Vinnie and Phil: A couple of "ex" CIA guys who are going after BushCo.

No piece I've written lately has attracted the attention received by this post on the Cheney/Pentagon plan to nuke Iran after the next big terrorist incident -- even if Iran is innocent. As long-time readers know, I've predicted just such a scenario for quite some time -- and those predictions appeared well even before the revelations in (of all places) American Conservative brought made my worst fear-fantasy seem all too real.

The original piece can now be found online here. You may also want to see (See this response, as well as the Al Jazeera take on this matter. Giraldi's brief squib has riveted the attention of observers across the political spectrum.

This really is the most important story of our time. More important than Judge Roberts, Senator Roberts, or Mister Roberts. More important than the appalling rape of young boys at Abu Ghraib. More important than Rove or Wilson.

Why? Because Cheney's scheme could not so much change history as end it.

And I've discovered an interesting new angle to the tale...

The American Conservative piece was written by one Philip Giraldi, a former CIA guy. Of course, with that organization, you never know whether quotes around the word "former" are warranted. (Did E. Howard Hunt "quit" three times, or merely two? I tend to forget...) Giraldi also did a three-year stint with the DIA -- Defense Intelligence Agency -- which probably explains where he made the contacts necessary to write the afore-cited piece.

Giraldi co-publishes a newsletter called Intelligence Brief, which is circulated within the business community. (It doesn't seem to have an online existence.) His partner in that enterprise is an equally intriguing fellow -- another former CIA guy named Vincent Cannistraro, formerly chief of operations for the CIA's counter-terrorism efforts.

You will recall that he was all over the news media in the aftermath of 9/11 and the invasion of Afghanistan. In story after story, quote after quote, he delivered his views -- as well as the views of his former employer. (For an example, see the interview here.) Of course, the CIA regulates what former employees may or may not reveal, so we may fairly presume that higher-ups at the Agency tacitly approved of (or at least were not angered by) his recent pronouncements.

Cannistraro's history places left-ish spook-watchers like myself in an odd position. (So does the Plame/Wilson affair, to be perfectly honest. I can recall a time when most progressives opposed the Reagan-era law against revealing the names of CIA agents.)

For example, Cannistraro was in charge of the CIA's investigation in the Pan-Am 103 bombing. Many believe that the "official" version of that event, which places the blame entirely on Libya, may not reflect reality. Some alternative theorists believe that the bombing targeted passenger Charles McKee, a career spy returning from Lebanon, and that a team of spooks scoured the crash site to make sure that McKee's suitcase (filled with revealing information) never fell into the wrong hands. Still others assert that the bomb was placed in a suitcase intentionally left unexamined because the flight was part of a "protected" CIA drug smuggling operation (or, alternatively, a drug sting.) Perhaps we should classify Cannistraro himself as an "alternative theorist," since he views Iran as the ultimate sponsor of the incident.

Alas, the Pan-Am 103 case is far too complex for even a brief summary here. I mention the matter only to demonstrate that Cannistraro played a role in the affair which some consider controversial. His "blame Iran" theory certainly indicates that he is no softie on Iranian matters.

Cannistraro later played an interesting role in the Oklahoma City investigation. From a story on Jayna Davis' site:

An FBI report, for example, records a call a few hours after the bombing from Vincent Cannistraro, a retired CIA official who had once been chief of operations for the agency's counter-terrorism center. He told Kevin Foust, a FBI counter-terror investigator, that he'd been called by a top counter-terror adviser to the Saudi royal family. Mr. Foust reported that the Saudi told Mr. Cannistraro about "information that there was a 'squad' of people currently in the United States, very possibly Iraqis, who have been tasked with carrying out terrorist attacks against the United States. The Saudi claimed that he had seen a list of 'targets,' and that the first on the list was the federal building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma."

Stephen Jones, McVeigh's lead lawyer, discusses the FBI report in his book, "Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy." Mr. Cannistraro later told Mr. Jones that he didn't know if the caller "was credible or not." But Mr. Foust's memo says Mr. Cannistraro described the Saudi official as "responsible for developing intelligence to help prevent the royal family from becoming victims of terrorist attacks," and someone he'd known "for the past 10 or 15 years."

(Again, this post is not the place to debate the contentious issue of the Oklahoma City bombing. Right now, I'm simply attempting to trace Mr. Cannistraro's public history vis-a-vis the investigation of terrorism.)

More recently, Cannistraro's name cropped up in pieces exposing the Iranian connections of that former BushCo darling, Ahmed Chalabi.

In a not-unrelated move, he also offered important testimony in the continuing Wilson/Plame investigation. A sample:

The leaking was, in my judgment, a manifestation of the continuing battle by some policy-makers to pressure the intelligence community into providing the intelligence data that would support previously adopted objectives. Some senior officials have contempt for the professional intelligence community, including CIA and DIA. This contempt has been manifested by attempted intimidation of analysts to produce supporting data for the policy-makers' own ideological beliefs. This disdain for the intelligence community led to dependenceby policyy makers on dubious channels of information such as the defector sourcesproduced byyaimedd Chalabi and the INCC....

...The Vice President and his chief of staff Lewis Libby visited CIA headquarters to engagethe CIA analysts directly on this issue of uranium acquisition in Africa and thealleged renewall of a nuclear program. I have heard that this unprecedented act, in which a Vice President engages desk level analysts, resulted in a contentious give and take.

That "contentious give and take" remark remains one of our few clues as to what really went on when Dick invaded Langley.

Even more revealing is this recent discussion between spook-watcher/broadcaster Ian Masters and Cannistraro on the still unresolved mystery of just who forged those Niger documents. (Yes, I know Rush Limbaugh still tells his listeners that these docs were real. He's lying. As usual.)

Here are a few excerpts. This, friends, is must-read material, because it hints at a great scandal to come -- the scandal behind the Plame scandal:

Vince Cannistraro: The documents were fabricated by supporters of the policy in the United States. The policy being that you had to invade Iraq in order to get rid of Saddam Hussein, and you had to do it soon to avoid the catastrophe that would be produced by Saddam Hussein's use of alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Ian Masters: Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims -- particularly the 16 words in the President's State of the Union address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ... it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or SISDE -- I'm not sure which one.

VC: It was SISME, yeah. ...

[D]uring the two-thousands when we're talking about acquiring information on Iraq. It isn't that anyone had a good source on Iraq -- there weren't any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

IM: Do we know who produced those documents? Because there's some suspicion ...

VC: I think I do, but I'd rather not speak about it right now, because I don't think it's a proven case ...

IM: If I said "Michael Ledeen" ?

VC: You'd be very close . . .

So what do we have here?

Cannistraro has a history as a strong opponent of Iran and its ties to terrorism. He also opposed the Chalabi/Ledeen/Cheney neocon axis. He opposed Chalabi -- and by extension, Ledeen -- precisely because of their ties to figures within Iranian intelligence.

And now Cannistraro's partner Giraldi has exposed a scheme by this very same neocon cabal to nuke Iran.

Can anyone truly explain just what sort of game these neocons are playing? Just who was Chalabi dealing with in Tehran? And why would any Iranian want to get in bed with a bunch of criminals who hope to turn that country into radioactive slush?

Here's a parting message for Vinnie and Phil (and I hope they will forgive the familiarity)...

Guys, I know you were involved with a certain organization which isn't exactly known for having a fond and forgiving attitude toward squealers. We all understand that this organization maintains a code of omerta.

But if you know more about what this rival gang -- the neocon "family" -- is up to, spill it. This is not the time to play Johnny Tightlips.

Because if facia bruta Cheney and his oobatzs neocons have their way -- fuggedabouddit. Pretty soon the entire world will be sleeping with the fishes.

Capice?

Go to Google...

...write in the word "failure" and press "I'm feeling lucky." Hee hee hee....

California saved? (Vote fraud update)

California's Governator-appointed Secretary of State, Bruce McPhereson, was supposed to be Diebold-friendly. Very friendly. As in: Count the nation's largest state as beet red, from here to doomsday.

So what's this?

After possibly the most extensive testing ever on a voting system, California has rejected Diebold's flagship electronic voting machine because of printer jams and screen freezes, sending local elections officials scrambling for other means of voting.

"There was a failure rate of about 10 percent, and that's not good enough for the voters of California and not good enough for me," said Secretary of State Bruce McPherson.

More:

McPherson denied approval of the TSx after a series of failedtests, culminating in a massive, mock election conducted on 96 of the machines in a San Joaquin County warehouse. San Joaquin is one of three California counties that purchased a total of 13,000 TSx machines in 2003 for more than $40 million and have paid to warehouse them ever since.

For eight hours on July 20, four dozen local elections officials and contractors stood at tables and tapped votes into the machines to replicate a California primary, one of the most complex elections in the nation. State officials watched as paper jams cropped up 10 times, and several machines froze, requiring a full reboot for voting to continue.

You can find McPhereson's letter to Diebold here.

I feel a bit like Anthony Quinn (playing Auda Abu Taii) in Lawrence of Arabia. Towards the end, after getting the public apology he never expected from Omar Sharif, Quinn can only sputter: "This is a new trick!"

So what is McPhereson's trick?

Perhaps this: By rejecting Diebold machines in the voting booth, he looks clean. But he has not rejected Diebold tabulators -- the "mother mchines," as they were once memorably called. In a close election, the tabulators do the real mischief.

