Bush Payoff For
Berlusconi
Berlusconi
Furnishes Forged Niger "Yellowcake" Documents to Bush, and ONLY gets a contract for the White House
Helicopter Fleet???
My
grand Niece could have "negotiated" a better Pay Off!!!!!! Not only
disappointing, but embarrassing!!!! To be bought SO Cheap?????
New links
implicating Italian companies and individuals with then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now raise the question of whether
Berlusconi received a payback as part of the deal -- namely, a Pentagon
contract to build the U.S. president's special fleet
of helicopters.
The yellowcake
story in the
Two people --
Carlo Rossella and Giovanni Castellaneta
-- are at the center of Italian inquiries into the transfer of the yellowcake
dossier from the SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency, to the White House.
According to the
influential Rome-based La Repubblica, Carlo Rossella -- at the time editor-in-chief of Berlusconi's
Panorama, one of
Besides directing
Panorama, Rossella -- once a foreign policy advisor
to Berlusconi -- had been considered a candidate to direct RAI,
A more direct
connection to Berlusconi is Giovanni Castellaneta,
current Italian ambassador to the
According to La Repubblica, Nicola Pollari, the
head of SISMI, tried to dispel the CIA's misgivings about the authenticity of
the yellowcake papers and failed. Castellaneta then
arranged for Pollari to bypass the CIA and meet
directly with then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Stephen
Hadley, Rice's chief deputy and currently national security advisor. The
meeting took place on
It was after this
meeting that the story of the yellowcake uranium ore from
What did the
Berlusconi government get in return for providing the Bush administration with
a convenient "smoking gun" to attack
The choice of AgustaWestland for Marine One surprised most industry
observers because U.S.-based Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. was the heavy favorite.
Sikorsky patented the first helicopter design in 1939 and built virtually every
president's helicopter since 1957. President Eisenhower regularly flew in a
Sikorsky to his
Not only did
Sikorsky lose, but it lost to a foreign firm that has no problems selling its
helicopters to the
As with the
yellowcake dossier, the key figure in the Marine One contract is Gianni Castellaneta. When the Pentagon put the Marine One contract
out for bid, Castellaneta was deputy chair of Finmeccanica and national security advisor to Prime
Minister Berlusconi. By the time the contract was awarded, Castellaneta
had been appointed
Castellaneta proudly told U.S. Italia
Weekly, "At
Castellaneta's role in obtaining the
Marine One contract has never been examined before, but according to
When Ambassador Castellaneta was asked about his role, the embassy press
officer, Luca Ferrari said, "In his capacity as ambassador, representing
all of
"Castellaneta's double role as ambassador and corporate
businessman has come under scrutiny at various junctures," says Carlo Bonini, an Italian journalist who has extensively
investigated the yellowcake affair. "His duality has inspired animated
debate in the Italian Parliament, but due to the absolute majority of seats
held by Berlusconi, the matter could never be fully discussed."
With center-left
opposition leader Romano Prodi taking the helm of
The
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