The secret history of the Reagan years -- and of today

I'm grateful to the reader who, in the comments section two posts down, linked to this page for more information on Michael Ledeen. The link takes you to Secret Teams and Covert Operations in the Reagan Era by Jonathan Marshall, Peter Dale Scott, Jane Hunter, originally published by the South End Press in 1987.

One cannot understand the origin of the current war without understanding Ledeen. One cannot understand Ledeen without reading up on the key role he played in promulgating the so-called "Bulgarian connection" to the shooting of Pope John-Paul II.

A quick scan of the internet will tell you that quite a few Americans still buy into this lie, even though Europeans have long recognized the story as disinformation. An Italian court fingered Ledeen as a ringleader of the hoax-peddlers.

Alas, the printed material proving what I've just said is now as rare as hen's teeth, available only to those few fans of yellowing books and microfilmed newsclips. Herman and Brodhead's important book The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection is almost impossible to find, even at large university libraries.

There were, in fact, quite a few good books and articles published during the 1980s -- material which exposed the many scandals which marked the era. The scarcity of that material explains why people born 20-35 years ago believe the hagiographic fairy tale version of the Reagan years. They never heard of Terpil and Wilson...Secord and Singlaub...Sterling and Ledeen...EATSCO...October Surprise...Vicki Morgan...Licio Gelli at the Reagan inaugural...and all the rest of it.

And most young people have never heard about the disinformation packets which the rightist networks regularly pumped into the info-stream. If you're over 40, perhaps you will remember the inane allegations of Libyan hit squads...Sandinista synagogue-burning...Nicaraguan drug-running...Soviet control of the American media...

We were inundated with that slop. As soon as one lie was exposed, we'd get hit with more slop.

The secret history of the Reagan era has retreated from view, which is why younger folk don't don't recognize key names. One such name is Michael Ledeen.

Why did Ledeen try to convince the world that the KGB shot the Pope? Not to turn America's citizenry anti-Soviet. We were already anti-Soviet.

I am convinced that Ledeen lied about the Pope shooting because he wanted war. I am also convinced that Ledeen helped to engineer the Niger forgeries because -- once again -- he wanted war. This time, he got his war.

Lord only knows what lengths will he go to in order to engineer war with Iran.

Question: How can we get the material published in the 1980s before a wider audience? Kids in their 20s have to have access to the truth about what really occurred when I was their age.

Alito

I didn't scream about Harriet Miers' nomination, despite her obvious lack of qualifications, because I suspected that she would support abortion rights. The reversal of Roe-vs-Wade serves the G.O.P. well -- as a rallying cry, as a never-realized goal. Should that goal ever be fulfilled, the Republican leadership will rue the day. Membership will quickly decline; allegiances will shift.

So now we have Judge Alito, who is unassailable on the issues of experience and intelligence. He will surely vote to end abortion.

Actually, some of his opinions have not been at all bad -- this page offers some hopeful items. For example, he wrote

A majority opinion in Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S., 381 F.3d 194 (3d Cir. 2004), holding that a school district did not provide a high school student with a free and appropriate public education, as required by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, when it failed to protect the student from bullying by fellow students who taunted the student based on his lack of athleticism and his perceived sexual orientation.

Well, that's something. The thug-uglies who still solidly support Bush are the sort who favor the bullies over the bullied.

But nothing can change the fact that his position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey was retrograde. His opinions on family leave and privacy have been appalling.

The religious right must be celebrating. Alito is their man.

Once again, organized Jesusmania has proven its clout, while the left has proven impotent. This, in a nation where the majority of Americans veer left on most issues, and would vote for the opposition party.

I had planned to write something jolly and non-political for Halloween. Right now, though, I'm a tad depressed.

The Niger fakes: Blame Berlusconi?

Joshua Marshall's latest series on the Italian connection to the Niger forgeries is must-read material. Right now, I'm wondering about the role played by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The La Repubblica investigators seem to favor a "blame Berlusconi" scenario. Allegedly, he hoped to make Italy a world player again, and thus had Nicolo Pollari, the head of SISMI (the Italian CIA) shop the fakes to Britain, France, and the U.S. The hoax had but one goal: War.

But now Berlusconi says he begged Bush not to go to war. Ex-post-facto fanny-coverage? Perhaps.

Or perhaps Pollari did what he did at the behest of someone other than Berlusconi. I suggest that readers take another look at the second La Repubblica story; scroll down to the section on Ledeen. I believe that the parties who might now claim to be the victims of disinformation had actually ordered up the hoax, much as you or I might order a pizza.

Scent of mystery

Many published reports have discussed the overpowering sweet smell that engulfed a large part of Manhattan yesterday. I've even received a first-hand description of the phenomenon. Although no-one considers the smell harmful, investigators have yet to discover a source.

Being of a fanciful turn of mind today, I'd like to mention a couple of points:

1. In August, the Department of Homeland Security conducted a test of New York's subway systems in order to determine their susceptibility to chemical attack. The testers used harmless substances -- or so we were told.

2. This strange event has a parallel -- of sorts.

In September of 1944, in Mattoon, Illinois, many residents described a "Mad Gasser" who would attack homes during the night. The Gasser sprayed an overpoweringly sweet substance into their windows, leaving the homeowners temporarily paralyzed. A few victims claimed to have caught a glimpse of the miscreant -- who (but of course!) was a man dressed in black.

The case of the Mad Gasser of Mattoon became a classic of sorts. Sociologists ascribed the incidents to wartime hysteria. The whole bizarre episode was filed alongside the mad reaction to Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast.

However, in the 1980s, researchers discovered an exact parallel. In 1933-34, the "Mad Gasser" -- or his twin -- seems to have attacked residents of Bottetort, Virginia. The details of both cases matched with precision. No-one involved in, or reporting on, the 1944 escapade seems to have known of the earlier attack.

A couple of years ago, a researcher named Scott Maruna claimed to have solved the mystery of the 1944 incidents. He identified the Gasser as a local loon named Farley Llewellyn (sounds like a name out of a bad '40s novel, doesn't it?). Farley was the son of a respected grocer. The community had angered him, and he hungered for revenge.

Maruna, a Jacksonville chemistry and physics teacher who grew up in Charleston, said the gas Farley used could have been nitromethane, a sweet-smelling, clear and highly volatile liquid that can cause nausea, burning of the mouth, swelling of the lips and minimal eye irritation.

Because nitromethane evaporates quickly, little to no evidence would often be left by the time police arrived at the scene of the attacks. Following almost all of the attacks, victims described the gas as smelling "sweet," with one person comparing it to the smell of cheap perfume.

Maruna doesn't tell us if Farley ever lived in Virginia.

Could nitromethane be the culprit in New York?

The scenario doesn't seem likely. Most observers (if that is the right word) compared the Manhattan smell to maple syrup, not perfume. Besides, how could any bar sinister make the gas spread throughout so much of the city?

Lying about George Galloway

Looks like they're lying about controversial British MP George Galloway again. In the past, he has successfully brought suit over this sort of thing. This time, though, he may have missed a good chance.

From the New Scotsman:

George Galloway has accused a US Senate committee of making allegations based solely on lies and demanded that it clear his name.

The Respect MP was accused of pocketing money from Saddam Hussein's oil-for-food programme in two separate reports this week, both citing former Iraqi deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz as a source.

Republican Senator Norm Coleman used interviews with Aziz as evidence that Saddam's regime granted 23 million barrels of oil to Mr Galloway and his Mariam Appeal fund.

But the French lawyers representing Aziz told Mr Galloway in Paris that Aziz had never made a single statement incriminating him.

Ron McKay, spokesman for the Bethnal Green and Bow MP, said: "Aziz is denying he made any statement incriminating George to Senator Coleman or anybody else.

"Mr Galloway is accusing Senator Coleman of putting together lying testimony and has demanded that his name be cleared."

Time for another suit? Not so fast.

If memory serves, Senators cannot be sued for libel for anything said on the senate floor. That little-known legal loophole may apply as well to Coleman's committee.

The trick is to cajole 'em into saying something actionable when they're away from the Senate. Then you can sue their pants off. Not that I want to see a pants-free Norm Coleman.

So why do they keep targeting Galloway with these smears? The Republicans only make him look good, in the end.

Is Rove off the hook?

According to NBC's Michael Issikoff, Fitzgerald made that personal visit to Bush's lawyer to tell him that Karl Rove was off the hook.

Does that make sense to you? Wouldn't the recipient of that news be Rove's lawyer?

One lawyer involved in the case who declined to be identified because of the matter's confidentiality said Novak decided "early on" to cooperate with Fitzgerald's probe and ID his source—whom Fitzgerald never charged, apparently because the mystery leaker told the truth to the grand jury.

And what sets this mystery leaker (Rove, probably) beyond the reach of the law?

Readers will recall Isikoff's biased, unreliable "reporting" in Whitewater. He has done better work since. But I still don't trust him...

Does Fitz want Dick?

I don't know why some progressives felt disappointed by Fitzmas. There are many good after-action reports on the Libby indictment, and much of the commentary argues persuasively that Fitzgerald's real target was and is Dick Cheney.

I commend to your attention this analysis by Marty Aussenberg ("gadfly"), a lawyer and former SEC enforcement official:

Under the applicable federal rule, indictments are only required to be a "plain, concise, and definite written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged." The rule goes further to say indictments "need not contain a formal introduction or conclusion."

The Libby indictment goes considerably beyond what the rule requires, or even envisions. It is what's called, in courthouse vernacular, a "speaking indictment." The purpose of a "speaking" filing, in any court proceeding, is to show the other side some of the stronger cards you're holding in your hand, and this indictment is no exception.

