected, it is due to the job we did—and we didn’t do it alone. If we won the war before firing a shot, it was due to our successes at infiltration and intelligence-gathering.
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).
"Reid: Cheney Obstructing Investigation"
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002979.html
Reid: Cheney Obstructing Investigation
From Laura Rosen at War and Piece...
Reid on Fire
The New Republic has more on what I reported last month: that Cheney has intervened with chairman Pat Roberts to obstruct the Senate Select Intelligence committee's investigation of the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. TNR write:
...--More dramatically, Reid also made it clear that he believes the delay in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of prewar Iraq WMD--the underlying issue behind Tuesday's closed session--is entirely attributable to Vice President Dick Cheney. "Nothing happens regarding intelligence gathering ... unless it's signed off on by the Vice President," he said. " Roberts couldn't do it"--i.e., Roberts couldn't conduct a full investigation without Cheney's approval. When I asked Reid whether he meant to state so flatly that Cheney was personally and directly stalling the Intelligence Committee's work, he didn't pause a beat. In fact he almost stood from his chair. "Yes. I say that without any qualification ... Circle it." ...
I don't understand why we haven't heard Pat Roberts complaining more vociferously about the obstruction he's experienced from the Veep. Why would the Senator stand for the administration bucking oversight and Congressional reporting requirements on Iraq intelligence, torture, black site prisons, etc.? (Via Tapped's Ezra Klein).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/pl_afp/usital ...
But committee staff sources say that before the cooperation ceased, the committee had received from Feith’s office internal memos suggesting that the office may indeed have been conducting unlawful activities. In particular, Democratic staffers are interested in a secret December 2001 meeting of two Feith deputies, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, with Ghorbanifar in Rome. The meeting also included members of a foreign intelligence service (Italy’s SISMI). The catch is that it wasn’t reported in advance to the intelligence committee or the CIA, in possible violation of Section 502 of the National Security Act, which says that anyone conducting intelligence activities must inform the committee and the agency
"Italy MPs probe Niger-Iraq claim"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4402594.stm
Italy MPs probe Niger-Iraq claim
The director of the Italian military intelligence agency (Sismi) is due to give evidence over allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger.
Nicolo Pollari is testifying before a parliamentary committee over reports that Italy wilfully gave the US and UK evidence that turned out to be false......
The Italian hearing into the claims is being held behind closed doors, but some details were expected to emerge later.
Italian newspaper La Repubblica says Italian agents gave the false dossier to British and American intelligence services........
"Niger Uranium Forgeries: Excavating a Roman Mystery"
One has to wonder how Laura can have such certain knowledge of what Fitzgerald has or has not requested. Ah, but if there is no such report -- and she cites the head of the Italian intelligence oversignt committee, one Enzo Bianco, denying it -- then how can Fitzgerald have requested it? There is, here, perhaps some confusion as to the nature of the "report" -- is it official, or is it just a transcript of a hearing? I think this guy, whoever he is, has the right idea.
Giovanni D'Avanzo, writing in La Repubblica , poses a few questions to Senor Bianco's oversight committee, and in the course of them avers:
"Sometime after October 9, 2002, a team of SISMI agents are ordered to keep Rocco Martino under close surveillance ... Why was no surveillance memo or report issued to judicial investigators on Rocco Martino, who is investigated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s office in 2003, until the fall of 2004?"
So there was an investigation, albeit not by the Italian parliament but by Rome's public prosecutor. It could be that this is what both Walker's and my own sources are referring to.
Laura cites several other skeptics, including a reporter for La Repubblica and "a former U.S. official recently in Italy," who say this story is "the echo of a rumor put out by people back the States." She also cites Vince Cannistraro, "who at one time heard rumors of such a report from Italian sources," and who
"Now says there doesn't appear to be a parliamentary report either. 'There is no published report,”'Cannistraro told me Monday. 'If there is a report, we might expect it would have some analysis and conclusions. There is no report, at least not a published report. …I think this stuff is just getting circulated.'"
