Today, Johnson has a major new piece on Cheney, Traitorgate, and the lies that led to war. Oddly enough, he does not mention the 22 indictments! Does he now have less faith in his source for that assertion?
Regardless, Johnson gives a good overview of the larger scandal that midwived the Wilson affair. Note this section:
It is now clear that Italy's intelligence service, SISME, had a hand in producing the forged documents delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in early October 2003 that purported to show a deal with Iraq to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a prominent neocon with longstanding ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain: Either SISME or someone with ties to SISME helped forge and circulate those documents, which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq.He's talking about Michael Ledeen.
Herman and Brodhead's invaluable The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection may be your best source on Ledeen's close ties, during the 1980s, to both SISMI and the far right in Italy. Here's a relevant chunk:
...he was associated with Francesco Pazienza, a friend of Licio Gelli and the Mafia and a member of the Italian secret service organization SISMI, and Ledeen himself was on the SISMI payroll and participated in its dirty tricks. According to Italian press reports, furthermore, Pazienza and Ledeen foisted some stale U.S. intelligence reports about the Communist Plot on SISMI for large consulting fees. Ledeen's manipulative operations in Italy were of sufficient scale and quality to cause a new head of SISMI to denounce Ledeen on the floor of the Italian parliament in 1984 as an "intriguer" and unwelcome in Italy.Then as now, faked intel was a specialty.
According to Diana Johnstone, Italian journalists to whom these secret reports were leaked were not fooled, and "found them an unconvincing rehash of old gossip, such as the notion that the Italian Communist Party was really run by a secret 'parallel, hierarchy commanded by Moscow."If a trick worked once, keep working it. Do men of this stripe care at all about the deaths caused by their deceits?
6 comments:
I never bought the 22 indictments story when it surfaced a couple of months ago. For one simple reason: Fitzgerald would have had to go back to the Justice Dept for more assistant u.s. attorneys to handle this number of defendents. Someone at Justice would have leaked this (someone outside of Fitzgerald's tight-lipped crew).
P.S.: Nice redesign, although an observer thought I was suddenly a fan of a hell-fire and brimstone theologian.
joe, didn't johnson's tuesday piece mention 22 FILES? i'll check, but it caught my eye because of that earlier rumor of 22 indictments.
"Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at for potential indictment."
this doesn't sound to me like he's claiming there are 22 indictments, but from these files, there will be indictments. i just find this remarkable given the earlier account.
also, in the midst of nearly blowing a gasket trying to keep my excitement contained today, this occurred to me:
the typical 'objective' observer might suggest that the right are way under-predicting the impact of all this, and the left are way over-predicting.
that would be logical but for the fact that fitz is running such a tight ship. ken starr he's not. in the midst of my trying to keep calm, i realized that we may actually be way BEHIND his curve on all this, because we're only getting little pieces of the puzzle. i'm beginning to suspect, after news that wurmser and hannah are spilling their guts, that fitz has put the whole puzzle together, including the aipac/franklin piece.
this reasoning left me bracing myself for results none of us could hardly imagine.
still have to reel myself in every five minutes or so, but that thought is now part of my self-monitoring mix.
also, what of the report in the wapo today that casually mentioned that if these do go down as indictments the public may never get to look at the evidence?
hm. check this piece out, by james moore:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-most-important-crimin_b_9183.html
not only does he tie the leak case up with the forgery and ledeen (mentioning that fitz has asked the italian government for copies of their investigation of the break-in of the niger embassy in rome), but he - like i just did in my previous comment - recognizes that fitz knows way more than is coming out in the press leaks. WAY more.
god, this is all so incredible.
"this reasoning left me bracing myself for results none of us could hardly imagine."
It's still so hard for me to imagine that Fitz will go for...something as big as what he may be going for. I know how you feel about the excitement, though, III, and the wanting for it to be as much as it could. I just...as I've asked before, how would the media report on that? I mean, really, how? The Big Issues are ones that have barely been touched in MSM, if it can be said they have at all. I haven't really been watching the network coverage so I don't even know what they're saying now, let alone what they might try to say if something truly huge is revealed by Fitgerald's work. Seems to me they might really, really be scrambling for copy.
If lll is correct, my belief in an active and intervening god will be permanently enhanced.
It is fascinating to note that Fitz's authority is unprecedented in American history. Never has a prosecutor, special or otherwise, had the heirarchical independence that Fitz does. No one--not Bush or Cheney or Gonzalez--can deny him the right to investigate who and what he chooses. They can't even touch his budget.
And I'm quite sure Fitz is aware of his rare and pivotal role in history. Like lll, I pray that he intends to fulfill his destiny.
BTW, 22 indictments does not mean 22 defendants. Rove could be indicted on two charges, Libby on three or four, Judy on two, etc.
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