Home > KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS

KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS

by Open-Publishing - Friday 29 July 2005
21 comments

Edito Wars and conflicts USA

[Corrected version to INCLUDE GRAPHICS]

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. [For more, see articles by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post — the main man of the mainstream media pursuing the Rove Scandal.]

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

Rocco Martino is a 66-year-old Italian gentleman SEE PHOTO who worked on and off for the Italian SISMI (analogous to the CIA) for many years and who also peddled the same information to various spy organizations and publications — a convicted felon and international stool pigeon, just the kind of person Ledeen’s associates needed.

After being fired by SISMI (for receiving stolen checks, among other things), he convinced the French intelligence in 2000 that he knew all about Africa and the trafficking of conventional and nonconventional arms. To avoid stepping on the toes of Italian intelligence, the French gave him a contact, or handler, in Brussels. Martino’s handler in Brussels asked him to obtain every type of news or reference to contraband uranium from Niger ("NYE-jer) — a former French colony in the Sahara desert (not to be confused with ex-British Nigeria in W. Africa), where mining was under the jurisdiction of two companies controlled by the gigantic French mining company Cogema.

Martino soon was knocking at the door of the embassy of Niger in Rome, where he met an Italian functionary (a "lady," by most reports — but this was no lady, as we shall see). Martino provided the French with documents showing that Iraq may have been planning to expand trade with Niger. In fact, the first set of documents did not refer to uranium, and the trade plans were probably the typical sort of relationship Arab oil states had with a whole range of third-world countries.

Martino was surprised when he saw that the French immediately jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that the documents indicated an Iraqi interest in uranium. (We now know that Iraq had no nuclear program.) "We need additional confirmation and more detailed information," said the French secret service. Martino set out to satisfy his French patrons with additional documents.

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.

Martino passed it on to the French secret service, who had paid for it, and also to Panorama [a magazine owned by Bush ally and Italian president Silvio Berlusconi], which assessed it by dispatching a female reporter to Niger. Panorama also turned the file over to the US Embassy in Rome for cross-checking in the US.

The female journalist soon told Martino that the trip to Niger had not produced any real confirmation, and also the French confirmed to Martino that the reports he had passed on to them were groundless. In other words, Bush’s war rationale was debunked way back in 2001 by amateur and professional sleuths.

Furthermore, it was a very amateurish forgery, not likely produced through official channels by any state intelligence agency with their vast resources. However, it was soon resuscitated as the Bush administration, in its first year, ramped up its public relations campaign for war.

ROME MEETING IN DECEMBER 2001

Michael Ledeen organized a meeting in Rome to gather evidence to support the planned war. Present were:

1. Michael Ledeen, Karl Rove’s foreign policy advisor and organizer of the meeting
2. Nicolo Pollari, head of the the Italian equivalent of the CIA, the SISMI
3. Italy’s Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino (no relation apparently to the spy Rocco Martino), Pollari’s boss
4. Larry Franklin, an American who presently is being prosecuted in the US for giving classified information to an Israeli front group, AIPC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) — which some would call "spying," even though he has not been charged with espionage
5. Harold Rhode: member of Dick Cheney’s Office of Special Plans, protege of Ledeen, go-between with Iraqi exile and CIA asset (at the time) Ahmed Chalabi.

Ledeen already had a longstanding friendship with Francesco Pazienza, an Italian felon and forger who had been kicked out of the official Italian intelligence organization SISMI but who had found a new home in the renegade intelligence agency P-2 (Propaganda Due). Pazienza apparently was not present but definitely was known to Italian intelligence agents, including Rocco Martino, as well as to Ledeen.

Ledeen also was a personal friend of Pollari, who, like Ledeen, is a master of the card game bridge (Ledeen writes columns on it). There are close ties between Pollari’s official intelligence organization, SISMI, and Pazienza’s unnofficial one, P-2. In fact, P-2 recruits from SISMI.

This little group dusted off Martino’s discredited second dossier on Iraq-Niger trade, with the uranium references. The Bush administration now had its causus belli.

CAUSUS BELLI: A PIECE OF CRAP [SEE PHOTOCOPY]

The accompanying figure shows a bit of the cobbled-up intelligence report on stolen letterheads, forged by amateurs — most likely Ledeen’s friend, Francesco Panzienza. This document, which can be viewed at the Israeli site http://www.4law.co.il/Le838k.html, is the "evidence" on which George Bush sent almost two thousand young Americans and untold thousands of Iraqi civilians to their deaths.

SPRING 2002: JOE WILSON TO NIGER

Former US Ambassador (to Gabon) Joseph Wilson made the trip, apparently at the behest of the CIA, to determine the authenticity of the charges in Martino’s documents, even though the CIA already could see they were forgeries. Even the Panorama reporter could have saved him the trouble. Wilson reported back to the CIA that there was no proof that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger. The US government knew there was no proof.

