http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/~~Saturday, November 05, 2005

Interview with Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Why are you opposed to the presence of George W. Bush in your
country, Argentina?

Bush is a danger for the entire world. He does not respect the
Declaration of Human Rights, or international treaties or the
Security Council of the United Nations. He invades countries, he lies
to the world and to his own people.

Bush is responsible for crimes of lèse-humanité, massacres in Iraq
and in Afghanistan and the Guantanamo prison camp. He talks about
terrorism, but he refuses to denounce the state terrorism of the
United States. In Latin America, Bush is a threat because the
Americans are building military bases all over the continent—in
Panama, in Colombia, in Ecuador and in the Pacific.

Recently, US troops have arrived in Paraguay, where the government
has given them immunity from prosecution throughout their national
territory and especially at the border with Bolivia, because Paraguay
possesses great reserves of water. Bush wants to impose the Free
Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA), but free trade is only a
lure, because it is the rich countries that control prices and
economic development for the poor.

The march in Mar del Plata against Bush is blowing the whistle on the
pillage of Latin America.

F.B.I. Is Still Seeking Source of Forged Uranium Reports -Oct 28
*NYT)

Just last week the NY Times said the fbi invest. was still going on.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28niger.html
October 28, 2005

F.B.I. Is Still Seeking Source of Forged Uranium Reports
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 - A two-year inquiry by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation has yet to uncover the origin of forged documents that
formed a basis for sending an envoy on a fact-finding trip to Niger,
a mission that eventually exploded into the C.I.A. leak inquiry, law
enforcement and intelligence officials say.

A counterespionage official said Wednesday that the inquiry into the
documents, which were intended to show that Iraq was seeking uranium
for a nuclear weapons program, had yielded some intriguing but
unproved theories. One is the possibility that associates of Ahmad
Chalabi, the former Iraqi exile who was a leading champion of the
American campaign to topple Saddam Hussein, had a hand in the
forgery. A second hypothesis, described by some officials as more
likely, is that the documents were forged at Niger's embassy in Rome,
in a moneymaking scheme. The official said the matter was being
investigated as a counterintelligence case, not a criminal one.

The United States government did not receive the papers until October
2002, eight months after the Central Intelligence Agency sent Joseph
C. Wilson IV, a retired ambassador, to Niger on the fact-finding
mission, according to a review completed last year by the Senate
intelligence committee. The C.I.A. decided in March 2003 that the
papers were forgeries.

But a little-noticed passage in another government report said the
C.I.A. had determined that foreign intelligence passed to the agency
in the months before Mr. Wilson's trip also contained information
that was "based on the forged documents and was thus itself
unreliable.".....

~Vince Cannistraro's statement was widely reported.

It's viewed as accurate by knowledgable observers, both inside and
outside the intelligence community.

You're not going to find many who endorse the FBI's 7/20 conclusion.

Cannistraro's version has been repeated by near-mainstream people,
such as Max Blumenthal. This is what he had to say about it at his
Blog on 10/27:

http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com /

It's All About Iraq

By the time you read this, there should have already been
indictments, so there is little use in speculating.

Still, it will be interesting to see how correct the speculation has
been. One thing the major media organs -- the Times, AP, Wall Street
Journal (go to any other blog for links) -- agree on at this point is
that Libby will be indicted, possibly for charges more serious than
perjury and obstruction.

From there on, the rumors sound stranger than I would have ever
imagined. If they prove to be correct, this administration will find
its next three years completely untenable. The climate at a certain
newspaper will not improve much either. I would have given these
rumors more credibility had I not bought a bottle of champagne after
seeing the exit polls on November 2, 2004 which wound up collecting
dust for months afterward. You know what I'm saying?

One of the most important discussions going on right now is about
Fitzgerald's interest in the Niger forgeries. As I discussed earlier
on this blog, Michael Ledeen was among a group of neocons including
Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode who met with the head of the Italian
CIA in 2001. Berlusconi's government soon passed info about Saddam's
acquisition of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Cheney -- info which
prompted Joe Wilson's fact-finding mission to Niger. Months after
Wilson's trip, someone broke into the Niger embassy and stole nothing
more than the letterhead the forgeries appeared on.

As Josh Marshall pointed out, Berlusconi is now lying about passing
on the bogus info to Cheney. Raw Story is following this, I hear, and
should have something out before tomorrow evening. And I may have
something to add, too.

Indictments related to the Niger forgeries would reveal the Cheney-
engineered attack on Plame and Wilson as part and parcel of a broad
conspiracy to deceive the American public into war. These indictments
would therefore provide fodder for long overdue congressional
hearings on pre-war deception. Earlier tonight, on Larry King Live,
Bob Woodward remarked, referring to the leak investigation, "I don't
see what any of this has to do with Iraq." Woodward and the rest of
Washington's oblivious, white collar press corps may to have to
change their tune very soon.

Indeed, the notion that Fitzgerald is investigating the forgeries,
which James Moore explored in his penetrating analysis of Plamegate,
seems solid.

don't see how they couldn't. Cannistraro made his accusation in
April.

You really should read the transcript of the radio interview that
was published.

Who Forged the Niger Documents?

By Ian Masters, AlterNet. Posted April 7, 2005.
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/21704 /

A former counterterrorism chief claims that the now discredited
documents that showed Iraq trying to purchase uranium were fabricated
right here in the United States.

