Vanity Fair: Niger Forgeries were Intel "black propoganda" -Wow, just wow!

[HamdenRice]

Craig Unger has a great summary of the Niger forgeries scandal that contains perhaps the best summary to date and some amazing new information, about how the forgeries came into being, how they were circulated through Italian and US intelligence, and how the entire scandal came to be blamed erroneously on CIA "intelligence failure." (Kudos to Cannonfire for bringing this article to the attention of the blogosphere.)

But perhaps even more shocking is Unger's description of some of the shadow institutions and players -- especially the Italian "Propoganda Due" or the P2 Masonic Lodge, and Michael Leeden, one of the main ideologues behind the neo-con program to carry on "total war" against the middle east.

For those of you who think that conspiracy theories can't be true, because someone would leak the information, Unger has this chilling paragraph about P2:

http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/articles/060606fege02

<quote>

Because Italy emerged from World War II with a strong Communist Party, domestic politics had elements of a civil war, explains Guido Moltedo, editor of Europa, a center-left daily in Italy. That meant ultra-conservative Cold Warriors battled the Communists not just electorally but through undercover operations in the intelligence world. "In addition to the secret service, SISMI, there was another, informal, parallel secret service," Moltedo says. "It was known as Propaganda Due."

Led by a neo-Fascist named Licio Gelli, Propaganda Due, with its penchant for exotic covert operations, was the stuff of conspiracy fantasies—except that it was real. According to The Sunday Times of London, until 1986 members agreed to have their throats slit and tongues cut out if they broke their oaths. Subversive, authoritarian, and right-wing, the group was sometimes referred to as the P-2 Masonic Lodge because of its ties to the secret society of Masons, and it served as the covert intelligence agency for militant anti-Communists. It was also linked to Operation Gladio, a secret paramilitary wing in NATO that supported far-right military coups in Greece and Turkey during the Cold War.

<unquote>

On the real, underlying goals of the neo-cons, as articulated by Leeden -- an operative whose work Unger traces from undermining the Carter administration with the bogus "Billygate" scandal, to promoting the false characterization of the assassination attempt against Pope John Paul as "Bulgarian," to Iran-Contra, to Niger yellowcake claims:

<quote>

But to Ledeen, Iraq was just one part of a larger war. As he later told a seminar, "All this talk about first we are going to do Afghanistan, then we will do Iraq … that is entirely the wrong way to go about it." He urged Americans not to try to "piece together clever diplomatic solutions to this thing, but just wage a total war against these tyrants."

<snip>

Ledeen repeatedly urged war or destabilization not just in Iraq but also in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, even Saudi Arabia. "One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please,"" he wrote. "Faster, please" became his mantra, repeated incessantly in his National Review columns.

<snip>

The U.S. must be "imperious, ruthless, and relentless," he argued, until there has been "total surrender" by the Muslim world. "We must keep our fangs bared," he wrote, "we must remind them daily that we Americans are in a rage, and we will not rest until we have avenged our dead, we will not be sated until we have had the blood of every miserable little tyrant in the Middle East, until every leader of every cell of the terror network is dead or locked securely away, and every last drooling anti-Semitic and anti-American mullah, imam, sheikh, and ayatollah is either singing the praises of the United States of America, or pumping gasoline, for a dime a gallon, on an American military base near the Arctic Circle."

[Benhurst]

1. The article is a "must-read." Recommended

[leveymg]

2. The Italian Fascists make a convenient scapegoat

Ungar's article, while commendably sweeping in its overview of the Niger Yellowcake affair, suffers from a glaring -- possibly discrediting -- omission. It makes no mention of the role of Israeli intelligence in organizing the parallel OSP-AIPAC spy operation that was salting Pentagon files with information about alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program "suggested" by the Mossad Chief of Station in Washington. Ungar is also silent about the role of Condi Rice in leaking classified documents to accused AIPAC conspirator, Steven Rosen.

Ungar does mention WHIG and OSP, but skips over the important detail that Condi Rice was leaking classified documents to AIPAC at a time the group was under investigation as a conduit to Israeli intelligence. The companion Niger Yellowcake case focused on planting false evidence of Iraqi WMDS. Larry Franklin, a DIA Iran expert who had been posted to Israel, is the direct link between both operations. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/4/24/125345/141

Condi & AIPAC: Cooking the Books on Iran or Iraq WMDs?
by leveymg
Mon Apr 24, 2006 at 09:53:45 AM PDT
Last Friday's news dump had a real whopper. Condi Rice was accused of leaking classified information to indicted AIPAC lobbyist, Steven Rosen. See, http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

This raises the question: was Condi cooking the books on Iran WMDs or was she helping to plant false evidence of Iraq WMDs? If the report is true, my money is on the former, and that implicates her in a plot with the Israelis to draw the U.S. into attacking Iran. If it was instead the latter case, she's guilty of merely working with Israeli agents to plant false evidence of Iraq WMDs. All in a day's work.

Either way, this may impact her chances for that NFL Commissioner's job.

leveymg's diary :: ::
The accusation against Condi gives us a chance to take a closer look at the Franklin OSP-AIPAC spy case, which has been largely overshadowed by Plamegate. According to the Franklin indictment, the bulk of the information that Lawrence Franklin was sharing with foreign intelligence officers (FO-1 through 3) at the Israeli Embassy, and their AIPAC cutouts, was about IRAN NOT IRAQ. Read the Lawrence Franklin indictment: http://files.findlaw.com/...

Please bear in mind that Col. Franklin was the DIA Iran desk officer when he was tasked to Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans (OSP). While Franklin was indeed involved with the goings-on at OSP surrounding the Niger Yellowcake documents, his primary duties concerned Iran WMDs. That's the same focus as Valerie Plame.

Similarly, the focus of Dr. Steven Rosen, an employee at AIPAC, was also Iran not Iraq.

It only stands to reason, then, that the classified information Condi is alledged to have shared with Rosen (which we can presume made its way to Mossad) was likely also about Iran.

SNIP

[mogster]

3. Hmmm...

> or pumping gasoline, for a dime a gallon, on an American military base near the Arctic Circle

I wonder which country we're talking about, Mr. Osama bin Ledeen. The Norwegian protectorate, perhaps?

Spledid stuff, HamdenRice! :-)