July 28, 2005
KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO
author: Clayton Hallmark
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Karl Rove's only full-time foreign-policy advisor is Michael Ledeen, a
rabid anti-Arab, pro-Israel activist. The FBI is investigating Ledeen
for procuring forged documents (shown here) on nonexistent WMD, which
George Bush used to justify his war on Iraq. When Joseph Wilson exposed
the farce, Rove helped "out" Wilson's CIA wife. Did Ledeen procure the
documents for Rove, and how might he have done that? The story includes
multinational stool pigeon Rocco Martino, Italian spy Francesco
Pazienza, wanted CIA spy Robert Seldon Lady, and Pentagon analyst Larry
Franklin, who's under charges of giving US secrets to Israel.
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Karl Rove's foreign-policy advisor, Michael Ledeen, proclaimed "the
rightness of the fascist cause" in 1972. In 1984 he got George Bush Sr
to appoint Iranian arms merchant/Iranian spy/Israeli spy Manucher
Ghorbanifar as a middleman in the scandalous Iran-Contra affair. Ledeen
has been a fixture in Washington and Israel ever since, advocating a
modern version of the Crusades against Islamic nations. Based on what
he has said and written, I believe Ledeen is insane.
Michael Ledeen, Rove's "brain," is one of the leading advocates for
a US attack on Iran. The Washington Post quoted Ledeen as saying that
Rove told him, "Anytime you have a good idea, tell me." I guess that
means we can look forward to the Bush team drumming up a war with Iran.
[For more, see articles by Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post -- the
main man of the mainstream media pursuing the Rove Scandal.]
George Bush Jr., when he assumed the presidency in 2000, already
knew that he was going to settle the family score with Saddam Hussein.
His "brain," Rove, quickly enlisted Ledeen to trump up a causus belli.
EARLY 2000: ROCCO MARTINO AND THE FRENCH CONNECTION
Rocco Martino is a 66-year-old Italian gentleman SEE PHOTO who
worked on and off for the Italian SISMI (analogous to the CIA) for many
years and who also peddled the same information to various spy
organizations and publications -- a convicted felon and international
stool pigeon, just the kind of associate Rove and Ledeen needed.
After being fired by SISMI (for receiving stolen checks, among
other things), he convinced the French intelligence in 2000 that he
knew all about Africa and the trafficking of conventional and
nonconventional arms. To avoid stepping on the toes of Italian
intelligence, the French gave him a contact, or handler, in Brussels.
Martino's handler in Brussels asked him to obtain every type of news or
reference to contraband uranium from Niger ("NYE-jer), a former French
colony in the Sahara desert (not to be confused with ex-British Nigeria
in W. Africa), where mining was under the jurisdiction of two companies
controlled by the gigantic French mining company Cogema.
#file_1#
Martino soon was knocking at the door of the embassy of Niger in
Rome, where he met an Italian functionary (a "lady," by most reports --
but this was no lady, as we shall see). Martino provided the French
with documents showing that Iraq may have been planning to expand trade
with Niger. In fact, the first set of documents did not refer to
uranium, and the trade plans were probably the typical sort of
relationship Arab oil states had with a whole range of third-world
countries.
Martino was surprised when he saw that the French immediately
jumped to the wrong conclusion and thought that the documents indicated
an Iraqi interest in uranium. (We now know that Iraq had no nuclear
program.) "We need additional confirmation and more detailed
information," said the French secret service. Martino set out to
satisfy his French patrons with additional documents.
JANUARY 2001 BREAK-IN AT NIGER EMBASSY
At night, between the first and second of the January 2001, a
mysterious thief came to the embassy of Niger in Rome and into the
residence of the counselor in charge. It turned out that some
letterhead and seals (see photocopy) were missing. A second dossier on
Niger-Iraq trade soon came into Martino's hands, one that included
references to uranium trafficking. Martino claims he got it from
embassy personnel and that he thought it was authentic.
Martino passed it on to the French secret service, who had paid for
it, and also to Panorama [a magazine owned by Bush ally and Italian
president Silvio Berlusconi], which assessed it by dispatching a female
reporter to Niger. Panorama also turned the file over to the US Embassy
in Rome for cross-checking in the US.