Josh Marshall makes more or less the same point. A lot of the stuff in that indictment just has no real reason to be, except to function as a signal of things to come.

The indictment, gadfly argues, includes all of the elements of an espionage act violation. So why wasn't Libby charged with that?

No, the real reason to lay out as much factual detail as he did was for Fitz to show the world (and in particular, the world within the White House) that he has the goods, and that he won't hesitate to drop the dime on some additional malefactors, particularly, Cheney. Let's face it: Libby is only the consigliere to Cheney's don. Even though the threat of spending 30 years in the pokey will be a powerful incentive for Libby to cut some kind of deal that might include turning on his boss, the possibility of the additional charges of revealing classified information, particularly against Cheney, is even more powerful since, presumably, Cheney does't appear to be at risk of a truth-telling-related indictment.

firedoglake has more along these lines, with a special emphasis on the discomforts awaiting Scooter in the Big House.

But here is the big question: Does Fitz want the cooperation from Libby? Or is he using Libby to widen that crack in the foundation -- and go after someone else who was on the brink of spilling what Fitz needs? Someone who is even more afraid of prison than Libby, and a whole lot more craven and less loyal in terms of thinking of "what's in it for me"?

Several have suggested that Tenet narced to Fitxgerald shortly before resigning as DCI.

All that said, I'm still not sure whether Dick can, in fact, be gotten. So far as I know, Cheney spoke to no reporters. Cheney and Scooter were free to chat all they wanted behind closed doors about who's who in the CIA, since both men were (obviously) cleared.

On the other hand, Libby could squeal. He could reveal that his boss orchestrated a "get Wilson" strategy. He could even start blabbing about the conspiracy surrounding the Niger fakes -- which, I believe, is the crime that Fitzgerald really wants to dig into.

So the argument comes down to Libby's willingness to withstand pressure. We can be certain of this much: This man does not want to do time, and his "bad memory" defense is laughable. Literally. Reporters guffawed when Fitzgerald gave a dead-pan rendition of Libby's inane story.

Bush can pardon Libby. But will the President take that step?

As I see it, he's facing three possible futures: 1. Deal with the firestorm which would follow a pardon, 2. Deal with the bigger firestorm of a trial, or 3. Deal with the unendurable firestorm resulting from an indictment of the VP. The first option must seem more palatable.

On the other hand -- is Cheney, in fact, the real target? On Friday, Fitzgerald was spotted taking a meeting with James Sharp, Dubya's personal lawyer. Bet you wish you were a fly on that wall...

How did Cheney learn that Valerie was CIA?

Not long ago (scroll down) I floated a theory -- which a few people actually seem to have read -- that Libby discovered Valerie Wilson's CIA status via an odd and circuitous route.

Yes, yes, I know Libby got the news from Cheney. (Any such discussion was legal, since both are cleared.) But who clued in Cheney?

Most seem to believe that Cheney talked to someone with a CIA background; a few observers have even suggested who that someone might be. But I've always been troubled by the use of "Valerie Plame," since her name has been "Valerie Wilson" for quite some time. A serving CIA officer would have given the veep current data.

Thus, I offer an alternative theory.

According to a number of reports, Valerie Wilson/Plame's CIA status was among the treasure trove of goodies that spy Aldritch Ames handed over to the Russians. The Russians had no motive to expose her; she never spied on them. I propose that a document deriving from the Ames revelation made its way into neocon circles -- probably by way of Mossad, which penetrated the Russian apparat long ago. Any such documentation, being roughly a decade old, would have used the name "Plame."

Does the indictment deep-six this theory? Consider this excerpt:

On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

Perhaps I'm just being obstinate, but I don't see how these words settle the matter. What does the term "understood" mean in this context? Did Libby make an inference, or did he hear a direct statement? Keep in mind that his primary goal has been to protect both Cheney and the neocon network.

Rove's new nickname

Since we now know that the "Official A" mentioned in the indictment is actually Karl Rove, perhaps we should refer to him as the Official A-hole.

Rove's basic defense -- "I didn't spill beans to reporters; the reporters spilt unto me!" -- is the same lie Libby told. Obviously, these guys got together and decided on a basic strategy. I doubt that they would have done so without running a few ideas past legal counsel. And who, one wonders, might have provided that counsel? If we're talking about a White House lawyer on the public payroll, no confidentiality privilege exists.

Iran, Israel: Some perspective

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his outrageous remarks about Israel, the world reacted as though such a sentiment had appeared out of thin air, with no provocation.

Please do not take what I'm about to say as any sort of endorsement of Iran's quasi-theocracy. Long-time readers know that a staunch opposition to theocracy has always motivated my work. But let's face facts.

Regime change in Iran remains the official policy of America and Israel. Michael Ledeen and his neocon cronies -- a network which has had a profound impact on this administration's foreign policy -- lust for war with Iran. In his columns, Ledeen acts like a whining child in the back seat who can't wait for Dad to stop at the next restroom: I wanna see bombs drop on Tehran, and I wanna see 'em NOW!!

This piece published by an Iranian news agency quotes the reaction of one Pirooz Mojtahedzadeh "a Tehran university professor and Director of Eurosevic Research Foundation in London." Professor Mojtahedzadeh may well be sucking up to Tehran; even so, he makes a couple of claims worthy of our attention:

"...Israel has threatened Iran with military attack at least 10 times and with nuclear attack in one case.

"Israel has been trying for years to force the US to enter into action and militarily attack Iran and wipe out this country from the (world) map."

He added that they should see how Israel is planning to eliminate Iran from the world map through the United States.

He also drew the attention of observers to the anti-Iran activities of the Bush Administration. He said Michael Ledeen, an advisor of US President George Bush has gathered together in Washington, all the separatist, secessionist, underground and even terrorist groups that (Iraqi dictator) Saddam Hussein had created to separate Iran's Khuzestan, and is masterminding a plot to eliminate Iran.

Of course, I do not accept the image of Israel manipulating the U.S. the way a kid playing a video game manipulates Mario. That, unfortunately, is how most in the Middle East see the relationship. Iranians know that Bush and Cheney want to rain fire on Tehran; Ahmadinejad has responded in kind, voicing a wish for a similar fate on those he (wrongly) believes to be the puppetmasters.

I cannot see why our society should excuse Ledeen's repeated cries for blood while comdemning Ahmadinejad's invocation of Mars. Surely we should hold all sides to the same standard? Iran's president may have issued horrifying rhetoric, but (so far as we know) that government has made no plans for attack. Can the same be said of the Americans?

A further point: Ahmadinejad is an elected leader -- of sorts. Iranian democracy is so very flawed, one really cannot use that label; the clerics hold far too much power. Still, we have no reason to believe that the man's anti-Israel rhetoric does not reflect the opinion of the Iranian people.

Which brings us to the contradiction of this administration's call to "democratize" the Middle East. A fair vote in (say) Saudi Arabia would thrust power into the hands of people who despise us.

The not-terribly-stable government we have installed in Iraq has close ties to Iran. If we pull out of that country altogether, power will probably fall to someone whose rhetoric makes Ahmadinejad's seem mild.

And we may soon be forced to withdraw. As Juan Cole notes:

Aides around Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the chief spiritual leader of Iraqi Shiites, are broadly hinting that after the December 15 elections, he may begin a Gandhi-like campaign to demand a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq...

If Sistani gives The Fatwa for a US withdrawal, the Bush administration will simply have to acquiesce. The situation would be similar to what happened in the Philippines in 1991, when the Philippines senate declined to authorize the extension of the treaty that permitted US naval bases in that country.

And what then? You don't need to be a Middle East expert to recognise the signs of a massive civil war. Alas, we have no good options here.

Innocent until proven guilty

Responding to the Libby indictment, both W and Cheney noted that, in our system, a person is innocent until proven guilty.

As a friend to this site put it:

One cannot help but think of the Gitmo and Abu Ghraib prisoners. And of course those scribbled Animal Farm qualifiers.

This hypocrisy would be stunning if it were not so damn predictable.

See what happens when you toss out the rules of civilized society? There may come a day when you expect those rules to protect you...

Greeting Card

As for my own feelings...well, G.K. Chesterton once wrote a short poem titled "Lines for a Christmas Card":

"May all my enemies go to hell.
Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel."

Of Plame, Ames, the necons -- and (possibly) Mossad

While compiling the rumor-roster published below, I became interested in the oft-heard report that Aldritch Ames, the spy for the Russians, first exposed Valerie Plame's CIA status.

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, former CIA man Larry Johnson sets the matter as straight as it's likely to get right now:

My understanding is that, as a result of the Aldrich Ames betrayal, the damage assessment there came up with the possibility that she may have been compromised, so she's moved back to the United States, home-based here, but continues to operate from here, traveling overseas as a consultant with Brewster-Jennings. So, she was continuing to work overseas.

Brewster-Jennings, you will recall, was a CIA front.

How important were these spilt beans? First, we still don't know precisely what he revealed about Plame. Nor do we know when he passed the information along, although he must have done so before his 1994 arrest.

Second, we've been told that since 1993, Russia and the United States have had coinciding interests regarding nuclear proliferation issues. One wonders what the Russians would have had to gain by harming this woman's career. They had no obvious motive to broadcast whatever they may have learned.

Upon reading Johnson's words, two thoughts suddenly occurred to me:

1. When did the Ames connection to Plamegate first enter public discourse? Who, outside the Agency, would have access to that kind of data? Are we dealing with a second leak?

2. One of the enduring mysteries of the scandal concerns the use of the name "Plame." The woman in question has used "Valerie Wilson" ever since she married Joseph Wilson. Why did Libby refer to her as "Valerie Plame"?

