Josh Marshall hints at scoop -- VP set up Niger-Iraq lie?

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

JMM says he can't say much more than the following hypothetical, in re the Niger-Iraq yellowcake scandal. But I'll go out on a limb: I'll bet that Cheney produced, directed and oversaw this entire disinfo campaign and that JMM et al are about to spill the goods:

www.talkingpointsmemo.com

Let's say that certain individuals or organizations are responsible for some rather unfortunate misdeeds. And let's further postulate that such hypothetical individuals or organizations find out that some folks are on to them, that a story is in the works -- perhaps more than one -- and that it's coming right at them. Those individuals or organizations -- as shorthand, let's call them 'the bad actors' -- might well start trying to fight back, trying to gin up an alternative storyline to exculpate themselves and inculpate others. If that story made its way into the news, at a minimum, it might help the bad actors muddy the waters for when the real story comes out. You can see how such a regrettable turn of events might come to pass.

[JI7]

1. everything i have read about indicates Cheney is at fault

and this isn't the only thing where he is at fault.

[Trajan]

17. Though the VP may be involved ...

Joshua uses the term 'organization' ...

Hmmmmm .. OSP ? ...

[Nordic65]

PNAC !!!

n/t

[newyawker99]

34. Hi Nordic65!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[displacedtexan]

2. What could make Josh sit on a story like this?

Must be "integrity."

Waiting for independent confirmation of sources?

I fear "integrity" will allow CheneyCo to get their lies out ahead of the facts.

[KoKo]

15. That's my big worry...please see my questions below about why did Josh

leak.

[AnnitaR]

3. Anyone else here nervous...

that all this shit hitting the fan with Cheney will cause them to boot him from the ticket?

I want the fucker to pay for all he's done, but I don't want him replaced on the ticket!

[wakfs]

10. I agree

We do NOT want Cheney bumped from the ticket. Bush would do something awful like replace him with McCain or Saint Rudy or somebody likely to help him win the election.

WE WANT CHENEY!!

[hang a left]

38. Or pardoned. n/t

[HereSince1628]

4. Well, someone forged the yellow cake documents...

the kind of money, notarity and perhaps _moral_ suasion would put tremendous pressure on those parts of the "machine" who know how the memo was assembled to leak and capture their 15 minutes of fame, or should I say Plame?

[Guaranteed]

5. Josh, if they're going to hit YOU first, get on your

fucking horse and tell people what REALLY happened. Now is the time, my friend.

[The Animator]

6. I can only hope that Cheney will take Junior down with him.

If Cheney shamed because of this debacle, George will be exposed as the witless butt pony that he is when he denies every having known his Vice President, Uncle Dick.

"We didn't really talk much. I honestly can't recall who he is exactly, name sounds familiar though... what was the question? It was about our whar on terra whadn'it?"

Hopefully, as Cheney begins his long painful fall, he will not have enough time to completly extracate his arm from up Bush's ass, and the puppet will go tumbling after.

[hlthe2b]

7. i'm very nervous: look at all the distractions: 1.early turn over of Iraq

2. This story planting the seed that the Niger Uranium transfer was somehow actually real, thereby discrediting Wilson; 3. The supposed capture of Zarqawi; and whatever I've missed already this morning...

They may well be working hard to distract, it does seem? I hate to think what else may be up their sleeve...

[Timefortruth]

24. Even if the yellow cake transfer were real, which I seriously doubt,

it is unrelated to the crimes committed in the outing of Plame.

It may even be possible that the mass media will want a sliver of confirmation this time rather than reprint administration lies. You never know, anything is possible.

[psychopomp]

32. I think the forged docs removed all credibility

If anybody still buys the yellowcake lie then they could benefit from psychotherapy.

[hlthe2b]

37. One would think! (media would want a sliver of confimation this time)

but I haven't seen many of the "steno sues" drop their pens ever ready for the next big ADMIN lie....

[PCIntern]

8. Who are the "et al."

If it's not one of the three real broadcast networks, the NYT, WP, or Sy Hersh, it's gonna get slammed for 'partisan politics in an election year', and denied out the wazoo.

Cheney will jsut sit there and shake his head in dismay. We'll gnash our bloodstained teeth and just cry some more...

