Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies

november 15, 2005

[parnasokan]

Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies

Here follows an interesting article from the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. I make no comment at all other than ‘read it’. Very soon, under the title “The Rockefeller Connection”, I will post something revealing, something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned ..

Nigergate: the dangerous relations between Democrat Senators and ex spies

Il GIORNALE 13 November 2005 By Gian Marco Chiocci and Mario Sechi

October 9 2002, Rome. Elisabetta Burba, journalist with Panorama magazine, crosses Via Veneto. At the American Embassy someone is waiting for her. The very same day in London The Guardian publishes an article in which Vincent Cannistraro, an ex CIA officer, refers to “manipulated information” which, he alleges, is on its way to the highest echelons of the American Government. Cannistraro points a finger towards the “hawks in the Pentagon” as being behind the disinformation.

While Cannistraro is busy speaking to the Guardian Rocco Martino’s false documents have as yet to reach the American Embassy, the State Department, the CIA, the Defence Intelligence Agency, the IAEA and the Italian SISMI. At the time of Cannistraro’s interview only the French DGSE have the false documents. How did Cannistraro know what was about to happen? Cannistraro is not the only ex CIA officer who foretells the events, in fact Nigergate is a plot in which bloggers, spies and Liberal journalists are all playing the very same game. Cannistraro’s foretelling the future is but the first of a series of the many, too many, coincidences in the Nigergate affair.

In Washington, as in the European capitals, mid October sees the discussions regarding military intervention in Iraq reach their peak. Nobody seems to doubt that Saddam Hussein is a menace, not even the France which is against the war, already in possession of the false documents and already in contact with the freelance spy Rocco Martino who will eventualy assume the role of “postman”. The French President, Jacques Chirac, in an interview with the Lebanese newspaper, L’Oriente le jour, published on October 16 2002, declared that “today a certain ammount of evidence leads to believe that in these last four years, that is in the period in which the weapons inspectors were absent, the country continued its re-arming program”. Meanwhile, in the United States, the Democrats side with Bush in favour of armed intervention. On October 10 2002 Hilary Clinton made her comments in regards to Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons. The same for John F. Kerry: “I will vote in favour of authorising the President to use force if necessary in that I believe that arsenals of weapons of mass destruction represent a real and grave threat to our security”. Amongst others voting “yes” was Senator John D. Rockefeller, Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, who today promotes the Italian connection in the false documents obviously forgetting his own words at the time: “there is proof that Saddam is working aggressively to develop nuclear arms which will probably be ready in five years”. Words that Rockefeller seems to have forgotten today at a time when he is asking the FBI to re-open the inquiry into the Italian front. Alongside him stands Congressman Henry Waxman, another who voted “yes” to the use of force. Yesterday Waxman returned once again to attacking the FBI for not having interrogated Rocco Martino during one of his two trips to America, the first to be interviewed by CBS (in vain because the interview was never aired). The polemic because the Director of the FBI, Robert S. Mueller III, signed a letter which closed once and for all the Italian front: the letter states that there was no plot to influence American foreign policy. The letter completely overturns the conspiracy theory advanced by the american bloggers and copied by La Repubblica which punctually interviews the Democrat Senators who were all for war yesterday but today are so full of regret that they want to place the very FBI under the spotlight, the same FBI that they applaude for having investigated Lewis Scooter Libby for his involvement in CIA-Gate. It’s true, the FBI could have interrogated Rocco Martino, had they been able to find him. Reliable information from the States points to Martino’s having been assisted by CBS before leaving Italy and having then been helped to hide. True? False? We will know during the next few days. There are no mysteries surrounding Martino’s “non interrogation”. In Italy SISMI made all of it’s information available to the Americans, adding in a letter to Mueller the hope that “our collaboration will continue along the same lines well into the future”.

