"Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams. The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq.

"The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime."
The Telegraph, UK, January 2007

Reports on Dem Prez Hopefuls Getting Pro-Regime (Iranian) Money (Both Clintons, Kerry Gore, etc.) in last two articles posted here.

The Soldier's Burden

Fort Carson Conference

I received this story second-hand from an old Navy Buddy. The story is what was reported by a Rear Admiral attending the conference. "He and his troops had the job of disarming all the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and explosive formed projectiles (EFPs) that were discovered before they were detonated."

Subject: GO/Flag Officers Conference on Iraq at Fort Carson

Earlier this week I attended a retired general and flag officer conference at Fort Carson, hosted by MGen Bob Mixon, the 7th Infantry Division Commander which calls the Fort its home.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ft. Carson, it is a huge installation located to the south of Colorado Springs; it's in the process of becoming one of the larger Army installations in the country (26,000 soldiers); and it is the test location for the new "modular brigade" concept that will reflect the Army of tomorrow by 2008.  It is also the home post of the largest number of troopers who have served multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and, regrettably, the largest number of troopers who have died in combat there over the past three years.  There are Ft. Carson units going to and returning from the combat area virtually on a monthly basis.

The conference was primarily organized to explain the modular brigade concept, and it featured a panel of officers who had either very recently returned from commands in the combat zone or were about to deploy there in the next two months.  Three of the recent returnees were Colonel H.R. McMaster, Colonel Rick S., and Captain Walter Szpak.

McMaster is the commander of the 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment, the unit that, through very innovative and population-friendly tactics, rid the city of Tal Afar of insurgents.  The mayor of Tal Afar came back to Carson two weeks ago to thank the troopers and their families personally for "freeing his people".  (You say you didn't hear about that in the mainstream media?) McMaster is considered the foremost U.S. expert on modern insurgent warfare, has written a book on the subject which is widely circulated at the war colleges and staff colleges, and he was asked to testify before Congress when he returned from the 3rd ACR combat deployment.  He is obviously one of the great combat leaders that has emerged from the war and is highly respected (some would say revered) by his troopers and his superiors alike.

Colonel S. is assigned to the 10th Special Forces Brigade and he headed up all of the 31 Special Forces A-teams that are integrated with the populace and the Iraqi Army and national police throughout the country.  Many of these are the guys that you see occasionally on the news that have beards, dress in native regalia, usually speak Arabic and don't like to have their identities revealed for fear of retribution on their families (thus the Colonel S.)  Captain Szpak was the head of all the Army explosive ordnance teams in Iraq.  He and his troops had the job of disarming all the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and explosive formed projectiles (EFPs) that were discovered before they were detonated.  They also traveled around the country training the combat forces in recognizing and avoiding these devices in time to prevent death and injury.  IEDs and EFPs are responsible for the vast majority of casualties experienced by our forces.

Despite the objective of the conference (i.e., the modular brigade concept), it quickly devolved into a 3½ hour question and answer period between the panel and the 54 retired generals and admirals who attended.  I wish I had a video of the whole session to share with you because the insights were especially eye opening and encouraging.  I'll try to summarize the high points as best I can.

1)  All returnees agreed that "we are clearly winning the fight against the insurgents but we are losing the public relations battle both in the war zone and in the States". (I'll go into more detail on each topic below.)

2)  All agreed that it will be necessary for us to have forces in Iraq for at least ten more years, though by no means in the numbers that are there now.

3) They opined that 80% to 90% of the Iraqi people want to have us there and do not want us to leave before "the job is done".

4)  The morale and combat capability of the troops is the highest that the senior officers have ever seen in the 20-30 years that each has served.

5)  The Iraqi armed forces and police are probably better trained right now than they were under Saddam, but our standards are much higher and they lack officer leadership.

6)  They don't need more troops in the combat zone but they need considerably more Arab linguists and civil affairs experts.

7)  The IEDs and EFPs continue to be the principal problem that they face and they are becoming more sophisticated as time passes.

Public Affairs:  We are losing the public affairs battle for a variety of reasons.  First, in Iraq, the terrorists provide Al Jazeera with footage of their more spectacular attacks and they are on TV to the whole Arab world within minutes of the event.  By contrast it takes four to six days for a story generated by Army Public Affairs to gain clearance by Combined Forces Command, two or three more days to get Pentagon clearance, and after all that, the public media may or may not run the story.

Second, the U.S. mainstream media (MSM) who send reporters to the combat zone do not like to have their people embedded with our troops. They claim that the reporters get "less objective" when they live with the soldiers and marines - they come to see the world through the eyes of the troops.  As a consequence, a majority of the reporters stay in hotels in the "Green Zone" and send out native stringers to call in stories to them by cell phone which they later write up and file.  No effort is made to verify any of these stories or the credibility of the stringers.  The recent serious injuries to Bob Woodruff of ABC and Kimberly Dozier of CBS make the likelihood of the use of local stringers even higher.

Third, the stories that are filed by reporters in the field very seldom reach the American public as written.  An anecdote from Col. McMaster illustrates this dramatically.  TIME magazine recently sent a reporter to spend six weeks with the 3rd ACR as they were in the battle of Tal Afar.  When the battle was over, the reporter filed his story and also included close to 100 pictures that the accompanying photographer took.  TIME published a cover story on the battle a week later, allegedly using the story sent in by their reporter.  When the issue came out, the guts had been edited out of their reporter's story and none of the pictures he submitted were used.  Instead they showed a weeping child on the cover, taken from stock photos.  When the reporter questioned why his story was eviscerated, his editors in New York responded that the story and pictures were "too heroic".  McMaster had read both and told me that the editors had completely changed the thrust and context of the material their reporter had submitted.

As a sidebar on the public affairs situation, Colonel Bob McRee, who was also on the panel and is bringing a Military Police Battalion to Iraq next month, invited the Colorado Springs Gazette to send a reporter with the battalion for six weeks to two months.  He assured the Gazette, in writing one month ago, that he would provide full time bodyguards for the reporter, taking the manpower out of his own hide. The Gazette has yet to respond to his offer.

Ten More Years:  The idea that we will have troops in Iraq for ten more years sounds rather grim, even though by contrast, President Clinton sent troops to Bosnia and Kosovo nearly ten years ago.  And they're still there with no end in sight.  While Iraq is clearly a different situation right now, the panelists believe that within a few years at the most, it will become very much the same - a peace keeping, nation building function among factions that have hated one another for centuries.  There is factionalism and there was bitter fighting in the Balkans before NATO intervened and with peace keepers, the panelists believe that Iraq will be a parallel situation. This, by the way, is why they all believe that linguists and civil affairs military personnel are so necessary for the future.

Colonel S. went out on a limb by suggesting that if most of the troops in Iraq were deployed home "tomorrow" he could have the entire country"pacified" and the terrorist situation brought under control with just one brigade of Special Forces.  Since these guys are linguists, civil affairs experts, among many other skills and talents, he may not be too far wrong.

Iraqi Attitudes:  The panelists agreed that the public affairs problem manifests itself most significantly in the American public belief that the people of Iraq want us out of their country which we are occupying. They have served in different parts of the country but each agreed that we are wanted and needed there.  I refer you to the anecdote from Col. McMaster and the thousands of pictures available on the internet of the U.S. forces shown in very cordial relations with the locals.  Of course, our media's obsession with Abu Graib and, if the initial reports regarding the small group of Marines at Haditha prove to be true, then those attitudes will change somewhat.  But as one of the panelists pointed out, the atrocities suffered under Saddam were much worse and much more common.

Morale and Capabilities:  Two weeks ago, the local TV channels showed a 3rd ACR re-enlistment ceremony held at Ft. Carson and officiated by Colonel McMaster.  Mind you, this unit has just returned from a one-year combat tour of hard and bloody fighting in Iraq and will likely return there again in eight to ten months.  Of the 670 soldiers eligible for re-enlistment, 654 of them held up their right hands and signed on for another four years.  Incredible!

The Army goal for re-enlistments for fiscal year 2006 was for 40,000 soldiers to extend their active duty commitments.  With four months remaining in the fiscal year, they have already exceeded their goal of 40,000 and may have to go back to Congress for authorization to exceed their force structure manning limitations.  Since Congress has been pontificating for the past couple of years that the Army is woefully under strength, that should not pose any difficulty.

Iraqi Forces:  Every one of the returning commanders had experience in joint operations with the Iraqi soldiers - and in the case of some of them, with the local and national police.  They all are supportive of the quality of the forces, but culturally, they believe that we may be expecting too much from them as a pre-condition for handing over greater responsibility for area control.  McMaster said that he worked with the army and the police at Tal Afar and was not the least bit reluctant to assign major responsibilities to them in the operations that were conducted.

Col. S.'s Green Berets, on the other hand, caught a national police lieutenant who was directing the emplacement of an IED by cell phone in order to disrupt a convoy - immediately after the lieutenant had been briefed on the convoy's route.  The good news in this situation was that they were able to reroute the convoy, safely, and track the lieutenant's entire network through the use of the speed dial on his phone.  Having terrorist infiltrators in both the army and the police force remains a problem.  But by no means does that detract from the courage and determination of those who are loyal to the new Iraq.

Explosive Devices:  The combined command in Iraq is becoming increasingly effective in countering the significant threat posed by the IEDs and EFPs. The frequency of attacks has decreased in large part through training to recognize the threat, the new technology (UAVs - unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, for example) which help to discover where the devices are emplaced, the infiltration of some of the terrorist cells, etc.  However, the technology being used by the terrorists is also improving measurably.  In the past six weeks, two bomb making sites were found, raided and the bad guys arrested.  In both cases, the head bomb makers were master's degree graduates (one in chemistry and one in physics) from American universities. That's a lot of brain power to bring into the fight, but we also have some pretty talented people in the military, industry and academia who are doing
their best to even the odds.

Conclusion:  This is more than I had intended to write on the subject – so what's new a lot of you might say - but it is a subject that doesn't get the proper balance from other sources, in my judgment at least.  I trust the information that we received far more than anything that I have heard or seen in our usual news sources.  The most disturbing thing that I heard was that our MSM is changing the stories filed by their own people on the scene because they sound "too heroic".

The over riding opinion that I came away from the conference with is that we have incredibly talented and professional leaders who are facing up to the challenges and are making inexorable progress toward the goals of our nation.  We're fortunate to have courageous and valorous people on the combat front, even though there seems to be a serious dearth of these same types of people in Congress and the mainstream media.

http://patriotfiles.org/TroopStories&Articles_Page6.htm
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Three Iranian factories 'mass-produce bombs to kill British in Iraq'

Toby Harnden in Washington

Rooftop snipers cause carnage in Baghdad Three factories in Iran are mass-producing the sophisticated roadside bombs used to kill British soldiers over the border in Iraq, it has been claimed. The lethal bombs are being made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps at ordnance factory sites in Teheran, according to opponents of the country's theocratic regime. Designed to penetrate heavy armour, the devices being manufactured in Iran involve the use of "explosively formed projectiles" or EFPs, also known as shaped charges, often triggered by infra-red beams. The weapons can pierce the armour of British and American tanks and armoured personnel carriers and completely destroy armoured Land Rovers, which are used by the majority of British troops on operations in Iraq. The Sunday Telegraph revealed in April that Iranian-made devices employing several EFPs, directed at different angles, were being used in Iraq. And in June, this newspaper obtained the first picture of one of the Iraqi insurgent weapons - designed to fire an armour-piercing EFP - believed to have been responsible for the deaths of 17 British soldiers. British Government scientists have already established that the mines are precision-made weapons thought to have been turned on a lathe by craftsmen trained in the manufacture of munitions. Members of the Washington-based Iran Policy Committee have released the details about the three bomb factories gathered by the exile group, the National Council for Resistance in Iran (NCRI). Iranians working for the NCRI pinpointed the facilities at three industrial sections called Sattari, Sayad Shirazi and Shiroodi. The factories are in the Lavizan neighbourhood in northern Teheran which is controlled by the country's defence ministry. The Sattari Industry specialises in anti-tank mines and operates under the aegis of the IRGC's al-Quds or Jerusalem Force.   British soldiers guard a convoy after a roadside bomb attack Alireza Jafarzadeh, a former spokesman for the NCRI who in 2002 revealed the existence of two Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak, said the devices were smuggled to Iraq via Iran's Shalamcheh border region. "These sites are close to a military site, known as Lavizan 2, that is now being used for Iran's nuclear programme. It shows there is a high level of co-ordination by the Iranian regime, which wants to destabilise Iraq to make way for an Islamic Republic. "This is not a ragtag workshop in some remote area. These sites are within an area that is one of the most sanitised parts of Teheran which is controlled by the Iranian Defence Ministry." He added that NCRI sources reported the movement of EFP devices from Teheran into Iraq as recently as June and that supplies of the devices, which began last year, had been stepped up in recent months. The infra-red triggering mechanism for roadside bombs was perfected by Hezbollah, under Iranian tutelage, against Israeli forces in the 1990s. Mr Jafarzadeh said that in recent weeks Iran had facilitated the movement of cash from Shia groups in Iraq to Hezbollah. Brig James Dutton, then the commander of British forces in southern Iraq, revealed last November that EFPs had led to a marked increase in the lethality of attacks. He said the "technology certainly, and probably the equipment is coming through Iran". He added: "They come in various grades, these EFP improvised explosive devices, from those that could be made in a relatively simple workshop to those that would require a reasonably sophisticated factory." Last week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former IRGC commander and the man believed by Western intelligence agencies to be in charge of Iranian operations in Iraq, was asked in an interview with CBS television why Iran would furnish roadside bombs to Iraqi insurgents. He ignored the question, instead responding: "We are saddened that the people of Iraq are being killed. I believe that the rulers of the US have to change their mentality. I ask you, sir, what is the American army doing inside Iraq? Why are the Americans killing Iraqis on a daily basis?" The factory disclosures come amid growing unease among soldiers in Iraq over what they believe is inadequate protection against terrorist booby traps. There are fears that soldiers' lives are being put at risk by senior officers insisting that troops must conduct patrols in armoured Land Rovers even though they provide little or no protection from such insurgent devices. Pressure continues to mount on the Ministry of Defence to introduce a new range of military vehicles that will protect troops from the terrorist bombs in Iraq. The last two soldiers to be killed by the device were Lieut Tom Mildinhall, 27, and L/Cpl Paul Farrelly, 28, both members of the 1st Queen's Dragoon Guards, who were killed on May 28 in a district north-west of Basra. All Credit Given To The Telegraph UK http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/20/wirq20.xml