Of course it isn't published -- that's the whole point.
Yes, it's true, as Laura says, that the Italians aren't too eager to have the blame pinned on SISMI -- but that doesn't mean SISMI isn't involved. And some Italians -- the left-wing opposition coalition, for example -- might be understandably eager to expose the scandal in the run-up to Italy's elections scheduled for next year.
Laura goes into the Italian role in creating and disseminating these documents, referring to the La Repubblica series on the subject, but somehow neglects to mention the crucial American angle -- and the key role of American neocons, i.e. Michael Ledeen, in funneling the information contained in the Niger forgeries to Washington. Someone legitimized these fake documents by doing an end run around the CIA and the mainstream intelligence community, and injected a fabrication into the American intelligence stream. Who was it? La Repubblica fingers the Office of Special Plans, and names names, including Ledeen, Harold Rhode, and Larry Franklin, the confessed spy for Israel.
...
I trust my source, and I furthermore think it's unimportant whether this information is coming from the Italian parliament or Rome's public prosecutor: the point is that the information is there, and it's getting out. Antiwar.com stands by its story.
"Open the Ledeen Dossier!"
The stakes involved in the Ledeen dossier are much more significant than the particular incident around the yellowcake. As EIR documented at great length, Ledeen is not just a nasty American political operative, but had been brought into the service of one of the remnant fascist organizations of the Mussolini era, the Propaganda Two (P-2) freemasonic lodge. P-2, which was founded by avowed wartime fascist grandmaster Licio Gelli, is an outgrowth of the Venetian synarchist bankers network which runs international terrorism, and proceeds from the avowed aim of destroying all nation-states, particularly the United States. The P-2 network has been exposed over the past 20-plus years as the real center of international terrorism, including the left and right wings of the "strategy of tension" which carried out such atrocities as the 1980 Bologna bombing, and the assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
Italian political life is riddled with assets, if not outright agents, of the P-2. Notable among them is Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi himself, whose membership card is a matter of public record. Given the prominence of P-2 influence in Italy, it should be no surprise that the Italians, under a Berlusconi government, were the ones who provided the cover of the forged Niger yellowcake documents, to support the Cheney-Bush war drive.
The question raised here is a fundamental one. The role of former P-2ers Ledeen and Berlusconi in promoting the war, underscores the reality that the drive for empire and world dictatorship, for which Cheney is a frontman, is in fact the project of an international synarchist oligarchy, the direct descendants of those banking families who funded Hitler and Mussolini, and created World War II. Cheney is undoubtedly a fascist thug, eager to carry out whatever wars, torture, and economic genocide are on the agenda of the desperate synarchist bankers. But the brains for these operations come from the top level of the heirs of the Venetian banking system, who know that they will destroy the United States as a republic by carrying out these plans.
The prime objective for all those patriots and world-citizens who wish to save this planet from a descent into a New Dark Age, is, of course, to remove Dick Cheney from office. But exposing the roots of Cheney policies in the global Venetian synarchist banking system, is a crucial concomitant, if we are to get the alternative, FDR-like policy put into effect.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/nolan-m2.html
How would the neocon think tanks view martial law? Michael Ledeen, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and close and trusted White House adviser, has this to say on p. 173 of his book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today As Five Centuries Ago: “Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader – a dictator – willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures,' which few know how, or are willing, to employ."
According to the Boston Globe, Ledeen in a 2003 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, asserted our nation’s insatiable lust for war by claiming that "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." Did anyone in the media ever challenge an administration spokesman to defend Ledeen’s staggeringly wrongheaded, anti-American values? Did any of the (self-described) scholars at AEI that day ask why the GD fool would say such a thing? President Bush, for his part has personally offered these congratulations to the AEI: “At the American Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds.”
