How does Gladio extend into the present day?

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How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:12 pm

The twin threads of organizational studies and Michael Ledeen have led me an interest in Gladio. I'm watching (and re-watching (and re-watching)) the BBC Timewatch 3 part series and taking copious notes for internetting...but I've got a question I suspect folks here could help shine a light on. How did that network move forward post-1990?

It's completely absurd to believe they just "dissolved" such a powerful system in the 90's. Aside from the general tragedy of Italy's descent from near-socialist populism to the current Videocracy clusterfuck it is today, are there actual lines of power extending from the stay-behind networks and foot soldiers into the political, EU realities of today?

Any tips appreciated. Thankee.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:23 pm

Take 2: Why does this Op Gladio-Iran/Contra fascist have *'s ear? Karl Rove.
Posted by robertpaulsen on Fri Jan-05-07 02:45 PM


Karl Rove, when he served as Bush's policy analyst, regularly consulted with Ledeen on foreign policy issues. When the Washington Post published a list of the people whom Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's closest adviser, regularly consulted for advice outside the administration, foreign policy veterans were shocked when Michael Ledeen popped up as the only full-time international affairs analyst, wrote Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service. 3

“The two met after Bush's election,” the Post reported, quoting Ledeen about Rove's request that “any time you have a good idea, tell me.” “More than once, Ledeen has seen his ideas, faxed to Rove, become official policy or rhetoric,” noted the newspaper. “When I saw that, I couldn't believe it,” said one retired senior diplomat. “But then again, with this administration, it seemed frighteningly plausible.” 4

more...

http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1261

Not sure why my original post was deleted. No explanation given, so I'm assuming someone didn't like my original link, as opposed to the truth contained within it.


The Time May Have Come - The Iran We Cannot Avoid - Michael Ledeen

Giraldi: US Intel Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged

AMERICAN JUDAS 2nd Edition: INVESTIGATE CHENEY & UNRAVEL

KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENT

Bush's Inconceivable Interest in Iran Sat Apr-01-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=819437

Senior U.S. Officials “Want to Hit Iran” Tue Apr-04-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=844418

Larisa Alexandrovna: CHENEY TAPS IRANIAN ARMS DEALER FOR IRAN TALKS Thu Apr-20-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... _id=977234

Seymour Hersh said something startling about Rumsfeld on Democracy Now Fri Aug-18-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=1936421

So former DLC, PNAC member Abram Shulsky feeding Cheney info on Iran? Sat Aug-19-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=1944614

Fuck. Iran has started "war games." Escalation may only be expected. Sun Aug-20-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=1949812

Attack on Iran is Coming Sun Aug-27-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=1993284

"Grave threat". Yes, it's deja vu all over again. Thu Aug-31-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2022620

UN attacks US nuclear report on Iran erroneous misleading unsubstantiated Sun Sep-17-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2159951

We Are Conducting Military Operations Inside Iran Right Now Tue Sep-19-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2168218

Navy told: Prepare to blockade Iran by Oct 1 Mon Sep-18-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2161779

Pentagon Iran Office Mimics Former Iraq Office Wed Sep-20-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2179484

“This is the largest massing of military power in the region, and it is gathering for a reason.” Sat Nov-18-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2753952

Seymour Hersh: Cheney Says 'Whether Or Not Dems Win-NO STOPPING Military Option With Iran' Sun Nov-19-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2757350

Does anyone still believe the US will launch a full scale invasion of Iran? Mon Dec-04-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2856177

Saudi clerics rally support for Sunnis and Saudi ambassador Abruptly Resigns Tue Dec-12-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2902643

Act III in a Tragedy of Many Parts - The US Occupation of Iraq Sun Dec-17-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2935498

Century Foundation Iran White Paper Series Fundamentalists, Pragmatists and the Rights of the Nation Tue Dec-19-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2948146

Oh shit Tue Dec-19-06
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... id=2944423
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:53 pm

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives ... tml#008117

HADLEY NAMED. La Repubblica has a dynamite series this week on the origin of the yellowcake forgeries. Laura Rozen reports:
With Patrick Fitzgerald widely expected to announce indictments in the CIA leaks investigation, questions are again being raised about the murky matter that first led to the appointment of the special counsel: namely, how the Bush White House came into possession of discredited Italian intelligence reports claiming that Iraq sought uranium "yellowcake" from Niger.
The key documents supposedly proving the Iraqi attempt turned out to be crude forgeries on official stationery stolen from the African nation's Rome embassy. Among the most tantalizing aspects of the debate over the Iraq War is the origin of those fake documents and the role of the Italian intelligence services in disseminating them.

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo reveal how Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service, known as SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House after his insistent overtures had been rejected by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2001 and 2002.

Today's exclusive report in La Repubblica reveals that Pollari met secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Their secret meeting came at a critical moment in the White House campaign to convince Congress and the American public that war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from developing nuclear weapons.

The La Repubblica article quotes a Bush administration official saying, "I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, general Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley."

Laura will have more on this story later today.


and this
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7256


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.


http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... wcake.html

Double-Dealers and Dilettantes--the Men Behind Nigergate Were All Italians.

The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger (1) for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe(2). The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or centrifuges) were the Italian government and Italian military intelligence. La Repubblica has attempted to reconstruct the who, where and why of the manufacture and transfer to British and American intelligence of the dodgy dossier for war.

They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002. In a lengthy investigative piece for the New York Times, Miller reported that Saddam could have built an atomic weapon with those aluminum tubes. These were the goods that the hawks in the Bush administration were expecting.

The "war dance" which followed Judith Miller’s scoop seemed like "carefully-prepared theater” to an attentive media-watcher, Roberto Reale of Ultime Notizie (The Latest News).

Condoleezza Rice, who was then White House Security Advisor, said on CNN: We don’t want the smoking gun to look like a mushroom cloud. A menacing Dick Cheney told Meet the Press that We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his technical and commercial capacities to acquire the material necessary to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon. This was the beginning of an escalation of fear.

26 September 2002: Colin Powell warns the Senate: The Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium is proof of its nuclear ambitions.

19 December 2002: The information on Niger and the uranium is included in the three-page President’s Daily Briefing prepared each day by the CIA and the Department of State for George W. Bush. The ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, added his stamp of approval: Why is Iraq dissimulating its purchase of Niger uranium?

more

http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/25/la-repubblica-scoop

....

It’s a fact that on the eve of the Iraq war, and under the supervision of the diplomatic advisor to the Foreign Ministry, Gianni Castellaneta (today ambassador to the USA), the director of SISMI organized his agenda in Washington with the staff of Condoleeza Rice, who was National Security Adviser to the White House at that time. La Repubblica is able to document this two track process between the government and Italian intelligence. At least one of these ‘barely official’ meetings of Pollari’s was, according to secret service agents, the ‘creation of a system’ that would bring together government, intelligence and public affairs .

