Who Forged Niger Documents?

[DemonFighterLives]

It is supposedly Michael Ledeen from PNAC.
Does anyone know if this was ever followed up on?
I did check for a link on it. I quess it's out there.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21704/

http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/ex-reagan_cia_head_source_fake_niger_docs_ledeen.htm

clip..
When the former CIA head of counter-terrorism was asked if a Michael Ledeen had been the one who produced the Iraq documents he said "You'd be very close."

This is consistent with the theory that the documents are the work of Iraqi dissidents associated with Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress.

The documents would have flowed from Chalabi to Ledeen to SISME, and thus would have been laundered to make them appear as legitimate products discovered by a legitimate intelligence agency.

This sophistication in the use of foreign intelligence agencies appears to be part of the modus operandi of the neocons, and may derive from the particular expertise of Ledeen and Richard Perle, developed in various shenanigans going back to the 1970's in particular the Iran-Contra affair.

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[DemonFighterLives]

1. Did this story just go away?

Michael Ledeen is with AEI, it was a caller on Big Eddy that said he was PNAC. I don't remember if he was.

With the whole WMD thing coming up again the faulty intelligence should be revisited.
http://jpwillis.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/4/10362/61305

clip...
Now, in terms of a timeline, we know the Niger forgeries were given to the US Embassy in Rome in October 2002. So, was Michael Ledeen, neo-con extroadinaire, resposible for the forgery?

Well, I think it's curious that in September 2002 (one month before the Niger forgeries were provided to the US Embassy, with the companion forgery), Ledeen wrote an article for the National Review where he says in the last paragraph the following:


Let's hope they've learned their lesson and realize that Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia are now working together against us.

Now this is not conclusive evidence of any sort, but it does strike me as curious that a month before the forged companion piece was "given" to the US Embassy in Rome, Ledeen was giving a heads up to a conspiracy of Middle Eastern countries in the National Review. If he was behind the forgery, the acceptance of the companion letter as a valid document would have more legitimacy if it was mentioned previously....

[Stephanie]

2. What is SISME?

That's all very interesting.

[leveymg]

3. Italian intelligence service

[DemonFighterLives]

7. Thanks, there were a lot of abbreviations for it

It is in the Alternet article and here is one on following the yellowcake road.

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/eddesk.nsf/All/A0F101466D6DA341CA256D6B000AE3CC

Clip..
What began as a minor Italian mystery is now a drama testing Bush's credibility as never before. Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas go inside the Iraqi intel wars.

Did it start with a break-in? On the morning of Jan. 2, 2001, Italian police discovered that the Niger Embassy in Rome had been ransacked. Not much was reported missing – only a watch and two bottles of perfume – but someone had apparently rifled through embassy papers, leaving them strewn about the floor.
Some months after the break-in, the Italian intelligence service – the SISME – obtained a stack of official-looking documents from an African diplomat. Signed by officials of the government of Niger, the papers revealed what purported to be a deal with the Devil. Agents of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, it appeared, were angling to purchase from the cash-starved, mineral-rich African nation some 500 tons of yellowcake, the pure uranium that can be used to build nuclear bombs. Excited by their intelligence coup, the Italians quickly notified the CIA and British intelligence.

A bombshell in the war on terrorism? More like an exploding cigar. The documents, a series of letters dated from July to October 2000, were actually crude forgeries. They referred to Niger agencies that no longer existed and bore the signature of a foreign minister who had not served in the post for more than a decade. Italian investigators, who only last week reopened the case, have theorized that the thieves who broke into the Niger Embassy had come looking for letterhead stationery and official seals that could be copied to create bogus documents.

[leveymg]

4. Who was Ledeen serving? Or is Amer. Ent. Instit. now in the forgery game?

Think about it.:bounce:

[Stephanie]

5. Know Your Neo-Cons: MICHAEL LEDEEN

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http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/4/dreyfuss-r.html

The American Prospect
Just the Beginning
Is Iraq the opening salvo in a war to remake the world?

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 4.1.03

For months Americans have been told that the United States is going to war against Iraq in order to disarm Saddam Hussein, remove him from power, eliminate Iraq's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and prevent Baghdad from blackmailing its neighbors or aiding terrorist groups. But the Bush administration's hawks, especially the neoconservatives who provide the driving force for war, see the conflict with Iraq as much more than that. It is a signal event, designed to create cataclysmic shock waves throughout the region and around the world, ushering in a new era of American imperial power. It is also likely to bring the United States into conflict with several states in the Middle East. Those who think that U.S. armed forces can complete a tidy war in Iraq, without the battle spreading beyond Iraq's borders, are likely to be mistaken.

"I think we're going to be obliged to fight a regional war, whether we want to or not," says Michael Ledeen, a former U.S. national-security official and a key strategist among the ascendant flock of neoconservative hawks, many of whom have taken up perches inside the U.S. government. Asserting that the war against Iraq can't be contained, Ledeen says that the very logic of the global war on terrorism will drive the United States to confront an expanding network of enemies in the region. "As soon as we land in Iraq, we're going to face the whole terrorist network," he says, including the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and a collection of militant splinter groups backed by nations -- Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia -- that he calls "the terror masters."