In the past, we've looked at indications that the leakers relied upon a specific as-yet undisclosed document. If the info came from an Agency source, surely the nomenclature would be more up-to-date. So -- presuming the existence of a document -- why would it use the name Valerie Plame?

I ask readers to consider a novel scenario:

Ames did disclose the truth about "Valerie Plame" to his masters. But the data did not stay locked up within Russian archives.

Somehow, that information made its way back to the neo-cons -- to the international network that hoped to bypass the CIA. First the neos used the data to harrass the Wilsons -- then they revealed the Ames connection in order to help Bush-friendly pundits fend off critics.

So how did the Ames angle first become public? Readers may be able to discover an earlier citation, but right now, the first mention of the matter I can find is this October 11, 2003 piece by New York Times editorialist Nicolas Kristoff:

First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

Since we can presume that Nicolas Kristoff does not have unfettered access to the all the archives of all the world's espionage agencies, we must ask: Who told him, and why?

Kristoff is considered a liberal. Some would argue whether he deserves that label. For example, he once insisted that the failure of newsrooms "to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today." (Hiring based on religious belief? Isn't that illegal?) Kristof did use Joseph Wilson as a source for a story on the Niger fraud, written before Wilson published his famous piece.

As we have seen many times in the past, the supposedly "liberal" NYT can serve as an ideal platform for a certain type of deliberate leak.

All of which brings us back to a fundamental question. How could Ames' information on Valerie Plame/Wilson make its way from secret Russian files to the photocopy machines used by the neocon network? One can think of several possible answers.

One possibility: The Russians gave the Ames-on-Plame data dump directly to the Bush administration pursuant to a high-level quid pro quo invisible to ordinary mortals. They wanted something from us; in return, they helped BushCo put out the fire caused by Joseph Wilson.

Another -- and in my view, more likely -- possibility is this: The neocons received the Russian information indirectly -- via Mossad.

Anyone who has followed spy stories over the past decade must have read accounts of Israeli penetration of the Soviet and Russian espionage establishment. See, for example, this little-known report out of China, which reveals that a Russian operative named Gregory Gifens switched his allegiance to Israel.

Jonathan Pollard, the spy-for-Israel within America's apparatus, relayed much information from Russian sources to Mossad.

Although I hesitate to mention the matter, many writers aver that Israeli technicians hid a "back door" within the Promis software once used by intelligence agencies throughout the world, including the KGB. (Why the hesitation? Because some of the stories surrounding the Promis scandal seem rather over-the-top.) This back door was used to leech secret data out of secure computer systems used by foreign governments. Thanks to the miracle of electronics, the KGB's primo stash went directly into Israeli hands. So, at least, runs the story.

Robert Maxwell -- the publishing magnate who, we now know, functioned as an Israeli spy -- acted as a channel between Mossad and an anti-Gorbachev faction within the KGB, shortly before the fall of Communism. Maxwell's motive (aside from the economic incentive) was to secure the release of thousands of Jews and dissidents. Who knows how much data was passed back-and-forth at that time?

One can go on, but the basic point remains: Any number of conduits might have placed scattered bits of Ames-originated intel before the eyes of Mossad analysts. Those analysts would have made a mental note of everything they read, then they would have filed the data away. You never know when stuff like that might prove useful.

When Wilson became a problem, that data became very useful indeed.

As everyone knows, the neocons have strong ties to Likud. One need only mention the name "Larry Franklin" to understand how a document snoozing comfortably in a Mossad file cabinet might suddenly start zooming through the rarified circles inhabited by Libby and his compatriots.

When the necons understood that Wilson would not play ball with their bloodthirsty scheme, the call went out for derogatory information on the man. That's when a decade-old document from the bad old days of Aldritch Ames -- a document mentioning "Valerie Plame" -- got loose. And the rest is unfolding history.

Speculation? Yep. But this scenario has the virtue of answering quite a few questions.

Have Israeli engineers invented a car that makes its own fuel?

This article from an Israeli news sources, and republished on the ghastly Free Republic site, says that an Israeli firm solved "all obstacles" regarding emission-free hydrogen engines.

I detect the odor of fish. But I'd like to hear a response from someone who better understands the science.

Dame rumor

Like everyone else, I'm confounded. Who knows what to think about the latest rumors concerning the Fitzgerald probe?

Can't catch Karl! The NYT reported yesterday that Libby will receive an indictment, while Rove will escape the hook -- for now. Fitz, we are told, will seek an extension of the Grand Jury to continue to look into the Rove matter. Some are speculating that Rove has "turned" -- against Cheney.

Heh heh heh. He said "extend." Can Fitzgerald extend the Grand Jury? Nobody "on the outside" seems to know! Joshua Marshall consulted his more legal-minded readers, who give the answer as a very (very) cautious "yes."

Or will Fitz get a do-over? Raw Story says that the current Grand Jury will not receive an extension -- instead, Fitzgerald will seek a new Grand Jury to look into the origins of the Niger forgery.

The other cover-up. According to Murray Waas, Cheney and Libby orchestrated another, related cover-up in 2004, when they kept key materials from the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of pre-war Iraq intelligence. Can't have stuff like that come out in an election year, y'see...

Libby's source. Everyone, even Fox, seems to agree that Libby's going to "get it." Libby's notes, according to previous report, held that he received the Plame information from Cheney. But Richard Sale says otherwise.

"That is simply not accurate," a very former senior CIA official told this repoter. "Libby's notes on this are misleading and inaccurate or both."

How, I wonder, does one attain the status of "very former senior"?

Mr. Very Former Senior (Tenet or McLaughlin?) and three others tell Sale that Libby received the information from someone within the State Department -- probably from John Bolton.

What do I think of all this? The only progressive who might receive some pleasure at Rove's escape would be...me.

I've been preparing a Halloween costume of Karl-as-Satan, a la that hilarious episode of "American Dad." For the past week, I've worried that I might have to toss out those cool devilish robes and go with black-and-white horizontal stripes.

Farewell, Harriet

She's gone. But a loss for Bush doesn't translate into a win for us. We didn't defeat her; the religious right did. Their victory proves their continuing strength.

They sensed -- I think correctly -- that she would not have voted their way on abortion. Now Bush has no choice but to choose someone whose anti-abortion record is unassailable. In essence, the next nominee will be chosen by Dobson, Falwell and Robertson.

W endorses the Beast 666

Halloween or Fitzmas, take your pick: 'Tis the season, and we must allow ourselves a light-hearted moment or two.

Today's moment comes to us courtesy this site, which offers photographic proof that George W. Bush personally signed a copy of a book called Konx-Om-Pax. The author? None other than Aleister Crowley, the self-proclaimed Great Beast 666.

This isn't the first time W and the Beast have crossed paths. Last year, Our Fearless Leader received a rare endorsement from the Plymouth Brethren, the ultra-puritanical Fundamentalist group which gave birth (in a reactive sense) to Crowleyanity.

If you're interested: "Konx-Om-Pax" were magic words used during the Eleusinian mysteries. Or so I've read. The text of Crowley's book is here, and, like much of the Beast's work, it is great fun for those of a certain turn of mind.

The opening words: "When the Neophyte enters upon the Path of Evil, there confronteth him the great angel Samael." Upon reading this, Dubya was overheard to mutter: "Tell me about it."

So we enjoyed ourselves very much and ate the most extraordinary supper you can think of. There were babies roasted whole and stuffed with pork sausages and olives; and some of the girls cut off chops and steaks from their own bodies, and gave them to a beautiful white cook at a silver grill, that was lighted with the gas of dead bodies and marshes; and he cooked them splendidly, and we all enjoyed it immensely. Then there was a tame goat with a gold collar, that went about laughing with every one; and he was all shaved in patches like a poodle. We kissed him and petted him, and it was lovely.

Good old Uncle Al. Happy Halloween, everyone!

Impeachment

A new poll (by a group previously unknown to me, which advertises itself as more accurate than Gallup or Zogby) says that 62.3% of Americans now think that Bush should be impeached -- if he lied. The La Repubblica stories (translations below) all go to the important question of whether we went to war based on falsehoods.

Niger-gate: Part three of the La Repubblica investigation

The invaluable Nur al-Cubicle is translating (even as you read these very words!) the third part of La Repubblica's series on Nigeer-gate. (Here's the original.) He hasn't finished yet, but here's what he has so far. As before, I've corrected a few obvious typos and added one or two extra paragraph breaks. (For some reason, Italian journalists tend to like really long 'graphs.) Nur tends to drop quotation marks present in the original; I've put them back in.

THE INVESTIGATION : Nicolò Pollari knew that the equipment purchased by Saddam Hussein was not destined for nuclear use. But when he is at the White House, he avoids mentioning it.

Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam

The bizarre Panorama scoop is accepted as fact and included in the dodgy dossier.

The story of the Italian involvement in manipulating the justifications for war against Iraq is one of dates on the calendar. We have already looked at of a few of them. And it is a date once again that unravels and reveals Chapter Two of the Great Scam.

The date is September 9, 2002. That day, in the rooms of the National Security Council, a very strange (if you believe in the principle of institutional transparency) and secret meeting takes place.

Why is the director of Italian national intelligence meeting a White House Administration official? It would be natural for Nicolò Pollari to meet with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be quite an ordinary event if the director of SISMI were meeting with Italian administration officials but very bizarre indeed if turns out to be administration officials of a foreign country, even if an ally. In this meeting there were Cabinet officials and under secretaries. So, just what is discussed with Stephen Hadley?