FALL 2002: USING THE CRAP

In London, Tony Blair spoke on September 24, 2002, for the first time on the attempts of Saddam Hussein to obtain uranium from Africa. Bush soon began to drive in the nail using the same argument. Remember, Martino had delivered the phony dossier this was based on to the US embassy in Rome over a year before. The US State Department and CIA rejected it and even Panorama had debunked it. The Pentagon, too, knew it was false, of course, but the Wolfowitz-Feith-Perle Defense Policy Board axis plus Bush and Cheney and their respective aides, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby (both now subjects of interest to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and his grand jury in Washington, DC), went with it anyway.

THE REST IS HISTORY: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein...

...recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Sixteen little words in Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union message that will be remembered in history with more honorable presidential words like, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (FDR). Bush was going on the forged documents procured by Rocco Martino, debunked by all pertinent experts, and debunked by Joseph Wilson. The US overcame Iraqi opposition — temporarily (resistance became "suicide," now wonders, for whom?) — mainly by bombing civilian structures rather than fighting, beginning on March 19, 2003

Wilson’s outraged response to using, for murder, evidence he had debunked got his family, or at least his wife, targeted by that amoral husk of a man, Karl Rove, who, along with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby (Cheney’s chief aide) outed Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak, Judith Miller (the jailed New York Times reporter and pro-war hawk), Matthew Cooper (Time’s reporter who has jeopardized Rove in a criminal investigation), and numerous other journalists. Most, like Miller and Cooper, wisely resisted Rove’s bait.

IMP OF IMPS: MICHAEL LEDEEN’S DAUGHTER SMILES IMPISHLY IN IRAQ [PHOTO]

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?

LEDEEN FELLOW-TRAVELER FRANKLIN FACES A COURT TRIAL

At Ledeen’s (Rove’s brain) meeting with Italian intelligence in December 2001 was one Larry Franklin.

The FBI caught Franklin, 58 — a Pentagon analyst on Iran and an Air Force Reserve colonel — meeting two agents of AIPAC, Israel’s US "lobby," in an Alexandria, VA, restaurant in June 2003. AIPAC employees — including AIPAC agents at the meeting, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman — had been under FBI surveillance for a couple of years. The FBI was surprised by Franklin showing up and began investigating him, too. The FBI arrested Franklin, on May 4, 2005, for illegally disclosing highly classified information to AIPAC — spying for AIPAC, in other words. He is free on bond and is expected to plead innocent at his trial.

Why hasn’t the FBI arrested anyone at the AIPAC? Who in the Bush administration is blocking justice in this case?

For that matter, why hasn’t the FBI interviewed Rocco Martino, the acknowledged and admitted procurer of the phony Niger uranium documents? They are known to be investigating the phony documents.

The United States has had no qualms about getting audacious in Italy by having the CIA abduct an Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, off the streets of Milan in February 2003, for "exceptional rendering," aka "torture," in Egypt. This open violation of Italian sovereignty was supervised by the CIA’s station chief in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady, formerly of the New Orleans area.

Lady Is No "lady": ROBERT SELDON LADY

It is my belief that the "Italian functionary," or "a lady," that Martino referred to was actually a Lady, Robert Seldon Lady Sr, the same man who headed up the torture abduction of Abu Omar.

Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro has just obtained arrrest warrants for 6 more CIA spies in addition to the original 13 that included Robert Lady, in connection with the abduction.

Robert Seldon Lady, 51, lived in Abita Springs, Lousiana, until 2001, when he left for the Milan post. He still has an address in New Orleans, according to Cryptome http://cryptome.org/lady-eyeball.htm . He and his wife Martha own a villa in the Italian countryside near Penango (Asti) and Turin, where they hoped to retire before he went on the lam. Born in Honduras, he was an affable New York City cop in the 80s who infiltrated leftist groups. He is something of an electronics hacker (at least of cell phones). And now he is a wanted felon in Europe.

During the operation, Lady apparently worked directly with the commander of the 31st Security Police Squadron, Lt. Col. Joseph Romano, USAF, at the Aviano Air Base in Italy. Lt. Col. Romano, who currently works at the Pentagon, also is sought for interviewing by Italian prosecutors. At the time, Romano worked under Brig Gen R. Michael Worden, commander of the 31st Fighter Wing, who also should have to answer some questions.
The Italian prosecutor could release the photographs of the American kidnap-torture perps at any time. This case — Robert Lady’s kidnapping of Abu Omar — could become a very big story because of its possible effects on relations between nations.

Forum posts

  • EXTRADICT KARL ROVE TO LONDON!!!!

    The White House undermined real efforts by the Pakistanis and the British to avert terror….Then, 7/7 happened…

    http://gaelicstarover.blogspot.com/2005/07/our-leaky-government.html

    Please sign the petition for an enquiry and for justice….

    http://petitiononline.com/noorkhan/petition.html

    • One would think the Italian authorities would be justified in the "renditioning" of the 19 CIA agents (also the US military officers) to Italy, wherever they are found, even in the United States.

