The American Conservative: Admin may be involved in Niger Forgeries

I saw this on Countdown (MSNBC) tonight, but I don't have a link since they (The American Conservative) isn't free online.

The article apparently stated that the Niger Docs weren't even seen by the CIA, as normal docs are, because they were handed to the Office of Special Plans and then gived directly to Cheney's office. So, Tenet cannot claim that he and the CIA were at fault for this as he did earlier. The article suggests that the reason why the WH reacted so strongly to Wilson about the Niger Docs was because they were afraid of someone investigating where the docs came from.

If anyone can find a link, post it. Crooksandliers might have something up later.

Found a link:
http://www.amconmag.com/2005/2005_11_07/feature.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10816.htm

This is fascinating.

the Niger documents, and only saw them briefly because Andrea Mitchell had a copy. So it makes me wonder where she got her copy.

WTF??? Is the entire media complicit in this war???

MSM can mean "major state media" also.

you know, I can see the media falling for it once or twice. They want the "inside story", they want a "scoop", they want to feel like they're insiders, that they're important. But swallowing this administrations shit time and again and getting burned, well........you'd think they'd be a bit wary after a while. You'd think they might do a little background on these stories before going public with them. You'd think that, wouldn't you?

But no, they keep going to the same poisoned well again and again and well, darn it......it almost seems that they're COMPLICIT with this administration in "catapulting the propaganda", as bush so eloquently remarked. :eyes:

This administration is as dirty as they come. They are criminals in the worst sort. They have sent over 2,000 of our young men and women to their graves because of bush's Oedipal hard on for Saddam and his country's oil. This does not even come close to the amount of those horribly maimed and disfigured and the tens of thousands of Iraqis that have been killed and wounded.

Will someone give this tory some legs, please? Americans MUST KNOW what this criminal cabal has done in OUR name! It is wrong and MUST STOP NOW! Leave Iraq, for good, pull out now before one more drop of blood is spilled for these dangerous, wicked, insane men in Washington!

Because the parent company still wins. It's only when you get "rathered" that there's a price to pay.

well DUH - Rip Van Winkle has finally woken up.......

imagine what is going to happen when the truth of the docs finally sinks in and the families of the war dead from all nations act.
What a goddamn bloody mess and the neo-convicts will pay and pay.

I'd love to see them dragged through Washington behind some gasoline guzzling SUV with "W" bumper stickers all over it. The day Americans wake up is the day America will return to it's greatness as a country.

...VERY intersting. This guy thinks that the Office of Special Plans may have something to do with them...

Lisa Daniels- let's all write her and say thank you.

In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.

It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.

The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.
_____________________________________________________

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.

thanks for the excerpt - excellent!

deeper commentary.

why is it that KO is absent so much?

Forging The Case For War ... The Bigger Story behind the Story ...
Topic started by Trajan on Oct-30-05 11:41 AM (2 replies)

looks like that thread fell through the cracks somehow.

:kick:

Hekate

Of course, it's entirely possible that someone else is responsible, like, say, Shaquille O'Neill. It's true, they are awfully small droppings for someone of Shaq's size. So, I suppose it is remotely possible that the shit I keep finding in my cat's litter box was actually left there by my cat.

"they are awfully small droppings for someone of Shaq's size"

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

and

:toast:

Unfortunately, I usually assume that anything marked "conservative" is some phony political organization in lock-step with the theocratic Nazis in the Repug party.

When some real conservatives who are true to their principles come forward, it is such a breath of fresh air, especially when it damages *.

in some way.

He may be wrong about everything else, but he has been vehemently opposed to the neo-con agenda.

The IAEA, after repeated demands for this evidence (which we were legally obliged to provide accdg. to UNSC Resolution 1441), received them on the eve of war (early March 2003). It took them hours to determine that they were crude forgeries.

1 - OSP and the White House circumvented normal channels and did not let the CIA see them.

2 - They had them for five months before turning them over to the IAEA.

3 - It took the IAEA hours to determine they were crude forgeries.

Those facts alone implicate the White House. It doesn't matter who actually created the forgeries.

Wouldn't the administration have the ability to make first-rate forgeries?

But as you say, #1-3 in your post makes the origin of the docs irrelevant. It is equally damning for the administration to have heaped credibility upon obvious forgeries.

Certainly.

But as the post above points out: "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie!"