Lying and Dying Redux
Stephen Pizzo

Editor's Note: This is an edited transcript of an interview conducted
by Ian Masters with Vincent Cannistaro, the former CIA head of
counterterrorism operations and intelligence director at the National
Security Council under Ronald Reagan, which aired on the Los Angeles
public radio KPFK on April 3, 2005.

SNIP

(interviewer)Well, Ambassador Wilson publicly refuted the claims —
particularly the 16 words in the President's State of the Union
address that the Iraqis were trying to buy significant quantities of
uranium from Niger. That document, I understand, was fabricated ...
it originally came out of Italian intelligence, I think SISME, or
SISDE—I'm not sure which one.

(V.C.)It was SISME, yeah. ...

During the two-thousands when we're talking about acquiring
information on Iraq. It isn't that anyone had a good source on Iraq—
there weren't any good sources. The Italian intelligence service, the
military intelligence service, was acquiring information that was
really being hand-fed to them by very dubious sources. The Niger
documents, for example, which apparently were produced in the United
States, yet were funneled through the Italians.

Do we know who produced those documents? Because there's some
suspicion ...

I think I do, but I'd rather not speak about it right now, because I
don't think it's a proven case ...

If I said "Michael Ledeen" ?

You'd be very close . . .

Well, again, Vincent Cannistraro, the feeling you get is that, from
going back to, let's agree that 9/11 is the greatest intelligence
catastrophe since Pearl Harbor, and then the WMD catastrophe that
followed it.

These are two huge embarrassments and it seems to be that the way the
White House has handled it's as though you have a car accident. And
instead of blaming the driver, you are blaming the car here. So, do
you believe that, you know, that this process — whether it was the
intention or not — it's certainly worked out in such a way to
exonerate the White House and to lay the blame with the wrong . . .

I think that's certainly the objective. To lay it off to the
intelligence community. But, it's very disingenuous. It's like
saying, OK, the intelligence community that we whipped into a frenzy
in order to provide information to sustain our policy conclusions
that Saddam had a WMD program and that he was an imminent danger —
that intelligence community provided information that now turns out
not to be correct.

And that's why we were misled into saying what we did say, and doing
what we did do. That's very disingenuous, because that's not the case
at all.

IT MAKES SENSE - Robert Mueller also covered up BCCI for BushInc.
He was the US attorney who refused to indict because he said there
was no case.

Kerry took his evidence to NY State attorney Morgenthau to keep the
investigation and the case alive.

Msnbc just said that they will do a segment with Levin and
Rockerfeller --coming up

it will be interesting to see if they mention this story (fbi closing
the investigation in july). I still do not know it true.

in other words, they were forged for "personal profit", so there's no
need to investigate?

And how does Mueller know it was for personal profit without knowing
who the forgers are?

Doesn't make any sense.

~Boggles the mind. The FBI has endorsed a theory that makes no
sense. That theory asserts that there were a pair of forgers,
a "security consultant" and an Italian national employee at the Niger
Embassy in Rome. The pair, it is surmised, proceeded to create
forgeries that appeared to be signed by a Foreign Minister who had
resigned years before the date of the documents.

No Niger Embassy employee is going to get that part wrong -- one
could probably safely assume that the accused would know the names of
her bosses.

This is simply ridiculous, and Director Mueller needs to be
investigated for his white-wash.

I'll believe Mr. Cannistraro on this, who had identified AEI's
Michael Ledeen as being "very close" to the culprit.

Remember what Richard Clarke said about the FBI to the 9/11 white
washers?

"I don't think the FBI knows what it knows."

http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/

~~That's the purpose of all this phony information.

First they zig when you zag, then when you think you got it right,
they zag and then you zig. The White House is spinning both ways at
the same time in hope of us losing interest.

We are being flimflammed by the biggest racketeers this country has
ever seen.

~This part is confusing also--did/do the Committee members know of
this in July?

....Committee members said they were shown documents defending
General Pollari, including a copy of a classified letter from Robert
S. Muller III, the director of the F.B.I., dated July 20, which
praised Italy's cooperation with the bureau.

In Washington, an official at the bureau confirmed the substance of
the letter, whose contents were first reported Tuesday in the leftist
newspaper L'Unità. The letter stated that Italy's cooperation proved
the bureau's theory that the false documents were produced and
disseminated by one or more people for personal profit, and ruled out
the possibility that the Italian service had intended to influence
American policy, the newspaper said.

As a result, the letter said, according to both the F.B.I. official
and L'Unità, the bureau had closed its investigation into the origin
of the documents. .....

~So why is everybody on this side of the pond saying the FBI
investigation is ongoing?

......The spymaster, Gen. Nicolò Pollari, director of the Italian
military intelligence agency known as Sismi, disclosed that Mr.
Martino was the source of the forged documents in closed-door
testimony to a parliamentary committee that oversees secret services,
the lawmakers said.

........

The revelation came on a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation
confirmed that it had shut down its two-year investigation into the
origin of the forged documents.

The information about Iraq's desire to acquire the ore, known as
yellowcake, was used by the Bush administration to help justify the
invasion of Iraq, notably by President Bush in his State of the Union

address in January 2003. But the information was later revealed to
have been based on forgeries.

The documents were the basis for sending a former diplomat, Joseph C.
Wilson IV, on a fact-finding mission to Niger that eventually
exploded into an inquiry that led to the indictment and resignation
last week of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis
Libby....