Does anyone else think the Niger forgeries and Plamegate are connected?

[jackbourassa]

I don't have all the facts, but there is something eerily familiar about these two cases. What connects them is Judith Miller's involvement in both.

What do you guys know about this? Let's make this the official thread of a link between the two.

Is it possible that the Bush Administration was responsible for the Niger forgeries to justify the "upcoming" invasion of Iraq and tried to silence Joe Wilson (and anyone else) when he got a little too close to the story.

After all, why would the Administration go to such trouble to discredit Wilson - if they didn't already know that the document was a forgery? If so, how did they know?

Is it possible that this is really what the Administration is afraid of? The possible revelation that they were behind the forged document.

Plus, do you think that this is an impeachable offense, if true? If the Dems have the majority after 2006, do you think this will get an article of impeachment?

I keep getting the feeling that a major scandal is about to break open.

[niyad]

1. you are assuming that the msm would actually cover it??

[mmonk]

2. Well they are connected

even if the administration didn't actually do them. Anyway you cut it though, it seems that they were in some way involved even if its not traceable. Too convenient and coincidental.

[Blue_Roses]

3. Hmmm...

Yep.

The web is spun thick with secrets and corruption with this bunch.

[babylonsister]

4. Welcome to DU! Your theory is good.

There's an Italian connection somewhere.
Also, perhaps they were after Ms. Plame herself?
Food for thought...
As for a major scandal, I totally agree. It's about
to unleash, by the end of this month.

[Beetwasher]

5. Intimately Connected

They are part and parcel.

[w13rd0]

6. Let's see...

...they also bugged UN offices to try and listen in on conversations regarding the security council vote. They also stole files from Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Cmmt. What reason would I have to NOT believe that they are behind the forgery? Only reason I can come up with is its cartoonish lack of quality. It's not even a good forgery. Hell, but then again, that's the problem with these crooks. What AREN'T they capable of doing for poltical power? There are some that think they'd go so far as to ignore a known threat in the hopes that a "new Pearl Harbor" would galvanize support behind a new American Empire. There's evidence that they falsify and fabricate "news" and "threats" for political purposes on a routine basis.

Why would we believe that these people are capable of such horrible things? Because they've said so, in PNAC documentation, in the writings of their mentor Leo Strauss. These people are every bit as cruel and inhumane and corrupt and manipulative as the worst humanity has to offer.

[mcg]

7. Yes, Wikipedia article on Yellowcake Forgery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_Forgery

"... The documents had long been suspected as frauds by U.S. intelligence. By early 2002, investigations by both the CIA and the State Department had found the allegations to be baseless. ...
Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents, and the governments prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Days later, in a column by Robert Novak, the covert identity of Wilson's wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame was exposed. ..."

Was the Bush Administration was responsible for the Niger forgeries?

I'm no expert on the issue, but I think that is very likely.

[BrotherBuzz]

8. Put Bolton in the formula and you make the connection...

Bolton is the key that connects Miller to the forged documents. Heck, it's common knowledge he forged the damn documents and even had the audacity to deny it, plus he visited Miller in jail. Interesting, no?

[grasswire]

9. absolutely

And there's a deeper layer as well -- it has to do with arms sales.

[burythehatchet]

19. as soon as Gobanifar's name surfaces

missle shipments are not far behind.

[Neil Lisst]

10. jackbourassa, yes, I agree with you

I've been saying for months that Judith Miller was a player in the outting of Valerie Plame, and not merely a journalist. She may HAVE been the one who told Rove Plame was CIA.

Miller was the one who placed her journalist rep on the line with the WMD folly. She was a Bush shill at the NYT, and no one looked worse than her when the WMD argument fell apart.

Rove and Bush have used phoney intel and information for years.


------
TERROR ALERT!
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/neillisst/

[enough]

11. READ ALL ABOUT IT here:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/9/192555/974

How Fitzgerald Might Expose the Niger Forgery Scandal through His Plame Investigation
by emptywheel

This is a detailed analysis of the question you are asking, including the Judy Miller connection, which is central. Highly recommended on dKos. It's too complicated to convey with a snip.

[Walt Starr]

12. Does anybody else think that tides and moon phases are connected? nt

[No Exit]

13. Yes, they are connected. Valerie Plame was in a position, or

close to getting into a position, to reveal the forgery of the documents.

[chat_noir]

14. KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS

KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO

Karl Rove’s only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson’s CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the documents for Rove, and how might he have done that? The story includes multinational stool pigeon Rocco Martino, Italian spy Francesco Pazienza, wanted CIA spy Robert Seldon Lady, and Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, who’s under charges of giving US secrets to Israel.