Billmon on Ohio. Billmon at the Whiskey Bar, after donating to the congressional campaign of Ohio Democrat Paul Hackett, offered this interesting observation:

I've been through Hackett's district -- in the heart of Ohio's hillbilly belt -- and it's one of those places where Republicans perversely thrive by meshing the votes of conservative suburbanites and rural traditionalists. Even the dying mill towns along the Ohio ignore their economic interests and vote Republican these days, although not by the same kind of margins as the two big Cincinnati collar counties -- Warren and Clermont. Those went for Cheneybush last year by margins of 72% and 71%, respectively. They could fairly be said to have played a pivotal role in keeping the Rovians in the White House, given that the combined GOP margin -- almost 80,000 votes -- accounted for two-thirds of Cheneybush's entire statewide edge over Kerry.

The ability of the Rovians to pull fresh GOP votes out of those two counties certainly challenged plausibility, and, in Clermont's case, almost defied mathematics. Consider the fact that according to the Census Bureau, Clermont's population rose only 4.4% (about 7,800 souls) between 2000 and 2003, while reported GOP turnout increased by roughly 31% (about 14,600 votes) from 2000 to 2004. This in a county that only had about 122,000 registered voters last year, according to the Cincinatti Enquirer. Mr. Diebold must be very proud.

The Republicans claim that "morals" issues (read: the horror of males kissing males) drove all those voters into the red column. However, polls indicate that, contrary to popular belief, "moral issues" were not a major driving force in the election.

Summary of a great article. Previously, we mentioned Mark Crispen Miller's fine new piece, "None Dare Call It Stolen," in this month's Harpers -- and not available online. If you have a spare six bucks, the issue is worth your investment. But if the budget is tight (as it may well be, if you are working class and living in George Bush's America), Mary Anne Saucier has pieced together this precis. I don't think anyone will mind if I reprint much of it...

The Conyers report details the disenfranchisement of Democrats through “intentional misconduct and illegal behavior, much of it involving Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell, the co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio.”

There was unequal placement of voting machines.

County boards of elections were ordered to reject all Ohio voter-registration forms not printed on white, uncoated paper of not less than 80 lb. text weight.

Access was limited to provisional ballots.

“Caging” was used to challenge 35,000 individuals who did not sign for registered letters sent to new voters.

There was restriction of media from covering the election and conducting exit polls.

There was a prearranged FBI terrorist attack warning in Warren County which kept reporters from observing a post-election ballot-counting.

There was restriction of foreign monitors from “watching the opening of the polling places, the counting of the ballots, and, in some cases, the election itself.

Numerous statistical anomalies all deducted votes from Kerry.

In Cuyahoga and Franklin Counties, “the arrows on the absentee ballots were not properly aligned with their respective punch holes, so that countless votes were miscast.”

In Mercer County, 4000 votes were mysteriously not in the final count.

In Lucas County a polling place never opened because no one had the key.

In Hamilton County, many absentee voters could not vote for Kerry because his name was not on the ballot.

In Mahoning County 25 electronic machines changed Kerry votes to Bush.

Dirty tricks told voters to go to false polling places; that Democrats were to vote on November 3; volunteers offered to take absentee ballots to the election office; voters were challenged to prove eligibility to vote. The “Texas Strike Force” (25 people registered at a Franklin County Holiday Inn, paid by the Republican Party) threatened targeted people from a pay phone, if they voted.

Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell created rules for the Ohio recount (requested by the Green and Libertarian Parties) which would prevent “countywide hand recounts by any means necessary.” The end result was “the Ohio vote was never properly recounted, as required by Ohio law.”

On December 13, 2004, it was reported by Deputy Director of Hocking County Elections Sherole Eaton, that a Triad GSI employee had changed the computer that operated the tabulating machine, and had “advised election officials how to manipulate voting machinery to ensure that [the] preliminary hand recount matched the machine count.” This same Triad employee said he worked on machines in Lorain, Muskingum, Clark, Harrison, and Guernsey counties.

“Based on the above, including actual admissions and statements by Triad employees, it strongly appears that Triad and its employees engaged in a course of behavior to provide “cheat sheets” to those counting the ballots. The cheat sheets told them how many votes they should find for each candidate, and how many over and under votes they should calculate to match the machine count. In that way, they could avoid doing a full county-wide hand recount mandated by state law. If true, this would frustrate the entire purpose of the recount law—to randomly ascertain if the vote counting apparatus is operating fairly and effectively, and if not to conduct a full hand recount.”

In Union County, Triad replaced the hard drive on one tabulator.

In Monroe County, “after the 3 percent hand count had twice failed to match the machine count, a Triad employee brought in a new machine and took away the old one. (That machine’s count matched the hand count.)”

Green and Libertarian volunteers reported that in Allen, Clermont, Cuyahoga, Morrow, Hocking, Vinton, Summit, and Medina counties, “the precincts for the 3 percent hand recount were preselected, not picked at random, as the law requires.”

Even though the 3 percent hand recount in Fairfield County was different than the machine count, there was no hand count as required.

“In Washington and Lucas counties, ballots were marked or altered, apparently to ensure that the hand recount would equal the machine count.”

“In Ashland, Portage, and Coshocton counties, ballots were improperly unsealed or stored.”

At great cost, Belmont County had an independent programmer change the counting machines so they would only count votes for President.

“..Democratic and/or Green observers were denied access to absentee, and /or provisional ballots, or were not allowed to monitor the recount process, in Summit, Huron, Putnam, Allen, Holmes, Mahoning, Licking, Stark, Medina, Warren, and Morgan counties.

Miller writes about the January 6, 2005 Electoral challenge from Ohio Representative Stephonie Tubbs-Jones and California Senator Barbara Boxer. He decries its rejection by the Congress and the press, with the Republicans calling the Democrats “troublemakers and cynical manipulators”, etc., etc.

According to Miller, “all this commentary was simply wrong” and “went unnoticed and/or unreported;” and with Bush’s re-inauguration “all inquiries were apparently concluded, and the story was officially kaput.” Miller emphasizes that, even after the National Election Data Archive Project, on March 31, 2005, “released its study demonstrating that the exit polls had probably been right, it made news only in the Akron Beacon-Journal,” while “the thesis that the exit polls were flawed had been reported by the Associated Press, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Columbus Dispatch, CNN.com, MSNBC, and ABC..”

Brief vote notes

Since my mood is sour (personal reasons), I'll be concise today -- which should please my ladyfriend, who says I'm too verbose.

The story of the 2004 vote theft refuses to die. Two new mainstream pieces will bring the facts to new eyes.

The first comes to us by way of Matt Taibbi in the New York Press. Here's a taste:

The evidence for this theft has been there for everyone to see for five years now; few serious thinkers even dispute the matter anymore, just as few Democrats would even bother denying now that John Kennedy stole the 1960 election.

Yet, Bush remains president. And not only has he remained president, he hasn't even had the decency to act embarrassed about it.

Count me among the few Democrats who deny the JFK accusation. Nixon challenged the Hawaii vote, and not the Illinois vote, because Nixon was the one provably up to no good in Illinois.

In Harpers, Mark Crispen Miller writes what may stand as the major critique of the election: "None Dare Call It Stolen!" It's not on the net -- yet -- which makes the latest issue of Harpers worth your six bucks. (Or perhaps, worth reading while resting in one of those overstuffed chairs at Barnes & Noble, a pastime I've been known to favor.) Here's an excerpt, courtesy the good folks at Democratic Underground:

The press has had little to say about most of the strange details of the election -- except, that is, to ridicule all efforts to discuss them. This animus appeared soon after Nov 2, in a spate of caustic articles dismissing any critical discussion of the outcome as crazed speculation: 'Election paranoia surfaces: Conspiracy theorists call results rigged,' chuckled the BALTIMORE SUN on Nov 5. 'Internet Buzz on Vote Fraud is Dismissed,' proclaimed the BOSTON GLOBE on Nov 5. 'Latest Conspiracy Theory -- Kerry Won -- Hits the Ether,' the WASHINGTON POST chortled on Nov 11. The NEW YORK TIMES weighed in with 'Vote fraud Theories, Spread by Blogs, Are Quickly Buried' -- making mock not only of the 'post-election theorizing' but of cyberspace itself, the fins et origo of all such loony tunes, according to the Times.

As with the JFK assassination and Iran-contragate, the mainstream pooh-poohers will end up with pooh-pooh on their faces.

Arrested for observing democracy in action. Jim March, of Black Box Voting, was arrested when he attempted to observe a Diebold vote tabulator at work after the San Diego mayoral election. Whatever your views of BBV (and I remain as confused as ever by Bev Harris), this situation is outrageous.

Documentation. Solarbus will give you a free CD chock-filled with documents and other info proving the case for vote fraud. They'll give it to you gratis, but they'd like you make copies and pass the word along. Pay it forward! But how about distribution via Limewire...Kazaa...BitTorrent...?

A blessing on Arcata, California! They're the first town -- first among many to follow, I hope -- to adopt a "Voter Confidence Resolution"

"The Voter Confidence Resolution is a common sense statement saying privatized election machines and secret vote counting ensure inconclusive outcomes. Under these conditions we will never have unanimous agreement about election results," says Dave Berman, co-founder of the Voter Confidence Committee of Humboldt County, CA. "The Arcata City Council has demonstrated that our local government does hear the voice of the people, even when the federal government has stopped listening."

Whatever they're smoking up there in Humboldt County actually seems to be improving their brain cells.

Senator Pat Roberts is the new enemy. Here's how to fight him.

Senator Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, refused to investigate the Niger forgeries, citing "an ongoing investigation" by the FBI. (Sound familiar?) Yet, as we mentioned earlier, he now has time to investigate the very concept of CIA cover.

An increasing number of progressives understand that these hearings will function as a tool to undermine the Plame investigation. We need to get the word out: This forthcoming "investigation" is important precisely because it will be rigged.

