Arrest of Pentagon Official May Help Unravel Neo-Conservative Cabal

[eleny]

More stuff about Ledeen in here as well as the forged Italian documents and how this may affect Cheney. No wonder Cheney is possibly suffering from the affects of GERD.

From The Executive Intelligence Review

"Pentagon Iran desk officer and neo-con patsy Larry Franklin was arrested on May 4, on charges that he passed classified information based upon secret Pentagon documents to two American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) officials in June 2003...

In addition, one source emphasized the importance of Franklin's December 2001 trip to Rome, accompanied by Rhode and Michael Ledeen. The trip centered around a meeting with former Iran-Contra swindler Manucher Ghorbanifar, whom Ledeen sought to reactivate as a Pentagon channel to the Iranian government, and as a source on activities inside Iraq and Afghanistan. The Rome trip coincided with the surfacing of the forged Niger government documents, falsely charging that Saddam Hussein was seeking large quantities of yellow cake uranium from the African nation.

Franklin was arrested on a criminal complaint, even as a grand jury continues to consider his case. He is widely considered to be providing information to prosecutors. A closer look at his associations with the neo-con crowd shows that by targetting him, FBI officials might be able to unravel a whole skein of wrongdoing, which could help bring down the inner circle linked to Vice President Dick Cheney."
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2005/3219franklin_arrest.html

[JDPriestly]

1. I do not trust the larouche source.

Has anyone else reported this?

[welshTerrier2]

4. good point ...

the story sounds reasonably credible; larouche as a source is not ...

"fixing the facts around the policy" would clearly include the bogus Niger memo ...

[eleny]

6. I'm sorry about the Larouche link without a disclaimer

The Larouche people, along with others more reputable, seem to be focusing on this Ledeen guy who's grabbed my attention today. I'll definitely look for other articles relating to this. Thanks for pointing it out.

[welshTerrier2]

9. a little help from your friends ...

try this DU thread from last April for starters: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3447316#3451236

if you google "ledeen italian niger uranium" you'll get tons of links ...

[eleny]

11. Thanks - the DU road leads back to Ledeen again and again

[welshTerrier2]

14. Deep Throat: you're missing the "overall"

in the movie "All the President's Men", Deep Throat kept getting frustrated with Woodward because he kept focussing on the details ... Segretti did this and Chapin said that ... he repeatedly said to Woodward: "you're missing the "overall"" ...

that's kind of how i see all this talk about Rove getting fired or will they arrest Libby or should "Judy" get a "get out of jail free card" ... these are distractions from the treasonous abuses of our government by the WH ...

THE STORY is the fabrication of evidence ("fixing the evidence around the policy") leading up to the invasion of Iraq and the intimidation of those who refused to go along with it ...

The DSM, Plamegate, the Niger memo, the "oops, Saddam didn't have any WMD", the intimidation of the press and the CIA, Powell's little dog and pony show at the UN ... all of it boils down to one very simple truth: bush and the neo-cons lied to the American people to justify a war ... if you like cliches, "bush lied and soldiers died" ...

the argument is NOT about whether we should have invaded Iraq or we shouldn't have ... the argument is not about "getting Rove" or sticking it to Judy Miller, the White House's mouthpiece in the press ... our culture is really poisoned by "personality news" ...

THE STORY is the total breakdown of our systems of checks and balances ... our institutions did not protect us from the lies and propaganda the neo-cons put out to justify a war ... the damage to our country (and the people of Iraq) has been, and will continue to be, immeasurable ... and thus far, the great cover-up has held ...

John Dean has called the neo-con crimes "worse than watergate" ... let's hope the punishments handed down are more severe ...

[eleny]

16. Unlike Watergate....

...people here are working backwards from the WH this time around. We have a jump start because some of the cast of characters populated the Reagan and Bush administrations.

[welshTerrier2]

17. that's true ...

the ties to the Iran contra crowd are especially damning ...

[eleny]

20. Thisis a real pack of bulldogs, isn't it.

Decade after decade, they keep plugging along.