Stephen Hadley is no third-rate underling in the White House. Today he is National Security Advisor. In 2002, he is deputy to Condoleezza Rice and a node in the parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] desired by Dick Cheney to justify the war on Saddam Hussein. He is the man who, among other things, is responsible for the sixteen words pronounced by George W. Bush in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address announcing the basis for on Iraq.

We know that Hadley, together with Pollari, does a lot of thinking about weapons of mass destruction. And it's reaonable to ask exactly what Pollari does know on the score of the Niger uranium on the 9th of September 2002. As he himself admits, Pollari knows everything. He has been apprised of sordid adventure of Rocco Martino. His own men were up to their necks in it. He is familiar with the role played by SISMI deputy chief Antonio Nucera, who lends a hand to snake oil salesman Martino.

On this day, Pollari is facing a choice for which he has all the elements: To tell Rice's deputy that the White House had better forget about the uranium story because it's a hoax, and that the Martino-Nucera duo are imposters -- or to reinforce the convictions of the American ally through a little shrewd silence. So what does Pollari choose to do? To find out, we had better take a look at Pollari's comportment relative to a different subject of conversation with Hadley: The nuclear centrifuge dossier.

Barely 24 hours before, on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller reports on the nuclear threat posed by Baghdad on the front page of the New York Times. In the last 14 months, writes the reporter, Iraq has sought to acquire aluminum tubes which, according to US officials, are destined to be used as rotor sheathing for centrifuges used for uranium enrichment.

On September 9, 2002, seated in front of Stephen Hadley, Pollari has the means to address even this aspect of the issue. SISMI claims that it has documentary proof of the acquisition of aluminum tubes by Iraq. But let's take a look what he’s talking about.

These are 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. This is the preferred material for low-cost missile systems (each tube costs approximately $17.50). There are made with an extremely hard alloy which makes them suitable as rotors for a centrifuge capable of separating fissile uranium from non-fissile uranium. It is not simple process because thousands of centrifuges (16 thousand) are needed and they must withstand synchronous rotation as extremely high speed.

As we now know, the CIA and the very cautious Secretary of State, Colin Powell, are convinced that dual use material is employed in Iraq's nuclear program. Powell draws on his military experience. He says: "I am not an expert in centrifuges, but as a military veteran, ask yourself this: why are the Iraqis are so busy in acquiring these tubes which, if they were rockets, would disintegrate soon after launch?"

Incredibly, the objection remains un-cross-examined even after the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (where uranium for the US nuclear arsenal is enriched using centrifuges) annihilate Powell's theory. The Oak Ridge people say that the tubes are too narrow, to heavy, too long and likely to split if used as centrifuge components. They conclude: "Those tubes are used for manufacturing a specific type of artillery shell."

So on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller portrays the aluminum tubes as "a smoking gun." The next day, Pollari is seated in front of Stephen Hadley. So what does he tell him? Pollari keeps his mouth shut. He doesn't reveal what he knows about the aluminum tubes, which are the source of so much concern (or even enthusiasm) for the Bush Administration.

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And here's the rest:

The shame is that those 7075-T6 tubes, 900 millimeters long, 81 millimeters in diameter, 3.3 millimeters thick, are well-known hardware to the Italian Army. They are 81-mm rocket artillery shells used in the Medusa air-to-ground missile system installed on Italian Army and Navy helicopters. In reality, the Iraqis are merely attempting to reproduce weaponry with which they became familiar during the long years of economic, military and nuclear cooperation between Rome and Baghdad. (Iraq's top army and air force officers trained in Italy during the 1980’s). Saddam's General Staff needs to duplicate them, so to speak, because their inventory is stockpiled outdoors and is now corroded. That was the reason behind the new anodized aluminum tube purchases.

Why does Pollari not utter a word? If you ask Greg Thielmann, ex-chief of the State Department Intelligence Service, he’ll tell you: "But seriously, haven’t you yet understood why the chief of Italian military intelligence did not provide us with any indication that would have allowed us to definitively discard the notion that the tubes would be used in someone's nuclear program? Well, I have an idea for you. SISMI, like the CIA and the entire Anglo-Saxon intelligence community, is ready and willing to satisfy the hawks in the US Administration." Thielmann’s assertion echoes like a shotgun blast. And the dates will yield solid confirmation.

September 8, 2002: Judith Miller casts the first stone.

September 9, 2002: Hadley meets Pollari

September 11, 2002: Stephen Hadley’s office contacts the CIA for authorization to allow the President of the United States to use the information on the sale of Niger uranium in a public address.

Specifically, as the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, the request made to the CIA at the behest the National Security Council asks George Tenet in writing if George W. Bush is authorized to say, "Iraq has made several attempts to acquire aluminum tubes for use in its uranium enrichment centrifuges. We also know that over the last few years, Iraq has restarted its attempts to acquire large quantities of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake -- the necessary component for enrichment processing." The CIA gives its permission, but on October 7th in Cincinnati, Ohio, the authorized words are not found in the President's speech.

The day before the address, Langley recommends that the statement be expunged. The intelligence is weak. One of the mines mentioned in the intelligence source as a site used for the extraction of uranium is flooded. The other mine is under the control of the French authorities.

What the devil was Pollari up to? The twisted yellowcake affair and now the centrifuges are tangled up around Rocco Martino's phony documents. Who did what to whom and where and why?

To get to the bottom of it, we have to address these questions and take another look at the words quoted above. The Italians know that Rocco Martino is a creep. They are aware that the only authentic papers in the dossier are stale intelligence pulled out of SISMI’s WMD archives. Pollari takes the lie off the leash and lets it spread around the globe. He does not have Rocco Martino "busted" when knocks on the door of MI6. Instead, Pollari credits Martino as "a reliable source." He does not put the damper on the enthusiasm of Michael Ledeen and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. He simply sits there in silence as the imbroglio simmers. In fact, when he does open his mouth, he neither extinguishes nor disappoints American desires.

This is what happened in the case of the aluminum tubes. Following a "brilliant operation," SISMI enters into material possession of the tubes. It's a military intelligence victory. But even the lowest grunt would understand that the tubes must be Italian -- they are shells from the Medusa-81 aircraft missile defense system. SISMI is well aware of this. Yet on September 9, 2002, Pollari maintains a reserved silence in the presence of Handley. And he does more than that.

On September 12, 2002, Panorama magazine hits the newsstands. In a lengthy article titled War with Iraq? It has already started, decisive yet unverified revelations on Iraqi nuclear rearmament are made to the world. So far, no one has started talking about uranium, let alone 500 tons of the ore.

It will be Tony Blair who mentions it first, but not until September 24, 2002 -- two weeks following the meeting between Pollari and Hadley and twelve days after Panorama's scoop. Inside the 50-page British government document, London affirms that Iraq has attempted to acquire uranium from Africa. Blair insists that Iraq has attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from an African nation despite the fact that he has no civilian nuclear program which would require it. Even today, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw continues to repeat that the "Italian dossier" was not the basis behind Blair’s words and that MI6 is in possession of previously acquired intelligence. Yet such intelligence "evidence" has never been produced. If it were to come out -- a source at Forte Braschi tells La Repubblica -- it would be easily discovered with a little sleuthing that that the “evidence” is in fact stale Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend, Hamilton Mac Millan.

So there has been no loose talk which might reveal Italian responsibility in the yellowcake affair. Only silence. We’ve seen how SISMI maintains silence.

But poor SISMI is not alone. Although perfectly informed, none of the protagonists in this sordid affair talks. Panorama clams up. When the editorial board of Panorama, owned by the Italian head of government, is called upon to reconstruct its contacts with Rocco Martino (who tried to sell the hoax to Segrate), it omits the recollection that the information contained in the bogus dossier was already published a month earlier. The Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine inexplicably shares the documents only with the US Embassy in Rome and not with the Italian government. He does not bother to verify the document with the excellent resources of the Italian intelligence agency which, as September's scoop shows, has access to it. He has no interest in relating, as a second possible worldwide scoop, that the evidence on which the war is based is false.

As you would expect, Palazzo Chigi is silent. The role of Silvio Berlusconi's diplomacy advisor, Gianni Castellaneta, has been key in mediating the relations between Italy with the parallel conduit ["Stovepipe"—Nur] that Dick Cheney creates with financing from Ahmed Chelabi's Iraqi National Congress to funnel intelligence "edited" by the Office for Special Plans which is then distributed to the media by the "Iraq Group," which sees action in the Judith Miller-New York Times affair. But has anyone heard Castellaneta utter one word? And who has ever offered Mr. Castellaneta a public forum to allow him to do so?

Also silent is Gianni Letta. When the truth on the bogus Italian dossier surfaces, the Deputy Secretary of Intelligence, contrary to what one reads in inaccurate government memos, invokes state secrecy. Letta insisted that no documentation would be forthcoming for Parliamentary scrutiny because Italian intelligence sources would be compromised. But what sources? Rocco Martino, the bad cop, the crooked spy, the double-crosser? Or would that be Antonio Nucera, the deputy director at SISMI's viale Pasteur offices who filches (or is compelled to filch) stale intelligence from the division archives to assemble the package?

Is it Fitzmas yet? Or simply Fitzmas Eve?

The Grand Jury has adjourned today with no further word of indictments. Some news sources are reporting that Fitzgerald may wait until Friday before telling the world what he plans to do. Richard Sale says that the announcement will come today, but the Department of Justice appears to have doused those hopes.

Now, now. Don't pout.

Raw Story -- which has had a fine track record in this case, reports that he will bring indictments against Rove and Libby. Even better: Richard Sale, whose reporting has been terrific, tells us that Fitzgerald's real target is Cheney. He may also go after Ledeen and co. And he may even ask for another Grand Jury!