The leaders of the War Machine – with their gulags, their lies, their senseless, immoral war – do not treat enemies and purported enemies terribly well. In the event of martial law, it would be naïve indeed to suspect that they would treat Americans any better. Patriots – left, right and center – should unite under the American flag to stop the War Machine today while they still can. The impeachment of Bush and Cheney is the obvious place to start. We, the people, should demand it of the US Congress, just as statesmen and citizens of their time demanded the Bill of Rights. Congress should be ordered, as well, to act responsibly and responsively and in the best interest of the sovereign Republic of the United States of America, not in the interest of neocon warmongers.
"Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent as Source of Forged Niger-Iraq"
... Uranium Documents
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytim ...
Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent as Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents
November 4, 2005 by ELAINE SCIOLINO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
ROME, Nov. 3 - Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three lawmakers said Thursday.
The spymaster, Gen. Nicolò Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, disclosed that Mr. Martino was the source of the forged documents in closed-door testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said.
Senator Massimo Brutti, a member of the committee, told reporters that General Pollari had identified Mr. Martino as a former intelligence informer who had been "kicked out of the agency." He did not say Mr. Martino was the forger.
The revelation came on a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it had shut down its two-year investigation into the origin of the forged documents.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002983.html
Laura Rozen: "The (Niger forgeries) Report that Wasn't"
For weeks in the run-up to the Libby indictment last Friday, reports swirled in the blogosphere and some wires. They contended that CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had “widened his probe” to include investigating the origins of the Niger yellowcake forgeries themselves. They spoke of Fitzgerald getting ahold of a secret Italian parliamentary report that reportedly fingered a gang of American neoconservatives and aides to Ahmad Chalabi as being behind the Niger forgeries.
...
There’s just one problem: Not only has Fitzgerald not received such a report or even indicated he has any interest in one. There is no Italian parliamentary report, published or unpublished, on the Niger forgeries. In fact, until today, there has been no Italian parliamentary investigation of the Niger forgeries, or the claim promoted by the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi to the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Iraq was seeking vast quantities of yellowcake uranium in Niger.
...
A reporter with the Italian newspaper Repubblica, which published a blockbuster series on the origins of the Niger forgeries last week, said that he heard rumors of such a report while in Washington this past summer, and went back to Italy and checked them out with his sources. He was left scratching his head. Not only is there no such report, there is as yet no such Italian parliamentary investigation. Sismi’s director Nicolo Pollari was interviewed by the Italian parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence services on Thursday, in a closed-door session.
...
The Italian military intelligence organization Sismi reported that Iraq had signed a contract to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger to the CIA in October 2001 and February 2002. It also reported those claims to Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the MI6, which reported them back to Washington. A motley crew including a senior Sismi officer, a former Sismi officer turned intelligence peddler (Rocco Martino), and a Sismi asset at the Niger embassy in Rome were identified by Repubblica as having collaborated to assemble the Niger forgeries, after staging a robbery on New Year’s Day 2001 to get official Niger embassy letterhead and a diplomatic codebook. Martino reportedly sold the dossier of forgeries to the French, the British, attempted but failed to sell them to the American embassy in Rome, and to an Italian reporter working for a Berlusconi owned magazine.
Lets hope Fitzgerald really does stay un-compromised, period because everyone knows from reading it Cheney deflected the blame to Italy.
The real forgers were NOT mentioned ie Duane Claridge so you can immediately see it.....total fucking whitewash in progress and its going to take a huge entity/army to get this bastard once and for all.
Notice how there was never any mention of....MICHAEL LEDEEN, mossad etc....
More about the Whitewash....you can spot them a damn mile away now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/wl_mideast_af ...
"no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed"
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com /
QUESTION: Thank you. Any more explanation of the Berlusconi-President discussion about Italian intelligence on Iraq -- is this to say that Mr. Fitzgerald's finding that the Niger claim had its genesis in Italian intelligence was wrong?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Mr. Fitzgerald's -- I'll have to look back at what his finding was. I don't recall the specifics of that.
QUESTION: Fitzgerald found that what we had been calling British intelligence, the document -- the forged document --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I missed that. I don't think so. I don't think so.
