Is this Woodward's Missing Article?

by emptywheel

Several months ago, I tried to figure out which journalist had been on the verge of publishing an article in late June 2003 naming Joe Wilson as the then-unnamed envoy to Niger. As I described in that post, when a second journalist tipped Wilson off to this article, Wilson called David Shipley and finally committed to write the Op-Ed that would be published on July 6, 2003. Here's one of Wilson's descriptions of the chronology:

The last straw came when Dr. Rice, in a June 8 appearance on Meet the Press, told Tim Russert: "Maybe somebody in the bowels of the Agency knew something about this, but nobody in my circles." That was a lie, and I knew it. She had to have known it as well.

[snip]

A call to a senior official in the administration elicited the suggestion that I might have to write the story myself. I took the remark to heart and called David Shipley, the editor of the op-ed page at the New York Times. He immediately offered me fifteen hundred words to tell my story.

Still, I hesitated, in the hope that pressure from journalists would force the hand of the administration. But two weeks after the Rice remark on Meet the Press, with my name now openly circulating among the press, it was clear that sooner or later my anonymity was going to be sacrificed on the altar of the story. (Politics of Truth 332)

Or, to update my earlier synthesis of the three descriptions Wilson gives in his book with other known details, sometime on or after June 13, in response to a suggestion from an Administration official, Wilson contacts David Shipley of the NYT to arrange to write an op-ed. He doesn't write it right away though; he's still not ready. But he does tell Ray McGovern on June 14 that he is the unnamed envoy to Niger and he will go public "in a couple of weeks." Wilson testifies before congressional intelligence committees somewhere between June 18-22. Then, around June 22-25 (two weeks after Rice's appearance, a week after mid-June, a few days after the latest testimony to Congressional intelligence committees), Wilson is warned that a journalist is "about" to publish his name "soon." At that point he contacts Shipley and firms up plans for his op-ed. But the op-ed doesn't appear right away; there is at least a week--and possibly up to two full weeks--between the time someone was ready to name Wilson and the time when Wilson names himself in his July 6 op-ed. And apparently (given that we don't know of an article that names Wilson that appeared in late June 2003), that journalist never published her story.

Well, I thought in July and I think now that Judy is the most likely candidate to be the journalist who was about to publish a story on Joe Wilson. But given what we've learned from Woodward, I think he, too, must now be considered a possible candidate.

Two clues to this puzzle
The biggest key to discovering who was about to write a story on Wilson is explaining two things. First, why would the journalist--the one ready to publish Wilson's identity--hold off on publishing the story? Everyone in DC wanted to know who the unnamed envoy was. It would have been a big scoop for whomever first confirmed his identity. So what convinced this journalist not to publish the big scoop?

And second, how would the second journalist--the one who was friendly to Wilson (and who wasn't interested in or able to, presumably because of a confidentiality agreement--reveal his identity himself)--learn of the impending story?

Why it still might be Judy
With Judy we can imagine either of two journalists tipping Wilson off--Kristof, who had known of Wilson's identity for some time and seemed to be sympathetic to him, or Shipley, who had been contacted by Wilson and had reason to protect his op-ed page scoop.

Also with Judy, we have two plausible reasons reasons why she didn't publish her story. First, she was on disciplinary status in June 2003, and she was having trouble convincing whatever elusive editor she had (I think it was primarily Joe Lelyveld) to publish her articles. We know from her own version of events the NYT wasn't willing to print her normal administration stenography.

I said I had told Mr. Libby that if The Times was going to do an article, the newspaper needed more than a recap of the administration's weapons arguments.

So perhaps she was having trouble convincing Lelyveld this was news. Also, the NYT is the only media outlet that would have had an incentive for sitting on a Wilson scoop. Joe Wilson telling his own story was bound to be more valuable than Judy telling his story. Put the two together (Lelyveld's apparent impatience with Judy and his interest in retaining the value of the op-ed), and you've got a really good explanation for spiking the earlier Joe Wilson story. Plus, if the NYT had spiked a Judy reveals Wilson story, it would explain why they're now trying so hard to hide their involvement in the Plame Affair.