Karl Rove’s foreign-policy advisor, Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972. In 1984 he got George Bush Sr to appoint Iranian arms merchant and Iranian/Israeli double-agent Manucher Ghorbanifar as a middleman in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair. Ledeen has been a fixture in Washington and Israel ever since, advocating a modern version of the Crusades against Islamic nations. Based on what he has said and written, I believe Ledeen is insane.
Michael Ledeen, Rove’s "brain," is one of the leading advocates for a US attack on Iran. The Washington Post quoted Ledeen as saying that Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." I guess that means we can look forward to the Bush team drumming up a war with Iran.

George Bush Jr., when he assumed the presidency in 2000, already knew that he was going to settle the family score with Saddam Hussein. His "brain," Rove, quickly enlisted Ledeen to trump up a causus belli.


http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7256

[seemslikeadream]

15. Tell Us Who Fabricated the Iraq Evidence

Tell Us Who Fabricated the Iraq Evidence
Norman Dombey, The Independent



October 9, 2005

President Bush's principal adviser Karl Rove is to be questioned again over the improper naming of a CIA official. Mohamed ElBaradei, accused by the American right of being insufficiently aggressive, wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his stalwart work at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pentagon official Larry Franklin pleads guilty to passing on classified information to Israel. Just a normal week in politics. But there is a thread linking these events and it is Iraq.

Politicians tell us they acted in good faith on the road to war, and maybe they did, but that leaves a prickly question: who was so keen to prove that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat that they forged documents purporting to show that he was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger to develop nuclear weapons? The forgery was revealed to the Security Council by ElBaradei. That was not an intelligence error. It was a straightforward lie, an invention intended to mislead public opinion and help start a war.

At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.

...

Ledeen is an intriguing and enduring presence in the murkier parts of US foreign policy. He is an American specialist on Italy with a long-standing commitment to Israel. According to The New York Times, in December 2001, a few months after the CIA first heard the Niger claims, Ledeen flew to Rome with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian arms dealer, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin. In Rome they met the head of Sismi.

Some months later, the documents were published, having been sold to an Italian journalist by a Roman businessman linked to Sismi.So far, so circumstantial. One man who might well know the answer to all this is Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of counter terrorism operations at the CIA. His belief is that the documents were produced in the US but "funnelled through the Italians". When an interviewer asked Cannistraro "if I said Michael Ledeen", he reportedly replied "I don't think it's a proven case ...You'd be very close"

Ledeen, on hearing this, issued the following statement: "I have absolutely no connection to the Niger documents, have never even seen them. I did not work on them, never handled them, know virtually nothing about them, don't think I ever wrote or said anything about the subject."

It seems it wasn't Ledeen but someone close to him. So who was it who had been planning since before 9/11 to create a fraudulent casus belli against Saddam?

more
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m16578&l=i&size=1&hd=0

[H2O Man]

16. Write On!!!

You continue to amaze me. Thank you for all you do.

[seemslikeadream]

21. and a Merry Fitzmas to you H2O Man

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Everywhere you go.
Who's gonna do five-or-ten?
We're thinking once again
Of handcuffs and of orange jumpsuits aglow.
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Indictments on every score
But the prettiest sight to see
Is the scowl on Darth Cheney
At the slammer's front door.

A warrant or writ, a subpoena that fits
Is the wish of Barney and Ben;
The thought of Turdblossom hung up like a possum
Is the hope of Janice and Jen;
And Mom and Dad can hardly wait for court to start again.

It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Everywhere you go.
There's an defendant who doesn't want to tell;
One in the White House as well --
The felony kind that doesn't mind the law!
It's beginning to look a lot like Fitzmas
Soon the bells will start
And the thing that will make them ring
Is the indictment that we sing,
Right within our hearts!

crispini

[truebrit71]

27. OMG!!! That is friggin' funny!!!

"Fritzmas"....

:rofl:

[symbolman]

18. EXACTLY

but there's more than that..

Ledeen was pals with the Italian forger who attended the Dec 2001 Rome meeting, including, Franklin (up for espionage now) the Director of the Italian intel scene SISMI, Rhoad, a super PIG nazi, was a go between for both Feith and Chalabi..

It was a real hoe down, and THEY created the causus Belli alright..

Now think about this, remember that Rove as a Young Republican broke into Dixon's office (in Chicago) years ago, STOLE LETTERHEADS (just like the thieves in Jan 2000, while Bush was being sworn in, at the Niger Embassy in Rome, taking what? LETTERHEADS..

Rove's Prank was to use the letterheads to create Invites for "Free Beer", etc and handed them all out to the junkies, Hos and losers, and at soup kitchens in the red light district.. soon tons of "losers" showed up for a real good time..

In the film I've created (at 150 minutes and a 2 DVD set called "Rove's War" at Takebackthemedia.com) I make the supposition that Rove pulls the same tricks over and over, he just RAMPS them up as he gets power..

HE went from stealin letterheads in Chicago, to having PLUMBERS (remember NIXON) Steal letterheads in Rome to create what was needed for his Lover (Bush) to Excell as a War Prez..