QUESTION: -- alleging an Iraq --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Okay, I don't think he did.
QUESTION: I'm wrong on this?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think he --
QUESTION: That's not ringing any bells.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes.
QUESTION: It's not ringing any bells with other people either.
QUESTION: No, it is, it is. And I can't remember if it's Fitzgerald or somebody else, but there's this is the central issue is --
QUESTION: The central issue was --
QUESTION: -- the source of the --
QUESTION: The source of the forged document was Italy, who handed it to --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, the -- we actually briefed on the source of the information back in July of 2003, and the source was the National Intelligence Estimate and British Intelligence. That was the basis for the reference in the President's State of the Union address.
QUESTION: Fitzgerald found an Italian tie, and I presume this is what the discussion between the President and Berlusconi was about.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, they -- like I said they -- Prime Minister Berlusconi brought it up, and as they indicated, that there wasn't any documents that were provided to us on Niger and uranium by --
QUESTION: Wait, no documents or no intelligence?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?
QUESTION: The press report out of Italy is a transcription -- it's a transcription of the forged documents, not the actual documents themselves. But Berlusconi said yesterday was, no information passed from Italy to the United States.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I think he was accurately reflecting what he indicated in the meeting.
QUESTION: So that accurately characterizes the President's position, that the United States never received any intelligence --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, Prime Minister Berlusconi was reflecting that within the meeting, and we've previously said in regards to a question that came up about a meeting here at the White House that no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed at that meeting, much less any documents being provided.
http://neworleans.cox.net/cci/newsnational/nationa ...
Italian Lawmaker Says Country's Secret Service Warned U.S. That Iraq Uranium Documents Were Fake
"Hadley told a press briefing that he had briefly met the head of Italy's SISMI secret intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, on September 9, 2002 in a "courtesy call" aimed at getting to know his new colleague.
"There was a meeting in Washington on that date. I did attend a meeting with him," Hadley said in response to a question about a report published last week in the Italian center-left newspaper La Repubblica, which disclosed the meeting.
"It was, so far as we can tell from our records, about less than 15 minutes. It was a courtesy call. Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed. And that's also my recollection," he said."
AFP News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/pl_afp/usital ...
Well Hadley, I'm sure there was a meeting....and I'm also sure you took the Niger forgeries to Frederick Fleitz.
I mean, you wouldn't LIE about everything would you? And attempt to get executive priveledge to save your ass? Nah, not you Hadley, who lied about going to Italy to begin with!
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp11012005.html
November 1, 2005
Berlusconi's Halloween Visit
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome
By GARY LEUPP
"All roads lead to Rome," and it seems that Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Affair, and more broadly the lies used to hoodwink the American people into supporting a criminal war on Iraq, will also trudge down the Appian Way lined this Halloween with the ghosts of crucified Iraqis.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica has recently published an exposé alleging in essence that the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare) at the specific behest of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi provided bogus intelligence to the Bush neocons in order to curry favor with the U.S. and to abet the relentless drive for war between 9-11 and the March 2003 invasion. This follows an Italian parliamentary report released in part to the public in July concerning the forged Niger uranium documents at the heart of the Plame Affair. These, which purport to show a deal between Baghdad and Niger for the purchase of huge quantities of yellowcake, were it seems produced in the Italian capital.
The report names four men as the likely forgers of the documents (Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes) and suggests that the forgeries may have been planned at December 2001 gathering in Rome involving Ledeen and SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. Also in attendance at that meeting: Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Antonio Martino and others including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. Here is a true rogues' gallery.
Michael Ledeen: neocon columnist, National Review Online contributing editor, specialist on the thought of Machiavelli and on Italian fascism, former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council, was involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair. Active in the American Enterprise Institute, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and Center for Democracy in Iran (CDI). Advocates regime change by force in Iran and Syria.
Nicolò Pollari: Author of many publications on legal and economic matters, investigation techniques and intelligence. Tax law Professor at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria. SISMI head since October 2001.