"It may turn out to be a war to remake the world," says Ledeen.

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http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020902&s=vest&c=1

article | Posted August 15, 2002
The Men From JINSA and CSP
by Jason Vest

<snip>On no issue is the JINSA/CSP hard line more evident than in its relentless campaign for war--not just with Iraq, but "total war," as Michael Ledeen, one of the most influential JINSAns in Washington, put it last year. For this crew, "regime change" by any means necessary in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority is an urgent imperative. Anyone who dissents--be it Colin Powell's State Department, the CIA or career military officers--is committing heresy against articles of faith that effectively hold there is no difference between US and Israeli national security interests, and that the only way to assure continued safety and prosperity for both countries is through hegemony in the Middle East--a hegemony achieved with the traditional cold war recipe of feints, force, clientism and covert action.

For example, the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board--chaired by JINSA/CSP adviser and former Reagan Administration Defense Department official Richard Perle, and stacked with advisers from both groups--recently made news by listening to a briefing that cast Saudi Arabia as an enemy to be brought to heel through a number of potential mechanisms, many of which mirror JINSA's recommendations, and which reflect the JINSA/CSP crowd's preoccupation with Egypt. (The final slide of the Defense Policy Board presentation proposed that "Grand Strategy for the Middle East" should concentrate on "Iraq as the tactical pivot, Saudi Arabia as the strategic pivot (and) Egypt as the prize.") Ledeen has been leading the charge for regime change in Iran, while old comrades like Andrew Marshall and Harold Rhode in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment actively tinker with ways to re-engineer both the Iranian and Saudi governments. JINSA is also cheering the US military on as it tries to secure basing rights in the strategic Red Sea country of Eritrea, happily failing to mention that the once-promising secular regime of President Isaiais Afewerki continues to slide into the kind of repressive authoritarianism practiced by the "axis of evil" and its adjuncts. </more>

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2003/03/26/perle/index.html

Joe Conason's Journal
Will the Senate investigate top hawk Richard Perle's questionable conduct at the Defense Policy Board?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

March 26, 2003 | A Perle of great price

Two weeks ago I suggested that Richard Perle's commingling of public service and private profit deserves the scrutiny of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Evidence has been growing since then that Perle, the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, is using his immense clout in the Bush administration as a business calling card. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that Rep. John Conyers has asked the Pentagon inspector general to investigate Perle, and that an unnamed "prominent Democratic member of the Senate" is "considering making a similar request." But rather than simply punting Perle over to the inspector general, the Senate itself ought to act in this case.

The first exposé of Perle's business affairs appeared in a New Yorker article by Seymour Hersh, who Perle then memorably smeared as a "terrorist" for having the temerity to report on his peculiar dealings with Adnan Khashoggi, the billionaire Saudi arms dealer, oilman and Iran-contra scandal figure. (Iran-contra scandal figures are a key talent pool for the Bush administration, the latest example being neocon publicist Michael Ledeen. Josh Marshall provides a photo of Ledeen and Perle at a Washington kaffeeklatsche, along with some of Ledeen's inane commentary, but omits his unsavory role in the arms-for-hostages fiasco.)

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,935812,00.html

Bush ready to fight war on two fronts
Ed Vulliamy in Washington
Sunday April 13, 2003
The Observer

The last shot of the war in Iraq will be the starting pistol for two further campaigns by the administration of President George W Bush. One will be fought in the region: no one really believes America's project is confined to Iraq. The toppling of Saddam is first base in what Michael Ledeen, leading thinker among the neo-conservatives driving foreign policy, calls 'a war to remake the world'.

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[understandinglife]

6. Here's something Pat Lang published yesterday at "No Quarter"

and some comments:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4124901

WATCH IT; SPREAD IT http://www.bushflash.com/right.html

Peace.

www.missionnotaccomplished.us - How ever long it takes, the day must come when tens of millions of caring individuals peacefully but persistently defy the dictator, deny the corporatists their cash flow, and halt the evil being done in Iraq and in all the other places the Bu$h neoconster regime is destroying civilization and the environment in the name of "America."

[SoCalDem]

8. maybe

[DemonFighterLives]

11. Dubby never found a forgery he didn't like

:rofl: That's a great pictue.

[LynnTheDem]

9. Ahmed Chalabi; he's a known forger.

Can look out links if wanted.

[proud patriot]

10. what about Bolton ?

:think:

[DemonFighterLives]

12. Don't know about Bolton

He seems to have disappeared.

Here is world Re-maker Ledeen:

[Dr Fate]

13. "Who forged them and why" should be asked by Top DEMs over & over.

But they refuse to for some reason. Just like they refused to talk about the DSM on TV.

[DemonFighterLives]

14. They apparently know why

It was to get their war on. Still amazing that there are not a few honest ones that are not neocons.

:kick: