Author: Patrick Lang

THE NIGER FORGERIES

How Did Allegations from Discredited Documents End Up in a State of the Union Speech?

By Richard Sale, Intelligence Correspondent
(Originally posted at Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005)

DOUG FEITH’S BACKCHANNEL

In December 2001, there was a secret meeting in Rome attended by MICHAEL LEDEEN, a paid consultant to Panorama, the Italian magazine that first broke the story of the Niger documents, Defense Department official, LARRY FRANKLIN, since indicted for passing classified information to Israel, the classified documents outlining US policy towards Iran and U.S activities in Iraq.

HAROLD RHODE, another DOD official was there, and, like FRANKLIN, was from the office of DOUG FEITH, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Also attending was Iran-Contra figure MANUCHER GHORBANIFAR, an Iranian fabricator of intelligence about whom the CIA had issued a “burn notice” that the man and his information were not reliable and to avoid employing him.

According to former and serving U.S. intelligence sources, the secret meetings between Pentagon officials and associates of Ghorbanifar in Europe had been going on for almost two years, a full year longer than the Bush administration acknowledged.

Ghorbanifar told Laura Rozen of the Washington Monthly about three meetings, but U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed to this reporter that, while the Pentagon originally told the Washington Post that Rhode had simply run into Ghorbanifar in Paris in June 2003, Ghorbanifar told Rozen that the two men spent weeks planning the meeting.

Further, U.S. intelligence officials said that the Italian military intelligence organization, SISMI, provided logistics and security for the December 2001 Rome meeting.

Continued below:

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From Richard Sale, longtime UPI intelligence correspondent:

An hour ago I was contacted by a U.S. government official close to the Fitzgerald case. This person told me that there WILL be indictments announced later this afternoon, and the Special Prosecutor will hold a press conference tomorrow.

Richard Sale

— Via Patrick Lang

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“Drinking the Kool-Aid,” Middle East Policy Council Journal, Vol. XI, Summer 2004, No. 2

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Below: Richard Sale’s first story of the morning: “Aides To Be Indicted, Probe to Continue,” via Larry Johnson.

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” Fitzgerald is an Irish doorman’s son who attended a Jesuit high school, then Amherst College — where he was a Phi Beta Kappa mathematics and economics major — and Harvard.

He registered to vote in New York as an independent. When he discovered that Independent was a political party, he re-registered with no affiliation. Illinois citizens know him for pursuing Republicans and Democrats with equal fervor. Former governor George Ryan (R) is on trial on corruption charges, and a growing number of aides to Mayor Richard M. Daley (D) face influence-peddling charges.”

A witness in the case said of Fitzgerald – “As White House staffers, ..you had generals and Cabinet secretaries being deferential to you. He didn’t care what you’d done or how well you knew the president.” Washpost

This man is a politician’s worst nightmare. He doesn’t “care what you’d done or how well you knew the president.”

He reminds me of the portrait of Robert Kennedy in Richard Mahoney‘s book, “Sons and Brothers.” Relentless, dogged, thorough, a workaholic who goes home to Chicago on the weekends. He has priorities and they are not all about his career.

Men like this are not driven by self-interest so much as they are by an internal demand for justice and virtue in the world.

He is unimpressed by the argument that “we have always done it that way.” Graft, character assasination as political “business as usual,” influence peddling? Men like this are outraged by such things.

Norah O’Donnell of NBC news said last week that she had been told by someone interrogated by Fitzgerald that he could best be described as “pious.” That strikes me as apt.

Piety can be religious or it can be civic as the Romans would have understood this virtue, as Marcus Aurelius would have understood it. In either case, Fitzgerald’s piety is “bad news” for a number of people.

He will do what he is going to do, and partisan hand-wringing will not affect him.

Get ready.

– Pat Lang

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by Patrick Lang

Walid Moallim, the former Syrian ambassador in Washington, says that he did not “threaten” Rafik Hariri a couple of weeks before Hariri was killed. He says that he had known and “worked with” Hariri for many years and thought of him as a friend.

That could be since Rafik Hariri was variously a “friend” to Saudi Arabia, the CIA and the Baathist government in Damascus.

He was also a friend to the Lebanese clique of his”friends” who together hold 75% of the country’s national debt, “a gift that keeps on giving.”

His many friends also included the Sunni zealots on behalf of whom Rafik spoke from the minbar of mosques in Lebanon claiming that he stood between the Sunni population and victimization by the rest of the Lebanese.

Learning who it was who killed Hariri is a daunting task for a serious investigator. There are so many candidates for the blame.

Nevertheless, Fox News Sunday (FNS) has already “moved on” from assumption of official Syrian government guilt in this matter to beating the war drums along the Potomac in a “riff” identical to that played as overture to the opera now “on the boards” in Iraq.

Today, 23 October, 2005. Brit Hume and Bill Kristol substantially made the following statements on FNS:

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by Pat Lang

“Bush said he called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice earlier in the day and instructed her to call upon the United Nations to convene a session “as quickly as possible to deal with this very serious matter.”

Bush was not specific about what steps the international community should take to make sure Syria is held accountable. He said the United States has started talking with U.N. officials and with Arab governments about what steps to take.

“Today a serious report came out that requires the world to look at very carefully and respond accordingly,” Bush said. Associated Press

Somewhere along the “dusty trail” a wise man told me that one should never threaten to do what can not be done, nor should one issue an order that is likely to be disobeyed. To do either of these things is to risk a loss of “gravitas.” In other words, people will stop listening to you if you do not perform after making rhetorical demands.

SYRIA and the Mehlis report are a case in point.

President Bush and his administration understandably take the ominous but not very conclusive outcome of the UN investigation quite seriously. The report is, in my opinion, overly dependent on single witnesses to events, but, it nevertheless points to high level Syrian involvement in the Hariri murder.

President Bush is calling for ACTION! I am puzzled as to what kind of action he is thinking of.

The Syrian government has a long established and time tested methodology for dealing with external demands placed upon it. It ignores them. The late Hafez al-Assad (papa of Bashar) refined this technique over many years in office. He was the master of “refusenikism.” He may have brought this form of “international relations” to a high point unlikely to be surpassed for a long time. .. continued below BIO:

The old man even demonstrated his devotion to the method in interviews with visiting “firemen.” … Continued BELOW:

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