To summarize: Nicolo Pollari’s SISMI wanted to substantiate the the Iraqi acquisition of raw uranium to build a nuclear bomb. The game-plan was rather transparent. ‘Authentic’ documents relating to an attempted acquisition in Niger (old Italian intelligence from the 1980’s) were the dowry of the second-in-command of CISMI’s Roman headquarters (Antonio Nucera). They were bundled together with another fabricated document … through a simulated burglary on the Nigerien embassy (from which they had gotten headed notepaper and seals). The documents were shown by Pollari’s men to CIA station agents, and at the same time, a SISMI ‘postman’ by the name of Rocco Martino was sent to Sir Richard Dearlove of MI6 in London.

turning to the second chapter of the Great Swindle, organized in Italy, to build the case that military intervention in Iraq was necessary. … the Italian report on uranium …

… The CIA analysts thought the first report ‘very limited’ and ‘without the necessary details.’ INR analysts in the Department of State assessed the information as ‘highly suspect.’ … The immediate impact on the American Intelligence community wasn’t very gratifying for Pollari … Gianni Castellaneta advised him to look in ‘other directions’ too, while the minister of Defence, Antonio Martino invited him to meet ‘an old friend of Italy’s.’ The American friend was Michael Ledeen, an old fox in the ‘parallel’ intelligence community in the US, who had been declared an undesirable person in our country in the 1980’s . Ledeen was at Rome on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowiz to gather intelligence that would support military intervention in Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi told La Repubblica : “Pollari got a frosty reception from the CIA’s station head in Rome, Jeff Castelli, for this information on uranium. Castelli apparently let the matter drop . Pollari got the hint and talked about it with Michael Ledeen.’ We don’t know what Michael Ledeen did in Washington. But at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinced Dick Cheney that the uranium trail intercepted by the Italians had to be explored top to bottom. The vice-president, as the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence tells it, once again asked the CIA ‘very decisively’ to find out more about the ‘possible acquisition of Nigerien uranium.’ In this meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly said that this piece of intelligence was at the disposition of a “foreign service.”

… Forte Braschi says that “Pollari was incredibly cunning – he knew that it wasn’t enough to rely on the CIA to push the uranium story. It was necessary to work, as Palazzo Chigi and the Department of Defence had indicated, with the Pentagon and with the National Security Adviser, Rice. … An administration official has told La Repubblica “I can confirm that on September 9 2002, General Nicolo Pollari met Stephen Hadley, the deputy to the National Security Adviser, Condoleeza Rice.”… SISMI’s ‘postman,’ Rocco Martino contacted a journalist for a weekly newspaper – edited by Carlo Rossella – to sell her the documents at issue. … Panorama had a worldwide scoop. Title “The War? It’s already begun,’ it spoke of ‘half a ton of uranium.’ … The government asked. The intelligence service gave. The media spread it. The government confirmed it. It was an old disinformation technique from the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger of the threat. Terrify and convince public opinion of it.

more
http://nuralcubicle.blogspot.com/2005/1 ... ction.html


Monday, October 31, 2005
SISMI's War in Iraq: The Iranian Connection

Carlo Bonini and Giuseppi d'Avanzo are at it again. Another three-part blockbuster exposé on the involvement of Italian Military intelligence inside Iraq.

Part I: From Chelabi to Iranian Agents--SISMI's War in Iraq
A strategic summit in Rome with the Pentagon.

ROME: He’s another politico-military intelligence chief. He’s a SISMI man. He makes his way slowly down the narrow hallway of the bar at the Hotel Eden in via Ludovisi. He stops to admire the sky and the attractive skyline of Rome in the April sun (it is 22 April 2003) through the hotel’s large windows. He looks elegant in his Chairman's Committee grisaille. . He selects a table at the center of the terrace. The waiter walks over and solicitously takes his order. The gentleman orders a freshly-squeezed orange juice and a double espresso. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began on the night of 19-20 March, thirty-three days earlier.

Today, as Silvio Berlusconi reveals that he never supported the military intervention in Iraq, it is fitting to tell the story of how our country, Italy, although allegedly opposed to war as our Premier now claims, was an active protagonist in war preparations and operations.

We will reveal the different arrangements and plans of action, as well as who planned them and with whom they were planned.

For us Italians, recounts the high-ranking SISMI official to La Repubblica, the war on Iraq was already underway in the days before Christmans, 2002. He smiles. He is animated with a glint of excitement in his eyes and for once seems seems to have no qualms about letting his personal satisfaction slip from behind a frozen mask.

Our man is too disciplined to crow about his successes and too stubborn to be discouraged by defeat. He tells us: It was a novelty, a revolution for our intelligence services. Never before in its history has SISMI been so prominently involved in military ground operations and a major role in planning a war campaign, to boot. The Italian Government? Of course our work was authorized by the Italian Government—are you joking? It was real war, not an exercise! The twenty men we sent to Iraq were risking their lives. He pauses. The espresso arrives. He sips it slowly, his eyes half-closed with satisfaction.

He continues. Twenty men from three SISMI departments were involved: Intelligence, Operations and Counterterrorism. They were divided into small groups which were to operate in and around the areas of Kirkuk, Baghdad and Basrah using outlandish disguises. Each unit was unaware of the identities and the mission of the others. Each unit was ordered to operate within a sector of territory and to work with intelligence “assets” who had already been selected and trained. The objectives were twofold: To identify Iraqi defenses and to evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi armed forces.

If combat was less intense than expected, it is due to the job we did—and we didn’t do it alone. If we won the war before firing a shot, it was due to our successes at infiltration and intelligence-gathering.

The story of Italian military intervention in Iraq begins when the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, sponsored by Defense Minister Antonio Martino, debarks in Rome with Pentagon men in tow to meet a handful of “Iranian exiles.” The meeting is organized by SISMI. In an Agency “safe house” near Piazza di Spagna (however, other sources have told us it was a reserved room in the Parco dei Principi Hotel).


"Reid: Cheney Obstructing Investigation"

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002979.html

Reid: Cheney Obstructing Investigation
From Laura Rosen at War and Piece...

Reid on Fire

The New Republic has more on what I reported last month: that Cheney has intervened with chairman Pat Roberts to obstruct the Senate Select Intelligence committee's investigation of the Bush administration's use of Iraq intelligence. TNR write:

...--More dramatically, Reid also made it clear that he believes the delay in the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of prewar Iraq WMD--the underlying issue behind Tuesday's closed session--is entirely attributable to Vice President Dick Cheney. "Nothing happens regarding intelligence gathering ... unless it's signed off on by the Vice President," he said. " Roberts couldn't do it"--i.e., Roberts couldn't conduct a full investigation without Cheney's approval. When I asked Reid whether he meant to state so flatly that Cheney was personally and directly stalling the Intelligence Committee's work, he didn't pause a beat. In fact he almost stood from his chair. "Yes. I say that without any qualification ... Circle it." ...

I don't understand why we haven't heard Pat Roberts complaining more vociferously about the obstruction he's experienced from the Veep. Why would the Senator stand for the administration bucking oversight and Congressional reporting requirements on Iraq intelligence, torture, black site prisons, etc.? (Via Tapped's Ezra Klein).



http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/pl_afp/usital ...

But committee staff sources say that before the cooperation ceased, the committee had received from Feith’s office internal memos suggesting that the office may indeed have been conducting unlawful activities. In particular, Democratic staffers are interested in a secret December 2001 meeting of two Feith deputies, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode, with Ghorbanifar in Rome. The meeting also included members of a foreign intelligence service (Italy’s SISMI). The catch is that it wasn’t reported in advance to the intelligence committee or the CIA, in possible violation of Section 502 of the National Security Act, which says that anyone conducting intelligence activities must inform the committee and the agency



"Italy MPs probe Niger-Iraq claim"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4402594.stm

Italy MPs probe Niger-Iraq claim

The director of the Italian military intelligence agency (Sismi) is due to give evidence over allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger.

Nicolo Pollari is testifying before a parliamentary committee over reports that Italy wilfully gave the US and UK evidence that turned out to be false......


