9-11 Timeline

I originally wrote this a couple years ago. At the time, all the links worked and corroborated my timeline. The timeline quickly spread throughout the internet and even was emailed to me from my sister who had no idea I'd written it!

Within a couple months, many of the links started going down. These links were up for years and suddenly they went down all about the same time.

Anyways, here's the timeline for 9-11. Make of it what you will. I believe any rational person will be left wondering.


From the PNAC, Sept. 2000:

"...the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catatstrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor."

Timeline to 9-11:

July 26, 2001 Ashcroft stops flying on commercial planes. See also Fox News and San Francisco Chronicle


August 4-30, 2001 24 hour fighter cover over the Bush ranch while the president is on a 30 day vacation.

August 6 Bush receives a briefing entitled "Bin Laden to Strike in US" and then left to go fishing the rest of the day.

Sept. 3, 2001 Salmon Rushdie banned from taking internal flights in the US.

September 10, 2001 Bush spends the night in Sarasota, Florida with a SAM missile battery placed upon the roof of the resort he was staying at.

Sept. 10, 2001 Top Pentagon officials >cancel their plane trips for the next day due to a urgent warning.

Sunrise, Sept. 11, 2001 NORAD is conducting Operation Vigilant Guardian, a war game. They are fully staffed and alert with senior staff manning stations across the US. Extra fighter planes are put on alert due to the operation. See also, Ottawa Citizen, Code One Magazine, Aviation Week and Space Technology, and ABC News twice.

8:00 am All four hijacked flights are scheduled to take off. Flight 93 is delayed on the runway for 40 minutes.
Warren Buffet is hosting a charity benefit inside the high security Offut military base. Attending are several executives from the World Trade Center. (You'll have to scroll down a ways to find the Buffet reference.) Originally I linked to the New York Times

8:13 Communications lost with Flight 11 and transponder turned off. Flight considered a "possible" hijacking.

8:14 Captain Ogonowski begins turning the talk back button off and on, allowing air traffic controllers to hear that something is amiss.

8:16 Flight 175 takes off late.

8:20 Flight 77 takes off 10 minutes late.

8:24 Ogonowski flicks on the talk back button and airtraffic controllers hear hijackers talking to the passengers and realize Flight 11 has indeed been hijacked.

8:31 The FAA notifies NORAD of the hijacking of Flight 11.

8:42 Flight 175's radio and transponder are cut off. NORAD's technicians are now linked to Bostons flight control tower so they learn this the same time Boston does.
Flight 93 finally takes off.

8:43 Flight 175's transponder comes back on but with a changed signal not designated to any plane anywhere that day. Incredibly, this allows the flight controllers to track Flight 175 easily.

8:44 ELT from Flight 175 picked up signalling the flight has been hijacked.

8:45 New York traffic controllers finally informed of a problem with Flight 11

8:46 2 fighters scrambled at Otis airforce base. Flight 11 crashes into the WTC. 3 F16's are flying a training mission 207 miles from Washington. They are not recalled for another hour.

8:50 flight controllers lose radio contact with Flight 77. Again, since NORAD is now linked directly to the flight controllers, they learn this immediately.

approximately 8:50 two open telephone conference calls made between the FAA, NORAD, the Secret Service and several other government agencies. Cheney is heard speaking on these calls.

8:52 The 2 fighters take off from Otis airforce base. According to the flight leader, they were at "full blower all the way." That would be 1875 mph. They never intercept anything or play any part in the unfolding events. Even though they could easily intercept Flight 175.

8:55 a public announcement is broadcast in the South Tower saying the building is secure and people can return to their offices.

8:56 Flight 77, already far off course and not responding, turns off its transponder.

9:03 Flight 175 >smashes into the South Tower. It is NOW, when all hell is breaking loose, that George W. Bush >sits down with a class of 2nd graders and begins a 20 minute book reading. Card waits patiently for a pause in the reading to inform the president that america is under attack.

9:04 Calls come streaming in to NORAD. Air bases want to know what they can do. "The nation is under attack."-Col. Robert Marr
"Give me 10 minutes and I can give you hot guns"-Syracuse Air National Guard.
NORAD did not issue scramble orders to any of these Air bases until 10:01. George Bush reads The Pet Goat, page two.

9:05 This is the time that NORAD later claimed it was first notified of any hijackings even though
their technicians had linked in to Boston air control already!!!!
Card now informs Bush that "America is under attack."
Bush does not ask WHO is attacking the US. He does not ask what is being done. He does not ask anything at all nor does he give any orders. He says nothing.
The Secret Service does not hustle him away to Air Force One.

9:09 NORAD claims they ordered Langley AFB to battle stations (26)

9:16 FAA tells NORAD that Flight 93 has been hijacked. Incredibly, it will be 42 minutes before anyone sends any fighter planes in its direction! (although one General states that no planes were ever sent to intercept Flight 93 at all). (27)

9:18 Bush finally leaves the schoolhouse, waiting until AFTER all reporters have left! (28)

9:24 This is the time that NORAD later claimed it was first notified of Flight 77's hijacking. A claim it later retracted. (29)

9:26 FAA orders a national ground stop, forbidding all military, commercial and law enforcement aircraft to take off. (30)

9:27 Langley AFB ignores the FAA order and scrambles 3 fighters.

9:30 3 Fighters take off from Langley AFB. They can make it to the Pentagon in 7 minutes. (31)

9:38 Flight 77 smashes into the Pentagon building. The 3 fighters from Langley have flown 24 miles from their AFB. That's an astounding 180mph. Well below their stall speed!!! Fortunately, the fighters hadn't stalled. Unfortunately, they were still so close to Langley because instead of being vectored towards Flight 77 they had been vectored to fly out over the Atlantic Ocean AWAY from the incoming plane!!! (32)

9:45 passengers of Flight 93 call loved ones and inform them of a plan to try to retake the plane.

9:55 Bush finally gives the order to allow fighter pilots to shoot down US planes. (33)

9:56 Still no fighter has intercepted Flight 93

9:57 "Let's roll."

