Helicopters, Cover-ups and War Crimes

[kpete]

The Helicopter That Paid For Bush’s War

'Officials up and down the chain who awarded the contract knew that they were doing something extraordinarily wrong.'

You may have heard about the scandalously overpriced presidential helicopters the U.S. had ordered from Italy, but did you know they may have been a payoff for forged intelligence used to sell the war in Iraq? It’s all a part of “a web of conspiracy and deceit,” says journalist Paolo Pontoniere.

A fleet of 28 Italian-made helicopters, each more expensive than the last Air Force One, was set to replace the current generation of presidential helicopters, pictured here. Public outcry over the price put the project in doubt, but there’s a lot more to be concerned about.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090311_helicopter_bushs_war_repost/

Helicopters, Cover-ups and War Crimes

'Officials up and down the chain who awarded the contract knew that they were doing something extraordinarily wrong.'

New America Media, News Analysis, Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere; Photo D.B. King, Posted: Feb 20, 2009

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This is a gross misrepresentation of the choice Obama faces. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn) and others have alleged that the contract for 28 Marine One helicopters was awarded to the Italian firm Finmeccanica as a thank you for Italy's participation in the Iraq War. The evidence, however, indicates that the contract was more specifically a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger. President Bush famously used this fraudulent "yellowcake" intelligence to justify launching the war.

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According to Italy's La Repubblica , Nicola Pollari, the head of the Italian spy agency SISMI, had failed to dispel the CIA's misgivings about the authenticity of the yellowcake papers. Giovanni Castellaneta then arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley, Rice's chief deputy at the time. The meeting took place on Sept. 9, 2002, in the White House, and was confirmed by White House officials.

"It is completely out of protocol for the head of a foreign intelligence service to circumvent the C.I.A.," former C.I.A. officer Philip Giraldi toldVanity Fair's Craig Ungar. "It is uniquely unusual. In spite of lots of people having seen these documents, and having said they were not right, they went around them."

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Especially when no WMDs were found, President Bush needed to find a way he could control to repay the Italians for their help. Bush pressed for a new fleet of Marine Ones. He demanded the contract be awarded through an expedited bidding process because of heightened security concerns. A senior Finmeccanica executive told us that long before the Navy announced the award in January 2005, he and other company executives were told that the fix was in.

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=820378857af3f342fff80bf5e4f64b00&from=rss