Posted on 05/25/2025 11:25:45 PM PDT by Governor Dinwiddie
Michael Ledeen, the controversial national security journalist, scholar and schemer who died at age 83 on May 17 from complications following a stroke, played a significant covert role leading up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, as well as other productions of false intelligence for political ends.
Ledeen was featured prominently in The Italian Letter, a 2007 book by SpyTalk Contributing Editor Peter Eisner and Knut Royce, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter at Newsday. Obituaries published this week gave scant attention to the key role Ledeen played in fabricating intelligence to justify the eventually disastrous military campaign to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power. The main goal of toppling the regime was achieved but the succeeding occupation, at a cost of an estimated $2 trillion, has been judged a military and diplomatic disaster resulting in 37,000 U.S. casualties, at least 200,000 and possibly a million Iraqi civilians dead due to war-related action, and the creation of a virtual Iranian client state in Baghdad.
(Excerpt) Read more at spytalk.co ...
Pulitzer Prize winners...
Are not a valid source of information, as history has shown.
Walter Duranty, the NYT bureau chief in Moscow was a Pulitzer Prize winner. And there have been others. It’s almost a guarantee that you are getting BS.
April 1959 : (Castro visits the NY Times) In April of 1959—amidst an appalling bloodbath of Cubans by firing squad ordered by Fidel Castro but mostly administered by his ever-faithful Igor, Che Guevara—Castro made a special visit to the New York Times offices in New York.
After a warm greeting from Arthur Hayes Sulzberger a beaming Fidel Castro personally decorated a beaming Herbert Matthews with a specially-minted medal expressing his bloody regime’s highest honor.
“To our American friend Herbert Matthews with gratitude,” beamed Castro as the flashbulbs popped. “Without your help, and without the help of the New York Times, the Revolution in Cuba would never have been.”
The support of the NYT for communists tyrants is not new. Remember Walter Duranty, the NYT bureau chief in Moscow who denied to the world the existence of the genocide by hunger of millions of Ukrainian peasants by order of Stalin.
—— To: 9thLife
The New York Times; Unrepentant Communist Enabler Humberto Fontova | Oct 20, 2014
http://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2014/10/20/the-new-york-times-unrepentant-communist-enabler-n1907581/print
Spytalk was crying a couple months ago about the resignation of Jay Bratt, forced out by Trump...
The Department of Justice official who pushed for the armed raid on Mar-a-Lago, which ended up with documents that were available for the asking and a chance to riffle through Melania’s underwear drawer, has retired. Jay Bratt, a 30-plus-year veteran of the Department of Justice, has tendered his resignation, saying staying on “wasn’t worth it.”
Poor, poor Jay Bratt. So misunderstood, according to Spytalk sources. And others may follow. Oh, horror.
If I kill one person, I get life in prison. Guys like this otoh...
That is not fair to Ledeen. At most, as a conservative journalist, he was a sincere and unwitting conduit of sometimes bad information offered by intelligence agencies and individuals. That is not the same as creating such information in the first place. Sadly, at times, intelligence agencies do a great deal of that based on the perceived needs of the moment.
People post leftist smears here now.
Leftist Liberal lies & drivel. Ledeen posted here on FR.
No he wasn't, the charges were ultimately dismissed by the DOJ.
claiming that Hussein had purchased yellow cake—lightly processed uranium—from Niger to build nuclear weapons.
He did, and in 2005, 550 metric tons was secretly sold off and shipped to Canada.
bkmk
Ledeen ..... A freeper way back when for a few months.
Interesting comment the typist there incorporated into the screed: “… he was involved in a “disinformation campaign” to discredit President Jimmy Carter’s brother Billy to the benefit of Republican candidate Ronald Reagan“
“Discredit” Billy Carter?
Billy Carter was a discredit to civilized society, a run-of-the-mill “good ole boy” for sure from the United States of Georgia; a source of endless embarrassment and shame to the Carter family, the but of innumerable jokes (I think even SNL roasted him at least once). His only contribution to history was the short-lived “Billy Beer” now found only in collectors’ hands and landfills.
All “The Gipper” had to do if he wanted to weaponize the existence of Billy Carter to his own campaign’s benefit was publicize video clips of his comments (“n*gger in a wood pile” among others) and antics to remind the voting public how the democrats had coarsened the culture of the White House/Presidency.
Ledeen was a neocon’s neocon intel operator.
“a cost of an estimated $2 trillion”
Even by D.C. standards, that’s some pretty big money.
Thank you, Jorge Busho.
Spytalk is hot garbage
The Iranian regime despised Ledeen.
He used to post her back in the day.
Seemed solid enough to me.
L
Long Washington Post article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/05/22/michael-ledeen-iran-contra-dies/
“While prominent figures such as former vice president Dick Cheney and defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld are often seen as practitioners of the neoconservative movement — which endorses unilateral and assertive policies in U.S. foreign and military affairs — Mr. Leeden was among its most uncompromising acolytes.
“Yet Mr. Ledeen issued some hard-to-reconcile mixed signals. He portrayed himself as a crusader for democratic values but found some fault in one of democracy’s pillars, an unrestricted media. He wrote in his 1985 book “Grave New World” that a free press was “useful, precious and sometimes invaluable,” but that leaks and other reportage can sometimes aid “opponents of the United States.
He raised the provocative idea of debating “where to draw the line” on the First Amendment and examine “what obligations the citizenry must fulfill in exchange for the right to free speech.
...his articles in the New Republic (written with journalist and editor Arnaud de Borchgrave) about Libya’s effort at influence peddling thorough President Jimmy Carter’s brother, Billy...
Mr. Ledeen answered critics by calling himself a small-d “liberal democrat” who remained inspired by the fact that American democracy began with a rebellion. “The revolution, in other words, must be exported,” he said in a 1977 speech.”
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mr. Ledeen turned back to international affairs in books and articles that often argued for relentless realpolitik in the Middle East and called for the ouster of Iran’s rulers as paramount.
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please,” Mr. Ledeen wrote before the Iraq invasion. “If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today.”
There is a lot to look at there—in my opinion he had some great moments but was ultimately wrong on many policy issues.
American imperialism was a concept that was doomed to failure.
His support for censorship made the wrong assumption it would never be weaponized against us.
Even smart people can be very very wrong sometimes.
L
His handle was MLedeen. I had an e-mail correspondence with him in the late 1990s about World War I.
MLedeen was good. I had a few back and forths with him. He was anti-Mullahs of Iran
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