Fitzgerald has interviewed the Italian officials re the Niger-Yellowcake

[Pirate Smile]

documents?

Flavia just said this on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC.

Has this been reported elsewhere?

Does anyone have any details.

edit to add - I found the Diary on Daily Kos that mentions this:

(FITZGERALD UPDATE): Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much

-snip-
UPDATE): It seems from this article that Fitzgerald has turned his attention directly to the Niger Forgeries themselves!


Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report: now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald asked for and "has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document," the former CIA officer tells me:

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."

And there's more:

my source tells me that "Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty," the prosecutor in the AIPAC case.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/145557/54

[callady]

1. Michael Ledeen

The Hand of Cheney

Did Dick Finger Valerie?

By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA analyst

So those searching for answers are reduced to asking the obvious: Cui bono? Who stood to benefit from such a forgery? A no-brainer-those lusting for war on Iraq. And who might they be? Look up the "neo-conservative" writings on the website of the Project for the New American Century. There you will find information on people like Michael Ledeen, "Freedom Analyst" at the American Enterprise Institute and a key strategist among "neoconservative" hawks in and out of the Bush administration. Applauding the invasion of Iraq, Ledeen asserted-with equal enthusiasm-that the war could not be contained, and that "it may turn out to be a war to remake the world."

Beyond his geopolitical punditry, Ledeen's curriculum vitae shows he is no stranger to rogue operations. A longtime Washington operative, he was fired as a "consultant" for the National Security Council under President Ronald Reagan for running fool's errands for Oliver North during the Iran-Contra subterfuge. One of Ledeen's Iran-Contra partners in crime, so to speak, was Elliot Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress about Iran-Contra. Abrams was pardoned before jail time, however, by George H. W. Bush, and he is now George W. Bush's deputy national security adviser. Ledeen is said to enjoy easy entrée to the office of the vice president as well as to his friend Abrams.

<snip>

Made in the U.S.A?

During a radio interview with Ian Masters on April 3, 2005, former CIA operative Vincent Cannistraro charged that the Iraq-Niger documents were forged in the United States. Drawing on earlier speculation regarding who forged the documents, Masters asked, "If I were to say the name Michael Ledeen to you, what would you say?" Cannistraro replied, "You're very close."

Ledeen has denied having anything to do with the forgery. Yet the company he keeps with other prominent Iran-Contra convictees/pardonees/intelligence contractors suggests otherwise. Besides, Ledeen has had a longstanding association with Italian intelligence.
According to most accounts, the Italians played an important role in disseminating the forged documents. If Ledeen and his associates were involved, this might also help explain the amateurishness of the forged documents. They would have sorely missed the institutional expertise formerly at their beck and call.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mcgovern07202005.html

[Carolab]

3. YUP. Michael Ledeen--Rove's BEST pal.

This is why I wanted Fitz to go after Rove hardest--he's the neocon "link".

[Pirate Smile]

5. Thanks. I knew of the Italian link with the forgeries but I haven't seen

any credible reporting that Fitzgerald has included any of this in his investigation. If he turns that corner, whoa baby!

[seemslikeadream]

7. Ledeen

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."

Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, "he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi." The former CIA officer says Wolf "was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop."

A veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ledeen played an important role in the Iran-Contra "arms for hostages" scandal by setting up meetings between the American government and the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Not all that unexpected coming from a self-proclaimed advocate of Machiavelli's amoralism. Today, Ledeen is among the most visible and radical neoconservative ideologues whose passion for a campaign of serial "regime-change" in the Middle East is undiminished by the Iraqi debacle. Just as the Roman senator Cato the Elder finished his perorations with the command "Carthage must be destroyed," so Michael "Creative Destruction" Ledeen closes his hopped-up warmongering essays with "Faster, please!," an exhortation presumably addressed to his confreres in the Bush administration.

Ledeen has kept the neocon faith – and the same friends – for all these years. He's still buddies with Ghorbanifar. In December 2001, he had a meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar in the company of the Pentagon's top Iran specialist, Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode, assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank. Also at the Rome conclave: a number of Ghorbanifar's Iranian friends, including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard. Rounding out the distinguished guest list, we have the Italian delegation, consisting of SISMI head honcho Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino, a neocon favorite. Once again, Ledeen plays the middleman – but what kind of a deal was he trying to negotiate?

more


http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10571.htm

At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.