3:00pm Bush joins Warren Buffet and several executives from the World Trade Center at Offut military base. (34)

11:30 p.m., Bush wrote in his diary, "The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today.... (35)

(1)
CBS News 7/26/01:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml
AP 5/16/02:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,52982,00.html
San Francisco Chronicle 6/03/02:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2002/06/03/hsorensen.DTL

(2)
Counterpunch 9/18/02:
http://www.counterpunch.org/mckinney0918.html

(3)
New York Times 5/25/02:
http://www.somaliawatch.org/archivemar02/020525201.htm

(4)
London Times 9/27/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/londontimes092701.html

(5)
Sarasota Herald-Tribune 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/sarasotaheraldtribune091002.html

(6)
Newsweek 9/17/01:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/629606.asp

(7)
Newhouse News, 1/25/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html
Ottawa Citizen, 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/ottawacitizen091102.html
Code One Magazine, 1/02:
http://www.codeonemagazine.com/archives/2002/articles/jan_02/defense/
Aviation Week and Space Technology 6/03/02:
http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm
ABC News 9/14/02:
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_1.html
ABC News 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html

(8)
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/AAL11Transcript.htm

(9)
MSNBC 9/15/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc091501.html
AP 8/12/02:
http://www.boston.com/news/daily/12/attacks_faa.htm

(10)
Christian Science Monitor 9/13/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/csmonitor091301.html
MSNBC, 9/15/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc091501.html

(11)
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
New York Times, 10/16/01 (C):
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/AAL11Transcript.htm

(12)
ABC News 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html
ABC News, 9/14/02:
http://abcnews.go.com/onair/DailyNews/sept11_moments_1.html

(13)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://avstop.com/news/transcriptflight175.html
Newhouse News 1/25/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newhousenews012502.html

(14)
Newsday, 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/newsday091002.html
Washington Post, 9/17/01]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=nation/specials/attacked&contentId=A41095-2001Sep16

(15)
New York Times 10/16/01:
http://avstop.com/news/transcriptflight175.html

(16)
USA Today, 9/3/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-02-choices-usat_x.htm
New York Times, 9/11/02:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html

(17)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 9/9/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology090902.html

(18)
New York Times 9/15/01:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nyt915.htm
NORAD 9/18/01
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm

(19)
FAA, 5/22/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/faa052203.html
UPI, 5/22/03 (B):
http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030522-084337-7921r
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html
CNN, 9/4/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/cnn090402.html
ABC News, 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/abcnews091102.html

(20)
MSNBC, 9/23/01 (C):
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/msnbc092301c.html
Slate, 1/16/02:
http://slate.msn.com/id/2060825/
Dallas Morning News 9/16/01:
http://www.staugustine.com/stories/091601/ter_0916010027.shtml
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://web.archive.org/web/20020615115751/http://www.norad.mil/presrelNORADTimelines.htm

(21)
USA Today, 9/3/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-09-02-choices-usat_x.htm
New York Times, 9/11/02:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/26/nyregion/26WTC.html

(22)
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
Boston Globe, 11/23/01:
http://www.boston.com/news/packages/underattack/news/planes_reconstruction.htm
New York Times, 10/16/01:
http://www.september11-tribute.org/NewsArticles/Wald1016.htm

(23)
Washington Times 10/7/02 and 10/08/02:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021007-85016651.htm
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021008-21577384.htm
Daily Mail 9/8/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/dailymail090802.html
San Francisco Chronicle 9/11/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/sfchronicle091102.html

(24)
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html

(25)
New York Times, 9/16/01 (B):
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/nyt091601b.html
Telegraph, 12/16/01:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F12%2F16%2Fwbush16.xml
Albuquerque Tribune, 9/10/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/albuquerquetribune091002.html
Washington Times, 10/8/02:
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20021008-21577384.htm

(26)
Aviation Week and Space Technology, 6/3/02:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2002/aviationweekspacetechnology060302.html

(27)
Seattle Times, 9/16/01:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134342382_fighters16.html
CNN, 9/17/01:
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/inv.hijack.warning/

(28)
Fighting Back: The War on Terrorism - From Inside the Bush White House, by Bill Sammon, 10/02, p. 90
St. Petersburg Times 9/8/02:
http://www.sptimes.com/2002/09/08/911/The_drama_in_Sarasota.shtml

(29)
FAA 5/22/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/faa052203.html
AP, 8/19/02:
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/america_at_war/article/0,1426,MCA_945_1340414,00.html
Guardian, 10/17/01:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,575518,00.html
New York Times, 9/15/01 (C):
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/nyt915.htm

(30)
Time 9/14/01:
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,174912,00.html
USA Today 8/13/02:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2002-08-12-clearskies_x.htm

(31)
NORAD 9/18/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/norad091801.html

(32)
NORAD Testimony 5/23/03:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2003/noradtestimony052303.html
Newsday, 9/23/01:
http://www.newsday.com/ny-uspent232380681sep23.story
NORAD, 9/18/01:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/2001/norad091801.html

(33)
Washington Post 1/27/02:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

(34)
Washington Post 9/11/01:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/articles/bush091101.htm
Salon, 9/11/01:
http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/11/bush/print.html
CBS, 9/11/02:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/11/60II/main521718.shtml
San Francisco Business Times 2/1/01:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/02/04/story3.html

(35)
Washington Post 1/27/02:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42754-2002Jan26

Read more!

Abu Ghraib 92683: The Brutal Tortures Right Here At Home!

I couldn't believe it when I read this. Here I'd seen Kent State, the WTO riots, Watts, you name it and I really take it for granted that, unless we are ever vigilant, police brutality and corruption will be the norm. But even a cynic like myself am amazed that Abu Ghraib seems to have come to the US.


And the courts condone it.

medical records show that during his visit to the jail he suffered a concussion, broken ribs, a gash in his leg, an eye contusion, broken veins in his feet, a shattered front tooth, lacerations and bruises over his body, contusions to a knee, neck pain, a fractured right wrist and nerve damage to his left hand. The handcuffs were locked so tightly that the steel sliced his hands and caused dangerous swelling. An imprint of a deputy’s boot could be seen on the back of his leg for days.

The beating was so severe that Hall defecated in his pants. Deputies laughed and called him a “shit monkey.” When they returned to his cell later, they cursed at him again—and tied a black mesh hood over his head.

All that for having a blood alcohol count of 0.00 and having taken a Praxil before causing minor damage in a fender bender while backing out of his house. But this isn't the only case of sadistic treatment reminiscent of Abu Ghraib for those unfortunate enough to be drug into the Orange County Jail. Not only are the police corrupt, but the Orange County Courts have condoned even worse.

As the article goes on to say:

law enforcement sources, defense lawyers and former inmates tell the Weekly that a minority of officers in the Orange County Jail are, as a sheriff’s department official familiar with excessive force cases described them, “pure and simple thugs who don’t have the mental or emotional makeup to wear a badge.”

“Outsiders might think the department wouldn’t tolerate these bad apples,” said the official. “But they’re definitely there. They’re an embarrassment to the department. They’ve even had names, including ‘The Psycho Crew.’”

...Orange County Register investigative reporter Aldrin Brown had previously written a series of articles describing the horrific results of the beatings in local jails: detached retinas, ruptured eardrums, shattered jaws, severed arteries, broken limbs—even death from trauma.

... In 2001, Brown and Register reporter John McDonald disclosed that four deputies had taken a 20-year-old inmate to an isolated area of the jail in December 1999 and crushed his testicles. Prosecutors agreed that the man had been tortured but said a code of silence among jail personnel prevented the filing of charges. Deputies claimed their Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination when they were brought before the grand jury.