The Italian hearing into the claims is being held behind closed doors, but some details were expected to emerge later.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica says Italian agents gave the false dossier to British and American intelligence services........


"Niger Uranium Forgeries: Excavating a Roman Mystery"

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.ph ... 88_0_1_0_C

One has to wonder how Laura can have such certain knowledge of what Fitzgerald has or has not requested. Ah, but if there is no such report -- and she cites the head of the Italian intelligence oversignt committee, one Enzo Bianco, denying it -- then how can Fitzgerald have requested it? There is, here, perhaps some confusion as to the nature of the "report" -- is it official, or is it just a transcript of a hearing? I think this guy, whoever he is, has the right idea.

Giovanni D'Avanzo, writing in La Repubblica , poses a few questions to Senor Bianco's oversight committee, and in the course of them avers:

"Sometime after October 9, 2002, a team of SISMI agents are ordered to keep Rocco Martino under close surveillance ... Why was no surveillance memo or report issued to judicial investigators on Rocco Martino, who is investigated by the Rome Public Prosecutor’s office in 2003, until the fall of 2004?"

So there was an investigation, albeit not by the Italian parliament but by Rome's public prosecutor. It could be that this is what both Walker's and my own sources are referring to.

Laura cites several other skeptics, including a reporter for La Repubblica and "a former U.S. official recently in Italy," who say this story is "the echo of a rumor put out by people back the States." She also cites Vince Cannistraro, "who at one time heard rumors of such a report from Italian sources," and who

"Now says there doesn't appear to be a parliamentary report either. 'There is no published report,”'Cannistraro told me Monday. 'If there is a report, we might expect it would have some analysis and conclusions. There is no report, at least not a published report. …I think this stuff is just getting circulated.'"

Of course it isn't published -- that's the whole point.

Yes, it's true, as Laura says, that the Italians aren't too eager to have the blame pinned on SISMI -- but that doesn't mean SISMI isn't involved. And some Italians -- the left-wing opposition coalition, for example -- might be understandably eager to expose the scandal in the run-up to Italy's elections scheduled for next year.

Laura goes into the Italian role in creating and disseminating these documents, referring to the La Repubblica series on the subject, but somehow neglects to mention the crucial American angle -- and the key role of American neocons, i.e. Michael Ledeen, in funneling the information contained in the Niger forgeries to Washington. Someone legitimized these fake documents by doing an end run around the CIA and the mainstream intelligence community, and injected a fabrication into the American intelligence stream. Who was it? La Repubblica fingers the Office of Special Plans, and names names, including Ledeen, Harold Rhode, and Larry Franklin, the confessed spy for Israel.

...

I trust my source, and I furthermore think it's unimportant whether this information is coming from the Italian parliament or Rome's public prosecutor: the point is that the information is there, and it's getting out. Antiwar.com stands by its story.


"Open the Ledeen Dossier!"

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/editorials/2005/3 ...

The stakes involved in the Ledeen dossier are much more significant than the particular incident around the yellowcake. As EIR documented at great length, Ledeen is not just a nasty American political operative, but had been brought into the service of one of the remnant fascist organizations of the Mussolini era, the Propaganda Two (P-2) freemasonic lodge. P-2, which was founded by avowed wartime fascist grandmaster Licio Gelli, is an outgrowth of the Venetian synarchist bankers network which runs international terrorism, and proceeds from the avowed aim of destroying all nation-states, particularly the United States. The P-2 network has been exposed over the past 20-plus years as the real center of international terrorism, including the left and right wings of the "strategy of tension" which carried out such atrocities as the 1980 Bologna bombing, and the assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.

Italian political life is riddled with assets, if not outright agents, of the P-2. Notable among them is Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi himself, whose membership card is a matter of public record. Given the prominence of P-2 influence in Italy, it should be no surprise that the Italians, under a Berlusconi government, were the ones who provided the cover of the forged Niger yellowcake documents, to support the Cheney-Bush war drive.

The question raised here is a fundamental one. The role of former P-2ers Ledeen and Berlusconi in promoting the war, underscores the reality that the drive for empire and world dictatorship, for which Cheney is a frontman, is in fact the project of an international synarchist oligarchy, the direct descendants of those banking families who funded Hitler and Mussolini, and created World War II. Cheney is undoubtedly a fascist thug, eager to carry out whatever wars, torture, and economic genocide are on the agenda of the desperate synarchist bankers. But the brains for these operations come from the top level of the heirs of the Venetian banking system, who know that they will destroy the United States as a republic by carrying out these plans.

The prime objective for all those patriots and world-citizens who wish to save this planet from a descent into a New Dark Age, is, of course, to remove Dick Cheney from office. But exposing the roots of Cheney policies in the global Venetian synarchist banking system, is a crucial concomitant, if we are to get the alternative, FDR-like policy put into effect.


http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/nolan-m2.html

How would the neocon think tanks view martial law? Michael Ledeen, a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, and close and trusted White House adviser, has this to say on p. 173 of his book Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli’s Iron Rules Are As Timely and Important Today As Five Centuries Ago: “Paradoxically, preserving liberty may require the rule of a single leader – a dictator – willing to use those dreaded 'extraordinary measures,' which few know how, or are willing, to employ."

According to the Boston Globe, Ledeen in a 2003 speech to the American Enterprise Institute, asserted our nation’s insatiable lust for war by claiming that "All the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . .What we hate is not casualties but losing." Did anyone in the media ever challenge an administration spokesman to defend Ledeen’s staggeringly wrongheaded, anti-American values? Did any of the (self-described) scholars at AEI that day ask why the GD fool would say such a thing? President Bush, for his part has personally offered these congratulations to the AEI: “At the American Enterprise Institute, some of the finest minds in our nation are at work on some of the greatest challenges to our nation. You do such good work that my administration has borrowed 20 such minds.”

The leaders of the War Machine – with their gulags, their lies, their senseless, immoral war – do not treat enemies and purported enemies terribly well. In the event of martial law, it would be naïve indeed to suspect that they would treat Americans any better. Patriots – left, right and center – should unite under the American flag to stop the War Machine today while they still can. The impeachment of Bush and Cheney is the obvious place to start. We, the people, should demand it of the US Congress, just as statesmen and citizens of their time demanded the Bill of Rights. Congress should be ordered, as well, to act responsibly and responsively and in the best interest of the sovereign Republic of the United States of America, not in the interest of neocon warmongers.


"Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent as Source of Forged Niger-Iraq"

... Uranium Documents


http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytim ...

Italy's Top Spy Names Freelance Agent as Source of Forged Niger-Iraq Uranium Documents

November 4, 2005 by ELAINE SCIOLINO and ELISABETTA POVOLEDO

ROME, Nov. 3 - Italy's spymaster identified an Italian occasional spy named Rocco Martino on Thursday as the disseminator of forged documents that described efforts by Iraq to buy uranium ore from Niger for a nuclear weapons program, three lawmakers said Thursday.

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.

Senator Massimo Brutti, a member of the committee, told reporters that General Pollari had identified Mr. Martino as a former intelligence informer who had been "kicked out of the agency." He did not say Mr. Martino was the forger.

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.


http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002983.html

Laura Rozen: "The (Niger forgeries) Report that Wasn't"

For weeks in the run-up to the Libby indictment last Friday, reports swirled in the blogosphere and some wires. They contended that CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald had “widened his probe” to include investigating the origins of the Niger yellowcake forgeries themselves. They spoke of Fitzgerald getting ahold of a secret Italian parliamentary report that reportedly fingered a gang of American neoconservatives and aides to Ahmad Chalabi as being behind the Niger forgeries.