Now we learn that Roberts also intends to investigate an investigator. In other words, he has set his sights on Patrick Fitzgerald. Scroll down to the final paragraph of the linked story, and you'll see what I mean.

Nope, he's not going to investigate Rove or Libby or anyone else who may have functioned treasonously in this scandal. Instead, Roberts intends to "probe" (read: undermine) Fitzgerald's attempt to determine the truth.

The ever-controversial Wayne Madsen has something to say about all this -- and he also offers further details about the coordinated attacks on CIA man Larry Johnson, the subject of an item posted earlier today. Whatever your opinion of Madsen's previous work, this entry strikes me as quite persuasive. I've added paragraph breaks for clarity:

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) intends to interfere in Fitzgerald probe. Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, announced that his commitee will be "reviewing" the criminal probe by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of the White House leak of the identities of covert CIA agents. If Roberts is serious and not just grandstanding, this may indicate that the White House is looking to give Fitzgerald's targets (Karl Rove, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and others) congressional general immunity from prosecution in return for their testimony before Roberts' committee. This was the method by which John Poindexter and Oliver North were able to avoid jail time for their roles in Iran-contra, their convictions being overturned by a federal appeals court because of their previously granted congressional immunity.

There is also a bit of Watergate redux in Roberts' statement. Pressure by the GOP on Fitzgerald is reminiscent of the Nixon administration's decision to fire Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox. That prompted the resignations of Nixon's Attorney and Deputy Attorney General.

Meanwhile, the Karl Rove/neocon spin machine is stepping up its criticism of ex-CIA officers who are defending Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson. The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) director Gary Schmitt penned a screed in William Kristol's and Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard attacking former CIA officer and Valerie Plame colleague Larry Johnson, who gave the Democratic weekly radio response to Bush's address on July 23. The neocon attack on CIA veterans, including the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), began in earnest on the/Republican Freerepublic.com site, a bevy of white supremacists, JDLers, and John Birchers largely based in California's San Joaquin Valley and Orange County.

How to fight Roberts? Write to any and all Democrats on his committee -- in particular, Jay Rockefeller. Rockefeller, alas, is known as a Republican doormat. He needs to have some stiffener injected into his spine.

If even one Democrat on that committee rebels -- if one member storms out in protest or offers a blistering statement to the media -- Roberts' scheme will stand exposed.

You can find all the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee listed here. Democratic members include Feinstein of California, Bayh of Indiana, Mikulski of Maryland, Levin of Michigan, and Wyden of Oregon.

Follow the links and you'll be able to email those senators directly. Tell them to stand up to any attempt by Senator Pat Roberts to harrass Fitzgerald or the Wilsons. Tell them to protest -- and protest loudly -- any scheme to offer immunity to Fitzgerald's targets. Tell them that Bush administration traitors should be subjected to -- not protected by -- a Senate probe.

Bush Administration admits to vote fraud plan in Iraq. Did it also happen here? Did stolen Iraq oil loot pay for dirty tricks?

Heretofore, I've made only oblique references to an article we should have discussed some time ago: Seymour Hersh's excellent expose in the New Yorker of the Bush administration's attempt to rig the January 30 elections in Iraq.

Remember? Remember how, after this "election," Bill Maher and Jon Stewart started to turn around on Iraq? Recall all the pious talk about how democracy was on the march throughout the Middle East?

All poppycock. Bush did not and does not want true democracy. In particular, Bush's men do not want to hand Iraq over to a Shi'ite potentially sympathetic to Iran. The Bush administration wanted Iyad Allawi, its chosen puppet, in power in Iraq.

Astonishingly, the Bush administration has admitted that it had a plan in place to give Allawi covert and illegal help. This Democracy Now exchange between Hersh and host Amy Goodman explains much:

AMY GOODMAN: ...The response of the U.S. government, Sy, in yesterday's Washington Post says, "President Bush authorized covert plans last year to support the election campaigns of Iraqis with close ties to the White House, but government and intelligence officials have said the plan was scrapped before the January vote. Some officials with knowledge of the original proposal said the Bush administration backed down after Congressional objections, but others cited concerns within the intelligence community that the effort was likely to backfire." Your response?

SEYMOUR HERSH: Well, look, I think just the fact that they made that much of an acknowledgement is pretty amazing because, as you said, this is a president who was publicly saying how fair and open, and the whole issue of whether or not, you know, what we're doing and what the motives are, and this idea that we want to instill democracy, and as I said, the finding was not just limited to Iraq, we're talking about the former Soviet Union, etc. We're doing a lot of talking about restoring democracy. Even the fact they thought about it so long, I think, was a significant acknowledgement.

But look, this is a government that, as I have written about before, has gone off the books. It's gone off the books in the global war on terrorism. By that I mean, we're using -- we're outsourcing operations.

And just how did this outsourcing take place?

What I write is that they simply went off the record, off the books on it. In other words, rather than deal with the C.I.A. and money that was appropriated by Congress, they took money -- I can't -- I don't know from where, one guess would be Iraqi oil money, which we had control of. They took money that had not been appropriated by Congress and put it to work using retired intelligence people and other probably retired military people and others to help generate votes for Allawi. Allawi was running at, oh, 3% or even lower in other polls. 3% during the year. And he improved at the end, because, among other things, the Saudis and the Brits were doing an awful lot right before the election to support him, but nonetheless, in the election, he got 14% or 15%, which was much more than anybody expected.

How did he do it? Well, three or four or five different ways. There was some direct intimidation by Iraqi police of people at the polls telling them how to vote. There was money. There were intelligence, former C.I.A. people who bragged after the election of stuffing ballots. There was also a lot of reports that -- as most people in the audience don't know, the way the election was set up, the Iraqi election, by us, there were 30,000 polling places around the country and only, at the most, 6,000 or 8,000 poll watchers. So there were a lot of places where there was nobody to monitor. And more importantly, really, there was no ability for the American or international press to go throughout the country.

Hm? What's this? Oil money being used for clandestine purposes?

Very interesting. We've been told that Iraqi insurgents have decimated the oil flow, which is why we've not received much relief at the gas pump.

But what if the oil is going through, and what if the neocons are using the profits to fund their worldwide schemes? Back to Hersh:

I just don't know that but, you know, when you talk about cash in Iraq, you don't just talk about cash. You talk about pallet loads of cash. There's an awful lot of money. If anybody wanted -- the London Review of Books recently did an amazing -- they took the six last State Department and U.N. reports on the missing cash in Iraq. Twenty billion dollars, much of it Iraqi oil money, has just disappeared, and there's no accounting for it. I shouldn't say all of it has disappeared, but the accounting is very lax.

The corruption of Iraq and the corruption of our military by the dollars around, the invidious and systematic corruption of our military is just beyond belief.

The article referenced above is titled "Where has all the money gone?" You can find it here. Much of it deals with the kind of corruption we've heard about from other sources -- in particular, Kellog, Brown and Root's demonstrated penchant for outrageous overbilling.

But check out the opening paragraph of the London Review of Books article (which is the source for the "pallet loads" comment above):

On 12 April 2004, the Coalition Provisional Authority in Erbil in northern Iraq handed over $1.5 billion in cash to a local courier. The money, fresh $100 bills shrink-wrapped on pallets, which filled three Blackhawk helicopters, came from oil sales under the UN's Oil for Food Programme, and had been entrusted by the UN Security Council to the Americans to be spent on behalf of the Iraqi people. The CPA didn't properly check out the courier before handing over the cash, and, as a result, according to an audit report by the CPA's inspector general, there was an increased risk of the loss or theft of the cash. Paul Bremer, the American pro-consul in Baghdad until June last year, kept a slush fund of nearly $600 million cash for which there is no paperwork: $200 million of this was kept in a room in one of Saddam's former palaces, and the US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.

This ongoing theft is occurring in a nation where the electricity still does not work.

That's why the troops won't leave. Why abandon a piggy bank that hasn't yet been emptied? The Bush administration is literally robbing Iraq blind to fund its schemes elsewhere.

Could one such scheme be the manipulation of America's election?

The scenario outlined above -- illimitable covert funds, retired clandestine operatives, Saudi involvement, vote manipulation -- strikes me as unnervingly similar to the controversial allegations made by Wayne Madsen. Many vote fraud watchers considered Madsen discredited after he devoted much ink to a crooked entity called Five Star Trust, which -- in retrospect -- may have been nothing more than a scarlet red herring. That false trail was indeed troubling.

Even so, if we look at the matter in the broadest possible terms, Madsen's account of how democracy was subverted in America bears a distinct resemblance to Hersh's account of how democracy was subverted in Iraq.

Now that the Bushites have admitted that they don't care about true democracy in Iraq, what makes you think that they care about true democracy in America? This country's elections are the real prize.

A smeared Johnson

Ever notice that right-wing "newsmen" often start spouting the very same line all at once?

It's almost as though Karl Rove or Ken Mehlman sends these guys a script. It's almost as though conservative "reporters" are so thoroughly lacking in self-respect that they prefer to recite the prescribed text, as opposed to applying any independent research or thought to their task. It's almost as though they can hear a starting gun which remains silent to everyone else.

Yeah, I know...anyone who thinks that way must be paranoid.

Even so, consider today's case in point: The coordinated attacks on CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson, who testified during Senate hearings on Treasongate. His testimony helped the Wilsons' case -- thus, the attack dogs went a-snarling after Johnson.

Leading the pack was none other than Dubya's close friend -- yes, everyone's favorite he-whore, the one invited for purely innocent overnight stays at the White House -- Jeff Gannon. Following right behind Gannon (you should pardon the expression) were the Murdoch crew, who raised the very same talking points.

