Josh Marshall: Yellowcake documents were forged by Italian Government

[geek tragedy]

I think this belongs in LBN, but if it doesn't feel free to move:

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

Essentially, Berlusconi's spies deliberately fed the CIA false information to exaggerate Saddam's nuclear capability and ambitions.

Who wants to bet that this was a personal favor to either aWol or Cheny from Berlusconi.

<snip>
In early 2000, the ‘security consultant’ was approached by a former colleague from SISMI whom he'd known for some twenty five years. This current SISMI officer told him that he had a source in the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, that they (i.e. SISMI) had no more use for her, but that she could be a source of valuable information for him if he put her on a monthly retainer. They were washing their hands of her, he said. But she could be of use to him.

The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security consultant's' longstanding clients.

What wasn’t clear at the time, however, was that SISMI hadn’t washed their hands of this Niger Embassy employee at all. She remained a SISMI asset. In fact, the relationship which the SISMI officer had set up was intended to serve as a conduit through which SISMI could conceal its role in the dissemination of what proved to be disinformation.

This was how the forged documents came into the security consultant’s hands.
<snip>

[blm]

1. Bush and Berlusconi have always been close friends.

They are both essentially fascist in their belief that corporations ARE the world's superpowers and they just use religion and the theocrats as the footsoldiers to serve their fascist agenda.

They both have their minions in the intel agencies pushing out fascist serving disinformation.

Thankfully, the good guys in the intel community are putting up obstacles to the corporatists' march to fascism.

[Minstrel Boy]

7. And Michael Ledeen consulted for Italian military intelligence

I posted this in GD earlier (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2128960&mesg_id=2129502&page=), but what the hell. I think this is important.


Would you be surprised to learn where arch neocon Michael Ledeen was in the late 1970s, and what he was doing? At the height of Italy's "strategy of tension" - a campaign of false-flag terrorism designed to discredit the Italian left, waged by the fascist CIA asset Licio Gelli and his P2 lodge - he was consulting for Italian military intelligence, and is said to have been an "honorary member" of the lodge. When secret membership roles were published in the early 1980s, Silvio Berlusconi's name was found on it, long before he entered politics.

So, with P2 member Berlusconi in office, and neocon Ledeen's ties to the Italian far right and Italian intelligence, maybe this story comes into focus.

"...terrorism has been Ledeen's bread and butter since at least the late 1970s, when he consulted for Italian military intelligence."
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8249

From Asia Times:

"Ledeen's right-wing Italian connections - including alleged ties to the P2 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.

"Over the next several years, Ledeen used his position as consultant to Haig, the Pentagon and the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan to boost the notion of a global terrorist conspiracy based in the Kremlin, whose KGB pulled the strings of all of the world's key terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EF26Ak03.html

"In 1980 he entered into a collaboration with Francesco Pazienza, an agent of the Italian secret service (SISMI) and a member of Rome's extreme right-wing Masonic Lodge, P2 (Propaganda Due), headed by the fascist Licio Gelli. In an Italian criminal court in 1985, Pazienza was judged guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of criminals and terrorists, among other offenses. Indeed, according to the findings of the court, Pazienza falsified information about the Bologna bombing in order to divert attention away from the real (right-wing) terrorists who had staged the attack."
(excerpt from Herman/O'Sullivan's The "Terrorism" Industry, 1989, quoted http://billmon.org/archives/000653.html ).

From Barbara Honegger's October Surprise, more on Ledeen and P2:

"When the Italian police raided (P2 Lodge founder) Gelli's home in March 1981, it was Michael Ledeen who, at the instigation of Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger, offered to buy the list of 953 P2 members in an apparent attempt to keep it from becoming public. Henry Kissinger had also reportedly sent Ledeen to Italy to try to squash an investigation into his and Haig's involvement in the founding of P2.

"On the morning of August 2, 1980, a massive bomb since linked to Gelli...exploded in the waiting room of the central train station in Bologna, killing 81 people and injuring 200 others. General Santorito, the chief of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, who was also reportedly a member of P2, testified in the wake of the bombing that it had been planned by the British-Swiss-American Montecarlo Comite, P2's "sister" organization based in Monaco. When P2 had come under increasing scrutiny in 1979, grandmaster Licio Gelli had reportedly made his base of operations the Montecarlo Comite.... Not surprisingly, reported members of the Montecarlo Comite are Gelli, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig and Michael Ledeen."

[geek tragedy]

11. So, let's see . . .

Michael Ledeen:

Bosom buddy of Chalabi
Connections to right-wing elements in Italy and SISMI
Wanted to push the absurd Iran/Iraq alliance theory in those documents
Neocon mafioso

Hmmmmmmm

[Rose Siding]

17. Marshall wrote about Ledeen's daughter in December-

Who's Who In The Coalition Provisional Authority
Special Baghdad edition
By Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Colin Soloway

12/04/03: (The Washington Monthly) Simone Ledeen is serving her country. She is the daughter of Michael Ledeen, the Iran-Contra luminary, AEI scholar, and all-around capo in the neocon mafia. She's 29, a freshly-minted M.B.A., with little to no experience in war-torn countries. But as an advisor for northern Iraq at the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad, she is, in essence, helping shape one quarter of that nation's economy.