Disappointingly for the neocons, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check the story: he reported that it was nonsense. When the story was repeated by Bush, Wilson went public. His wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was then outed by the White House. Hence Rove's predicament.

An organisation called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up in the Pentagon by Douglas Feith, a former consultant to Israel's Likud party, to prepare for the war. In the words of Robert Baer, a distinguished former CIA man, it was a "competing intelligence shop at the Pentagon"..."if you didn't like the answer you're getting from the CIA". In short, bogus stories would get a second chance at the OSP.

A clue to the ancestry of these black arts can be found in 1980, when right-wing Republicans wanted Ronald Reagan elected. They publicised a story that Billy Carter, the then President Jimmy Carter's colourful brother, had received $50,000 (£28,000) from the Libyan government.

The story was always denied by the President and no evidence of the payment was found, but the story helped to elect Reagan. Its source? Sismi, and an associate of a man called Michael Ledeen.


http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.php?id=2426_0_1_0_C

First of all, I am not a leftist. Secondly, the sources for the quotes of former CIA and DIA agent Philip Giraldi were my interviews of him, as indicated in the correctly transcribed entry on the Wikipedia page, and which I provided the mp3 link for. Fourth, I am happy that the US is no longer part of the British Empire.

As far as Ledeen and the Niger uranium forgeries, Giraldi explained in the interviews that the "couple of CIA agents" were paid in foreign accounts and that Fitzgerald had "already found the money trail." Ledeen's connections to the Office of Special Plans and Sismi are well documented, he attended a number of meetings in Italy with Harold Rhode, who "practically lived out of (Iranian spy) Ahmad Chalabi's office," Manucher Ghorbanifar and guilty Israeli spy Larry Franklin, around the time the Italians began passing on the (already debunked) story back to the US.

As Josh Marshall put it in The Hill:

"he intelligence reports that came in to Washington in late 2001 were from Italian military intelligence, SISMI. The other detail, according to intelligence sources I’ve spoken to, is that those reports turned out to be text transcriptions of Niger forgeries that didn’t surface in Rome until almost a year later...

From the very beginning, American suspicions about a Niger-Iraq trade in uranium were based on what turned out to be the forged documents. And the text transcriptions of those documents came in from Italian intelligence...

Burba, the Italian journalist who eventually brought the forgeries to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, got them from an unnamed Italian “security consultant.” His name turns out to be Rocco Martino, a retired SISMI operative. And as I mentioned last week, last summer, my colleagues and I conducted a series of in-person interviews with him.

It has sometimes been suggested in the Italian press that Martino himself is the forger. But he told us a different story — one that was corroborated by another participant in the handling of the documents. Martino told us that the documents came from a still-serving SISMI colonel, whom he named."

But where did they originate? Giraldi's partner, Vincent Cannistraro, Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council under Reagan, has maintained that they were produced in the US and has said, "You'd be very close," in answer to the question of whether Ledeen forged them.

Combined with what Giraldi had to say, it sure seems like enough to take to a grand jury to me.

Or is it not a crime to lie a country into war?

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7256

July Friday 29th 2005 (05h28) :
KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS
13 comment(s).

KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO

Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson’s CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the documents for Rove, and how might he have done that? The story includes multinational stool pigeon Rocco Martino, Italian spy Francesco Pazienza, wanted CIA spy Robert Seldon Lady, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who’s under charges of giving US secrets to Israel.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Karl Rove’s foreign-policy advisor, Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972. In 1984 he got George Bush Sr to appoint Iranian arms merchant and Iranian/Israeli double-agent Manucher Ghorbanifar as a middleman in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair. Ledeen has been a fixture in Washington and Israel ever since, advocating a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic nations. Based on what he has said and written, I believe Ledeen is insane.
Michael Ledeen, Rove’s "brain," is one of the leading advocates for a US attack on Iran. The Washington Post quoted Ledeen as saying that Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." I guess that means we can look forward to the Bush team drumming up a war with Iran.

George Bush Jr., when he assumed the presidency in 2000, already knew that he was going to settle the family score with Saddam Hussein. His "brain," Rove, quickly enlisted Ledeen to trump up a causus belli.

