I think we should set up a defense fund for my friend Michael Ledeen who is being accused of forging the Niger Uranium Documents by former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro. It all happened on a radio show over the weekend:
Ian Masters, host of Background Briefing, in Los Angeles, interviewed Vincent Cannistraro, the former head of Counterterrorism operations at the CIA. Cannistraro came close to naming the man who forged the Niger documents. When Masters asked, “If I said ‘Michael Ledeen’?” Vincent Cannistraro replied, “You’d be very close.”
Is that “close as in close” or close as in “close, but no cigar”? (Insider’s note: Ledeen is a cigar maven.) I hate to rain on Mr. Cannistraro’s anti-neocon parade, but I have news for him: The Niger Documents were in French and Michael doesn’t speak French (well, barely, but trust me, not enough to pull off a forgery of anything remotely official). Now if the docs were in Italian…
What we have here is obviously another dim-witted round being fired in the ongoing internal intelligence/foreign policy wars. In the old days, uttering such ridiculous slanders on Pacifica Radio would amount to nothing because no one would notice. In our Internet Age, inane remarks of this nature spread like wildfire. But perhaps Cannistraro is not up to speed on such things.
MEANWHILE: some people want to know if “Michael Ledeen kidnapped the Lindbergh baby?”
(Cohibas will be accepted for the Defense Fund.)
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