[Emit]

22. Someone else here at DU said the other day about Bush & Co.

Just recently: They're the extension of the Nixon/Reagan/Bush/Bush admin...which was a subsidiary of the Barry Goldwater/Curtis LeMay nuts of 1964.

Or something like that. This is so true!

[hootinholler]

26. Rove was a young republican working for Team Nixon in '72

Quite a few of the PNAC were.

-Hoot

[eleny]

28. Emit - did you see this article?

Rove-gate: Who Leaked to the Leakers? This isn't about Karl Rove by Justin Raimondo
"This isn't about Rove.
It's about a cabal of war hawks inside the administration who passed on this information to others without telling them about Plame-Wilson's deep cover status, perhaps suggesting that she was just an analyst working at a desk rather than a covert operative involved in a vitally important overseas operation, the knowledge of which was highly compartmentalized and only dispensed on a need-to-know basis. When Rove and his shills blabbed to reporters and anyone who would listen, they didn't realize that they were aiding and abetting an elaborate ploy to stick it to the CIA."
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/

It was posted here at DU this morning. To give props:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4116940&mesg_id=4116940

[Emit]

29. Funny you should mention that article

I originally posted it a couple of days ago, and it was temporarily locked by the mods for being an unreliable source. Some good folks came to my rescue, and it was unlocked and then sunk like an old ship. It's been posted now, that I've seen since then, about four times between this forum and the General Discussion forum.

Anyway, yes, I think it connects the dots well, although I do not think his depiction of Rove in the intro is accurate (I think he lets off Rove too easily), and I think he's left some stuff out ( the kind of stuff you've been finding, for example).

But, all in all, it's right along the lines of what I, and obviously you, have been trying to piece together over the last couple of days, and as I said in my original post when I posted the story, it reads like a le Carre spy novel!

[eleny]

31. "like a le Carre spy novel!"

I had not seen that you posted that article. I'm so glad it turned up again. Like Mark Rich, he wants to pull back from the dots since the picture has emerged. Although DU has been there from the beginning. ;)

WelshTerrier just posted about The Day of the Jackal a few minutes ago. Your minds are thinking alike!

Btw, if you can listen to streaming audio, Nate Clay on WLS out of Chicago has a great program tonight. He's trying to educate his audience on the historical relationship between Christianity and Islam over the centuries. Mainly focusing on a book titled The Cross and the Crescent. A sort of history lesson and at this point, a palette cleanser.
http://www.wlsam.com/listenlive.asp The Real Player seems to be working better than Windows Media.

[Emit]

33. Yeah, I was trying to find a link b/w Plame, Bolton & Cheney

"Could this be how Bolton and Cheney fit into Plame story?...
...It reads like a le Carre spy novel! And I feel like I just watched the trailer for the movie."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1930463

Anyway, I'm glad it resurfaced. We need to be looking at the big picture.

Hey, thanks for the link to Nate Clay--listening now, as I have had several heated discussions with some far-right fanatics about Islam vs. Christianity recently, and have been researching that a bit, too. (Most of these fanatics I'm dealing with want to nuke all the major cities in the Middle East!) So, I could use a history lesson here. What, are you reading my mind! :D

[eleny]

36. No mind reading

We were talking about Nate in another thread, so I figured to mention him.

Looks like he went and spoke well of some right winger regarding the democracy in the middle east and that riled up some DUERS, who I agree with. But he's also adamantly against the war and neocons. I think he's in the process of educating himself on all this. He's a journalist and historian who most interested in writing about the diaspora. This glitch agreeing with some winger was a side step off reality. Hopefully he'll figure it out soon.

[Emit]

38. Kick and thanks

I gathered that from listening--first time I've listened to him. I think they were talking about Daniel Pipes?

In the end, Nate seemed to make his position clear, IMO. It was worth listening to to gain better insight. Nothing is ever black and white.

[wli]

43. and Nixon administration

[peacetalksforall]

40. terrier - you are exacly right...additionally, the exposure was also

to halt CIA investigations into wmd trafficking.