The declerations made by Waxman to La Repubblica would appear somewhat singular. But just who is Waxman? The Congressman is linked to the millionaire Lyndon La Rouche, another exponent of the Democrats who, in Italy, are active through Movisol (International Movement for Civil Rights - Solidarity) and in the United States through the Executive Intelligence Review, which, on June 13 2003, circulated the following piece of disinformation: “according to EIR intelligence sources the Niger documents were produced inside the Niger Embassy in Rome and were passed to the Italian Carabinieri (Military Police) who then, without commenting at all, passed the documents to the British MI6 and the CIA”. Basing himself on this disinformation Waxman wrote a letter to Bush demanding an explanation, none ever arrived due to the simple fact that the EIR scoop was totally baseless. No trace of the Carabinieri, no trace of British or Americans. Nothing at all. All that remains is a network of spies, anti-Bush giornalists and Democrat Senators who all seem to forget two or three things: Rocco Martino was a spy employed by the French; Niger is an ex Frech colony; the French control the extraction of uranium in Niger; the French had the dossier containing the false documents in the autumn of 2000; in regards to the forgeries France remained silent, never telling the Americns a word about the forgeries, until after the IAEA disclosed all.

Question: why don’t all of the highly allert Democrat Senators, beginning with Rockefeller, ask the FBI to investigate Paris?

[dangus]

Deer Parnasokan,

I em a verry, verry welthy oil man. I hav made many, many moneys deeling with Saddam Hussein, but I am verry afrayd that the Natiuns United wil confisckate my moneys. I am needing thank you sume American who will allow me to diposit my many, many moneys in a banque Americain. If you help me out, I will give you all the baggettes you culd possibly eet, pluss tenne persent of all my many many moneys.

--Jacques Chirac

[smoothsailing]

Why don't the Democrats investigate Paris?

Paris who? Paris Hilton?

[dangus]

Oh, crud that Niger scheme from Chirac looks fake as all heck: I FORGOT TO PUT IT IN ALL CAPS!

[dangus]

Oh, believe me... they've had people rummaging through Paris for years...

[YOUGOTIT]

Can you provide a link please. I cannot find it at Il Giornale.

[txhurl]

something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned ..

Doubtful it's passed under FR radar screen, but you can try.

[parnasokan]

this is url http://www.ilgiornale.it/a.pic1?ID=42533

[ravingnutter]

Cannistraro’s foretelling the future is but the first of a series of the many, too many, coincidences in the Nigergate affair.

No kidding, I've been working on this for awhile:

My theory (#42)is that this was a collaborative effort by the French and CIA coordinated by Wilson. Jacqueline, (Joe's his second wife), was a French diplomat and may have provided the connections for Wilson to see the forged documents that were supplied by the French through the Italians. In other words it is possible that Wilson knew that the docs were forged because he was privy to the information that French wanted to discredit the British info on Saddam shopping for yellowcake and that Wilson's objective was the same. The French just happen to manage the yellowcake production in Niger.

Therefore, Wilson did not lie when he said he saw the documents.

Per a thread by Fedora:

French intelligence soon began a campaign to discredit the US case for war against Iraq. In 1999, French intelligence had begun investigating the security of uranium supplies in Niger, where uranium production was controlled by a consortium led by the French mining company COGEMA, a division of the French state-owned nuclear energy firm AREVA. At that time, Italian businessman Rocco Martino provided French intelligence with genuine documents revealing that Iraq was planning to expand trade with Niger. French intelligence took an interest in the documents and asked Martino to provide more information. In 2000 he used a contact in the Niger embassy in Rome to provide French intelligence with documents purporting that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. These documents were later exposed as forgeries;

< snip >

Since it is now also known that French intelligence was trying to push Martino’s forgeries on US and British intelligence, as simultaneously the Democratic National Committee was planning to discredit President Bush’s Iraq policy by accusing his administration of manufacturing evidence against Hussein’s regime, heightened suspicion is cast on Wilson’s use of the Niger investigation to discredit the Bush administration’s case for war.

What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa

Also, Rocco only "procured" the documents, he did not forge them. Fitzgerald went to Italy to investigate the Niger Embassy (in Rome) burglary...where the letterhead and seals for the forgeries were stolen. Ex-CIA agent (and coincidentally, an advisor to the Vatican in Rome),Vincent Cannistraro has stated that Alan Wolf and Duane Clarridge were the actual forgers, but his account is the only one available that I can find on the subject. He has also pointed the finger at Michael Ledeen, but Ledeen has publicly made a statement that he had nothing to do with it and demanded an apology from Cannistraro.