Iran & W. What does the president know, and when did he know it? By Michael Ledeen “We’ve got a lot of issues with Iran,” President Bush told a news conference last week. “The first is whether or not they will help this young democracy succeed,” he said, referring to Iraq. He said the “second issue” was whether Iran would help the Lebanese government, and that the “big issue” was “whether or not Iran will end up with a nuclear weapon.” The heart sinks. Can anyone — let alone the president — possibly believe that the mullahs might help Iraq succeed? The only “success” they are interested in is the humiliation of America and the domination of Iraq. Can anyone possibly believe that Iran might help the Lebanese government? The only thing they care about is the destruction of that government, the slaughter or domination of the Maronite Christians, and the creation of an Islamic Republic under the thumb of Hizbollah. And finally, how can anyone possibly believe that the “big issue” is whether or not Iran will get nukes? The issue is American lives, now being taken in Iraq and Afghanistan by Iranian weapons, killers, and managers. This is not new; it has been going on for 27 years, and we have yet to respond. As I warned both before and after the liberation of Iraq, the Iranians and their Syrian allies, fearing their doom if we succeeded in creating a free Iraq, unleashed a terror war against us and the Iraqi people, just as they had done 20 years before in Lebanon. There is abundant evidence, as Bob Woodward tells us in his latest book, State of Denial. Here are three examples (actually two; the first and third appear to be the same, albeit 60 pages apart): Pages 414-415: “Some evidence indicated that the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah was training insurgents to build and use the shaped IED’s, at the urging of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That kind of action was arguably an act of war by Iran against the United States. If we start putting out everything we know about these things, Zelikow felt, the administration might well start a fire it couldn’t put out...” Page 449: “The components and the training for (the IEDs) had more and more clearly been traced to Iran, one of the most troubling turns in the war.” Page 474ß: “The radical Revolutionary Guards Corps had asked Hizbollah, the terrorist organization, to conduct some of the training of Iraqis to use the EFPs, according to U.S. Intelligence. If all this were put out publicly, it might start a fire that no one could put out...Second, if it were true, it meant that Iranians were killing American soldiers — an act of war... It’s not the first time we have had information about Iran’s murder of Americans. Louis Freeh tells us that the same thing happened following the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. On page 18 of Freeh’s My FBI he reports that Saudi Ambassador Bandar told Freeh “we have the goods,” pointing “ineluctably towad Iran.” The culprits were the same as in Iraq: Hezbollah, under direction from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence. And then there was a confession from outgoing Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani to Crown Prince Abdullah (at the time, effectively the Saudi king): page 19: “the Khobar attack had been planned and carried out with the knowledge of the Iranian supreme ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei.” As Freeh puts it, “this had been an act of war against the United States of America.” Clinton famously failed to respond to Iran’s act of war. Instead, he attempted to achieve a modus vivendi with the mullahs, the kind of negotiated surrender now so fervently proposed by “realists” of the Brent Scowcroft/Richard Haass/James Baker school, supported by Henry Kissinger on his pessimistic days. This sort of appeasement has always encouraged enemies like the Iranian theocrats to intensify their attacks on us and on those of their own people who dare to call for freedom, and so it has proven ever since. Is it possible that President Bush is not aware of this history? Just barely. Woodward’s account shows that there were at least some policy makers (he cites Zelikow, but there are no doubt others as well) who were very reluctant to pass this information up the line to a president who could be expected to take action after he learned about it. The secretary of State, Colin Powell, was famously unwilling engage the United States involved in support of Iranian dissidents (“We don’t want to get involved in an Iranian family squabble”), and his Deputy, Richard Armitage, actually argued that Iran was a “democracy.” They would not have wanted the president to know that there were daily Iranian acts of war against the United States. What about the intelligence community? Are they not obliged to inform the president of Iranian acts of war? Indeed they are, but they, too, were concerned about the president’s muscular foreign policy. I was asked by a high-ranking intelligence officer to “take it easy on Iran,” because, he thought, “things were going along nicely,” and in a decade or so we could expect an Iranian democracy. But if we got engaged, “God only knows what will happen.” I suppose he is now one of the happy thinkers who say that Iran won’t have nukes for another decade or so. Worse yet, in December, 2001, Iranians meeting secretly with American officials in Rome, informed the United States about Iranian plans to kill coalition soldiers in Afghanistan. The information was correct, and the killers were eliminated. But in short order, orders were given to terminate all such contacts with Iranians, even though the Rome meeting had produced life-saving information. I can well believe that the preside nt was never told about the Iranian-sponsored killers. According to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Bob Woodward had eight hours with the president. Did he ever ask if we were at war with Iran? Given the explosive evidence provided in State of Denial, he certainly should have. But if he did, there is no record of it in his book. Perhaps the question was not asked for the same reason the policymakers and spooks didn’t want it known that Iran was waging war on us: fear of the consequences. For once you put the Iranian question in that context, it’s really impossible to pretend that our “issues” with the mullahs consist of trying to convince them to help freedom in Iraq and Lebanon, and getting them to cooperate in dismantling their nuclear program. Once you are forced to address the facts, all sorts of “issues” drop into the background. http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGIzYmRmZTMwOGRhMGYzYzcxZGUxNDQzZjE4YzY2NDU= __________________________________________________________________________

Senator Hillary Clinton Takes Money From Pro-Regime Iranians

January 20, 2006

by Jim Kouri, CPP, National Association of Chiefs of Police

Senator Hillary Clinton yesterday accused President George W. Bush of mishandling the threat from Iran while she's been accepting money from supporters of the renegade Iranian regime. Wealthy businessmen Hassan Nemazee and Faraj Aalaei who are associated with the American Iranian Council, a pro-regime, anti-sanctions group, are vocal Clinton supporters and contributors.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Namazee has contributed $4,000 to Clinton's reelection while Aalaei contributed $1,000. Insight Magazine, published by the Washington Times, describes their lobby this way: "the American-Iranian Council [AIC], a pro-regime lobbying group [are] trying to get Congress and the Bush administration to lift the trade embargo on Iran." According to reports in Hillary Clinton's home state, she's also raising money from Gati Kashani, another figure linked with the Iranian Mullahs and who also supports the regime.

On its website, the Iranian American Political Action Committee (PAC) noted, "On Friday, June 3rd [2005], Iranian-American friends of the Hillary Clinton Senate re-election campaign hosted a fundraising event in honor of Senator Clinton. The event took place at the home of Gita and Behzad Kashani in Los Altos Hills, California." The PAC favors relaxing or eliminating Visa rule for Iranians coming to the United States and believes that Clinton would be helpful in achieving their goals.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation opposes such liberalization of the visa process for the terrorist state. But in full pander mode, the Iranian PAC reported that Clinton attacked United States Visa policy.
 
"Senator Clinton went on to address the audience on topics specifically relevant to the Iranian-American community. She discussed immigration and acknowledged the difficulties Iranian nationals have in obtaining visas to visit family members residing in America. She stated, 'Our visa policy is not only unfair but it's not good for America.'"


During her speech yesterday Senator Clinton attacked the Bush Administration, charging that the US government has wasted precious time in dealing with the looming Iranian nuclear threat.
 
"I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations," Clinton said during a speech at Princeton University, referring to American willingness to allow European powers to handle talks with Teheran. "We cannot and should not -- must not -- permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons," Clinton added. "In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations."

This is the exact opposite of what she's said regarding the run up to the Iraq war. Democrat Party bigwigs accused Bush then of not working with our allies -- France, Germany, Russia -- and not allowing the United Nations more time to deal with the Saddam Hussein regime.

 According to critics, Senator Clinton's modus operandi is to tell audiences what she believes they wish to hear. Tell Americans to get tough on Iran so as to present herself as tough on national security, then tell Iranians she wants to help them.

At least she did use the "plantation" word which I believe was calculated to bring about controversy as was her latest diatribes against Bush. The release of the Barrett Report brings up questions of her and her husband's own -- excuse the phrase -- culture of corruption. She's done this before when she criticized the Bush Administration's lack of resolve to stop rampant illegal immigration and to increase border security. However, when a bill went to the senate that would increase funding for border patrol agents and additional detention facilities, she and the senior Senator from New York, Chuck Schumer, voted no.

Then when speaking before a Latino group in California, Hillary told the audience that she would work to get them healthcare and education assistance.

John Spencer, the former Yonkers Mayor and Vietnam combat veteran who will challenge Senator Clinton in November, made the following statement, "Senator Clinton voted against the very munitions necessary to avoid a nuclear confrontation with Iran while at the same time accepting money from supporters of the Iranian Mullahs. Senator Clinton lacks the credibility to keep New York safe and she should return this tainted money."

© 2006 Jim Kouri, CPP
http://www.opinionet.com/article.php?id=5579
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 "Hassan Abbasi was among those who was arrested in the Thursday, January 11th early-morning raid in the Iraqi town of Erbil. An excerpt:

Abbasi has been among the highest ranking members of the Islamic regime’s terror operations for many years, acting as Khamenei’s foreign policy and defense advisor. Abbasi has had an active voice under not only Khamenei but also Rafsanjani and Khatami as well. The Martyrdom Brigades of the Global Islamic Awakening is controlled by Abbasi. "    From: Was Iranian Revolutionary Guard guru, Hassan Abbassi one of those arrested in Erbil?  (2nd Article Below)

US says to "go after" Iran, Syria networks in Iraq

Mon. 15 Jan 2007

BAGHDAD, Jan 15 (Reuters) - The United States plans to "go after" what it said were networks of Iranian and Syrian agents in Iraq, U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said on Monday. "We're going after their networks in Iraq," he told a news conference, as he laid out the new U.S. and Iraqi strategy to end sectarian violence -- by both Sunnis and Shi'ites -- at what Khalilzad called a "defining moment" for Iraq. U.S. forces are holding five Iranians following a raid on an Iranian government office in Arbil last week -- the second such operation in recent weeks. Khalilzad and the U.S. commander in Iraq, General George Casey, denied there was any disagreement between Washington and Iraqi Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki over the detentions. Iraq's foreign minister has endorsed Iranian calls for the release of the five men. Khalilzad noted that some Iraqi political organisations that opposed Saddam Hussein from exile had historical ties to security forces in neighbouring countries -- an apparent reference in part to ties between some of Maliki's fellow Shi'ites and the Shi'ite Iranian Revolutionary Guards. "We will target these networks in the ... expectation of changing the behaviour of these states," Khalilzad said. He said some of the five arrested in Arbil were members of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, which he said was directly involved in supplying weapons to militants in Iraq. U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said on Sunday that there would probably be more such operations against suspected foreign agents. Iran Focus  http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9851

Was Revolutionary Guard guru, Hassan Abbassi one of those arrested in Erbil?

"The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th." President's speech about War on Terror [...]The third group is the smallest but the most lethal: the terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaida. Many are foreigners who are coming to fight freedom's progress in Iraq. This group includes terrorists from Saudi Arabia and Syria and Iran and Egypt and Sudan and Yemen and Libya and other countries. Our commanders believe they're responsible for most of the suicide bombings and the beheadings and the other atrocities we see on our television. They're led by a brutal terrorist named Zarqawi, Al Qaida's chief of operations in Iraq, who has pledged his allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Their objective is to drive the United States and coalition forces out of Iraq and to use the vacuum that would be created by an American retreat to gain control of the country. They would then use Iraq as a base from which to launch attacks against America and overthrow moderate governments in the Middle East and try to establish a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain. That's their stated objective. That's what their leadership has said. These terrorists have nothing to offer the Iraqi people. BUSH: All they have is the capacity and the willingness to kill the innocent and create chaos for the cameras. They're trying to shake our will to achieve their stated objectives. They will fail. America's will is strong. And they will fail because the will to power is no match for the universal desire to live in liberty. (APPLAUSE) The terrorists in Iraq share the same ideology as the terrorists who struck the United States on September the 11th. Those terrorists share the same ideology with those who blew up commuters in London and Madrid, murdered tourists in Bali, workers in Riyadh and guests at a wedding in Amman, Jordan. Just last week they massacred Iraqi children and their parents at a toy giveaway outside an Iraqi hospital. This is an enemy without conscience, and they cannot be appeased. If we're not fighting and destroying this enemy in Iraq, they would not be idle. They would be plotting and killing Americans across the world and within our own borders. By fighting these terrorists in Iraq, Americans in uniform are defeating a direct threat to the American people. Against this adversary there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/30/AR2005113000667.html Terrorism key to Iran's security strategy: US spy chief Thu. 11 Jan 2007 WASHINGTON, Jan 11, 2007 (AFP) - US intelligence supremo John Negroponte Thursday warned that Iran was using "terrorist" operations abroad as a key element of its national security strategy. A day after President George W. Bush warned that US soldiers in Iraq would act against Iranian and Syrian elements in the war ravaged country, the director of national intelligence said Shiite militant group Hezbollah was acting as a key agent for Tehran. "We assess that Iran regards its ability to conduct terrorist operations abroad as a key element of its national security strategy," Negroponte said. "It considers this capability as helping to safeguard the regime by deterring US or Israeli attacks, distracting and weakening Israel, enhancing Iran's regional influence through intimidation, and helping to drive the US from the region," he said. Negroponte, who has been named deputy to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said that at the "center" of Iran's "terrorism strategy" was Lebanese Hezbollah, "which relies on Tehran for a substantial portion of its annual budget, military equipment, and specialized training." He said that Hezbollah was focused on its agenda in Lebanon and supporting anti-Israeli Palestinian "terrorists." The spy chief also said that Iranian conventional military power threatened Persian Gulf states and challenged US interests. "Iran is enhancing its ability to project its military power, primarily with ballistic missiles and naval power, with the goal of dominating the Gulf region and deterring potential adversaries," he said. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9820 _____________________________________________________ Detained Iranians tied to Revolutionary Guards: US official