Incidentally, I hope soon to have a translation up of the third La Repubblica story. The first two parts are below -- and this is DYNAMITE stuff.

Right now, though, I have to help my ladyfriend (the college girl) do some research on David Hume. Hell of a day, ain't it?

The origins of Niger-gate, continued

Here (courtesy of Nur al-Cubicle) is a translation of the second part of the La Repubblica investigation.

I feel guilty reprinting the fine work of another blogger, but -- as I've demonstrated! -- I have never been to Italy and I do not know Italian, and thus could not do this work myself. (That didn't stop me from altering Nur's translation slightly: To avoid confusion, I've put back quotation marks that appeared in the original. I also corrected a few obvious typos and added some paragraph breaks to increase readability.)

You should read part one (scroll down) before jumping into this piece. I know the articles are lengthy. But the story is genuinely fascinating. Yes, our old "pal" Michael Ledeen finally shows up on stage...!

Part Two of the investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica.

INVESTIGATION / SISMI Director General Nicolò Pollari travels to the States to corroborate the purchase of nuclear material by Saddam Hussein.

Pollari travels to Washington to present his version of "the truth":
The Yellowcake Dossier was not the work of the CIA.

For SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, the rules of his profession are unequivocal. He tells La Repubblica: "I am an intelligence chief and my only institutional partner in conversation following 9-11 was CIA Director George Tenet in Washington. Obviously, I held conversations solely with him." But is it really true that our cloak-and-dagger people worked solely with the CIA? Or did they work as part of the clandestine effort undertaken by the parallel intelligence agency created by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz within the Iraq War Group, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and the office of the National Security Advisor -- all determined to produce the evidence for "regime change" in Baghdad?

It is a known fact that on the eve of the war on Iraq and under the supervision of Palazzo Chigi Diplomacy Advisor Gianni Cestellaneta (today Italian Ambassador to the United States), SISMI chief Pollari arranged a meeting in Washington with the staff of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. La Repubblica has documented the double ruse engineered by the Italian government and Italian intelligence. At least one of the very non-institutional encounters covered, according to intelligence agents, the creation of a network involving government, intelligence and information sharing.

Brief synopsis: Pollari’s SISMI wants to give credence to the story of acquisition of uranium ore in order to build a nuclear bomb. The scheme is transparent. The "authentic" papers concerning an attempt to acquire uranium in Niger (stale Italian intelligence left over from the 80's) are a legacy of a former SISMI Deputy Chief in Rome, Antonio Nucera. They are bundled up together with other worthless documents assembled helter-skelter after a simulated burglary of the Niger Embassy (embassy letterhead and stamps are taken). The documents are exhibited by Pollari's men to the CIA Station Chief in Rome while SISMI's "postman," a certain individual by the name of Rocco Martino, delivers a copy to Richard Dearlove’s MI6 in London.

That's the baseline snapshot. We'll now provide the second chapter of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam orchestrated in Italy to provide the pretext for the invasion of Iraq. We reintroduce Greg Thielmann, former director of the US Department of State's intelligence bureau, who encounters the Italian report on the uranium. He does not recall the precise date.

Thielmann recounts the events of autumn 2001 in generalities. But the precise date may prove revealing: it is October 15, 2001. On that day three events are woven together to produce an astounding coincidence: Nicolò Pollari is appointed to head SISMI by the Italian government on September 27, after serving as Number Two at CESIS (a coordinating intelligence agency at Palazzo Chigi). Silvio Berlusconi is finally invited to the White House by George W. Bush. October 15 marks the date of the first CIA report on the evidence assembled by the Italians.

It's impossible to say if all this is coincidence, but one cannot ignore the context: The Italians possess a burning desire score a win. After his bungling remarks on the Clash of Civilizations, Berlusconi is encountering problems in getting an invitation from the White House, under fire from moderate Arab regimes. Pollari is eager to quickly get in step with Premier and the new course of action. The new chief at the SISMI section in charge of WMD, Colonel Alberto Manenti (direct superior of Antonio Nucera), wants to put himself on the same page as the new SISMI director. It is a known fact that Bush shows the West Wing's Rose Garden to Berlusconi and the CIA acknowledges, as reported by Russ Hoyle (who has been analyzing the conclusions of the US Congressional Investigation Committee) that Italian intelligence has some neatly prepackaged information with a pretty bow. Negotiations (between Niamey and Baghdad) on the purchase of uranium have been ongoing since the start of 1999; the sale [of uranium to Baghdad] was approved by the Niger Supreme Council in 2000. No documentary evidence is offered to show that any shipment of uranium has occured. CIA analysts consider the report to be "somewhat limited" and "lacking in necessary detail." Intelligence and Research analysts at the US Department of State qualify the intelligence as "highly suspect."

The first contact with the American intelligence community is not gratifying for Pollari but still highly useful. The SISMI director, who is no fool, reconstructs the landscape and the cast members of the ongoing behind-the-scenes battle in the American Administration between those who stress caution and pragmatism (US Department of State and the CIA) and those who are looking for an excuse to start a war (Cheney, the Pentagon), which is already on the drawing board.

However, when the SISMI director returns to Italy, he perceives a similar battle underway in Rome. Gianni Castellaneta advises Pollari to look in other directions, while Defense Minister Antonio Martino tell Pollari to expect a visit from an old friend of Italy.

This old friend is Michael A. Ledeen, a veteran of American parallel intelligence networks, who had been previous declared persona non grata by Rome during 1980s. [Likely because of kidnapping of Abu Abbas, orchestrated by Ledeen and Oliver North, and the attempted "extraordinary rendition" of Abbas through Italy--Nur] Ledeen is in Rome on a mission from the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz to collect intelligence which would support a war on Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi [equivalent to Langley, VA, the headquarters of the CIA--Nur] tells La Repubblica: On the subject of intelligence collected on the uranium purchase, Pollari gets the cold shoulder from CIA Station Chief Jeff Castelli. Apparently, Castelli has dropped the matter entirely. Taking a hint, Pollari discusses the matter with Michael Ledeen.

No one knows what leads Ledeen to return to Washington. But at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinces Dick Cheney that the uranium trail picked up by Italian intelligence should be explored in closer detail. As the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, a determined Vice President makes a request to the CIA to take another look into "the possible acquisition of Niger uranium." During a meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly states that this piece of intelligence is held by "a foreign intelligence agency."

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And here's the rest:

The parallel intelligence network over at the Pentagon distributes "new information" according to which there exists an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the supply of 500 tons of uranium per year. The technicians at the Department of State raise an eyebrow at the report -- 500 tons of uranium! An exaggerated quantity! The report is manifestly devoid of all plausibility. Every independent report ordered following the circulation of the Italian memorandum indicates that the Niger uranium mines at Arlit and Akouta can yield at most 300 tons per year.

But time is growing short. George Tenet, stung by the intelligence gaps of 9-11, grins and bears it but becomes incredibly unreceptive when State Department intelligence controverts him, recounts Greg Thielmann to La Repubblica, by saying that the intelligence collected in Rome is inconsistent, that the uranium story is phony and that a bunch of things contained in the report are fabricated.

Pollari is a very clever man, they say at Forte Braschi, and so he understands that to work the uranium story he cannot go to the CIA alone. He has to go through, suggest Palazzo Chigi and the Italian Defense Minstry, the Pentagon and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The comment might have been meant as malicious (in the world of espionage, it's often the case), but confirmation from the "alternate channel" which Pollari opens up Washington permits us to cast a scenario and explore the details of meeting.

This is the scenario. Pollari is in Washington. He arranges a meeting with George Tenet and, as happens frequently, his presentation is to be given in a reserved conference room at a hotel close to Langley.

An attendee at the meeting tells La Repubblica: "Pollari's English must not have been very polished, so a female interpreter is used between him and Tenet. There's an embarrassing upshot. In the course of exchanging pleasantries, George reveals some information from al-Qaeda concerning Italy which the Agency has gathered from prisoners at Guantanamo. Tenet expects at least a smile or even a nod of gratitude. A stony face glares back at him. If at first he found Pollari unpleasant, now he considers him untrustworthy. What what strikes everyone seated around the conference table is the extreme marginalization of Pollari's station chief in Washington."

This bizarre behavior is intriguing. In 2002, the SISMI station chief in Washington is Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo. He possess extensive background in WMD, an excellent relationship with the CIA and the respect of CIA Number 2, Jim Pavitt. A source at Forte Braschi recalls: "The truth is that we did not want to keep the CIA out of our business, but Pollari distrusted Grignolo -- whom he believed was too cozy with Langley -- so he blocked Grignolo's every move. He forced him, so to say, into the useless task of background checks on SISMI new hires, who might have spent some time in the United States.....During those months, serious contact took place elsewhere -- through Condoleezza Rice, through Ledeen and through the Office of Special Plans run by Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith. It is Castellaneta who arranges a meeting for Pollari in the offices of the National Security Advisor at the White House."

When did they meet and what did they say? "What did you expect them to be talking about in the summer of 2002? Weapons of mass destruction!" When did the meeting take place? "That’s my business...but all you have to do is to is check the visitors' roster and flight plans between Ciampino [Rome’s military airport--Nur] and Washington."

Here in Rome, it’s difficult for us to access those flight plans. We had better luck in Washington. An Administration official told La Repubblica: "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolò Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, deputy to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice."