In addition, despite what the MSM is reporting, the Italians released a press report yesterday saying they had nothing to do with the forgeries:

Italy denies role in fake documents on Iraq

This was also backed up by Rocco here

Cannistraro's "theory" falls apart when you consider that he:

1) blamed SISME (the Italians), which has proven to be wrong

2) bases his assumptions on a Dec 2001 Ledeen meeting, when Cannistraro himself was in Rome in Nov 2001, which would make him just as suspect.

I also discovered that Cannistraro worked directly with Clarridge during Iran Contra, so he has alot of nerve bringing that up in connection to Ledeen. Another interesting tidbit (#47) that I discovered is that Wolf and Clarridge worked with Aldrich Ames, who outed Plame to the Russians in the 90's. Coincidence? I think not. Cannistraro trying to kill two birds with one stone to cover his own carcass seems to be the more likely answer. Equally suspicious is the Hersch article, where Cannistraro and another unnamed agent state the exact route the documents took and Cannistraro actually admits that he called the CIA about the documents before they were proven to be false. This begs the question...just how did Cannistraro know about the documents before they were vetted? Sounds a whole lot like Wilson's slip-up about seeing the documents.

Hersch also claims in the above linked article:

Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.

A more reliable source, Joe diGenova claims it was a possible CIA coup as well. As does James Lewis in two articles, here and here

Two other names just crept into this...Niger Ambassador Adamou Chekou, who was in charge at the Embassy when the break-in and forgeries occurred and Wissam al-Zahawiah, Iraqi Ambassador to the Holy See. Seems Italian Intelligence was eavesdropping on these two and discovered their "hotline".

Did you read that carefully. Holy See? As in Vatican? Where Vincent Cannistraro is the security advisor?

Also take into consideration:

Wilson (as Ambassador to Gabon) had/has connections to the Gabon Chief of State, Omar Bongo, who was the chief African ally of the French oil company TotalFinaElf, a major beneficiary of the Oil-for-Food bribes. Prior to the Iraq War, they had a contract with Saddam's regime worth an estimated 12.5 to 27.0 billion barrels of oil reserves. Also he had connections via the Middle East Institute and Rock Creek, both of which are Saudi controlled.

Wilson's wife Jacqueline was also apparently a lobbyist for Bongo and it seems Wilson was pretty chummy with Saddam's weapons buyer, having dinner with him on the eve that Kuwait was invaded in 1990. She is now an advisor to Bongo, her picture from a 2005 conference can be found here That makes it very clear that there are connections to oil-for-food. No wonder Wilson can afford his lifestyle.

Source: Posts 21 and 22

[popdonnelly]

Okay, so how did Cannistraro know these fake documents were on their way to the U.S. government, unless he was involved in it?

[texas_mrs]

bump

[ravingnutter]

Cannistraro ping.

[ravingnutter]

Okay, so how did Cannistraro know these fake documents were on their way to the U.S. government, unless he was involved in it?

That's what I have been saying all along! Same goes for Joe Wilson.

[marron]

Very soon, under the title “The Rockefeller Connection”, I will post something revealing, something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned ..

Please ping me when you do... thanks

[ravingnutter]

Reliable information from the States points to Martino’s having been assisted by CBS before leaving Italy and having then been helped to hide.

Timeline problems with that...CBS interviewed him for 60 minutes twice in NY, supposedly in June and August of 2003 (when the National Guard story was supposed to run).

Source

Besides, the Italians already were tracking him and the FBI, well...let's just say they still don't give a rat's patootie.

[ravingnutter]

From one of piasa's posts:

JANUARY 2003 : (AL ZAHAWIE, "RETIRED IN JORDAN" - IS RECALLED BACK TO BAGHDAD, IRAQ; HE IS TAKEN TO MEET UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS) But last January, al-Zahawie was summoned back to Baghdad for what he had expected would be a request to help Iraq's Foreign Service plan for deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz's planned visit to the Vatican. Instead, upon landing in Baghdad, al-Zahawie was taken to meet with UN weapons inspectors. Five inspectors interviewed him in a 90-minute session, he says.