EARLY 2000: ROCCO MARTINO AND THE FRENCH CONNECTION

...


The war is not just about oil, Israel’s fears/ambitions, or US hegemony. There are contracts and contractors in Iraq. Modern-day carpetbaggers with briefcases descended like a plague of scorpions on the poor, bloodied, bombed-out, grieving people of Iraq. They included the daughter of the war’s chief banshee -- Simone Ledeen, Michael’s young daughter -- shown in the photo, greeting with an impish smile another occupier at the Baghdad airport -- getting ready to lord it over the Iraqis as she tries out her new MBA in working for the CPA. Caption: "The creatures step out of the tripods." Maybe it’ll help to pay off those student loans -- huh, Michael?


http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/145557/54
Keyser Soze aka Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen was one of the founders of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). He holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank for AIPAC. He is co-founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. As far back as 1980, the CIA allegedly listed Ledeen as an agent of influence of Israel. Ledeen is the main foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove. Ledeens main obsession seems to be to overthrow Iran.

In 1972 he published the book Universal Fascism, in which he expounds upon "the rightness of the fascist cause." In Universal Fascism, Ledeen first builds his case that fascism was the "20th Century Revolution" and that "people yearn for the real thing - revolution". It's the blueprint for a fascist revolution.

In 1980 he collaborated with Francesco Pazienza of SISMI and P-2 in the "BillyGate" affair. This is the same Pazienze who was recently found out to belong to the parallel intelligence agency in Italy. In 1985 Pazienza was found guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of terrorists. Ledeen is identified in court documents as an agent of SISMI.

The Pentagon downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after the FBI began a probe of Ledeen for passing classified materials to a foreign
country, believed to be Israel.

[callady]

18. Indeed

I am hardly the first to implicate Ledeen in connection with the Niger uranium forgeries. Former CIA counterterrorism officials Vince Cannistraro and Larry Johnson have pointed the finger in Ledeen's direction. As the latter put it:

"Italy's SISME also reportedly had a hand in producing the forged documents delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome in early October 2003 that purported to show a deal with Iraq to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a prominent neocon with long-standing ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain, either SISME or someone with ties to SISME, helped forge and circulate those documents which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq."

Cannistraro, asked by an interviewer if Ledeen was involved with the forgers, said "you'd be very close."

<snip>

The cast of characters involved in Niger-gate is like old home week in the government scandal sweepstakes. Aside from Ledeen, whose storied (or is that checkered?) history is well-known, we have Clarridge, first head of the Counterterrorism Center set up by Bill Casey under Reagan, who deserves a column all by himself. His close relationship with Ledeen dates from his time as chief of station in Rome in the late 1970s. Clarridge was indicted for lying to prosecutors during the Iran-Contra imbroglio, but given a presidential pardon. His book, A Spy for All Seasons, was the first real "tell-all" book about the Agency. During the Reagan administration, he purportedly was the intellectual author of the notorious "Psychological Operations in Guerilla Warfare," a CIA how-to manual instructing the Nicaraguan contras in the fine art of terrorism, including bombings, assassinations, and violence directed at noncombatants. It was Clarridge who came up with the bright idea of mining Nicaragua's harbors, which led to the unprecedented condemnation of the U.S. government's actions in the World Court. He was reportedly slated to become a top counterterrorism official in the National Security Council, but was nixed.

He now lives in San Diego, Calif., and pursues a number of business and ideological interests, including Dax Resources Corp., which runs a 24-hour Global Response Center and advertises its facility at kidnap prevention and counterterrorism, noting that "we can also undertake special operations, including technical countermeasures."

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681

Fitzgerald is also in an ongoing investigation/case/scandal involving Perle-Kissinger with the multi-media group Hollinger.

:hi:

My view of it is this: Either they know Fitzgerald can be counted on to keep the drama going and make it appear intense and true to form while coming out with Indictments Lite or he is really going after big fish with a purpose and if the latter case is true and he heads in the direction of Ledeen's role the World will be stood upon its head. I don't take bets on the latter scenario. And perhaps I am wrong and the world would be put back on its feet as it is presently on its head.

