Would someone help me out with understanding something re: Neocon Spy saga

[Dover]

Trying to understand why the current crackdown on the Neocons is only now getting real play in the media. The struggle within the DOD, State Dept. and the Pentagon over M.E. policy was well known by insiders and the media, where it occassionally leaked out. Perhaps proof of these backchannel meetings...or rather, what they produced... which circumvented approved U.S. policy has not been immediately available....until fairly recently.

For instance, this article is a year old:


August 8, 2003 02:30 PM

Looks like Rummy needs to clean house:

Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials.

At least two Pentagon officials (Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin) working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.

The senior official and another administration source who confirmed that the meetings had taken place said that the ultimate policy objective of Feith and a group of neo-conservatives civilians inside the Pentagon is regime change in Iran.

He confirmed that Secretary of State Colin Powell complained directly to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld several days ago about Feith's policy shop conducting missions that countered U.S. policy.

http://www.jimgilliam.com/2003/08/inside_rummys_office_part_2.php

*******


Now that clandestine meeting in Rome between Ledeen, Rhode, Franklin, the Italians and the Iranians is being connected with the emergence of the forged Niger documents which were passed off at about that time. That direct connection is potentially damning evidence implicating the neocons.

Here are some excerpted portions of recent articles that one DUer posted:

In late 2001, the SISMI (Italian military intelligence service), officer brought the Niger Embassy employee a packet of documents --- those later identified as forgeries --- and instructed her to slip them in with the other documents she was providing to the ‘security consultant’ on an on-going basis.

She mixed those documents in with authentic documents which she had access to in the course of her work at the embassy. She then passed those documents --- again, a mix of authentic and forged ones --- to the ‘security consultant’."

<...> (earlier)

"What’s long been known about the Niger documents is that an Italian ‘security consultant’ tried to sell them to an Italian journalist named Elisabetta Burba. Burba’s editor at Panorama, in turn, instructed her to take them to the US Embassy in Rome. That is how they came into the hands of the American government."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_08_01.php#003235


"The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting. <...> Also in attendance was Ghorbanifar and a number of other Iranians. <...> The Washington Monthly has also learned from U.S. government sources that Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html

Connect the dots.

I don't quite get where they are going to take all this. As I recall, those documents were dismissed as unreliable by our intelligence agencies prior to their introduction as evidence to the U.N. (that embarrassing presentation by Powell explaining Iraq's apparent intentions to develop nuclear capability).
EVERYONE knew the whole rationale put forth by the neocons for going into Iraq was a sham back then.
So I don't fully understand why this is just now coming out, unless the CIA/FBI have been trying to wrap up loose ends before coming down on them all.......or have waited to drop this bomb more publicly when it would have the greatest impact on the elections......OR if they are attempting to thwart an imminent attack on Iran.

OR all of the above.....none of the above?

Help me out here.....

[spotbird]

1. What play in the media?

There is a story or two in the press, but Scott Peterson is still the headliner.

[lancdem]

3. Well, it made the front page of my Sunday paper

[NoMoreMrNiceGuy]

4. Thats the same thing I was thinking.

I scanned the news channels today and nothing...a big fat zero. Whats more frustrating is there seems to be nothing we can do about. Writing all the news outlets will get you no where. Only 60 minutes has shown all the dirt on this admin....well not all the dirt but they do what they can.

[lancdem]

2. I just asked Wayne Madsen that same question via email

he said it was probably leaked by people at the CIA or FBI who are pissed at Bush. And more is likely on the way.

[JerseygirlCT]

7. OT, but hey, are you a fummer? Me too!

Just noticed your sig line and name (duh.)

Graduated a zillion years ago, though... ('82)

Edited to add the "OT" warning...

[enough]

5. Read Juan Cole's article posted today (Aug. 29)

Ties it all together. There's too much there to summarize. A must read for anyone interested in any of this.

http://www.juancole.com/

And while you're at it, read the Aug. 28 entry as well.

[Dover]

8. That IS a great piece...........but it just leaves me with MORE questions!

It does seem that perhaps all my assumptions about WHY NOW are probably accurate then with emphasis on the probability that
the neocons will be attempting to invade Iran any minute and this might serve to stop it or expose it first.

But what is not clear is what role Bush has played in this. Has he been kept in the dark for the most part? Is his father opposed to this turn of events? Why has the media (who surely must know much of this information) sided with the neocons and refused to make this front page news? Have they been infiltrated that deeply and broadly?

Which corporations are supporting the neocons/Likud? MOST of them? WHO is holding the lid on this clear departure from U.S. policy? Is our leadership in the military aware they are working (and dieing) for the Likud?

[MGKrebs]

6. I'll take a stab at it.

A possible scenario would go like this:

The Neocons needed a reason to attack Iraq and/or Iran (and I expect Syria too). 9/11 was a good base to start from, but there really wasn't a connection to any of those countries, and we weren't going to attack Saudi. Perhaps it was very much like Iran/Contra, where everybody knew what Ronnie Raygun wanted, but also knew that he couldn't give explicit orders to DO it, since that would have been, well, illegal. Feith, Franklin, and Rhode take it upon themselves to give Bush* the evidence he needs to make his dream come true.

