The Plot Thickens

Did the Italians do it? Why do we get the sense that all of us, including perhaps our Vice-President, are about to find out. Knight-Ridder (11.04.05):

"Contrary to Italian government denials, a powerful Italian military intelligence agency passed bogus allegations to the United States of an Iraqi effort to buy uranium ore from the African nation of Niger for a nuclear bomb program, U.S. officials said Friday. The purported deal, which President Bush cited in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, was a key argument that Bush and his senior aides advanced for invading Iraq and toppling dictator Saddam Hussein." Italy provided U.S. with faulty uranium intelligence, officials insist

As you may be aware, "(n)o nuclear weapons program was found after the March 2003 invasion." "Four U.S. officials said the Italian military intelligence agency known as SISMI passed three reports to the CIA station in Rome between October 2001 and March 2002 outlining an alleged deal for Iraq to buy uranium ore, known as yellowcake, from Niger." "One of the reports passed by SISMI contained language that turned out to have been lifted verbatim from crudely forged documents that outlined the purported uranium-ore deal, the U.S. officials said." "The Italian government has denied that SISMI was involved in concocting or passing the forged documents." Inquiring minds may wish to know "who concocted the forged documents and why the claim was in Bush's State of the Union address after being knocked out of a draft of a nationally televised presidential speech some two months earlier." Remember Larry Franklin? From Fall, 2004? Washington Monthly (September, 2004):

"On Friday evening, CBS News reported that the FBI is investigating a suspected mole in the Department of Defense who allegedly passed to Israel, via a pro-Israeli lobbying organization, classified American intelligence about Iran. Franklin, along with another colleague from Feith's office, a polyglot Middle East expert named Harold Rhode, were the two officials involved in the back-channel, which involved on-going meetings and contacts with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and other Iranian exiles, dissidents and government officials." Iran-Contra II?

Skullduggery afoot? These meetings "suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a 'regime change' agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself." "The first meeting occurred in Rome in December, 2001. It included Franklin, Rhode, and another American, the neoconservative writer and operative Michael Ledeen, who organized the meeting." Also at that meeting were "Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, SISMI, attended the meetings, as did the Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino, who is well-known in neoconservative circles in Washington." Harold has been described as "a protege of Michael Ledeen". Mike supposedly introduced Manucher to Oliver North back in the '80s. Back then, Mike "vouched for Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, and along with Oliver North, met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and officers of Mossad and the CIA to arrange the illegal weapons-for-hostages deal with Iran that would become known as the Iran-Contra scandal." Well hell; how was he to know? Maybe it's just us, but is there some kind of pattern emerging? Let's see. We have Mike, Harold, Larry and Manucher in Rome in December, 2001, meeting with Nicolo, who just happens to run Italian military intelligence. Over the next three months, we then have SISMI passing three reports about the Niger yellowcake on to CIA Rome. Then we have the infamous "Sixteen Words"^® in the President's 2003 State of the Union. We now know each and every one of these reports were based on the same forgery. Nope. Nothing there. Move on, please.