Italian Spymaster Removed From Office As Pressure Grows On CIA Rendition Program

Pressure grows on US rendition policy
By Guy Dinmore

Published: November 20 2006 19:37 | Last updated: November 20 2006 19:37

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US officials privately acknowledge that they are trying to minimise political fallout from renditions, just as the US has been forced to confront the issue of torture, secret prisons and detention without trial.

One of the most damaging cases to come to light is that of an Egyptian cleric who was snatched from the streets of Milan in 2003. Washington has failed to persuade the Italian government to throw a cloak of secrecy over the possible trial in absentia of 26 suspected US agents, including two CIA station chiefs, charged with his abduction.

Amnesty International has urged the Italian government to forward to the US extradition warrants for 26 Americans issued by a Milan court in July. Washington is putting pressure on Rome to stay its hand.

Prosecutors in Italy have yet to make a formal request for the case to go to trial. But yesterday, Nicolò Pollari, head of Sismi, the military intelligence service, was removed from office.

more at:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c0fe4cb2-78cd-11db-8743-0000779e2340.html

while their at it.

Ghorbanifar (notorious Iran/Contra arms dealer), and rabid NeoCons on Rumsfeld's payroll including Michael Ledeen. Many believe that the forged documents alleging a nuke connection between Iraq and Niger--that the NeoCons back at the White House kept putting back into Bush's speeches, after the allegation was disproved--were cooked up at those meetings. And I have always wondered why WMD-runner Ghorbanifar (shunned by the CIA as a known liar) was needed to cook up what turned out to be very crude and easily detectable forgeries. Surely Sismi was capable of forging documents (good forgeries or bad ones, as needed). There are important mysteries here yet to be unraveled--including perhaps what lay behind the layers of cover stories from the Bushites on the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings (destruction not just of Plame's career but of the entire WMD counter-proliferation network that she headed), the suspicious death of the British WMD expert David Kelly three days after Plame was outed, and the real purposes of the rendition and torture program, which may have been to interrogate/'disappear' witnesses and whistleblowers, and to disrupt other investigations, re Bush Junta crimes and plots. (I believe this Egyptian cleric fracas is a case in point--by snatching him too early, the US agents involved blew an Italian investigation.)

It's difficult to figure out what was going on in this cloaked world--but it appears that some people were doing their jobs, while others within the same governments, and/or supposedly on the same side, were trying to foil them, and also that the Bushites were trying to manufacture a war, while others--for instance, those in Plame's B-J counter-proliferation network--understood their job to be preventing war, not manufacturing it. One of the keys may be a plot by the NeoCons to PLANT nukes in Iraq, to be "discovered" by the U.S. troops who were hunting for them, after the invasion, possibly combined with an overarching goal of discrediting the people in the CIA, like Plame, who WERE doing their job, to make them more purge-able. (For instance, to draw the CIA into a public position of no nukes in Iraq--with the enticement of the crudely forged Niger documents--then to discredit them when the planted nukes were "found.")

I favor this latter theory--a plot to plant WMDs (nukes) in Iraq, hatched for obvious political reasons, and also to discredit the professional side of the CIA--as at least part of what was going on with the Bushites and these agencies. It answers MANY mysteries. For instance, why were the forgeries so "crude" and easily detectable, and why did this allegation keep getting put back in Bush's speeches, after the charge was disproved? Answer: The Bushites had to make the claim sound viable--as if they had secret information supporting it--because they were going to MAKE it come true, by planting the nukes in Iraq. And it wouldn't work to discredit the CIA if the CIA hadn't debunked it. It may even be the case that Wilson was baited to publish his article--with the Bushites lurking in the background, holding the secret knowledge that Wilson's wife Plame was a top level CIA NOC, whose specialty was WMDs in the Middle East.

If this theory is more or less true, its "tips of the iceberg" may be visible in the Bushites' REACTION to the FAILURE of their plot to plant nukes in Iraq--for instance, the evidence of panic in the way they hastily outed not just Plame but her entire counter-proliferation network (putting many covert agents/contacts at risk of death)--a very high risk set of actions for all of the top Bushites involved (high risk of treason and felony charges); also the evidence of panic in the Blair government, occurring simultaneously, over David Kelly's disclosures to the BBC. There is some evidence that Kelly knew more than he was saying to the BBC--and his highly suspicious death right in the middle of all this would certainly point to something more. Had he helped to FOIL the Bushite plot to move nukes into Iraq--or stumbled upon the plot from his contacts in Iraq or the U.S.? Is this what they were all worried about, when Blair was informed, on July 7 (the day after Wilson published his article), that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"? (Hutton Report.) The bare bones time sequence goes like this (in 2003, after the invasion): July 6, Wilson publishes; July 7, Blair informed that Kelly knows something more. July 14: Plame outed (by Novak). July 18: Kelly found dead, in very suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched. July 22: Novak ADDITIONALLY outs the entire Brewster-Jennings network (destroying the entire network and all of its counter-proliferation projects and info sources, and putting all of its agents/contacts out of commission, and in danger.)

This notion that the Bushites were trying to plant nukes in Iraq is somewhere between a working hypothesis (an educated guess), and a theory (lots of supporting evidence). There is evidence to support it, but no "smoking gun." And that may because the "smoking guns" are dead (assassinated, tortured, 'rendered,' 'disappeared').