this is interesting.
a french national and spymaster testifying in an italian judicial procedure.
european integration must be working really well these days.
Posted by orionATL at December 9, 2005 08:15 AMWow, eR, you have a chance to become part of an international conspiracy! It would appear you have joined Laura Rozen and that interviewing puppetmaster, Josh Marshall, as one of the nefarious "individuals of various nationalities, not excluding Americans" whom SISMI has "exactly identified" and to whom it has "attributed specific responsibilities" for this mess. I sure hope you're proud of your consistently "unsuccessful" attempts "to accredit responsibility to our Nations' damage".
Now readers who are familiar with story of the Niger forgeries may be led to assume that when the Sismi mentions possible involvement of American citizens, they might be alluding to Vincent Cannistraro's cryptic remark that it might be someone close to Michael Ledeen. Or the recent story that Fitzgerald has an uncensored version of the Copaco hearings that also point to Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf.It's not the case.
In the past month the Berlusconi press has been cooking up a new version that puts responsibility at the door of the French DGSE, the CIA Vips and the American left. Yes, if we are to take these innuendos and slurs and toss them together, we've got a cosy little lefty conspiracy that implicates Waxman, the Rockefellers, prominent left wing bloggers and the liberal press out to sway public opinion and frame the "Three B's" [Bush, Blair and Berlusconi].
...
And the leftist cabal? After all, isn't Vincent Cannistraro a professor at the Institute of Criminology at Paris II, just like Alain Chouet? What more proof do you need? How could the Vips have known about the AIEA [IAEA] report results on the 6th of March 2003, in a German televised interview a day before El Baradei released them? You guessed it, Jacques Baute and David Albright are in cahoots. And did you know that the Rockfellers have shares in the Cogema, the company that mines uranium in Niger of all places? Or that Lyndon LaRouche is behind Waxman? That Josh Marshall tried to pilot Rocco Martino's answers in the infamous CBS interviews?
Man, I fervently hope Il Giornale and its multiply criminal owners get slapped with a whopping lawsuit over this. If SISMI's going to play hardball here, I hope its opponents are prepared to do the same. Anybody really now think it was just Nucera's 8th Directorate at SISMI that was involved?
Posted by KM at December 9, 2005 09:15 AMWell, if Chouet can actually back up anything he is saying, more power to him. However, he was booted out of the DGSE in the summer of 2002 for digging up dirt on Chirac. Then you have to think about who benefits from these forgeries. Did the USA really benefit from them? No. Were the USA made out as fools when the IAEA exposed them? Yes.
Now who would want to do that? Someone in French intelligence and possibly elements within the CIA? Say... the Valerie Plame division?
Read through this post and tell me how much you believe what Chouet and the Wilsons are selling.
Posted by Seixon at December 9, 2005 11:02 AM
Request to KM -
in you comment above there are a number of quotes, at least that is what i assume you intend them to be, using both quotation marks and indented parapgraphs.
could you provide us with the sources of those quotes.
Posted by orionATL at December 9, 2005 11:09 AMSorry, Orion -- it's from (de Gondi's translation of, plus commentary on) La Repubblica's follow-up article on SISMI and the FBI investigation, linked to in the last paragraph of eR's post.
Posted by KM at December 9, 2005 11:20 AMthanks km
i dont believe what i've just read.
and it doesn't help that my impression of european police officials is informed mostly by inspector cleauseau movies.
this makes the cia's exploding-cigar-for-castro caper look like textbook amterial.
Posted by orionATL at December 9, 2005 12:55 PMI had various thoughts reading the latest two Repubblica articles but considered them too minor to post about.
Nevertheless, after reading the silly post of the Bush apologist above, I think it may be worth touching on one of those thoughts.
At first glance it may seem heartening that Chouet (not "Choulet", eR) is going to be interviewed by the public prosecutor's office in Rome. Now La Repubblica's article doesn't say very much about the basis for, and parameters of, Ionta's reopened investigation. But I should hope that the reopening of the judicial inquiry is prompted by much, much more than just Chouet's recent disclosures. For the information already publicly available conclusively demonstrates that the "judgements" of the FBI and Copaco "investigations" were not only woefully inadequate but in many cases just plain false (a polite way of saying that they were pathetic -- and I do mean pathetic -- whitewashes), and that SISMI has been lying about its active role in the Niger fiasco. We didn't need Alain Chouet to establish that. We already had, inter alia, eRiposte.
The "French connection" is a SISMI red herring. I think it's important to emphasise this. The only ones who want this subject framed as a question of "Italy vs. France" are SISMI, Berlusconi's government and its apologists (and of course their collaborators on this side of the Atlantic). And if the new inquiry simply becomes a question of Chouet's word against Martino's/Nucera's/SISMI's then it is SISMI who is likely to benefit. If what Chouet says is true, then it's just more damning evidence piled upon the heap that already exists. But to focus too narrowly on Chouet or DGSE is, IMO, to play into the diversionary tactics of the real perpetrators, who've already been caught dead to rights in so many critical respects.
Posted by KM at December 9, 2005 01:40 PMSo I'm a Bush apologist because I bring up some uncomfortable truths? Damn the "reality-based" community has problems. I'm not even a conservative or a Bush-voter, but I get treated like one every single day. Wouldn't be too much to just face the truth sometimes, would it?
There's just one simple question that I've always wondered about: why in the hell would the US give up the forgeries to IAEA if they knew they were so blatantly forged to make complete asses out of themselves?
That alone makes absolutely no sense.
Why didn't INR and the State Department tell anyone that they thought the documents were hokey?
Why did Valerie Plame's division in the CIA sit on the forgeries for months without telling anyone about them or telling anyone that they were fake?
Can any of you schmucks answer any of those questions?
Posted by Seixon at December 10, 2005 01:59 PMKM, thanks - I fixed the typo. You are right about the Bush apologist, although that is a weak term to describe such shills.
Posted by eriposte at December 12, 2005 06:09 AM