Why it might be Woodward
But I also think there's a chance--a small one--that Woodward tried to write an article in late June. We know Woodward knew of Wilson's--and Plame's--identities well before (by any definition of mid-June) the time in late June that this article was going to be written. And we know that Woodward and Pincus were talking about this story. According to Woodward, at least, they had a conversation about it in June (and technically, Pincus never refuted that they talked about Wilson and Niger in June, only that Woodward had told him of Plame's identity). Further, we know that Pincus had ongoing discussions with Wilson. So if Woodward mentioned that he intended to write a story, Pincus is likely to have told Wilson about it.

The question is, could Pincus have convinced Downie or Woodward to hold onto the Woodward scoop? In Plan of Attack, Woodard tells of an instance when he convinced Downie to hold onto a story--because of CIA intervention.

Two reporters at The Washington Post had got wind of the possible nuclear or dirty bomb threat and a story was about to be published Sunday, December 2, with some of the details. With Tenet out of the country, a very senior CIA official called me at home hours before the story was to be printed and urged it be delayed.

[snip]

Len Downie, the executive editor of the Post, spoke with the CIA official and decided to hold the story. (47)

It's fairly easy to imagine why the CIA might have wanted to intervene in this case. But CIA intervention would shoot Downie's current story about when he learned Woodward had received this leak full of holes. And given how much the CIA has shared with Fitzgerald, you'd think they'd have mentioned this story, if they had intervened to stop its publication.

Or, perhaps, Pincus just convinced Woodward to back off all by himself. Woodward asked Pincus to keep his name out of this story. And Pincus asked Woodward to hold off on this particular story. (Although if Pincus convinced Woodward to hold off on this story--particularly if he told Woodward of Wilson's planned op-ed--it raises the chances that Woodard reported back to the Get Wilson squad that Wilson was going to reveal his own identity in an op-ed, particularly given Woodward's belief about the underground railroad of information back and forth between sources and journalists.

Was this story a Plame leak, or a Wilson leak?
Like I said, I still favor the Judy story, I just wanted to lay out this plausible Woodward scenario.

But if either one of them was the journalist itching to write a story around June 25, it takes on added meaning given what we know of the case. If Woodward were trying to write a story in late June, period, or if Judy were trying to write a story after June 23, then he or she would have known Plame was a CIA employee. Back when I first imagined Judy might have tried to write a Joe Wilson story in late June, the possibility that she was going to out Plame was really remote. But we know now it was a real possibility. Hell, we know Libby talked to both Woodward and Judy on the same day that week. Here's what Woodward says of his June 23 phone conversation with Libby (Woodward had an in-person interview with Libby on June 27):

I also testified that I had a conversation with a third person on June 23, 2003. The person was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and we talked on the phone. I told him I was sending to him an 18-page list of questions I wanted to ask Vice President Cheney. On page 5 of that list there was a question about "yellowcake" and the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq's weapons programs. I testified that I believed I had both the 18-page question list and the question list from the June 20 interview with the phrase "Joe Wilson's wife" on my desk during this discussion. I testified that I have no recollection that Wilson or his wife was discussed, and I have no notes of the conversation.

We conveniently don't have Woodward's notes (and this from a guy who took meticulous notes from his later Libby meeting). We know he already knew of Plame's identity (but not that she was covert). But we don't know why he called Libby. Was he just setting up his later meeting? Did Libby call him? Libby, apparently, hasn't placed any restrictions on Woodward's waiver, so Woodward ought to be able to answer these questions.

And here's how Judy describes her June 23 meeting in Libby's office:

Mr. Libby said the vice president's office had indeed pressed the Pentagon and the State Department for more information about reports that Iraq had renewed efforts to buy uranium. And Mr. Cheney, he said, had asked about the potential ramifications of such a purchase. But he added that the C.I.A. "took it upon itself to try and figure out more" by sending a "clandestine guy" to Niger to investigate. I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I thought "clandestine guy" was a reference to Mr. Wilson - Mr. Libby's first reference to him in my notes.

[snip]

My notes indicate that Mr. Libby took issue with the suggestion that his boss had had anything to do with Mr. Wilson's trip. "Veep didn't know of Joe Wilson," I wrote, referring to the vice president. "Veep never knew what he did or what was said. Agency did not report to us."

Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau?" [emphasis mine]

Now, Judy says this was Libby's first mention of Wilson; she doesn't say this was the first she learned of Wilson's identity. That leaves several distinct possibilities to explain Judy's notes. Perhaps, as I suggested in an earlier post, when Judy uses direct discourse to describe her notes, she is recording the lie Libby told her to tell. He's telling her to write a story not naming Wilson, but referring to him as clandestine guy (this would shoot down my theory she was going to identify Wilson at this point though). Or, Libby's seeding the false allegation the Get Wilson campaign would make later, that Wilson was some kind of clandestine go-between for Niger and Iraq. Or, finally, that Judy already knew of Wilson's identity (and, perhaps, Plame's identity) via someone else, perhaps Mr. X. So when Libby mentioned the "clandestine man" who had been sent to Niger, Judy knew to write down "Veep didn't know of Joe Wilson" in her notes.

One thing's for sure, though. Given the fact that Woodward had a note-less conversation with Libby and Judy discussed Wilson and Plame with Libby, both on June 23, it raises the possibility that Libby was trying to get one of them to write the story that didn't appear at precisely that time.

And it leaves the distinct possibility, too, that Judy had already learned of Wilson and Plame from someone else, before June 23.

Update:

Changed the initial Shipley contact date to June 13 per Jeff's comment below.

Comments

[SaltinWound]

Thanks, emptywheel, I get antsy and expectant when it's been a while since we've seen something from you. A couple thoughts on how the Woodward conversation could have impacted the Miller one or vice versa. What if Libby knew Woodward had been leaked to and was waiting to hear the info repeated back from him in some form, so he could pass it on to Miller? So Woodward becomes an earlier version of Tim Ruusert, one he didn't have to use earlier in the investigation, because the June 23rd meeting hadn't been revealed yet. Or, on a less explosive note: Woodward told Libby on June 23rd that Wilson was going to go public, and that somehow emboldened Libby to act with Miller?

[SaltinWound]

I'm defining "a while" as anything more than five minutes.

[emptywheel]

Huh. That's a really interesting scenario, Saltin. Then you could have Libby coming foward to get Woodward to speak, so he could spin his journo scenario at an earlier moment.

I'm leaning toward the belief that Judy heard of this somewhere earlier, though.

[drag0n]

Forging The Case For War is a good piece up on American Conservative that raises the possibility that since the administration was obviously overreacting to Joe Wilson's original comments on his Niger investigation that there is quite likely a more nefarious coverup.

This is a theme that has come up a lot on the left it is interesting to see that the Reaganite right is coming to the same conclusions. Philip Giraldi has written a number of interesting pieces in that magazine on the Iraq conflict. All are worth reading.

I would be curious to hear what emptywheel thinks of Giraldi's reporting on the matter. Giraldi's conclusion follows:

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.

It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.

The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.

Has Ledeen ever been a source for any of the journalists involved in this?

[John Lopresti]

I am glad you are looking at the new timeframes around June, EW. I am into other projects at this time, yet appreciate your delving. In KagroX style I offer the following miscellany which might be relevant to your interests, maybe.

Here are links to some articles a few of which you probably have skimmed, as you are well informed and likely already know much of the material.

Judy Miller's October 23 post to the NYT B. Calame site in which she names Jill A as her editor for an unpublished July article; some of it may be believable, you would know about veracity and possible relevance; the article is at Calame's October 23 site.

On Sunday Drogin and Goetz published a 13-page feature length LAT article, probably 2500 words, on the peculiar saga of Curveball during 2002 debriefing in Germany by the intelligence service there; the LA Times article. This article begins in 1999, and is thorough.

And the side action by DoJ thru DC court fining Pincus $500./day for the next ten days to coerce divulgation of his sources in the US weapons lab spy case: DoJ, or actually Judge Collyer ruling in DoJ's favor, is saying Pincus has to contact and get specific release authorizations from all sources or head to Judy M's old cell in VA on contempt charges ten days from now; there are several articles and court documents online in this matter. The WaPo's Lane synopsizes very briefly here Saturday; the court site lags behind, showing still only the original Thursday order stipulating 48-hours instead of the extended ten-day timeframe which Pincus obtained the next day Friday.