All within the very same hour, yesterday morning.

"Gentlemen, start your engines...!"

That rightist "talking point" fixates on an inconsequential piece written by Johnson in the days before 9/11, a piece which the rightists now claim ignores the terrorist threat. The very idea of a Bush admirer scoring anyone else for ignoring the terrorist threat in that period is pretty damn hilarious. There's a certain Presidential Briefing Memo I could mention...

But why should I say anything, when Larry Johnson can defend himself so eloquently? Check out his response here.

The rightwing is resurrecting an op-ed I wrote in July 2001. I stand by the full article. It is still relevant today. I am accused, incorrectly, of ignoring the threat of terrorism. In fact, I correctly noted that the real threat emanated from Bin Laden and Islamic extremism.

President Bush, for his part, ignored the CIA warning in August of 2001 that Al Qaeda was posed to strike inside the United States.

Reprinted below is the article I wrote in January 2003. My key warning is contained in the second paragraph. I wrote, "In fact there is a serious risk that a U.S. led war against Iraq may crystallize the diffused anger in the Arab and Muslim world--a heretofore unattained goal of bin Laden and his followers--and persuade more Muslim youths to take up the terrorist banner against American and her citizens."

Thanks go to Brad Friedman for bringing this matter to our attention.

THE MOST IMPORTANT STORY OF OUR TIME: Cheney makes plans to nuke Iran

If you are the sort of person who passes articles to friends, show 'em this one.

The print edition of the American Conservative includes a startling passage -- one which my readers will find evocative and horrifying. According to the article, Dick Cheney has personally instructed the Pentagon...

(Wait. Let's stop right there and ponder for a moment. Can a veep command the Pentagon to do anything? Apparently so! And here, you always thought the President was the Commander in Chief...)

Back to our story: Dick Cheney has personally instructed the Pentagon to draw up plans to nuke Iran immediately after the next terror attack. And we all know that such an attack is inevitable.

Iran will fry even if that nation has nothing to do with the terrorism!

The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing--that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack--but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.

The lives of untold millions may be saved if those officers develop a conscience and go public.

We need to get the Democratic Party Leadership interested in this story. And the rank-and-file. And the media.

Of course, right-wing propagandists have tried to convince us that Mr. and Mrs. Average Iranian really, really love America, deep in their hearts. That, presumably, is why Dick Cheney wants to turn them into glowing green vapor stew, even if they are innocent of any crime against us.

Plamegate

When does an expanding balloon reach the bursting point? Some feel that the Plame-gate balloon may soon reach that stage.

I haven't the time to write about this affair with sufficient detail. Suffice it to say that the revelation of a 12-hour gap is one factor that now makes this scandal a matter of "What did the President know and when did he know it?" That gap refers to the window between the time Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez unofficially told White House Chief of Staff Andy Card about the Plame Leak Investigation, and the next day -- 8:30pm on Sep 12, 2003 -- when he gave official word.

Lots of mischief can occur in twelve hours. Lots of shredded and burnt documents. Lots of swapped-out hard drives. Destroying that material became illegal the moment Gonzalez gave official notice of the investigation.

The best discussion of this and related matters may well be found on good old Brad Friedman's blog, here and here). The more recent story refers to David Gergen's appearance on This Week, in which he also raises the dreaded "What did the President know" question.

(Some wags will aver that the larger question should be "What does the President know...in general?")

You'll also want to read the ThinkProgress column here. Very likely, Card warned Bush (who has retained private counsel) during that twelve hour gap. Bush allegedly spoke to Rove early on.

As New York Times colunist Richard Stevenson notes:

Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian at American University in Washington, said the lesson of recent history, for example in the Iran-Contra case under President Ronald Reagan, is that presidents tend to know more than it might first appear about what is going on within the White House.

"My presumption in presidential politics is that the president always knows," Lichtman said. "But there are degrees of knowing. Reagan said, keep the contras together body and soul. Did he know exactly what Oliver North was doing? No, it doesn't mean he knew what every subordinate is doing."

More:

But Bush's political opponents say the president is in a box. In their view, either Rove and Libby kept the president in the dark about their actions, making them appear evasive at a time when Bush was demanding that his staff cooperate fully with the investigation, or Rove and Libby had told the president and he was not forthcoming in his public statements about his knowledge of their roles.

"We know that Karl Rove, through Scott McClellan, did not tell Americans the truth," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., and a former top aide in the Clinton White House. "What's important now is what Karl Rove told the president. Was it the truth, or was it what he told Scott McClellan?"

The even more important point is: Did Bush provably lie at any point?

Running for Cover: This New York Times piece indicates that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, (R-Kansas) still does not understand what NOC means, or that the Agee law refers to anyone who has functioned in a cladestine capacity for CIA at any time during the previous five years.

Actually, I'm sure he does know these things. Senator Roberts is simply operating under the well-known Rovian principle that a talking point, even if utterly fraudulent, will gain credibility if repeated ad nauseum. ("I heard it a hundred times. It must be true!")

But the newest trick runs deeper than that. Roberts' Committe will conduct "hearings" -- read: propaganda extravaganzas -- on the very nature of CIA cover. Obviously, these hearings exist for one purpose: To get testimony on the record (which will add credibility to the Republican charge that Valerie Wilson was not really a CIA covert agent. You can bet the rent money that if, when such testimony appears, the Murdoch pseudo-press and the radio rightists will do their utmost to give it publicity.

The only kind of "cover" that interests Pat Roberts is covering Dubya's sorry ass.

Deep Throat is STILL a mystery! (A wild ride through '70s-era paranoia...)

Way too much is happening. We suddenly have solid evidence of vote manipulation by the Bush administration -- in Iraq -- while the Plame affair has officially morphed into one of those nasty what-did-the-President-know scandals.

I can thus easily understand why an insufficient number of people have noticed the revelation that Deep Throat, of Watergate fame, may not be Mark Felt after all. Instead, Felt seems to have been one member of an FBI committee of leakers.

Forgive me for indulging in a Bill O'Reilly moment, but -- remember my earlier posts? I said that the important question was not "Who is Deep Throat?" but "Who was the Throat behind Throat?" Many noticed that "Felt" supposedly told Woodward about the 18 minute gap (and other taped lacunae) after Felt had left the FBI.

Murray Waas has detailed much of the story on his blog, Whatever Already, and in this Village Voice piece, which discusses newly-released evidence that the FBI had investigated -- and cleared -- Mark Felt for leaking.

This newest revision of the Throat saga began with a little-noticed article in the Albany Times-Union concerning highly respected former FBI man Paul Daly. Daly claims to have had personal interactions with the individuals who used Felt as a front man.

Daly, a Boston native, identified the others -- all deceased -- as Richard Long, who was chief of the FBI's white-collar crimes section during Watergate; Robert G. Kunkel, agent-in-charge of the Washington field office, which led the Watergate burglary investigation; and Charles Bates, who was assistant director of the FBI's criminal investigative division.

John Dean's reaction is of interest:

"I have been saying since Day 1 when I learned that it was Felt's identity that he could not have acted alone," Dean said in a telephone interview from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. "He could not have done it alone, and the names you bring, Kunkel and Bates, were highly suspect always. Pat Gray had a huge problem with them."

Kunkel's son denies that his father worked with Felt, and also alleges that the elder Kunkel had mentioned another (as yet unnamed) Throat suspect. Of course, Felt himself used to go to great lengths to deny the "Throat" accusation. WOrth noting: In his 1979 book, Felt describes his close working relationship with Kunkel during Watergate.

Apparently, Daly mentioned this scenario to well-known author Joe Persico some two years ago, well before Felt identified himself.

As for Charles Bates -- well, he has always been a particularly interesting fellow.

He attracted quite a bit of attention (particularly from left-leaning conspiracy-spotters) back in the 1970s for his handling of the Patty Hearst case, as well as the killings of Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Gadfly journalist and Realist editor Paul Krassner gives his unique perspective on this history:

In 1969, Charles Bates was Special Agent at the Chicago office of the FBI when police killed Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark while they were sleeping. Ex-FBI informer Maria Fischer told the Chicago Daily News that then-chief of the FBI's Chicago offfice Marlon Johnson personally asked her to slip a drug to Hampton; she had infiltrated the Panther Party at the FBI's request a month before. The drug was a tasteless, colorless liquid that would put him to sleep. She refused. Hampton was killed a week later. An autopsy indicated "a near fatal dose" of secobarbital in his system.

In 1971, Bates was transferred to Washington, D.C. According to Watergate burglar James McCord's book, A Piece of Tape, on June 21, 1972, White House attorney John Dean checked with acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray as to who was in charge of handling the Watergate investigation. The answer: Charles Bates -- the same FBI official who in 1974 would be in charge of handling the SLA investigation and the search for Patty Hearst. When she was arrested, Bates became instantly ubiquitous on radio and TV, boasting of her capture.

During the SLA imbroglio (far too complex a matter to discuss properly here), Bates took an oddly protective stance toward self-proclaimed rebels William and Emily Harris. The Harrises set off paranoia buzzers when they somehow managed to avoid the deadly shoot-out which killed most other members of the group. (Were they tipped off? They had Patty under their wings at the time.) When caught, they received astonishingly light sentences, even though Patty was willing to testify that Emily had murdered Myrna Opsahl. "So far, the Harrises were not overtly involved in any of these incidents," Bates declared to the press in 1974, as he more-or-less offered the Harrises immunity -- even though anyone clipping news stories at the time knew full well that the Harrises were heavily involved with the SLA's kidnappings, robberies and killings. Understandably, some progressives uspected that the Harrises were deep, deep undercover provocateurs (at the time, various stories alleged that the couple had been narcs before joining the SLA) -- and that Charles Bates knew something about the duo that he did not reveal.

