Who knows who Michael Ledeen is? He is a Jewish American who went off to graduate school to study Fascism, and seems to have fallen in love with it. He particulary loved Machiavelli. Studying in Italy, he somehow became involved with the Italian Secret Service SISMI and a number of Shady International figures [Manucher Ghorbanifar]. It’s hard to figure out exactly what he thinks, but what he does is clearer. He believes in Power and War. He’s a sucker for intrigue and secret dealings. He is opposed to diplomacy. And he hates Iran. Other than that, he’s a contrarian. Oh yeah, he’s the Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent contributor to the New Republic. Needless to say, he’s in the group known as Neoconservatives. He’s been a government consultant here and in Italy. His dubious claim to fame is having been a broker in the Iran-Contra deal during the Reagan Administration. Like others at the American Enterprise Insitute [Laurie Mylroie comes to mind], his ideas filter to us through the Neoconservatives that Bush imported into key positions in our government. The recent SSCI phase 2 Report on the Administration’s Prewar Iraqi Intelligence has almost 30 pages devoted to him, though it has more to do with Iran that Iraq.
We’ve long known that Ledeen and several DoD officials made a trip to Rome in December 2002. There was a lot of suspicion that these trips might have something to do with the Niger Yellowcake Forgeries that were used as an excuse to invade Iraq in March 2003. Ledeen has categorically denied this, but the actual reason for that trip was unknown until the release of the recent report – at least unknown to me. Shortly after the 9/11 attack, Michael Ledeen contacted Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor under Condaleeza Rice. He said he’s been contacted by Manucher Ghorbanifar, his pal from Iran-Contra days, who informed Ledeen that he had two Iranians who wanted to talk. Ledeen was sure that the State Department and the C.I.A. wouldn’t listen because Manucher Ghorbanifar was involved [having tarnished reputation from the Iran-Contra Affair]. I’ll skip the details of how things went after that in setting up the meeting. It’s in the report and interesting to read in a Tom Clancy sort of way. The end of this part of the story is that the DoD under Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz ended up setting up the meeting.
The point for this post is that this shows the extreme bias that infused our government when Bush came to power. The Neoconservatives saw the Arab States [Iraq and Iran] as an evil empire [Bush would later say "Axis of Evil"]. But they also had developed an extreme bias against the State Department, the C.I.A., and the U.N. They saw the Diplomacy of the State Department and the U.N. as appeasement, and felt the C.I.A.’s Intelligence was off the mark, focusing on Terrorist groups rather than countries [Iraq and Iran]. That bias was unaffected by 9/11. Stephen Hadley wasn’t an AEI or PNAC transplant. He had been a Vulcan – the group that had advised Bush 2000 on Foreign Policy, but the Neoconservative bias had infected to whole Administration from very early on. So Hadley bit the hook from the first cast and arranged the DoD connection for a meeting in Rome. This meeting and a subsequent meeting in Paris turned out to be another Manucher Ghorbanifar scheme. Manucher Ghorbanifar himself came to the meeting along with a member of a foreign intelligence agency [redacted in the report, but surely someone from the Italian Secret Service]. The two Iranians gave some information and Ghorbanifar explained his latest plan to overthrow the Iranian government. They asked for money, the usual millions. This contact in three days in Rome lead to lots of phone calls and faxes from Ghorbanifar and the Iranians to the DoD officials. Ledeen kept up his contacts with our government, claiming we were missing opportunities. He even had fellow AEI-er Newt Gingrich lobbying for more contact. Somehow, people from the Office of the Vice President got involved [One of the DoD officials involved was subsequently arrested and in now serving time for passing classified information to Israeli Agents].
My focus is how easily Stephen Hadley fell for the idea of going around the C.I.A. and the State Department; how easily he passed the gathering of intelligence on to the DoD; and how fluid the connection between our government and the American Enterprise Institute was at that point. Michael Ledeen, Newt Gingrich, and the OVP were pressuring government officials to move in bizarre internal channels to meet with a known crook who had already burned the U.S. badly. The Deputy National Security Advisor [who is now our National Security Advisor] was playing Secret Agent Man with the shadiest of characters, providing a way around the formal pathways our government uses for such contacts, and opening a conduit into our government for a fascist, right wing, fanatic and his sociopathic, arms dealer Iranian friend.