Nobody had a better opportunity to demand reform than federal judge Gary L. Taylor. Prompted by Herman’s class-action lawsuit, Taylor conceded in April that “there is room for improvement” inside the jail but suggested the grievances aren’t serious. He killed the suit.

These thugs deserve to be tossed behind bars and throw away the key. If California has a death penalty, then these thugs deserve Death Row. But what does the Orange County judicial system have to say?

“Improvement is always a necessary goal,” the judge said in a 14-page ruling. “The county and the sheriff show every indication they will perform that high duty.”

But Sheriff Mike Carona—who called Taylor’s ruling a “great victory”—has little incentive to clean up the county’s jail. He first won election in 1998 by telling voters that his leadership would produce a department that was a model of professionalism. Today, he thinks he’s succeeded. Through one of his spokesmen, the sheriff said he runs “one of the safest jails in America” and that “inmate welfare” is “very high on our list.”

“At most, all these incidents show are that various employees committed misconduct, (there is) “no evidence of widespread abuses.”

If you're wondering whether it's a case of the courts knowing better than the public or if it's a case of corruption all the way up into the courts, this should help you see more clearly:

But the most troubling ruling from the court came on June 8, when Justices Moore and Fybel joined William Bedsworth. The case was simple: Santa Ana police took Hong Cuc Truong, who’d been arrested for shoplifting in 2002, to the Orange County Jail. There, Truong—a Vietnamese immigrant diagnosed with schizophrenia—initially refused a deputy’s command to undress and take a shower before she was to be issued a jail jump suit. Truong began undressing about 10 minutes later, after another inmate convinced her it was safe to disrobe. As she pulled her sweater over her head, however, four deputies pounced, beating and kicking her and painfully twisting her arms behind her back. In the process, Truong suffered a severe arm fracture, according to records reviewed by the Weekly. Tossed in a cell, she said she was denied medical attention for hours.

The appeals court ruled there had been no excessive force. Never mind that the woman was in the process of complying when the attack occurred, wrote Justice Moore: “Truong’s refusal to obey the lawful order and the events that led to her injuries are part of an unbreakable chain of events.” It was “temporal hair-splitting” to consider that the woman had “changed her mind and started to remove her sweater.”

But lost in Moore’s justification was a missing explanation: Why did it take four trained deputies—using considerable violence—to handle Truong, who, at the time of the incident, was 54 years old, an inch over 5 feet tall and barely 100 pounds?

One has to wonder if this isn't the fate of America in a microcosm. According to Wikipedia, Orange County has long boasted one of the largest Republican Party organizations in the state, the Republican voter registration outnumbers the Democratic 3-2, Five of the County's six U.S. Representatives, four of its five State Senators, and seven of its nine State Assembly members are Republicans, as are four of the five members of the County Board of Supervisors.

The county features prominently in the book Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right by Lisa McGirr. She argues that the County's rightward orientation in the 20th century owed much to its settlement by Midwestern transplants, who reacted strongly to communist sympathies and the turmoil of the 1960s in nearby Los Angeles—across the "Orange Curtain."

Is this what awaits America at the hands of the GOP?

I think it's time for Kossacks to start making some noise! NOT IN OUR COUNTRY! Contact members of the California state and federal government and let them know that the torture stops NOW!

Email Senator John Campbell: campbell@sen.ca.gov
Senator Joseph Dunn
Assemblyman Tom Harmon
Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez
Sen. Dick Ackerman: Senator.Ackerman@sen.ca.gov
Sen. Alan Lowenthal: senator.lowenthal@sen.ca.gov
Assemblywoman Lynn Daucher
Assemblyman Bob Huff
Assemblyman Todd Spitzer
And while you're at it, give Arny a call: Phone: 916-445-2841 or email: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
And don't forget the State Attorney Generals Office

Read more!

Valerie Plame's Sources: The Usual Suspects

Originally posted on the Daily Kos, July 30th

A lot of speculation has been going on lately about Rove, Libby, Bolton and how Valerie Wilson's identity first got out.  Was it the press that leaked it to Rove and Libby?  How did the press learn about Valerie Plame and her front company?  All we really know is that it all seems to boil down to Judith Miller and who her source is.

Judith Miller, the N.Y. Times primary WMD reporter and the woman in jail for refusing to reveal her source in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.  What do we know about her?  What do we know about her sources?  I must admit that frankly I knew next to nothing  when I set out to learn the answers.  It seems, however, that somebody up there likes me and they were guiding my hand as the first place   I stumbled upon not only establishes one of Ms. Millers primary sources, but sends me down a path of discovery that ultimately  brings Ms. Miller and her primary source face to face with those people I've come to call The Usual Suspects.

What do we know about Judith Miller?

It seems Judith Millers role at the N.Y. Times was to be the Propaganda Minister for the White House in its successful attempt to drag us into a preemptive war with Iraq.  Jack Shafer tells us of Judith Millers role in his excellent article here .

But thanks to the reporting of the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, we now know Miller was a true believer who grew fat on WMD tips from her sources inside Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress organization, and that once in-country she threw a bit and saddle on the WMD detectives and rode them like Julie Krone from one end of Iraq to the other to investigate those tips.



That none of the official tips or the ones provided by Miller revealed WMDs indicates that 1) the Iraqis perfectly expunged every site Miller ever mentioned in her reporting prior to the U.S. invasion; or 2) her sources were full of bunk. Either way, if Miller got taken by her coveted sources, so did the reading public, and the Times owes its readers a review of Miller's many credulous pieces. Thanks to the power of the Nexis Wayback Machine, we can give the Times a few tips on which Miller stories need revision, redaction, or retraction.

Not only was Judith Miller feeding the rumor mill with unsubstantiated stories, but as the site above shows, her greatest scoop ever

Miller files her biggest scoop ever: "Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, An Iraqi Scientist Is Said To Assert," April 21, 2003. Traversing Iraq with a Mobile Exploitation Team in search of WMD, they tell her of the extraordinary claims by an Iraqi scientist in their custody. They say he claims Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment just before the war started and that he has led them to buried precursor materials from which illegal weapons can be made.

And more! He says Iraq secretly sent its unconventional weapons and technology to Syria in the mid-1990s; it had recently been cooperating with al-Qaida and turning its focus to weapons R & D and concealment. These are described to Miller by officials as the most important discoveries in the WMD hunt so far.

totally came apart when Ms. Miller   admitted herself that the key source of her story, the Iraqi scientist, was in fact a "military intelligence officer".  Yet no where does she explain how she mistook a military intelligence officer for an Iraqi scientist, how this officer could have known where precursor materials were buried, where he pointed out these burial sites were or what has become of him.