[me b zola]

32. "Modern day carpet baggers". It would be enough said,

...but these guys are lethal--by the tens of thousands.

I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!!!!!!!!!

[The Backlash Cometh]

36. John Kerry would have been poison to these people.

If Kerry had been president in 2004, he would have known these names and would have connected the dots without anybody's help. I bet there was election fraud taking place, specifically to make sure Kerry didn't win.

[reality based]

2. Also some discussion by James Moore here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/the-most-important-crimin_b_9183.html

[Pirate Smile]

13. Thanks for that - I've seen it floating around today but I hadn't actually

read it.

I'm to the point where I just want the indictments, etc.

I'm sick of reading tea leaves. I guess, we will find out soon enough.

Thanks again.
:)

[Pirate Smile]

26. After reading the entire thing - WOW - he does a great job of laying it

all out there and connecting the dots, along with clearly stating most of our feelings regarding how our government has been hijacked and we desperately want it back, including with some justice.

[Pirate Smile]

41. Here is some of the important text from the link:

"Fortunately, there are good signs. Fitzgerald has reportedly asked for a copy of the Italian government's investigation into the break-in of the Niger embassy in Rome and the source of the forged documents. The blatantly fake papers, which purported to show that Saddam Hussein had cut a deal to get yellowcake uranium from Niger, turned up after a December 2001 meeting in Rome involving neo-con Michael Ledeen, Larry Franklin, Harold Rhodes, and Niccolo Pollari, the head of Italy's intelligence agency SISMI, and Antonio Martino, the Italian defense minister.

If Fitzgerald is examining the possibility that Ledeen was executing a plan to help his friend Karl Rove build a case for invading Iraq? Ledeen has long ties to Italian intelligence agency operatives and has spanned the globe to bring the world the constant variety of what he calls "creative destruction" to build democracies. He makes the other neo-cons appear passive. He brought the Reagan administration together with the Iranian arms dealer who dragged the country through Iran-Contra and shares with his close friend Karl Rove a personal obsession with Machiavelli. Ledeen, who is almost rabidly anti-Arab, famously told the Washington Post that Karl Rove told him, "Any time you have a good idea, tell me."

The federal grand jury has to at least consider whether Ledeen called Rove with an idea to use his contacts with the Italian CIA to hatch a plan to create the rationale for war. Ledeen told radio interviewer Ian Masters and his producer Louis Vandenberg, "I have absolutely no connection to the Niger documents, have never even seen them. I did not work on them, never handled them, know virtually nothing about them, don't think I ever wrote or said anything about the subject." It is strictly coincidence then that some months after he and his neo-con consorts and Italian intelligence officers met in Rome that the Niger embassy was illegally entered and nothing was stolen other than letterhead and seals. And equally coincident that forged papers under those letterheads were slipped to Elisabetta Burba, a writer for an Italian glossy owned by Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's prime minister, and a backer of the Bush invasion scheme. Unfortunately for the pro-war neo-cons, even an Italian tabloid would not publish the fake documents and turned them over to the CIA and US government in Rome.

The other American attendees at Ledeen's Roman Holiday are also worthy of scrutiny. Larry Franklin was recently arrested for leaking classified US government information to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Ledeen sprang quickly to his defense but Franklin faces prosecution next year and is most probably cooperating with prosecutor Fitzgerald. Harold Rhode, the other American actor in this tragicomic affair, worked the Office of Special Plans (OSP) at the Department of Defense for Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Characterized as a "counter-intelligence shop," OSP simply interpreted intelligence in a manner that fit the need for evidence that Iraq had WMD. If the CIA gathered data that said otherwise, OSP analyzed it differently or ignored the facts and then reported to the vice president precisely what he wanted to hear. Rhode also was the liaison between Ahmed Chalabi, the convicted embezzler the Bush administration was using to feed information to them and Judy Miller about the distortions and lies required to fuel the rush to war. "

edit to add - perhaps when Flavia said "interviewed" (which is what I thought she said) she was just referring to the fact that he requested and reviewed the Italian government's unredacted investigation.

I don't know - either way, it is good news.