As with October 15, 2001, September 9, 2002 was a day marked by many coincidences. On that day, the Italian magazine Panorama was coming up on the editorial deadline for its 12-19 September issue. As one might expect from Rocco Martino (the SISMI "postman" in the yellowcake affair), he contacts a reporter from the magazine (Carlo Rossella was Editor-in-Chief at the time) in October to sell him the phony dossier. No one seems to remember that in the 12-19 September 2002 issue, coinciding with Pollari's meeting with Hadley, Panorama published an international scoop entitled War with Iraq? It has already begun.

The Panorama article mentions "a delivery of half-ton of uranium... The men of Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency, acquired the ore through a Jordanian middleman in far-away Nigeria, where a few traders succeeded in smuggling it after stealing it from a nuclear depot in a republic of the former USSR. The cargo containing 500 kilograms of uranium was then docked at Amman and afterwards shipped overland in a 7-hour journey to its final destination: the al-Rashidiyah plant 20 km north of Baghdad, recognized as a site for the production and processing of fissile material." And further along in the article: "The alarm concerns Germany, where in the past Iraq had attempted to purchase technology and industrial parts from the firm, Leycochem....and even the much sought-after aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges."

Although there is a discrepancy in the location (Nigeria and not Niger -- a lapsus calami?) and the story is somewhat of a fairy-tale (contraband from the USSR is transported all the way to Africa by truck), what is essential here is to notice that in the Panorama article, the recipe (so to speak) has all the right ingredients needed for war: 500 tons of uranium, which make its way from Africa to Baghdad, and aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. One could reasonably conclude that the scam churned in Italy could be accurately superimposed on the allegations made in the CIA-gate/New York Times affair. The government has but to ask and the media gets on the stick. The government then confirms what's in the media. It’s an old disinformation technique from the Cold War: Exaggerate the danger posed by the enemy. Terrorize and influence public opinion. And with Italy involved as an accessory. The magazine that spreads the poisonous disinformation is owned by PM Silvio Berlusconi, who controls intelligence in Italy and who wants to become the close ally of George W. Bush, who wants to go to war.

You could say that with the terrain prepared in advance, Pollari is able to concentrate on another essential aspect of the operation: Promoting himself and SISMI by cashing in on a year's worth of cloak-and-dagger work, and pulling the wool over the eyes of Parliament by carefully manipulating information and revelations which should have been subject to careful reconstruction accompanied by corroborating documentation -- and not by the State's wall of silence (which Italian PM Gianni Letta lamented on July 16, 2003).

Back from his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari was debriefed by an Italian Parliamentary intelligence oversight commission. They summon him twice. In the first session, the SISMI director maintains: "We had no documentary proof; only information that a central African nation sold uranium ore to Baghdad." Thirty days later, Pollari says: "We had documentary proof of the acquisition by Iraq of uranium ore from a central African nation. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment from German and possibly Italian manufacturers."

Once out of maw of Parliament, Pollari still has the problem of conveying the dodgy dossier to Washington without leaving fingerprints. He lucks out. SISMI "postman" Rocco Martino, who has already left a package on the doorstep of MI6, contacts Panorama correspondent Elisabetta Burba and attempts to sell her the dossier. But is it the snake oil salesman’s idea -- or that of Antonio Nucera -- or is someone else behind it?

Mrs. Burba rightly double-checks the Niger information. She concocts an undercover investigation on dinosaurs -- from the Oranosaurus nigeriensis to the Afrovenator abakensis.

In the meantime, a reliable source comes along. Elisabetta does what a reporter has to do -- with rigor and tenacity. She concludes that the story is baseless and refrains from publishing a single line. But unknown to her, it's already out of her hands -- because the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Carlo Rossella, enthralled with the possibility of having foun (as he tells his staff) a smoking gun, has forwarded the documents to the US Embassy in Rome, which he regards as the best source of confirmation.

Does Pollari inform Berlusconi's publication Panorama, patting itself on the back over the uranium scoop, that the information is bogus? It appears that he did not. And this is how Jeff Castelli and the CIA came to find on their plate the crock of nonsense which they have been refusing to taste for nearly a year. The documents are such crude forgeries that they must be hidden from scrutiny lest they rain on Dick Cheney's parade.

The arrival of the documents in Washington occurs through the back door. They are distributed on October 16, 2002, to the various intelligence agencies by the US Department of State during a routine meeting which four CIA officials attend. But not one of them is able to recall how they came into possession of the documents or how they came to know of them. Mysteriously, the Italian forgeries are "misplaced" at Langley for three months and it is only after an internal audit ordered by the Inspector-General that they are found inside a safe in the Anti-Proliferation Section. This is the first Italian lunge-and-parry. The uranium hoax inflated with the aluminum tube chicanery. But that is another story.

To be continued...

Niger-gate: How it began

The Nur al-Cubicle blog draws from the foreign media to present less-familiar views on the current crisis. The current offering gives us a good translation of the first La Repubblica piece on Niger-gate.

Do I think this investigation is the final word? No.

As you read, you may spot instances in which self-serving sources attempted to "spin" the reporters. Despite the title of this account, I do not think that the men behind this scandal were all Italians. I refuse to view the necons as easily-gulled naifs; they knew from the start that they were peddling a lie.

Still, the investigation you're about to read is invaluable. The sequence of events finally becomes clarified. The documents were birthed pursuant to a low-level scam played on French intelligence. That sort of thing happens all the damn time in spook-world. But after 9/11, someone decided to use the same materials to scam the American people -- and thus our nation began its dash to disaster.

Who was that "someone"? La Repubblica fingers Berlusconi. My instincts (for whatever they may be worth) tell me to point elsewhere. Soon enough, we should have a clearer idea as to where the blame lies.

Most English-language accounts of these shady operations tend to inundate the reader with a confusing mass of foreign names. The La Repubblica piece presents the tale in a more "humanized" and accessible fashion. We get to know these people.

I think this translation deserves the widest possible audience. I hope I may be forgiven for republishing it here:

Double-Dealers and Dilettantes -- the Men Behind Nigergate Were All Italians.

The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger (1) for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe(2). The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or centrifuges) were the Italian government and Italian military intelligence. La Repubblica has attempted to reconstruct the who, where and why of the manufacture and transfer to British and American intelligence of the dodgy dossier for war.

They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002. In a lengthy investigative piece for the New York Times, Miller reported that Saddam could have built an atomic weapon with those aluminum tubes. These were the goods that the hawks in the Bush administration were expecting.

The "war dance" which followed Judith Miller's scoop seemed like "carefully-prepared theater” to an attentive media-watcher, Roberto Reale of Ultime Notizie (The Latest News).

Condoleezza Rice, who was then White House Security Advisor, said on CNN: We don’t want the smoking gun to look like a mushroom cloud. A menacing Dick Cheney told Meet the Press that We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his technical and commercial capacities to acquire the material necessary to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. This was the beginning of an escalation of fear.

26 September 2002: Colin Powell warns the Senate: The Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium is proof of its nuclear ambitions.

19 December 2002: The information on Niger and the uranium is included in the three-page President’s Daily Briefing prepared each day by the CIA and the Department of State for George W. Bush. The ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, added his stamp of approval: Why is Iraq dissimulating its purchase of Niger uranium?

28 January 2003: George W. Bush pronounced the 16 words, which amountd to a declaration of war. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The beans in that bag are Roman. In the general haze of events which precede the invasion of Iraq, Italian involvement is prefigured by a single, grotesque protagonist: Rocco Martino, son of Raffaele and America Ventrici, born in Tropea (Province of Catanzaro) on September 20, 1938.

To read the rest -- and trust me: You GOTTA read this one -- click on "Permalink" below.
Here's the rest from La Repubblica:

Unmasked by the British press (The Financial Times, The Sunday Times) in the summer of 2004, Rocco Martino spills the beans: It's true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those (Niger uranium) documents, but I was duped. Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes. It was a disinformation operation.

An incomplete confession but close to the truth.

Martino conceals the identify of the architects behind the "operation" and appears to be merely a pawn, like his partners in crime. So is the puppeteer pulling the strings of their sordid adventure? To find out, we'll start with that funny-looking fellow who came to Rome from Tropea...

Rocco Martino is a dishonest cop and a crooked spy. He has the aura of a rogue about him even if you don't know his background. A captain of politico-military intelligence between 1976 and 1997, he was let go for "conduct unbecoming." In 1985, he was arrested for extortion in Italy. In 1993, he was arrested in Germany in possession of stolen checks. Nevertheless, according to a Defense Ministry official, Martino worked for SISMI until 1999 as a double agent.

Martino rents a place at No. 3 rue Hoehl in Sandweiler, Luxemburg. He gets a fixed salary from French intelligence and uses a consulting firm as cover: Security Development Organization. In other words, he also works for French intelligence. Serving two masters, Rocco tries his best. He sells information on the Italians to the French and information on the French to the Italians. That's my job. I sell information.

In 1999, the pleasure-seeking Rocco is running out of cash. When he’s down to his last dime, he hatches a plot of his own. He's convinced that he's got a brilliant and risk-free idea. What illuminates the light bulb is the problem the French are encountering in Niger.

In brief, between 1999 and 2000 the French realize that someone is working abandoned mines to generate a brisk clandestine trade in uranium. Who is purchasing the smuggled uranium? The French are looking for an answer and Rocco Martino senses an opportunity.

So he asks for help form an old colleague at SISMI: Antonio Nucera. A Carabinieri (cop) like Rocco, Antonio is the Deputy Chief of the SISMI center in viale Pasteur in Rome. He's chief of the 1st and the 8th divisions (weapons and technology transfers and WMD proliferation counterespionage, respectively, for Africa and the Middle East.