A quick perusal of Ms. Millers work shows us a vast array of "scoops" all of which helped the White House's argument for war and all of which relied upon "defectors".  Everyone of these "scoops" have turned out to have been, as Jack Shafer put it,  wrong, very wrong, or very, very wrong.

One of the named defectors...told officials...chem/bio weapons labs could be found beneath hospitals and inside presidential palaces.

An unnamed Iraqi defector claims Saddam Hussein is trying to create new chemical weapons.

"All of Iraq is one large storage facility" for WMD chemical agents.

"Iraqi defectors who once worked for the nuclear weapons establishment have told American officials that acquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority."

What we see here is Judith Millers MO.  She cites "defectors" as the source of these claims.  The CIA always doubts the veracity of these claims but the Pentagon always embraces them.  None of her stories ever turn out to be true or verifiable and now we know that in one instance, at least, her supposed "defector" was in fact a military intelligence officer who she has not named.

All of which tells us that Ms. Miller is not a credible reporter but a White House propaganda tool.  

Remember how some of the key figures amongst The Usual Suspects are tied to AEI?  Well, it turns out, Ms. Miller is too:

Publishing a series of books dealing with both Islam and weapons of mass destruction, Miller established her reputation within an interlocking group of right-wing think tanks that have long promoted US war against Iraq and the defense of Israel. The leading figures in these organizations now dominate the civilian leadership of the Pentagon. She co-authored a book on Iraq with Laurie Mylroie, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who is identified with the thoroughly discredited theories that the Saddam Hussein regime was behind not only the September 11, 2001 attacks, but subsequent anthrax attacks on the US Capitol as well as the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

Both Mylroie and Miller are connected to the Middle East Forum, a right-wing pro-Israeli lobbying group that describes its mission as "promoting American interests in the Middle East." The key figure in this organization is Daniel Pipes, who argues in a recent article that the US has no "moral obligation" to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people and that the war in Iraq must be judged less by "the welfare of the defeated than by the gains of the victors." The organization lists as its key goals "strong ties to Israel" and a "stable supply and cheap price of oil."

Note that David Wurmser, of the Office of Special Plans and aide to Dick Cheney, is a former Director of Middle East studies at AEI and assistant to John Bolton.  More on that later on.

Who were Judith Millers sources?

One man that knows a bit about Judith Miller is   Howard Kurtz,    host of CNN's Reliable Sources, a weekly that casts "a critical lens on the media".  In Kurtz May 26th article in the Washington Post, he produces an internal Times memo in which Miller described her main WMD source as none other than Ahmed Chalabi.  In a June 25th article, he follows up on this trail with:

More than a half-dozen military officers said that Miller acted as a middleman between the Army unit with which she was embedded and Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, on one occasion accompanying Army officers to Chalabi's headquarters, where they took custody of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law. She also sat in on the initial debriefing of the son-in-law, these sources say.



Since interrogating Iraqis was not the mission of the unit, these officials said, it became a "Judith Miller team," in the words of one officer close to the situation.

 Military officers critical of the unit's conduct say its members were not trained in the art of human intelligence -- that is, eliciting information from prisoners and potential defectors. Specialists in such interrogations say the initial hours of questioning are crucial, and several Army and Pentagon officials were upset that MET Alpha officers were debriefing Hussein son-in-law Jamal Sultan Tikriti.



  "This was totally out of their lane, getting involved with human intelligence," said one military officer who, like several others interviewed, declined to be named because he is not an authorized spokesman. But, the officer said of Miller, "this woman came in with a plan. She was leading them. . . . She ended up almost hijacking the mission."



Said a senior staff officer of the 75th Exploitation Task Force, of which MET Alpha is a part: "It's impossible to exaggerate the impact she had on the mission of this unit, and not for the better."

The April trip to Chalabi's headquarters took place "at Judy's direction," one officer said.

Chalabi said in a brief interview that he had not arranged the handoff with Miller in advance and that her presence that day was "a total coincidence. . . . She happened to be there."

One military officer, who says that Miller sometimes "intimidated" Army soldiers by invoking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or Undersecretary Douglas Feith, was sharply critical of the note. "Essentially, she threatened them," the officer said, describing the threat as that "she would publish a negative story."

An Army officer, who regarded Miller's presence as "detrimental," said: "Judith was always issuing threats of either going to the New York Times or to the secretary of defense. There was nothing veiled about that threat," this person said, and MET Alpha "was allowed to bend the rules."

Is it no surprise that The Usual Suspects show themselves once again?  Feith, of the Office of Special Plans, Chalabi's biggest champion, is the man who's name Judith Miller uses to intimidate troops.  Chalabi, who's main contact with the White House is Harold Rhode, of the Office of Special Plans, not only makes the transfer to Judith Miller of one of Iraq's most wanted men, but is her main source for WMD's.  How strong is Millers tie to Chalabi?

Kurtz disclosed an internal e-mail exchange between Miller and John Burns, the Times' Baghdad bureau chief:

Miller fired back that she was entitled to the interview as she had forged a relationship with Chalabi over the course of a decade. She noted, "He [Chalabi] has provided most of the front page exclusives on WMD in our paper."

Kurtz also tells us that:

In another case, Miller wrote of her exclusive interview with Nassir Hindawi, a former top official in Iraq's biological warfare program. The interview took place while Hindawi was "in the protective custody of Iraqi opposition leader Ahmad Chalabi," Miller wrote.



In early May, Miller reported on MET Alpha's search for an ancient Jewish text that wound up unearthing Iraqi intelligence documents and maps related to Israel. In this case, too, Sethna said, the information was passed from Chalabi's group to Miller.

And then there's this article which shows that of all the unreliable sources Miller used, she relied upon none more than Chalabi.

But - one would hope - Chalabi wouldn't have access to the identity of Valerie Plame.  His access to Harold Rhode notwithstanding.  So who else is a Miller source?

The Salon article above goes on to shed some light on this question:

a former CIA analyst, who has observed Miller's professional products and relationships for years, explained to me how simple it was to manipulate the correspondent and her newspaper.



"The White House had a perfect deal with Miller," he said. "Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives with Iraq, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated by some insider she always describes as a 'senior administration official.' She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi. Too bad Judy didn't spend a little more time talking to those of us in the intelligence community who had information that contradicted almost everything Chalabi said."

Much can be learned about Judith Millers role in spreading propaganda for the WH here , but what really springs out is this quote from Ms. Miller herself

My job was not to collect information and analyze it independently as an intelligence agency; my job was to tell readers of the New York Times as best as I could figure out, what people inside the governments who had very high security clearances, who were not supposed to talk to me, were saying to one another about what they thought Iraq had and did not have in the area of weapons of mass destruction.