ALL those CREATURES, AND the WHIG group should all be indicted, they are ALL guilty as shit for conspiracy..

GOt the goods on them, spent a year researching this for my DVD set which I'm now shipping :)

and other goodies too!

[burythehatchet]

20. great connection with Rove's use of letterhead in the past

good catch dude.

[symbolman]

25. Yeah, after doing a year of research on these clowns

it suddenly occurred to me that Rove is a one trick pony, seriously - he does the same stuff over and over but on a larger scale each time, since he has more power..

From Dixon to Niger makes perfect sense.

The Self Bugging episode in the 80's, later he Bugged the nations in the UN to intimidate THEM into going along with the UN Resolution as well..

I bring all this up in my 2 DVD set "Rove's War" at Takebackthemedia.com, 150 minutes of RED MEAT (not wrapped in tin foil, lol) for those that want to know what the hell was happening, complete chronology as well..

The whole Dec 2001 FORGER convention is on the DVD set.. I want to see ALL those monsters go DOWN, THEY created the causus belli, and Ledeen came STRAIGHT from Rove's OFFICE.

No Brainer.

[flyarm]

22. what seems to always be missing is DR. DAVID KELLY

the last person to supposedly contact dr. kelly was judith miller...

i remember reading the email his wife said dr kelly wrote judith..now i am going on memory ..don't have time to look through files right now..dr kelly supposedly wrote judith saying he couldn't wait to get back into iraq..but he had to walk his daughter down the isle ( for her wedding ) in september...and that day he committed suicide...

well just has never ever ..will never work for me..his last contact is judith miller and he goes and commits suicide..no way no how..a man who's daughter is getting married and writes that he has to walk his first born down the isle does not commit suicide...never ever would happen..and the connection here is judith miller is the last to contact him?????????

this article has a treasure chest of links on the bottom and a time line of the doggy dossier from blair...a must keep for time-lines and articles...

The dossier, the death and a damning verdict
http://www.guardian.co.uk/hutton/story/0,13822,1133837,00.html

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/kelly/story/0,13747,1146232,00.html

but the main point is...judith miller was in contact with DR DAVID KELLY...she knows he was killed..she is scared for her life..i would bet...

and i would bet the farm this all leads to bolton!!

why did the special prosecutor let bolton visit her in jail i wonder..was it taped??

judith i think has alot more to worry about than the special prosecutor...she is living ,i would guess on ice thats melting...

fly

[robertpaulsen]

29. I was wondering why that sounded so familiar. It's called RATFUCKING.

Rove's Prank was to use the letterheads to create Invites for "Free Beer", etc and handed them all out to the junkies, Hos and losers, and at soup kitchens in the red light district.. soon tons of "losers" showed up for a real good time..

When I read that, it reminded me of a passage in All the President's Men that I recently read. It relates to a conversation Woodward had over lunch with a "friend" of Howard Hunt. Here's what he had to say:

He then proceeded to make it clear that he thought Howard Hunt ridiculous. "Once, during the Florida primary, Howard had some fliers printed saying that Mayor (John V.) Lindsay, of New York, was having a meeting and there would be free beer. Howard handed these fliers out in the black areas, and of course there was no meeting or beer, so the blacks would come for their beer and leave hating Lindsay. Howard thought this was the greatest thing since Chinese checkers".

All The President's Men, page 279.



Makes me wonder if Howard ever met Karl. We know Rove and Segretti worked together, so it wouldn't surprise me:

A part in the Watergate saga

On August 10, 1973, as a protégé of Donald Segretti (later convicted as a Watergate conspirator)<6>, in the midst of the Watergate scandal, Rove was the subject of a Washington Post article titled "Republican Party Probes Official as Teacher of Tricks." The article, which was sourced to tape-recorded conversations, reported how the 22-year-old Rove and a colleague had been touring the country giving young Republicans "dirty tricks" training, complete with stories of derring-do such as the incident at the Dixon headquarters. At the request of then-Chairman of the Republican National Committee George H.W. Bush, Rove was questioned by the FBI. <7> Rove's contemporary Lee Atwater signed an affidavit stating that the admissions caught on tape, including the Dixon incident, were made merely "in jest." <8>

The Republican National Committee investigated and exonerated Rove, who blames political opponents from his chairmanship race for spreading false allegations. <9>

Watergate veteran and Republican critic John Dean corroborates the investigation of Rove during Watergate: "...Based on my review of the files, it appears the Watergate prosecutors were interested in Rove's activities in 1972, but because they had bigger fish to fry they did not aggressively investigate him." <10>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove

[blm]

24. Exactly. That's why I remind people that all that's happening is rooted in

IranContra and BCCI.

Those two investigations hold the keys to connecting everything that has been going on for the last few decades of BushInc.