...

There’s just one problem: Not only has Fitzgerald not received such a report or even indicated he has any interest in one. There is no Italian parliamentary report, published or unpublished, on the Niger forgeries. In fact, until today, there has been no Italian parliamentary investigation of the Niger forgeries, or the claim promoted by the Italian military intelligence organization Sismi to the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Iraq was seeking vast quantities of yellowcake uranium in Niger.

...

A reporter with the Italian newspaper Repubblica, which published a blockbuster series on the origins of the Niger forgeries last week, said that he heard rumors of such a report while in Washington this past summer, and went back to Italy and checked them out with his sources. He was left scratching his head. Not only is there no such report, there is as yet no such Italian parliamentary investigation. Sismi’s director Nicolo Pollari was interviewed by the Italian parliamentary committee overseeing the intelligence services on Thursday, in a closed-door session.

...

The Italian military intelligence organization Sismi reported that Iraq had signed a contract to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger to the CIA in October 2001 and February 2002. It also reported those claims to Britain’s foreign intelligence service, the MI6, which reported them back to Washington. A motley crew including a senior Sismi officer, a former Sismi officer turned intelligence peddler (Rocco Martino), and a Sismi asset at the Niger embassy in Rome were identified by Repubblica as having collaborated to assemble the Niger forgeries, after staging a robbery on New Year’s Day 2001 to get official Niger embassy letterhead and a diplomatic codebook. Martino reportedly sold the dossier of forgeries to the French, the British, attempted but failed to sell them to the American embassy in Rome, and to an Italian reporter working for a Berlusconi owned magazine.


Lets hope Fitzgerald really does stay un-compromised, period because everyone knows from reading it Cheney deflected the blame to Italy.

The real forgers were NOT mentioned ie Duane Claridge so you can immediately see it.....total fucking whitewash in progress and its going to take a huge entity/army to get this bastard once and for all.

Notice how there was never any mention of....MICHAEL LEDEEN, mossad etc....

More about the Whitewash....you can spot them a damn mile away now.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/wl_mideast_af ...

"no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed"


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com /

QUESTION: Thank you. Any more explanation of the Berlusconi-President discussion about Italian intelligence on Iraq -- is this to say that Mr. Fitzgerald's finding that the Niger claim had its genesis in Italian intelligence was wrong?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Mr. Fitzgerald's -- I'll have to look back at what his finding was. I don't recall the specifics of that.

QUESTION: Fitzgerald found that what we had been calling British intelligence, the document -- the forged document --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I missed that. I don't think so. I don't think so.

QUESTION: -- alleging an Iraq --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Okay, I don't think he did.

QUESTION: I'm wrong on this?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Maybe I'm wrong. But I don't think he --

QUESTION: That's not ringing any bells.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes.

QUESTION: It's not ringing any bells with other people either.

QUESTION: No, it is, it is. And I can't remember if it's Fitzgerald or somebody else, but there's this is the central issue is --

QUESTION: The central issue was --

QUESTION: -- the source of the --

QUESTION: The source of the forged document was Italy, who handed it to --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, the -- we actually briefed on the source of the information back in July of 2003, and the source was the National Intelligence Estimate and British Intelligence. That was the basis for the reference in the President's State of the Union address.

QUESTION: Fitzgerald found an Italian tie, and I presume this is what the discussion between the President and Berlusconi was about.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, they -- like I said they -- Prime Minister Berlusconi brought it up, and as they indicated, that there wasn't any documents that were provided to us on Niger and uranium by --

QUESTION: Wait, no documents or no intelligence?

SCOTT McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

QUESTION: The press report out of Italy is a transcription -- it's a transcription of the forged documents, not the actual documents themselves. But Berlusconi said yesterday was, no information passed from Italy to the United States.

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I think he was accurately reflecting what he indicated in the meeting.

QUESTION: So that accurately characterizes the President's position, that the United States never received any intelligence --

SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, Prime Minister Berlusconi was reflecting that within the meeting, and we've previously said in regards to a question that came up about a meeting here at the White House that no one here has any recollection of Niger and uranium being discussed at that meeting, much less any documents being provided.



http://neworleans.cox.net/cci/newsnational/nationa ...
Italian Lawmaker Says Country's Secret Service Warned U.S. That Iraq Uranium Documents Were Fake


"Hadley told a press briefing that he had briefly met the head of Italy's SISMI secret intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, on September 9, 2002 in a "courtesy call" aimed at getting to know his new colleague.

"There was a meeting in Washington on that date. I did attend a meeting with him," Hadley said in response to a question about a report published last week in the Italian center-left newspaper La Repubblica, which disclosed the meeting.

"It was, so far as we can tell from our records, about less than 15 minutes. It was a courtesy call. Nobody participating in that meeting or asked about that meeting has any recollection of a discussion of natural uranium, or any recollection of any documents being passed. And that's also my recollection," he said."
AFP News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051103/pl_afp/usital ...

Well Hadley, I'm sure there was a meeting....and I'm also sure you took the Niger forgeries to Frederick Fleitz.

I mean, you wouldn't LIE about everything would you? And attempt to get executive priveledge to save your ass? Nah, not you Hadley, who lied about going to Italy to begin with!

http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp11012005.html

November 1, 2005

Berlusconi's Halloween Visit
The Plame Affair Leads to Rome
By GARY LEUPP

"All roads lead to Rome," and it seems that Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the Plame Affair, and more broadly the lies used to hoodwink the American people into supporting a criminal war on Iraq, will also trudge down the Appian Way lined this Halloween with the ghosts of crucified Iraqis.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica has recently published an exposé alleging in essence that the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare) at the specific behest of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi provided bogus intelligence to the Bush neocons in order to curry favor with the U.S. and to abet the relentless drive for war between 9-11 and the March 2003 invasion. This follows an Italian parliamentary report released in part to the public in July concerning the forged Niger uranium documents at the heart of the Plame Affair. These, which purport to show a deal between Baghdad and Niger for the purchase of huge quantities of yellowcake, were it seems produced in the Italian capital.

The report names four men as the likely forgers of the documents (Michael Ledeen, Dewey Clarridge, Ahmed Chalabi and Francis Brookes) and suggests that the forgeries may have been planned at December 2001 gathering in Rome involving Ledeen and SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. Also in attendance at that meeting: Larry Franklin, Harold Rhode, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Antonio Martino and others including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. Here is a true rogues' gallery.

Michael Ledeen: neocon columnist, National Review Online contributing editor, specialist on the thought of Machiavelli and on Italian fascism, former employee of the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council, was involved in the transfer of arms to Iran during the Iran-Contra affair. Active in the American Enterprise Institute, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), and Center for Democracy in Iran (CDI). Advocates regime change by force in Iran and Syria.

Nicolò Pollari: Author of many publications on legal and economic matters, investigation techniques and intelligence. Tax law Professor at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria. SISMI head since October 2001.

Dewey Clarridge: former CIA operative, famous in mid-1980s for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair. Head of CIA's Latin America division 1981-84, directed the mining of Nicaragua's harbors and helped organize the Contras. Indicted in November 1991 on seven counts of perjury and false statements, pardoned by first president Bush Christmas Eve 1992.

Ahmad Chalabi: convicted swindler, leader of U.S.-funded Iraqi National Congress, neocon ally, presently one of two deputy prime ministers in Iraqi government.