"They asked why I went [to Niger], why I was chosen, when I left Rome and whether there were any other Iraqi diplomats at the Vatican," he says. "But then they asked who had the seal of the embassy and where I had left it." That's when al-Zahawie got wind of some kind of foul play. Italy had handed over cables from al-Zahawie to the Niger government announcing the trip, and other documents had pointed to his presence in Niger. But the inspectors were particularly interested in a July 6, 2000, document bearing al-Zahawie's signature, concerning a proposed uranium transaction. The inspectors refused to show him the letter, he says, but al-Zahawie was sure he had never written it. "If they had such a letter, it had to have been a forgery," he says. The tell-tale signs of the forgery were quite obvious, he stresses. [* My note: How would he know the 'tell-tale sign' if they refused to show the letters to him? Shades of Joe Wilson's foreknowledge of the docs?]

[ravingnutter]

Sorry, but it is no joking matter when the CIA tries to take down a sitting President.

[ScaniaBoy]

Please ping me when you post "The Rockefeller Connection”.

Thanks!

[YOUGOTIT]

Thanks. Got the story in Italian and it should be a point of investigation by the Justice Department on Rockefeller.

[popdonnelly]

Chiocci has been doing an excellent job of reporting on this.

[smoothsailing]

Here's something you may not have seen. Free Agents

[nopardons]

bttt

[Gaffer]

Very funny....by the way, when I was growing up, we were taught to say "NIGER" for the country where the 'g' kinda sounds like a 'j'.....Now alluvasudden, the CNN, MSNBC, CBS pukes are saying "nijeeeeeerrrrrr." Makes you wonder if some bright 'bulb' at CNN thought, "Hey! If we prounounce it like we used to, some dumb CNN blond (brunette, whatever) is gonna screw up and say the "N-word" by mistake sometime....

[popdonnelly]

I agree with you that there is something strange about Cannistraro's role in this matter. How did he know so much about this false information?

[ravingnutter]

Something else about foreknowledge that I remembered, from a Ledeen article (who they are trying to blame):

JJA: Look at page 76 of the Silberman-Robb Report. CIA had received three reports from "a liaison intelligence service" in late '01 and early 2002. "One of these reports explained that...during meetings on July 5-6, 2000, Niger and Iraq had signed an agreement for the sale of 500 tons of uranium." And the "liaison service" provided a "verbatim text" of the agreement. Got that? Not the document, but a text. They were keeping the documents to themselves, and they wouldn't tell us the source, because, they said, they were afraid of leaks.

ML: Right, that text is supposed to be the text of one of the forged documents.

JJA: Silberman-Robb doesn't say that, actually, although that's probably true. Everyone has assumed that the "liaison service" was Italian, but since the Italians did not have those documents in early 2002-nobody except the French and Rocco, the French agent, had them at that time-it wasn't them.

ML: So they weren't the "liaison service." It was...the FRENCH???

JJA: Voila! Or should I say, Ecco!?

National Review

[Just mythoughts]

bttt

[smoothsailing]

LOL!

[popdonnelly]

If the French had sent this information to the CIA in late 2001-early 2002, then a possible source for Cannistraro could have been former associates in the CIA.

[pinz-n-needlez]

Bump

Pinz

[pinz-n-needlez]

Thanks for your attempts to keep these dots from floating off the page.

Pinz

[pinz-n-needlez]

Ping

Pinz

[Fedora]

Thanks!

[ravingnutter]

If the CIA was so afraid of leaks that they wouldn't provide the documents to the Intelligence Committee, why would they leak it to an ex-CIA agent? How did Castelli pass on the the the exact text of the forgeries if he never saw the documents, as he claims? Oops...I guess we ought to make that four people now that are clairvoyant.