Fast forward: So, now we come to the Niger Yellowcake Forgeries. Rocco Martino, another shady character, and friends had put together a scam in 1999-2000, a set of documents supposedly showing that Iraq had purchased Yellowcake uranium from Niger. They peddled them around. The French bought them and quickly determined that they were frogeries. But after 9/11 Rocco gave it another shot. Nicolo Pollari, head of SISMI in Italy became involved. Pollari knew they were bogus, but pushed them presumably as a way of getting tight with the U.S. They were peddled to the British and to the American Embassy, and made it to a vault at the C.I.A., but there was no action. Then guess what happened? A year later [September 9, 2002] Nicolo Pollari is sitting in Stephen Hadley’s Office. Hadley says he doesn’t recall what they talked about, but within days, he’s trying to include the Niger Yellowcake story into a speech to be given by the President. The C.I.A. had by this time been alerted to the existence of these documents and was receiving "transcripts" from Pollari. Guess who got the C.I.A. cracking on te Niger story? The OVP, of course. So C.I.A. Director knew about them, and said not only "no" but "hell no" to including this report in Bush’s speech. The C.I.A. sent two further memos to Hadley saying that the Niger story was not confirmed. But Hadley forgot all that and he put it in the President’s State of the Union message as the famous sixteen words, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa .”
The U.N. Atomic Agency subsequently exposed that this whole Niger Yellowcake story was a genuine hoax before we invaded Iraq, but off we went anyway. Why did Bush say it that way? Our C.I.A. wouldn’t certify it, but the British had gotten the same pitch from the Italians, and bought the story claiming to have independent coroboration [which turned out to be untrue]. The point here is that Stephen Hadley later claimed he’d forgotten about the C.I.A. memos, yet he put the claim in the speech in such a way as to get around the C.I.A.’s objections. All that means is that Hadley may look honest, but that he can lie with the best of them as he’d done about his meeting with Pollari. And he gave the lie for Bush to tell in a way that couldn’t be challenged. The British had done what Bush said they did. It just happened that we already knew it wasn’t right. And by the way, Pollari knew that the aluminum tubes that were being touted as centrifuge tubes for uranium enrichment were actually Italian-made missle housings. But Pollari didn’t mention that to Hadley either.
Fast Forward: Joseph Wilson knew that the Niger Yellowcake story wasn’t true. He didn’t know about the forgeries, however. When he heard the sixteen words, he knew they weren’t true. As time passed and we invaded Iraq, he became increasingly agitated about what he knew. At first he tried to expose it indirectly, but it didn’t work, so he said it outright in a New York Times op-ed piece on July 6, 2003 – three months after we’d invaded Iraq and during the time when it was dawning on us that there was nothing to find. We’ve talked about two previous episodes where Stephen Hadley had gone around the regular channels of government – the Ledeen Rome Meeting and his meeting with Nicola Pollari. In both cases, the OVP was involved. Now for the third teaming of Hadley and Cheney. After Wilson’s article, the "shit hit the fan." 
Condi Rice and George Tenet began to fight about who was to blame for the sixteem words. While they were warring, Hadley and Cheney were working on a more cloak and dagger scheme. Wilson was married to a Secret C.I.A. Agent. Their plan was to discredit him by exposing his wife and claiming that Wilson was on a boondoggle she arranged for him – eight days in sunny Niger. They would also release the National Intelligence Estimate that had been hastily patched together to satisfy Congress in the lead-up to the war. It was a flawed document, but it did mention the Niger story as credible. So while Rice and Tenet battled over who should take responsibility, Cheney, Hadley, and Libby went to work on their scheme – scheme number three [+].
When the Administration claims that we just had bad intelligence, or that Joseph Wilson is just some has-been Ambassador Liberal, or when Scott McClellan claims that the Administration Principals are really good guys who didn’t lie, they just presented things in their best light, think of the line, "and the truth shall make us free." We’re not free yet. Everything in this version of these stories is factual. Who knows how many such facts are out there, unearthed. This is not bad intel, or bad Lib’ruls, it’s conscious, premeditated untruthfulness by some bad boys.
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