(Note: The duo finally went back to prison -- for how long, I don't know -- after Kathleen Soliah resurfaced. Emily has finally been acknowledged as the murdered of Myrna Opsahl.)

If the reader will forgive still another small side-trip into '70s-era paranoia, Krassner goes on to describe his one personal interaction with Bates. While the following passage may (or may not) take us some distance away from Watergate and Deep Throat, it's still worth noting. This material will probably seem oddly nostalgic to older members of the reading audience, while younger folk might see it as a warning for the future. Krassner speaking:

In the middle of Patty's trial--on a Saturday afternoon, when reporters and technicians were hoping to be off duty--Bates called a press conference. At 5 o'clock that morning, they had raided the New Dawn collective, the aboveground support group of the Berkeley underground Emiliano Zapata Unit. Was there a search warrant? No, but the FBI had a "consent to search" signed by the owner of the house, who later admitted to being a paid FBI informant. Accompanying a press release about the evidence seized at the raid were photographs still wet with developing fluid. Bates posed with the photos.

Six weeks later, I received a letter by registered mail on Department of Justice stationery, signed by Charles Bates, advising me that I was on an Emiliano Zapata Unit "hit list" seized during a search. The information "is furnished for your personal use and it is requested it be kept confidential. At your discretion, you may desire to contact the local police department responsible for the area of your residence."

But I was more logically a target of the government than of the Emiliano Zapata Unit -- unless, of course, they were the same. Was the right wing of the FBI warning me about the left wing of the FBI?

The "underground history" of the 1970s continues to haunt us.

Bob Woodward has refused to comment on Daly's assertions or on Waas' articles.

In his new book, Woodward also refuses to discuss his interactions with his other known "inside" source, Robert Bennett of the CIA (now a senator) -- even though the Lukoskie memo (which Jim Hougan has done so much to publicize) makes clear that Bennett was feeding Woodward stories in exchange for silence on the CIA's role in Watergate.

Odder still, Woodward has evinced a very strange attitude toward Plamegate -- an attitude which, so far as I know, he may still hold, despite recent events:

[Washington Post editor Len] Downie, and Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward-- the one and same Bob Woodward who took on the White House during Watergate-- have been telling anyone willing to listen to their complaint (a complaint made by a powerful man is always heard more reverently than one made by the rest of us!) that the Plame affair has been much ado about nothing, that the Post has bravely not given into competitive pressures by joining the rest of the journalistic pack, and that if there is real news sometime, they will be the first to publish and crack the case!

If we presume that Downie followed Woodward's lead, what do we make of all this? Woodward may simply have misjudged the importance of the story. Or -- just perhaps -- he continues to dally with one faction of the intelligence community, a faction which advised him to steer clear of the Plame scandal.

Don't print the legend

Although this essay may seem like one of those "personal" pieces I write on weekends, I hope it will serve a larger purpose.

One of my guiltiest cinematic pleasures is John Milius' 1975 epic The Wind and the Lion, which chronicles the 1904 face-off between President Teddy Roosevelt (Brian Keith's best performance ever) and a Berber chieftain named Mulay el Raisuli (Sean Connery), the kidnapper of an American citizen. This is the role in which Connery escaped his James Bond persona and established himself as a leonine authority figure whose old bones young women want still to jump.

Much as I hate to admit it, this is a great film, featuring terrific performances, near-perfect direction, solid action sequences (from the era before digital "stuntwork" ruined action scenes), amazing photography -- and Jerry Goldsmith's finest score.

So why feel guilty about this pleasure? Because the film was made by a conservative who (in his DVD commentary) praises Dubya's foreign policy.

In truth, one cannot pigeonhole John Milius too easily -- he describes himself as both an imperialist and a Marxist. No doubt this dichotomy helps to explain his fascination with TR, who was a trust-buster and a conservationist as well the wielder of that famed "big stick."

Milius' political variant of multiple personality disorder forces viewers of this film to switch loyalties every ten minutes or so, which is one reason why it remains fascinating. Most conservatives who attempt to ply the narrative arts lack the intellectual capacity to understand anything beyond the simplistic clash between Good Guys and Bad Guys. In The Wind and the Lion, you never quite know who the Bad Guys are; they may -- or may not -- be us.

Why mention this old film in a political blog?

In part, because TW&TL was so predictive. The conflict between American imperialism and Islamic nationalism has become the conflict of our time. Connery's jihadist holy man now seems a model for Osama Bin Laden -- and don't dismiss the possibility that Osama saw this film, which was popular among Mulsims. (I hope readers will forego the usual oh-so-clever comments about Connery's brogue. Who else could have played this role?) Moreover, the character of the half-mad Captain Jerome seems to prefigure Ollie North. Only a (semi-)conservative film-maker could have gotten away with a movie glorifying a terrorist while disdaining the corrupt puppets who run too many Islamic lands.

The film also maintains relevance for its strange attitude toward history -- toward reality itself.

Of course, I have never expected strict historical accuracy from Hollywood films. And I always liked Milius' decision to change the sex of the Raisuli's kidnap victim (a switch widely publicized by reviewers back in 1975). The change makes the story better.

But filmic myth-making becomes a serious matter when the myth invades the classroom.

On the DVD commentary track, Milius informs us that Marine Corps instructors routinely screen one section of TW&TL in every OCS course -- the segment in which some 250 Marines storm the palace in Tangiers and take over the government of Morocco.

Never happened.

At the time this film came out, I was in high school taking an AP class in American history. When the teacher declared that America avoided overseas entanglements between the war of 1812 and the First World War, I loudly disagreed. "What about the conquest of Morocco?" I asked.

The teacher told me to double-check, which I did.

We never took over Morocco.

American battleships showed up in Tangiers harbor, and Marines did march through the streets of Tangiers. But they did not take over. They merely rattled sabers in order to convince the ruler of that country to negotiate with the Raisuli.

(That's another predictive aspect of this film: We see a Republican president vow never to negotiate with terrorists, yet he does just that in order to free American captives.)

Why (presuming we can believe Milius' commentary track) do Marine instructors fixate on this one scene? With all the astonishing events in the history of the Corps, why teach new officers to model themselves on a fictional battle?

It's not even much of a battle. In the film, 250 well-armed Marines face roughly two-dozen sword-wielding ceremonial guards in comic opera costume. When Captain Jerome yells "Hostiles to the left!", the one-sided tableau makes the audience laugh.

Do Marines really point to this encounter as a proud moment?

Elsewhere in the film, TR -- having bagged a grizzly bear in Yellowstone -- delivers a speech about the American spirit. "The world may learn to respect us, but they will never love us -- for we have too much audacity." A lecture like this can make a conservative achieve orgasm.

On the commentary track, Milius reveals that these words are now engraved on a plaque in a state park in Wyoming. He even gave officials of that state an official-sounding citation, in order to "prove" that Teddy said those words.

Alas, the entire speech was a concoction.

Milius seems genuinely amused his little ruse has given rise to one of the most famous "quotes" attributed to President Roosevelt.

Whenever such film-centered controversies come up, writers often point to a quote from John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence: "When legend becomes fact, print the legend." (Ford was another complex individual with both conservative and liberal tendencies.)

I've heard that phrase all my life. I've grown leery of it.

The most dangerous aspect of the conservative's mind is his psychopathic refusal to differentiate between what is and what he feels should be -- or, when the topic turns to history, what was and what should have been.

Today, any news outlet is considered "biased" if it does not emit the right-wing fantasy du jour. Ann Coulter has written a hagiography of the half-mad Joe McCarthy, and has been rewarded with a Time cover for her many falsifications. With true audacity, Ronald Reagan told audiences that he personally participated in the liberation of the concentration camps, and that it was North Vietnam (not the South) which had refused to participate in the reconciliation efforts of the 1950s.

These are not areas of legitimate controversy. Unlike (say) the killing of JFK or the sinking of the Maine, these are not enigmatic matters on which reasonable people may have widely varying views. These are instances of deliberate lying, of propagandists making a deliberate decision to put the very fabric of history through a laundromat designed by Big Brother.

As I write, a book called Rule By Secrecy (written by Jim Marrs) sits on my desk. This work presents as true such well-known hoaxes as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Report From Iron Mountain. Nearly every page contains an outrageous, easily provable lie. Naturally, this work became an underground bestseller in rightist circles.

Go to Snopes, and survey the political tinge of the many urban legends catalogued there. Most of these widely-promulgated yarns promote a far-right ideology. Very few have any basis in fact.

We see the same principle at work in the discourse over current events.

As all well-informed people know, the fall of that infamous Saddam statue was a staged event using Chalabi's goons -- yet the right-wing press still portrays the incident as a spontaneous reaction by the citizens of Baghdad. Whenever truth-seekers counter rightist lies about the Plame affair -- no, he did not go to Africa at his wife's behest; no, the Niger documents were not proven authentic -- the radio rightists simply renew their bogus charges.

Repeat a lie X number of times, and it will become true. Or so the right-wingers seem to believe.

The conservative mania for re-moulding history was harmless enough when John Milius brought it into our movie theaters. Today, however, that mania threatens all of America.

Far-rightists now control the presidency, the congress, and most of the judiciary. They now scheme to control history itself. Reality itself. Politics has become an exercise in epistemology. The only question left is Pilate's question.