This section is very busy section at the end of the 1980s, tailing the many agents which Saddam has deployed around the world prior to the invasion of Kuwait... "With some success," according to an Italian intelligence official who at the time worked for the division. The official recalls: We succeeded in getting our hands on Niger code books and a telex from Ambassador Adamou Chékou to the Niger Foreign Ministry informing Niamey that Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, would be coming to Niger as a representative of Saddam Hussein.

But that wasn’t all. We confiscated maraging steel (ultra-high strength steel) in the port of Trieste. We thought it was destined for a series of centrifuges used to separate uranium. We exchanged information on Iraqi nuclear proliferation at the end of the eighties with the British of MI6—the cream of the crop. A sincere friend of Italy worked there: Hamilton MacMillan. MacMillan mentored Francesco Cossiga [Interior Minister, in charge during the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades] in his introduction to the mysterious ways of espionage when he was "resident" in Rome.

Nucera decided to give a hand to his old friend, Rocco. Rocco quickly briefs him on the job. Isn't there anything you can give me? Info? A good Niger contact? I’ll take anything you have! The French are as dry as people lost in the desert. They want to know who is buying their uranium under the table. I'm prepared to pay well to find out.

In the archives of Nucera's SISMI division, there are documents that could be useful in pawning off a half-baked frittata and making a few bucks. There's the telex from the Niger ambassador. Further needs might be met at the Niger Embassy at No. 10 via Baiamonte in Rome. SISMI director Nicolò Pollari confirms to La Repubblica: Nucera wanted to help out his friend. He offered him the use of an intelligence asset -- no big deal, you understand; one that was still on the books but inactive -- to give a hand to Martino. The asset worked at the Niger Embassy in Rome. She was in bad shape. She barely eked out a living in the back of the espionage shop. She didn't get a monthy sum from Italian intelligence. In other words, she was a contractor.

Information and cash were exchanged. It was only chickenfeed -- a few hundred thousand lira notes. But that was a lot in 2000 -- and Martino was really desperate. He was on a slow slide to destitution -- nothing to spy on and nothing to sell.

La Signora. You should have seen her, "La Signora". Sixty years old if she was a day! A face that once was pretty -- now it looked a crinkled leaf. You could call her a gofer for the Niger Embassy. She looked like my old auntie. A French accent. A complicit wink. Always spoke in a whisper. Even when she said "hello," her voice was like a tiny, mysterious flute, ready to reveal a thousands secrets. But even "La Signora" needed cash.

Nucera arranged the meeting. Rocco and La Signora don't take long. He going to get what he came for. But wasn't Nucera her official contact at SISMI? Then why wasn't she supposed to know that it was SISMI who wanted the favor? And why was the item useful to the Agency?

With the blessing of Nucera, Rocco and La Signora, a pair of clever snake-oil salesmen, conclude a bargain. There would be a few sheets of paper available for sale. But the help of a Niger national was needed. La Signora points him to the right man. He’s First Embassy Counselor Zakaria Yaou Maiga. As Pollari told us, that Maiga spent six times more than he earned.

The gang of spendthrift bunglers who short on cash is ready to go into action. Rocco Martino, La Signora, Zakaria Yaou Maiga. Nucera retreates into the shadows. They wait for the embassy to close its doors for New Years 2001. They simulate a break-in and burglary. When on January 2, 2001, bright and early, the Second Secretary for Administrative Affairs Arfou Mounkaila reports the burglary to the Carabinieri of the Trionfale station, he has to admit with a grin that the burglars were half asleep. A lot of trouble and effort for nothing. Mounkaila is unable to report missing what he doesn't know is gone. Letterhead, and official stamps. In the hands of the snake oil peddlers, useful stuff with which to assemble a dodgy dossier.

Old documents are extracted from the SISMI division's archives—like code books (Nucera is deputy chief of section), letters, contracts and a memorandum of understanding between the government of Niger and Iraq "concerning the supply of uranium on 5 and 6 July 2000 in Niamey." The memorandum has a 2-page attachment entitled "Agreement." Rocco hands over the "package" to agents from the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. They hand him some banknotes which he spends in Nice. Rocco loves the Cote d’Azur.

Up to this point, a caper worthy of Stan Laurel, Goofy and Cruella deVille. But it's an innocuous swindle. The French take the documents and throw them in the dumpster. One of the agents remarks, Niger is a French-speaking place and we know how things are there. But nobody would have confused one minister with another they way they did in that useless piece of garbage.

Case closed, then? No! The burlesque imbroglio is transformed into a very grave matter. Along comes September 11th and Bush immediately starts to think about Iraq and requests proof of Saddam's involvement in the attacks.

SISMI recalls the via Baiamonti squad to into action. A new director, Nicolò Pollari, arrives at Forte Brasco. And Col. Alberto Manenti, the new man on the job, is placed in charge of WMD. A well-prepared officer but completely incapable of saying "No" to a superior, says a SISMI official with whom he worked. Col. Manenti had Nucera on his staff for a time and knew him well. Manenti, who knows that Nucera is about to retire, asks him to stay on as a consultant.

SISMI is straining at the bit. It has room for maneuver like never before in the history of Italy. Berlusconi asks Pollari for a feat on the international stage which will catapult Italy to the first among US allies. A similar request comes in from the CIA station chief in Rome, Jeff Castelli. News, information, useful scraps of intelligence are needed. Now! On the double! Washington is looking for proof to use against Saddam.

The White House (in particular, Cheney) puts pressure on the CIA to hop to it. The absence of proof isn't proof of absence, philosophizes Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In that kind of climate, with their phony dossier, the snake oil salesmen of via Baiamonti, (Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera) would be useful. So what do they do in the fall of 2001? Rocco Martino describes it this way: At the end of 2001, SISMI handed the yellowcake dossier to the British of MI6.

They hand over a dossier devoid of scrutiny. They claim only that they got it from "a reliable source." Then they make a small tweak: SISMI wanted to disseminate the Niger documents to allied intelligence but at the same time, did not want its collaboration in the operation known. These are allegations which Palazzao Chigi vehemently denies. The government tells a bald-faced lie. After the war reveals the WMD chicanery, the Italian Government swears that no uranium dossier was handed over or made to be handed over to anyone, either directly or through intermediaries.

The next move was predictable. The Italian Government and SISMI build a dike between Forte Braschi and the footprints of the via Biaimonte squad. But its denial does not hold up.

It is a fact that in fall of 2001, SISMI monitored Rocco Martino's every move in London. This is confirmed to the Repubblica by SISMI chief Nicolo Pollari. We monitored Martino and photographed his meetings in London. Would you like to see the pictures? So why didn't Rome put the lie to its ex-agent and snake oil salesman? Especially since the information in the dossier was vouched for by Pollari to Jeff Castelli, CIA station chief. It is a fact that a report on the bogus, made-in-Rome dossier ended up at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence -- in the Office of Strategic, Military and WMD Proliferation Affairs.

Strategic Affairs is not a big place. At the time, 16 analysts worked there under the direction of Greg Thielmann. Thielmann tells La Repubblica: I received the report in fall of 2001. We thought that Langley acquired it from their field officer in Italy. The agent in the field reports that Italian intelligence let him see some papers documenting the attempt by Iraq to acquire 500 tons of pure uranium from Niger. So, SISMI purported the truth of documents it knew to be false to the CIA.

There's a second confirmation. At Langley, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson was assigned the mission to verify the Italian "story" of the 500 tons of uranium.

Says Wilson: The report was not very detailed. It's not clear if the agent who signed the report materially saw the peddled documents or whether he heard it from another source.

We'll have to modify the sequence of events:

Fall 2001: General Pollari's SISMI is in possession of a phony dossier assembled by Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera. They show it to the CIA while Rocco Martino delivers it to Sir Richard Dearlove's MI6. This is only the beginning of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam.

To be continued...

"Judy..."

Since Judith "aspen roots" Miller seems destined for an early retirement -- first from the NYT, then from blogosphere demonology -- I had better take this opportunity to remind readers of a cinematic prophecy.

If you've ever seen David Lynch's undervalued film Fire Walk With Me (the Twin Peaks prequel), you may recall that -- just before the Laura-goes-to-Heaven coda -- a particularly mysterious image appears.

In extreme close-up, the son of Satan removes his mask, revealing the face of a smirking chimp. (Well, I say he's wearing a smirk.) The chimp utters just one word: "Judy."

For years, this reference has puzzled Lynch aficionados, since the film has no character by that name. Now it makes sense.

David Lynch: Weirdo or psychic?

(Come back later today. We'll open our Fitzmas presents together.)

'Twas the night before Fitzmas

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/ says that Fitzgerald will release one to five indictments tomorrow. The Financial Times makes a similar prediction. So does John Roberts of CBS:

Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent V alerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be.

Who is Mr. X? Perhaps Dick Cheney. Former CIA analyst Melvyn Goodman has some pertinent observations:

From the first day I was convinced that Dick Cheney was the center of this covert action to lead the country into war, because this is what this is about: the misuse and the secret use of intelligence. It's about that more than it is leaks and sources and even Valerie Plame's identity. It's about how we went to war.

Dick Cheney, I thought, would obtain some kind of plausible denial, because this was run like a CIA covert action. But now he's lost his denial, if he was indeed the source of Valerie Plame's name to Lewis Libby, who then went forward with Karl Rove to give this name to at least five or six journalists and, of course, it was Robert Novak who did the administration's work for it. He was what some people would call the useful idiot, who then ran the Valerie Plame name in his column. But this is now in the White House.

And once, frankly, you had Lewis Libby implicated -- Lewis Libby is just an apparatchik. As an old Soviet analyst, the Libby type is quite recognizable. And you knew that he had to have some sponsorship or endorsement, or he was galvanized in some way by, indeed, his patron. And, of course, his patron was Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, Scott McClellan has, in essence, tossed Rove and Libby into the snow.