Fri. 12 Jan 2007

WASHINGTON, Jan 12, 2007 (AFP) - A group of Iranians detained by US forces in Iraq in a new effort to counter Tehran's alleged support for violent attacks had links to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, a senior US official said Friday. Six Iranians were nabbed in a night-time swoop by US forces on an office in the northern Iraq city of Arbil early Thursday, prompting protests from Iran and strong criticism from other governments. State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said the Arbil office was targeted "because there was information that we had that the individuals there were associated with attacks against multinational forces, against Iraqi forces," he said. "Certainly there's also been information linking this facility to Revolutionary Guard and other Iranian elements ... that are fomenting violence" in Iraq, he said. "The claim that this was somehow an innocent diplomatic facility seems to ring hollow in light of that," he said. Casey confirmed that one of the six people detained had been released and the other five were still in custody of US forces, who are continuing to investigate the incident. Iran protested the raid on the Arbil office to the US government via its interest section in the Swiss embassy in Washington, Casey said. Earlier Friday State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said none of the detained Iranians held diplomatic passports and that the Arbil office had no diplomatic status. "It was a building that the Iranians were using, occupying, it was Iraqi territory," he said. In Baghdad the office was described as an Iranian liaison office. The raid came on the heels of a warning by US President George W. Bush that the United States would crack down on Iranian meddling in Iraq, where US commanders believe Tehran's agents arm militias and incite anti-US attacks. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9814 Rice says Bush authorized Iranians’ arrest in Iraq Sat. 13 Jan 2007 The New York Times By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL R. GORDON Published: January 13, 2007 WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — A recent series of American raids against Iranians in Iraq was authorized under an order that President Bush decided to issue several months ago to undertake a broad military offensive against Iranian operatives in the country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday. “There has been a decision to go after these networks,” Ms. Rice said in an interview with The New York Times in her office on Friday afternoon, before leaving on a trip to the Middle East. Ms. Rice said Mr. Bush had acted “after a period of time in which we saw increasing activity” among Iranians in Iraq, “and increasing lethality in what they were producing.” She was referring to what American military officials say is evidence that many of the most sophisticated improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s, being used against American troops were made in Iran. Ms. Rice was vague on the question of when Mr. Bush issued the order, but said his decision grew out of questions that the president and members of his National Security Council raised in the fall. The administration has long accused Iran of meddling in Iraq, providing weapons and training to Shiite forces with the idea of keeping the United States bogged down in the war. Ms. Rice’s willingness to discuss the issue seemed to reflect a new hostility to Iran that was first evident in Mr. Bush’s speech to the nation on Wednesday night, in which he accused Tehran of providing material support for attacks on American troops and vowed to respond. Until now, despite a series of raids in which Iranians have been seized by American forces in Baghdad and other cities in Iraq, administration officials have declined to say whether Mr. Bush ordered such actions. The White House decision to authorize the aggressive steps against Iranians in Iraq appears to formalize the American effort to contain Iran’s ambitions as a new front in the Iraq war. Administration officials now describe Iran as the single greatest threat the United States faces in the Middle East, though some administration critics regard the talk about Iran as a diversion, one intended to shift attention away from the spiraling chaos in Iraq. In adopting a more confrontational approach toward Iran, Mr. Bush has decisively rejected recommendations of the Iraq Study Group that he explore negotiations with Tehran as part of a new strategy to help quell the sectarian violence in Iraq. In the interview on Friday, Ms. Rice described the military effort against Iranians in Iraq as a defensive “force protection mission,” but said it was also motivated by concerns that Iran was trying to further destabilize the country. Mr. Bush’s public warning to Iran was accompanied by the deployment of an additional aircraft carrier off Iran’s coast and advanced Patriot antimissile defense systems in Persian Gulf countries near Iran’s borders. Both the White House and the secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, insisted Friday that the United States was not seeking to goad Iran into conflict, and that it had no intention of taking the battle into Iranian territory. The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, warned reporters away from “an urban legend that’s going around” that Mr. Bush was “trying to prepare the way for war” with Iran or Syria. Mr. Gates said that the United States did not intend to engage in hot pursuit of the operatives into Iran. “We believe that we can interrupt these networks that are providing support, through actions inside the territory of Iraq, that there is no need to attack targets in Iran itself,” Mr. Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “I continue to believe what I told you at the confirmation hearing,” he added, referring to last month’s hearings on his nomination, “that any kind of military action inside Iran itself would be a very last resort.” Ms. Rice’s comments came just a day after the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., Democrat of Delaware, issued a sharp warning to the administration about the recent raids against Iranians in Iraq, including one in Erbil early Thursday. He said the vote to authorize the president to order the use of force to topple Saddam Hussein was not a vehicle for mounting attacks in Iran, even to pursue cells or networks assisting insurgents or sectarian militias. “I just want the record to show — and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the border into Iran and Iraq — that will generate a constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you,” Mr. Biden said. In the view of American officials, Iran is engaged in a policy of “managed chaos” in Iraq. Its presumed goal, both policymakers and intelligence officials say, is to raise the cost to the United States for its intervention in Iraq, in hopes of teaching Washington a painful lesson about the perils of engaging in regime change. Toward this end, American officials charge, Iran has provided components, including explosives and infrared triggering devices, for sophisticated roadside bombs that are designed to penetrate armor. They have also provided training for several thousand Shiite militia fighters, mostly in Iran. Officials say the training is carried out by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. In the interview on Friday, Ms. Rice said, “We think they are providing help to the militias as well, and maybe even the more violent element of these militias.” In addition, American officials say the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Quds Force is active in Iraq. A senior military official said last week that one of the Iranians seized in Baghdad late last month was the No. 3 Quds official. He said American forces uncovered maps of neighborhoods in Baghdad in which Sunnis could be evicted, and evidence of involvement in the war during the summer in Lebanon. That Iranian official was ordered released, by Ms. Rice among others, after Iran claimed he had diplomatic status. This week, American forces in Iraq conducted at least two raids against suspected Iranian operatives, including the raid in Erbil. The United States is currently detaining several individuals with Iranian passports who were picked up in those raids. The Iranians have said that they were in the process of establishing a consulate, but American officials said that the Erbil operation was a liaison office and that the workers there did not have diplomatic passports. A defense official said Friday that such raids would continue. “We are going to be more aggressive,” he said, referring to the suspected Iranian operatives. “We are going to look for them and to try to do what we can to get them into custody.” Thom Shanker contributed reporting. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9825 _______________________________________________________________________ Squeezing Iran Fri. 12 Jan 2007 The Wall Street Journal REVIEW & OUTLOOK January 12, 2007; Page A12 The United States has known for years that Syria and Iran are supporting Sunni insurgents and Shiite radicals in Iraq -- support that has taken a heavy toll in American lives. On Wednesday, President Bush finally suggested he'll do something about it. "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces," Mr. Bush said. "We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." Those sound like fighting words, and even before he spoke U.S. forces raided the Iranian "office of relations" in the Kurdish city of Irbil, arresting five of its employees and seizing documents and other property. That raid follows the arrest of two Iranian diplomatic officers in Baghdad last month; they were expelled to Tehran, but they were found with incriminating documents that probably led to yesterday's raid in Irbil. It's about time, and we hope the Administration keeps showing Tehran that it will pay a price for continued subversion in Iraq. There's certainly much more coalition forces can do. Consider the problem of Iranian-manufactured improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, some of which are capable of penetrating M-1 tank armor. According to information provided by an Iranian opposition group with a track record for accuracy, many of those IEDs arrive in Iraq via the southern Shalamche and central Mehran-Badreh border crossings with the connivance of Iraqi officials friendly to the Iranian regime. At a minimum, coalition forces can police and seal those crossings. The U.S. can also shut down the network of charities and "cultural institutions" that serve as front groups for Iranian terrorist activities. Iran's so-called Qods (Jerusalem) Force, the terrorist arm of its elite Revolutionary Guards, operates in Iraq under the aegis of the Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf Al-Saqafieh Establishment, based in the city of Najaf and run by Iranian mullah Hamid Hosseini. Arms deliveries are organized by the innocuously named "Headquarters for Reconstruction of Iraq's Holy Sites," which is supposed to work at rebuilding and preserving Shiite shrines but is said to be under the control of a Qods Force general. Money for these groups arrives in Iraq through a number of Iranian-controlled currency exchanges. Iran is also attempting to establish a branch of Hezbollah in Iraq even as it trains Iraqi Shiite militants at bases in Iran. Less information is publicly available on Syria's current support for the insurgency, but what we do know is damning. After the battle for Fallujah in November 2004, U.S. troops seized GPS systems "with waypoints originating in western Syria," according to the Washington Post, while captured fedayeen reported receiving small arms and explosives training in Syrian camps. Syria is also suspected of harboring former Saddam loyalists such as Izzat Ibrahim Al Douri, King of Clubs on the card deck of Iraq's most-wanted and now the self-declared successor to Saddam as President of Iraq. We wouldn't rule out incursions into either country, if military circumstances warrant. This does not mean another invasion, but Predator strikes or special forces raids against terror camps in either country are surely justified to protect American lives and help the new Iraqi government succeed. Syria's Assad family has a long history of meddling in the affairs of its neighbors -- not just Iraq but also Israel, Turkey and Lebanon. But the Assads also understand the language of force, as when they swiftly shut down the anti-Turkish terrorist PKK operations after Turkey threatened to invade in 1998. Iran is also susceptible to U.S. pressure, both military and non-military. The President's decision to deploy another carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf suggests he is prepared to counter any Iranian moves to interfere with maritime traffic in the area, as it did in the late 1980s. We are also heartened by signals from the Administration that it has all but given up on its mostly fruitless attempt to sanction Iran's nuclear transgressions at the United Nations. On Tuesday, the Treasury Department designated state-owned Bank Sepah for its role in Iran's missile procurement network; more can be done to freeze or seize the assets of key Iranian officials whose personal assets are usually parked abroad. One failure of Mr. Bush's war leadership has been to clearly define the enemy in Iraq, which for a long time has included Syria and Iran. The more we have shown forbearance, the nastier their actions have become. We hope Mr. Bush's remarks Wednesday, and the actions in recent days, signal a new determination to take the battle to that enemy. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=9802 _________________________________________________________________________

Iran: Findings of the 9/11 Commission

Sat. 22 Oct 2005

Iran Focus The following are excerpts from the 9/11 Commission Report. [1] The commission interviewed more than 1,000 people in ten countries and conducted an unprecedented review of U.S. intelligence. Among its findings, excerpted below, was evidence of a significant and continuing relationship between al-Qaeda and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran and Khobar Towers—1996 On June 26, 1996, a truck bomb ripped through an apartment complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing nineteen U.S. servicemen. In 1997, the Washington Post reported that the Saudi Hezbollah operatives suspected of carrying out the attack were associated with Brigadier Ahmad Sharifi, an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander.[2] In passing, the 9-11 Commission reiterated the likelihood that Iranian officials played a major role in attacking U.S. forces: In June 1996, an enormous truck bomb detonated in the Khobar Towers residential complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, that housed U.S. Air Force personnel. Nineteen Americans were killed, and 372 were wounded. The operation was carried out principally, perhaps exclusively, by Saudi Hezbollah, an organization that had received support from the government of Iran. While the evidence of Iranian involvement is strong, there are also signs that al Qaeda played some role, as yet unknown.[3] Did Iran Train Al-Qaeda? Between 1991 and 1996, Osama bin Laden lived in Sudan where he was protected by Hassan Abdullah at-Turabi, the leader of Sudan's National Islamic Front, an Islamist movement. According to the 9-11 Commission, Sudanese officials facilitated meetings between al-Qaeda operatives and Iranian officials, a relationship which blossomed into tactical training: Turabi sought to persuade Shiites and Sunnis to put aside their divisions and join against the common enemy. In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support—even if only training—for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Ladin reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The relationship between al Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shia divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations.[4] Did Iran Aid Terrorist Transit? In 1996, after the Taliban seized power, Osama bin Laden relocated to Afghanistan where he established a number of terrorist training camps. Al-Qaeda training attracted a steady stream of young Islamists, many of whom transited Iran. While Iranian border officials normally stamp passports, they made an exception for many Al-Qaeda terrorists. The 9-11 Commission explained how this facilitated Al-Qaeda operations: Certain al Qaeda members were charged with organizing passport collection schemes to keep the pipeline of fraudulent documents flowing. To this end, al Qaeda required jihadists to turn in their passports before going to the front lines in Afghanistan. If they were killed, their passports were recycled for use. The operational mission training course taught operatives how to forge documents. Certain passport alteration methods, which included substituting photos and erasing and adding travel cachets, were also taught. Manuals demonstrating the technique for "cleaning" visas were reportedly circulated among operatives. Mohammed Atta [a 9-11 hijacker] and Zakariya Essabar [an Al-Qaeda member whose U.S. visa was rejected, preventing him from participating in the 9-11 hijackings] were reported to have been trained in passport alteration. The purpose of all this training was twofold: to develop an institutional capacity for document forgery and to enable operatives to make necessary adjustments in the field. It was well-known, for example, that if a Saudi traveled to Afghanistan via Pakistan, then on his return to Saudi Arabia his passport, bearing a Pakistani stamp, would be confiscated. So operatives either erased the Pakistani visas from their passports or traveled through Iran, which did not stamp visas directly into passports.[5] Iranian Support for the 9/11 Terrorists Iranian support for Al-Qaeda continued to increase, even as Clinton administration officials sought to extend an olive branch to the Islamic Republic.[6] The 9-11 Commission documented at length Iran's continuing assistance to Al-Qaeda and recommended that the U.S. government further investigate Iranian links to Al-Qaeda: While in Sudan, senior managers in al Qaeda maintained contacts with Iran and the Iranian-supported worldwide terrorist organization Hezbollah, which is based mainly in southern Lebanon and Beirut. Al Qaeda members received advice and training from Hezbollah. Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al Qaeda figures after bin Ladin's return to Afghanistan. Khallad [bin Attash, a high-level Al-Qaeda operative[7]] has said that Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, but was rebuffed because bin Ladin did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia. Khallad and other detainees have described the willingness of Iranian officials to facilitate the travel of al Qaeda members through Iran, on their way to and from Afghanistan. For example, Iranian border inspectors would be told not to place telltale stamps in the passports of these travelers. Such arrangements were particularly beneficial to Saudi members of al Qaeda. Our knowledge of the international travels of the al Qaeda operatives selected for the 9/11 operation remains fragmentary. But we now have evidence suggesting that 8 to 10 of the 14 Saudi "muscle" operatives traveled into or out of Iran between October 2000 and February 2001. In October 2000, a senior operative of Hezbollah visited Saudi Arabia to coordinate activities there. He also planned to assist individuals in Saudi Arabia in traveling to Iran during November. A top Hezbollah commander and Saudi Hezbollah contacts were involved. Also in October 2000, two future muscle hijackers, Mohand al Shehri and Hamza al Ghamdi, flew from Iran to Kuwait. In November, Ahmed al Ghamdi apparently flew to Beirut, traveling—perhaps by coincidence—on the same flight as a senior Hezbollah operative. Also, in November, Salem al Hazmi apparently flew from Saudi Arabia to Beirut. In mid-November, we believe, three of the future muscle hijackers, Wail al Shehri, Waleed al Shehri, and Ahmed al Nami, all of whom had obtained their U.S. visas in late October, traveled in a group from Saudi Arabia to Beirut and then onward to Iran. An associate of a senior Hezbollah operative was on the same flight that took the future hijackers to Iran. Hezbollah officials in Beirut and Iran were expecting the arrival of a group during the same time period. The travel of this group was important enough to merit the attention of senior figures in Hezbollah. Later in November, two future muscle hijackers, Satam al Suqami and Majed Moqed, flew into Iran from Bahrain. In February 2001, Khalid al Mihdhar may have taken a flight from Syria to Iran, and then traveled further within Iran to a point near the Afghan border. KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9-11 attacks who is now in custody[8]] and [Ramzi] Binalshibh [an al Qaeda operative captured in Pakistan a year after the attacks who acknowledged a planning role[9]] have confirmed that several of the 9/11 hijackers (at least eight, according to Binalshibh) transited Iran on their way to or from Afghanistan, taking advantage of the Iranian practice of not stamping Saudi passports. They deny any other reason for the hijackers' travel to Iran. They also deny any relationship between the hijackers and Hezbollah. In sum, there is strong evidence that Iran facilitated the transit of al Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and that some of these were future 9/11 hijackers. There also is circumstantial evidence that senior Hezbollah operatives were closely tracking the travel of some of these future muscle hijackers into Iran in November 2000. However, we cannot rule out the possibility of a remarkable coincidence—that is, that Hezbollah was actually focusing on some other group of individuals traveling from Saudi Arabia during this same time frame, rather than the future hijackers. We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation. After 9/11, Iran and Hezbollah wished to conceal any past evidence of cooperation with Sunni terrorists associated with al Qaeda. A senior Hezbollah official disclaimed any Hezbollah involvement in 9/11. We believe this topic requires further investigation by the U.S. government.[10] Notes [1] 9-11 Commission Report (Washington, D.C.: The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, July 22, 2004). [2] The Washington Post. June 28, 1997. [3] "The Foundation of the New Terrorism," 9-11 Commission Report, p. 60. [4] Ibid., p. 61. [5] "Al Qaeda Aims at the American Homeland," ibid., p. 169. [6] Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, remarks before the American-Iranian Council, Mar. 17, 2000. [7] The Christian Science Monitor, Apr. 19, 2004. [8] "Progress Report on the Global War on Terrorism," White House, Sept. 2003. [9] CNN.com, Sept. 17, 2002. http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4099

