When the story first hit the corporate media I knew straight away it was bullshit and couldn’t understand why journalists were taking it seriously. It was just so obviously rubbish.
A modicum of common sense would have told anyone who wanted to do the smallest amount of research that the story was false.

This is what probably, more than any other one thing, (except the term “Pre-emptive Strike”) alerted me to the fact that Bush & co. were going to invade Iraq regardless, and they didn’t really give a damm if they broke international law or whether anyone in the world believed their BS.
If they weren’t even going to try to concoct a reasonable story, then they obviously didn’t give a flying fuck what the world, congress, the UN, the citizens of Iraq or America thought…

Moreover, for Powell to use this rubbish as part of his presentation to the UN and for Bush to use it in his SOTU speech, well their reasons for Iraq were really just pathetic.

In May 26, 2003 Dino (who did grad work in the U.S.) attended the Nato meeting in Prague discussing nuclear weapons in Iraq & lead up to war: http://www.nato-pa.int/Default.asp?SHORTCUT=401

In June 2003 he participated in Aspen Strategy Group conference Trans-Atlantic Relationship at the Cross Roads. One of the things he was heavily involved with is uranium and Niger (in part because of his role in foreign affairs.
http://american_almanac.tripod.com/transaqu.htm (from Executive Intelligence Review: July 18, 1997 )
http://www.converge.org.nz/pma/jaurg.htm

By Oct 21, 2003 Dino was accused of taking kickbacks in acquisition of Telecom Serbia (sold by Telecom Italia). Dino is said to have received some $50 million in bribes; his wife given a suitcase with $5 million in cash (Telecom)
http://www.novinar.com/mednaro…..m_novice=5

http://www.europeanfoundation.org/docs/173id.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2…..-f11.shtml

[Mod note; next time, let’s split this many links into two comments, OK?]

Friends seek missing scientist
Coast Guard suspends its search for the sailor, but a group keeps looking with satellite imagery.
By John M. Glionna, Times Staff Writer
February 3, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO — Friends of a renowned Bay Area computer scientist whose sailboat vanished this week off the coast here pledged Friday to continue hunting for the missing sailor even though the U.S. Coast Guard has called off its search.

Jim Gray, 63, a research pioneer and founder of Microsoft’s Bay Area Research Center, left San Francisco on Sunday aboard his 40-foot sailboat, Tenacious, to scatter his mother’s ashes off the Farallon Islands, about 30 miles west of the city. He planned to be back that day.

Late Thursday, after four days of scouring coastal waters with three helicopters and two C-130 airplanes, Coast Guard search and rescue officials announced that they would suspend their quest for Gray.

Officials expressed frustration that their wide search net — covering 300 miles from the Oregon border south to the Channel Islands — had turned up no clues about the disappearance of the longtime yachtsman.
{snip}
Frew said Gray’s friends and colleagues refuse to give up hope despite the mystery of where he might be. “The Coast Guard said that with the people and equipment they had out there they should have found something even as small as a beer cooler,” he said. “That’s just weird.”

NOTE-I’m not claiming his disapperance is connected to this case or the other scientists who met an early demise, I’m just pointing it out.

I do also suspect Cheney was “at war” with the CIA because of some combination of mistrust, suspicion, and alleged incompetence. And this played a role in the decision to refute Wilson so strongly.

But I think the main reason for the effort had to be because the charge Wilson was leveling at them was so damn serious.

They obviously shoule have been leaning backward, not forward, when it came to anything at all “Plame” outside of the very strict confines of the WH or OVP and those who had the appropriate security levels. But I think it’s more likely they f*cked up when they leaned across the line in their zeal, more thn it was some larger attempt to blow B&J out the water.

In case you missed it, there’s a tasty piece here by Brent Budowsky:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…..40305.html

…
When we were writing the original law, not one of us, could have ever imagined that identity disclosers would be high officials in the U.S. government. The law was aimed at people very hostile to the U.S., who were acting in a manner that helped the KGB.

It was unthinkable to all of us, that anyone involved in these disclosures, felonious or not, would be high in the U.S. government.

…

Oops!!!!!!!!

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/…..35.php#3_5

Quoting from the Conclusion there:

The information and analysis offered in this post provides compelling evidence that, at the September 9, 2002 meeting between Nicolo Pollari and Stephen Hadley, it is more than likely that the topic of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal must have come up and that Pollari must have vouched for the credibility of SISMI’s reporting on that deal in some form or the other. This was the most likely trigger for the NSC’s attempts to introduce a claim about the “500 tons” of uranium into Bush’s September 2002 UN speech.