When the history of the occupation of Iraq is written, there will be many factors to point to when explaining the post-conquest descent into chaos and disorder, from the melting away of Saddam's army to the Pentagon's failure to make adequate plans for the occupation. But historians will also consider the lack of experience and abundant political connections of the hundreds of American bureaucrats sent to Baghdad to run Iraq through the Coalition Provisional Authority.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5338.htm

[salin]

12. Could he be the customer mentioned?

The ‘security consultant’ met with the woman in question and agreed to pay her 500 euros a month for various documents and materials which came into her hands in the course of her work for the Embassy. Most of the material in question had nothing to do with Iraq or WMD. It dealt primarily with immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa --- topics of concern to at least one of the 'security consultant's' longstanding clients.

This seems to be one of the most significant items in the article.

[blm]

15. GREAT reminder, MB.

I'm gonna spread your post to other forums.

[hedda_foil]

16. Great post! Please note the similarity of Bologna & Madrid train bombings

And who was responsible for the Bologna bombing. Another confirmation of the initial reaction of many DUers at the time of the Madrid bombing (in light of Aznar's determination to blame the Basques) that the attack was a false flag operation designed to frighten the citizenry into re-electing Aznar. Remember, the polls showed a very close race, and the Aznar internals may just have shown him losing.

[blm]

20. Spread MB's post around.

No doubt LeDeen is in it up to his Dumbo ears.

[salin]

10. When was Berlusconi elected?

[lottie244]

19. The question is from where did the SISMI get the document?

I bet the Italian were not the originators.

[goclark]

24. Are you speaking @ GHW or GW?

Sounds like the CIA connections belong to Poppy right?

[blm]

25. LeDeen and Berlusconi go WAY back with Poppy.

LeDeen is agit-prop. Just about every war that the BFEE has gotten us into over the last 3 decades has LeDeen urging it along beforehand.

[blm]

26. Here's LeDeen agitating for war in Iran last April using SISMI again.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110004959

Regime change in Tehran is necessary for peace in Iraq.
BY MICHAEL LEDEEN

Friday, April 16, 2004 12:01 a.m.

Much is being made about the irony of an Iranian envoy arriving in Iraq to help negotiate a solution to the U.S. standoff with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. How could we allow a charter member of President Bush's "Axis of Evil" to negotiate a "peace" with the thuggish Sadr and his band of fanatical militants?

Indeed, the irony is as thick as Sadr's own beard. But the fact that Iran holds sway over him and other Shiite militants in Iraq should surprise no one. Despite repeated denials by the State Department, it is an open secret throughout the Middle East that Sadr has been receiving support--if not precise orders--from the mullahs in Iran for some time now.

That the war being waged by Shiite militants throughout Iraq is not just a domestic "insurgency" has been documented by the Italian Military Intelligence Service (Sismi). In a report prepared before the current wave of violence, Sismi predicted "a simultaneous attack by Saddam loyalists" all over the country, along with a series of Shiite revolts.

The Italians knew that these actions were not just part of an Iraqi civil war, nor a response to recent actions taken by the Coalition Provisional Authority against the forces of Sadr. According to Italian intelligence, the actions were used as a pretext by local leaders of the factions tied to an Iran-based ayatollah, Kazem al-Haeri, who was "guided in his political and strategic choices by ultraconservative Iranian ayatollahs in order to unleash a long planned general revolt." The strategic goal of this revolt, says Sismi, was "the establishment of an Islamic government of Khomeinist inspiration." The Italian intelligence agency noted that "the presence of Iranian agents of influence and military instructors has been reported for some time." Our own government will not say as much publicly, but Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. John Abizaid, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, have recently spoken of "unhelpful actions" by Iran (and Syria).
>>>>>>>>>>

  

[Rose Siding]

2. Is your title correct?

Specific details in such an already complicated saga could end up being very important.

SISMA facilitated the circulation of the docs, but do you have additional information that the Italians actually forged them? The actual forgers and the original (pre-Italian) hands that pulled the strings are yet to be discovered, as far as I'm aware. Josh verifies that "the SISMI officer brought the Niger Embassy employee" the documents, but not that he/she or anyone in the SISMI actually created the forgeries.

[ChocolateSaltyBalls]

3. Excellent point..........

The most interesting thing to me about these documents is how badly they were forged (i.e. misspellings, signatures of people no longer associated with the government of Niger etc.), and how no-one on the U.S. side of the equation noticed the discrepancies before trumpeting them as 'proof' of Saddam's attempt to jump start his nuclear program.

[Kagemusha]

4. This is a pretty extreme form of "facilitation".

It strongly implies a deliberate effort to hide the false nature of the forged documents. Therefore, I don't personally care if they forged the stuff themselves or contracted to some common criminal... they are responsible for cooked intelligence that greatly pleased the Bush Administration and told it what it wanted to hear.

[Rose Siding]

9. Would you care if the documents came to the Italians by way of

say...the CIA or the VP or Chalabi? I think Josh's story goes back further in the chain, so where they originated could be really pertinent.

