This is the scandal behind the scandal - The Niger documents were fake

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/niger-gate.html

Americans are the victims of the greatest and most deadly hoax in history; lied into a war of conquest. As we are Americans, and as we are at heart moral and just people, we cannot allow a single person who took part in that lie to remain in a position of authority or public trust, whether in government or in the media.

[whistle]

1. These are the grounds to impeach Dick Cheney and Bush

...and any other Bush staff involved in this hoax.

[roody]

2. I don't have time to read that. I knew they were fake before

the f****** invasion!

[peacetalksforall]

3. So what is Michael Ledeen doing right now - does he have a

government paid job or a foundation paid job? What's his project? He is the get Iran guy, isn't he?

It certainly appears that he was a key guy on the forgeries.

[seemslikeadream]

6. "Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen"

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/MichaelLedeen.html


"Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen"


April 7, 2005

Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen
By Katherine Yurica

Would you be surprised to find that a man who was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, a man who is the darling of the Bush White House and is an adviser to Karl Rove, a man who loves Machiavelli and studies him, a neo-conservative who has close ties to one of America’s leading “Christian” Dominionists—Pat Robertson, and a man who called Pearl Harbor “lucky” and a providentially inspired event—may be the man who is behind the forging of the Niger documents that convinced America to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq?

<snip>

It would be foolish for America’s political strategists and congressional leaders to ignore Michael Ledeen and his interpretation of Machiavelli. Mr. Ledeen speaks from the cutting edge of a group of men and women who desire nothing more than to reconstruct America in their own image. This nation is in grave danger. Ledeen belongs to a group of men, including Harry Jaffa, Pat Robertson, Willmoore Kendall to Allan Bloom, who, according to Shadia Drury, scholar and author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, share “the view that America is too liberal and pluralistic and that what it needs is a single orthodoxy that governs the public and private lives of its citizens.”<1>

The belief in a single voice that governs the public should cause all Americans to understand these men want to convert this nation to a permanent dictatorship. Their inspirer was Leo Strauss, a professor who taught Machiavellian methods to many of them at the University of Chicago. In fact, Paul Wolfovitz earned his doctorate under Strauss and many of the neo-cons in the White House studied under him. Strauss believed every society needs a “single public orthodoxy.” As Drury put it, “a set of ideas that defines what is true and false, right and wrong, noble and base.” Strauss believed that the role of religion was indispensable to the political success of a nation. For a political society had to hold together and act as a unit in lock step with the leader. Strauss believed that religion was the means to inculcate the desired ideas into the minds of the masses. He didn’t care what religion—just as long as it was a religion that could link itself to the political order


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/22/7563/12283


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.

[Jcrowley]

4. From link

"Where did the forgeries come from? The documents had first surfaced in Italy, and in July, 2005 the Italian Parliament released a report naming four men as the likely forgers of the documents; Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes. Ahmed Chalabi is the former bank embezzler who was at one time expected to lead Iraq in the post-Saddam period. Of the remaining men, Michael Ledeen deserves special note. Shortly before the forged documents surfaced in Italy, Michael Ledeen paid a visit to the head of Italy's secret service, SISMI. Ledeen's entourage included Larry Franklin, since exposed as a spy for Israel operating in the Pentagon Office of Special Plans, an operational partner to the White House Iraq Group charged with "selling" the war in Iraq to the American people. Larry Franklin has confessed to handing classified information to AIPAC, the Israeli lobby. Presumably the information went from AIPAC to Israel. Less discussed is what disinformation flowed back from Israel through AIPAC, to Larry Franklin. What is known is that the claims regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that came from the Office of Special Plans were as groundless as the claim that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger."

[Quixote1818]

5. Didn't we already know that?

Is there something new in that article that suggest something will come of this? Does Fitz have something under his sleeve?

[Crabby Appleton]

8. nope, nope

[troubleinwinter]

9. We have known for a long time they were fake. It's why they are called forgeries.

[2Design]

7. we knew that a long time ago - must be msm is finally finding out n/t

[Peace Patriot]

10. Y'all think that's all they were doing--faking documents?

And why were the Niger docs such bad forgeries--wrong dates, wrong names--that real intelligence agents exposed them in what, 24 hours?