      The country of the American Indian has never learned to "walk a mile in the other man’s moccasins."

      In foreign policy, the Bush admin is breaking down what little effectiveness that international law had.

      Domestically, Bush is causing a Constitutional crisis: a contest between the rule of law and the Imperial Presidency.

      I hope any patriots remaining in the FBI, and people like US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, end up winning this contest. God bless his mostly African-American, mostly female grand jury in Washington.

    • Whenever I try to sign a petition in the past week or so I get the following message:

      566 Response HTTP Version Unsupported
      This Web page could not be opened with the specified browser HTTP version. Please contact the owner
      of this Web page for more information.
      No place to send to owner of webpage. I have Firefox on one screen name and Explorer on the other but it doesn’t matter which screen name I am using.

      I made the following comments that were not posted since I got the error message:

      Khan Institute - Worldwide Blackmarket for Nuclear WMDs that Cheney and Rumsfeld proftited from one of the motivations for outing Plame that Brewster Jenning was getting too close to this souce of income and the plot to plant WMDs in Iraq
      FirelakeDog.com said she and others were having problems with Haloscan yesterday and I could not access Daily Kos comments. Don’t know if it is because they are getting so many hits or if something else is going on.

      Has anyone else had this problem?

  • Excellent article, even it it doesn’t go into the documented P2-SISMI history of involvement in false flag terrorism - the ’strategy of tension’..
    May I recommend this news blog, which I find posts a bounteous selection of news http://www.livejournal.com/users/mparent7777/2005/07/29/
    Related books appear in this list of recommended reading on our ’GWOT’ - soon to be GSAVE ? - and its historical context

  • Wonderful reporting. Thank God that there are some journalists still doing what they are needed to do in this terrible of confusion and chaos. I laud you. Best, Toddie

  • Link to the forged documents doesn’t work. Great stuff though. Thanks.

    • http://www.4law.co.il/Le838k.html

      The above link works to get you to the forged documents.

      The original link also works, if you delete the comma after the "html."

      I should have included a space, thus http://www.4law.co.il/Le838k.html .

      Thanks to all for reading and commenting on this.

      Clayton Hallmark

    • Did you perchance read my article here:

      http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/22/7563/12283

      You’re the only other person I’ve seen make the link between Lady and Martino besides myself. If you have any more information to shed a light on their possible connection, I’d really appreciate it if you could post it.

      Thanks,
      Pen

    • The CIA knew the document was forged, and reported it saying it was poorly forged long before Bush, Rove, Cheney, Powell, Condzzoppllssa, Rumsfeld, et.al started using it as a big selling point for the war. It will all come out and then the Repugs will be thrown out of power.

    • Clayton-
      .... the Niger Documents fabricated were an obvious fabrication, but having Blair make them public was clever.....
      Thanks again for posting this piece. I’ve sent it repeatedly to CNN, MSNBC and many others since you posted it. It has been investigated and run on the channels with coverage of Martino. Plamegate/ Nigergate will turn out to be the one stupid little thing that exposed our ’fearless leaders’ and their ’1997 PROJECT FOR A NEW AMERICAN CENTURY’. A pre-emptive strike takes years to plan. Certain subversives have to be backed and trained; the FAA air traffic has to be controlled; the FBI have to be sent to Monterey for a ’special conference’ that week; Pres Bush has to be placed in a classroom reading to children in Sarasota, FL; drills and tests have to be performed to coordinate the ’hit’ on the World Trade buildings’- mysteriously including bldg #7; those buildings have to be vacated for detonation 2 weeks in advance for a few days under the guise of fixing the air conditionting and bldg #7 with FEMA/ CIA offices are asked to vacate their important papers and not to enter the bldg after 9/10/01; simulation/ propaganda video’s have to be made to use for simulation drills and to later (try to) fool the public (like the recent one released for the Pentagon that doesn’t even have a plane in site... just fakey flames; high profile scapegoats set into place to play along, well hidden, cared for and occasionally used for video scare tactics involving terrorist threats (Osama looks better than he ever did (if that’s even him)- while in exile on one of the islands in Dubai’s WORLD... they should check the ’Saudi island’ ... he’s there sipping on Pina Colada’s over lunch with the likes of Michael Jackson).
      Ledeen is an ass. He’s been a bug in everyone’s ear since the late 80’s early 90’s and his dirty little deeds will bring the whole plan come crumbling down- thanks to our ’pitbull prosecutor’ Fitzgerald... the robotic runner sent from heaven that made a deal to help humanity if he was supplied with as much pizza as he wants :-)

      peaceout0818@yahoo.com

  • Nice story, but it has some major flaws and gaping holes. One flaw is that you don’t cite any sources for your information. The meeting between Leeden, Franklin, et al was reported in Newsweek — is that your source? This narrative would have more heft if you included citations and links.