[emptywheel]

dragOn

There is not a demonstrable connection between Ledeen and either of these guys--not that I know of. But there is a clear connection between Harold Rhode--who was in the early meetings with Ledeen on the forgeries--and Judy Miller. Rhode was Chalabi's liaison with DOD for the period when Judy was in Iraq, effectively embedding her military unit with the INC. So he is likely responsible for some of the staged stories she reported on from Iraq.

[orchid314]

EW,

Here's a link to a post that Steve Clemons wrote today over at The Washington Note, where he speculates on whether or not Fitzgerald might have a Deep Throat inside the administration who is guiding him through the maze of the Plame leak:

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001099.html

What are your thoughts about the existence of such a friendly source, and who it might be?

[emptywheel]

orchid

Well, obviously that SAO has talked to Fitzgerald. THe timing is very significant--right when the investigation was announced. I think it was a shot across the bow of the Get Wilson crowd that he was going after them.

I've always thought Powell or one of his surrogates was this person (Armitage or Wilkerson??).

And it is a mistake, IMO, to read this article in isolation. Novak's famous October 1 column was almost certainly written as pushback against this SAO.

[emptywheel]

john lopresti

Both the NYT and Judy seem to have cooperated to hide any mention of Joe Lelyveld in their coverage of this affair. I find that incredibly suspicious--he was clearly in charge for the whole period when this leak was happening. So I think Abramson is getting blamed as the ONE editor, even though Judy clearly had someone senoir to Abramson.

[drag0n]

Re: Friendly leaker

My money would be on someone from The State Department. Powell and everyone below him had every reason to be extremely angry at this point since they had more or less been sidelined and treated like $10.00 whores. Having the administration attack a former diplomat following the humiliation of Powell in front of the UNSC and the sidelining of State in postwar Iraq would surely have sent someone over the edge...

[Jeff]

emptywheel - A small detail to add to your timeline from the October 12 2003 Pincus and Allen piece:

Wilson said he attempted to increase pressure on the White House the day after the June 12 article was published by calling some present and former senior administration officials who know national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. He wanted them to tell Rice that she was wrong in her comment on NBC's "Meet the Press" on June 8 that there may be some intelligence "in the bowels of the agency," but that no one around her had any doubts about the uranium story.

So Wilson called the administration on June 13.

I was just looking back over that August 25 2005 LAT article, and it looks to me like Wilkerson may have been their background source for the fate of the INR memo in State hands, as he's quoted on the record there pretty extensively as well. Maybe Wilkerson was the source for Allen and Priest as well.

[orionATL]

"... and given how much the cia has shared with fitzgerald..."

i would have expected they'd do all they could to help the prosecutor, but i've never seen it put this directly.

how or where can one learn the cia's contribution to fitzgerald's case ?

or is this just common knowledge that i have been oblivious to?

[emptywheel]

Jeff

That's a great detail--thanks for pointing it out. But remember, just because Wilson contacted someone in the administration doesn't mean he contacted OVP. I kind of take that sentence to read: "Wilson contacted Brent Scowcroft, Marc Grossman, and XXX who knew National Security Advisor..." I'd bet money on Scowcroft and Grossman. Wilson had been trying to get through to Condi through Scowcroft for 8 months by that point.

And if I'm right and it's Grossman (I say that because they're both career diplomats, they worked together on something in Turkey, and they both went to UCSB, although I'm not sure if it was at the same time), then Grossman talked to Wilson after he briefed at the WH on the INR memo. In fact, I've been wondering whether Grossman could be the SAO for the WaPo. How much did they strategize about their Get Wilson campaign on June 12? Particularly since Mr. X was leaking around then and Libby may have tried to seed leaks with Woodward and Judy not long after, it is possible that the June 11/12 meeting was the strategy session for the leak.

Which would also explain how Wilson knew so much about it.

orion

Actually, I just made that up.

Fitzgerald has interviewed Tenet, McLaughlin, James Pavitt (I think, although don't quote me on it), and Bill Harlow. And there has been some pushback from the CIA about what happened--particular wrt the drafting of Tenet's July 11 mea culpa speech. In addition, the senior CIA offier who told Libby of Plame's identity testified (if he's not one of the ones listed above).

But I seem to recall some reports of Fitzgerald spending a lot of time at CIA in 2004. Which would be a good place to get a lot of this evidence.