Iran says U.S. planned 9/11 attacks

Fri. 12 Jan 2007

Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Jan. 12 – Iran trumpeted a stunning accusation against the United States on Friday, claiming it had planned the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The Chairman of the Guardians Council Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati described 9/11 as a "puppet show", adding that it had been orchestrated by the Americans themselves. "They used this event as a pretext in order to create the slogan of fighting terrorism and promoting democracy to carry out an assault on Islamic countries. But the reality is that they have been defeated in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, and Lebanon and their slogan has lost its effect", Jannati told worshippers during a sermon in Tehran. His comments were aired on state television. In September 2006, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps accused the Bush Administration and the Israeli security service Mossad of ordering the September 11 attacks.

http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/

 "...whenever Muslims form a sizable population in a region of an otherwise non-Muslim country, they start a secessionist campaign for independence of that region to form an Islamic state. "

Excerpt From
Naïve Experts' Misleading Views on Jihad (in Southern Thailand )


[...] "The experts quickly disregard the most obvious fact that whenever Muslims form a sizable population in a region of an otherwise non-Muslim country, they start a secessionist campaign for independence of that region to form an Islamic state. That's also exactly what is happening in Kashmir, Chechnya , Mindanao and Kosovo and now in Thai South. The unsuspecting experts naively buy Muslims unsubstantiated allegations of oppression and marginalization as the underlying and justifiable cause for the insurgency. Despite decades of such incidences, the experts, consciously or unconsciously, ignore the most obvious fact that the people involved in these insurgencies are the Muslims and their common binding factor is Islam. "

"In regard to the allegation of oppression and marginalization of the Muslims, it is happening everywhere: in Kashmir, Mindanao , Chechnya, Kosovo, Australian, USA and all across Europe. However, such allegations are hardly substantiated in facts and figures. Not only that Muslims are oppressed and marginalized even in countries like Malaysia and Indonesia , where they are a majority. In the recent annual meeting of the ruling UMNO party in Malaysia, the issue of marginalization of the majority Malay Muslims by the minority Chinese and Indians became a heated topic in fiery speeches. The experts should, however, take note that if discrimination and marginalization are the valid causes of the barbaric insurgency that is going on in Southern Thailand, the minority Chinese and the Indians should have burned Malaysia into ashes with violence for the kind of discrimination going on against them as the constitutionally approved Government policy in that country. "

'Another factor the experts ignore is that a number of secessionist campaigns by various ethnic and religious groups have been solved over the recent decades. The insurgency by the Sikh people for independence from India is one such example. But none of the Islamist secessionist campaigns in non-Muslim countries have achieved a peaceful solution but instead, they have only gained strength in ferocity and violence. While, in cases like Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they have gotten for what they initiated the insurgency, which is autonomy, and eventually independence in time to follow. Furthermore, instead of subsiding, new Islamic insurgency continues to spring up across the world on a regular basis. "

"There is little doubt in the fact that the experts on terrorism, especially those working on the Islamist violence and insurgency, are of great importance in today's world stricken by the Islamist terrorist activities at all corners of the world. Their opinion and advice greatly influence the policies of the Governments that shape the future of our world. It is important that these experts get the proper understanding of the fundamentals behind the massive Islamist insurgency and violence that plague the world. Else, their expertise is not going to help but instead, may only worsen the future of mankind. "

From: Naïve Experts' Misleading Views on Jihad in Southern Thailand 
by Alamgir Hussain        28th November, 2006 

http://www.islam-watch.org/AlamgirHussain/NaiveExpertsThaiInsurg.htm

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Article # 2

The Veil Controversy Islamism and liberalism face off. by Olivier Guitta 12/04/2006, Volume 012, Issue 12 of The Weekly Standard IN 1989, the first hijab incident in Europe took place in Creil, a suburb of Paris, when three high school girls tried to go to class wearing the Islamic headscarf. The students were expelled. Fifteen years later, with the hijab spreading fast among Muslims in France, the government formally banned the wearing of religious symbols in public schools. At the time, most European countries criticized French "intolerance" and deemed the issue a uniquely Gallic problem. But it wasn't. Today most European countries--and a number of Muslim countries--are debating what to do about this increasingly problematic sign of Islamization. The British were among the most vocal critics of the French ban--back when they were still quite pleased with their own multicultural model. But on October 5, ex-foreign minister Jack Straw revealed that he regularly asked women who came to see him wearing face veils to take them off. Straw pointed out that veils are bad for community relations, and Prime Minister Blair added that the veil is a "mark of separation." This debate coincided with the decision of a British principal to fire an assistant teacher who refused to remove her full-face veil, or niqab, while teaching. Joining the fray was author Salman Rushdie, whose elegant contribution was the statement, "Veils suck." Tensions are rising, fueled by accusations of Islamophobia from some Muslim officials. There is fear that race riots could break out in some British suburbs. Then there is Germany, where four states have barred public school teachers from wearing the hijab. Some brave female politicians born in Turkey spoke out on the issue in an October 15 interview with Bild am Sonntag. One of them, Ekin Deligoz, a Green party member of parliament, advised fellow Muslim women: "You live here, so take off the headscarf." She added that the headscarf is a symbol of female oppression. Because of her comments, Deligoz has received death threats and is now under police protection. Finally, in Italy, where the niqab is banned, the controversy has reached new heights since the broadcast of a heated exchange on a television talk show. Right-wing member of parliament Daniela Santanche clashed with the imam of a mosque near Milan, Ali Abu Shwaima. Said Santanche: "The veil isn't a religious symbol and it isn't prescribed by the Koran." Retorted Shwaima: "The veil is an obligation required by God. Those who do not believe that are not Muslims. You're ignorant, you're false. You sow hatred, you're an infidel." Coming from an imam, this rant carried almost the weight of a fatwa, or religious edict, in certain quarters, where it could be seen as a death sentence. Santanche has been given 24-hour police protection. She says she is speaking out because Muslim women forced to wear the veil have asked her to. She told the Sunday Times, "It's time to turn our backs on the politically correct. It's a question not of religion but of human rights." And not only in Europe. Muslim countries are not immune to the controversy over the veil. In Egypt--where some 80 percent of women are now veiled, according to sociologist Mona Abaza--the dean of Helwan University has recently expelled female students for wearing the niqab. Interestingly, Soad Saleh, a former dean of the female faculty and Islamic law professor at the most prestigious Islamic university in the world, Cairo's Al-Azhar, confirmed that the niqab is not an obligation. Gamal al-Banna, brother of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, goes further: "Neither the Koran, nor the hadith require women to wear a headscarf." But the country whose government is currently going after the hijab most vigorously is Tunisia. The wearing of the hijab has been spreading rapidly in Tunisian towns, prompting President Ben Ali recently to reactivate a 1981 decree banning the wearing of the hijab in government offices, schools, universities, and public places in general. His government views the hijab as one more sign of the unwelcome but growing influence of Islamists in Tunisian society. This past Ramadan, in a reversal of the standard pattern for Muslim religious police, Tunisian police were seen tearing headscarves off women in the streets. The authorities consider the hijab unacceptable in a country that enshrined women's rights as long ago as 1956, with the banning of repudiation (male-initiated casual divorce), polygamy, forced marriage, and the granting of women's rights to vote and sue for divorce. Ben Ali sees women "as a solid defense against the regressive forces of fanaticism and extremism." Interestingly, the Tunisian author and feminist Samia Labidi, president of A.I.M.E., an organization fighting the Islamists, recounts that she personally started wearing the veil before puberty, after Islamists told her the hijab would be a passport to a new life, to emancipation. After a few years, she realized she had been fooled and that the veil made her feel like she was "living in a prison." At first, she could not bring herself to stop wearing it because of the constant psychological pressure. But the 1981 ban on the hijab in public places forced her to remove it, and she did so for good. Labidi's experience suggests that in both Tunisia and France the recent banning of the hijab has actually helped Muslim women who are subject to Islamist indoctrination. For Islamists, the imperative to veil women justifies almost any means. Sometimes they try to buy off resistance. Some French Muslim families, for instance, are paid 500 euros (around $600) per quarter by extremist Muslim organizations just to have their daughters wear the hijab. This has also happened in the United States. Indeed, the famous and brave Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan recently told the Jerusalem Post that after she moved to the United States in 1991, Saudis offered her $1,500 a month to cover her head and attend a mosque. But what Islamists use most is intimidation. A survey conducted in France in May 2003 found that 77 percent of girls wearing the hijab said they did so because of physical threats from Islamist groups. A series in the newspaper Libération in 2003 documented how Muslim women and girls in France who refuse to wear the hijab are insulted, rejected, and often physically threatened by Muslim males. One of the teenage girls interviewed said, "Every day, bearded men come to me and advise me strongly on wearing the veil. It is a war. For now, there are no dead, but there are looks and words that do kill." Muslim women who try to rebel are considered "whores" and treated as outcasts. Some of them want to move to areas "with no Muslims" to escape. However, that might not be a solution, as Islamists are at work all over France. The Communist newspaper L'Humanité in 2003 interviewed two Catholic-born French women who said they had converted to Islam and started wearing the niqab after systematic indoctrination by the Muslim Brotherhood. In light of this, wearing the hijab may or may not be a manifestation of the free exercise of religion. For any individual, it may reflect the very opposite--religious coercion. In fact, millions of women are forced to wear the veil for fear of physical retribution. And the fear is well founded. According to Cheryl Benard of RAND, every year hundreds of women in Pakistan and Afghanistan alone are killed, have acid thrown in their faces, or are otherwise maimed by male fanatics. Given the Islamists' ferocious determination on this point, it is worth asking: Why exactly is covering the female so important to them? The obvious answer is that it is a means of social control. Not coincidentally, it is one of the only issues on which Sunni and Shia extremists agree. It's not by chance that use of the hijab really took off after Iran's Islamic regime came to power in 1979. Some Shiite militias in Iraq have actually started forcing women--Muslim or not--to wear the veil or face the consequences. If this issue were not vital for Islamists, how can one explain their reaction when France banned the hijab in public schools? Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri, "strongly condemned" President Chirac's decision and threatened actions against France. Likewise, Sheikh Fadlallah, founder and spiritual leader of Hezbollah, wrote to Chirac threatening "likely complications" for France. Mohammad Khatami, former president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, called on the French government to "cancel this unjust law." Commenting recently on the veil and the Islamists' strategy, Professor Iqbal Al-Gharbi, from the famous Islamic Zaytouna University in Tunis, explained: "The veil is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the veil, there is the regressive interpretation of the sharia [Koranic law]. There are the three essential inequalities which define this interpretation: inequality between man and woman, between Muslim and non-Muslim, between free man and slave." "Islam is the solution" is the motto of the Muslim Brotherhood. Instead, the real solution to the veil problem in Europe and in modern countries elsewhere is the defeat of radical Islam, making possible the peaceful integration of normal Muslims into Western societies on Western terms. Olivier Guitta is a foreign affairs and counterterrorism consultant in Washington. http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/999jpabw.asp?pg=1

© Copyright 2007, News Corporation, Weekly Standard, All Rights Reserved.

___________________________________________________________________________


Article # 3

"Apart from symbolizing the evil and wicked capitalism, the WTC was also the central symbol of American power and wealth. In Islam, Allah wishes all people and entities of the universe submit to the feet of Islam by hook or crook. The infidel America is not only dominated by the disbelieving worst beasts, the Christians and atheists but also controlled by the Jews, who are the vilest of all creatures in the eyes of Allah."

The Falling Tower and Islam

by Alamgir Hussain

08 Jan, 2007

"The government should strike with an iron fist against those who endanger the safety of people," he said. "The great march of reconstruction will begin after guaranteeing security and then all justification for the presence of multinational forces will be removed." 
                                         Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the 130-strong Shiite bloc in the Iraqi parliament, 

 

Shiite Leader Backs Iraqi Security Plan

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-shiites,0,5079034,print.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

By BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer

January 11, 2007, 5:51 AM EST

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The country's most powerful Shiite politician issued strong backing Thursday for the Iraqi government's new Baghdad security plan, calling for it to "strike with an iron fist" and indirectly urging the militia of a radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to disarm.

Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who heads the 130-strong Shiite bloc in parliament, spoke just hours after President Bush announced his new strategy to quell violence in the Iraqi capital, including an additional 21,500 American for Baghdad and the western Anbar province.

Al-Hakim's backing for the new security drive was crucial if the government and U.S. forces were to succeed in what could be a last attempt to curb the sectarian bloodshed that threatens to push the capital deeper into civil war.

In a speech in the southern holy city of Najaf, al-Hakim did not mention Bush's comments but said that restoring security in Iraq would allow foreign troops to leave.

"The government should strike with an iron fist against those who endanger the safety of people," he said. "The great march of reconstruction will begin after guaranteeing security and then all justification for the presence of multinational forces will be removed."

On Wednesday, al-Hakim discussed the security plan with Iraq's top Shiite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. Earlier Wednesday, National Security Adviser Mouwaffak al-Rubaie met al-Sistani and quoted the cleric as saying he agreed that all illegal weapons should be removed.

One of the possible main targets of the new security plan is al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia that has been blamed for much of the sectarian violence that has killed thousands.

"We call all groups, parties and political institutions -- especially Islamic ones that follow Shiite leaders that sacrificed for the sake of God and the peoples -- to support the government's efforts in this field and especially the Baghdad plan," al-Hakim said.

"We affirm our maximum support for the government in its attempts to build state institutions and implement the law by carrying out its plans to guarantee security, on top of them the Baghdad security plan," said al-Hakim who is the leader of the Iraq's largest Shiite group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Saturday announced his government's new security plan for Baghdad, which consists of neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweeps by Iraqi forces backed by U.S. troops to dismantle the Sunni insurgent and Shiite militia grip on the capital.

"We hope and expect the government will not tolerate any person or group that violates the law and endangers the citizens rights," al-Hakim told hundreds of people, including many clerics, in the audience.

All Credit to Newsday Inc.

and BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press Writer

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-iraq-shiites,0,5079034,print.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

 In Iraq they are killing American soldiers as they converse with Iraqis. They call themselves The "Islamic" Army of Iraq. Do you think they would think twice about killing Americans in America in the same fashion if they could get away with it?  (In reference to Juba the sniper targeting american soldiers in video on CNN.

This is a "wakeup call" to America and to the new Congress coming into office in 2007.

I don't post this information and videos here to revel in the killing of Americans, I do it to horrify you, to show you that these are not civilized people who can be dealt with reasonably, nor with intellectual knowledge. Beware.



They Call Themselves The Islamic Army of Iraq

DUBAI - The Islamic Army in Iraq, one of the main armed groups fighting US forces in the war-torn country, has threatened to carry out attacks inside the United States, according to a statement posted on a website Monday.

This year "will bring woes on America. The mujahedeen (holy warriors) have prepared big surprises for your sons outside America and a big surprise for you inside America," said the statement whose authenticity could not be confirmed....

The mujahedeen "will take the battle from inside our country (Iraq) to yours," the statement said.

"We address you after you finished celebrating the new year, hoping that you are no longer drunk ... We will give American civilians a taste of what civilians in our country go through," said the statement, presented as a "message to the American people."

The message, which described the American people as "uncivilized" and "ignorant," claimed that "the whole world" hates America.

"Are you aware that the number of those who support striking America on its own turf has greatly increased?" it said.