In twenty years, will we have any history left? If some future Secretary of American Culture decrees that our schools should teach that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were allies throughout World War II, who will dare shout "Liar!"?

Who will dare to say "Don't print the legend?"

Does Karl Rove have Nazi family ties...? (And more on the current scandal.)

You probably already know today's big Rovegate news: A Bloomberg story claims that Rove lied to a Grand Jury about the way he came to know Valerie Wilson's "secret identity." Rove's version of events -- that he learned about Wilson/Plame from reporters -- has been staunchly denied by the reporters themselves.

Murray Waas made much the same point the day before Bloomberg ran the story:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

Goodness. Does this mean Karl Rove (or -- horrible thought! -- his lawyer) might have lied to us via that recent leak to the New York Times?

If you want to place the current scandal in an interesting historical light, you may want to check out this older (2003) story from Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman. They discuss the Nazi family ties of several key Republicans -- including Karl Rove:

...Rove's grandfather was Karl Heinz Roverer, the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was Reich-Statthalter -- Nazi State Party Chairman -- for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A. G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp, at which tens of thousands of Jews, Gypsies, dissidents and other were slaughtered en masse

An unfortunate coincidence? Arguably.

But note that Governor Schwarzenegger has a similar "coincidence" in his family history -- as does our president himself. The Bush family fortune derives, in no small measure, from Prescott Bush's business dealings with Nazis, which continued even after Pearl Harbor.

Rove...Schwarzenegger...Bush. What was it Ian Fleming used to say? I think it was something along the lines of Three times is enemy action...

Turki day: Will an Osama associate represent Saudi Arabia in D.C.?

If you saw Fahrenheit 911, you'll recall the sight of former Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar -- "Bandar Bush" -- hobnobbing with our current prez and his dad. Bandar has been "axed" to leave. The Saudis replaced him with Turki al Faisal, the former head of Istakhbarat al Amiyyah, otherwise known as the Saudi version of the CIA.

Turki used to be Saudi Arabia's liaison man to a fellow named Osama Bin Laden. Interestingly, Turki al Faisal quit his post as intel chieftain only ten days before the attack on America. Some reports say he was removed following pressure from the United States.

The private lawsuit filed on behalf of the 911 families named Prince Turki as an ally of Al Qaida -- a charge he has always denied. A judge in the case ruled that Prince Turki had immunity; his name was therefore dropped.

The uncle of Turki al Faisal, interestingly enough, was Kamal Adham -- a major player in the BCCI scandal. The crooked BCCI bank (which specialized in money laundering and other unsavory activities) intertwined with the CIA, radical Islamists, and the Bush family.

Turki al Faisal defends his dealings with Osama in this interview with British report Con Coughlin. Some readers may find this choice of interviewers odd, since Coughlin has, in the past, played the role of a British intelligence asset.

Perversely enough, Reverend Moon's Washington Times praises Turki as someone who "has long been involved in his country's efforts to combat al Qaeda." This, despite the printed accounts of his early-90s collusion with Osama Bin Laden in a plot to change the government of Yemen. The Moonie Times analysis also contradicts the allegations printed here about Turki al Faisal and the possible funding of Al Qaida.

The above link will take you to a secondary source which quotes a piece titled "The Politics of Three -- Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Israel" by a German writer named Paul W. Rasche. Unfortunately, the original article seems to have been removed from the internet, and now maintains on online existence only in quotation.

In brief, Raschke states that Turki al Faisal heads (or headed) the Faisal Islamic Bank of Saudi Arabia -- which, according to Raschke, had subterranean connections to the world of Osama Bin Laden, and to the bank most closely associated with Al Qaida, Al Taqwa:

The president of the Al Taqwa Bank Group is Youssef Mustapha Nada, naturalized Italian, and a member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaa-al-Islamiya, which is directly allied with Al Qaeda through Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, said by some intelligence sources to be the brains behind bin Laden. When the Bahamas closed Al Taqwa Bank Ltd. early this year, Swiss authorities required a name change in Al Taqwa Bank, which then became registered in Switzerland as Nada Management Organization SA. It is the same Al Taqwa Bank.

More:

In 1970, Youssef Nada moved to Saudi Arabia and, with help from the Muslim Brotherhood, established contact with members of the Saudi Royal family, and founded a construction company in Riyadh, much the same as the Bin Laden family. He remained active in Riyadh, and soon founded the first Islamic bank in Egypt, the Faisal Bank.

More:

The Faisal Islamic Bank of Saudi Arabia is the head bank of a number of affiliated Islamic Banks under that name across the Islamic world from Egypt to Pakistan to the Emirates and Malaysia. The head of Faisal Islamic Bank of Saudi Arabia is former Saudi Intelligence Chief, Turki al-Faisal. Faisal Islamic Bank is directly involved in running accounts for bin Laden and his associates, and has been named by Luxembourg banking authorities in this regard.

(Emphasis added by me.) Is the Raschke article accurate? I do not know. In truth, I have not even seen the orginal piece.

However, I do think we have sufficient grounds to warrant congressional scrutiny of the man who, it seems, will soon function as Saudi Arabia'sambassador to the United States.

Vote notes (Important developments on several fronts)

Supreme Court Nominee John Roberts, working behind the scenes, may have helped Bush win in 2000. For more info, go to the Dallas Morning News story here, and scroll down until you see the words "Role in 2000 recount."

Although his name did not appear on the briefs, three sources who were personally aware of Judge Roberts' role said he gave Republican Gov. Jeb Bush critical advice on how the Florida Legislature could constitutionally name George W. Bush the winner at a time when Republicans feared that if the recount were to continue the courts might force a different choice.

Hmmm...

Georgia on our minds. A new law in Georgia will forbid the vote to anyone who does not possess government-issued photo identification. This legislation will severely impact 150,000 seniors in that state who do not possess driver's licenses -- not to mention the impact on blacks and poor people.

This sorry turn of events derives, of course, from the Republican propaganda campaign designed to convince the citizenry that America suffers from an epidemic of voters using fake identification. (Remember the widely-circulated urban legend of the voter registered as "Jive F. Turkey"?)

The new law's supporters claim that it is an attempt to reduce voter fraud, but Secretary of State Cathy Cox has said she cannot recall a single case during her tenure when anyone impersonated a voter.

In the same period, she says, there have been numerous allegations of fraud involving absentee ballots. But the Georgia Legislature has passed a law that focuses on voter identification while actually making absentee ballots more prone to misuse.

Oh, but it gets worse...

More Georgia horrors: Cynthia McKinney has just released documents which, she claims, take "hack the vote" stories completely out of the realm of conspiracy theory.

The first flickers of a problem appeared in the public mind with the election of Gov. Sonny Perdue with an unaccounted for 11 point swing overnight in the voting publics voting preference. Perdue was the first Republican Governor elected in Georgia since the reconstruction.

Georgia's elections have been fraught with massive problems from day one and election officials have hidden the problems from the voters.

Georgia's election officials sought to protect Diebold instead of the voters.

The first document is a list of bugs and failures experienced in Georgia's 2002 election, none of which have been resolved to date, much less in time for the 2004 election.

Mr. Sam Barber of American Computer Technologies, Inc. has filed a federal lawsuit against Diebold. ACT was originally a Minority Owned Business contacted by Diebold to subcontract the Acceptance Testing of the Diebold system. When they discovered Mr. Barber really intended to test the equipment as prescribed by computer science, they threw him off the contract.

What they WANTED Mr. Barber's company to do was assemble the 2 pieces of equipment and CALL it acceptance testing. When he refused, he was dismissed by Diebold in McKinney, TX.

Want to judge the documents for yourself? Be my guest. (And here's the video of McKinney in action.)

And when you're done, take a look at this 2004 portrait of Cathy Cox, the Georgia Secretary of State who has been called the Poster Girl for Diebold. (Also see here.) Somehow, I don't think she'll consider McKinney's documentation worthy of investigation.

But if democracy somehow manages to endure (or to revive) in this nation, Cynthia McKinney will one day be remembered with gratitude and affection -- and Cathy Cox will, if she is lucky, be forgotten entirely.

Mississippi is also going Diebold. Secretary of State Eric Clark sez:

"You hear about (computer) hacking, but it just can't happen here," he said. "It's as secure as anything can be. Based on everything I've seen, these are the best machines available and they're coming at zero cost to the counties."

On a completely unrelated note, did you know that the average I.Q. in Mississippi is 85 -- lowest in the United States?

Caught taking a Diebold bribe...? Matthew Damschroder, the Director of the Franklin County Board of Elections was suspended after questions were raised about his "handling" of a $10,000 check written by a Diebold representative.

Damschroder has said he accepted a $10,000 check from Diebold political consultant Pasquale "Pat" Gallina on county property and later delivered it to the Franklin County Republican Party.

More:

Damschroder also told reporters and county prosecutors that Gallina reported cutting a private deal on Diebold voting machines with Secretary of State Ken Blackwell's campaign adviser and then donating $50,000 to "Blackwell interests."

You just knew Kenny boy would enter this tale, didn't you? Gallina denies the claims, incidentally.

Undeniably, the major voting machine companies have a sorry history of bribes and offering cozy post-public-life sinecures to election board officials throughout the country.

On a similar note...

Seattle arrest! In the past, we've focused on the important research by Paul Lehto (that's L-E-H-T-O...I think) on electoral shennanigans in the state Laura Palmer called home. Specifically, Lehto noted a telling pattern: Paper votes matched the exit polls, while touchscreen votes favored Republicans. He also drew attention to two under-recognized (and perhaps related) oddities: The mysterious pattern of touchscreen machine repairs, and the manufacturer's insistence that power cords be "daisy chained" on Sequoia voting machines. Data -- such as a virus or a vote-theft program -- can be transferred via power cords.