[William Ockham]

According to http://www.ucsbalum.com/alum_dir_plus/notable/politics.html, Grossman and Wilson both graduated from UCSB in '72

[QuickSilver]

Things sure do get murky in June, don't they?

But one thing is clear: the plot against Wilson was already hatched, and the ball was already rolling toward the exposure of Wilson and his wife. Wilson's July 6th editorial was an effort to defuse the White House spin (the "clandestine guy" stuff) that seems to have already been bubbling up through the journalistic grapevine.

Put a little differently, Wilson's Op-Ed didn't prompt the leak, as the mainstream media tells it. Instead, the Op-Ed was written in the midst of the leak, in part as a way of preventing the leak from going forward on the White House's terms. Although the mainstream media is yet to frame it this way, this seems to me the only way to understand it. Thanks for doing the spadework, emptywheel!

And if you haven't picked it up already, be sure to read Woodward's PLAN OF ATTACK....

[orchid314]

Would the OVP people have strategized so openly in front of Grossman? It seems like they would have attempted to use at least some discretion, so that State wouldn't have such concrete evidence of their plan to out Plame. But, hey, maybe Cheney, Libby et al. were so filled with hubris at that particular moment in time that they said to themselves, "Well, so what if Powell and company know about this? What can they actually do about it?"

Also, wouldn't Grossman have some kind of notes from that meeting, and perhaps some that he might have jotted down afterward, and wouldn't Fitz have been able to use these in bringing conspiracy charges against the group, at the same time when he charged Libby? Or to bring conspiracy charges, would Fitz need a corroborating source in addition to Grossman, and perhaps he's working on that now? (Assuming, of course, that Grossman is the SAO in question.)

Just thinking out loud here.

[jim]

EW,

I can't remember where I've read this one detail, but it always stands out in my head. In conjunction with what Jeff pointed out, I thought I remember reading that Rice got word back to Wilson, in response to his calls, that if he wanted to tell his story, he should do an op-ed....

If this is true (and I'm looking for verification somewhere) they clearly knew that he was coming....weeks before his op-ed appeared.

[jim]

Found it....from the Vanity Fair profile:

"Wilson immediately called a couple of people in the government, whose identities he will not divulge-"They are close to certain people in the administration," he says-and warned them that if Rice would not correct the record he would. One of them, he says, told him to write the story. So at the beginning of July he sat down to write "What I Didn't Find in Africa.""

The tone/substance of this refutes my earlier suggestion that Rice "got word back to him." I thought I read that before, though I may be having a false memory.

[jim]

As I was looking for the "why don't you write an article" cite, I came across this in the Vanity fair profife, and it is pretty interesting....Leiby calls to talk about Wilson's 91 experience, for no apparent reason, so it seems. That call pre-dated Wilson's article...Apparently, he just called out of the blue to talk about 1991. OK?!?

And, the part about Novak saying that something was a non-story on July 6 (before he is apparently writing his article)is interesting in and of itself. By the way, when did Novak first get leaked to? Could that be why he said "non-story"? One July 6, what would be his basis for making that comment?

"While he [Wilson] was working, he says, he received a call from Richard Leiby, a reporter at The Washington Post, about his role in the 1991 Gulf War. Wilson told him about the Times article he was writing, and the Post, in an attempt to keep up, ran a story about Wilson on July 6. That same day Wilson appeared on Meet the Press; so did Senators John Warner (Republican, Virginia) and Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan), who had just returned from Iraq. Both Warner and Levin commented that Wilson's article was of interest, as did Washington Post columnist David Broder. Only Robert Novak, in a separate segment, said that it was a nonstory."

[emptywheel]

William

Great find. Thanks for that.

QS

Yup, I'm reading Plan of Attack. Paid more than the $.35 paid for hers, though.

jim

Here's how Wilson describes the Leiby arrangement in his book:

Now Rich wanted to profile me regarding my work during the first Gulf War [note, Leiby had already written about the hostages from it, which may be why he called]. When he called, I told him that I'd welcome a profile, because an op-ed piece detailing my trip to Niger would be appearing in a Sunday edition of the New York Times. He knew about the trip, as his Post colleague Walter Pincus was one of the journalists I had spoken to on background in the months since the president's sixteen words.

