[promoted from the diaries by catnip]

Cross-posted at Eurotrib by de Gondi.

While Berlusconi dishes out his intergalactic bullshit (Title of il Manifesto yesterday: Balle spaziale) as a latter-day peacenik, the Bonini- D’Avanzo team publish a new series that promises to have far-reaching consequences. The first installment reveals what happened at the secret Rome meetings starting in December 2001, involving Sismi agents, Ledeen, Franklin, Rhode and the crucial protagonists, Aras Habib Karim and Francis Brooke. Ghorbanifar, according to Sismi sources, had a minor role, more as a decoy, to divert attention.

The scoop reveals the behind the scene preparation of the war and the key role of the Italian secret services in infiltrating southern Iraq to prepare the terrain for the land invasion through their long-standing network in Iraq.

The Rome meetings were arranged at the behest of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans in collaboration with the Iranian regime which certainly had converging interests to eliminate Saddam and expand their influence in Southern Iraq.

Here follow translations of significant parts of the first article. I will update it throughout the day, and expect Nur-al Cubicle to do so also:

“…We must say who Ahmed Chalabi is. A neo-con Benjamin, Chalabi was charged by Pentagon hawks to funnel information to European intelligence services on WMDs obtained from so-called scientists that had defected from the [Iraq] regime. The man responsible for gathering together and constructing the “legends” [spin] was Chalabi’s intelligence chief, Aras Habib Karim. Aras is a key figure. He coordinates the Intelligence Collection Programme. He runs and confections dissident “material.” He’s a Shiite Kurd, just under 50, crafty, mean, a master at double-crossing and falsification of documents. With a peculiarity: the CIA has always considered him “an Iranian agent.” The second key player is Francis Brooke. The false Niger Uranium dossier ended up in his hands although it is not known how. Brooke holds the strings to Condoleeza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz and between the Iraqi National Congress and the Pentagon. His ties to Iran are excellent, far more than Chalabi’s.

The American intelligence source continues: “Ahmed Chalabi and his best men- Karim, Brooke- work as a team with the Pentagon and the American Enterprise Institute. An example to understand better. In 2004 the three [sic] men who alternate in Baghdad together with Chalabi as “liason officers” are Michael Rubin, president of theAmerican Enterprise Institute; [and] Harold Rhode, Douglas Feith’s assistant at the Office of Special Plans and Paul Wolfowitz’s “advisor for Islamic Affairs.” Just as in Italy before the war. The meetings in Rome brought together representatives of the whole team: Michael Ledeen, of the American Enterprise Institute; Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans; the colonels of the Iraqi National Congress; and the Iraqi Shiites of the Supreme Council of the Iraqi Islamic Revolution, and of course “the Guardians of the Revolution.” That was the situation in Rome. Interesting, isn’t it?” [Yes] interesting…

The following translation concludes the first installment of today’s la Repubblica scoop by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo. A full translation is presently going on line thanks to Nur-al Cubicle.


UPDATE: In order to offer readers significant passages not yet on line in English, I will continue where Nur-al Cubicle has left off.

UPDATE: The rest of the article is now available below in full.

This is the political context that permits the Sciri to collaborate with the Bush administration to manufacture the pretext to go to war. Together with the Intelligence Collection Programme, Aras Habib Karim organizes the revelations of Iraqi deserters. Sciri offers the Pentagon a confirmation of their apparently “independent” revelations, in reality put together with the Chalabi group under the supervision of Teheran’s secret services.

If a defector, “worked over” by the INC in London, declares that Saddam Hussein “is trying to develop a new chemical weapon,” the military leader of the Sadr Brigade, Abdalaziz al-Hakim, while visiting Washington, consigns to American functionaries “a document from the Iranian intelligence demonstrating how the dictator has authorized his regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons against any Shiite uprising in the case of an American attack.”

We’ve learned to recognize the mechanisms of disinformation. But now protagonists appear to walk the Italian stage just before the war of whom we were not aware. We now see them, one next to another. They participate in the Rome meeting. Programmed by Michael A. Ledeen for the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. Politically sponsored (according to Pollari) by the Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino. Technical organization by the Sismi.