Despite all the clear deception, there's also ample amount of incompetence to go around in this administration. Condi couldn't imagine planes being used as weapons... despite the fact that the U.S. had just held exercises simulating exactly that, and despite the fact that it was exactly that threat that forced the G-8 Summit to install anti-aircraft guns around Brussels (I think) that very year.

Add to that level of incompetence a sense of arrogance, and clear signs that (post 9-11) no one will question you, and I could be convinced that Cheney himself forged the documents.

"Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own 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. Seeing America undo traditional societies, they fear us, for they do not wish to be undone. They cannot feel secure so long as we are there, for our very existence—our existence, not our politics—threatens their legitimacy. They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission."

but if WH was trying to keep it out of normal channels, then no. Especially if they privatized it out to one of their cronies in what has become their typical fashion - pay out mega bucks for something of less than top notch results.

...loop on the forged documents. They were specifically offered to OSP and Hadley, circumventing the CIA.

The earlier reports, that the CIA discounted, were simply that: "reports". They had little to back them up, and this was why the CIA kept arguing with the White House NOT to use the Niger-uranium story in speeches. There is ample evidence that they repeatedly warned the WH not to use this. Why would they have done so if they had forged them?

It states that Rocco Martino created the forgeries and bunched them in with official document stolen from the Niger embassy in Rome. His intention was to sell them to the French who were managing Uranium concession and mining in Niger. Instead he gave them to a reporter for Panorama magazine (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Burlesconi.) Martino has since admitted the Italy and the U.S. were part of the eventual forgery of the entire dossier.

Is lying about the reason for a war an impeachable offense?

By John W. Dean
FindLaw Columnist
Special to CNN.com
Friday, June 6, 2003 Posted: 2117 GMT ( 5:17 AM HKT)

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/06/findlaw.analysis.dean.wmd/

<snip>

And in this case, far from backpedaling from the President's more extreme claims, Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at times, been even more emphatic than the President had. For example, on January 9, 2003, Fleischer stated, during his press briefing, "We know for a fact that there are weapons there."

In addition, others in the Bush administration were similarly quick to back the President up, in some cases with even more unequivocal statements. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had WMDs -- and even went so far as to claim he knew "where they are; they're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad."

<snip>

To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress and the nation into war based on bogus information, he is cooked. Manipulation or deliberate misuse of national security intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high crime" under the Constitution's impeachment clause. It would also be a violation of federal criminal law, including the broad federal anti-conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony "to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose."

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/06/findlaw.analysis.dean.wmd/

Obviously a high pressure zone was cooking in the climate in June 2003. The unequivocal nature of the argument, the slam-dunk as it were, was predicated not only on faulty intelligence but on fabricated intelligence. Joe Wilson was talking and he cut straight to the bone of contention. The desperate act to discredit him, to shut him up by outing his wife, was sought because they believed that the truth was the seed of impeachment. The decision was not and could not have been simply the rogue act of a single staffer. They were all involved and invested in it because they were all involved in the manufacture of the intelligence.

:kick:

widespread. It will help assure Fitz (who probably is-but why assume) aware of it.

The thing about these former CIA employees is they are aware of the magnitude of this treasonous act, and have the internal knowledge of the system to explain just what was circumvented. Hats off to Mr Giraldi for exposing these treasonous bastards. Let's hope the MSM is saturated with this story!

forward it to your networks as well!

Was it Cheney or Rumsfeld that put into effect the propaganda, that it was ok to lie?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9884537/

<snip>

DANIELS: Now, you make a very important allegation, a big allegation in your article that the Niger documents might have been forged in collusion with the Pentagon‘s Office of Special Plans which you in your article say would explain why the administration went after Ambassador Joe Wilson. What evidence do you have supporting that?

GIRALDI: Well, there‘s not a whole lot of solid evidence. But the fact is that if you consider people at the top level of the administration going after somebody who ostensibly was just a critic, it doesn‘t really make sense unless there was a much bigger agenda that was being hidden. And that‘s what I‘m suggesting.

And it is also true that the Italian who actually passed the documents that wound up in Washington, a guy named Rocco Martino, he later said to The Financial Times in London that he was engaged in what was a much bigger scheme that was a disinformation operation being carried out by the Italian government and also the American government.

<snip>

Catapult the truth and throw some kitty litter and cat shit in the sling or better yet put Andrea Mitchell in it.

This is the strand that will unravel the lies. Would someone please give a tug?

I believe I read somewhere that the Niger Rome embassy break-in occurred prior to
9/11. Does anybody have info on this?