Francis Brookes: member of the "Rendon Group," a "public relations" body formed by the Pentagon engaged to promote Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress.

Larry Franklin: colonel in USAF reserve, subordinate to Douglas Feith in Defense Department, Middle East specialist, under arrest for espionage for Israel.

Harold Rhode: Pentagon official, Middle East specialist, Ledeen protégé, American Enterprise Institute, heavy neocon.

Manucher Ghorbanifar: Iranian exile, arms dealer, one-time CIA operative distrusted by CIA since 1980s. Key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Antonio Martino: Founding member of Forza Italiano (Berlusconi's political party), Professor of Economics, adjunct scholar with the Heritage Foundation, Italian Defense Minister.


http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=7681

"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."

Alan Wolf died about a year and a half ago of cancer. He served as chief of the CIA's Near East Division as well as the European Division, and was also CIA chief of station in Rome after Clarridge. According to my source, "he and Clarridge and Ledeen were all very close and also close to Chalabi." The former CIA officer says Wolf "was Clarridge's Agency godfather. Significantly, both Clarridge and Wolf also spent considerable time in the Africa division, so they both had the Africa and Rome connection and both were close to Ledeen, closing the loop."

A veteran of the Iran-Contra scandal, Ledeen played an important role in the Iran-Contra "arms for hostages" scandal by setting up meetings between the American government and the Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar. Not all that unexpected coming from a self-proclaimed advocate of Machiavelli's amoralism. Today, Ledeen is among the most visible and radical neoconservative ideologues whose passion for a campaign of serial "regime-change" in the Middle East is undiminished by the Iraqi debacle. Just as the Roman senator Cato the Elder finished his perorations with the command "Carthage must be destroyed," so Michael "Creative Destruction" Ledeen closes his hopped-up warmongering essays with "Faster, please!," an exhortation presumably addressed to his confreres in the Bush administration.

Ledeen has kept the neocon faith – and the same friends – for all these years. He's still buddies with Ghorbanifar. In December 2001, he had a meeting in Rome with Ghorbanifar in the company of the Pentagon's top Iran specialist, Larry Franklin, and Harold Rhode, assigned to the Office of Net Assessment, a Pentagon think tank. Also at the Rome conclave: a number of Ghorbanifar's Iranian friends, including a former senior official of the Revolutionary Guard. Rounding out the distinguished guest list, we have the Italian delegation, consisting of SISMI head honcho Nicolo Pollari, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, and Italian Defense Minister Antonio Martino, a neocon favorite. Once again, Ledeen plays the middleman – but what kind of a deal was he trying to negotiate?

more
http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e10571.htm


At the beginning of 2001, a few weeks before George Bush took office, there was a break-in at the Niger embassy in Rome. Strangely, nothing of value was taken. Months later came 9/11 and a month after that, as George Bush wondered how to get back at the terrorists, a report from the Italian security service (Sismi) reached the CIA: Iraq was seeking to buy uranium.

Disappointingly for the neocons, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to check the story: he reported that it was nonsense. When the story was repeated by Bush, Wilson went public. His wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame, was then outed by the White House. Hence Rove's predicament.

An organisation called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was set up in the Pentagon by Douglas Feith, a former consultant to Israel's Likud party, to prepare for the war. In the words of Robert Baer, a distinguished former CIA man, it was a "competing intelligence shop at the Pentagon"..."if you didn't like the answer you're getting from the CIA". In short, bogus stories would get a second chance at the OSP.

A clue to the ancestry of these black arts can be found in 1980, when right-wing Republicans wanted Ronald Reagan elected. They publicised a story that Billy Carter, the then President Jimmy Carter's colourful brother, had received $50,000 (£28,000) from the Libyan government.

The story was always denied by the President and no evidence of the payment was found, but the story helped to elect Reagan. Its source? Sismi, and an associate of a man called Michael Ledeen.

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/comments.ph ... 26_0_1_0_C


First of all, I am not a leftist. Secondly, the sources for the quotes of former CIA and DIA agent Philip Giraldi were my interviews of him, as indicated in the correctly transcribed entry on the Wikipedia page, and which I provided the mp3 link for. Fourth, I am happy that the US is no longer part of the British Empire.

As far as Ledeen and the Niger uranium forgeries, Giraldi explained in the interviews that the "couple of CIA agents" were paid in foreign accounts and that Fitzgerald had "already found the money trail." Ledeen's connections to the Office of Special Plans and Sismi are well documented, he attended a number of meetings in Italy with Harold Rhode, who "practically lived out of (Iranian spy) Ahmad Chalabi's office," Manucher Ghorbanifar and guilty Israeli spy Larry Franklin, around the time the Italians began passing on the (already debunked) story back to the US.

As Josh Marshall put it in The Hill:

"he intelligence reports that came in to Washington in late 2001 were from Italian military intelligence, SISMI. The other detail, according to intelligence sources I’ve spoken to, is that those reports turned out to be text transcriptions of Niger forgeries that didn’t surface in Rome until almost a year later...

From the very beginning, American suspicions about a Niger-Iraq trade in uranium were based on what turned out to be the forged documents. And the text transcriptions of those documents came in from Italian intelligence...

Burba, the Italian journalist who eventually brought the forgeries to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, got them from an unnamed Italian “security consultant.” His name turns out to be Rocco Martino, a retired SISMI operative. And as I mentioned last week, last summer, my colleagues and I conducted a series of in-person interviews with him.

It has sometimes been suggested in the Italian press that Martino himself is the forger. But he told us a different story — one that was corroborated by another participant in the handling of the documents. Martino told us that the documents came from a still-serving SISMI colonel, whom he named."

But where did they originate? Giraldi's partner, Vincent Cannistraro, Director for Intelligence Programs at the National Security Council under Reagan, has maintained that they were produced in the US and has said, "You'd be very close," in answer to the question of whether Ledeen forged them.

Combined with what Giraldi had to say, it sure seems like enough to take to a grand jury to me.

Or is it not a crime to lie a country into war?

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7256


July Friday 29th 2005 (05h28) :
KARL ROVE, MICHAEL LEDEEN SPIES PROCURED FORGED NIGER DOCUMENTS


KARL ROVE and VARIOUS SPIES HE IS LINKED TO

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.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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 and Iranian/Israeli double-agent 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.

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

...


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 in working for the CPA. Caption: "The creatures step out of the tripods." Maybe it’ll help to pay off those student loans -- huh, Michael?
http://bellaciao.org/en/IMG/jpg/Simone_3-2.jpg

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/19/14555 ...

Keyser Soze aka Michael Ledeen.

Michael Ledeen was one of the founders of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). He holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a think tank for AIPAC. He is co-founder of the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. As far back as 1980, the CIA allegedly listed Ledeen as an agent of influence of Israel. Ledeen is the main foreign policy advisor to Karl Rove. Ledeens main obsession seems to be to overthrow Iran.

In 1972 he published the book Universal Fascism, in which he expounds upon "the rightness of the fascist cause." In Universal Fascism, Ledeen first builds his case that fascism was the "20th Century Revolution" and that "people yearn for the real thing - revolution". It's the blueprint for a fascist revolution.

In 1980 he collaborated with Francesco Pazienza of SISMI and P-2 in the "BillyGate" affair. This is the same Pazienze who was recently found out to belong to the parallel intelligence agency in Italy. In 1985 Pazienza was found guilty of political manipulation, forgery, and the protection of terrorists. Ledeen is identified in court documents as an agent of SISMI.