[popdonnelly]

Well, there are all kinds of possibilities where Cannistraro could have gotten it from. It couldn't have been a public source, not at that early date. I was speculating that, since he was ex-CIA, someone he had known at the CIA could have fed him the information. An active CIA person couldn't go public with that kind of information, but Cannistraro wouldn't be hampered in that way. So if someone in the CIA wanted to get it out, feed it to Cannistraro.

[Enchante]

All that remains is a network of spies, anti-Bush journalists and Democrat Senators who all seem to forget two or three things: Rocco Martino was a spy employed by the French; Niger is an ex French colony; the French control the extraction of uranium in Niger; the French had the dossier containing the false documents in the autumn of 2000; in regards to the forgeries France remained silent, never telling the Americns a word about the forgeries, until after the IAEA disclosed all. Question: why don’t all of the highly alert Democrat Senators, beginning with Rockefeller, ask the FBI to investigate Paris?

[popdonnelly]

"How did Castelli pass on the the the exact text of the forgeries"

When did Castelli pass on the text? The CIA had supposedly been given the text - the text, not the documents themselves - sometime in late 2001-early 2002.

[piasa]

Not to mention that the guy at the IAEA who spotted the docs as forgeries was French. Last name of Baute, I think.

[SuzyQue]

"Very soon, under the title “The Rockefeller Connection”, I will post something revealing, something important that until now passed completely under the Radar Screen. Stay tuned .."

Please ping me, also, when you post.

[piasa]

Vincent Cannistraro, the ABC flak who was described as "the head of the CIA's counter-terrorism centre" during the 1988 Lockerbie investigation and as a " CIA intelligence advisor to the National Security Council" during the Ok[lahoma] City bombing investigation, is always and everywhere quoted by the liberal media, and what he has to say is revealing: "The leak was to punish Wilson, to disparage him with the suggestion of nepotism," he said. In other words, he suggested, the leaker was arguing that Wilson's report should not be taken seriously because he only got the job through his wife's intercession. (Wilson says his wife was not the person responsible for sending him to Africa.) --- LA Times, 10/1/03 Washington Abuzz Over a New Kind of Scandal [Yep, Plame Worked With Foley!]

To: okie01 Hmmm...more likely Vincent Cannistraro, who tried to finger Ledeen for the forgeries. Source [http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archives/2005/04/free_michael.php]
Interestingly enough, I have found so far that Cannistraro does alot of interviews in LA, where Doug said Wilkinson's phone numbers were based from. Whether he lives in LA, I have not been able to determine. If I remember correctly, Cannistraro is in cahoots with Larry Johnson in the VIPS. Something else I found that was interesting about Cannistraro:
He organized an interview with Osama bin Laden for ABC News in 1998.
Source [http://www.pewfellowships.org/seminars/2002/fall/vincent_cannistraro.htm] 147 posted on 07/27/2005 11:12:59 AM PDT by ravingnutter

Regarding the part in bold- I remember Ollie North a while back making a comment - I think it was in his newsletter- about how people in the press who had been involved with interviews of bin Laden in the past were not cooperating with US investigators hunting for bin Laden. North was disgusted by this.

[piasa]

The documents were just what Administration hawks had been waiting for. The second former official, Vincent Cannistraro, who served as chief of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, told me that copies of the Burba documents were given to the American Embassy, which passed them on to the C.I.A.’s chief of station in Rome, who forwarded them to Washington. Months later, he said, he telephoned a contact at C.I.A. headquarters and was told that “the jury was still out on this”—that is, on the authenticity of the documents.
-------"The Stovepipe: How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq’s weapons.",Seymour Hersh, The New Yorker, 10/27/2003

[GOPJ]

Basing himself on this disinformation Waxman wrote a letter to Bush demanding an explanation, none ever arrived due to the simple fact that the EIR scoop was totally baseless. No trace of the Carabinieri, no trace of British or Americans. Nothing at all. All that remains is a network of spies, anti-Bush giornalists and Democrat Senators who all seem to forget two or three things: Rocco Martino was a spy employed by the French; Niger is an ex Frech colony; the French control the extraction of uranium in Niger; the French had the dossier containing the false documents in the autumn of 2000; in regards to the forgeries France remained silent, never telling the Americns a word about the forgeries, until after the IAEA disclosed all. Question: why don’t all of the highly allert Democrat Senators, beginning with Rockefeller, ask the FBI to investigate Paris?