As Jack Shafer is correct in pointing out, Miller is describing her role as that of a "conveyor of official news rather than as a skeptical reporter."  But what Miller has told us here is that she has sources within the government "with very high security clearances".  It stands to reason that it was one of those people who would have had access to Valerie Plames identity.  Who might that be?

Obviously, since Millers role was to get info to support the war from Chalabi and have it confirmed by her senior administration official with high security clearance, then there must be a conduit from Chalabi to this senior administration official. As we already know, that man was Harold Rhode, the main liason between the White House and Chalabi.

"According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence



officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalab's office." This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said. It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said." FBI probes DOD office - (United Press International)

Let's get back to that in a minute, but first, let's look at how Miller got assigned to MET during the Iraq war.  It was, afterall, the prime assignment of any reporter embedded in Iraq during the war.  MET was assigned to be the guys who found the WMD's.  Who signed off on having Miller be the frontline reporter in the discovery of WMD's?  

According to this

According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon--an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it.

So there can be no doubt that the White House intended to use her as a propaganda tool from the get go.  But while there is a relationship there, Rumsfeld is not a known source of any Miller articles as far as I can tell and Rumsfeld doesn't come up in any circles as a possible source of the Plame leak.

Miller also used Richard Perle, the longtime Chalabi ally, as a source.  But as a civilian, he would lack the proper clearances.

Did she use Col. William Bruner, liason to the Iraqi National Coalition and yet another member of the Office of Special Plans?  While he would seem to be her logical source for several of her articles in which she attributed her source to have been from within the INC, he doesn't look to be the logical choice for having knowledge about the identity of Valerie Wilson.

There's also more to consider here:

Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

Whoever Millers source is, the information first went past people very close to Bush.  Who?

Well, there's David Wurmser, former Director of Middle East studies at AEI.  In late 2001 he was part of the Secret Intelligence Unit tasked with finding an Al Queda-Iran link, that was incorporated into the Office of Special Plans in 2002.  In Sept. 2003, Wurmser became aide to Dick Cheney.  

Let's take a moment to consider something: Where did The Usual Suspects get their information about Valerie Plame?  Who in the administration would have had access to Top Secret information pertaining to Valerie Wilson/Plame's role in nuclear proliferation?  The only logical person to turn to for such information would have been John Bolton, State Dept. deputy secretary in charge of WMD's.  Bolton played a central role in the Niger Yellowcake story.

And who are two of Bolton's assistants?  David Wurmser and John Hannah, both of whom conveniently also worked in Dick Cheney's office.  And according to a Richard Sale article on Insight Mag saved here Federal investigators have solid evidence against John Hannah:

Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said.



According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.



The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said.

This gives us a direct connection to Cheney and from there to Bush.  From Hannah to Wurmser and then to Miller?  Or even straight from Hannah to Miller?

Now I said I'd get back to the Rhode angle. Rhode was not just a conduit for Chalabi to the White House and therefore, part of the echo chamber that Miller worked in, he was witnessed by a CIA analyst as being "constantly on his cell phone to Israel" discussing U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics.  But what's even more alarming is this article which states

Hannah is a neoconservative and old cold warrior who is really more of a Soviet expert than a Middle East expert. But in the 90s he for a while headed up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that represents the interests of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC).

Once again, both FBI investigations seem to be crossing paths.  This brings up a completely new possibility:  AIPAC is under investigation for espionage against the United States.  Could the trail go from Bolton to Hannah to AIPAC to Miller?  If so, she would definately never give out her source in THAT case.

But this article would indicate that Miller could go straight to Bolton.

One thing is for sure, you can count on The Usual Suspects to have been the ultimate source of the leak of Valerie Plames name.

As an aside, Russ Baker, who has written critically of Miller for the Nation, lays the lions share of the blame on Judith Miller and the N.Y. Times. "I am convinced there would not have been a war without Judy Miller," he said.

UPDATED MATERIAL:

Arianna has this tidbit to add to the "who was the source" question:

Howard Kurtz reported that Miller and Libby spoke a few days before Novak outed Plame -- and I'm hearing that the Libby/Miller conversation occurred over breakfast in Washington. Did Valerie Plame come up -- and, if so, who brought her up?

Of course, the spin doctoring has already begun.  As Arianna also writes

The idea that intelligence was being fixed goes to the heart of Miller's credibility. So she calls her friends in the intelligence community and asks, Who is this guy? She finds out he's married to a CIA agent. She then passes on the info about Mrs. Wilson to Scooter Libby (Newsday has identified a meeting Miller had on July 8 in Washington with an "unnamed government official"). Maybe Miller tells Rove too -- or Libby does. The White House hatchet men turn around and tell Novak and Cooper. The story gets out.

This is why Miller doesn't want to reveal her "source" at the White House -- because she was the source. Sure, she first got the info from someone else, and the odds are she wasn't the only one who clued in Libby and/or Rove (the State Dept. memo likely played a role too)... but, in this scenario, Miller certainly wasn't an innocent writer caught up in the whirl of history. She had a starring role in it.

Except, of course, that there's that one nagging little part I boldened above.  Who were Millers friends in the intelligence community?  Why, as I've already shown, none other than The Usual Suspects.  Therefore, the whole "they got it from Miller" spin doesn't really work does it?  We are still left wondering which of the Usual Suspects are the original source of the leak.

It was a fantastic spin job by the N.Y.Times, however, and even Arianna seems to be unwittingly helping in spreading this new spin.  At least she goes on to show how culpable the entire Times was in this making a mockery of the free press.

The latest spin, posted here on KOS, is that Miller protecting her source is somehow equivalent to Woodward protecting Mark Felt.  There's a huge Grand Canyon of difference, however, between the two cases:

Woodwards case involves protecting a source who is a whistleblower of government wrongdoing.  Woodward is a genuine journalist, investigating a story in which the whistleblower provides critical information uncovering wrongdoing.

Millers case involves protecting a source who is committing a crime.  Miller is not a genuine journalist, only a propaganda mouthpiece.  Her role in this affair is to help cover up her own wrongdoing and the wrongdoing of others.  She is a co-conspirator to the crime being investigated.  Her source has committed a criminal act.

Forget Grand Canyon, it's a world of difference.

Read more!

The SISMI Connection and Judith Miller's Source

Judith Miller seems to get around. Not only was she front and center in Iraq, toting the administrations line about WMD's, she managed to get herself involved in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. One has to wonder just how deep her connections go with those involved in the Niger Uranium Forgeries. So deep that she dare not reveal her source in the Valerie Plame outing for fear of revealing even deeper truths?

It would seem that SISMI (Italian Intelligence) Chief Nicolo Pollari was taking crib notes of Judy's escapades and attempted to pass on to the Italian government two of the same false leads Judy was passing on to the American public.

The odds that these two very disparate individuals weren't working from the same playbook are zero to none. Obviously, Pollari, a member of Propaganda Due, was running the same con job on the Italians as Judy's sources were on America. And this gives us one more clue in unraveling this entire mystery.



