When did Palpatine become aware of the Clone Army?
Thus far, it has been our ASSUMPTION that Palpatine ordered the clone Army. But this doesn't make sense. Sifo-dyas ordered the clone army and Sifo-dyas was a KNOWN jedi that died BEFORE the events of TPM. Palpatine was not chancellor before then, so he couldn't have had ANY involvement in the ordering of the clone army. So when/how did Palpatine find out about it?
I have come up with two possible scenarios:
1. Palpatine assumed the identity of a dead jedi and convinced the kaminoians he was the head of the jedi council and ordered the clone army. This satisfies both the notion that Sifo-Dyas WAS a real jedi AND
that Palpatine ordered the creation of the clone army. The problem with this theory is that it is just too convenient and is really not that interesting.
2. Palpatine had NOTHING at all to do with the order to create the clone army, and had no knowledge of its existance until it was revealed in AOTC. he was planning to CREATE HIS OWN army with the passing of the military creation act, or whatever it was called.
It WAS the JEDI who ordered the army created. Either by former head of the jedi council sifo-dyas OR by another jedi taking on his name. In that case, I beleive it was Mace Windu who ordered the army and it was DEFINATELY Mace Windu who deleted Kamino from the records.
Why would Mace do such a thing? SImple. There was the prophecy, and the threat of the Sith. The jedis ability to use the force was diminishing, the dark side was growing stronger, and he knew there were not enough jedi around to keep the peace. he needed an army to help protect, not only the entire galaxy, but the jedi, specifically.
I think this would be an interesting revelation for EPIII, because it would make the Jedi partly responsible for their own demise, even though the actions they took were a result of the Sith threat.