Why do you think they didn't want Paris investigated?

[ravingnutter]

I think you are confusing Jeff Castelli with Vincent Cannistraro. Jeff Castelli was the Station Chief in Rome who originally recieved the info in the fall of 2001 from SISME (the Italians). After more research, I have found out I was partially wrong...Castelli did see the documents, but did not recieve a copy. He wrote a synopsis in memo form and passed it to Greg Thielmann in the NSA. Incidentally, Thielmann has toured on the anti-war circuit with none other than Joseph Wilson after he lost a "pissing contest" with John Bolton over way information was passed up the chain of command.

Thielmann ignored the info because, in his opinion, the info in the memo is "somewhat limited" and is "lacking in necessary detail" and is "highly suspect." The actual forgeries turned up much later. Still, that begs the question about how the CIA had the actual text of the forged documents during the 2000-2001 time frame as they testified to the Intelligence Committee when Castelli only provided a syopsis based on his recollections of what the documents contained and then that was not sent to the CIA in the US, but to Thielmann, who apparently sat on the info. It is also interesting that Jeff Castelli was recalled by Tenet to Washington right when this story broke, reportedly for "misconduct". Then, all of a sudden Tenet and James Pavitt resign for "personal reasons" (like I believe that nonsense).

Actually this whole thing started between 1999 and 2000 when the French realized that someone is working abandoned mines to generate a clandestine trade in uranium. They hired Rocco Martino to "investigate". So...although Wilson claims he spoke with "officials" in Niger, it is highly unlikely that those officials would know about a smuggling operation.

[popdonnelly]

"Why do you think they didn't want Paris investigated?"

Partisanship. Democrats don't want Paris investigated, they want Bush investigated - for political advantage. Don't assume that members of Congress are on a search for the truth.

[popdonnelly]

I understood that you were talking about someone other than Cannistraro, but I didn't know who Castelli was. Seems to me the forgeries could have been originally made just for the purpose of making some quick money. But the uses that have been made of the documents by the different actors in the story is interesting.

[piasa]

JULY 9, 2003 : (CBS AIRS COMPLAINTS BY GREG THIELMAN, FORMER STATE DEPT DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC, PROLIFERATION AND MILITARY ISSUES OFFICE IN THE BUREAU OF INTELLIGENCE AND RESEARCH, AGAINST COLIN POWELL ) ... CBS itself featured the same basic charge from Thielmann back on July 9 and he leveled his allegations, against Powell and other Bush officials, during PBS’s June 13 Now with Bill Moyers. - October 16, 2003 CyberAlert, via "60 Minutes II Re-Runs Ex-Official’s Attack on Powell’s UN Case," by Brent Baker, Media Research Center , 2-5-04

* Note that this is the same day Japan Today is fed the Cap Hill Blue Story on fake CIA source "T J Wilkinson" :

JULY 9, 2003 : (JAPAN TODAY RECEIVES CHB "T J WILKINSON" STORY, BUT CREDITS THE STORY TO TRUTHOUT.ORG WHICH HAD SENT IT TO THEM) The genie was out of the bottle at this point. On July 9th, Japan Today published the same exact story as Capitol Hill Blue, verbatim, crediting the story to TruthOut. Within hours, the Google News compilation service had it as the head story in its grouping of the news reports about the White House admission that the Niger intelligence was unreliable. I contacted Japan Today, and in a series of emails with Mr. Betros, I informed him that Capitol Hill Blue had backed off of some of the assertions in the article, and further that there was reason to doubt the existence of the Mr. Wilkinson quoted in the story. This information was news to Mr. Betros, as he was completely unaware of Thompson and of Capitol Hill Blue. He informed me that Japan Today had obtained the story from TruthOut, to which his organization subscribes, and which had presented the story as their own. Betros acted quickly to verify what I was telling him, apparently realizing that the credibility of his news organization could be impacted.- "Games People Play," by William McKinley of FreeRepublic

[ravingnutter]

Yeah, I've had my eye on Thielmann too, just can't figure out how he is involved. He was the first one to get a "report" (synopsis) of the forgeries from Jeff Castelli, the CIA Station Chief in Rome. What is throwing me off is that he ignored it, as he said it was not credible. If he was deeply involved, he would have passed it on, but then again, maybe it was a timing issue. He was apparently in a pissing contest with Bolton over how reports were passed up the chain of command. Bolton makes a statement that:

“I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR analysts weren’t including,” he told me. “I didn’t want it filtered.