What a bunch of nonsense about this meeting. It was organized, we’ve been told over the years, “to save human lives in Afghanistan.” Then, “to program together with Iranian exiles popular support from the Iranian masses,” with the nebulous idea of an uprising capable of sweeping away the Ayatollahs’ regime. It’s been said that it was useful to “pin-point Iranian interests in Afghanistan.” And at last, according to a Sismi “note,” to “obtain information on the alleged ties with Al Qaeda and the role played by certain Mideast governments in their relation to international terrorism.”

In each one of these interchangeable scenarios Manucher Ghorbanifar has a leading role. Iranian by birth, resident- as far as is known- between Paris and Genève, Ghorbanifar doesn’t have a great reputation. For some, he’s an arms dealer. For others, a forgerer. For the civil branch of our intelligence, he’s a secret agent for Teheran. For American intelligence, he’s a Mossad agent. For others, he’s an accomplished bullshit artist. Still for others, he’s all this rolled into one. But to the contrary, the Iranian appears to be a minor figure. He’s the decoy that the meeting’s organizers throw out to stir nosey busybodies away from the scene of the crime, and above all, away from the motives.

The American source tells la Repubblica: “Manucher Ghorbanifar only offered a London source who apparently was able to show us in Baghdad where Saddam stocked enriched Uranium just before the war.Ledeen embelished the story by referring that Ghorbanifar’s contact also knew that Iran was trying to buy the Uranium and that the radiation emitted by the material had contaminated Iraqi technicians whose identities he knew. After a series of blows between the CIA and the Pentagon, Ghorbanifar’s London source was taken to Baghdad at the Agency’s expense to localize the place where the Uranium was stashed. After dragging Langley’s men around for a few days, the guy asked for fifty thousand dollars to refresh the memories of some people in Baghdad who could help him in the hunt. Obviously, the jerk was ridden of with a kick in the ass…”

So forget Manucher Ghorbanifar.

The meeting in Rome at the [Hotel] Parco di Principi or in the house in Piazza di Spagna- most likely in both- has to coordinate three intelligence services. Nicolò Pollari’s Sismi. Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. “The Supreme Council for the Revolution,” the Sadr Brigade of Mohammed and Abdalaziz al-Hakim. The coordination of the work and the “material” produced by the three “networks” can offer essential information for the planning of the Anglo-American military campaign, and above all a concrete evaluation of state of Saddam’s defences; his generals’ will to fight; the real state of Saddam’s arsenal of arms, beyond [allied] influence operations. Each one of the intelligence networks has something to offer that would be useful to the Pentagon.

The Sismi can boast of its good contacts with the officials who were trained in Italy in the Eighties. With the passage of time, they have become informants and “sources.” The Iraqi National Congress can count on regime defectors. The Sciri constantly monitors the territory since, as Muhammad Baqir al Hakim explained to la Repubblica before being killed on March 18th, 2003, “The Sadr Brigade, with its autonomous militias, is in Baghdad, Iraqi Kurdistan and Southern Iran.” Above all in the area that encompasses Kerbala and Najaf to Bassora and the peninsola of al Faw up to the Kuwait border, everything that happens is reported by the invisible Sciite network that covers the no-fly zone below the 33rd parallel, a strategic territory for any land invasion.

The operative plans of the Pentagon foresee that the terrestrial campaign will rely on intelligence gathered behind the front. The information will be gathered by the Joint Anglo-American Command in real time, analyzed, elaborated and transformed into instructions for the fighting units. The concept is elementary. Signal strategic objectives from within enemy territory, the nature of defences and the capacity for offensive measures of the enemy military forces whose exact location is not known, as well as the [state] of militia dispersed among the civil population. There is also a second work project, more important than this. Behind the lines, infiltrated agents must prepare the terrain for a “secret pact” (safqa, in Arab) “for the capitulation of nation.” The pact includes “safe conduct for commanders of the Republican Guard, the Baath militia and the president’s fedayn.” In a second phase the Americans intend “to offer rich compensations, the possibility to reside in the United States, together with their families, and above all, to offer a significant operational role together with factions of the Iraqi opposition, especially the Iraqi National Congress.

Together with the Sciri and Chalabi’s men, Italy will have its role in the spoils’ auction of Baghdad and Bassora- places all too familiar to Italian military counter-espionage. Besides, the campaign in Mesopotamia, in its first phase (up to Bush’s “Mission Complete”) was nothing more than “simple corruption of a rotten system whose functionaries sold themselves in mass to the CIA.” The Sismi agents get to work. It’s time to go back to the terrace of Hotel Eden and listen to the Sismi agent.

(part 1, to continue)