[Pirate Smile]

45. Here is an oldie but a goodie from Lawrence O'Donnell that is alway

good to refresh our memories about:

07.07.2005 Lawrence O'Donnell

The One Very Good Reason Karl Rove Might Be Indicted

-snip-
In February, Circuit Judge David Tatel joined his colleagues' order to Cooper and Miller despite his own, very lonely finding that indeed there is a federal privilege for reporters that can shield them from being compelled to testify to grand juries and give up sources. He based his finding on Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence, which authorizes federal courts to develop new privileges "in the light of reason and experience." Tatel actually found that reason and experience "support recognition of a privilege for reporters' confidential sources." But Tatel still ordered Cooper and Miller to testify because he found that the privilege had to give way to "the gravity of the suspected crime.

Judge Tatel's opinion has eight blank pages in the middle of it where he discusses the secret information the prosecutor has supplied only to the judges to convince them that the testimony he is demanding is worth sending reporters to jail to get. The gravity of the suspected crime is presumably very well developed in those redacted pages. Later, Tatel refers to "having carefully scrutinized (the prosecutor's) voluminous classified filings."

Some of us have theorized that the prosecutor may have given up the leak case in favor of a perjury case, but Tatel still refers to it simply as a case "which involves the alleged exposure of a covert agent." Tatel wrote a 41-page opinion in which he seemed eager to make new law -- a federal reporters’ shield law -- but in the end, he couldn't bring himself to do it in this particular case. In his final paragraph, he says he "might have" let Cooper and Miller off the hook "were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security."

Tatel’s colleagues are at least as impressed with the prosecutor’s secret filings as he is. One simply said "Special Counsel's showing decides the case."

All the judges who have seen the prosecutor's secret evidence firmly believe he is pursuing a very serious crime, and they have done everything they can to help him get an indictment.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lawrence-odonnell/the-one-very-good-reason-_b_3769.html

[reality based]

48. Interesting tie back to an Iran-Contra actor

For being a charter Axis of Evil member, Iran sure seems to get a break whenever Republicans are in power.

[crispini]

4. I'd seen the one before saying that he requested the documents.

But I had not seen any report before saying that he had INTERVIEWED the Italians. That's new.

[lovuian]

6. Chalibi the Double Agent for IRAN who has not been arrested

and is STILL ALIVE!!! Why doesn't Fitzgerald call him to testify???

[Roland99]

10. I think Fitz would subpoena Elvis and Hoffa.

This guy is nothing but thorough.

[goforit]

11. Well, give the guy some credit, Chalabi will have his day.

[goforit]

8. OMG!! "BULLDOG", no kidding and I love this guy!!!!

[lovuian]

12. Maybe Fitz asked about Barbara Olsen the Italian Lira forgery

lady since he was talking about forgeries!!! HEE HEE HEE!!!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

9. This is becoming more interesting than any mystery novel

If Fitzgerald starts subpoenaing documents related to the alleged suicide deaths of John K. Kokal of the State Department or David Kelly, then I'll start beginning to think we are soon going to be living in one of the most historically significant times in American history.

[hang a left]

17. What was the timing of Kokal pushing himself off that building?

Was that 2003?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

21. November, 2003 - about 4 months after David Kelly was found dead

[hang a left]

24. That would have been within a month of the start of the Plame

investigation. And the Aipac investigation had been ongoing for about 1 and half years. I think you may be onto something. Fitzgerald may know . I betcha a dollar he empanels a new grand jury and keeps going.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

25. Unfortunately, I'm not on to anything - Kokal's death was blacked out

by the media. Try googling John J. Kokal and you'll find just a few websites all referencing one or two articles published about his death. After that, there's nothing, absolutely nothing. There was barely a mention of it and not even an obituary in the Washington papers. Kokal was working in the very section of the State Department dealing with the WMD issue and the middle east. I don't even think I ever saw mention of an official police investigation into his death or even an interview with his widow in the media. The complete lack of information regarding Kokal's death is something I have found very troubling, whether or not suicide was the actual cause of death.

[lovuian]

28. Bingo!!! Thats about right the guy who took off his shoes before

he jumped!!!

Ya Fitzgerald is on it I bet!!! One needs to find these assasins!!!

I know they used the Mafia to assasinate the casino owner in Abrahamoff case!!!