The Pentagon downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after the FBI began a probe of Ledeen for passing classified materials to a foreign
country, believed to be Israel.

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism ... edeen.html


"Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen"


April 7, 2005

Everything You Need to Know About Michael Ledeen
By Katherine Yurica

Would you be surprised to find that a man who was deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan Administration, a man who is the darling of the Bush White House and is an adviser to Karl Rove, a man who loves Machiavelli and studies him, a neo-conservative who has close ties to one of America’s leading “Christian” Dominionists—Pat Robertson, and a man who called Pearl Harbor “lucky” and a providentially inspired event—may be the man who is behind the forging of the Niger documents that convinced America to launch a preemptive strike against Iraq?

<snip>

It would be foolish for America’s political strategists and congressional leaders to ignore Michael Ledeen and his interpretation of Machiavelli. Mr. Ledeen speaks from the cutting edge of a group of men and women who desire nothing more than to reconstruct America in their own image. This nation is in grave danger. Ledeen belongs to a group of men, including Harry Jaffa, Pat Robertson, Willmoore Kendall to Allan Bloom, who, according to Shadia Drury, scholar and author of Leo Strauss and the American Right, share “the view that America is too liberal and pluralistic and that what it needs is a single orthodoxy that governs the public and private lives of its citizens.”<1>

The belief in a single voice that governs the public should cause all Americans to understand these men want to convert this nation to a permanent dictatorship. Their inspirer was Leo Strauss, a professor who taught Machiavellian methods to many of them at the University of Chicago. In fact, Paul Wolfovitz earned his doctorate under Strauss and many of the neo-cons in the White House studied under him. Strauss believed every society needs a “single public orthodoxy.” As Drury put it, “a set of ideas that defines what is true and false, right and wrong, noble and base.” Strauss believed that the role of religion was indispensable to the political success of a nation. For a political society had to hold together and act as a unit in lock step with the leader. Strauss believed that religion was the means to inculcate the desired ideas into the minds of the masses. He didn’t care what religion—just as long as it was a religion that could link itself to the political order.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby norton ash » Fri Sep 16, 2011 1:56 pm

Superb, SLAD. Thanks!
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Sep 16, 2011 2:26 pm

Amazing, thank you. I though Ledeen was simply a student of shitstory and an admirer of Italian Fascism with the bizarre notion that it was all about "Democratic Revolution."

His appearances in the BBC Timewatch series are in a whole new light now...guess it's time to re-re-re-rewatch now.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Rory » Fri Sep 16, 2011 2:29 pm

This might be a rather facile question/observation about Ledeen in light of slad's excellent posts; but I remember watching Adam Curtis' Power of Nightmares (and The Trap also?) and Ledeen is several of the clips (interviewed by Curtis maybe, it isn't always clear).

I have to say I don't think he (Ledeen) blinked the whole time: Not once that I recall. I remember think ing is he a fucking (sinister, right of right wing, neocon) lizard?

Please correct me if I'm wrong but did he unblinkingly (with those heavy lidded eyes) stare into the camera the whoile time?
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Sep 16, 2011 2:34 pm

I can't speak to his appearances on Curtis material but in the BBC programme I watched last night, your observation was dead on. He is a doppelganger for a professor I once knew, who also happened to be a fascist. Intense and so condescending you have to wonder if they're actually broadcasting from a terrestrial source.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 16, 2011 2:57 pm

Even though lizards do blink Ledeen is one of the lizard people who has learned to control his eyelids
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Stephen Morgan » Fri Sep 16, 2011 6:11 pm

Geckos lick their eyelids to keep them moist.

Just thought I'd share that.

Formal networks may no longer exist, although I've seen no real evidence for Gladio having been discontinued. The maintenance of a Gladio network is required of all NATO member nations under the NATO charter. But look at Susurluk. They weren't in an organisation together, they were in a car together. They were working together, but it was all under the table, they were members of the International Association of Drug Lords, Terrorists and Politicians. They just happened to have a joint interest in pursueing the aims of transnational covert governance and the ultimate sovereignty of capital over nations.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Sep 16, 2011 7:08 pm

Wombaticus Rex wrote:Amazing, thank you. I though Ledeen was simply a student of shitstory and an admirer of Italian Fascism with the bizarre notion that it was all about "Democratic Revolution."

His appearances in the BBC Timewatch series are in a whole new light now...guess it's time to re-re-re-rewatch now.


You probably already know about this, but when re-watching, it's worth knowing that Oswald LeWinter appears in it too - the notorious "hoaxer", whistleblower, or CIA disinformation specialist, depending on who you believe. He is one of the guys who appears in shadow, claiming to be a NATO colonel (which he isn't) if I remember right - he's sitting by an open balcony and looks like he's got a fake belly. I think that's him anyway. He's a truly odd player in this story - and in just about everything else.

He appeared in two of Francovich's CIA-centric films, apparently as part of an effort to discredit them, by later discreditting his own testimony by...um... discreditting himself. Hard to say how it was all meant to work, really, except the minute most people hear there's a known hoaxer involved in the production, who got himself past the researchers and the onto the screen, their brains happily shut down and they're prepared to throw out a lot of the other evidence (with relief) as being fake or slanted. To me, the fact that somebody (a possible CIA agent, or asset) wormed their way into the film to throw a spanner in it's works just makes the rest of it all the more convincing. And it's not like anybody faked-up Giulio Andreotti's revelations in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, though given his nature we do have to wonder why he chose to do that in the first place.

It's also possible LeWinter is a creature of the LaRouche intelligence network (not that that would exclude him from being CIA as well) as he was involved in promoting the October Surprise allegations very early on, not long after it was first broken in the pages of EIR. Gary Sick had to publically renounce him, after using him for a source in "October Surprise", so he's been planting himself into conspiracies for a long time and doing his best to make them seem less believable to the general public.

Some people now believe that parts of Gladio, whether by accident or design, later morphed into things like the Dutroux network (for want of a better name for it) and other similar paedo/extreme right/intelligence/blackmail/Brownstone groups with apparent state links and protections. I think some of those ideas might come from LaRouche as well, though - weren't there suggestions here that the Project for the Exposure of Hidden Institutions and the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (who did some great work on tying Gladio to the Dutroux group and Michel Nihoul - though without providing any verifiable direct links) were LaRouchian fronts, or at least took funding from one of his orgs?

It's all hella confusing. Finding verifiable info on a guy like LeWinter is near impossible too. For instance, this craziness is on his wiki page:

He almost certainly was the man who purchased an almost random set of clothing in Paul Gauci's shop in Malta, which was found at the site of the Pan Am 103 crash. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Le_Winter


Apart from the fact that it was Tony Gauci's shop, not Paul's (whoever he is), just WHAT THE FUUuu....?!

So yeah... disinfo and confusion. There's a lot of it about if you're looking into what Gladio got up to post-P2, and it's at-first abortive, but now successful and thriving, takeover of the Italian government, judiciary, and media.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Fri Sep 16, 2011 7:21 pm

Interesting, yeah. I found myself disbelieving pretty much everything the guy said because his blacked-out countenance focused my attention instead upon his cadence. Also, listening to 20 straight minutes of Italian then hearing someone speak English, well...

I really appreciate the info dump, man, because I checked that Wiki and just despaired...his paper trail is such a bizarre quiche of horseshit. Fascinating character -- in fact, fascinating just in the simple fact that he can exist. WTF?