When the American Journalism Review first published this article the connection between Judith Miller and The Usual Suspects had not become fully clear. However, their article provides invaluable insight into the situation that was developing in Congress that lead up to one of Judy's infamous 'scoops'.

Knowledgeable members of Congress also noticed a difference between what the intelligence showed and what the administration was claiming. Then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and House Majority Leader Dick Armey warned publicly against an unprovoked attack on Iraq. Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the CIA had "absolutely no evidence" to prove Iraq possessed or would soon possess nuclear weapons, as the administration claimed. And so, in early September, the administration set out to silence the doubters.

On September 8, the Miller/Gordon story about the aluminum tubes appeared on page one of the New York Times. The information was attributed to unnamed administration sources. That same morning, Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press." Cheney mentioned, vaguely at first, Saddam's efforts "to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs." Russert, familiar with the Times story, prompted his guest: "Aluminum tubes."

Cheney replied: "Specifically aluminum tubes. There's a story in the New York Times this morning--this is--I don't--and I want to attribute the Times. I don't want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it's now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire...the kind of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge."

When Bob Simon heard about this interview, he told me, he smelled a rat. "You leak a story to the New York Times," he says, "and the New York Times prints it, and then you go on the Sunday shows quoting the New York Times and corroborating your own information. You've got to hand it to them. That takes, as we say here in New York, chutzpah."

September 7, 2002: Headline: "US says Hussein intensifies quest for a-bomb parts".

This article was by Miller and Michael Gordon, promoting the bogus aluminum tube story: "In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." Miller and Gordon emphasize "Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals". One more Miller 'scoop' that turned out to be false.

Of particular interest in the article is this:

Iraqi opposition leader gives American officials paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if US attacks

Obviously, the Iraqi opposition leader is none other than Ahmed Chalabi, Judy's #1 source of bogus Iraqi information. For more on Judy Miller and Ahmed Chalabi, see here.

Flash forward to October 2002 and the head of SISMI, General Niccolò Pollari, testifying for the first time before the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee. Pollari is being evasive about the circumstances surrounding the “uranium dossier” acquired by Rome and now in the hands of the British. He does, however, explain: "We have no documentary evidence, but there are reports that a certain Central African country sold uranium to Iraq." In November, before the Parliamentary Intelligence Oversight Committee once again, he is suddenly more forthcoming, "We have documentary evidence of the purchase of raw uranium by Iraq from the central African republic. We also have knowledge of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment from German and possibly Italian industrial firms. Pollari opines that, having obtained the uranium and the centrifuges, the Iraqis would need at best three, and probably five years, to produce a weapon of mass destruction.

Of course, this "documentary evidence" was the forged Niger documents which by November 2002 had already been debunked by Joe Wilson 9 months earlier as well as Fortuna magazine prior to that. But what is important here is that Pollari admits that SISMI has at the least, copies of the forgeries. This means the forgeries actually must have passed through SISMI's hands. They later claim to La Repubblica that they never passed the documents on, stating:

Reports of the transmittal by Italy of Nigerois or Iraqi documents to other intelligence organizations is completely without foundation: the Italian intelligence services never supplied any document whatsoever.

However, that still doesn't explain Pollari's assertion that SISMI possessed the documentary evidence.

What is also interesting to note is that Pollari is also claiming SISMI has knowledge of Iraq's attempts to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment. This is straight out of Miller's Sept. 7th article. The story has since been proven to be as false as the forged Niger documents.

But the dots are starting to connect. Pollari is a member of Propaganda Due. Pollari was at the meeting with Michael Ledeen and Manucher Ghorbanifar. Pollari is feeding the lies about Niger uranium and centrifuges to the Italian Government, claiming he has documentary evidence of one and knowledge of the other. Miller is receiving the same stories but her sources are the White House and Chalabi. Who is the common thread? Who's the person that has come into contact with both Pollari and Chalabi? Who must be at the point where the threads of this web of deceit cross, coordinating the propaganda machine for Italy and America?

Harold Rhode.

Harold Rhode was the main liason between the White House and Chalabi. Harold Rhode was at the meeting with Pollari, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar. If Harold Rhode is the coordinator of Judith Millers long list of propaganda plugs in the NYT, then doesn't it stand to reason that, come time to out Valerie Plame, Harold Rhode would continue to be Judy's go to guy?

Why won't Judy confess if Harold Rhode was her source? Because the White House cannot afford to have Patrick Fitzgerald go down that road. It's the road that leads to Rome and the forger of the Niger Yellowcake documents.

Read more!

Niger Yellowcake and The Man Who Forged Too Much

(Originally published at the Daily Kos July 22nd, 2005)

They say all roads lead to Rome. Well, this one certainly does. It's a road that starts in Paris, at the door of Iranian arms dealer and Mossad double agent Manucher Ghorbanifar, a man known to the CIA as an "intelligence fabricator". It's a road that runs through Niger uranium mines, past a Genoan fascist organization operating as a parallel Italian intelligence network with ties to Rocco Martino, and down the streets of Milan, where a CIA operative, now considered a fugitive at large by Italian authorities, once operated.

Ultimately, however, it is a road that does not end in Rome. It runs past that ancient icon of Imperial corruption and leads us to Washington D.C., past a Federal Investigation into Israeli espionage and right up to the steps of the White House and Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans.

All signs along this road point to the answer to the question: Who forged the Niger Uranium Documents?

We find ourselves beginning our journey in Paris with Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Back in 1984, Michael Ledeen put forward the idea of using Manucher Ghorbanifar to make illegal arms sales to Iran. The CIA's Deputy Director for Operations, Clair George, deemed Ghorbanifar totally unreliable. He felt that Ghorbanifar, a MOSSAD double agent, had Israel's security as his only priority. But George Bush Sr., having dealt with Ghorbanifar in Paris prior to the infamous "October Surprise" that got Ronald Reagan elected, agreed with Ledeen and so Ghorbanifar became the middleman in what became known as the Iran-Contra affair. In fact, Oliver North testified that the diversion of funds to the Contras was proposed to him by
Ghorbanifar during a meeting in January 1986.

So it should have come as no surprise that Newsweek reported that :

Ghorbanifar, a former Iranian spy who helped launch the Iran-contra affair, says one of the things he discussed with Defense officials Harold Rhode and Larry Franklin at meetings in Rome in December 2001 (and in Paris last June with only Rhode) was regime change in Iran....The Pentagon cut off contact with Ghorbanifar, whom the CIA years ago labeled as a fabricator, after news about the talks broke last summer....But Ghorbanifar says he continued to communicate with Rhode, and sometimes Franklin, by phone and fax five or six times a week until shortly after the Paris meeting last summer (June 2002).