Dewey Clarridge: former CIA operative, famous in mid-1980s for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair. Head of CIA's Latin America division 1981-84, directed the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and helped organize the Contras. Indicted in November 1991 on seven counts of perjury and false statements, pardoned by first president Bush Christmas Eve 1992.
Ahmad Chalabi: convicted swindler, leader of U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, neocon ally, presently one of two deputy prime ministers in Iraqi government.
Francis Brookes: member of the "Rendon Group," a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.
Larry Franklin: colonel in USAF reserve, subordinate to Douglas Feith in Defense Department, Middle East specialist, under arrest for espionage for Israel.
Harold Rhode: Pentagon official, Middle East specialist, Ledeen protégé, American Enterprise Institute, heavy neocon.
Manucher Ghorbanifar: Iranian exile, arms dealer, one-time CIA operative distrusted by CIA since 1980s. Key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Antonio Martino: Founding member of Forza Italiano (Berlusconi's political party), Professor of Economics, adjunct scholar with the Heritage Foundation, Italian Defense Minister.
"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."
Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, "he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi." The former CIA officer says Wolf "was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop."
A veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ledeen played an important role in the Iran-Contra "arms for hostages" scandal by setting up meetings between the American government and the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Not all that unexpected coming from a self-proclaimed advocate of Machiavelli's amoralism. Today, Ledeen is among the most visible and radical neoconservative ideologues whose passion for a campaign of serial "regime-change" in the Middle East is undiminished by the Iraqi debacle. Just as the Roman senator Cato the Elder finished his perorations with the command "Carthage must be destroyed," so Michael "Creative Destruction" Ledeen closes his hopped-up warmongering essays with "Faster, please!," an exhortation presumably addressed to his confreres in the Bush administration.
Ledeen has kept the neocon faith – and the same friends – for all these years. He's still buddies with Ghorbanifar. In December 2001, he had a meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar in the company of the Pentagon's top Iran specialist, Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode, assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank. Also at the Rome conclave: a number of Ghorbanifar's Iranian friends, including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard. Rounding out the distinguished guest list, we have the Italian delegation, consisting of SISMI head honcho Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino, a neocon favorite. Once again, Ledeen plays the middleman – but what kind of a deal was he trying to negotiate?
more
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e10571.h...
At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.
Disappointingly for the neocons, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check the story: he reported that it was nonsense. When the story was repeated by Bush, Wilson went public. His wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was then outed by the White House. Hence Rove's predicament.
An organisation called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up in the Pentagon by Douglas Feith, a former consultant to Israel's Likud party, to prepare for the war. In the words of Robert Baer, a distinguished former CIA man, it was a "competing intelligence shop at the Pentagon"..."if you didn't like the answer you're getting from the CIA". In short, bogus stories would get a second chance at the OSP.
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.
First of all, I am not a leftist. Secondly, the sources for the quotes of former CIA and DIA agent Philip Giraldi were my interviews of him, as indicated in the correctly transcribed entry on the Wikipedia page, and which I provided the mp3 link for. Fourth, I am happy that the US is no longer part of the British Empire.
As far as Ledeen and the Niger uranium forgeries, Giraldi explained in the interviews that the "couple of CIA agents" were paid in foreign accounts and that Fitzgerald had "already found the money trail." Ledeen's connections to the Office of Special Plans and Sismi are well documented, he attended a number of meetings in Italy with Harold Rhode, who "practically lived out of (Iranian spy) Ahmad Chalabi's office," Manucher Ghorbanifar and guilty Israeli spy Larry Franklin, around the time the Italians began passing on the (already debunked) story back to the US.
As Josh Marshall put it in The Hill:
"he intelligence reports that came in to Washington in late 2001 were from Italian military intelligence, SISMI. The other detail, according to intelligence sources I’ve spoken to, is that those reports turned out to be text transcriptions of Niger forgeries that didn’t surface in Rome until almost a year later...
