Who Is Michael Ledeen? The Man Behind The Niger Forgeries

I have just been trawling through the Wikpedia and Sourcewatch entries on Michael Ledeen. And if this is not the man behind the PlameGate Niger forgeries, then I am a blind baboon's bleeding left buttock!

Selected info from Wikpedia:

Ledeen holds a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, where he specialized in the comparative history of German and Italian fascism.

Ledeen was a major figure in the biggest foreign policy scandal of the Ronald Reagan administration. As a secret agent of National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, Ledeen vouched for Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar, and along with Oliver North, met with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and officers of Mossad and the CIA to arrange the illegal weapons-for-hostages deal with Iran that would become known as the Iran-Contra scandal.1

He was also a vocal proponent of the theory that the Bulgarian Secret Service was behind the plot to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The theory was later rejected by the Italian Courts. In early 2005 it was suggested that new evidence, in the form of East German Stasi documents, show that it was the Bulgarians in concert with the KGB and Stasi who were behind the plot. The former head of the Stasi, Marcus Wolf, and the Berlin office overseeing the Stasi archive, claim that the documents in question were sent to Italy in 1995 and do not implicate anyone in the attack on the Pope.

Regarding regime change in the Middle East, in 2002 Ledeen criticized the views of former National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, writing:

He fears that if we attack Iraq "I think we could have an explosion in the Middle East. It could turn the whole region into a caldron and destroy the War on Terror." One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today. If we wage the war effectively, we will bring down the terror regimes in Iraq, Iran, and Syria, and either bring down the Saudi monarchy or force it to abandon its global assembly line to indoctrinate young terrorists. That's our mission in the war against terror.

In 2005, Vincent Cannistraro, former head of counterterrorism operations at the CIA and the intelligence director at the National Security Council under Ronald Reagan, when asked by Ian Masters if Ledeen was the source of the forged memo that claimed that Iraq had sought to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger replied "you'd be very close.

In an interview on July 26, 2005, Cannistraro's business partner and columnist for the American Conservative magazine, former CIA counter terrorism officer Philip Giraldi, confirmed to Scott Horton that the forgeries were produced by "a couple of former CIA officers who are familiar with that part of the world who are associated with a certain well-known neoconservative who has close connections with Italy." When Horton guessed whether that was Ledeen, Giraldi confirmed it and added that the ex-CIA officers, "also had some equity interests, shall we say, with the operation. A lot of these people are in consulting positions, and they get various, shall we say, emoluments in overseas accounts, and that kind of thing.

From SourceWatch:

In the book Reagan Presidency, Michael Ledeen described his role in the Reagan administration thus: "I was a kind of intelligence courier for the White House: I would go and talk to various people in Europe. There are certain kinds of conversations that an American president will want to carry on outside of official channels. I carried some of those private messages. My other responsibility was that I worked with [Oliver] North on counter-terrorism. I read all the intelligence on terrorism, and North and I would discuss it."

SourceWatch also has details of the "BillyGate" affair, in which Ledeen collaborated with Italian intelligence to frame Jimmy Carter's brother Billy following a trip to Libya.

Testimony in the trial of Francesco Pazienza and statements by top intelligence officials before the Italian parliment revealed that Ledeen performed work for SISME, the Italian Intelligence Service, and had dealings with Pazienza in addition to their collaboration on the Billygate affair.

Federico Umberto D'Amato, a top Italian security official known as "the J. Edgar Hoover of Italy," testified before parliament in 1982 that "Ledeen had collaborated with the Italian services" and that Ledeen and two former CIA agents taught Italian agents. Gen. Giuseppe Santovito, the head of SISMI and Mr. Pazienza's superior at the time, gave similar testimony. Mr. Pazienza said Ledeen received at least $120,000, at least some of which was paid into a Bermdua bank account. Ledeen denied providing training to SISMI.

Ledeen said he had performed a "risk analysis" project for SISMI and may have received $100,000 and travel expenses. He said he believed he had a personal account in Bermuda for a period of months.

Mr. Pazienza said that he and Ledeen in 1980 and 1981 also were involved in creating a direct link between some U.S. supporters of Ronald Reagan and the right wing of the then-ruling Christian Democratic Party in Italy. Ledeen and Pazienza worked as a middleman between Italian leaders and the incoming Reagan administration, bypassing normal Italian-American diplomatic channels. D'Amato provided a similar account in his testimony to parlament. Richard Gardner, the America Ambassador to Rome at the time said that Pazienza and Ledeen were "freelancers with questionable credentials" who "subsituted" for the embassy and caused "great problems."

Duane R. Clarridge, a longtime CIA field agent (NE & SE Asia) and administrator who was pardoned by George HW Bush for his role in the Iran-Contra affair... says Ledeen's damage to Jimmy Carter's presidential campaign by "trumpeting of the Billy/Qaddifi relationship" earned the appreciation of Alexander Haig and other prominent Republicans. Clarridge wrote that Ledeen further aggravated the CIA by becoming an unofficial conduit between Haig and General Giuseppe Santovito, head of the Italian Military Service (SISMI).

And how BushWorld is this?

Clarridge notes that in 1987, as he was retiring from the agency after being formally reprimanded, it was his friend Ledeen who used connections with a prominent General Dynamics shareholder to introduce Clarridge to the General Dynamic executives who offerred him a position at the company.

In case you didn't know, Ledeen is on the books of Benador Associates and writes regularly for the National Review.

Ledeen's history suggests he is an expert at escaping from horrrible trainwrecks. Are we gonna let the bastard limp away from the horrors of Iraq? This is a man who desperately needs to spend his dying days in prison, reflecting on the errors of his ways.