The important points to note in the Newsweek article were this:

1: The two Americans at the meeting were
a) Harold Rhode, a member of the Office of Special Plans, protege of Michael Ledeen and the liason between the administration and Ahmed Chalabi and b) Larry Franklin, formerly of the Office of Special Plans, whom the FBI arrested for giving away secrets to Israel through the organization AIPAC.

2: The two Italian men present were
a) SISMI (Italian Intelligence) Chief Nicolo Pollari.b) Italian Minister of Defense Antonio Martino.

3: The meetings were in Rome in Dec. 2001.

What Newsweek doesn't tell us is that a third American was present at that first meeting and that he was the man who organized the meeting: Michael Ledeen.

But back to Ghorbanifar. A quick look in the Wikipedia shows us that:

Ghorbanifar's suspected duplicity during the Iran-Contra deal led CIA Director William Casey to order three separate lie-detector tests, all of which he failed. Iranian officials also suspected Ghorbanifar of passing them forged American documents. The CIA issued a "burn notice" (or "Fabricator Notice") on Ghorbanifar in 1984, meaning he was regarded as an unreliable source of intelligence. A 1987 congressional report on Iran-Contra cites the CIA warning that Ghorbanifar "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance" who was known to spread false information to advance his own interests.

In case you missed it, let me repeat: Iranian officials also suspected Ghorbanifar of passing them forged American documents.

Our road now takes us from Paris to Genoa, to the doors of an organization known as Propaganda Due (P2).

On July 4, 2005 the news broke that the Genoan police had arrested two leaders of a Neo-Fascist, unofficial, self-proclaimed "anti-terrorist" network operating parallel to SISMI in Italy. The group recruited police and intelligence agents to their cause. Saya and Sindoca created the Department of Strategic Anti-Terrorism Studies (DSSA), which reportedly had ties to the Bush administration as well as Isreal. One of the two leaders - Gaetano Saya - affirms he is a member of P-2 (Propaganda Due) on the DSSA website. A website which also
says:

The evil which has descended upon us finds in men like George Bush in America and Gaetano Saya in Italy an impregnable bulwark: God-fearing men, harded and pure individuals who, enlightend by God, have descended into the valley of the shadow of death to defend the Judeo-Christian faith and the West. The righteousness which these men represent will defeat the anti-Christ. God is on their side.

The P-2 Lodge, a hotbed of fascism, reportedly maintained close links with Michael Ledeen. A number of SISMI agents and assets have been tied to the group, including Francesco Pazienza, a SISMI agent, and Rocco Martino.
In 1981, a raid on the home of Licio Gelli uncovered documents listing all the names of the members of P2.

Italy's current Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi was on that list.

The road then takes us to Milan.

The mounting evidence has caused prosecutors in Genoa and Milan to suspect that the neo-Fascist intelligence group may have been involved in the kidnaping of Imam Abu Omar (Moustapha Hassan Nasr) from a street in Milan in 2003.
Michael Scheuer told Italy's La Repubblica that the kidnaping of Abu Omar was authorized by SISMI chief Nicolo Pollari. Saya's website seems to indicate that SISMI Chief Nicolo Pollari was affiliated with his organization.

On June 24th, 2005 an Italian judge ordered the arrests of 13 people that an Italian newpaper reported were all American CIA agents, in the purported abduction of Abu Omar.

The judge proclaims that "Wanted for coordinating the kidnaping: Robert Seldon Lady."

Go to the following pdf, click on Italy and scroll down to the Milan station to see Lady was a member of the CIA's Milan station:

http://www.arcservices.us/US%20Embassies-%20key%20officers%20of%20foreign%20posts.pdf

Robert Seldon Lady was a Honduran-born CIA agent once in charge of a covert American unit in Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua tasked with infiltrating anti-American groups and turning them over. Italian authorities believe Lady was involved in the initial interrogation of Abu Omar in Egypt. Lady is also accused of trying to influence the investigation. Italian agents went to Lady's home with an arrest warrant. He had fled the country.

So, like Ghorbanifar, Lady seems to have followed the road from Iran-Contra to Italy.

The road that leads us now to Rome and the Niger Embassy.

Enter Rocco Martino.  A known felon in Italy, he was an on again off again member of SISMI.  At one point he had worked as a consultant for the division within Fort Braschi that was keeping track of weapons of mass destruction.

In early 2000, Rocco Martino, who, as I noted above, was tied to P-2, went back on the SISMI payroll.  He was then directed by a SISMI agent to contact a SISMI source, a "lady" who worked at the Niger Embassy in Rome, could provide Martino with information in exchange for which Martino pays the Nigerien "lady" 500 euros/month.

On January 2nd, 2001, police discover that the Nigerien Embassy has been broken into and documents and files were stolen.  Italian investigators now believe that the breakin is related to the Niger forgeries.

Then in October 2001, the following occured as described by Joshua Marshall :

You'll remember that most of the papers in the bundle of Niger-uranium documents that arrived at the US Embassy in Rome were actually authentic. It was only a subset of the documents --- those specifically related to the alleged Niger-Iraq transactions and a couple others --- that were bogus.

In late 2001, the SISMI officer[the one who put Martino in contact with the "lady"] brought the Niger Embassy employee a packet of documents --- those later identified as forgeries --- and instructed her to slip them in with the other documents she was providing to the `security consultant' [Rocco Martino] on an on-going basis. She mixed those documents in with authentic documents which she had access to in the course of her work at the embassy. She then passed those documents --- again, a mix of authentic and forged ones --- to the `security consultant'[Rocco Martino].

This was the story that was fed to Joshua Marshall.  However, now that the light has been exposed upon the parallel clandestine organization operating within SISMI, an organization that Rocco Martino was a member of, one has to ask themselves if any "lady" from the Nigerien Embassy was ever involved.

If she ever really existed, why haven't investigators already discovered the identity of this "lady"?  You'd think, at the least, there'd have been an internal investigation at the Nigerien Embassy to find out who was leaking documents.  There couldn't have been that many Nigerien women working in the Embassy.  It seems especially unlikely that SISMI doesn't know the identity of the "lady" since the Niger embassy in Rome has been a key listening post for Italian military intelligence since 1983 in addition to the fact it was a SISMI agent that

first sent Martino to the Nigerian Embassy.

Then again, the FBI hasn't questioned Martino either, even after they were informed he was coming to America .

And here's what one analyst said about the forged documents:

the thing that stood out immediately about the documents was that a companion document - a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium - mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran, and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome.

Iraq and Iran, allied, taking on the world in a plan orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome?

Uhhh.

But it is important here to note the linkage being made by the fabricator of this forgery.  This person wants to link Iran with Iraq.  He wants us to believe that these two nations are a

threat.  More on that later.

Here are the Nigerian forgeries .