[FreakinDJ]

9. Does this mean he takes the fall for the Plame outing too

Maybe Chimpy's Daddy designed him a golden parachute

[pleft]

11. Looks like...

Cheney and company are out ahead of this story, again. They have begun to muddy the waters already. Unfortunately, given the US press corp, this will all just end up confusing the American public. I can already picture a confused Paula Zahn, "Yes, Josh, but doesn't this all just come down to a he said/she said?".

[Jose Diablo]

12. What if....

the yellow cake forgery was done in Cheney's energy meeting? The meeting that he refuses to make public, and the SCOTUS sent back to appeals court.

Currently, Chalabi/OSP is credited with creating the forgery sometime after 911. But if that forgery actually occurred pre-911, would this imply previous knowledge of an event then in the future that would make the forgery valuable in convincing the people that Iraq needed to be invaded.

[DrBB]

13. I'm saying Manucher Ghorbonifar for the button man

'Member him, DU oldsters? From back in the good old BCCI/Iraqgate days of the late 80s? His name has shown up a couple of times in the context of this story--I believe he arranged the meeting where the bogus documents were handed over to the Italians. Bet he cooked 'em up himself. At the behest of some old friends with names like Cheney and Bush.

[KoKo]

22. Yes, I've got to go back and ready Hersh's article linked from JMM's

site. I do remember Ghorbonifar coming up somewhere. Is Ollie North behind the scenes on this one, too? Imagine he had some old connections he could work with.

[KoKo]

14. So, why did Josh give us a "teaser" before he left for vacation? Was he

trying to pre-empt the disinformation he knew was going to be planted in the Financial Times article? Why else would he leak that he was onto a big story that he and others were working on and he said in his article before his vacation about his big news: quote Josh: "...if and when it comes to fruition, and I think it will."

Was it better for Josh to tip us off or to remain quiet and not tease us, thereby alerting the "dark powers" that the story exposing them was going to be coming out.

The way it stands C-Span had Isikoff (that Repug shill reporter) on this morning and showed the Financial Times article as a big front page story and Isikoff sneeringly said "oh yes more invidence is there about Niger selling uranium (very loose quote). So Isikoff is on and already folks are being led to believe that the WMD/Saddam story is REAL AGAIN, so when the real expose comes out folks won't buy into it.

This is really too cat and mouse, here. Who is the cat and who is the mouse. Why would Josh tip them off?

:crazy:

[warrior1]

16. So when the Grand Jury

issue their indictments this story get's blown out of the water.

This is like a bad pulp fiction.

[KoKo]

19. I think Josh is hinting that this is going to be very controversial but

with charges and countercharges. Still can't figure out why he's leaking it, except to warn us so we have a "heads up" on the crap coming down the pike and that there will be an effort to counter it by a group of journalists. :shrug: Cat and Mouse and really hard to understand.

[Tatiana]

18. KoKo, IMO, Cheney et. al. already knew.

Call Josh's little forewarning a premptive strike, if you will. Obviously Josh and whoever these other journalists are would have had to talk to very high-level sources in the administration. It's not impossible to conclude Cheney found out about someone leaking either out of OSP or the Pentagon and scrambled to put out his own version of events before the bombshell of truth broke.

[KoKo]

20. That makes sense, I guess. A pre-empt of a pre-empt. Something must

not be quite complete with Josh's & Co's story that they couldn't get it out first. :shrug: Maybe flushing out Cheney will give them some piece of info or a new source that they couldn't get otherwise?

This is like reading a spy novel.

[Tatiana]

25. They've got to get everything confirmed airtight.

It's what REAL journalists do. Also, I think this will play well for us. Cheney is muddying the waters for now, but Josh and co. will be able to swoop down and expose YET ANOTHER LIE this administration and its cohorts have tried to foister off on the public.

Cheney will come out looking like the beady-eyed snake he really is.

[Renew Deal]

21. Your guess is good,.

I think it's tied to the Plame affair somehow. I can't wait to find out. Maybe they knew the indictments were coming today so they moved up the hand-over.

[KoKo]

23. Are indictments coming or is Fitzgerald not going to indict and so JMM and

his colleagues are going to have to work the story from another angle.

If Fitzgerald doesn't do anything it's going to be very bad. On the other hand maybe Fitzgerald is going to announce something big (Wayne Madsen reported that) and Bushies are working like hell to get the Yellow Cake story verified to pre-empt Fitzgerald. :eyes:

[Rose Siding]

27. Perhaps the reporters did a deal with sources

(grand jury? or prosecutor's office leak?) not to do the story until after the indictments. But why? To avoid appearing too political? To be left alone to conclude the investigation without credibility threatening leaks?