From the very beginning, American suspicions about a Niger-Iraq trade in uranium were based on what turned out to be the forged documents. And the text transcriptions of those documents came in from Italian intelligence...
Burba, the Italian journalist who eventually brought the forgeries to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, got them from an unnamed Italian “security consultant.” His name turns out to be Rocco Martino, a retired SISMI operative. And as I mentioned last week, last summer, my colleagues and I conducted a series of in-person interviews with him.
It has sometimes been suggested in the Italian press that Martino himself is the forger. But he told us a different story — one that was corroborated by another participant in the handling of the documents. Martino told us that the documents came from a still-serving SISMI colonel, whom he named."
But where did they originate? Giraldi's partner, Vincent Cannistraro, Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council under Reagan, has maintained that they were produced in the US and has said, "You'd be very close," in answer to the question of whether Ledeen forged them.
Combined with what Giraldi had to say, it sure seems like enough to take to a grand jury to me.
Or is it not a crime to lie a country into war?
July Friday 29th 2005 (05h28) :
KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS
KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO
Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson’s CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the documents for Rove, and how might he have done that? The story includes multinational stool pigeon Rocco Martino, Italian spy Francesco Pazienza, wanted CIA spy Robert Seldon Lady, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who’s under charges of giving US secrets to Israel.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Rove’s foreign-policy advisor, Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972. In 1984 he got George Bush Sr to appoint Iranian arms merchant and Iranian/Israeli double-agent Manucher Ghorbanifar as a middleman in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair. Ledeen has been a fixture in Washington and Israel ever since, advocating a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic nations. Based on what he has said and written, I believe Ledeen is insane.
Michael Ledeen, Rove’s "brain," is one of the leading advocates for a US attack on Iran. The Washington Post quoted Ledeen as saying that Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." I guess that means we can look forward to the Bush team drumming up a war with Iran.
George Bush Jr., when he assumed the presidency in 2000, already knew that he was going to settle the family score with Saddam Hussein. His "brain," Rove, quickly enlisted Ledeen to trump up a causus belli.
EARLY 2000: ROCCO MARTINO AND THE FRENCH CONNECTION
...
The war is not just about oil, Israel’s fears/ambitions, or US hegemony. There are contracts and contractors in Iraq. Modern-day carpetbaggers with briefcases descended like a plague of scorpions on the poor, bloodied, bombed-out, grieving people of Iraq. They included the daughter of the war’s chief banshee -- Simone Ledeen, Michael’s young daughter -- shown in the photo, greeting with an impish smile another occupier at the Baghdad airport -- getting ready to lord it over the Iraqis as she tries out her new MBA in working for the CPA. Caption: "The creatures step out of the tripods." Maybe it’ll help to pay off those student loans -- huh, Michael?
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/14555 ...
Keyser Soze aka Michael Ledeen.
Michael Ledeen was one of the founders of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). He holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank for AIPAC. He is co-founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. As far back as 1980, the CIA allegedly listed Ledeen as an agent of influence of Israel. Ledeen is the main foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove. Ledeens main obsession seems to be to overthrow Iran.
In 1972 he published the book Universal Fascism, in which he expounds upon "the rightness of the fascist cause." In Universal Fascism, Ledeen first builds his case that fascism was the "20th Century Revolution" and that "people yearn for the real thing - revolution". It's the blueprint for a fascist revolution.
In 1980 he collaborated with Francesco Pazienza of SISMI and P-2 in the "BillyGate" affair. This is the same Pazienze who was recently found out to belong to the parallel intelligence agency in Italy. In 1985 Pazienza was found guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of terrorists. Ledeen is identified in court documents as an agent of SISMI.
The Pentagon downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after the FBI began a probe of Ledeen for passing classified materials to a foreign
country, believed to be Israel.
http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism ... Ledeen.h...
"Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen"
April 7, 2005
Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen
By Katherine Yurica
Would you be surprised to find that a man who was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, a man who is the darling of the Bush White House and is an adviser to Karl Rove, a man who loves Machiavelli and studies him, a neo-conservative who has close ties to one of America’s leading “Christian” Dominionists—Pat Robertson, and a man who called Pearl Harbor “lucky” and a providentially inspired event—may be the man who is behind the forging of the Niger documents that convinced America to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq?
<snip>
It would be foolish for America’s political strategists and congressional leaders to ignore Michael Ledeen and his interpretation of Machiavelli. Mr. Ledeen speaks from the cutting edge of a group of men and women who desire nothing more than to reconstruct America in their own image. This nation is in grave danger. Ledeen belongs to a group of men, including Harry Jaffa, Pat Robertson, Willmoore Kendall to Allan Bloom, who, according to Shadia Drury, scholar and author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, share “the view that America is too liberal and pluralistic and that what it needs is a single orthodoxy that governs the public and private lives of its citizens.”<1>
The belief in a single voice that governs the public should cause all Americans to understand these men want to convert this nation to a permanent dictatorship. Their inspirer was Leo Strauss, a professor who taught Machiavellian methods to many of them at the University of Chicago. In fact, Paul Wolfovitz earned his doctorate under Strauss and many of the neo-cons in the White House studied under him. Strauss believed every society needs a “single public orthodoxy.” As Drury put it, “a set of ideas that defines what is true and false, right and wrong, noble and base.” Strauss believed that the role of religion was indispensable to the political success of a nation. For a political society had to hold together and act as a unit in lock step with the leader. Strauss believed that religion was the means to inculcate the desired ideas into the minds of the masses. He didn’t care what religion—just as long as it was a religion that could link itself to the political order.
by SonicG » Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:11 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 10:30 pm
by SonicG » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:20 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:23 pm
Irish politician does not hold back on calling out Donald Trump for being a fascist
By Walter Einenkel
Thursday Nov 17, 2016 · 11:43 AM CST
Irish Senator Aodhán Ó Riordáin opened the upper house of the Irish legislature (Seanad Éireann) with a statement about the United States’ election of Donald Trump. Mr. Riordáin was responding to the hypocritical congratulatory reactions from fellow Irish politicians. Riordáin opened by quoting the Irish statesman, Edmund Burke.
The only way evil can prosper if for good men to do nothing.
From there Riordáin vented the very real frustrations and fears we all feel right now about Donald Trump and the frightening way that elites around the world seem to be trying to normalize him.
America has just elected a fascist, and the best thing that good people in our government can do is to ring them up and ask him if it's okay to still bring the shamrock on St. Patrick's?
He didn’t end there.
And I don't use the word fascist lightly. What else would you call somebody who threatens to imprison his political opponents? What else would you call somebody who threatens to not allow people of a certain religious faith into their country? What would you say or how would you describe somebody who was trying to deport 10 million people, or say about somebody who says that the media is rigged, judiciary is rigged, the political system is rigged, and then he wins an election.
He attacks the Irish government for its diplomatic statement to Trump and then goes in on how we all feel right now, across the world—watching England and America “echo” the 1930s. Please watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOTpuF0TMzk
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/11/1 ... -a-fascist
by 8bitagent » Fri Nov 18, 2016 4:11 am
by Wombaticus Rex » Fri Nov 18, 2016 5:25 pm
8bitagent » Fri Nov 18, 2016 3:11 am wrote:We will endure bad shit under Trump, but is it really any worse than the millions of dead thanks to Bush and Obama?
by Agent Orange Cooper » Fri Nov 18, 2016 7:21 pm
Wombaticus Rex » Fri Nov 18, 2016 2:25 pm wrote:8bitagent » Fri Nov 18, 2016 3:11 am wrote:We will endure bad shit under Trump, but is it really any worse than the millions of dead thanks to Bush and Obama?
Yes, of course it is. It's happening to Americans, bruh.
Fuck is wrong with your moral compass?
by Wombaticus Rex » Fri Nov 18, 2016 7:44 pm
by Agent Orange Cooper » Fri Nov 18, 2016 7:54 pm
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