Could that have been this report? If Thielmann would have passed it on, it could have prevented this whole fiasco.

[Rocket1968]

bump

[MilleniumBug]

Three articles from Italy published today.  The first is complete here but a poor translation.  There are links for the other two.  The conclusion seems to be that the "Three B's" (Bush, Blair, and Berlusconi) were targets of a takedown attempt by former intelligence agents (including CIA) joined by French, Democrats, and some of the MSM.

 

n. 274 of 18-11-05 page 5

Niger-gate, the faida in the Cia in order to hit Bush
of GIAN MARK CHIOCCI

Italy was pulled in dance from former men of the agency and civil employees in activity engage to you in a fight of being able against the new ones concern to us intentional from the USA president

The "guastatori", rigorously anonymous, find side on the average liberal Americans
Mario Sechi
from Rome

In order to comprise the origin of the Niger-gate it is necessary riavvolgere the tape and to leave from a group of former agents of the Cia that - always in tune with Three political-mediatico party anti "B" (Bush, Blair, Berlusconi) - changes the course of the events with declarations, interviews and forecasts to say little narcotic.
Capofila the off board of the Veteran movement Intelligence Professionals for voted Sanity to demonstrate the pressures of the USA Administration (and the hawks of the Pentagon) in order to manipulate it makes documents of accusation against the Irak, is Vincent Cannistraro, former civil employee of the anti-terrorism of Langley, gettonatissimo from blogger American and, the obviously, host appreciate on Republic. Like told yesterday from the Newspaper, Cannistraro is the man who in the day in which the journalist of Panorama, Elisabetta Burba, delivery to the USA embassy to Rome the false letters on the letter traffics uranio between the Niger and Saddam (received from Rocco Martino, spy of the 007 French) anticipates on the English daily paper The Guardian that some "information manipulated" (in the text the used expression are cooked information) would be in order to catch up concern us of the government American.
As it made to know it - inasmuch as the counterfeit correspondence, to 9 October of 2002, knew it only the French Services - it is a mystery never cleared. Also because only two later months, to Paris, participating to the convention Not Conventional Terrorism and the Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction: 15 months after the 11th of september it will candid say to believe that Saddam possesses crews of mass destruction bacteriological chemistries and.
It is in this period that emerges an axis constituted from former employee of the Central Agency Intelligences, making head for the note to the Vips organization, and various colleagues in activity and still engage to you in a hardest crash of being able inner to the Cia. Many have not appreciate the arrival of the new director Porter Goss and the intentional reform from Bush with the institution of the "Zar of the Intelligence", John Negroponte. In many they play to shooting to sign against the House White woman, with the Italy that is considered ventre the motivatings force of the chain. One of the new evidences arrives from a service of the Washington Bureau of the publishing group Knight Ridder that 4 past November writes: "Four officials of the intelligence American say that the Sismi has passed three report to the Cia station of Rome, between the October 2001 and March 2002, in which it spoke itself about an agreement for the sale of uranio between Niger and the Irak".
According to the officials "one of the report contains a language that it sends back to false letters". The four speak without to say who are, and chiosano: "the Sismi sure is been involved". The plot it comes punctually resumed in Italy from Republic. The active group of "guastatori" finds space on the average liberal Americans always resorting to the anonymity.
This axis has a feeling with network the international antagonist and, in special way, with that European that finds its it finishes them in France and Germany. From here the clamorous rilasciata interview 1º March 2003 to the German television Ard from David Albright, a former inspector of international the atomic Agency that, in anticipating the most secret relation of the Iaea on the falsità of documents on the traffics of uranio Niger-Irak, pulled the cross on the USA administration openly accused is to have forced the own intelligence to invent itself of the tests in order to justify the armed participation, is to have supplied to the UN false tests on the possession of crews of destruction of mass from part of Saddam Hussein. To the lead transmission tv from Volker Steinhoff they will participate, with to the "veggente" Albright, three pensions Cia to you in some way riconducibili to the Vips structure.