The female journalist soon told Martino that the trip to Niger had
not produced any real confirmation, and also the French confirmed to
Martino that the reports he had passed on to them were groundless. In
other words, Bush's war rationale was debunked way back in 2001 by
amateur and professional sleuths.
Furthermore, it was a very amateurish forgery, not likely produced
through official channels by any state intelligence agency with their
vast resources. However, it was soon resuscitated as the Bush
administration, in its first year, ramped up its public relations
campaign for war.
ROME MEETING IN DECEMBER 2001
Michael Ledeen organized a meeting in Rome to gather evidence to support the planned war. Present were:
1. Michael Ledeen, Karl Rove's foreign policy advisor and organizer of the meeting
2. Nicolo Pollari, head of the the Italian equivalent of the CIA, or SISMI
3. Italy's Minister of Defense, Antonio Martino (no relation apparently to the spy Rocco Martino), Pollari's boss
4. Larry Franklin, an American who presently is being prosecuted in
the US for giving classified information to an Israeli front group,
AIPC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) -- which some would
call "spying," even though he has not been charged with espionage
5. Harold Rhode: member of Dick Cheney's Office of Special Plans,
protege of Ledeen, go-between with Iraqi exile and CIA asset (at the
time) Ahmed Chalabi.
Ledeen already had a longstanding friendship with Francesco
Pazienza, an Italian felon and forger who had been kicked out of the
official Italian intelligence organization SISMI but who had found a
new home in the renegade intelligence agency P-2 (Propaganda Due).
Pazienza apparently was not present but definitely was known to the
Italians as well as Ledeen.
Ledeen also was a personal friend of Pollari, who, like Ledeen, is
a master of bridge, the card game (Ledeen writes columns on it). There
are close ties between Pollari's official intelligence organization,
SISMI, and Pazienza's unnofficial one, P-2. In fact, P-2 recruits from
SISMI.
This little group dusted off Martino's discredited second dossier
on Iraq-Niger trade, with the uranium references. The Bush
administration now had its causus belli.
CAUSUS BELLI: A PIECE OF CRAP [SEE PHOTOCOPY]
#file_2#
The accompanying figure shows a bit of the cobbled-up intelligence
report on stolen letterheads, forged by amateurs -- most likely
Ledeen's friend, Francesco Panzienza. This document, which can be
viewed at the Israeli site  http://www.4law.co.il/Le838k.html,
is the "evidence" on which George Bush sent almost two thousand young
Americans and untold thousands of Iraqi civilians to their deaths.
SPRING 2002: JOE WILSON TO NIGER
Former US Ambassador (to Gabon) Joseph Wilson made the trip,
apparently at the suggestion of the CIA and his wife, who worked in the
CIA, to determine the authenticity of the charges in Martino's
documents, even though the CIA already could see they were forgeries.
Even the Panorama reporter could have saved him the trouble. Wilson
reported back to the CIA that there was no proof that Iraq had sought
uranium in Niger.
FALL 2002: USING THE CRAP
In London, Tony Blair spoke on September 24, 2002, for the first
time on the attempts of Saddam Hussein to obtain uranium from Africa.
And some time later Bush began to drive in the nail using the same
argument. Remember, Martino had delivered the phony dossier this was
based on to the US embassy in Rome over a year before. The US State
Department and CIA rejected it and even Panorama had debunked it. The
Pentagon, too, knew it was false, of course, but the
Wolfowitz-Feith-Perle Defense Policy Board axis plus Bush and Cheney
and their respective aides, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby (both now
subjects of interest to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and his grand
jury in Washington, DC), went with it anyway.
THE REST IS HISTORY: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein...
...recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Sixteen little words in Bush's January 2003 State of the Union message
that will be remembered in history with more honorable presidential
words like, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (FDR). Bush
was going on the forged documents procured by Rocco Martino, debunked
by all pertinent experts, and debunked by Joseph Wilson. The US
overcame Iraqi opposition -- temporarily (resistance became "suicide,"
now wonders, for whom?) -- mainly by bombing civilian structures rather
than fighting, beginning on March 19, 2003
Wilson's outraged response to using, for murder, evidence he had
debunked got his family, or at least his wife, targeted by that amoral
husk of a man, Karl Rove, who, along with I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby
(Cheney's chief aide) outed Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak, Judith
Miller (the jailed New York Times reporter and pro-war hawk), Matthew
Cooper (Time's reporter who has jeopardized Rove in a criminal
investigation), and numerous other journalists. Most, like Miller and
Cooper, wisely resisted Rove's bait.