Lehto focused on Snohomish County. Now we learn some interesting news about King County:

Former King County Elections Superintendent Julie Anne Kempf was booked into jail Tuesday, July 19, on investigation of forgery, theft, criminal impersonation, and assault on a police officer, Seattle Weekly has learned.

The probe that led to her arrest is related to events that occurred after she left her county job in December 2002, but it involves recent incidents connected to the elections office.

More to come, I am sure...

AccuFake: A poster to Democratic Underground claims to have discovered an email from one Diebold employee to another -- an email containing a Christmas poem which parodies "A Night Before Christmas." Amusingly enough, this bit of "insider" humor refers to the Diebold system as AccuFake. Cynical jesting or revelation?

Sherole Eaton, the courageous Ohio Board of Elections worker who was "axed" to leave after she testified to outrageous attempts to fix the recount, still needs help to keep up her $600-a-month medical insurance premium. Her health is in danger, and a brain aneurism requires surgery. For information on her story and how you can help, go here.

Incidentally, there's a rumor that a mainstream magazine will soon devote some major ink to her story. I hope that article includes the following details:

After Sherole stood up and the recount was stopped before it was completed, she was forced by the BOE to take "comp time" off. While she was off, they discovered an aneurysm. When she returned, they held a BOE meeting and DINO Hughes seconded the motion to fire her and all 4 members voted for her firing.

She was commended by these same Democrat board members at the next meeting after the recount for what a wonderful job she did throughout the election and the recount.

Now, remember, she was off work after the recount for the biggest share of the time preceding her firing. The Board would not give an official reason for her termination.

In the meantime, the Republican Director of Elections in Hocking County, Lisa Swartz spent several weeks after the recount shredding documents and voter records without authorization. She also planned Republican fundraisers, inviting bands, etc., using county equipment and time to do so. She did this in front of the DINO Chairman of the Board without any reprimands.

Also, the ex-Saudi Arabian oil employee, Sue Wallace, was the election worker in charge of the absentee ballots. They could not give an answer to the Green Party volunteers when asked how many absentee ballots were counted. She kept some of them in an unlocked desk drawer. Blackwells office was aware of the absentees being unaccounted for in Hocking County. Sue was not reprimanded for this.

In sum: The bad guys are flexing their muscles. Yet a growing number of people are finding themselves in Neo's position -- they've awoken from a dream-like pseudo-reality to find themselves mired in goo. Will enough people acheive samsara in time to save democracy?

Then again, does Bush really want to overturn Roe v. Wade?

The progressive reaction to the selection of John Roberts runs toward "Well, it could've been worse."

His record (to the extent that he has a record) on the abortion question is intriguingly mixed. He has argued that doctors receiving taxpayer $$$ shouldn't mention the A-word to patients -- a very retrogressive position, which he may have taken simply to please his client. On another occasion, he conceded that he had no personal objection to the fact that the Roe v. Wade decision fixed the law of the land.

All of which leads me to wonder: Does Bush really want an anti-abortion crusader on the nation's highest court? Or does he simply want someone whose resume gives the appearance of being -- potentially -- anti-abortion?

In the past, I have argued that the loss of abortion rights might provide the shock to the system that could reverse this nation's long, slow slide toward theocratic fascism. What if the G.O.P.'s big-thinkers came to the same conclusion long ago?

Suppose abortion suddenly became illegal in the several states. Within a year, membership in the Republican party would decrease by...what? Five percent? Ten percent? If sufficiently inconvenienced, a fair number of this nation's many superstitious hillbillies might start singing that old song: "I'm reviewing...the situation...I think I better think it out again!"

Are the top Republican leaders truly concerned about abortion, or are they merely mollifying the fundamentalists?

Ronald Reagan probably wasn't the prude many of his worshippers took him to be. Nancy was pregnant when he married her. (I hope you know what Nancy Davis was famous for during her Hollywood days. You didn't think she got roles based on her acting talent, did you?) More to the point, Reagan signed legislation liberalizing California's abortion laws in 1967. He switched his stance only when he understood his base better.

Poppy Bush? I doubt he ever truly cared about the issue. In his culture, if Muffy from Kappa Alpha Theta told her paramour that a game of hide-the-salaam had taken an unexpected turn, he would just toss her a handful of bills and tell her to "take care of it." Poppy was no Jesusmaniac; he merely played one on TV.

Bush the younger? Larry Flynt once said that he had affidavits proving (or at least claiming) that in 1970, Dubya impregnated some pretty young thang and paid for her to, uh, "take care of it." Whether you believe that story depends, I suppose, on your opinion of Larry Flynt.

Dick Cheney? Cah-MON. Do you really think Dick Cheney personally gives one fiftieth of a fleck of crap about the abortion issue?

I suspect that none of the G.O.P.'s uppermost leaders have any personal stake in the issue.

The trick, then, has always been to find a candidate who seems poised to please the fundamentalists -- but who will go on to maintain Roe v. Wade.

Of course, Bush's choice will also uphold the rights of large corporations to force the American worker into a state unnervingly similar to peonage. But that goes without saying.

Wilson and Wurmser

Just a short squib here -- I still want the longish post below to garner attenton. (I've cleaned up a couple of typos.) Some bloggers have fingered a potential new leading player in the Plame affair: David Wurmser, Bolton's special assistant -- another neo-con with a Likud ueber alles 'tude. Check out Dark Wraith Forums and this Kos diary.

By the way, I'd like to thank the readers who contributed such thought-provoking responses to the post below on the CIA and the origins of Plame-gate.

Good old Mr. Wilson: The CIA and Rovegate

The Plame/Wilson/Rove/whoever case has so many twists and turns, one cannot comment on all of them. But one aspect of the scandal gnaws at me: How did it start?

How did it really start?

To explain my concern, let us first flash back to Watergate.

In the early 1970s, Democrats and lefties were so grateful for the prospect of ending the detested Nixon presidency that they (for the most part) neglected to ask some difficult questions. Why did "former" CIA man McCord leave a second piece of tape on the door, thereby blowing the break-in? Why did he write the letter which transformed the burglary into a national scandal? Why did Alexander Butterfield (a man many Nixon staffers considered "spooky") voluntarily disclose the existence of the tapes?

At that time, and for some years afterward, neither right nor left explored such problems. Neither side wanted to contemplate the notion that Nixon was being undone by enemies within the intelligence community.

Now flash forward to 2003, and ask yourself a couple of questions:

Why did Cheney's office ask the CIA to send someone to Niger to "check out" the forged documents? And who chose Joseph Wilson for that job?

Cheney, I am convinced, was "in on the joke" from the beginning. That is, he must have known that the yellowcake documents were forgeries. (Hell, I would not be utterly surprised to learn that he gave the order to have them forged.)

And even if he didn't know, his first move should have been to knock on the door of an expert in questioned documents.

For our present purposes, let us presume (and this is no unfair presumption) that Dick already knew the Niger yellowcake allegation to be nonsense. Let us further presume (again, this is not an outlandish idea) that a well-connected neocon cabal created those documents.

What, then, would be the purpose of Wilson's safari? How could anyone at the White House expect any CIA-chosen asset in Africa to "confirm" a hoax?

As you know, right-wing propagandists are pomoting the lie that Wilson claimed that Cheney personally chose him for this mission. In response, Democrats and other truth-tellers have noted Wilson's actual words, as revealed in this interview with Wolf Blitzer:

WILSON: Well, look, it's absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.

What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby's statement, it was probably the vice president himself...

BLITZER: Scooter Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.

WILSON: Scooter Libby.

They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.

Again: If (and I strongly suspect this to be the case) Cheney knew that the documents were bogus, what would be the point of this exercise?

We come now to the question of who chose Wilson. The rightists have always claimed, falsely, that he was chosen by his wife. Wilson says only that the choice was made by someone at the "operational level."

Who might that be? It wasn't Valerie Plame/Wilson. So who?

Earlier today, a guest on Al Franken's show made a wry comment about this situation. Just which audience was Novak playing to when he outed Valerie Wilson as CIA -- the people who listen to Pacifica radio? I mean, what other crowd would consider that revelation shocking and damning?

Answer: The neocons.

They now vilify the CIA -- or rather, they despise the large anti-neocon sector of the CIA. (The intelligence community is not ideologically monolithic.) That's why the neocons started their own spy shop in the Pentagon.

A fair amount of the current anti-Wilson spew is actually anti-Agency spew. Listen closely and you'll hear it. Neoconservatives are pissed off at the Company, and many a Company man feels a similar antipathy.

Now let's proceed to a third question: Just when did that cabal of White House insiders order a "work-up" on Joseph Wilson? The "work up" included the information about Valerie Plame, and apparently listed her by that name, not as "Valerie Wilson."

The circumstances surrounding the choice of Joseph Wilson are the subject of this important Daily Kos post, which focuses on a June 10, 2003 State Department memo centering on Wilson and his wife. The memo is now a matter of no small concern to prosecutor Fitzgerald.

The date is important. Wilson did not publish his op-ed article until four weeks later -- July 6, 2003.

Today's Los Angeles Times claims that Rove and his comrades became semi-obsessed with Wilson after the July 6 piece hit ink. But the circulation of the afore-cited memo (and other evidence) indicates that White House neocons ordered a "work up" on Wilson well before he made his contribution to the New York Times.

Why?

Obviously, they weren't peeved by what he wrote, since (at that time) he had not written anything. They found him annoying for some other reason.