Fixing the war was number 1 because it was the most urgent.
Stopping the investigation was number 2 because they probably felt they had a little time on this and could control the press.
Revenge on the Wilson's was number 3.

We are now wasting too many words on Rove and Libby.

The overall was 'arranging' the war.

The war is why they stole all the elections and it looks like it was the reason behind 9-11.

[oxbow]

41. Exactly! I wish I could nominate posts

All these little skirmishes don't mean a thing. It's about Iraq. It's about thousands of people who are six feet under because a lie right now. Never let us forget that!

[eleny]

10. Here's a DOJ site with the pdf of Franklin's arrest

http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/press_room/press_releases/2005_4008_1_franklinpr050405.pdf

As for the Larouche speculations about what exact tunes Franklin could sing to implicate those who surround Cheney - who knows. But we do know that Franklin has close connections to Ledeen and Ledeen is Rove's closest foreign affairs adviser. Franklin accompanied Ledeen on a trip to Italy. That timing of that trip coincided with the surfacing of the forged Italian documents.

Here is an article by Joshua Marshall that talks about the trip to Italy
"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."
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshall.html


The "War and Piece" blog of Laura Rozen from 2004 led me to the article she co-wrote with Marshall that I referenced above.
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001070.html

Here is an article by Juan Cole about AIPAC that talks about Franklin and Ledeen as well as a host of others.
" AIPAC's Overt and Covert Ops"

"Franklin moved over to the Pentagon from DIA, where he became the Iran expert, working for Bill Luti and Undersecretary of Defense for Planning, Douglas Feith. He was the "go-to" person on Iran for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and for Feith. This situation is pretty tragic, since Franklin is not a real Iranist. His main brief appears to have been to find ways to push a policy of overthrowing its government (apparently once Iraq had been taken care of). This project has been pushed by the shadowy eminence grise Michael Ledeen for many years, and Franklin coordinated with Ledeen in some way."
http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=3467

[Al-CIAda]

21. Larry Franklin spy probe

Cloak and Swagger
The Larry Franklin spy probe reveals an escalating fight over control of Iran policy.

By Laura Rozen and Jason Vest
Issue Date: 11.02.04
--
At the time the CBS report aired in late August -- incidentally, on the Friday evening before the opening of the Republican national convention -- custody of the Franklin investigation was being transferred from the head of the FBI counterintelligence unit, David Szady, to U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty, a Bush appointee, in Alexandria, Virginia, as the case moved to the grand-jury phase.

And then, in mid-September, news of the Franklin investigation went dark.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=8764

---

Disinfopedia-
Larry Franklin
From Disinfopedia


Lawrence (Larry) Franklin is an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency who works in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. He reports directly to Feith's deputy, William Luti and specializes in Iranian policy issues. <1>

Allegations of Espionage

On August 29th 2004, it was reported that Franklin is under investigation for allegedly spying for the state of Israel <4> (http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20040828_1405.html) <5> (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1093674510956) <6> (http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040828-020807-9421r.htm). According to an article in Haaretz, Franklin is not Jewish himself <7> (http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/470390.html).

Franklin allegedley offered highly classified draft documents regarding the United States policy towards Iran to two members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The two AIPAC Iran analysts, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, have retained a well known criminal defense attorney, Abbe Lowell, for counsel.<8> (http://daily.nysun.com/Repository/getmailfiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=NYS/2004/09/02&ID=Ar01300)

Attorney General John Ashcroft assigned highly partisan Republican U.S. Attorney Paul McNulty to the espionage case. Charges of espionage were expected to be downgraded to charges of mishandling classified information.

Franklin's security clearance was revoked in June 2004.


Secret Meetings with Iran-Contra Arms Dealers

Beginning in 2001, Franklin and Harold Rhode (Feith's top specialist on the Middle East) held secret meetings in Rome with Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. These meetings were arranged by longtime Republican operative Michael Ledeen.

The Washington Monthly (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0410.marshallrozen.html) claimed the intent of these meetings was clear: "regime change" in Iran:

"The DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a "regime change" agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself."

