Beyond The Plame Blame Game: Spotlight On Ledeen

Matthew Yglesias makes a good point which has been almost totally ignored.

The Niger uranium documents, which were the original reason Wilson was sent to Niger, have been proven to be crude forgeries with no basis in fact:

First and foremost, it's now clear that whatever Iraq may or may not have tried to do in 1999, it didn't actually get anywhere near building a nuclear bomb. Second, given the actual state of Iraq's nuclear program at the time, there's no reason to think uranium yellowcake would have been useful for doing anything, as Iraq had no capacity to transform it into a usable weapon. Third, the Iraq Survey Group, appointed by the president to review Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction programs stated last year that it had "not found evidence to show that Iraq sought uranium from abroad after 1991 or renewed indigenous production of such material." Fourth, the International Atomic Energy Agency responded to the Butler report by asking the British government to provide it with the non-forgery-based evidence for the story, which the Brits have failed to do. Indeed, it seems that the only British sources were the forgery, and reports from other intelligence services that were, in turn, based on the same forgery.

All that aside, no officials anywhere, including the authors of the Butler report, deny the basic point that the Niger uranium memo was forged.

So beyond the question of who leaked Plame's identity to the press, there lies the much more important question of who forged these documents and why?

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) asked the FBI to investigate this, after which they left this matter out of their reports. The FBI provided no further information, and did not even bother to interview Rocco Martino, a former Italian military-intelligence official who was reported (in the European media) to be the original source.

So who's responsible for these forgeries, and why did they create them, and why was the matter not investigated more extensively? Yglesias pulls his punches and leaves the question open.

But as Juan Cole has already noted, there is one person in the Bush-neocon administration (and remember, Bush is just the titular head of this cult) who has extensive links to the Italian military, and that is the neo-conservative thoroughbred, Michael Ledeen.

As Jack Dalton has previously noted, Michael Ledeen studied under Leo Strauss at Chicago Uni, as did Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Don Rumsfeld and other neo-cons. And as Jim Lobe has said, Strauss believed the world to be a place where "policy advisers may have to deceive their own publics and even their rulers in order to protect their countries".

More on Ledeen from Source Watch:

Ledeen was a Ronald Reagan appointee and is outspoken on U.S. foreign policy. He worked as a consultant to the National Security Council, Department of State (81-82), and Department of Defense (82-86).

* is a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
* is associated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies
* commenced service on the U.S.-China Commission in 2001.
* is a contributing editor to National Review Online
* is a contributor to Jewish World Review

Ledeen's daughter is Simone Ledeen, who went to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq in October 2004 and ended up in a position of considerable responsibility.

Ledeen's books include Universal Fascism, which speaks favorably of fascism as a "revolutionary movement," and Gabrielle D'Annunzio, a glowing biography of the eccentric Italian fascist.

Like nearly everyone that matters in the Bush administration, Ledeen was involved in the Iran-Contra affair. He even wrote a book about it ("Perilous Statecraft: An Insider's Account of the Iran-Contra Affair"). The title of another (1996) Ledeen book virtually encapsulates the whole neo-con obsession: "Freedom Betrayed; How the United States Led a Global Domocratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away".

Now why is an admittedly pro-Fascist ideologue, who loudly advocates violence as the only means of real political change, in a position of such influence with the US government? You tell me.

Did Ledeen use his Italian military contacts to "generate" the forged Niger uranium documents? Did his neo-con colleagues like John Bolton relentlessly push for an investigation, despite intelligence dismissing them as forgeries? Did other neo-cons ensure the investigation into these forgeries was never followed up? Does the sun rise in the East every morning, or is that just a "reality-based" misconception?

P.S. I'd better whisper this last bit... Yes, Michael Ledeen is Jewish. But that's obviously got nothing to do with all this.

LATER: Amazing, really amazing. A single post like this is enough to bring some old friends back for a visit.