So let's sum up what we know so far:

Rocco Martino, Michael Ledeen, Francesco Pazienza, Silvio Berlusconi and Nicolo Pollari are all members of P-2. P-2 is found out to have been running a parallel intelligence network that recruited SISMI agents. Pollari authorized the abduction of Abu Omar. The abduction was allegedly coordinated by Robert Lady. An unknown SISMI agent contacts Martino and puts him in touch with a "lady" who can get him documents about Niger. The Niger Embassy is broken into. The unknown SISMI agent gives the "lady" real Niger documents along with the forgeries. This "lady" gives them to Martino.

And now the road takes us to the office of Panorama.

Panorama is owned by Silvio Berlusconi.

Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for Panorama, receives a telephone call from Rocco Martoni telling her about the Niger documents, offering to sell them to here for ten thousand dollars.  She meets with him and he gives her photocopies.  She asks how they could be authenticated and he shows her a photocopy of the codebook from the Niger Embassy.

Italian authorities believe the codebook was obtained in the breakin of the Niger Embassy in 2001.

Burba shows the documents to her boss and requests to arrange a visit to Niger.  Her boss, editor-in-chief Carlo Rossella, who is known to have ties with the Berlusconi government, insists that she first turn copies over to the U.S. Embassy,, which she did on October 9th.  Burba's trip to Niger proved that the documents were fake and even that the companies allegedly

involved were too small to make a transaction of that size. Something the French would have known had they been behind the forgeries.

Martoni was never paid.  The article was never published.

The New Yorker published an account of what happened next:

Two former C.I.A. officials provided slightly different accounts of what happened next. "The Embassy was alerted that the papers were coming," the first former official told me,
"and it passed them directly to Washington without even vetting them inside the Embassy." Once the documents were in Washington, they were forwarded by the C.I.A. to the Pentagon,

he said. "Everybody knew at every step of the way that they were false--until they got to the Pentagon, where they were believed."

Who would have alerted the Embassy that the papers were coming? The entire statement presupposes that the Embassy knew what papers were coming.

But now, the long and winding road leads us at last to Washington DC and the FBI investigation into the AIPAC spy ring.  Here we find the usual suspects.

Keyser Soze aka Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen was one of the founders of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA).  He holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank for AIPAC.  He is co-founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran.  As far back as 1980, the CIA allegedly listed Ledeen as an agent of influence of Israel.  Ledeen is the main foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove.  Ledeens main obsession seems to be to overthrow Iran.

In 1972 he published the book Universal Fascism, in which he expounds upon "the rightness of the fascist cause."  In Universal Fascism, Ledeen first builds his case that fascism was the "20th Century Revolution" and that "people yearn for the real thing - revolution". It's the blueprint for a fascist revolution.

In 1980 he collaborated with Francesco Pazienza of SISMI and P-2 in the "BillyGate" affair. This is the same Pazienze who was recently found out to belong to the parallel intelligence agency in Italy. In 1985 Pazienza was found guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of terrorists.  Ledeen is identified in court documents as an agent of SISMI.

The Pentagon downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after the FBI began a probe of Ledeen for passing classified materials to a foreign
country, believed to be Israel.

In 2001, Ledeen was hired by Feith to work on contract for the Office of Special Plans.

It was Ledeen who got Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard his job in the Navy.

It was Ledeen who insisted on using Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Mossad double agent, in the Iran-Contra affair.

It was Ledeen who organized the meeting between Rhodes, Franklin and Ghorbanifar on Dec. 1, 2001 in Rome.

On Dec. 12, 2001, U.S. Amb. Sembler has a private dinner with Ledeen and the Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino.  Ledeen and Martino begin discussing the previous meeting with Ghorbanifar which they had both attended.  Sembler, deeply concerned that a secret meeting had occured with the recipient of two CIA "burn notices", informed the CIA which in turn informed the White House, specifically Stephen Hadley.  Hadley told Ledeen and Co. to back off of Ghorbanifar.  But that order was ignored and communication between Ghorbanifar and Rhode continued up to their second face to face in June 2003.

Rhode also met with AIPAC lobbyists, Ahmed Chalabi, Israeli agents and SISMI during this time.

Harold Rhode.

Rhode is a member of the Office of Special Plans.  He fervently pushes for the invasion of Iran. He's the main liason between the White House and Ahmed Chalabi.  He is a 20 year Middle East expert.  He has close ties to Michael Ledeen.

"According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence

officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalab's office." This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said. It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said." FBI probes DOD office - (United Press International)

Larry Franklin.

Larry Franklin, a Col. in the US Air Force, is considered the Pentagons top Iran analyst.  He attended the meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar. He works for the Office of Special Plans and is a fervent believer in the need to invade Iran.  He is now under arrest for allegedly giving state secrets to Isreal through AIPAC.

FBI investigators indicate that they are looking for more than one person. Michael Ledeen and Harold Rhode have to be considered primary suspects.

This flowchart shows how the Office of Special Plans was organized.

Note that many members are also affiliated with AEI and therefore, by extension, with AIPAC.  Their names are Wurmser, Rubin, Cheney, Perle and Gingrich.  That's in addition, of course, to Keyser Soze, er Michael Ledeen.

One need only look at what espionage operation risked being exposed by Wilson revealing the Niger Yellowcake forgeries to realize why Rove would go so far as to 'out' Valerie Plame to discredit Joe Wilson.

Which takes us down the road to the desk of Bob Novak.

Bob Novaks greatest harm to national security didn't come from outing Valerie Plame and her front company.  His greatest harm came when he made the following statement in his July 14, 2003 article:

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

Up until that time, the name of the country involved was classified. Check out EmptyWheels great diary.

How could Novak have known SISMI was involved? Either someone with clearance told him, or a conspirator to the forgeries told him.

Who would those conspirators be? Those with links to P-2 and the parallel Italian intelligence network. I think I've pretty much spelled out who's on that list.

So did Manucher Ghorbanifar make the forgeries? Or was it Francesco Pazienza? The signs along the road would point to Ghorbanifar. Remember that the second forgery had the outlandish claim that Iraq and Iran were planning to take on the worlds major powers? Ghorbanifars self interest is the "liberation" of Iran. Isreal wants Iraq and Iran invaded. So does Ledeen, he's done nothing but rant about just that for years. So does Rhodes. So does Franklin. The invasion of Iran is already being planned by the White House.

No, Pazienza was most likely the SISMI agent that put Martino in touch with the "lady" who in turn passed Ghorbanifars forgeries along with the stolen Niger documents onto him.

So why hasn't the FBI questioned Rocco Martoni or the alleged "lady" at the Niger Embassy?

The answers to those questions probably lie somewhere down the road with the trial of Larry Franklin and the investigation into Valerie Plame.

We can only hope.

Read more!