[rumpel]

14. It is time to read Sy Hersch again...who was that "businessman" who gave

the Italian reporter the documents....

:evilgrin:

[flyarm]

15. this was posted all morning on here..but

its good for the nighties to see it!!

fly

[cry baby]

16. Somebody help me...if Fitz finds out that they were forgeries...

What does that mean? Does he bring charges on that? And who will he probably charge if he gets to charge someone?

Thanks in advance!!

[Just Me]

34. That evidence would tend to prove a conspiracy to defraud,....

,...members of Congress (and the American people) especially since the forgeries were identified PRIOR to the many assertions made by this administration re yellowcake and nuclear capabilities (which did not exist). I am sure there are many other crimes involving risk to national security, skimming around treason and war crimes.

As to the "forger",...:shrug:,...s/he he would be guilty of numerous charges in addition to outright fraud.

If Fitzgerald has broadened his investigation to include those forged documents, the whole administration is culpable in intentionally misrepresenting the case for a war that was illegal under U.S. and international law.

We're talking war crimes defined by our own laws. :wow:

[cry baby]

35. What do you think, Just Me, do you think there will be indictments

in regards to the Niger forgeries? Conspiracy to defraud seems so big...and we have seen this admin slide on so many things already...what is your guess?

Thank you for a clear explanation!

[Just Me]

42. I am confident there will be indictments,...

,...however, I am also fairly certain that Fitz will avoid allowing this matter to become so complex as to be unmanageable and/or too confusing for lay people.

There is a possibility that, evidence of additional criminal activities revealed in this investigation will lead to additional prosecutorial activities.

I must say that, I am extraordinarily impressed that Fitz appears to, in fact, be tracking the facts so thoroughly. His activities give me greater confidence that the corruption and criminality of the neoconsters will be brought to some form of justice.

[cry baby]

43. Thank you. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for justice. nt

[JaneGat]

19. Guardian (July): a "parallel" Niger docs investigation

<snip>
"Leaking the identity of an undercover agent is a serious crime under US law, but prosecutors would have to prove that the leaker was aware of the agent's covert status. However, the investigation, led by federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, is reported also to be investigating possible charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.

Meanwhile, a parallel investigation is under way into who forged the Niger documents. They are known to have been passed to an Italian journalist by a former Italian defence intelligence officer, Rocco Martino, in October 2002, but their origins have remained a mystery. Mr Martino has insisted to the Italian press that he was "a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me", but has not specified who that might be.

A source familiar with the inquiry said investigators were examining whether former US intelligence agents may have been involved in possible collaboration with Iraqi exiles determined to prove that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear programme."

© Guardian Newspapers Limited http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1534652,00.html

[callady]

20. Dick Cheney's Covert Action

Despite repeated attempts by the Italian intelligence service to help us cook the books, the senior CIA intelligence analysts resisted the administration’s effort to sell the bogus notion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Niger. Even in the much-maligned October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the entire intelligence community remained split on the reliability of the Iraq/Niger claim. During briefings subsequent to the publication of the NIE, senior CIA officials repeatedly debunked the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium. They also dismissed as unreliable reports from Great Britain, which also were derived from the faulty Italian intelligence reports.

It is now clear that Italy’s intelligence service, SISME, had a hand in producing the forged documents delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in early October 2003 that purported to show a deal with Niger to buy uranium. Many in the intelligence community are convinced that a prominent neocon with longstanding ties to SISME played a role in the forgery. The truth of that proposition remains to be proven. This much is certain: Either SISME or someone with ties to SISME helped forge and circulate those documents, which some tried to use to bolster the case to go to war with Iraq.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20051019/dick_cheneys_covert_action.php

[journalist3072]

22. Are we even able to..

wrap our heads around just how HUGE this is?

Fitzgerald is NOT playing. He's looking at some incredibly serious stuff here. It almost boggles my mind.

[Stephanie]

31. yes, and yet think - he's only at the tip of the iceberg

He's only going back to 2003. We've been delving into BushCO evil deeds since the 2000 campaign. We know a lot worse than forged documents.

[symbolman]

50. He's going back further than 2003

the Ledeen Meeting in Rome occurred in Dec of 2001, Franklin, Rhode, Feith, he HEad of the SISMI was there, as well as the Italian forger from a Rogue offshoot of the SISMI Propaganda DU I believe..