    Second, and more important: the story implies a great deal, but it doesn’t actually prove much. There is no direct linkage between Leeden and Rocco Martino shown here. Yet that is the major conclusion of the piece. It’s an intriguing premise, but nothing more.

    Personally, I think you’re onto something — or, at the very least, you’ve synthesized the direct reporting of others into an interesting theory. But that’s all it is right now. Concluding anything beyond that is simply giving ammunition to the Bush side, which would like to paint us all as conspiracy whackos.

    I’d dearly love to see someone connect the dots between the forged yellowcake memo and Bush/Rove/Cheney. But all the dots aren’t there yet.

    peace.

  • Justin, et al: Thank you again.

    I could hardly post the portraits of the fugitive CIA agents, or people would say *I* was outing CIA agents.

    A really good article on this would drive someone to suicide. I am working on it.

    Clayton Hallmark

    • It would seem fair if you would cite your source of the Lady, Rocco link that you evidently read off of my diary several days earlier.

      Pen

    • I have gone ahead and posted the photos anyway. Robert Seldon Lady is an EX CIA agent, so no problem with outing him. See: http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/128060/index.php

      His father, Billy Lady, is dead, so no problem in outing him either. See both photos at: http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/128060/index.php

      Also, Pen, reading your article, I don’t see where you said Bob Lady was the "lady" at the Nigerian Embassy.

      Thanks to all for reading and commenting.

      Clayton Hallmark

    • Then you must have skipped an entire section of my article:

      "So let’s sum up what we know so far:

      Rocco Martino, Michael Ledeen, Francesco Pazienza, Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolo Pollari are all members of P-2. P-2 is found out to have been running a parallel intelligence network that recruited SISMI agents. Pollari authorized the abduction of Abu Omar. The abduction was allegedly coordinated by Robert Lady. An unknown SISMI agent contacts Martino and puts him in touch with a "lady" who can get him documents about Niger. The Niger Embassy is broken into. The unknown SISMI agent gives the "lady" real Niger documents along with the forgeries. This "lady" gives them to Martino."

      So the question I put to you still stands: What is YOUR source of information that Robert Seldon Lady was the agent who passed the forgeries on to Rocco Martino? If you could cite something about this, it would be very helpful.

    • No. Definitely not. Francesco Pazienza WAS NOT in the P2 lodge. Else he would have been free instead of sitting in prison from 1987. In fact, Mr Licio Gelli, the head of P2 is free and not in jail.
      And, about forgery, I see only two real forgeries: the above presumptions about Pazienza and the fake extradition that was arranged on him by corrupted Italian Judges.
      See the documents released from the US Department of State here:
      http://www.pazienzahungerstrike.info

    • An finally, some truth:
      L’INCHIESTA. Fabbricate a Roma in maniera goffa e artigianale le prove su Saddam. Storia del falso dossier uranio che il Sismi spedì alla Cia - la Repubblica, 24 ottobre 2005
      http://www.repubblica.it/2005/j/sezioni/esteri/iraq69/sismicia/sismicia.html

  • The links, and corrected links in these posts, to the forged niger document don’t work. Could the document have been removed? Who posted the document originally? how long has it been around? it seems like it would be able to prove & get more people to believe Bush lied us into war if that pic ofthe crude forgery is what the document reall y looked like.

    That picture is worth 10 million words. it says it all. an obvious forgery. so, who got ahold of it and put it on the web? who stands by that? i want to run wild with this information, but for now, my "source" is a broken link to an israeli law site. i don’t think i will change any minds with that as my source of info. the last thing i need to do is destroy my credibility with staunch republicans who believe the GOP can do no wrong.

  • This article is so riddled with inaccuracies that it wouldn’t withstand a child’s scrutiny.

    The timeline is all wrong, especially about when the CIA got the documents, and just about everything related to the US intelligence community. Have you even read the various intelligence reports? The SSCI report? The Robb-Silverman report? The Butler report? Apparently not, since your "story" conflicts with a lot of it.

    You also fail to source just about every claim in your entire piece. I think I had to debunk this kind of story before, because in reality, some of the US officials you cite never went to Italy, or they were only cited being in Italy on a certain month, and there’s no proof they ever even met with any of the others you talk about.

    It reads like a typical conspiracy theory, where you throw in as many "nefarious" people you can and try to hammer out some sort of connection between all of them.

    If there’s anything that needs to be looked into, it is the French connection into this mystery. Martino was paid by the French, as you have noted, and the French also reported to the US on Nov 22 2002 that they have information about Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Niger.

    I have always suspected all of this was a French counterintelligence op, but there just isn’t enough evidence to substantiate that, although after reading the SSCI report, the French definitely look suspicious here.

    Of the entire intelligence community in the US, only the INR doubted the information about Niger and the uranium up until the State of the Union. After that, it quickly started falling apart, with the IAEA declaration of the documents as forged being the nail in the coffin.