"According to U.S. government sources, both the State Department and the CIA eventually brought the matter to the attention of the White House -- specifically, to Condoleezza Rice's chief deputy on the National Security Council, Stephen J. Hadley...Hadley sent word to the officials in Feith's office and to Ledeen to cease all such activities.

An anonymous senior administration official quoted by the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service (http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=94701) said that the immediate objective of the Pentagon hawks appeared to be to "antagonise Iran so that they get frustrated and then by their reactions harden U.S. policy against them."

http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Larry_Franklin
---
FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case
(CBS) CBS News has learned that the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

60 Minutes Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports the FBI believes it has "solid" evidence that the suspected mole supplied Israel with classified materials that include secret White House policy deliberations on Iran.

At the heart of the investigation are two people who work at The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/08/27/eveningnews/main639143.shtml

----

Analysis: More Being Learned About Larry Franklin, Suspected Spy For Israel
Morning Edition: September 3, 2004

Chalabi Linked to Pentagon Leak Probe
STEVE INSKEEP, host:
Now in this country, we're learning more about a suspected spy for Israel at the Pentagon. Since word leaked out about him, we've learned the man's name, Larry Franklin, and a bit more about his work as a mid-level analyst on the Pentagon's Iran desk. Now there are growing indications that the FBI probe is actually much wider than just Franklin and that it's been going on for at least two years. NPR's Mary Louis Kelly is following all this and has an update on the investigation.

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/transcripts/2004/sep/040903.kelly.html

[starroute]

30. There was a great thread on all this a year ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2128960#2132332

Ledeen, Rhode, the Italians -- lots of good stuff there.

[eleny]

32. DU is always way ahead!

Thanks so much.

[Emit]

34. Thanks for that DU link!

Going thru it now--

# 44. scottxyz--
"Who needs Tom Clancy novels when we have such gripping current events? I feel like I get the equivalend of Joan Didion's novel "Democracy" about once a week on DU now. (Joan, if you're out there, the Plame/WMD/Halliburton story would make a great new novel. Just suggesting.)"

How even more prophetic today, it seems! Oh man, you guys were jammin'!

[DoYouEverWonder]

2. Sounds like we've found the missing link

or I'm a monkey's uncle.

[wli]

3. LaRouche; get independent confirmation

[DoYouEverWonder]

5. Here's confirmation of this story from the M$M

The Bush administration sends two Defense officials, Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin, to meet with Iranians in Rome in response to an Iranian government offer to provide information relevant to the war on terrorism. The offer had been back-channeled by the Iranians to the White House through Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian arms trader and a central person in the Iran-Contra affair, who contacted another Iran-Contra figure, Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute. Ledeen passed the information on to his friends in the Defense Department who then relayed the offer to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Hadley expressed no reservations about the proposed meeting and informed George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. According to officials interviewed by the New York Times, the United States Embassy in Rome was not notified of the planned meeting as required by standard interagency procedures. Neither the US embassy nor CIA station chief in Rome learn of the three-day meeting, apparently attended by both Ghorbanifar and Ledeen, until after it happens. When they do catch wind of the meeting, they notify CIA and State Department headquarters in Washington which complain to the administration about how the meetings had been arranged. People and organizations involved: Harold Rhode, Stephen Hadley, Manucher Ghorbanifar, George Tenet, Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Michael Ledeen

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/entity.jsp?id=1521846767-1541

Truth Out link to NY Times article:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/120803F.shtml

[shraby]

7. Ghorbanifar was an illegal arms dealer

the article neglects to mention this. I believe he was involved with the Iran/Contra deal.

[Alien8ed]

8. If Ghorbanifar Is Involved...

It's going to stink in a way that an infinity of dead camels, rotting septically, six deep, and covering the ENTIRE Sahara Desert could not even begin to compete with, because that particular Iranian arms dealer, based in Tunis, was the Monaco BCCI branch bag-man, for the BCCI scandal, Iran-Contra and a half dozen smaller bits of business, which, regardless of how much money was involved - for which, read, "piles," - EACH cost many, many lives.