[burythehatchet]

17. Of course it is...that's the crux of the entire matter

the went after the Wilson's because the Niger forgeries came out of OSP at Cheney's direction. Wilson was attacking them close to their operations. See Michael Ledeen!

Catwoman sent me this link:

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1009-25.htm

At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.
...
A clue to the ancestry of these black arts can be found in 1980, when right-wing Republicans wanted Ronald Reagan elected. They publicised a story that Billy Carter, the then President Jimmy Carter's colourful brother, had received $50,000 (£28,000) from the Libyan government.

The story was always denied by the President and no evidence of the payment was found, but the story helped to elect Reagan. Its source? Sismi, and an associate of a man called Michael Ledeen.
...
Ledeen is an intriguing and enduring presence in the murkier parts of US foreign policy. He is an American specialist on Italy with a long-standing commitment to Israel. According to The New York Times, in December 2001, a few months after the CIA first heard the Niger claims, Ledeen flew to Rome with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian arms dealer, and two officials from OSP, one of whom was Larry Franklin. In Rome they met the head of Sismi.

[jackbourassa]

23. Will he get impeached for this?

If we win the 2006 midterms, because let's be honest, the GOP will never do it.

I'm convinced that Bush will never get convicted - or removed from office - even with a slight Democratic majority (2/3rd's needed), but we can get a couple of articles of impeachment in there. Let history judge his lies and disaster.

[mattclearing]

26. Of course they are.

The whole idea behind de-legitimizing Joe Wilson was to lend credence to the Niger forgeries.

I doubt they can prove who forged the documents though.

[welshTerrier2]

28. and the DSM too - "the facts are being fixed around the policy"

it's all part of the exact same modus operandi ... bush, PNAC and the neo-cons wanted to go to war in Iraq before bush took power in 2001 ...

PNAC called for a massive precipitating event (9/11?) to get a buy-in from the American people ... and they needed many smaller arguments to support their case for war ...

it's called psyops ... it's called propaganda ... it's call lies ... it's called intimidation ...

anyone who believes "outing Plame" was merely about retaliation against a single individual misses the point ... the goal of "outing Plame" was to intimidate a substantial network inside the CIA that was refusing to go along with bush's phony case for war ... most of these people eventually left the agency ...

the Plame case is treason ... it's about lying to Congress and the American people ... it's about international crimes and invasion of a sovereign country without justification ... the Niger forgeries are little more than just one very clumsy piece of a very large puzzle ...

the punishment for this treasonous conduct, btw, could be death ...

[NVMojo]

30. read this ...

October 09, 2005
How Fitzgerald Might Expose the Niger Forgery Scandal through His Plame Investigation

by emptywheel

I've said on multiple occasions that I don't think Fitzgerald has evidence yet from the Plame investigation pertaining to the Niger forgeries. I've said that Fitzgerald needed to flip Bolton and not just Judy to get to the Niger forgeries. But I think I was wrong. I think Fitzgerald may be able to get to the Niger forgery scandal too. Here's how.

Judy's discovery of a possible uranium forgery

As I described twice in my Judy series, on her ridiculously staged Indiana Jones expedition into the depths of the Mukhabarat, Judy "found" a document detailing a potential deal between Iraq and a Ugandan businessman to buy uranium. Here's the description she gives of that memo:

Of even greater interest to MET Alpha was a ''top secret'' intelligence memo found in a room on another floor. Written in Arabic and dated May 20, 2001, the memo from the Iraqi intelligence station chief in an African country described an offer by a ''holy warrior'' to sell uranium and other nuclear material. The bid was rejected, the memo states, because of the United Nations ''sanctions situation.'' But the station chief wrote that the source was eager to provide similar help at a more convenient time.

more...

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2005/10/how_fitzgerald_.html

[jackbourassa]

32. With that latest poll saying that 50% want Bush impeached

if he lied about Iraq, I believe this investigation just took on much more importance.

[NVMojo]

31. Read this: Tell Us Who Fabricated the Iraq Evidence

Published on Sunday, October 9, 2005 by The Independent

President Bush's principal adviser Karl Rove is to be questioned again over the improper naming of a CIA official. Mohamed ElBaradei, accused by the American right of being insufficiently aggressive, wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his stalwart work at the helm of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Pentagon official Larry Franklin pleads guilty to passing on classified information to Israel. Just a normal week in politics. But there is a thread linking these events and it is Iraq.

Politicians tell us they acted in good faith on the road to war, and maybe they did, but that leaves a prickly question: who was so keen to prove that Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat that they forged documents purporting to show that he was trying to buy 500 tons of uranium from Niger to develop nuclear weapons? The forgery was revealed to the Security Council by ElBaradei. That was not an intelligence error. It was a straightforward lie, an invention intended to mislead public opinion and help start a war.

At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1009-25.htm