And yes, I assume Novak was a plant at MTP (perhaps Bumiller, who was also on) to counter Wilson. I speculate here that Libby may have spoken to Novak before the week of July 7; perhaps he's Novak's first source but has never been discovered as such since he didn't speak to him during the week of July 7.

[emptywheel]

Oops, forgot to turn off the blockquotes.

[lukery]

jus tightening up the timing a little bit, woodward on larryking: "I learned about this in mid-June, a week, ten days before (june 23)"

he's obviously still trying to hid the date...

[jim]

EW....

Total coincidence then that Leiby calls Wilson while Wilson is working on the NYTimes piece? Maybe Leiby passes on to Wilson that the Post is working up a piece on him related to non-91 events. The timing is crazy.

[emptywheel]

jim

Well, no, not a coincidence. I think he was working on the 91 profiles because of the Iraq war. And it sounds like he had learned from Pincus that Wilson was the mysterious envoy, so he knew he was back in the news.

lukery

Yup. Has to be after the 12th. Later Woodward says he asked after the Pincus interview appeared.

[Sara]

EW -- just a set of archival matters that might be useful.

On Grossman -- he was Ambassador to Turkey while Joe Wilson was Chief Diplomat to NATO -- 95 & 96, and much of their involvement centered on the Northern No Fly Zone over Iraq flown out of Turkey, and matters related to Kurds to which Turkey had allergies. It also covered the deployment of Turkish Military to Bosnia -- Wilson was in charge of legal details. They were friends, and it was during this time that Valerie and Joe were dating and putting their relationship together, and I don't find it incomrehensible that Marc Grossman might not have known what that involved.

OK on Ledeen. Remember that Sidney Blumenthal sued him over the charge that appeared in Drudge regarding his beating Mrs. Blumenthal, which was false. Sidney sued Drudge and Ledeen and posted the depositions on the net, and they might still be there. They were interesting. Mrs. Ledeen was big time in Concerned Women of America -- a Scaife funded outfit, with which Ann Coulter was involved, and there was much more of that sort of thing. Anyhow dear Sidney did a great service by taking it to court, and doing the fact finding in depositions. All the financial connections are there, and I assume deep in google, the transcripts are still available.

OK -- my own much earlier research on Ledeen -- not using the net because it did not then exist. Ledeen was a cohourt of Ollie North in Iran Contra, and in looking at Iran Contra I took a different kind of look (largely because I was traveling that year.) Do you remember "Ollie's Navy?" These are the ships he chartered from Denmark in the mid 1980's to move arms to Iran (Tow Missles) and Polish arms from Poland to Hondouras and Panama. (And I suspect he was also very much involved in moving Polish arms to Pakistan for the Afghanistan War.) Anyhow, the Senate-House committee did an awful job of investigating this end of it all -- but I have some lovely tapes broadcast on Danmark's Radio of the Old Bearded Sea Captain telling all his tales of doing these shipments (plus the sea chanties in Danish about the sailings. Of course the Sea Captain speaks and sings in Danish -- but since I was an exchange student there years ago, I understand and all that. For 20 years he had done CIA stuff -- and Ollie North and Ledeen blew his cover, and he was mad, and was talking and singing.

I have no idea how many ships Ledeen and North chartered, but one was beached in Panama with half a load of Polish weapons as Ollie's cover was blown, and the test of that load had been off-loaded on an Island off Houdouras. The other ship was discovered in Korser on the West Coast of Funen -- also filled with Polish arms. There may well have been several others.

The Danish Seaman's Union sued North and Ledeen in Svendborg Naval Court, and won. The trial was something of the Danish Version of the OJ trial, though of course we never heard of it in the US. North and Ledeen were convicted in abstensia for the seaman's wages, interest and all -- and another judgement to the ship owners. I don't think North and Ledeen will willingly put down in Denmark given what they owe given the judgement.

I know this does not help with the task at hand -- it is archeology. Americans have little access to it because it is all disguised behind the legal wall of the Danish Language. I have enough of it (and I read, speak and understand Danish) to know it is there -- and should be part of the story. I tried to get a reporter doing Hondouris stuff to use it in the mid 1980's -- not with any success. American reporters do not do well when they have to migrate to a different language.

Anyhow -- this is part of Ledeen's past.