The list of names involved is a very naughty bunch.

But keep in mind: Ghorbanifar is their front man. Of the lot, he's the one chosen to represent the rest because, compared to them, he still passes a commercial banker's "sniff test".

And that is roughly equal to official damnation stamps, on the other fellows' foreheads, by comparison.

[eleny]

13. I googled

The AtlanticBlog of William Sjostrom, an economist living in Ireland, wrote this on July 3, 2003:
"One of the people attending these meetings was neocon Harold Rhode. Another was Larry Franklin, who currently is in a bit of trouble for allegedly providing Israel and its American agents with American classified material. None other than John Bolton - a guy who we know was involved in the improper removal of UN official Jose Bustani, Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, in order to stop Bustani from sending chemical weapons inspectors to Iraq and thus undermining Bush Administration lies about Iraq's possession of such weapons - was used to begin to spread the yellowcake lies (the State Department tried to hide Bolton's involvement). I think it is fair to say that our knowledge of the neocon conspiracy against Iraq - and the United States - is starting to come together.

All these characters got away with this stuff in order to provoke the attack on Iraq. It would be nice if they were not allowed to get away with it again and cause an attack on Iran based on the literary efforts of Ghorbanifar and his friend Michael Ledeen."
http://www.atlanticblog.com/archives/000932.html

And The Arms Control Wonk writes:
"You’ve likely noticed that the office of Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a letter describing State Department efforts to “conceal unclassified information about the role of John Bolton … in the creation of a fact sheet distributed to the United Nations that falsely claimed Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.”"
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=485

[fob]

24. Holy shit. That is quite a 24th post! Welcome to DU, and with your

gift for descriptions, I'm glad you're on our side.

"an infinity of dead camels, rotting septically, six deep, and covering the ENTIRE Sahara Desert could not even begin to compete with..."

[Emit]

18. Ghorbanifar and Ledeen and Iran-Contra

Ledeen and Ghorbanifar:

This is an article about Ledeen I posted on a similar thread:
<<snip>>
During the Reagan years, he served as an adviser to Secretary of State Alexander Haig and national security adviser Robert McFarlane, in which capacity he helped arrange meetings between the US government and Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, thus becoming a minor figure in the Iran-Contra saga. These days, according to The Washington Post, he talks frequently with Bush strategy guru Karl Rove. In the current debate over "regime change" in Iran, Ledeen is a major voice for an aggressive US policy to overthrow the mullahs, which he sees as but one small part of his vision of an American-led "global democratic revolution."

<<snip>>

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/10/10/man_of_the_world?pg=full

[jmcon007]

25. More info on Ledeen in a Pat Buchanan article.....

excerpts: (the entire article is a good read concerning neocons)

Whose War?
A neoconservative clique seeks to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America’s interest.

