And then there's the "Clumsy Forgery Theory" (Plame)...

[Junkdrawer]

A little background:

After WW II, a group of powerful, wealthy men, centered in Wall Street, lobbied for creation of what was to be called The CIA. This CIA, while failing miserably at the analytical job it was created for, nevertheless committed assassinations, overthrew foreign democracies and generally muddied the name of American Foreign Policy from 1947 though 1978. Usually at the behest of Big Business and under the banner of Anti-Communism.

After Watergate, reformers came into power and the wings of the CIA were clipped. Assassinations and overthrows of foreign governments were prohibited, a FISA court was set up to watchdog US civil liberties, and Congressional oversight was instituted. The New CIA was to be almost exclusively analytical. The Old CIA and the interests they served went underground and invented “alternate” methods of funding.

I contend that, when in power, Republican governments have tried to discredit the New CIA and reinstate the Old CIA. And no one more aggressively than Dick Cheney.

Flash forward to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Miraculously there appears a document that “proves” that Saddam was attempting to obtain uranium yellowcake from Niger. Later called “The Niger Forgery”, this document was so bad that US experts dismiss it almost immediately. And yet, Cheney refuses to let it go and mention of the document is made in the infamous “16 words” of the 2003 State of the Union speech.

So here’s the theory:

The document was designed to be discovered as a forgery. Indeed, plants at the CIA tried to get as many of the heroes and heroines of the New CIA to get on the bandwagon of denouncing the document as they could. Later, yellowcake would be smuggled into Iraq through Turkey and not only would the Bush/Cheney invasion of Iraq be proved necessary, but much of the New CIA would go down in flames.

But a funny thing happened. The New CIA smelled a rat and intercepted the bogus yellowcake in Turkey, probably with the aid of Brewster-Jennings. So a plan was devised to get rid of the pesky Brewster-Jennings once and for all. And thus the big push to out Valerie Plame. And since they knew that sneaky means were used to get Joe Wilson involved in the Niger Mission, they could simply claim that it was Valerie Plame that recommended him for the job and thus provide the ostensible reason of “setting the record straight on this despicable case of nepotism.”

BTW: I don’t claim credit (or blame) for the above. It’s an amalgam of things I’ve read here for the past few years. But it’s my current working theory.

[dweller]

1. what do you mean by

'sneaky means were used to get Joe Wilson involved'?

dp

edit: i should clarify: who is the 'they' in since they knew sneaky means...

[hobbit709]

2. It means bushco

needed an excuse so they manufactured one. Wilson was picked to go on the mission because of his relationship to Plame. It was a setup so they could go after her, which is what the neocons really wanted.

[annabanana]

3. look at Valerie's testimony from yesterday

A "junior" person got a call that VP's office wanted the docs revisited.... a "passing colleague overheard" the conversation... That second person brought up Joe and asked her to request her husband to come in and talk to them.

SHE obviously can't identify the "junior" or the "passing colleague".. but someone knows who they are.

[Junkdrawer]

4. The idea came to me when I read these parts of the transcript...

...


MS. PLAME WILSON: Thank you, Congressman. I'm delighted as well that I am under oath as I reply to you.

In February of 2002, a young junior officer who worked for me -- came to me very upset. She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone -- I don't know who -- in the office of the vice- president asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. She came to me, and as she was telling me this -- what had just happened, someone passed by -- another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already -- my husband -- had already gone on some CIA mission previously do deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, "Well why don't we send Joe?" He knew that Joe had many years of experience on the African continent. He also knew that he had served -- and served well and heroically in the Baghdad Embassy -- our embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. And I will be honest. I had -- was somewhat ambivalent at the time. We had 2-year-old twins as home, and all I could envision was me by myself at bedtime with a couple of 2-year-olds. So I wasn't overjoyed with this idea. Nevertheless --

...
(much later in the testimony)
...

REP. WESTMORELAND: But in the Senate intel report that I've got, it says some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador. Was this a voluntary lack of memory, or was there no notes kept on it. Is it -- how could they forget how they came about a name that they were fixing to send to a foreign country to check on the intelligence of Iraq getting material to build nuclear bombs? That seems a little bit far-fetched to me.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Congressman, please remember that in this period -- in the runup to the war -- we in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA were working flat out as hard as we could to try to find good, solid intelligence for our senior policymakers on these presumed programs. My role in this was to go home that night, without revealing any classified information, of course, and ask my husband would he be willing to come into CIA headquarters the following week and talk to the people there. At that meeting, I introduced him, and I left, because I did have 101 other things I needed to do.

....

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Plame_hearing_transcript_2_0316.html

[dweller]

5. thanks

i hadn't seen that transcript (followed the official threads here yesterday, so missed some dialogue).

i follow your theory, just didn't realize who you thought was up to something 'sneaky' in the choice of Wilson.

dp

edit...spalling.

[Junkdrawer]

6. Westmoreland definitely tried to hang his hat on the "no one remembers" point.

And my suspicious mind says "He KNOWS that no one could remember who made the recommendation."

[razors edge]

7. But,

The document was investigated and found to be a hoax by the Italians.

This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries. The forged documents were reported as being "discovered" in Italy by SISMI, the Italian Security Service. Shortly before the "discovery" the head of SISMI had been paid a visit by Michael Ledeen, Manucher Ghorbanifar, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin, the Israeli spy operating inside the OSP.

In July, 2005, the Italian Parliament concluded their own investgation and named four men as suspects in the creation of the forged documents. Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes. This report has been included in Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame, and Paul McNulty, the prosecutor of the AIPAC spy case.

[Junkdrawer]

8. Yeah. The theory is that they were designed to be discovered as forgeries. n/t

[razors edge]

9. But that

would mean they were discovered as such too quickly and later backfired?

Since the use of these bogus claims were the * admins strongest claims against Iraq at the time.

[Junkdrawer]

10. The theory is that IF enriched uranium were "discovered" in Iraq...

and the so called New CIA were on record as saying that all of Cheney's intelligence was bunk, the New CIA would take a hit.

[razors edge]

12. Interesting

And quite the possibility. I think the best way to get to the bottom of the whole mess we call the executive branch, is to remove the gag order on Sibel Edmonds.

From KOS: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/15/3443/17668

Excerpt: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one... But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it... You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people.

[Junkdrawer]

13. Absolutely....and I hear she wants to talk about Brewster-Jennings. n/t

[razors edge]

14. I watched almost all

of the testimony yesterday, and DVRed it for later since I was at work, and I did not hear them mentioned BJ. I got the feeling they had decided not to go there in public testimony. Maybe waking the brain dead public with too much info is dangerous to the continued continuity of our our so called "government".


Or maybe I missed it. :shrug:

[Junkdrawer]

16. There was a list of verboten topics...

I'll bet Brewster Jennings was #1 on that list.

[Junkdrawer]

11. FYI: The Turkish smuggling bust:

....

Smuggling route

It is not yet clear where the uranium, estimated to be worth $5m on the black market, was being taken, but it is unlikely there would have been a market for it within Turkey.

The Turkish media have been speculating that the alleged smugglers, both Turks, may have planned to take the weapons grade material through Syria and on into Iraq.

The seizure is the biggest of its kind in recent years.

Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Turkey has been a transit route for smuggled nuclear materials, many of which have found their way onto the black market in Istanbul.

....


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2286597.stm

[razors edge]

15. I remember this

I always thought it funny the apologists point to these claims of smuggled uranium and at the same time claim Saddam moved his Bio-Chem to Syria.

Which is it? Was he importing death and destruction or exporting it to hide? (question to nut jobs, not you)

[Junkdrawer]

17. .