I suspect that the Niger docs were intended to be "crude" forgeries (as they are often called)--that is, easily detectable. In the WMD-planting theory of Traitorgate, the Niger forgeries were intended to draw the CIA into a known position of no-nukes in Iraq. And the CIA was then to be discredited, when nukes (procured by infamous Iran-Contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, who attended the Rome meeting with the head of SISMI and Ladeen in late 2001), were "found" by the US troops who were hunting for them in Iraq after the invasion. This "find" of WMDs in Iraq was also intended to cement Bush's and Blair's political positions. But something went wrong. Somebody interfered with that nuke movement. And that is what the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings were all about. That was Plame/B-J's job--WMD counter-proliferation. This theory explains why there was such a panic in the White House in the week of July 7-14--with so many top Bushites involved in potential treason, and calling six reporters in one week to get Plame outed. It smells of panic (--that their plot was about to be disclosed). It also explains why they didn't out just Plame (July 14) but proceeded with the SECOND outing (July 22) of the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network, putting all of its covert agents/contacts at risk of getting killed, and disabling all projects. The latter was an excessive measure--far beyond any political motive of punishing Joe Wilson for his dissent--and carried added risk of treason charges. It was the counter-proliferation NETWORK they were after, possibly because they weren't sure who had foiled their nefarious scheme to plant phony WMD evidence in Iraq, so they outed everybody (by Novak publishing the company name, Brewster-Jennings in a followup column). (A possible candidate for discovering their dirty plot was David Kelly, the Brits' WMD expert who was found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances four days after Plame was outed; his computers and office were searched and, four days later, the entire B-J network was ADDITIONALLY outed by Novak.)

Really, I think it needs to be explained WHY the Niger forgeries were so bad. If what many suspect is true, that it was the Rome 2001 meeting, where the forgeries were concocted, they had the head of Italian intelligence involved--and they couldn't create GOOD forgeries? Then there's all that song and dance about people insisting that the Niger/Nuke allegation be put BACK in Bush's speeches, even after several agencies had proved them to be forgeries. Why do that? According to this theory, it had to be done--Bush had to say it--to set the context for discrediting and purging the CIA. when the planted nukes were "found" in Iraq, after the CIA said there weren't any--then the Bush Junta would be justified in purging all the honest professionals in that agency.

It's a quite interesting theory, and has held up well as more details have come out. And it has emotional truth. The evident panic among the Bushites to out Plame (why the rush? why call six reporters?). (This may be connected to something that was told to Tony Blair on July 7--that David Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--Hutton Report. Kelly had already been whistleblowing to the BBC about the "sexed up" pre-war WMD intel. What MORE did he know? If it was this--that he knew of the plan to plant the weapons--it would explain the panic and rush to out Plame and Brewster-Jennings, to silence or kill anyone else who knew.) On the emotional front, there is also the likelihood that the Bush Junta, rabid NeoCons like Ladeen, and Ghorbanifar (who hated the CIA), would not just forge documents for the political purpose of convincing the American people, and the world, that the war was justified, but would engage in the further deception of planting the weapons. Does anyone doubt that this is the sort of thing they would do? It seems a "natural" for them--especially with so much riding on a "find" on WMDs in Iraq. And, if they had such a scheme, what happened? Why didn't it go forward? I think it's a good bet that this is what Cheney and Libby are REALLY covering up--not just their participation in outing CIA agents, but the REAL reason why they did it.

[KoKo]

11. Excellent points...and remember when Josh Marshall and Linda

Rozen brought one of the Italians who was behind pushing the forgeries to that Italian Newspaper into the country they couldn't get the FBI to interview him? The story Ed Bradley was going to do on it for "60 Minutes" was canned because of the Dan Rather problem with the Bush National Guard lies. I wonder if the National Guard "incident" and Rather and Producer firings weren't a convenient "smoke screen" for what Josh and Linda had found. When Bradley and "60 Minutes" allowed "Salon" mag. to show the video on their website, it seemed to me that they knew the importance of the story.

It's all connected with so many careers being ruined and yet ....it never comes out fully. Fitzgerald's case is so narrowed that I don't know if we will ever get anymore out of this except a trial over whether Libby is guilty or not. Who will take the information that comes out of the trial further? Who do we have left who can push for an Indpendent Counsel? Will our Dems do it? Will the Repugs join with the Dems ...or will it all be covered up like Iran Countra?

[seemslikeadream]

12. What are Cheney and Libby are REALLY covering up?