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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Sep 16, 2011 8:23 pm

I hope I've still got some of my old links on LeWinter and the Gladio/Dutroux stuff. Seems that the Project for the Exposure of Hidden Institutions is defunct now, though most of it's pages are still reproduced on Wikispooks (yeah... Wikispooks :? ).

It somehow makes perfect sense to me that LeWinter would be a recognised and respected poet, like E. Howard Hunt with his novels, and, come to think of it, Licio Gelli being a poet as well. Their entire lives are artworks. Horrible ones.
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby cptmarginal » Sat Sep 17, 2011 12:04 am

I don't know how relevant he might be to attempts at tracing Gladio up to today (a very interesting topic), but I did post a small cache of information on LeWinter right here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=29370

"LeWinter is an example of a brilliant mind gone to the bad," former CIA counter-terrorist expert Vincent Cannistraro said in a conversation about the man two years ago. "His father was a professor at Columbia University. He grew up in a New York City suburb with all the privileges. It is amazing how far he has fallen."

Beyond this, however, facts about Mr LeWinter are hard to come by. When I dealt with him in 1996 - spending a week with him at his Mojave Desert home in California - for a Channel 4 documentary that never made it into production, the psychological warfare he waged against me left me uncertain about almost everything concerning him.

Spy buffs know Mr LeWinter as a former CIA operative. A Vienna tabloid last week quoted Rodney Stich, author of Disavow - a CIA Saga of Betrayal, as saying that Mr LeWinter worked for more than 30 years for the CIA under the codename "Razine"; he was recruited in the Sixties, during the Vietnam war, as a college professor, and acted first as an informer on students.


All that comes to mind right now regarding the question in the OP is that I think the Gladio-style networks have been upgraded and maybe to an extent superseded by the new counter-terror networks currently entrenching themselves all around the world. Permanent Gladio, without information leaks, in even the countries not normally associated with the NATO stay-behind armies. The ones hidden in the core who are carrying out the atrocities in theory probably have a much better chance of not being directly exposed these days, what with hindsight and current compartmentalized infosec "national security" horseshit. My personal guess is that this works the same as in the FBI or whatever: new recruits and the "naive" think they are helping to fight terror; others are secretly advancing an agenda through violence, bound together in their purpose by some fraternal or chivalric order within the security services.

This is definitely a task that's nearly impossible, but maybe you'd run right into the modern-day dark core of Gladio if you could be privy to the milieu of fraternal and other social contacts among officials at the ECB and the BIS.

A lot of speculation on my part, it could go on and on. The concrete questions being asked about the direct continuation of Gladio in Italy are probably more pertinent.

Here's something: the revival of the "red brigades"

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/inde ... e&story=56

http://www.revleft.com/vb/mysterious-de ... cf215&amp;

Italy - An endless cycle of terror

Italy's fascist-infested democracy is now coming under real strain. Terrorists calling themselves "The Red Brigades" struck again at the end of March in Bologna, killing Marco Biagi, a university professor and govern-ment consultant on labour and employment policy.

These terrorists are once more enveloped in the mystery of their true political function and affiliation. In the past their activities have been used by American-backed right-wing and fascist forces as levers in the strategy of tension that came about within the framework of the Anglo-American Stay Behind Gladio networks dating back to 1949.

Now the old questions are being asked again. Whose interests are these terrorists serving? Who is likely to benefit from their actions at a time of increased tension in the face of renewed confrontation between a government lacking credibility and the trade unions?

The attempts to find some answers have reopened speculation about the so-called "second generation Red Brigades", which came into existence in 1974-75. According to General Gianadelio Maletti, the director of Italian military counter intelligence in the early 1970s, later found guilty of collusion in the protection of fascist terrorists, "second generation Red Brigades" were probably recruited by the Italian Secret Service and other "parallel agencies" acting under the supervision of the CIA in order to infiltrate the original movement of the Red Brigades, known as the "nucleo storico".

In his testimony given last year before the Commissione Stragi (Commission on terrorist massacres), General Maletti, who in order to escape justice took refuge in South Africa under apartheid, said that the creation of "second generation Red Brigades" was discussed at the highest level of the Italian government. He did not deny that some of their members were trained at Campo Maraggiu, in Sardinia. This was the secret training ground for the Gladio forces, which were linked to a network of fascist organisations. The favourite of the CIA, and undoubtedly of Henry Kissinger himself, was Ordine Nuovo, led by Pino Rauti, the avowed admirer of Hitler and Himmler. Only last year Rauti made an electoral deal with Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia. At the very top of the secret plans however was the fascist Licio Gelli, head of the notorious P2 Masonic Lodge.

Gelli, known to the CIA and friendly with the former US President Ronald Reagan, recruited about 1,200 members, including Maletti and other heads of the secret services and the military. P2 was later described by an investigative commission as a "government within the government". It was a subversive organisation, a military coup in waiting, with men ready to take control of key structures throughout the country. An attempted coup did in fact take place during the night of 7-8 December 1970, when the Home Office in Rome was briefly taken over. Known as the "Borghese coup", it was called off at the last minute apparently because Gelli did not get the green light from the United States.

On the list of P2 members found in Gelli's villa in Tuscany was the name of Berlusconi. Among the many mysteries in the tycoon's early career concerning the source of the funds that enabled him to buy estates in Milan and later launch his television channels with licences given to him by the corrupt Christian Democratic-Socialist government, the Gelli link highlights the Gladio-P2-Berlusconi-CIA jigsaw.

Berlusconi is now flanked by deputy Prime Minister Gianfranco Fini, the former secretary of the fascist MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano), and by Umberto Bossi of the racist Northern League. The rise of what has been described as the most dangerous political triad in Europe appears to be the successful fruition of a long sought objective. "The CIA wanted to assist nationalism with the extreme-right contribution", declared Maletti to the Commission.

Given the efforts of both the United States and Britain in setting up the Gladio network in Italy in 1949, which relied on fascists as the most trusted soldiers to keep the Communists at bay, it would seem that Prime Minister Tony Blair's steadfast support for and efforts to give legitimacy to Berlusconi's government, even when it appears anomalous and disreputable in the eyes of the world, is just a rerun of old alliances outside parliamentary democracy going back more than 50 years.

As for the Red Brigades, the key members of the "nucleo storico" were captured and most of them have since publicly recognised the futility and anachronism of any attempt to win over by force an entire population to the idea of establishing a communist state against the intentions of established left-wing parties. One wonders, therefore, what lies behind these new recruits who commit a terrorist act, such as the killing of Biagi, that so clearly strengthens the Berlusconi coalition and more specifically prompts the entire military to spring to its defence.

The killing has come at a time when the government is facing the reemerging opposition led by a trade union movement still capable of mobilising up to three million people on a national demonstration and bringing the country to a standstill in defence of workers' rights. The unions have flatly rejected Berlusconi's attempts to depict them as the breeding ground for terrorism. Their aim is to protect Article 18 of the Workers' Statute, which requires the reinstatement of anyone who is sacked without good reason. Biagi was one of the architects of a change in the Statute that would have made hiring and firing easier. He knew he was in danger. He had complained to the authorities about their decision to take away his escort and leave him unprotected.

In order to divert attention from this crucial detail, soon after the killing government officials claimed to know that the terrorists had used the same "Red Brigade weapon" that two years earlier had killed Massimo D'Antona, another government consultant on employment legislation, who had worked under the previous government. Later, however, it transpired that this detail could not be verified. In D'Antona's case the killers had picked up all the bullets in order to cut all links to the weapon that had fired them.