"Last year was a picnic for your soldiers (in Iraq). The year 2005 will witness a quantitative and qualitative change in the operations against your army, which will go down in history," the statement said.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004530.php

Islamic Army in Iraq Releases Video Featuring Sniper Attacks including Interview of "Juba, the Baghdad Sniper"

By SITE Institute

October 22, 2006
Today, October 22, 2006, the Islamic Army in Iraq issued a 28:24 minute English-subtitled video featuring sniper attacks on American soldiers and an interview with the “commander of the sniper brigade in Baghdad.” Titled “Baghdad Sniper,” the video opens with a scene of the alleged sniper setting down his weapons and entering thoughts into a journal.

As for the importance of sniper attacks, the “commander” states: “the Islamic Army decided to pay more attention to [the sniper rifle], because it does make a huge impact on the battlefield . . . also filming the operations is very important, because the scene that shows the falling soldier when hit has more impact on the enemy than any other weapon.”

The “commander” notes Western media attention to retired marine sniper Major John Plaster, and to his book, The Ultimate Sniper, “which is one of the main books we use to train our snipers.” Major Plaster is also the creator of four instructional videos on sniper tactics.

Interspersed between narrations of his writing and the interview, American soldiers are shown during the surveillance and attack stages of the sniper’s operation. “Juba” refers to the nickname American forces gave the insurgent sniper in Baghdad.

A note at the end of the video reads “This CD distributed for free in Iraq.”
The video is provided to our Intel Service members.
http://siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications221306&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

Juba (sniper)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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"Juba" is the nom de guerre of an alleged sniper involved in the Iraqi insurgency featured in several propaganda videos. In the most recent, he claims to have shot 37 American soldiers [1]. Whether Juba is a real individual is unknown, but the sheer number of attacks claimed and the arrest or capture of at least two people claimed to be Juba suggests he may be a fictional composite of several insurgents.

Contents[hide]
1 Videos
1.1 First video
1.2 Second video
2 Rumors of capture
3 Blogs
4 References
5 External links
//

[edit] Videos
Several video clips which show the actions of Juba have been circulated through the internet.

[edit] First video
In November 2005, a video which was circulating in Iraq appeared on the internet. [2] The video, attributed to the Islamic Army in Iraq, showed United States soldiers falling to the ground, allegedly due to attacks by Juba.

Also circulating was a video clip showing nine shootings of men appearing to be US soldiers. The video starts with a character saying, "I have nine bullets in this gun and I have a present for George Bush. I am going to kill nine people. I am doing this for the viewers to watch. God is great. God is great." With that, he makes his way from the vehicle, and a series of separate scenes begin, showing several individuals shot in action.

[edit] Second video
A second "Juba" video was distributed in 2006 in western Baghdad and released on the internet in late October 2006. The video contained an interview with the supposed self-styled commander of the Baghdad sniper division, footage shows numerous fighters being trained in the use of sniper rifles. The video discusses the alleged fear generated in coalition forces by insurgency snipers, and shows "Juba" returning from a sniping mission, marking a tally of 37 on a wall. The sniper then sits down to make a diary entry. The video claims that there are dozens of snipers operating within the Islamic Army of Iraq and other factions, and shows more being trained. The rest of the video shows numerous clips of US soldiers allegedly being sniped, and the 'Baghdad sniper commander' explaining that his men are inspired and trained to an extent based on the information in the book The Ultimate Sniper by retired Major and US Army sniper John Plaster.

[edit] Rumors of capture

It has been rumoured that "Juba" may have been captured on June 2, 2005. An Iraqi sniper, in a van at a distance of 75-100 metres away from American soldier Stephen Tschiderer, shot at him using a rifle with a telescopic sight. Tschiderer was hit, but his injuries were minimal due to his body armor [2] Soldiers from the B Company, 4th Battalion, 1st Iraqi Army Brigade unit began searching the insurgents (allegedly the sniper and the driver who videotapes the attacks). [3] [4]
The army located the van and discovered a cushioned sniping nest. This nest was lined with numerous bed mattresses to muffle the sound of a Dragunov sniper rifle [5], which was used to fire through a hole just big enough for the shooter to engage his target of choice. The driver of the van was detained and the wounded shooter was captured after a short pursuit by Tschiderer and B Company.
On November 29, 2006, a man named Ali Nazar Al-Jubori (or Mazar Jubouri) was arrested by the Iraqi interior ministry and declared to be "the sniper of Baghdad". [6][7]

[edit] Blogs
Many websites and blogs from different countries talk about "Juba the Sniper", providing stories, pictures and movie clips which feature soldiers Juba has supposedly sniped. There is no evidence that any of these websites have any link to Juba, though some of them claim to have been written by Juba himself.

[edit] References
^ "U.S. military probes sniper threat in Baghdad" by Paul Holmes. Reuters news service, Sun Oct 29, 2006 last accessed October 31, 2006.
^ [1].

[edit] External links
Carroll, Rory (2005). "Elusive sniper saps U.S. morale in Baghdad" The Guardian. August 5, 2005.
"Al-Qaeda, Iraq insurgents mark Muslim holiday", Agence France-Presse. November 3, 2005.
Please note that these videos may contain graphic footage
Baghdad Sniper: Myth or Menace? ABC news article
Video clip from German TV about "Juba"
Jawa report on Juba's activities and his alleged links to American "traitors"
(German) Article in SPIEGELonline (German Newsmag) about Tschiderer and "Juba"
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_%28sniper%29"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juba_(sniper)
__________________________________________________________________

Baghdad Sniper (Juba) Islamic Army in Iraq
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Monday, October 30, 2006

US military probes sniper threat in Baghdad

Here's the full article from Yahoo

BAGHDAD (Al-Reuters) - The U.S. military has begun looking more closely at shooting attacks on troops in Iraq to establish whether they are carried out by snipers, according to a spokesman. The change reflects concern over an insurgent video-CD that appears to show a series of shooting attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in Baghdad by a purported sniper brigade from the Sunni militant Islamic Army. The video, which Reuters has seen, was handed out in Sunni parts of western Baghdad last week as a "gift" to mark the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. It shows 28 separate attacks, several of them involving precision shots to the head. Narrated by a man described as the brigade "commander" and subtitled in English, it claims the marksmen use a training manual written by a retired U.S. Army Special Forces officer.

U.S. casualty reports list three killings by sniper fire in Baghdad this year, all since July, and 24 by small arms fire, 10 of them in October.

The 28-minute propaganda video opens with musings from a black-masked man identified as "Juba, the Baghdad Sniper." Reports of a lone sniper nicknamed Juba prowling Baghdad surfaced last year. The new footage shows the man adding another "kill" to a list of 37 hits on a piece of paper on a wall.

The "commander," however, says the Islamic Army now has "a fair amount of snipers" with the steady hand and eagle eye required for the task. "The idea of filming the operations is very important because the scene that shows the falling soldier when hit has more impact on the enemy than any other weapon," says the "commander," whose face is obscured.

Garver said he had not seen the video, called "Juba Returns." He said sniping was "another threat that we have to worry about" but questioned whether all the attacks were the work of accomplished sharpshooters. "They could be a lucky shot with a good rifle," Garver said. "Having a scope does not necessarily qualify you as a trained sniper."

According to the Web site www.icasualties.org, which tracks the official casualty toll in Iraq and Afghanistan, 38 U.S. troops have been killed by sniper fire in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, seven of them this year.

The video says the brigade's main weapon is the Tabuk sniper rifle, which was produced in Iraq from a Yugoslav design. It uses standard Kalashnikov rounds and probably has a range of 500-600 metres (yards), according to arms Web sites which describe it as more of a marksman's rifle than a sniper rifle, which is designed to be accurate beyond 800 meters (yards).

By Diana West
December 1, 2006

Did anybody really need a leaked memo from the National Security Agency to figure out that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is incapable of stopping the carnage in Iraq? Given that his political power depends on factions allied with Shi'ite militias behind much of the carnage, Mr. Maliki has never fit the white hat and brass star in this wretched desert saga. Adding insult to injury, he even left President Bush in Jordan this week, cooling his heels, as they say, when Mr. Maliki postponed a summit meeting after the memo leaked. 

    Then again, what about Mr. Bush? Why hasn't he been able to bring order to Iraq with the United States military? Here's the answer: As a creature of Shi'ite thug-o-crats, Mr. Maliki's hands are tied. As creatures of political correctness, we have tied our own hands. And almost literally. The PC rules of engagement imposed on American soldiers have as much to do with the chaotic limbo our troops find themselves in as failed political policies. Closely held, these rules -- burdensome constraints, really -- have become obvious to everyone, including our foes. News reports tell us potential targets in Iraq must be engaged in hostile acts, or show "clear intent," before our men can take a shot at them. Mosques where insurgents seek shelter and store arms are no-go zones for American soldiers. We don't even shut down mosque loudspeakers that broadcast incitement against our troops. Marine Maj. Jeffrey O'Neill put it this way to the Christian Science Monitor: "Many would ask: What other war would we allow the enemy to broadcast calls for our defeat for the sake of cultural sensitivity?" 

    The answer is no other war, at least no other war fought to win. But we don't even know what victory looks like -- unless anyone seriously believes victory looks like just another basic death-to-America-and-Israel Shariah state dominated by Shi'ites with ties to jihadist Iran. Next to such a prospect, chaotic limbo doesn't look good, but it does postpone that sure-to-be nasty shock of recognition. 

    But is our choice only "victory" or else? (Forget Plan B, soon to come from the blue-ribbon lunatics -- I mean, "realists" -- of the Iraq Study Group, who are expected to argue that it's in America's national interest to "solve" Iraq by seeking help from the terrorist likes of Iran and Syria.) And what is "or else," anyway? 

    "Or else" refers to the cataclysm that's supposed to occur should we decide that remaking Islamic culture isn't our strong suit or in our national interest, and thus refocus our mission so as to ensure that Islamic culture doesn't remake us. Depending on its purpose and execution, withdrawal -- or better, redeployment -- wouldn't necessarily lead to cataclysm. 

    Here's an "or else" scenario from Nawaf Obaid, an adviser to the Saudi government, that actually sounds promising -- not a term that usually springs to my mind to describe Saudi scenarios. Contemplating what he would call an unwelcome American withdrawal from Iraq, Mr. Obaid writes that the Saudi government just might fill the breach out of "religious responsibility" to Iraq's Sunni minority. Saudi Arabia, "the de facto leader of the world's Sunni community," Mr. Obaid writes, just might decide to support Iraq's Sunni fighters, just as Iran has been supporting Iraq's Shi'ite fighters, to avert a possible "full-blown ethnic cleansing." 

    Imagine: Sunni Saudi Arabia vs. Shi'ite Iran -- and nary an American soldier ordered to pull his PC punches in the crossfire. But there's more. Mr. Obaid continues: King Abdullah might also "decide to strangle Iranian funding of the [Shi'ite] militias through oil policy. If Saudi Arabia boosted production and cut the price of oil in half, the kingdom could still finance its current spending. But it would be devastating to Iran, which is facing economic difficulties ...The result would be to limit Tehran's ability to continue funneling hundreds of millions each year to Shi'ite militias is Iraq and elsewhere." 

    I like. If Saudi Arabia "strangled" Iran's economy, that would also strangle Iran's capacity to fund its nuclear blackmail program, not to mention Hezbollah and other murderous proxies. And what was that the Saudi adviser said about cutting the price of crude oil in half? 

    A Saudi-Iranian, Sunni-Shi'ite rift over Iraq sounds like a win-win situation for the United States, maybe even better than the Sino-Soviet rivalry of the Cold War. This time around, instead of nuclear weapons to build in the interim, we would have something even more liberating to work on -- energy independence. 

The Washington Times

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/dwest.htm
    

" And then there are the nonstate actors that could well pose an even greater danger: al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terror organizations. The CIA and other U.S. agencies have almost no knowledge of terrorists' intelligence practices here. "   Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen"


(Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, describes a growing threat posed by foreign agents and terrorists who exploit U.S. weaknesses in this second of three excerpts from his new book, "Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen" (Crown Forum), out this week. )

(Read Part 1 here  or below, it is dated September 18, 2006)  

Part III of Excerpts from Bill Gertz's "Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen" (Crown Forum) September 20, 2006

 
The FBI, the CIA and other intelligence agencies continue to struggle to plant agents in, or recruit them from, deadly Islamist terror organizations here and abroad. 

    The FBI, for example, did not have under way a single active investigation this past spring of al Qaeda or any Islamist group anywhere in the United States. 

    Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network is not alone in posing a threat of new attacks. The FBI believes that Lebanon-based Hezbollah has set up terrorist cells in at least 10 U.S. cities. 

    The Iranian government has backed Hezbollah to the tune of $100 million. FBI officials worry that Iran could activate a network of Hezbollah terrorists here if the international community acts to stop the Islamic regime's nuclear program.
    President Bush expects the FBI to help counter such terror threats through its new National Security Branch (NSB), a major reform he announced over internal opposition in summer 2005. 

    "The focus of what we're doing has changed over our history," said Gary M. Bald, the 28-year FBI veteran chosen to direct the NSB, which combined counterterrorism, counterintelligence and intelligence-analysis divisions. "This is the most significant [change], no doubt. But it's just the latest. 

    "It's not the embracing or the understanding of the need to do it," Bald said in an interview. "It's getting us efficient at something that we've not had a long experience at doing." 

    The FBI and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community was woefully unprepared after September 11 to track down terrorists by penetrating the dark world of al Qaeda. 

    The nation had extremely limited capabilities in human intelligence-gathering -- the real stuff of spying. These shortcomings remain five years later. 

    Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, argues that many problems facing U.S. intelligence are a legacy of the Clinton administration. 

    "It's ineffective in 2006 because it was gutted in 1996," Mr. Hoekstra said, pointing to the severe depletion of human spying capabilities in the 1990s. 

    Left largely unsaid in this year's debate about the president's authorizing the National Security Agency to intercept suspected terrorists' communications: The administration might not have needed to rely on the program so heavily, and risk infringing on civil liberties, were American counterintelligence not so weak. 

    The government needed to take extraordinary measures to track down al Qaeda cells. And despite the terrorist surveillance program and stepped-up FBI activity, U.S. intelligence has not found any al Qaeda cells inside this country.
    
    'Work in progress'
    A presidential commission organized in 2004 revealed the FBI's ineptness in conducting counterintelligence and counterterrorism programs. 

    The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (commonly referred to as the WMD commission) examined how and why the intelligence community failed to properly assess Iraq's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile weapons programs. 

    The WMD commission, headed by federal appeals Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles S. Robb, Virginia Democrat, also explored the overall capabilities of U.S. spy agencies. 

    A section on "intelligence at home," included in the panel's report issued in March 2005, said the FBI had made strides in collecting and analyzing intelligence but had "a long way to go." The bureau, it said, acknowledged that domestic intelligence gathering "will be a work in progress until at least 2010." 

    The biggest challenge, the report found, was integrating FBI operations into a command structure that is subject to orders from the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, whose recently created job is to oversee the nation's 15 spy agencies. 

    The commission called for creation of a National Security Service to manage, direct and control all FBI resources used in countering terrorists, spies and other threats to national security. 

     The panel said the FBI needed to move past decades of bitter rivalry with the CIA that prevented the agencies from complementing each other's efforts in the war on terror. 

    A bigger-picture problem remained, the WMD commission noted: an FBI culture that resisted reform. 

