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Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Mr. Shit, I'd like you to meet Miss Fan
Posted by Jill | 12:38 PM

Today could be a Very Big Day.

Raw Story is reporting that source confirm that indictments are coming from our friend Mr. Fitzgerald.

And TAPPED links to some astounding articles appearing this week in the Italian newspaper La Republicca, claiming that Niccolo Pollari, chief of Italy's military intelligence service 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, meeting with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Whether this is the "Very explosive news out of Italy today on the Niger/uranium front" referred to by Josh Marshall remains to be seen.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE from Josh Marshall:

Nicolo Pollari is the head of Italian military intelligence, SISMI. The Repubblica article claims that over the course of 2002 Pollari -- knowing the documents were fakes -- made repeated attempts to get them into the DC information stream by going around the CIA, which discounted them as fakes. This was to satisfy the expressed needs of Bush administration officials who were searching for some information to validate their claims about an Iraqi nuclear program.

Remember, too, that Pollari attended the secret Rome meetings in late 2001 arranged by Michael Ledeen and attended by Manucher Ghorbanifar, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode.

Pollari's efforts were apparently in concert with the man who is now the Italian ambassador to the United States. And, perhaps most explosively, Pollari apparently arranged a secret meeting with Stephen Hadley -- then deputy National Security Advisor, and now National Security Advisor -- to discuss the documents.

The alleged date was September 9th, 2002.

The context here is important. The source of endless suspicion about when the documents first surfaced has been the timing and how that related to what was then happening in Washington. They surfaced just after the White House and the CIA had had a roundhouse battle over whether the President could make the Niger accusation in a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio. The CIA eventually prevailed, at least winning that round. The documents surfaced in Italy a couple days later. And the president eventually succeeded in levelling the claim in his subsequent State of the Union address.

That White House-CIA argument was happening in late September 2002. The speech, if memory serves, was to be given on October 7th.

That puts the alleged Hadley-Pollari meeting only a week or so earlier.


And it looks like tomorrow is Fitzmas, though the indictments will be sealed until Thursday. Stores are open till 9:30 PM tonight and tomorrow night, so you have plenty of time to finish your shopping.
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