    Another thing I have noted is that the Rome embassy faxed the documents to the CIA first when they received them from the Italian journalist. The SSCI report is redacted, so you can’t tell where in the CIA the documents were faxed to. This happened on Oct 9 2002. On Oct 11 02, the embassy reported to the State Department that they had sent them to the CIA. On Oct 15 02, the embassy faxed the documents to the State Department Bureau of Nonproliferation. They forwarded them to INR.

    INR distributed copies of the forged documents on Oct 16 02 at a meeting with DIA, CIA, DOE, and NSA representatives. The CIA representatives present cannot recall picking up a copy.

    Copies of the forged documents were found in CIA’s CPD’s vault. Valerie Wilson works at the CPD.

    Later, WINPAC (CIA) had to get the copies of the documents from INR, since they apparently didn’t have them.... which means that CPD sat on them and didn’t say anything to anyone about them.

    Odd?

    • From Clayton Hallmark: I’ll ignore your insults because I don’t care.

      The picture has become clearer in recent days with indictments and other news. Here is the timeline based on what we know now.

      TIMELINE
      YEARS 1999-2000 Rocco Martino is a double-agent for the French secret service and the Italian intelligence agency SISMI, even though SISMI had officially fired Martino stealing money for himself (not much more than any good intelligence agent would do). The French find out that someone has been working abandoned French mines in Niger. They want to find where the uranium is going and consult Martino.

      Martino, needing intel to sell to the French, asks his old friend at SISMI, Antonio Nucera, for help. Nucera introduces him to a lady ("La Signora") who is a SISMI asset (spy) at the Rome embassy of Niger (Niger rhymes with forger). She in turn enlists the cooperation of a Niger employee of the embassy, Zakaria Yaou Maiga, and the three conspire to obtain materials at the embassy to sell to the French.

      JANUARY 1, 2001 The little gang simulates a break-in and burglary at the embassy and steals letterhead and some document stamps, the kind that make documents official as a notary stamp does.

      The gang types and stamps the amateurish forgeries you see here, including:

      Forged letters
      Forged contracts
      A memorandum of understanding for Niger to supply Iraq some uranium in 2000
      An 2-page agreement, as an attachment to the memorandum

      Martino conveys the dodgey dossier to the French. The French are the first to get it and immediately see that it is a forgery, having obvious mistakes in naming ministers of the Niger government. That doesn’t stop them from paying him.

      SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 Nineteen people — ostensibly Islalmic fanatics — crash a few planes, knock down the a few buildings in New York and part of the Pentagon and kill about 0.014 percent of the population of metropolitan New York. In response, the Bush administration decides not just to launch preemptive wars and a war on terror — but to throw out over 2000 years of Western civilization, jettisoning its heritage of human rights and resorting to torture, wars on civilians, and other crimes of King Herod. In Silvio Berlusconi’s "Clash of Civilizations," we immediately run away from ours.

      In this atmosphere, Bush is empowered to carry out his family’s vendetta against the Hussein family, and the Italian president Silvio Berlusconi seeks to serve his master some intelligence for the vendetta. Berlusconi and the CIA chief in Rome, Jeffrey Castelli, ask the new (effective Sept. 27) SISMI chief, Nicolo Pollari, to get the goods on Saddam.

      FALL 2001 General Pollari’s SISMI has the Niger forgeries assembled by Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera (Nucera, Martino’s friend, was still working for them). SISMI shows the Niger forgeries — but does not give a copy — to the CIA’s Castelli in Rome.

      Rocco Martino delivers actual copies of the Niger forgeries to Sir Richard Dearlove’s MI6 (em-eye-six) in London. The Brits are ahead of the CIA in Rome, which only got to view, not keep, copies of the forgeries.

      FALL 2001 IN THE USA

      A CIA field officer in Rome, probably COS Castelli, sends the CIA in Washington a memo "that Italian intelligence permitted him see some papers documenting the attempt by Iraq to acquire 500 tons of uranium ore from Niger" (I quote from the Repubblica article). Apparently the Italian SISMI was pushing these forged Niger documents to Castelli as authentic.

      OCTOBER 15, 2001 (APPROX.) George W. Bush receives Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at the White House.

      The CIA in Washington makes its first report on the memo it received from its Castelli in Rome. It is merely an acknowledgment that Italian intelligence has a dossier based on the the Niger forgeries (forgeries the CIA doesn’t have and Castelli has only seen) on Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Niger.

      FALL 2001 (WASHINGTON) CIA analysts in Washington report that Castelli’s memo from Rome is "somewhat limited" and is "lacking in necessary detail." The State Departments intelligence analysts (under Greg Thielmann) report that the Italian intelligence in the Castelli memo is "highly suspect." Remember, the US supposedly still does not have a copy of the forgeries the intelligence is based on, the forgeries presented here.