    "Past efforts to build a strong intelligence capability within the FBI have foundered on this resistance," the report said. "In 1998 and 1999, similar reforms failed in quick succession as a result of strong resistance from the FBI's operational divisions and an intelligence architecture that could not defend itself inside the bureaucracy." 

    Law-enforcement investigators did not want to become spies. And bin Laden, they argued, "is never going to Des Moines."
    
    'More capable'
    Mr. Bush overruled internal opposition and announced creation of a national-security section within the FBI on June 29, 2005, and chose to highlight the change during a July 11 speech at the FBI Academy in Quantico. 

     The president said the reform, among 70 recommendations from the WMD commission that he backed, would make the FBI "more capable to stop the terrorist acts before they happen." 

    The next month, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III appointed Bald, a career law-enforcement investigator with little experience in intelligence, as director of the redubbed National Security Branch. 

    Although Bald was the FBI executive for counterterrorism and counterintelligence, close observers saw his selection as a clear sign that the bureau would continue to oppose building an aggressive counterterrorism and counterspy capability. 

    Bald, though, bristles at the suggestion that the FBI had a cultural aversion to improving intelligence-gathering. 

    "It's a culture of complete dedication to our mission, working around the clock, being called in on weekends and nights and not getting paid extra, and really doing everything you can to protect our nation," Bald said.
    He said a substantial number of 12,000 special agents work for his new branch, although the actual number is classified. All of the bureau's 1,720 intelligence analysts are part of the NSB. 

    The FBI hasn't found it easy to change an institutional viewpoint of being its own "primary customer of information," Bald said. He said he worries that leaks of sensitive information could wrongly damage the reputations of those under investigation. 

    "Now what we're in is a realization that not only are there other services that benefit from our intelligence, but other services can provide value to our investigations as well," Bald said. "We understand that. The challenge is developing the processes that make that efficient."
    
    'Safe from scrutiny'
    Even as adversaries and friends alike ramp up intelligence activities against the United States, the WMD commission's final report warned, "our counterintelligence efforts remain fractured, myopic and marginally effective." 

    The report stated bluntly: "Our counterintelligence philosophy and practices need dramatic change, starting with centralizing counterintelligence leadership, bringing order to bureaucratic disarray and taking [the CIA's] counterintelligence fight overseas to adversaries currently safe from scrutiny." 

    Counterintelligence, the panel concluded, remains a "second-class citizen in the intelligence profession." 

    Since the 1970s, some 15 agencies have been severely restricted in trying to stop foreign spies and, increasingly, terrorists. Multiple special commissions and reports, many before September 11, identified the problems. 

    Taking advantage of these severe deficiencies, spies -- among them John A. Walker, Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen, Ana Montes and Katrina Leung -- have significantly weakened U.S. intelligence and defense capabilities. 

    China and Russia have stolen sensitive technology on a massive scale. Enemies have penetrated every single U.S. national-security agency except the Coast Guard. They have purloined nuclear weapons data, cryptographic codes and procedures, intelligence sources and methods, war plans and more. 

    The continuing threats include Cuba and North Korea as well as the traditional intelligence powers, China and Russia, which use official and nonofficial cover officers to target American interests. 

    And then there are the nonstate actors that could well pose an even greater danger: al Qaeda, Hezbollah and other terror organizations. The CIA and other U.S. agencies have almost no knowledge of terrorists' intelligence practices here.
    
    Attack first
    Richard Haver, former special assistant for intelligence to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, helped assess the damage in major spy cases since the 1980s. He points to widespread resistance within government to making the necessary reforms. 

    "We do the things that are easy, we do the things that are cosmetically appealing, that make the system feel better," Haver said in an interview, "and that perhaps satiate the critics in Congress and placate the media and make it look as though we're really changing." 

    Haver argues that true reforms are not about more money or agency-wiring diagrams.
    "They have to do with culture," he said. "They have to do with the way these bureaucracies view themselves, the way they work with each other." 

    In the infamous case of Hanssen, the spy for Moscow, the FBI was unwilling even to look for a spy in its midst, and so he operated for years without being caught. 

    "The best defense is a good offense," Haver said. "If you are sitting back, waiting for the enemy to attack you, it will happen. If you want effective counterintelligence, the principal element of that is the capability of your system to attack the adversary intelligence service before they attack you."
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Part II of Excerpts from Bill Gertz's "Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen" (Crown Forum), 
     
    FBI agents found the typewritten letter in a search of the office of the suspected spy for North Korea.
    "It would be preferable," it said, "that you find a student inside the church." 

    The letter, from one of the spy's North Korean handlers, used "church" as code for "Washington, D.C." 

    It was December 1997. The following March, the FBI intercepted a fax in which their suspect, Korean-American businessman John Joungwoong Yai, gave a progress report on his main goal -- recruiting a subagent who could join the U.S. government and obtain top-secret information for the communist regime in Pyongyang. 

    Possible employment stops for the "disciple" that Yai discussed with an associate: the Library of Congress, the FBI, even a news reporting job in Washington. 

    Yai, of Santa Monica, Calif., had planned to recruit someone "for a long time and anguished over it," he wrote to his North Korean contacts. 

    "There are two or three persons whom I have been working on for a while. In [my] opinion, the person has to possess a high quality presence; at least or higher than a U.S. university education, absolutely fluent in English and Korean, young with clear ideology, and has potential to work in the church."
    Yai concluded his fax with good news. "I have successfully found an excellent, young high quality person who lacks nothing for becoming a student who has potential for a long range plan." 

    FBI documents in the case of John Joungwoong Yai provide a rare glimpse into the secret world of North Korean spying within the United States. 

    North Korea today epitomizes the term "rogue state."
 
    Under absolute leader Kim Jong-il, who has ruled as an iron-fisted demigod since his father's death in 1994, the communist regime has demonstrated that it can starve and brutalize its own people as well as fire long-range ballistic missiles to threaten other nations. 

    Kim fulfilled the goal of his father, Kim Il-sung, by covertly developing a nuclear weapons arsenal in part to ensure that the regime stays in power. 

    Kim exploits the organs of the Workers' Party of Korea as a combination of intelligence and security services. This vast, secret network of political police, modeled on the Soviet Union's KGB, conducts operations abroad as well as squelches the slightest internal dissent. 

    A U.S. government counterintelligence report produced in 2004, "Intelligence Threat Handbook," highlights North Korea's efforts to infiltrate the United States. The report notes that operations here remain limited, but some are among the most threatening because they focus on "acquiring nuclear weapons technology." 

    A classified government report in 1999 said Kim's "aggressive intelligence programs ... place a priority on science and technology collection." 

     
    Keeping tabs
    The FBI compiled exhaustive evidence that Yai conducted what U.S. officials called "low-level intelligence services" for Pyongyang over at least seven years, until his arrest Feb. 4, 2003.
    Yai faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted on charges of failing to register as an agent of Kim's government. 

    "During the period of the ... surveillance, the FBI found no evidence that Yai was employed by any entity other than the North Korean government," FBI counterintelligence agent James G. Chang said in an affidavit. 

    The FBI investigation concluded that Yai was a spy who traveled to North Korea, China, Austria, the Czech Republic and other countries to meet North Korean security officials. 

    But Yai ended up being sentenced to two years after pleading guilty to lesser felony charges related to not declaring $18,179 in cash to customs officials at Los Angeles International Airport as he and his wife returned from a trip to Prague in April 2000. 

    Yai, a shopkeeper and restaurateur born in South Korea in 1943, became a U.S. citizen in 1981.
    Agents intercepted Yai's telephone and fax communications; hid microphones in his office, house and car to monitor conversations; and secretly searched his residence with authorization from a court in Washington under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

    The FBI found that Yai was sending reports to North Korea through China that were based on information from public sources, including newspapers, magazines, TV and radio. He embellished information to make it sound more valuable to his handlers, the affidavit said. 

    The bureau traced Yai's calls to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and to Shenyang, China, close to the border with North Korea. 

    In May 2000, Yai began corresponding with the North Koreans in Beijing via e-mail. Chang said in the affidavit that the North Koreans turned to China in communicating with agents because of extremely limited e-mail access in North Korea at the time. Only a few high-ranking government officials, Kim among them, were permitted to use the Internet. 

    Yai's lawyer, William Genego, argued in court that Yai sent newspaper clippings to North Korea simply to compensate for the lack of free media and Internet access.
    'Mr. Kang' regrets 

    An FBI search of Yai's Santa Monica house April 8, 1998, found "code charts" for secret communications.
 
    Base words and phrases included "the White House," "the State Department," "the Pentagon," "secret operation," "military," "human target," "covert surveillance," "top secret," "recruitment," "CIA," "FBI," "nuclear facility" and "invasion." 

    Code words included Yai's cover names -- "Won," "Doe," "Adams" and "Paul" -- as well as multiple substitutions for the word "headquarters" such as "Kang," "Peter" and "James." 

     Intercepted communications and physical searches revealed Yai was meeting with North Korean contacts overseas and receiving thousands of dollars at a time. On March 15, 1998, for example, the FBI intercepted a fax to Yai from "Peter Kang." 

    The fax stated: "I received your itinerary fine. It would be preferable that Mr. Kang greet you, but in due concern for the health [code for 'safety'], we have decided not to." 

    The fax specified local telephone numbers at which to "ask for Kim Chol-yong" and "inform him of your location," numbers that were for the North Korean Embassy in Vienna, Austria. 

    A search of Yai's office April 8 produced an envelope with the address of a Vienna hotel, containing $8,500 in cash. According to the FBI affidavit, a stamp in Yai's passport showed he was in Austria on April 4.
    
    Pastoral visit
    Over several days in March 1998, Yai had sent two more faxes to his North Korean handlers to provide details on his young recruit in America, identified only as Person C in the FBI affidavit. Yai wanted the recruit to visit headquarters, which he referred to as "pastor Peter." 

    "It is better to have the pastor give him the blessing himself, and then give him directions," Yai wrote.
    In another fax, he told the North Koreans that his "new student" was born in Seoul in 1969, spoke English well, was skilled in use of computers and had an ideology that "is beneficial and reliable to our causes." 

    In May 1998, hidden FBI microphones picked up a conversation between Yai and a female associate, whom the affidavit identifies as Person L. 

    Yai explained that "the long-term plan is to hook [Person C] up with his friends in Washington, D.C., who are going to school there." 

    Person L asked whether the recruit could get a job as a reporter in Washington, to which Yai replied, "Historically for spies, if the head leaders fall, everyone falls also." 

    He did not explain this cryptic remark, but it indicates Yai saw himself as a spymaster. 

    His young recruit eventually did visit North Korea. On July 20, 1998, Yai faxed headquarters to report Person C's reaction. 

     "He indicated it was a valuable experience, although a nervous one," Yai wrote. "Disciple will do well."
    
     Eye on Washington
    The FBI said Yai helped his unidentified coworker, Person L, get a job with the Los Angeles district attorney's office as a steppingstone toward other employment -- at the FBI. 

    "They need Chinese speakers and people like me who can speak Korean," Person L told Yai, in a conversation overheard by the FBI. "I heard people wait up to five years to be hired by the federal government. So I think I should apply to places in Washington, D.C., as soon as possible." 

    Person L said she was trying to get a job at the Library of Congress as a researcher in Korean-American crime. 

    "The office I am working for right now is a law-enforcement office," she said. "So I heard it is very easy for me to get hired by another law-enforcement agency later on." 

    The North Koreans clearly indicated a focus on obtaining top-secret information from inside the U.S. government. 

    On May 5, 1997, a handler sent a fax to Yai saying that the "company president" thought Yai "has made too many proposals about medicine that is already well known, and the types of goods are not varied enough." ("Medicine" was code for "source," in the sense of "basis of information.") 

    His contacts wanted newer and better "medicines," specifically ones that were "a little more interesting and inexpensive" -- codes for "undisclosed [not sold to the public]" and "top secret," respectively. 

    Other 1997 faxes to Yai from North Korean headquarters made similar suggestions about what sort of "medical proposals" and "items" would be "accepted." Yai apparently took the message to heart. 

     In his office, the FBI found these notes, handwritten in Korean: "Do not send anything that has been revealed in the newspaper or radio. (Engage in a lot of conversation with people above [in rank], and things that we do not see in homeland.)" 

     The FBI said it overheard Yai telling Person L that the North Koreans "are looking for things that are not public."
    "They want about 100 or 150 reports a year," he told her. "I finished about 160 last year."

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Part I of Excerpts from Bill Gertz's "Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let It Happen" (Crown Forum),
Tai Wang Mak dialed a phone number in Guangzhou, China. 

    The man who answered, Pu Pei-liang, was a researcher at the Chinese Center for Asia Pacific Studies at Zhongshan University, known to U.S. intelligence officials as CAPS. 

    "I'm with Red Flower of North America," said Mak, a Chinese national working as an engineer in Los Angeles for Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television. 

    Mak said he would arrive in China in nine days. Pu instructed him to use a calling card to phone from the airport in Guangzhou so that he could be picked up. 

    The call from California to China, placed Oct. 19, 2005, was intercepted by the long electronic ears of the U.S. National Security Agency. 

    Mak's reference to Red Flower of North America brought a breakthrough in a yearlong investigation into one of the most damaging losses of defense technology in American history. 

    Chinese spies used those code words to authenticate themselves when making contact with communist China's intelligence bureaus. Other often-used code words include Winter Chrysanthemum and Autumn Orchid. 

    U.S. intelligence knew that CAPS received funding from the People's Liberation Army and conducted operational research for the Chinese military. The phone call revealed that CAPS had one of its most valuable spies inside the U.S. defense industrial system. 

    Mak and Pu, investigators say, were undercover military intelligence officers with the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army, the spy service well-known to U.S. counterspies as 2 PLA. 

    Investigators say Tai Mak's brother, Chi Mak, headed a family spy ring in Los Angeles. After his Oct. 28 arrest by the FBI, Chi Mak, a naturalized citizen and electrical engineer with a major American defense contractor, told investigators that he had supplied sensitive Navy weapons secrets to the Chinese since 1983. 

    The fact that the spy ring went undetected for two decades was a major counterintelligence failure. Worse, the U.S. government would go on to bungle the case.
    
    Picking pockets 

    R. James Woolsey, the former CIA director, has called the Constitution one of the best recruiting tools for intelligence services. His point is that those living under oppressive, dictatorial regimes sometimes will take incredible risks to step forward and secretly help in the battle for freedom and democracy. 

    In fall 2004, the CIA recruited just such a source from China, a person within the military and security establishment. One of the first questions the CIA poses, in the jargon of the intelligence business, is "Who is picking our pockets?" 

    The new source identified the spy ring in Los Angeles that investigators said was run by Chi Mak, an electrical engineer with the defense firm Power Paragon, a subsidiary of the Fortune 500 company known as L-3. 

    The source said the Chinese military was gaining sensitive technology and information on Navy warships. What's more, China was buying ostensibly commercial goods and diverting them to the military. 

    Under pressure to adopt a counterintelligence culture instead of a "cop" mentality, the FBI hoped to play the spy ring and see where it led. 

    Counterintelligence is part art, part science, a discipline aimed at identifying and exploiting or stopping foreign spies. Law enforcement is easier: You identify the bad guys and arrest them. 