The former analyst Ray McGovern, is one of these: "the logical conclusion - it says - is that the information have been manipulated and manifactured on the base of the requirements dictated from politics, and this, from the point of view of the intelligence it is an anathema. That even renders superfluous to have an intelligence agency ".
Former agent Robert Baer R-a.domanda, answers stizzito: "Not there is an imminent threat from part of the Irak, and clearly? Not there are tests of the gas existence rib Vx, anthrax or roba of the sort ". On the same wavelength the former official David MacMicheal syntonizes itself: "Task that the Administration is making pressures on the intelligence system, is that features of Cia, of Fbi or whichever other, in order to put with the stronger tests possible to the aim to demonstrate that there is a concrete and immediate danger of attacks from part of terrorists, in particular those associates to you with To the Qaida or the Irak, through crews chemistries, biological, or other crews of mass destructions". Not content, to the term of the program on the issuing Ard, the former trio Cia nozzle an appeal to the colleagues in service inviting them to discharge themselves or not to support you concern us of the Bush government.
Some day passes. 12 March 2003 begins circular on Internet a document from the title it "Manipulation of the intelligence for the war" to company of Ray McGovern. You specific as two members of the Vips (Baer have not been cited) have participated to a program of the German television "equivalent to 60 minutes", that is the program of the Cbs that will interview two times Rocco Martino (but it will not send in wave the talk) and that just in that period it will head, with to the salary Washington Monthly, to be involved the Sismi and the Italian government in it is made. McGovern defect, on narcissism linens, then running to specify as the interviews "have been recorded before that the innovationes came to the light on the intelligence American". And here, like for Cannistraro, it is worth the same question mark. How it made knowing these innovationes?
A step behind. David Albright in 1996 had been in Irak like inspector of the Iaea and with to the French Jaques Baute, director of the "Iraq Nuclear Verification Office" of the Iaea, examined documents on the Niger consegnatigli to New York, 4 February 2003, from the American government. Albright would have maintained, also in quality of president of the Institute for Science to International Security (Isis) continues contacts with some former members, for the note, in force to the Invo of the Iaea.
She has been for case the Bauté French to blow the information to Albright? And if it is not therefore, it is reasonable that Bauté did not know null of that makes before the official declaration of the 7 dated Iaea March 2003? Possible, therefore, that of it it has not made signal the connazionali that behave in way suspicion somewhat inasmuch as on one side, until the last one (that is to 4 March 2003) they swear the Americans who those same information on the traffics of uranio are true because have "a national origin" and they enter nothing with those Italians not there, eppoi candid backtrack only when the scandal is burst? Who answers?
(2-he continues)

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n. 274 of 18-11-05 page 3

Niger-gate, uranio outside the control and the dark direction of the 007 Frenchhttp://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=it_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ilgiornale.it%2fa.pic1%3fID%3d42939%26PRINT%3dS

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n. 274 of 18-11-05 page 14

The strange ones interlace between Niger-gate and Oil for food http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=it_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.ilgiornale.it%2fa.pic1%3fID%3d43214%26PRINT%3dS

[piasa]

I suspect Thielman was a clot in the flow of data...

Another thing that makes me wonder if he was a mole for someone in the press- or perhaps in the Senate intel committee- is that he was continually annoying Bolton by trying to insert himself into meetings where he wasn't wanted or needed. The Cuban spy Elena Belen Montes also had similar intrusive habits. She was destined to be planted on Tenet's staff until investigators decided to bring her in after 9/11. She was also noted for clotting up the flow of info to her superiors- she supressed any intel on Cuba that might lead to people assuming it was a greater threat, for example in biochem warfare reasearch.