There will be arrests of course. But those really responsible for the Biagi killing will remain shrouded in mystery. This is not just because some of the most recent terrorist attacks, such as the bomb at Il Manifesto, have turned out to be the work of fascists attached to Third Position, but also because the Bologna killing bears the hallmarks of a very professional operation. "If you look at the spot where it took place you begin to realise that it was carried out with military precision", a source told Searchlight. "Via Valdonica, in the heart of the ex Jewish ghetto of Bologna, is under the constant gaze of dozens of people, with narrow points of entry and exit. This is definitely not the place where amateurs can strike with enough confidence to get away virtually unseen."

The return of terrorism is bound to reopen the questions about the strategy of tension and the "years of lead", one of the darkest chapters in Italian history, and increase the sense of menace to the country's fragile democracy. After 20 years of fascism followed by utter subservience to the United States, which for over 40 years propped up the Christian Democrats' corrupt string of governments infected by the Mafia, financial malpractices and nepotism, many Italians fear for the future of their shaky institutions, especially the judiciary, which has come under the attack of the present government.

The current political situation bears similarities with 1922, when Mussolini was invited to form a government backed by the country's industrial class and by popular consensus achieved through nationalistic fervour and a show of strength. Berlusconi is the industrial class and simultaneously the owner of the key instrument of consensus-making apparatuses, his television channels and huge media empire. Last year a large numbers of Italians voted not so much for parties in the moral ethical tradition but for the embodiment of the aggressive values they had heard advertised: plutocracy, fascism and racism.

There are also similarities with 1963 when for the first time since the Second World War the CIA-backed Christian Democratic Party appeared shaken by the first centre-left-government of Aldo Moro and by trade union militancy. The Stay Behind structure immediately stirred. The attempted coup d'état by General Giovanni de Lorenzo in 1964 was a flop, but it succeeded in mobilising the fascist and neo-fascists forces and thus ignited the fuse of the strategy of tension. Terrorists began to strike. How many members of the Red Brigades were in fact fascists acting as agents provocateurs to weaken the left and strengthen the military we shall probably never know.

Investigations in over 300 killings during the "anni di piombo" have all too often led to the capture and imprisonment of the foot soldiers carrying out the attacks. At the point their commanders would have been unmasked, documents have disappeared, tapes have been erased and witnesses have been killed in an endless and so far successful sidetracking operation. Even the assassination of the Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in 1978 remains a mystery. Only last month Michele Landi, a computer expert who had been working on the investigation into the D'Antona killing, was found dead. "I do not think it was suicide," said a magistrate who knew him well.

When D'Antona was killed members of Digos, the Italian anti-terrorist squad, and some military intelligence sources indicated to Searchlight that those responsible were probably to be found among the fascists. The last four years have seen many bombings, arsons and assaults all claimed by what appear to be non-existent "left groups" who when investigated turn out to consist of followers, if not members, of Roberto Fiore's Forza Nuova. The assassination of Biagi is likely to turn out to be part of a recreated Gladio-style strategy, now adapted to prop up the most dangerous political triad in Europe.


The Mysterious Death of Michele Landi
Italy: Is the intelligence service behind the murder of the government official Biagi?
by Gerhard Feldbauer

At the end of March the Italian trade unions had called for a mass demonstration in Rome against the democracy and welfare cut-offs of the government of Silvio Berlusconi. When the government official Marco Biagi was shot four days before in Bologna, allegedly by new "red brigades for communism", the protests were threatened with failure. Berlusconi and his minister of the interior Scajola immediately accused the trade unions of compliancy. The demonstations and an announced general strike would be on the same side as the terror of the new red brigades. However, the organizers persisted and the demonstration turned out,with three million participants,just like the following general strike aimed as a loud challenge to the government.

The murder of Biagi appears now more and more as a provocation by the inner intelligence SISDE. The facts: As proof for the alleged murder of the government official by the red brigades a 26 page declaration of confession was submitted. The public prosecutor's office assigned the IT expert Michele Landi to determine the identity of the alleged confesser's e-mail through computer research. This obviously revealed with his investigations completely different authors than the red brigades. After the submission of his report Landi was found dead on the 5th of *April in his appartment in Rome. Although the courts medical investigation did not exclude foreign effect, the ministry of the Interior immediately announced "suicide by hanging". Several people testified that Landi had denied the authenticity of the "confession" of the red brigades and had spoken of "important discoveries", one of the main suspects revealed. Furthermore he had told friends that he was being shadowed.

After the family of the deceased had complained of the *murder to the public prosecutor's office, further *results of the investigation shook the suicide allegation. Investigators found that the corpse did not come from the rope found in the appartment with which Landi was said to have hung himself. Furthermore hair was found, which neither came from the deceased,nor his friends. The public prosecutor Matassa,who was responsible for the investigation, explained plainly that the intelligence service produced the suicide of Landi, because he became a safety risk with his investigation results about the alleged left-wing extremist terror scene. Thereupon Minister of the interior stated on TV it still had to be considered a suicide and demanded the media *be"gagged".

The threat showed effect. The media was silent for several weeks,apart from exceptions like the Liberazione or IL Manifesto. The writer Umberto Eco stated that press censorship prevails and the head of the government "manipulates the media".

In the middle of May further investigation results became public, which disproved the suicide allegation of the Minister of the Interior. Thus injuries showed up on the neck of the victim caused by foreign effect. In addition Landi was at the time of death under such a heavy alcohol effect that his own hanging was almost completely impossible.The most serious indication though: A secret file with his research results about the murder of Biagi had been deleted from his computer.

First published by German newspaper Junge Welt.
http://www.jungewelt.de/2002/06-18/004.php
Translated using Babelfish, revised, edited by Noly Lopez.


Apparently almost the entire Italian intelligence system was overhauled in 2007, and the old agencies replaced with new names. Maybe check out DIGOS? Surely they know about these "parallel agencies" running Gladio...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divisione_ ... i_Speciali

Also somewhat curious: "Gnosis - The Italian Intelligence Magazine" (in English), which may only be viewable via cache.

http://www.sisde.it/gnosis/MainDbE.nsf/HomePages/H11
http://web.archive.org/web/200712151101 ... onoTerrore
http://www.sicurezzanazionale.gov.it/we ... ne/en_home
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby cptmarginal » Sat Sep 17, 2011 12:24 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pino_Rauti

Founder of Ordine Nuovo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordine_Nuovo

"He established his own party, the Social Idea Movement, of which he remains leader as of 2009"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Idea_Movement

"Social Idea Movement (Movimento Idea Sociale, MIS) is an Italian neo-fascist political party.

It was founded in 2004 by a split of the Tricolour Flame party. Its leader is Pino Rauti, former leader of the Italian Social Movement and founder and long-time leader of Tricolour Flame."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tricolour_Flame

Pino Rauti is also father-in-law of the notorious current mayor of Rome, Giovanni Alemanno.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gianni_Alemanno

"He always wears a necklace with a celtic cross. He stated he wears it only as a religious symbol and because of a personal meaning for him, being a jewel worn by his friend Paolo di Nella, a far right militant that had been killed during the '70s Anni di Piombo."
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Re: How does Gladio extend into the present day?

Postby Stephen Morgan » Sat Sep 17, 2011 4:37 am

Paul Gauci was Tony's brother. He received reward payments after his brother's testimony, probably a way to funnel payments to Tony without them looking as big as they were.
Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. -- Lawrence of Arabia
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