      HERE’S WHERE THE BACK-CHANNEL COMES INTO PLAY.-----------------------

      FALL 2001 (ROME) Since the Italian warmongers have been rebuffed by American intelligence, the normal channel for intelligence on WMD — and still wanting to ingratiate themselves with the American government (American warmongers) — they turn to political operatives in Washington, the back-channel. These include:

      – Dick Cheney’s and Paul Wolfowitz’s White House Iraq Group
      – The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (the "Stovepipe") created by Wolfowitz
      – The office of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice

      All of the above have been infiltrated by Israeli agents, as indictments such as Larry Franklin’s are only just beginning to show.

      AFTER OCTOBER 15, 2001 Italy’s defense minister arranges for Pollari to meet in Rome with Pollari’s old bridge (card game) buddy Michael Ledeen, an Israel First, anti-Muslim, US neoconservative — and, like so many other administration neocons, a Republican operative linked back to the Iran-contra black-ops affair of the 1980s. Ledeen is Karl Rove’s foreign policy advisor — Bush’s brain’s brain — and he is coming to Rome to look for an excuse for war. He comes not as an official of the US government but as a "scholar" of a Washington think tank, the American Enterprise Institute and, according to Repubblica, at the request of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

      DECEMBER 2001 There’s a meeting in Rome attended by Ledeen, SISMI’s Pollari, Italy’s Minister of Defense, the now-indicted Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode — a member of the Office of Special Plans, Ledeen’s protege, and Iraqi-exile, Iran-spy Chalabi’s close associate. The Americans need a cause for war and Pollari just happens to have one waiting — a DOSSIER on Martino’s Niger forgeries. BUT NOT THE FORGERIES THEMSELVES.

      THE US DOESN’T HAVE THE NIGER FORGERIES YET — ONLY CASTELLI’S MEMO AND POLLARI’S DOSSIER — AND WON’T GET THE SOURCE DOCUMENTS (THE FORGERIES) UNTIL ABOUT A YEAR LATER.

      EARLY 2002 Ledeen returns to the neocon cabal in Washington and informs Wolfowitz of Pollari’s dossier. Wolfowitz tells Cheney, and Cheney asks the CIA to look into it.

      LATE FEBRUARY 2002 Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (husband of an undercover CIA agent going by the cover name of "Valerie Plame") goes to Niger to check on uranium sales to Iraq. He does it at the request of the CIA and for free. Wilson and the US Ambassador to Niger report that the sales are unlikely.

      EARLY 2002 (WASHINGTON) The parallel intelligence conduit (DOD’s Stovepipe, which is outside the regular US intelligence chain) distributes Pollari’s back-channel dossier (not the forgeries yet) to the regular intelligence agencies, including the following. State Department intelligence tells the CIA the info in Pollari’s dossier is implausible, referring among other things to an impossible amount of uranium mentioned in the dossier.

      CIA headquarters, however, possibly influenced by having missed warnings signs of the 9/11 attacks, does not discount Pollari’s dossier.

      JULY 23, 2002 (LONDON) "DOWNING STREET MEMO" / "FIXED" INTELLIGENCE A full eight months before the invasion, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers meet. Notes are taken and a memo written (the Downing Street Memo) that will go public only long after the war starts.

      Included in the note-taker’s account was an assessment by the chief of British intelligence, after returning from a visit to Washington, that: "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." The WMD part is the Niger forgeries.

      MID-2002 Pollari meets his opposite number Tenet near the McLean, VA, headquarters of the CIA. They seem to mistrust each other.

      SUMMER 2002 Making an end run around Tenet and the CIA, Pollari holds has an ongoing dialog with Demon-Eyes Rice’s office and the Wolfowitz/Feith Office of Special plans at the Pentagon.

      SEPTEMBER 9, 2002 Pollari is movin’ on up in the US, to the White House. There he meets with Rice’s No.2 in the National Security Advisor’s office, Stephen Hadley.

      SEPTEMBER 2002 In its September 12-19 issue, the Berlusconi-owned Panarama weekly magazine claims that Iraq has bought uranium from African and has attempted to buy aluminum tubes, used in centrifuges for making bomb-grade uranium, from Germany.

      SEPTEMBER 2002 Pollari tells the Italian Parliament — a even more compliant representative body than the US Congress — that he has no proof of the Niger-uranium claim.

      30 DAYS LATER Pollari tells Parliament, no, he does have documentary evidence of uranium sales and attemped attempted centrifuge sales. Italy’s intelligence chief is like Will Rogers, apparently — all he knows is what he reads papers like Panorama.

      SEPTEMBER 24, 2002 (LONDON) British Prime Minister Tony Blair — advance man for the Angel of Death, Bush — speaks for the first time on attempts by Saddam Hussein to obtain Uranium from Africa. This charge is based on the Niger forgeries that you see here, which Britain obtained about a year earlier. The US had Castelli’s (CIA chief in Rome) memo on the forgeries through regular channels, and had Pollari’s (SISMI chief) dossier on Iraq-Niger-uranium through the neocons’ illegitimate back-door channels (Ledeen, Wolfowitz, Cheney) — but the US did not have the actual forgeries, yet.