IMP OF IMPS: MICHAEL LEDEEN'S DAUGHTER SMILES IMPISHLY IN IRAQ [PHOTO]
#file_3#
The war is not just about oil, Israel's fears/ambitions, or US
hegemony. There are contracts and contractors in Iraq. Modern-day
carpetbaggers with briefcases descended like a plague of scorpions on
the poor, bloodied, bombed-out, grieving people of Iraq. They included
the daughter of the war's chief banshee -- Simone Ledeen, Michael's
young daughter -- shown in the photo, greeting with an impish smile
another occupier at the Baghdad airport -- getting ready to lord it
over the Iraqis as she tries out her new MBA working for the CPA.
Caption: "The creatures step out of the tripods." Maybe it'll help to
pay off those student loans -- huh?, Michael.
LEDEEN FELLOW-TRAVELER FRANKLIN FACES A COURT TRIAL
At Ledeen's (Rove's brain) meeting with Italian intelligence in December 2001 was one Larry Franklin.
The FBI caught Franklin, 58, meeting two agents of AIPAC, Israel's
US "lobby," in an Alexandria, VA, restaurant in June 2003. AIPAC
employees, including the agents, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, had
been under FBI surveillance for a couple of years. The FBI was
surprised by Franklin's appearance and began investigating him, too.
The FBI arrested Franklin, a Pentagon analyst on Iran and an Air Force
Reserve colonel, on May 4, 2005, for illegally disclosing highly
classified information to AIPAC -- spying for AIPAC, in other words. He
is free on bond and is expected to plead innocent at his trial.
Why hasn't the FBI arrested the AIPAC agents, Rosen and Weissman,
or anyone at the AIPAC? Who in the Bush administration is blocking
justice in this case?
For that matter, why hasn't the FBI interviewed Rocco Martino, the
acknowledged and admitted procurer of the phony Niger uranium
documents? They are known to be investigating the phony documents.
The United States has had no qualms about getting audacious in
Italy by having the CIA abduct an Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, off the
streets of Milan in February 2003, for "exceptional rendering," aka
"torture," in Egypt. This open violation of Italian sovereignty was
supervised by the CIA's station chief in Milan, Robert Seldon Lady,
formerly of the New Orleans area.
Lady Is No "lady": ROBERT SELDON LADY
It is my belief that the "Italian functionary," or "a lady," that
Martino referred to was actually a Lady, Robert Seldon Lady Sr, the
same guy who headed up the torture abduction of Abu Omar.
Italian prosecutor Armando Spataro has just obtained arrrest
warrants for 6 more CIA spies in addition to the original 13 that
included Robert Lady, in connection with the abduction.
Robert Seldon Lady, 51, lived in Abita Springs, Lousiana, until
2001, when he left for the Milan post. He still has an address in New
Orleans, according to Cryptome http://cryptome.org/lady-eyeball.htm.
He and his wife Martha own a villa in the Italian countryside near
Penango (Asti) and Turin, where they hoped to retire before he went on
the lam. Born in Honduras, he was an affable New York City cop in the
80s who infiltrated leftist groups. He is something of an electronics
hacker (at least of cell phones). And now he is a wanted felon in
Europe.
During the operation, Lady apparently worked directly with the
commander of the 31st Security Police Squadron, Lt. Col. Joseph Romano,
USAF, at the Aviano Air Base in Italy. Lt. Col. Romano, who currently
works at the Pentagon, also is sought by Italian prosecutors for
questioning. At the time, Romano worked under Brig Gen R. Michael
Worden, commander of the 31st Fighter Wing, who also should have to
answer some questions.
The Italian prosecutor could release the photographs of the
kidnap-torture perps at any time. This case -- Robert Lady's kidnapping
of Abu Omar -- could become a very big story because of its possible
effects on relations between nations.
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