I do not yet have a fully-formed theory. But here are a few ideas:

1. I suspect that the person who chose Wilson may have been then-DCI George Tenet or his second in command, John McLaughlin, both of whom were later "axed" to leave by a sorely displeased George Bush. In a long-ago post, I asserted my belief that Bush's actions (or inactions) in the run-up to 9/11 angered McLaughlin.

We can feel certain that neither he nor Tenet appreciated the administration's attempts to blame the CIA (and only the CIA) for the torrents of bogus pre-war intelligence. And we can only imagine Tenet's reaction after Bush studiously ignored all pre-9/11 warnings issued by the intelligence community.

Even so, Tenet did whatever he could to remain within Bush' good grace for as long as possible. Biding his time, as it were.

2. The neocons seem to have expected Tenet to chose someone pliable for the Niger trip -- someone who would go along with a carefully prepared disinformation scheme. This scheme may have been far more elaborate than we can now guess.

I believe that the CIA man visiting Africa was supposed to perform some specific action that would have credibilized the yellowcake fraud. In other words: He was supposed to perform a covert op.

What sort of op? Well, one can only imagine. Perhaps the neocons expected Wilson to plant evidence during his Niger excursion?

Yes, I am speculating. But this speculative scenario makes a lot more sense to me than does the "official" story. According to the Accepted Scenario, the CIA's man in Africa was supposed to do some Sherlock Holmesing in Niger to "confirm" a document which the neocons back in D.C. surely had to know was a fraud.

3. Joseph Wilson either was not in on the plan -- or he was in the know, but refused to perform as requested.

Incidentally, I think we can fairly say that Wilson was, is, a CIA asset. He may or may not have received the spook training his wife underwent. Even so, conventional wisdom holds that half the people in the diplomatic corps are really working for the intelligence community. Given what we now know about Wilson, would you categorize him as a "spooky" diplomat or a "non-spooky" diplomat?

The point is this: Whatever the hell it was that he was supposed to do in Niger, Wilson didn't do it. He followed a different agenda.

Which may well mean that the CIA followed a different agenda.

Now go back to the beginning of this post and re-read the paragraph about Watergate.

Stray notes

The Downing Street Memo is now on the air: Check it out...

Beyond that...

1. There's too much going on! And I do not have enough time to discuss all of it, or even most of it.

2. I apologize to John Aravosis for misspelling his name in a recent post. I grant him (and Paul Lehto) the right to spell my name in any fashion they choose. Suggested misspellings: "Canon," "Kanon," "Conan," "Canoon," and "Akeem the Merciless."

3. I try not to acknowledge righties who post nonsense to the comments section. My usual policy is to allow them to say whatever they please. This time, though, I so pissed off that I've decided to delete a pack of lies about Joseph Wilson posted by a reactionary stooge who (for whatever reason) enjoys tweaking our noses.

Go ahead. Call me a censor. I don't care. You don't like my decision? Get your own damn blog.

For the record: Wilson provably never said that Cheney sent him on the mission to Niger. His wife did not arrange the choice of her husband. The New Hampshire Union Leader may proclaim otherwise; doing so only proves their bias. The leaked "revelations" of last Friday's (form Rove's lawyer, obviously) prove only that Republicans hope that no-one in the public will compare the current lies against previously revealed material.

The Agee law defines a covert agent of the CIA as someone who has served in the capacity within the previous five years. This fact renders irrelevant the question of whether or not Valerie Wilson was playing Jane Bond at the time of the Niger trip or at the time her husband published the article.

That's how Repblicans operate: They lie and lie and lie. If a lie doesn't take the first time, they keep repeating it. They are paid to repeat horsecrap ad infinitum. Alas, paid workers will usually outperform voluntary labor.

Alternate bomb theories: Hot and hotter

Investigators and commentators have given us more than one alternate "take" on the bombings in London. We can place these theories in two categories, spicy and ultra-spicy. Let's start with a whiff (just a whiff, mind you) of ultra-spiciness:

1. Habanero-strength. Your best guide remains Xymphora, although aficionados of the strong stuff will want to take a look at the continuing work of Alex Jones (who has published a genuinely intriguing continuation of the Peter Power/Rudy Guiliani aspect) and perhaps even Jeff Rense. These gentlemen will surely guide you into some very strange places, places you may not care to go. (You never know when Rense will bring chupacabras into the story.)

Call me a wimp, but the "habanero" version is rather too hot for me. I prefer...

2. Jalapeno-strength. This scenario is a little more digestible, but still packs plenty of heat.

One blogger refers to this scenario as the "Orange Alert scandal." The story, which grows insanely complex with each passing minute, comes down to this: The Bush administration, in a mad rush to create a terror alert during the Democratic convention (all the better to remind us of the threat to America, don'tcha know), inadvertently (?) revealed the name of their most important intelligence asset within Al Qaida. This is a man named Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan, an Al Qaida computer expert "turned" by our side and kept in place. (Just like the old Cold War days, eh wot?)

As John Avorosis tells it in his seminal story:

3. ABC reports that names in Khan's computer matched a suspected cell of British citizens of Pakistani decent, many of who lived near the town of Luton, England - Luton is the same town where, not coincidentally, last week's London bombing terrorists began their day. According to ABC, authorities thought they had stopped the subway plot with the arrest of more than a dozen people last year associated with Khan. Obviously, they hadn't.

4. Those arrests were the arrests that the Bush administration botched by announcing a heightened security alert the week of the Democratic Convention. The alert was raised because of information found on Khan's computer (this is in the public record already, see below). In its effort to either prove that the alert was serious, or to try and scare people during the Dem Convention, the administration gave the press too much information about WHY they raised the alert. This put the media on the trail of Khan - they found him, and they published his name.

In other words, the Bushies were able to trump up their terror alert -- but in the process, they outed the most important mole we had.

If that mole had remained in place, might he have prevented the London bombings? Many think so:

Again, these were guys connected to the plot to blow up the London subway last week. Some may have escaped because of Bush administration negligence involving a leak. And in fact, ABC News' terrorism consultant says the group that bombed London was likely activated just after the arrests:

"It is very likely this group was activated last year after the other group was arrested," Debat said.

A key story in all this was published in the August 7, 2004 edition of the New York Daily News:

Within hours of Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan's name being publicized Monday, British police launched lightning raids that netted a dozen suspected Al Qaeda terrorists, including one who was nabbed after a high-speed car chase....

Now British and Pakistani intelligence officials are furious with the Americans for unmasking their super spy - apparently to justify the orange alert - and for naming the other captured terrorist suspects.

Pakistani Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayyat expressed dismay the trap they had hoped would lead to the capture of other top Al Qaeda leaders, possibly even Osama Bin Laden, was sprung too soon.

"The network is still not finished," Hayyat said. It "remains a potent threat to Pakistan, and to civilized humanity."

No duh. Londoners found that out the hard way.

The Newsclip Autopsy site has taken up this story. You may want to consider the research found here.

Our attention is drawn to this significant CBS News story (the true importance of which went largely unrecognized at the time), which contains the following:

A Pakistani security official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Tuesday that despite failing to capture some al Qaeda suspects after Khan's arrest, the country's security agencies were chasing them and would eventually get them.

The official would not reveal the names or nationalities of the fugitives who evaded arrest.

Ghailani and Khan are still in the custody of Pakistan.

Officials say Ghailani and Khan's computer contained photographs of potential targets in the United States and Britain, including London's Heathrow Airport and underpasses beneath London buildings.

(Emphasis added.)

So we know -- or, at least, we have good reason to believe -- two things:

1. Escaped members of the Khan network eventually carried out the attacks.

2. Those running Khan knew the names of people in that network who escaped capture.

While you chew over those two items, consider the following from The Scotsman:

ONE of the London suicide bombers was allowed to tour the Houses of Parliament as the guest of an MP months after police and intelligence services became aware of his links to another alleged bomb plot, it emerged last night.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, was a guest of the Labour MP Jon Trickett in July 2004, four months after he had been identified by intelligence officials as a "criminal associate" of one of the subjects of a major counter-terrorism operation that had resulted in several arrests.

The extraordinary visit emerged as an Egyptian biochemist who may be linked to the bombers was arrested in Cairo, where he was due to be questioned by Scotland Yard detectives.

The astonishing revelation about the killer's Commons visit throws into question previous assertions that none of the bombers was known to police in connection with terrorist allegations and comes amid growing concerns about how the bombers were allowed to strike.

In other words: "Our" side knew who these guys were. Instead of being rounded up, one terrorist was given a tour of the Houses of Parliament!

(Now that I think of it, this story may pack a "habanero" punch after all...)

Americablog found a very relevant nugget in a September, 2004 exchange with Homeland Security head honcho Tom Ridge. Ridge speaking:

But I know there was the regrettable disclosure of information that British officials would have much preferred to remain confidential, at least during the time of apprehension and the decision-making as to whether or not they should be held and then charged. And I assure you it wasn't part of any public pronouncement relative to raising the threat level from the Department of Homeland Security.

Well...maybe. It all depends on how much you trust Tom Ridge.

At best -- at best, what we have here is another example of BushCo.'s penchant for tattling on our own operatives.

Hats off to Americablog and Newsclip Autopsy for covering his matter. I can add only my own humble speculation -- which may please those of you who hunger for something a bit hotter than a mere jalapeno:

Someone in the Bush administration provided a breadcrumb trail to super-mole Khan in 2004. What if that revelation was not an accident? Khan, it is said, could have helped "our side" capture Bin Laden himself. Do the neocons want Osama to remain free?

(Egads. My crossbreeding experiment may have resulted in the hottest pepper of 'em all!)