This is consistent with the reporting of La Repubblica:

In an explosive series of articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, investigative reporters Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d’Avanzo report that Nicolo 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.

So, it wasn’t enough that SISMI was peddling information that they knew to be a fabrication. They were likely peddling it directly to the White House because the CIA thought that it was a pile of crap.

The above reads better at TLC, with all the context, links, emphasis, etc.

cinnamonape @127
The irony is, that unless some additional, non-public material comes out that he actually knew that Plame’s status was classified…Libby may have walked if he had told Fitz and his investagators the whole truth.

I don’t understand this ??? … Libby knew Plame was CPD in June

DOH! I should have said “covert” not “classified”.

I do see that Libby could be charged successfully with other laws that relate to National Security.

My comment relates only to his fear of being prosecuted under the Intelligence Agents Identity Protection Act, which has VERY high (almost unusable) standards for a Prosecutor…which makes it almost worthless as a law to protect covert agents, IMO.

But Libby was clearly negligent with the use of classified information, and violated his Security Clearance repeatedly. And the timeline also is interesting in his release of information of the NIE. It seems he may have revealed the section about Niger BEFORE Bush “declassified” it. He talks to Addington after he has discussed it with several reporters.
[Or maybe he was discussing the use of Presidential declassification to “out Plame”?]

The obsession of the WH about this issue is what is compelling. There were dozens of falsehoods that the WH promulgated about WMD’s that were challenged, and they simply chose to ignore them. Even on this one they admitted they were “wrong”…and likely could have run with the British White Paper explanation until the claims were forgotten. Yet it it seems this one they fought tooth and nail on…even to the point of outing a CIA officer involved in the CPD. Even to the point of UNIQUE in US HISTORY, of having a President declassify part of a document to attack a critic (a pattern then repeated with the charges of the Iraq War actually fomenting terrorism).

I can easily see why people think that there is something tied to this specific Niger claim, or Plame’s work on other topics, that was the REAL reason that the Administration acted so aggressively and virulently on this challenge.

… It may be that only a few WINPAC moles associated with Bolton gave them any credit. …

My recollection is that much the same thing happened on the aluminum tubes. The koolaiders were few, were heavily outnumbered and were heavily outranked professionally, but won the day anyway.

From eRiposte’s table, meeting of 9/9/02:

SISMI chief Nicolo Pollari has fairly unprecedented secret meeting with Deputy NSA Stephen Haldley (and NSA Condi Rice) – all indications are SISMI likely vouched for their Niger reporting in this meeting and WH pushes CIA to approve uranium claim again and again for Bush speeches starting on Sep 11, 2002

I’m sure it’s all Oh So Top F’ing Secret, but is there any chance in hell of the SSCI being successful in a subpoena of the details of this meeting? There would have to be records, right? If this meeting happend, wouldn’t record-keeping be a legal requirement, and their preservation too?

Or does “executive privilege” win the day again?

I don’t understand this ??? … Libby knew Plame was CPD in June

{RBG Note; the balance of cinnamonape’s comment is below}

So why did he “cover up” this event in the manner he did?

{RBG Note; so how’d I do?}

Great! Thanks!

I think someone else could create an even more succinct “evidence” timeline with a few more ‘bombs’ in there that Fitz has built up.

Now…why did Libby create THIS tale?

It relates to the Cheney memo…a memo that he kept hidden (or forgot ;-) despite the subpoenas requiring all materials relevant to the investigation. I suspect he got very frightened after several reports and Schmall’s subsequent discussion about the risks involved in “outing” a CIA officer. This was the same time that discussion was emerging about whether it was a violation of the Iintelloigence Agents Identity Protection Act if one accidently revealed a covert agents identity.

Thus Scooter had to create an alibi wherein he was not involved in an INTENTIONAL series of leaks that revealed her identity, but that his leaking was accidental…based on information that he BELIEVED he had obtained from an UNCLASSIFIED SOURCE (Russert…who tells him the whole Washington Press Corps already knows this).

The irony is, that unless some additional, non-public material comes out that he actually knew that Plame’s status was classified…Libby may have walked if he had told Fitz and his investagators the whole truth.

He got screwed by his COVER-UP!