Strange, isn't it? A few short months ago, every progressive considered the End of the Rove Era an impossible dream. Now that this goal seems close at hand, we feel unsatisfied. We want more. We want to see a broken Cheney.

As for me -- I'd be dancing a jig right now, if I weren't still smarting over the dunderheaded error committed earlier today. (See the apologetic note appended the previous post.) But please -- don't let my sour mood spoil your Fitzmas. Happy Holidays!

More on the lie that led to war (Updated and corrected)

A lot has happened on the Niger front since I wrote my piece this morning. La Repubblica has published a follow-up account; Josh Marshall gives both the gist and his analysis.

Laura Rozen also takes a very helpful look at the matter. Rozen was able to confirm a key contention made by the Italian newspaper -- that Bush's Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley met with SISMI head Nicolo Pollari on September 9, 2002. At that time, Pollari had some Niger docs that he wanted to palm off on BushCo. Roughly eleven months earlier, Pollari had already told Washington about Iraq's alleged devious doings in Africa. The documents seemed to confirm this earlier warning.

(Clever, eh? Pollari used one lie to "confirm" a later, more elaborate lie...)

Can we reconcile this new data with previous claims that the hoax originated with Ledeen and two former CIA officers? I believe so. La Repubblica traces the plot back to SISMI officer Antonio Nucera. But the actual origin point remains cloudy; in a forgery case, one always likes to know the name of the actual forger. Do not dismiss the earlier report that Ledeen, Clarridge and Wolf were the ultimate masterminds.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of this spy tale is the chronology. The forgery conspiracy seems to date back to 1999 -- which means the plot to foment war in the Middle East began well before 9/11.

Yet Pollari waited until shortly after the tragedy to put the plot into motion.

Did SISMI as an institution try to mislead the Bush administration into war? Sure seems that way -- but only on the surface.

SISMI head Pollari did not merely meet with Hadley. He did not merely pass the forgeries along. He had warned the Bushites about the Niger "revelation" as early in October, 2001. A short while later, he offered Cheney's office transcripts of the documents; later still, he handed over the documents themselves. In all, he spent a year cultivating the ground for war.

Question: Why on earth would SISMI want to goad the U.S. into invading Iraq?

Answer: They wouldn't.

Someone else was using Pollari, Nucera and so forth. Italian intelligence gained nothing from an American invasion. Besides, if this were truly a job conducted by SISMI (or any other professional intelligence agency), the fakes would have been of a higher quality.

Therefore, we must be dealing with an ad hoc group operating both inside and outside SISMI. Ideology and personal loyalty binds these individuals together.

There is precedent for the existence of such a group: "Super SISMI" of P2 fame. That group networked with interests outside Italy -- in particular, with what Joseph Trento calls the "rogue CIA."

I have now reconsidered the attractive-but-fanciful scenario (outlined below) that the CIA intentionally used these documents to embarrass the Bush administration. A cute idea -- but impossible. We now know that the plot pre-dates this administration.

No, we are dealing with a long-range plan to use American military might to remake the Middle East. The lie that led to war was not a SISMI plot per se, although key participants did belong to that agency. Neither was this a CIA plot per se, although the American participants do have backgrounds with American intelligence. Neither can we say that this a Bush/Cheney plot, since the scheme predates the administration.

One of the frustrating things about this international network is that we cannot put a name to it. The tired and not-really-accurate "neocon" label is the only nomenclature we have; for now, it will have to do.

I suspect that La Repubblica acquired this information from a leaks within the Berlusconi government, desinged to forestall Fitzgerald's revealtion.

Note: I wrote an earlier version of this story under the impression that Berlusconi owned La Repubblica. I remembered having read that he had purchased the larger concern which owned the newspaper. But I forgot the most important part of the story: The editorial staff successfully revolted against him. The paper is now the leading critical voice against Berlusconi.

There's an old Russian proverb: Memory is a crazy old woman who picks up scattered bits of discarded cloth while ignoring diamonds. My memory usually isn't that bad, thank god. Now, however, I must beg the readers' forgiveness for a serious lapse. I've had several significant "memory errors" since I started blogging, but this one is the most absurd and humiliating.

The secret society and the Niger forgeries (revised)

Josh Marshall has done remarkable, ground-breaking work on the Niger forgeries and their movement through the murky world of Italian parapolitics. Yet he doesn't give his readers some necessary history.

In his latest look at the controversy, he draws from a recent (as-yet untranslated) article in La Repubblica on the forgeries. Marhsall correctly identifies the piece as a limited hang-out (although he does not use that term). Marshall:

And this one says the culprits are Rocco Martino, the Italian woman who works in the Niger embassy in Rome and the SISMI operative Martino named as his ultimate source. The motive, says Repubblica, was money.

I've never named the SISMI colonel whom Martino said he (indirectly) got the documents from. But now Repubblica has. So I will too: his name is Antonio Nucera...

My experience with this case, going back almost two years now, is that whenever damaging new information was about to come out on the forgery mystery, the Italian government-cum-intelligence agencies put out substantial new information about what happened mixed with disinformation aimed at throwing people off their trail. And when I say 'their trail', I mean the complicity of Italian intelligence in the documents hoax itself.

We must also discuss the complicity of Michael Ledeen, who has long-standing ties to the ultra-right "Super-SISMI" faction within Italian intelligence. "Super-SISMI" grew out of the fascist secret society P2.

Italian media magante and prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was, like Michael Ledeen, a member of P2.

From the excellent Wikipedia entry:

...in 1981 a scandal arose on the discovery by the police of Licio Gelli's secret freemasonry lodge (Propaganda Due, or P2) aiming to move the Italian political system in an authoritarian direction to oppose communism. A list of names was found of adherents of P2, which included members of the secret services and some prominent personalities from the political, industrial, military and press elite, among which Silvio Berlusconi, who was just starting to gain popularity as the founder and owner of "Canale 5" TV network. The P2 lodge was dissolved by the Italian parliament in December 1981 and a law was passed declaring similar organizations illegal, but no specific crimes were alleged to individual members of P2. Berlusconi later (1989) sued for libel three journalists who had written an article hinting at his involvement in financiary crimes and in this occasion he declared in court that he had joined the P2 lodge "only a very short time before the scandal broke" and "he had not even paid the entry fee". Such statements, however, conflicted with the findings of the parliamentary commission appointed to investigate the lodge's activity, with material evidence, and even with previous testimony of Berlusconi, all of which showing that he had actually been a member of P2 since 1978 and had indeed paid a 100,000 Italian liras entry fee. Because of this he was indicted for perjury, but the crime was extinguished by the 1989 amnesty.

Despite the dissolution order, the old P2 ties still bind. We can't expect accurate reporting on the forgeries from a journal financially tied to the very network that produced the forgeries.

Joshua Marshall avoids discussing this strange milieu for understandable reasons: The books and articles exposing P2 have largely faded from memory. Most moderate-minded Americans do the sigh-and-eye-roll routine whenever anyone mentions the words "secret society." In order to maintain credibility, today's writers must pretend not to have read the material published in the 1980s.

The La Repubblica partial hangout comes after former CIA operatives Larry Johnson and Vince Cannistraro disclosed the existence of an Italian Parliamentary Commission report on the authorship of the forgeries. Fitzgerald, we are told, has read this report. According to this story, the forgers were Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf of the CIA, aided by Michael Ledeen.

(A side note: Can we classify Ledeen as CIA? His resume suggests that he -- like Valerie Plame/Wilson -- may have functioned as an NOC officer. He certainly has long-standing ties both to P2 and to various players in the "rogue CIA" netowrk discussed by Joseph Trento in Prelude to Terror.)

I strongly urge readers to study both Justin Raimondo's piece on the forgeries, as well as Xymphora's recent take.

I can't agree with some of what Mr. X says. He refers to "the CIA" as though that organization were not internally factionalized. He also views Ledeen as "fundamentally an idiot." That's not my take on the man.

However, Xymphora echoes a point I've previously made when he suggests that someone within CIA (John McLaughlin? Just a guess...) set the Wilson affair into motion. X:

The CIA could have sent anybody they liked to Niger to investigate the situation. While Wilson was a logical choice, there were many other logical choices. If they were so deeply concerned about the undercover status of his wife, isn't it odd that they picked Wilson?

...Why didn't Tenet object to the sixteen words? He signed off on the State of the Union address, after complaining about similar words in Bush's Cincinnati speech only a few months earlier. Did he just get tired of hitting his head against the wall? Or was he very happy to see the sixteen words?

To which I'll add one further point: Why (assuming Raimondo's information is correct) did pros like Clarridge and Wolf countenance such a bad forgery?

Some might speculate that the Niger forgeries represented a variation on the gambit played on Dan Rather. Perhaps a group within CIA hoped to avert war by tricking Bush into accepting evidence later proven false.

Although I remain unpersuaded by that scenario, the idea does have a certain appeal.

Note: I wrote an earlier version of this story under the impression that Berlusconi owned La Repubblica. I remembered having read that he had purchased the larger concern which owned the newspaper. But I forgot the most important part of the story: The editorial staff successfully revolted against him. The paper is now the leading critical voice against Berlusconi.

There's an old Russian proverb: Memory is a crazy old woman who picks up scattered bits of discarded cloth while ignoring diamonds. My memory usually isn't that bad, thank god. Now, however, I must beg the readers' forgiveness for a serious lapse. I've had several significant "memory errors" since I started blogging, but this one is the most absurd and humiliating.