[geek tragedy]

13. Oh, I agree

There's definitely more there. But, the deliberate deception of our intelligence services by a member of the "coalition of the willing" by itelf is huge news.

[geek tragedy]

5. An excellent point

but Marshall has hinted that the Italians created these docs. NOte this passage:

<snip>
n late 2001, the SISMI 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.<snip>

It's pretty clear they knew these docs were forgeries. Whether or not they actually made them is probably impossible to know--but there was a clear intent to deceive.

[Rose Siding]

14. Yes, I snipped a piece of it myself

But there are many scenarios that could apply. SISMI could have been acting for or with any number of other entities in passing the docs through the channels they took. I suspect the documents had a different dad- of even more interest to American investigative reporters.

Wilson/Plame/Niger arguments turn on very precise data. What's pretty clear to you here (not unreasonably!), doesn't seem so clear to me.

[Snazzy]

21. Hersh

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’” These retirees, he said, had superb contacts among current officers in the agency and were informed in detail of the sismi intelligence.

“They thought that, with this crowd, it was the only way to go—to nail these guys who were not practicing good tradecraft and vetting intelligence,” my source said. “They thought it’d be bought at lower levels—a big bluff.” The thinking, he said, was that the documents would be endorsed by Iraq hawks at the top of the Bush Administration, who would be unable to resist flaunting them at a press conference or an interagency government meeting. They would then look foolish when intelligence officials pointed out that they were obvious fakes. But the tactic backfired, he said, when the papers won widespread acceptance within the Administration. “It got out of control.”


http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact

[NashVegas]

6. The Story Has No Title

Which is why it was earlier posted in GD and not here.

[msanthrope]

8. Makes sense--lots of sense. n/t

[allemand]

18. The Italian Government kind of denies involvement, but

I can't make sense of the second part of that statement as quoted in La Repubblica:

"In relazione a notizie riportate da alcuni organi di stampa e informazione circa la vicenda Iraq-Niger, il governo ribadisce con fermezza quanto già più volte dichiarato in termini assai precisi e chiari: nessun documento, né direttamente né in forma mediata, è stato mai consegnato ad alcuno, né tantomeno, di conseguenza, sono state svolte attività o intese con chicchessia".

"Peraltro - prosegue la nota - ogni acquisizione informativa di organi nazionali riflette attività ed atti svolti ed acquisiti negli anni 1999-2000 e, al più, nella primissima parte del 2001. Le comunicazioni, i rapporti e le collaborazioni intervenute con organi collaterali esteri sono quelle formalmente rappresentate al Parlamento".

http://www.repubblica.it/2004/g/sezioni/esteri/iraq29/ura/ura.html

The first part states that no document has been handed over to anybody, neither directly nor indirectly, and, consequently, no activities were carried out nor understandings with anybody.

This might be a non-denial denial, because it remains unclear who didn't hand over documents, if it refers only to the government or also to the intelligence service.

The second part reads:
"Moreover/however - the note continues - every informative acquisition by national organs reflects activities and actions carried out and acquired in the years 1999-2000 and, in addition, in the first part of 2001. The communications, the relationships and the collaborations undertaken with collateral foreign organs are those formally represented to the Parliament".

What does this mean? And what is the relation to the first part?

[Kellanved]

22. that was the story a year ago

In fact the very first claims about the yellowcake story being bogus mentioned the Italian Intelligence Service as being the first buyer, possibly the origin.

A 2003 report:
http://zdf.de/ZDFde/inhalt/30/0,1872,2052990,00.html

[struggle4progress]

23. There's some reason Butler et al have obscured this story ...

... as much as possible.

I'm betting that the real story goes back to the dual nature of the CIA as an intelligence lab and covert operations shop for the President:

President wants war in Iraq. Agency to provide supporting intelligence. Covert ops gang manufactures foreign press and intelligence to cite. Intelligence folks meanwhile antsy that they not take the fall for a con game.

We need to be VERY careful about centralizing all our intel under one roof per 9/11 or no unbiased info will ever be generated.

[gasperc]

27. As an Italian, I'm disgusted however I always hated Berlesconi

my grandpartents hated him too, my uncle likes him but he's a right wing nut

[struggle4progress]

28. kick for faking intelligence

:kick:

[struggle4progress]

29. Vindication? Well, not exactly ...

Notes from the Press
Chris Graham

I've been noting how those on the political right have been making a point about how the Senate Intelligence Committee report on what went wrong with respect to what we knew about Iraq before we launched our pre-emptive war there apparently vindicated the Bush administration on a matter involving Iraq's supposed attempts to purchase uranium from the African country Niger.

What interests me here is that I've read the section of the report dealing with the Niger issue - and can't seem to bring myself to the same conclusion that there is anything at all in there that would vindicate the administration, which used the claim that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger as a key part of its case for war.
<snip>

Here's a link to the report - http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf.

Take the time to read it, and you'll see why you haven't heard the president or anybody in his administration crowing about how they've been vindicated.

http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$24574


Contains a few nice quotes to toss around.