      DISSEMINATION OF THE ACTUAL FORGERIES — MARTINO THE SECOND-STORY MAN AND BACK-DOOR MAN

      OCTOBER 2002 With SISMI’s Pollari still trying to get the Niger uranium hoax to fly, Rocco Martino, the lead forger who already has given the forgeries to the British MI6, sells them to Elisabetta Burba, a correspondent for — Panorama. Despite the affiliation with Berlusconi’s propaganda sheet, she plays the honest reporter — the antithesis of the media whoring of Judith Miller of the New York Times and Robert Novak — and declines to spread the lies in the forgeries.

      However, Berlusconi’s trusty editor-in-chief sends the Niger forgeries to the US embassy in Rome. Now, finally, the actual Niger forgeries are in American hands, apparently for the first time.

      ITALIAN INTELLIGENCE HAD SLIPPED THE NIGER FORGERIES — THE RATIONALE FOR THE IRAQ WAR — INTO AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE BY ANOTHER BACK DOOR (THIS TIME, MARTINO AND PANORAMA) SO AS TO LEAVE NO FINGERPRINTS.

      OCTOBER 16, 2002 The State Department distributes the Martino/Pollari Niger forgeries (Martino had made them in early 2001, and Berlusconi and Pollari had been pushing them ever since) at a meeting with the regular intelligence agencies, including four CIA officials.

      The forgeries are very crude as you can see. The CIA men could see that they would be an embarrasment to Cheney and the US warmongers. Luckily the forgeries disappear for three months. Fortunately (or unfortunately for the neocons) they are found in an internal audit ordered by the CIA inspector-general.

      JANUARY 28, 2003 "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Sixteen little words in President Bush’s State of the Union speech that will live with famous presidential words like "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (FDR). Contrast the terrorizing words of a demagogue with the reassuring words of a great, benevolent president. Bush was inciting the nation to war based on the crude forgeries you see here.

      FEBRUARY 2003 The month before the Niger forgeries are used to start the Iraq war, the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN needs just hours spread over 10 days to debunk these forgeries, which professionals and amateurs in the intelligence game — a journalist, ambassadors, the Rome CIA chief, CIA analysts and State Department intelligence in Washington — already had debunked. There is no way Bush and his administration could have believed their own lies about these forgeries.

      Joseph Wilson had noted a year before that the documents were signed by Niger officials who were no longer in government and that they probably were forged. The CIA sent him to Iraq to find out this type of thing, on a request from Vice President Cheney.

      The IAEA finds the following ridiculous errors that I could have found myself in a few hours of Googling (if I had had the forgeries):

      * In an alleged letter dated July, 27, 2000, the president of Niger refers to the central African nation’s constitution of May 12, 1965, but the constitution in place in 2000 was dated Aug. 9, 1999.

      * A letter allegedly signed by the foreign minister of Niger on Oct. 10, 2000, bears the signature of Allele Elhadj Habibou, who was actually foreign minister in 1988-1989.

      * The official letterhead used is obsolete and includes the wrong symbol for the presidency, as well as references to temporary state bodies - such as the Supreme Military Council and the Council for National Reconciliation - which are "incompatible with the dates of the alleged correspondence."

      * The date of a Niger "ordonnance" cited in the alleged agreement is off by 26 years.

      MARCH 19, 2003 Bush launches the American Blitz (pumps his hand gleefully as children die in their beds) against military and civilian targets in Iraq, softening up the Iraqi army and children for the US Army’s and Marines’ attack.

      THE NEED FOR A COVERUP — HAVING USED FORGED DOCUMENTS TO START A WAR, THE ADMINISTRATION HAS DONE SOMETHING IT EVENTUALLY WILL NEED TO COVER UP.

      JULY 6, 2003 Seeing the horrors of war that his honest debunking report on Niger uranium should have prevented, Joseph Wilson writes an article in the New York Times, "What I Didn’t Find in Africa." What he didn’t find was uranium sales to Iraq. What he did find was that the copies you see were forgeries. The White House decides to discredit and punish Joseph Wilson. The cowards go after his wife.

      "KILL THE MESSENGER": THE NIGER FORGERIES NOW ARE A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER AND THE OBJECT OF A COVERUP.

      JULY 14, 2003 Wilson’s CIA wife is unmasked as neocon columnist Robert Novak publishes an article that says "two senior administration officials" (presumably Lewis Libby and Karl Rove) told him Wilson’s wife, whom he identifies as Valerie Plame, is a [CIA] operative on weapons of mass destruction." Her cover as a WMD investigator is blown, her career ruined, and what started as the White House’s dishonest search for WMD ended up with the White House sabotaging the CIA’s legitimate WMD search.