They go to Rome, meet with the Italian intelligence service and Israeli intelligence. Somebody creates the faked Niger documents (and who knows what else), which makes it's way back to the CIA through legitimate channels.

At this point, the CIA may suspect, or even know, that some of this intel is bullshit, and when they provide their reports to the Executive branch, they say so. But by then, we've already got the Office of Special Plans set up, and those guys remove all of the 'buts', 'maybe's', and ' possiblies' from the reports before they are passed on the the Shrubster. Oh, and then you get somebody like Chalabi or Gorbhanifar to corroborate the fake data to make it seem more legitimate.

And the reason it's getting any kind of play right now is because it is a spy hunt. Kinda sexy. If or when the rest of this starts coming out, peoples eyes just may start to glaze over. We shall see. (And now we've got the Halliburton/Iran story to add in to the mix.)

Hope that helps.

[finecraft]

9. I want to know where Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin were

during the Winter of 2000 and the Spring/Summer of 2001. The Niger embassy In Rome was broken into during January of 2001. Stationary and official seals were stolen during the break in. Intelligence sources speculate that the forged Niger uranium documents were created sometime during the summer of 2001. Rhode and Franklin seem to like visiting Rome a lot, so I'm wondering if they were there anytime between December 2000 and July of 2001......sometime before 9/11. Seems strange the documents that purported to show that Iraq was trying to purchase Uranium, a charge that was one of the foundations of bush's wmd claims against Saddam, are thought to have been created BEFORE 9/11 and stranger still that the initial break in of the embassy, where the materials to prepare the forgeries was obtained, happened 6 months BEFORE 9/11.

Seems to me, based on the break in date and when the fake documents were created:
1. someone knew that 9/11 was going to happen and documents would have to be created to make substantiate a case to go after Iraq on a charge that they were trying to aquire WMD material, or
2. they already knew a war with Iraq was set to go, and the documents were needed to substantiate a pre-selected reason they had already agreed upon to invade Iraq

Paul O'Neill, in his book, says that from his first NSC meeting on February 1, 2001, there was talk about regime change in Iraq. This meeting was AFTER the January break in at the Niger embassy in Rome, when the material was stolen to create the forged documents.

Someone already had a plan in motion before January of 2001. Who was it, and were Rhode and Franklin involved?

[RainDog]

10. energy policy task force

didn't Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club get a few documents released from the Energy Policy Task force that showed Cheney and Ken Lay and other oil-i-crats dividing up Iraq--also before 9-11.

9-11 obviously gave them the pretext for plans that were already in place.

whether or not they were complicit or allowed 9-11 is the question of this era, and I wonder if it will ever be definitively answered.

Rumsfield taking over Norad in July of 01, as Gail Sheehy reported in the L.A. Times, was another one of those moments that made me wonder...especially when he couldn't be found while the attacks were underway because he was in a meeting with Wolfowitz...and, apparently, no one in his office knew this?

interesting, though, about the Niger break in. First I've heard of it. Do you have a link or source?

[finecraft]

11. Here's a site with a pretty good timeline and links

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq_africa-uranium_allegation

January 2, 2001
The Italian police discover that the Niger Embassy in Rome has been ransacked. It appears that the people involved in the break-in searched through the embassy's documents and files. In 2003, Italian investigators will suspect that this incident is related to a collection of forged documents obtained by an Italian journalist in October 2002 which play a significant role in US allegations that Saddam Hussein attempted to obtain uranium oxide from Niger between 1999 and 2001 (see Early October 2002).

Josh Marshall at www.talkingpointsmemo.com also has some good information on the break in----during which a watch and 2 bottles of perfume was also stolen along with the seals and paper.

[RainDog]

12. thanks!

I look forward to getting a copy of Paul's book.

This whole thing stinks. I cannot believe that CNN, for instance, has not kept asking questions about all of these issues, that NO ONE at CNN is willing to do any sort of investigative reporting about anything that actually matters for American democracy.

I stopped watching CNN, for the most part, long ago because they've replaced reporting on almost anything substantial with tabloid stories like the Peterson trial.

but the Niger Embassy break in in Rome seems to be a very important point of question considering Italian intel's part in the fake Niger docs.

Since Marshall reported on it, maybe we'll see it again in the current story on the OSP.

To me, it's one of the most explosive questions concerning this story.

[finecraft]

13. You're Welcome!

You've hit the nail on the head with your assessment of today's media. I can remember when the Watergate stuff was going on, and I can't even fathom how our media today would handle something like that. With all the information coming out now about the OSP, I can't help but wonder how far these people have gone in setting up their planned invasion of Iran. I read an article overseas a few days ago that said US warplanes have already violated Iranian airspace on a couple of occasions, but have we heard anything about it over here? Nada...Zip. Juan Cole wrote in his article today that the OSP group seemed to have been gearing up for some sort of congressional vote on a war resolution on Iran sometime early in 2005. Even if Kerry wins, have they already set some sort of plan in motion that can't be stopped? Judging from the dates on the Niger set-up, I bet they have been working overtime to get something in place. This whole thing is deeply disturbing, and it frustrates me that nobody is asking any questions. The media seems to have bought the administration's story that"Franklin is just a mid level Pentagon analyst that doesn't have any real control or oversight of foreign policy" bull. If any member of the press would have half a brain, they would see that there is much more to this story.