I, too, sense it's tied to Plame.

[geek tragedy]

26. No one has mentioned "Chalabi" yet

My guess is that his grubby mitts are all over this.

[Cat Atomic]

28. If true, it'd certainly put the Plame outing a new light.

People here have suspected Cheney's involvement in the yellowcake memo, but no one in the mainstream press has ever mentioned that possibility.

If it turns out that Cheney was involved in producing this thing simply to fool the public into his war, and then covering it up by exposing a CIA agent... I think alot of people will be demanding an orange jumpsuit for Dick Fucking Cheney.

[Beetwasher]

29. This Is How I See It

JM et al. has or is getting the goods on the real source and/or inspiration behind the forgeries and I suspect they ultimate came from Cheney's direction.

This FT piece and the upcoming interview w/ the unnamed possible forger/businessman are merely the latest attempt by Cheney et al. to muddy the waters by claiming the forgeries were done as a distraction to hide the fact the Niger WAS selling Yellowcake to Iraq through some other means. IOW, the forgery would discredit the notion they were doing it because it was so crude. :shrug:

My prediction: I suspect the unnamed forger/businessman will reveal that Iraq WAS buying Yellowcake from Niger and that he was directed by others (other than Cheney et al. that is) to do so as a diversion.

JMM's story will link the forgeries at least tangentially to Cheney.

My wild ass guess.

[DakotaDemocrat]

30. Stuff outta left field...

1) What's Mr. Tenet doing these days...How about other ex's?

2) Leak this early seems a bit fishy - is he working on something else, giving these guys a bone to get off his trail?

3) Why are other journalists involved in this?

[KittyWampus]

31. My Wish Would Be Having A Tie To GOP Taking $ From The Chinese Commie Spy

Katrina Leung

And while the GOP was doing this, they were not only investigating Clinton & Gore, accusing THEM of taking money from Chinese operatives... THE FBI INVESTIGATOR GOING AFTER THE DEMOCRATS WAS SLEEPING WITH LEUNG!

This story broke about 2 months ago and dropped off the radar completely.

IT IS HUGE... AND ATRIOS & MARSHALL COMMENTED ON IT.

And just last week the GOP was trying to float Kerry taking $ from a Korean criminal.

This is only wishful thinking. Too bad something this damning falls through the cracks and gets lost.

[pleft]

33. Keep this post from Josh in mind....

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_12_28.php#002356

[Fridays Child]

35. Then, is this upcoming exposé a staged event, produced by bushco?

-snip-

The journalist - Elisabetta Burba - reported in a Panorama article that she suspected the documents were forgeries and handed them to officials at the US embassy in Rome.

The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer.

It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger's real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel.

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1087373295039

[fizzana]

36. I called this over a week ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1823075

My final theory about the Josh Marshall story

It's the origin of the forged Niger/Uranium papers. I recall Josh Marshall mentioning some time ago that this was being investigated but no-one has mentioned anything about that since then.

I recall Sy Hersh writing that he suspected some pissed-off ex CIA agents had created the forged documents to embarrass the Bush administration.

I never fully believed that and always had the nagging suspicion that the papers were created by people in the administration, most likely in Cheney's office.

Mark my words - this is the story and if JM and others can prove it, "tectonic" is an understatement

[KoKo]

40. You think Cheney forged his own Niger documents? Wow.. seems a

little too odd that he would need to do that when he could have a "go for" do it for him. But, if he ordered it (maybe what you are saying) then that would be a shocker. :wow:

[fizzana]

39. I'm sure JM had his reasons for working on this with other

colleagues and I'm also sure he can only reveal what he can for the time being. If it wasn't for the FT article I'm sure there would have been no mention of the story on TPM.

If Chaney or for that matter, the OSP & Rumsfeld are involved it will severely damage Bush even if it means Cheney steps down and he has to replace him with a stronger candidate.

The war in Iraq goes from being based on bad intelligence to being based on intelligence forged by the very people who used the forgery to justify the war. "Tectonic" is an understatement.

I pray that JM's story is 100% solid because it will have to be to survive the scrutiny it will come under.