      JULY 14 AND 17, 2003 Mathew Cooper of Time writes that government officials have told him Wilson’s wife is a CIA official monitoring WMD.

      SEPTEMBER 29 TO 30 The US Department of Justice informs White House counsel Alberto Gonzales it is investigating the unmasking of an undercover CIA employee by administration officials.

      DECEMBER 30, 2003 Patrick Fitzgerald, the US Attorney in Chicago, is named as special counsel to conduct a grand jury hearing in Washington to see if any crimes were committed in naming Plame.

      MAY 21, 2004 Fitzgerald’s grand jury asks Cooper and Time to give up evidence and documents. They refuse.

      AUGUST 9, 2005 US District Judge Thomas Hogan finds Cooper and Time in contempt of court.

      AUGUST 12-14, 2004 The grand jury summons Judith Miller, a war advocate and reporter for the New York Times who had talked to government officials about Plame. She joins Cooper in refusing to cooperate.

      AUGUST 24, 2004 Cooper agrees to testify after Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby (later indicted), releases Cooper from a promise of confidentiality.

      REMEMBER: ALL OF THIS COURT WRANGLING IS OVER THE "OUTTING" OF VALERIE PLAME, JOSEPH WILSON’S WIFE, IN RESPONSE TO WILSON’S HAVING DEBUNKED THE NIGER FORGERIES IN A NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE.

      SEPTEMBER 13, 2004 The grand jury issues another subpoena to Cooper for further information, but Cooper and Time refuse to cooperate.

      OCTOBER 2004 TO JUNE 2005 Miller, Cooper, Time, and the Times engage in legal wrangling that goes all the way to the US Supreme Court, to avoid giving evidence that they say violates freedom of the press and confidentiality agreements they had made.

      MAY 2005 (LONDON) The London Sunday Times publishes the secret "Downing Street Memo." A national security aide to British Prime Minister Tony Blair had produced a memo based on a meeting between Blair and his top advisers on July 23, 2002 (described above), and someone had leaked the memo to the paper. The memo shows that what the British government knew was not what Bush had said (that Iraq bought uranium in Africa) but the opposite — intelligence was "fixed" to justify a planned war.

      JUNE 27, 2005 The Supreme Court refuses to hear the cases of the Time and New York Times reporters.

      JULY 1, 2005 Time turns over Cooper’s notes, emails, and other documents as Cooper and Miller refuse to reveal sources.

      JULY 6, 2005 Judge Hogan sends Miller to jail for refusing to reveal her source (who eventually turns out to be Libby).

      JULY 15, 2005 Karl Rove testifies to the grand jury that he learned Plame’s identity from journalists and then discussed it with Cooper without using Plame’s name.

      SEPTEMBER 29, 2005 Miller is released from jail after agreeing to testify. She says her source (later revealed to be Libby) released her from her promise of confidentiality.

      SEPTEMBER 30 TO OCTOBER 12 Miller testifies on three days to the grand jury. She turns over notes about a phone call with Libby that she suppossedly had neglected to mention before (obstruction of justice?).

      OCTOBER 14, 2005 Rove testifies to Fitzgerald’s grand jury for the fourth and final time.

      OCTOBER 16, 2005 Miller reports on her testimony in her paper (the NYT) and says Libby told her Joseph Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA’s Weapons, Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit. Libby was trying to cripple the very unit that should have been able to save us the "trouble" of going to war in Iraq.

      OCTOBER 19, 2005 The AP reports that Karl Rove’s grand jury testimony also implicated Libby as someone who told reporters Mrs. Plame-Wilson worked for the CIA. Libby has been set up to take the fall for others in the administration.

      OCTOBER 25, 2005 The NYT implicates Dick Cheney by saying that he is the one who told Libby of Mrs. Plame’s identity in the first place (June 2003, before the White House was out to get Joe Wilson and Plame).

      OCTOBER 28, 2005 Fitzgerald announces that the grand jury has voted to indict Libby but not Rove.

      NOVEMBER 2005 Other government officials and reporters COMPLICIT IN THE PLAME OUTING remain indicted.

      NOVEMBER 2005 Important questions about WHO PROCURED THE NIGER FORGERIES FOR THE US, and how and why, remain unanswered.

      Other big questions remain about WHO USED THEM TO START THE WAR and HOW AND WHY DID THEY DO IT. DID PRESIDENT BUSH LIE, deliberately and knowingly, to start the war? Should he be impeached and imprisoned? Is lying us into war to be his main legacy?

      Also, what reporters and government officials have obstructed justice by impeding grand jury and FBI investigations? They need to be indicted. Libby is not the only one.

      What other crimes have been committed, and by whom, in covering up the Niger forgeries?

      What role have foreign states and agents played in connection with the Niger forgeries? Have Americans committed treason, espionage, or similar crimes in connection with the Niger forgeries? How can another war based on fixed intelligence be prevented?

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