ALso the Letter heads were stolen in 2000 about the time Bush was being sworn in..

Remember, Rove was in Charge of Ledeen at that point, and also recall that ROve broke into Dixon's office in Chicago and STOLE Letterheads, which he used to make invitations to hand out all over the Red Light District of Chicago and the soup kitchens..

this was back when Rove was a College Republican - he's a one trick pony, does the same crap over and over, each time gaining more power which he uses to pull the same crap again..

I think the cycle is about to be broken by Fitz - my HERO :)

[Sydnie]

23. I am speechless - but very hopeful

Hubris should have been one of the seven deadly sins!

[TahitiNut]

27. "All three had business interests with Chalabi."

Let's drag out that photo of Chalabi sitting with Pickles for the SOTU. It's another smoking gun.

[Catrina]

29. Or maybe one of Chalabi and Judith Miller

along with Larry Johnson, planning a fundraiser for 'Nation A'?? Justin Raimondo has an article on his site (can't google right now but I read it earlier) in which he says that Chalabi, Judy and Franklin had joined forces to raise funds for a country called 'Nation A'.

Actually, Judith Miller's name is not in the material he's talking about, but it surely sounds like her, as described.

The twists and turns and many, many 'dots' that have to be connected to follow this story, is mind-blowing.

From a stolen election, to 9/11 (and btw, an above article says the breakin to the Niger Embassy was BEFORE 9/11, when the letterhead, later used in the forgeries, was taken. How did they know they would need those forged documents way before 9/11? Could this mean they KNEW 9/11 was going to happen, several months before it did? I believe that information is in the OP.

[chat_noir]

39. Pickles and Chalabi

photo caption: "Deep infiltration: Ahmad Chalabi seated behind the First Lady at the 2004 State of the Union Address."


http://sirocco.blogsome.com/2005/07/

[Nothing Without Hope]

30. Hallelujiah!!!!!! This is what I've been hoping for - go to the forgeries

themselves and unravel the plan at its heart and inception.

Treason and lies, lies and treason.

Recommended.

[The Backlash Cometh]

33. I've only read two paragraphs, but I already have two observations:

(1) The letter originated in FRANCE. So you know that the right-wingers are going to take this to the bank. That the letter-writer was a Mossad double-agent and not a frenchman is going to be secondary.

(2) Why is George Bush I's name coming up in relation to the Iran-Contra mess? I thought he wasn't in the loop. If he was, why didn't he face charges?

[phiddle]

37. He merely SAID he wasn't in the loop.

The prosecutor, Lawrence Walsh was convinced that Bush was, based on the fact that Donald Gregg, Bush's chief of staff for national security affairs, was receiving daily updates on the contra situation. The one person who would have fingered Bush (Caspar Weinberger) was pardoned by Bush on the eve of his testimony in December of '92. Walsh's book "Firewall" laid out the strategy to insulate Reagan and Bush from charges by having underlings take the fall.

[Neil Lisst]

38. It is one thing Junior learned from daddy Bush ...

Junior will pardon people before they testify in open court.

I think Bush will try to bogart past this by pardoning a bunch of people.

[The Backlash Cometh]

40. Do you think the presidential papers he tried to seal may have

revealed Bush I's involvement in Iran-Contra? Once Bush is out of office, can we get access to them and review them?

Is it possible that the Bush family has been behind one of the worse conspiracys in American history?

[countryjake]

46. Bingo!

I think any of that sort of evidence surely has been destroyed, long ago. They're just too good at covering their ass...they were while they were doing it. Evidenced by Bush Sr. winning the presidency, which felt so similar to that sick feeling we all got last Fall...so many of us knew that both Reagan and Bush Sr. had to know what had gone on under their noses, especially considering George H.W's former role in the government.

[The Backlash Cometh]

47. Can you remember the election when Bill won in 92?

I guess it was a clean election, or perhaps, they still hadn't thought about stealing the election?

[mzmolly]

44. Wow. Could Fitzmas be bigger and better then we imagined?

[lovuian]

49. Chalabi associates theres another confirmation!!!

maybe this is the connection to Chalibi!!! Judith Miller's buddy!!!