by Patrick J. Buchanan

http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html

....The War Party seemed desperate to get a Middle East war going before America had second thoughts. Tom Donnelly of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) called for an immediate invasion of Iraq. “Nor need the attack await the deployment of half a million troops. … he larger challenge will be occupying Iraq after the fighting is over,” he wrote.
Donnelly was echoed by Jonah Goldberg of National Review: “The United States needs to go to war with Iraq because it needs to go to war with someone in the region and Iraq makes the most sense.”
Goldberg endorsed “the Ledeen Doctrine” of ex-Pentagon official Michael Ledeen, which Goldberg described thus: “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show we mean business.” (When the French ambassador in London, at a dinner party, asked why we should risk World War III over some “shitty little country”—meaning Israel—Goldberg’s magazine was not amused.)
Ledeen, however, is less frivolous. In The War Against the Terror Masters, he identifies the exact regimes America must destroy:
First and foremost, we must bring down the terror regimes, beginning with the Big Three: Iran, Iraq, and Syria. And then we have to come to grips with Saudi Arabia. … Once the tyrants in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia have been brought down, we will remain engaged. …We have to ensure the fulfillment of the democratic revolution. … Stability is an unworthy American mission, and a misleading concept to boot. We do not want stability in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and even Saudi Arabia; we want things to change. The real issue is not whether, but how to destabilize.
Rejecting stability as “an unworthy American mission,” Ledeen goes on to define America’s authentic “historic mission”:
Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law. Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity which menaces their traditions (whatever they may be) and shames them for their inability to keep pace. … e must destroy them to advance our historic mission.
Passages like this owe more to Leon Trotsky than to Robert Taft and betray a Jacobin streak in neoconservatism that cannot be reconciled with any concept of true conservatism.
To the Weekly Standard, Ledeen’s enemies list was too restrictive. We must not only declare war on terror networks and states that harbor terrorists, said the Standard, we should launch wars on “any group or government inclined to support or sustain others like them in the future.”
Robert Kagan and William Kristol were giddy with excitement at the prospect of Armageddon. The coming war “is going to spread and engulf a number of countries. … It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid. … t is possible that the demise of some ‘moderate’ Arab regimes may be just round the corner.”
Norman Podhoretz in Commentary even outdid Kristol’s Standard, rhapsodizing that we should embrace a war of civilizations, as it is George W. Bush’s mission “to fight World War IV—the war against militant Islam.” By his count, the regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil (Iraq, Iran, North Korea). At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘“friends” of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority. Bush must reject the “timorous counsels” of the “incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell,” wrote Podhoretz, and “find the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated” Islamic world. As the war against al-Qaeda required that we destroy the Taliban, Podhoretz wrote,

We may willy-nilly find ourselves forced … to topple five or six or seven more tyrannies in the Islamic world (including that other sponsor of terrorism, Yasir Arafat’s Palestinian Authority). I can even the turmoil of this war leading to some new species of an imperial mission for America, whose purpose would be to oversee the emergence of successor governments in the region more amenable to reform and modernization than the despotisms now in place. … I can also envisage the establishment of some kind of American protectorate over the oil fields of Saudi Arabia, as we more and more come to wonder why 7,000 princes should go on being permitted to exert so much leverage over us and everyone else.

A list of the Middle East regimes that Podhoretz, Bennett, Ledeen, Netanyahu, and the Wall Street Journal regard as targets for destruction thus includes Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, and “militant Islam.”

[wli]

42. Pat Buchanan is not who I'd expect to come out with this

These guys must have hit a nerve by doing something or planning to do something even more serious than we've heard of.

[Emit]

35. That's an interesting site you gave the link for

Haven't checked it out much beyond the Ledeen info, yet, but I sure like this idea from that site:

<<snip>>
Reduce the fragmentation of the historical record
The Cooperative Research website seeks to help reduce the fragmentation of the historical record by connecting events whose temporal and spatial relationships are often obscured by a mass of contradicting and disconnected literature, the biases of the media, and the tendency for important past events to be relegated to the annals of forgotten history.

Increase the efficiency of information acquisition
Another objective of the Center is to increase the efficiency of research by reducing the tendency for researchers to duplicate the efforts of others. All too often, researchers—largely because of a fragmented historical record—needlessly spend a significant amount of time and energy bringing material together and establishing connections, even though this work may have already been performed by someone else. By collecting a mass of well-cited “event summaries” and “entity profiles” in a database, with descriptions about the relationships that exist among them, this website should reduce the frequency of such occurrences.

Increase the efficiency of information production
This project is premised on the notion that collaboration in an online “open-content” environment can greatly improve the efficiency and quality of information production in the public sphere as it allows contributors to build upon and improve the work of others in real time as part of a global community. Furthermore, products resulting from such arrangements are inherently more democratic than those of the private sector as they are created by a much broader spectrum of interests and perspectives.

Encourage the transition of oversight responsibilities from governments to civil society on a global scale.
The Center for Cooperative Research calls on people to abandon the widely-held assumption that governments can be relied upon to competently monitor the activities of themselves or the entities with which they have close relations. A major goal of this website is to encourage people to play an active role in scrutinizing the activities of all individuals, groups and institutions that wield significant political and economic power. Our position is that the power of oversight should not rest with governments, but with civil society itself.
<<snip>>

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/aboutsite.jsp#2

[DoYouEverWonder]

37. The site is run by DUer

Paulthompson. It's focus is 9-11 but it is full of invaluable information and everything is based on links to stories in the M$M. The 9-11 was also published in book form last year. The site and Paul both rock. Glad I was able to turn you on to it.

[Imagevision]

12. recommended

[welshTerrier2]

15. Ledeen: in his own words ...

note that this guy was pushing bush to attack Syria, Iran and Lebanon ... he's a real sicko with an "anything goes" morality ...

source: http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200503170753.asp

"If you are victorious," Machiavelli says in his uncompromising way, "people will always judge the means you used to have been appropriate."

Syria and Iran are tottering, and if they fall, the terror network will break into relatively impotent shards that we will be able to destroy. Forget about diplomacy, this is war. Every day we hear about plans to attack the United States directly, and every day more Americans die in Iraq. Is it not too clever by half to resort to cunning diplomacy at such a time? Is it not immoral to leave American fighting men and women in harm’s way an hour longer than is absolutely necessary?

The fires of freedom are burning all over Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. Don't stand back and admire the flames. Push the dictators in, and then cheer as free societies emerge.

[Emit]

19. And he's Rove's only full-time international affairs analyst

according to this:

Middle East

Veteran neo-con advisor moves on Iran
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - When The Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W Bush's closest advisor,
regularly consults for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst.

"The two met after Bush's election," the Post reported cheerfully, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that "any time you have a good idea, tell me". "More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric," noted the newspaper.

"When I saw that, I couldn't believe it," said one retired senior diplomat. "But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible."

<<snip>>

Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P-2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig.
Cont'd here:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html

[bloom]

27. Lots of good stuff here...

"Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P-2 Masonic Lodge that rocked Italy in the early 1980s - have long been a source of speculation and intrigue, but he returned to Washington in 1981 as "anti-terrorism" advisor to the new secretary of state, Al Haig."

See also this on Gladio (there are other Ledeen links, as well - on the archived thread):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4116947

[sunnystarr]

23. This is HUGE ... Recommended and thx for the hard work. (nt)

[pberq]

39. Raimondo on Franklin

Justin Raimondo (mentioned elswhere in this thread) has written several articles on the Franklin affair, and has been following it closely. He basically agrees with the larouche story. Here is a snip from one of his more recent articles:

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=6068

<snip>
. . .When Franklin was finally arrested, however, reflexively pro-Israel neocons like Joel Mowbray and Kate O'Beirne sneered that the charges didn't rise to the level of espionage, and averred that the whole thing was merely a matter of "mishandling" classified information: a tempest in a teapot. And on the left, an otherwise excellent piece by Laura Rozen in The Nation downplayed the charges in a less obvious way.

Rozen, a perceptive reporter who has been following this story from the start, gives us the essential context of the Franklin affair by showing that he was very much a part of a small, tightly-knit network inside the Pentagon dedicated to provoking war not only with Iraq but also igniting a regional conflict including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. She does a very good job, in her piece, of showing how Franklin was at the center of this group's covert machinations: he had a penchant, as she puts it, for "showing up at critical and murky junctures of recent history":

"He was part of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which provided much-disputed intelligence on Iraq; he courted controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, who contributed much of that hyped and misleading Iraq intelligence; and he participated with a Pentagon colleague and former Iran/contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar in a controversial December 2001 meeting in Rome – which, in a clear violation of US government protocol, was kept secret from the CIA and the State Department."

"In all these endeavors," Rozen writes, "Franklin … was hardly acting as a lone wolf." These rogue operations were projects of the neoconservative matrix in Washington, which reaches not only into the bowels of the Pentagon but also seems to have gained access to the higher echelons of this administration, and virtually taken over the Vice President's office lock, stock, and barrel. . . (More)