    But the government mishandled the case. One problem was that the FBI and the CIA had conflicting goals. The CIA was afraid to lose its prized source, the Chinese recruit. The agency did not want the FBI to make arrests immediately, since swift action would alert the Chinese to a mole. 

     Investigators said Tai Mak, who worked for a producer of Chinese-language programming, served as a handler and courier for the spy ring. The investigation continued for about a year, until the NSA intercepted his "Red Flower" phone call in October 2005. 

    Days later, on Oct. 28, the FBI arrested Chi Mak, 66, and his wife, Rebecca Laiwah Chiu, 63.
     Agents also arrested Tai Mak, 57, and his wife, F.  Heung Li, 49, at Los Angeles International Airport as they prepared to travel to China. 

    He was carrying disks on which were hidden encrypted files containing sensitive data on Navy technology. Many documents were labeled "proprietary" and "restricted," meaning they could not be exported.
    
    'At serious risk'
    An FBI affidavit made a case for applying maximum charges against the four suspects -- conspiracy to steal U.S. military information on restricted Navy warship technology, smuggling information to China in violation of export laws and theft of government property. 

    "Chi Mak said that he knew that Mr. Pu was providing the information to members of the Chinese government's science and technology community," the affidavit said. 

    The FBI produced the affidavit to secure arrest warrants for the Mak brothers and their wives, as well as search warrants for their homes, workplaces and vehicles. Having spent a year conducting electronic surveillance, investigators believed the searches would uncover classified data and other information that would lead to more serious espionage charges. 

    Judges underscored the seriousness of the charges by denying bail for the Mak brothers. One judge told Chi Mak's lawyer: "You're talking about billions of dollars of technology that puts our country at serious risk."
    Chi Mak, a specialist in electrical power, received a secret-level security clearance in 1996. 

    The document trail led investigators to conclude that he passed information that will allow Beijing to track the Pentagon's new Virginia class-attack submarine, which uses L-3 technology. The compromised technology also will enable the Chinese to develop countermeasures against the submarine and to copy its electronic systems. 

    Investigators believe he gave China schematics and design information on the latest generation of Aegis weapons systems, which L-3 helped to develop. Aegis -- meaning shield -- is being upgraded to become America's most advanced and mobile anti-missile system for use on guided-missile cruisers, guided-missile destroyers, Sea Wolf-class submarines and aircraft carriers. 

    Chi Mak worked on four classified Navy contracts related to Aegis. Investigators believe his spy ring was the main supplier of Aegis technology to China and, one U.S. defense official says, the Chinese quickly incorporated it into their Luyang II guided-missile destroyer.
    
    Lesser charges
    By the time formal indictments were issued Nov. 15, the most serious charges against Chi Mak and the three others had been dropped. Tai Mak's wife was excluded altogether, though she was charged separately with running an illegal marriage-fraud network that helped immigrants gain entry into the United States.
 
    The three remaining suspects were indicted on relatively minor charges of failing to register as foreign agents. The initial charges could have resulted in prison terms of up to 25 years, but the lesser charges carried maximum sentences of 10 years. Chi Mak, his wife and Tai Mak all pleaded not guilty. 

    So what changed? U.S. government sources say that petty squabbling between prosecutors and investigators jeopardized the case. 

    The more serious charges were dropped because the FBI counterintelligence team that conducted the investigation got into a dispute with the U.S. attorneys in Los Angeles who were in charge of the prosecution.
     The FBI fully expected that search warrants would unearth classified data, so prosecutors balked when much of what was found was not officially classified as secret. 

    "Nothing I passed [to China] was classified," Chi Mak told investigators shortly after his arrest.
    He was right. Investigators say the lack of classified documents revealed that the spies had done their homework. 

    Chinese intelligence-gathering services exploited the fact that Navy officials underclassified some of the most sensitive information about weapons systems to make it easier for private defense contractors to use the data. 

    "There is no question that this case has caused serious damage to U.S. national security," one investigator said.
    
    'More subtle'
     Espionage laws are so difficult to apply that prosecutors almost need a confession to be able to make their case. 

    The current statute, enacted in 1917, requires prosecutors to prove "intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation." 

    This standard often forces the release of intelligence or defense information to prove national security was harmed.
    David Szady, head of FBI counterintelligence until this year, said loss of sensitive-yet-unclassified information can do real harm to national security. 

    The technology passed to China in the Mak case was proprietary corporate trade secrets or export-controlled, but did not carry the "secret" or "top-secret" label. Chi Mak had access to Connecticut-based submarine manufacturer Electric Boat, for example, as if he were one of their own employees, Szady said. 

    The case "probably murdered the Navy" because of the loss of technology, he said. 

    Obtaining contract documents not only will allow Beijing to build its own version of one of the Navy's developmental warships, the DD(X) destroyer, but possibly to "sell it in competition to us," Szady said.
    The Chinese, he said, are good at positioning agents who can obtain advanced technology in the developmental stage, before it is classified. 

    "The [spy] business is getting more complex, more subtle," Szady said. "It's smarter business than the old cloak-and-dagger."

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(Rush Limbaugh) My Conversation With Bill Gretz

Source: The Limbaugh Letter, July 1999
Published: July, 1999 Author: Rush Limbaugh

This intrepid Washington Times reporter's new book, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Regnery) is a must-read.

RUSH: I'm really glad to speak to you, Bill, because I want to do as much as I can to get your book into as many people's hands as possible. Now, when Betrayal first came out, there was a report that the Justice Department was considering prosecuting you for the "harm" you had done to national security -- by publishing all these secrets. Have they made a move on you?
GERTZ: Not that I know of. And they're unlikely to, although I'm flattered. As I've said, if they want to help me sell a lot of books they can put me in jail. But as I got all of this material -- and it did include sensitive documents, including an Executive Order signed by the President -- I took the trouble to present the list that we planned to publish to the CIA.
We have almost unlimited freedom as reporters, but I think it comes with a certain responsibility -- so I gave them a chance to weigh in. They obviously weren't too happy about this, but they only objected to about six pages of material, which the publisher decided to withhold. I didn't have any objection because the meat of those documents was actually explained in the chapter on Russia selling missle technology to Iran.
RUSH: So readers really don't miss anything?
GERTZ: No, other than seeing a Top Secret NSA intercept.
RUSH: Are you aware of any effort made on the part of the government to try to find out who your sources are and lean on them?
GERTZ: I can tell you that in the past, and I'll speak generically, there have been efforts to go after sources -- specifically people who are believed to be my sources. In fact, the President himself a number of years ago sent a secret memorandum to all government departments -- obviously, it leaked to me -- that called on agency and department heads to go after, take administrative action, or even prosecute people who were leaking classified information.
I called up Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman, and asked, "What's this all about?" He said, "It's based on some pretty amazing reporting from one Bill Gertz." I said, "I'm flattered, but do you really think you're going to get anywhere with this?" He said, "No, we have no illusions. Going after leakers is a fool's errand." But they were making an effort to do that.
A similar thing happened at the Pentagon a couple of years ago, when Defense Secretary Bill Perry issued a memorandum about this problem. After Perry left office, I asked him if it made any difference. He said, "No, but we wanted to try."
RUSH: It is clear that you have the ability to get more information out of classified areas than anybody working today. I'm glad you're on the case. And I am curious to know wheter any intimidation might actually be effective.
GERTZ: These witch hunts go on periodically, where they try to find sources. As one of my editors here once said when the FBI was investigating a leak, "We wish the FBI well in whatever endeavor it chooses."
RUSH: Do you think if your work were published in, say, The Washington Post or New York Times that you and your information would be reacted to and treated differently?
GERTZ: It's a little bit frustrating sometimes to see major stories ignored because they come from The Washington Times, but on more than a few occassions we have triggered major news storiews that have forced the other papers and news organizations to follow us. It's obvious to me they don't like to do that, but when the story is too big to ignore, they will do it. There does seem to be a tendency to downplay or ignore a lot of our exclusives, although we do get quite a few wire pickups and follow-ups from other media. But I attribute that in part to the Administration's incredible capability of manipulating the press. They have ways, subtle and not-so-subtle, of intimidating reporters and news organizations into not pursuing stories they don't like. I've seen it happen on a number of occassions.
RUSH: Can you give us an illustration?
GERTZ: Sure. Last year we reported that 13 of China's 18 long-range missiles are targeted at U.S. cities. This was contained in the CIA's premier intelligence publication called the National Intelligence Daily. This is one of those big stories for us, because we've been following President Clinton saying over 100 times: "There are no missiles pointed at the children of America." Here you have a clear case where his intelligence community has concluded in its most important document that there are in fact Chinese missiles pointed at U.S. cities.
When that story broke -- and I heard this both from officials and from other reporters -- the Administration tried to put out the word that, well, the warheads on those missiles aren't really mounted on those Chinese boosters. I checked with my sources and they said that's not true. They have no way of knowing whether the warheads are mounted or not. Besides, that's not where the targeting is done. The targeting mechanism is separate from the warheads. So this is one example of how they try to spin the news they don't want. That allowed them to say, "Don't follow this Gertz story because here's our take on it."
RUSH: It's safe to say that if you were working for, say The Post or The New York Times or The Boston Blobe or The L.A. Times, much of your current stuff would have been spiked anyway.
GERTZ: That's right. I probably wouldn't have lasted very long working there. They're so extremely politically correct these days. One thing about The Washington Times is that we pride ourselves on being politically incorrect.
RUSH: And yor are. You open Betrayal with four chapters on Russian expionage, terrorism, and the danger that the former Soviet Union's military represents for America. But America thinks that's over with, that the Russians are our buddies, that we've neutralized their threat. Would you say the Russian threat as comprised today is more dire than that of China?
GERTZ: Yes, just in terms of sheer TNT power or megatonnage. The Russian nuclear arsenal represents the real strategic threat to the United States, although I wouldn't minimize the Chinese threat in any way. I highlight this in the chapter on nuclear nightmare, which goes into the crumbling control over the Russian nuclear arsenal.
This is a real untold story under the Clinton Administration. I first learned about it years ago from a senior official in the Energy Department, who explained that politically motivated officials basically killed off his entire program -- an intelligence program that focused completely on how the Russians were not controlling their nuclear arsenal. This was definitely bad news for a people like Strobe Talbot and others who wanted to adopt a conciliatory approach to Moscow and to Boris Yeltsin. So they immediately disbanded this entire program, and put in officials who were more pliable and would go along with the ploitical leanings of their intelligence assessment.
I was fortunate enough to get a number of classified CIA reports which revealed how dangerous the situation is. Even those reports appeared to me and to other outside observers to play down the danger of an unauthorized Russian nuclear missile launch. They kept saying that even though there are problems, the prospect of an unsanctioned use is low.
Well, as they say, one nuclear missile can ruin your whole day. Even if there's a remote possibility that some rogue general could get hold of a nuclear command post and press the button, it's truly alarming. But the Administration publicly adopted the exact opposite approach. They had almost a mantra: "There's no problem with the Russian nuclear control over its missiles. Everything's fine. Don't worry about it."
RUSH: Would that primarily be Strobe Talbot? He's got some, to me, inexplicable love affair with Russia and has since his youth.
GERTZ: Yes, he is clearly a liberal arms control proponent. Did nothing but criticize the Reagan Administration, did nothing but criticize the Strategic Defense Initiative.
Certainly missile defense is probably the most important issue right now in terms of national security. Yet his perspective, and that of Clinton and his other advisors, is that arms control is the most important element of the U.S. relationship with Russia. They want to send diplomats to Geneva to sit down over long documents and argue whether they should use the word "shall" or "may" -- and try to conclude agreements that in the end the U.S. will adhere to and the Russians will probably not adhere to.
They've made arms control the centerpiece. I remember a briefing at the Pentagon three or four years ago, a snowy day here in Washington, a Friday, when there's a low newscycle turnout. No one was there. The Secretary of Defense got up and said: Our first line of defense against missiles is arms control; then it's deterrence; and last would be actually building missile defense.
Strobe Talbot has been the driving force on Russia policy; Al Gore as well. He's had this bi-national commission with the Russians -- which is done entirely in secret. It has seemed to be a mutual admiration society with whatever prime minister was in there, first Chernomydin, then Primakov, now they've got a new guy, Stepashin.
RUSH: Has Gore got egg on his face, given the Russian move in Kosovo? He was highlighted by Clinton as the guy who's making sure the Russians are kept happy. Now the Russians moved in and we're all suprised and stunned.
GERTZ: This is a debacle. They're doing major spin control -- you need a Dramamine patch just to make it through the doorway over there. Gore said he had "personal assurances" from the foreign minister. He said explicitly the Russians promised that they wouldn't go in. Look what happened. They went in ahead of NATO. They've created a huge problem -- not just militarily but strategically. Imagine this scenario. Suppose the Serbs suddenly decided, now that the Russians are inside Kosovo, that they didn't want to pull out their forces. Would that mean the United States wouldn't bomb those forces because of the Russians? You have the prospect that they're operating outside of NATO's chain of command. There have already been a couple of run-ins around the Pristina airport. This is a major problem that is not getting the attention it should.
RUSH: What's in store for us, in light of what you said about the rogue interests in Russia and the nukes, now that they've moved into Kosovo? How do you read that? What are the Russians trying to do?
GERTZ: You have to put this is context. I've been writing about this for the paper over the last couple of weeks. Beginning with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Russians immediately pulled back from any contacts with the West. There was a report out of Moscow by the defense attache`, Brigadier General Keith Dayton -- this was a private back-channel cable that went to the Pentagon -- who said that the Russians are cutting off all contacts with Western military attache`s in Moscow. Dayton described it as "a return to the Cold War." This is very serious. The Russians also pulled out their officer, whom we had invited to come into NATO headquarters as part of the operation in Bosnia.
Right away you had questions about what the Russians were doing in Bosnia. They had a battalion of troops in Bosnia as part of the peacekeeping operations there. But now they've clearly taken anti-NATO steps. Another sign was the fact that they sent two intelligence-gathering ships to spy on the NATO operation in the Balkans. Were they just collecting intelligence for themselves, or were they supplying it to the Serbs? I know from other intelligence reports that I've reported on that they have been spying on behalf of the Serbs and using international organizations in the Balkans as cover.
They have a cultural affinity with the Serbs. They're both Slavs, and they're basically aligned themselves with the Serbs. This creates huge problems for peacekeeping if they're going to have to settle the differences between the Kosovar Albanians and the Serbs. Clearly it's going to be very difficult to get the Albanians back into Kosovo if the Russians have a strong say. They want their own sector to do peacekeeping in, and they want to be outside the NATO command. Those are two demands that NATO is not going to give up.
RUSH: I'll bet they do. I'll bet they do, while spinning that they haven't. The words will be different from the reality. But why the airport? With the airport, you control who gets in -- and who gets out. It's the "who gets out" that's interesting to me. If you control the airport, maybe you can see to it that some indicted war criminals find their way out of the country.
GERTZ: Sure. Pristina is the regional capital, and the airport was where Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, the British commander in the whole region, was going to have his headquarters. Now the Russians have moved in and won't get out. After this broke and the Administration was sitting there with egg on its face, we got yet another lie from the Russian foreign minister who said, "Oh, it's a mistake. They're going to be pulled out." Then we find out, "Oh, actually Boris Yeltsin approved this deployment."
It raises serious questions about whether the Russians have control over their military -- and I don't think they do. This goes right to the heart of strategic nuclear command and control. One thing could escalate to another and then the so-called "de-targeting agreement" that Clinton made with Yeltsin a number of years back could go right out the window.
RUSH: By the way, where is the China story now?
GERTZ: It seems to have gone off the radar screen.
RUSH: It really does, except for you. Do you have a theory as to why?
GERTZ: I don't know the reason. The Republicans have been taking steps in Congress, they passed some legislation to try to tighten up security. But this is a story that the Administration doesn't want out -- and as a result, most of the major media have been ignoring it.
RUSH: Rep. Curt Weldon said that while the Administration was ostensibly "reviewing" the Cox Report to determine what would be declassified, they were actually preparing their spin operation. So the question arises, is this Administration at all concerned with the national security implications of this story? Or, are they just concerned about their own political standing at the end of the day?
GERTZ: Yes, I think that's it.
RUSH: Really? They are not concerned with national security?
GERTZ: I think they have made national security take a back seat to doing business with China at all costs. And that's had devestating consequences. Their response was to blame the Republicans. But it was not the Republicans who stole these nuclear secrets or acquired the technology, it was the Chinese. Yet there was not a single word of criticism about the Chinese. Not one.
If you search all the statements by Administration officials, we heard, "Well, everybody spies," and, "Isn't it too bad that the Republicans didn't do anything; we're doing something about it." Then Clinton turned around and offered to renew most favored trade status with China.
RUSH: Plus, we learned that former Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, not wanting to hurt anybody's feelings, scrapped the practice of requiring color-coded IDs in all the nuclear labs. We didn't want to discriminate and hurt people's feelings by having it known that certain people were not allowed access to these very important places. Then we learned that it was O'Leary herself who leaked the design of the W-87 to U.S. News & World Report, which published a diagram of the weapon in the July 31, 1995 issue.
In your book you quote a government official close to the Cox Committee saying that the Administration "circumvented the law and they knew what they were doing." So was this a systematic dismantling of our security on purpose? Or is this just a liberal naivete that does not accept the Chinese as a threat?
GERTZ: I think it's a little of both. In the case of the Energy Department and Hazel O'Leary, she brought in a group of people who could only be described as virulent antinuclear activists, and they took a slash-and-burn approach to security.
They knew that they only had a short period of time, and they were out to do as much damage to the Energy Department's role in U.S. nuclear weapons as they could. They did this under the guise of declassification. Instead of protecting secrets, their main concern was: How much can we declassify? In a number of cases we reported that they started declassifying en masse, and before anyone knew it information about nuclear weapons was leaking out.
They had to scrap the whole program. Just recently Congress passed a law that said,"No more bulk declassification of nuclear material." It has to be reviewed carefully so we don't give terrorists or other rogue states the ability to develop nuclear weapons.
They adopted this naive approach to world affairs, that there are no more threats in the world, that the only real threat is the United States. As Jeane Kirkpatrick said, it's the blame-America-first crowd. These are people who believe fundamentally, philosophically, that the major cause of the problems in the world is not Russia or China but it's the United States, and the more that can be done to limit the assertiveness and strength of the United States in the world the better off the world will be.
RUSH: I've been quoting Madeline Albright who said in April 1998: "We very much don't want to be out there by ourselves as the organizer and the only superpower. People don't believe that. They think we just want to be king of the hill, but we do not." These people have always felt that the focus of evil in the world is the U.S. military. Yfor're saying what I've often said myself, but to hear you say it, as close as you are to all this, is chilling. They actually believe the world will be safer if they can balance the nuclear threat by giving a whole bunch of nations access to it.
GERTZ: Right. I heard a speech by Frank Wisner, the U.S.ambassador to India. He was a senior Pentagon official when they denied armor to the commanders in Somalia, which led to the big disaster there. Wisner showed the Indians how we knew about their nuclear tests so the Indians could hide it from us when they finally did one. In his recent speech I remember him saying, "Oh, the balance of power is a very complex thing." I thought, "What is he talkiang about? There is no 'balance of power' in the world today. We are the sole superpower." But they think in terms of power balancing, and for them that means taking power from the United States and giving it to countries like Russia and China.
RUSH: They actually think the world is being made safer by doing this.
GERTZ: Yes, they think that's fundamental.
RUSH: There's no moral difference between a Communist government in China and the democratic United States of America in their minds.
GERTZ: Right. Yes. Have you ever once heard any Clinton Administration official even say that the Chinese government is a Communist government/
RUSH: No. They never have.
GERTZ: That says it all right there. They are working very hard to pretend there are no foreign threats. An intelligence official once told me: "For the Clinton Administration there are no foreign threats, only foreign capabilities." He was expressing his frustration at how politicized the intelligence community had become, that they were not allowed to use terms that highlight the dangers in the world, which they've been doing for decades.
RUSH: I read an interview with you on WorldNetDaily.com by Jon E.Dougherty. You're quoted as having told him: "The Chinese are engaged in a pretty serious strategic and conventional military buildbu. The alarming part of that is that it doesn't appear as though they're building up forces just for a regional conflict. It appears as though they're developing forces [strictly] to oppose the United States." What specifically do you mean?
GERTZ: They're not building three types of strategic nuclear missiles in order to confront the Philippines. They're doing it to confront the United States. Their goal is to push the United States out of Asia, and they're doing everything they can to achieve that goal. And these are people who follow Sun Tzu and his Art of War, who said: "The acme of skill is defeating your enemy without firing a shot."
They know they can't match the United States missile for missile, warhead for warhead, ship for ship. So they're engaged in what they call "asymmetrical warfare." They've picked a few areas where they want to challange the United States' technological superiority, and that includes mobile ICBMs. We don't have any. These are missiles you can't find, as demonstrated in the Persian Gulf War. We had a terrible time trying to locate Iraqi SCUD missiles -- and those were just short-range missiles. The Chinese want to put these missiles in their country and be able to threaten the United States, so that if there is a confrontation over Taiwan -- and that's really the hotspot -- they'll be able to have these missiles.
They're also developing some more exotic weapons. They're doing information warfare. This is among the most closely guarded secrets, but they're actually looking at ways they can take down an entire country through computers. The joint staff, the military, did an exercise last year. It was called "Eligible Receiver," and just using tools from the internet, just software and things, this group of NSA specialists literally could have turned the lights out in large portions of the United States. They could have. They got into the power grid and could have shut down the power.
This is one area where the Chinese are working. Another is anti-satellite weapons. Huge amounts of data, whether it's military or commercial information, travels by satellite, and those satellites are extremely vulnerable. The Chinese have tested anti-satellite weapons. The military did a test last year, where they fired a low-powered laser at a satellite and caused damage to the sensors. This means they could basically shut down our communications and satellite information networks with laser satellite weapons, which they're working on.
RUSH: Speaking of satellites, given the fact that they've tested the W-88, our most advanced warhead, is there any chance for the Strategic-Defense Initiative, SDI?
GERTZ: This is, as I mentioned, the most serious national security issue facing the country. Clinton has made it clear he's been flexible on almost every issue except missile defense; he's committed to having none on his watch. Again this goes back to the arms control relationship with Russia. They believe that having these negotiations is more important.
The Rumsfield Commission which Congress organized last year burst the balloon on the Administration's idea that there were no missiles pointed at the children of America. They highlighted the emerging threat of long-range missiles. Their bottom-line conclusion was that a long-range missile threat to the United States could emerge with little or no warning.
This means that whoever we have an arms control agreement with regarding missile defense is going to be meaningless if the Chinese aren't part of it, if the North Koreans aren't part of it, if the Iranians aren't part of it and other states that wish us ill. If you don't defend the country against the greatest strategic threat, then it makes it very, very difficult for the defense leaders to argue defending it against the lesser threats, whether that's terrorism or regional conflicts. And that's precisely what the administration had done. They've wished away the long-range missile threat and just focused on these lesser threats, which are much more difficult to counter.
RUSH: You've said that China is playing the Russia Card. What do you mean?
GERTZ: During the Cold War, we made a quasi-alliance with the Chinese against the Soviet Union, which was an expansionist, Communist power. We even had electronic eavesdropping post in China that were spying on the Soviet Union. With the end of the Cold War, however, all that changed.
Now China is emerging as the new regional and potentially global superpower, and they recognize that in order for them to gain position over us they're going to have to weaken us. So they've launched an anti-hegemonism campaign. Theyre blaming us as the great hegemonic power in the world. In order to balance power, they've made common cause with Russia. They have a semi-alliance. They recently concluded a border agreement which allowed China to pull thousands of troops and tanks off its border with Russia and those troops are now being used for repression in Xian-Xiong, where you have Muslim separatists and also in Tibet, where the Buddhists are seeking independence. And they've also begun purchasing large amounts of hig-technology weaponry, including ships with SSN22 Sunburn missiles.
RUSH: From whom?
GERTZ: From Russia. The Chinese are Buying these Ships. Now, these Sunburn missiles were designed specifically to kill U.S. ships. The Russians built them for one purpose and that is to sink our aircraft carriers and our destroyers and crusiers. So, clearly, this is another indication that they're preparing forces not to fight regional conflicts but to confront the United States.
RUSH: Bill Richardson says that the lab security problems have all been remedied. They've been solved. Is that true?
GERTZ: False, totally false. This is another case where the Administration has been saying loudly and repeatedly that they've made vast improvements in laboratory security. How? First, they signed a Presidential Directive, I think it was PDD61. The most notable feature of this directive is that it's currently secret. I went to the White House and I said: "If you want to make your case that you've improved security, why not release this directive?"
"Oh, no, we can't do that," they said. I talked to people who have seen the directive and they said that it doesn't do anything to improve security. Basically it brings in FBI people to fire the Energy Department security and intelligence officials; second, it institutes a system of polygraphs or lie detector tests -- which have been shown, especially by the Chinaese, to be very easily defeatable. There is the case of Larry Wu Tai Chin, a spy in the '80s, who worked for the CIA as a mole for China for decades and underwent a number of polygraph tests that he obviously passed without any problem. They haven't really improved security. Also, according to the Cox Report, it's almost certain that Chinese espionage is continuing today. I interviewed the head of Los Alamos National Laboratory, John Brown, and the question I put to him was: "How many Chinaese nationals currently are working at Los Alamos?" He said about 100. These aren't Chinese Americans. These are people who hold People's Republic of China passports. They don't have access to secrets, but they have access to the people who have secrets. I thought: "If you have a Chinese espionage problem, it seems to me that the first thing you would do would be to try to limit the access of people from the PRC who might be involved in that espionage." The Administration has said they have no plans to change that policy.

(Continued in my comments)
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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RUSH: The more the American people are not paying attention to this, the more the Administration thinks they can be lax with this so-called strategic partnership and ruffle as few feathers in China as possible.
GERTZ: But it doesn't look like there's going to be a strategic partnership with China. Even those in the Pentagon who are in charge of trying to build that relationship are starting to recognize it. A big monkey wrency was the errant bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. As I reported in the paper, the Chinese are convinced that that bombing was deliberate and intentional.
RUSH: They really believe that?
GERTZ: Yes. And that it was part of conspiracy to try to drag China into the Balkans conflict. The reason they believe this -- and this is based on intelligence reports -- is that when the bombs struck that embassy building, the JDAM missiles, as they're called, homed in on the defense attache`'s office and a secure communications room. So that convinced the Chinese this wasn't accidental. We're sending an envoy to China this week to again apologize for it.
RUSH: Pickering. What do you think?
GERTZ: I've looked into this. I went to the CIA and asked my friends there. I said, Look, if you had a mole in the CIA who wanted to screw up U.S. relations with China or any other country, is it possible you could feed in the false coordinates for the Chinese embassy in Belgrade? The answer I got -- and I tend to believe it -- is that you couldn't aorchestrate the number of screwups that took place in order for that errant bombing to take place. Obviously it was based, first of all, on a wrong map. But then there were at least five different places along the way by five different agencies, including the CIA, that were supposed to validate that the target they were aiming at was actually a Serbian military supply depot. And it wasn't.
We haven't had all the answers on it, but I tend to believe that it was a mistake. I can't see any benefit for the Administration to try and provoke the Chinese. Right now you've got a billion and a half people angry at you. It's not a good situation.
RUSH: One final question, in light of these resent developments coupled with this Administration's approach to matters military vis a` vis China. What would happen if China invaded Taiwan while Bill Clinton is President?
GERTZ: That's a good question.
RUSH: I'm afraid we'd do nothing. I think we'd huff and puff but I don't think we could afford to do anything.
GERTZ: We do have some indication that they would respond. I think it would be vitally important that we fulfilled the commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act, which states that the U.S. would not allow Taiwan to be overrun militarily. That's the bottom line. The Administration has tried to obscure that commitment to defend Taiwan by saying that it's "ambiguous." But think about the repercussions in Asia, if the United States did not. I can tell you talking to the U.S. Pacific Command that we do have contingency plans for a conflict with China over Taiwan. They do planning for all kinds of things, but there are war plans should the Chinese try to take Taiwan militarily. They have not disavowed the use of force against in Taiwan. It's a flashpoint.
In the book I talk about the case of General Xiong Guangkai, a senior official in the People's Liberation Army. I've met him several times. He speaks English very well, very polished. He had an exchange with a former Pentagon official back in 1995 when the Chinese were conducting war games near Taiwan, with the intent to intimidate the Taiwanese. He explained to this former offical, Charles Freeman, that during the Korean War the United States had an overwhelming nuclear advantage over China, but General Xiong said that's not the case today. China has made strides, and he said the United States would not intervene in a conflict with Taiwan "because it cares more about Los Angeles than Taipei," the Taiwanese capital.
I talked to Charles Freeman, who felt it was enough of a threat that he notified the White House national security advisor at the time, Anthony Lake. Freeman recognized it for a nuclear threat. I talked to General Xiong about this, who would just smile and tell me I was a friend of China.
RUSH: Bill, thanks for your time. I really appreciate it. Continued good luck with the book and congradulations on your work.
GERTZ: Thanks. Keep up the good work on your end, too.
RUSH: I'll do my best.

******************************************************

Treachery
By Bill Gertz

Washington Times | September 24, 2004

The following excerpts are from Bill Gertz's new book, Treachery

Part I: How the French Armed Saddam

The United States stood by for years as supposed allies helped its enemies obtain the world's most dangerous weapons, reveals Bill Gertz, defense and national security reporter for The Washington Times, in the new book Treachery (Crown Forum). In this excerpt, he details France's persistence in arming Saddam Hussein. 
    
New intelligence revealing how long France continued to supply and arm Saddam Hussein's regime infuriated U.S. officials as the nation prepared for military action against Iraq.

The intelligence reports showing French assistance to Saddam ongoing in the late winter of 2002 helped explain why France refused to deal harshly with Iraq and blocked U.S. moves at the United Nations.

"No wonder the French are opposing us," one U.S. intelligence official remarked after illegal sales to Iraq of military and dual-use parts, originating in France, were discovered early last year before the war began.

That official was careful to stipulate that intelligence reports did not indicate whether the French government had sanctioned or knew about the parts transfers. The French company at the beginning of the pipeline remained unidentified in the reports.

France's government tightly controls its aerospace and defense firms, however, so it would be difficult to believe that the illegal transfers of equipment parts took place without the knowledge of at least some government officials.

Iraq's Mirage F-1 fighter jets were made by France's Dassault Aviation. Its Gazelle attack helicopters were made by Aerospatiale, which became part of a consortium of European defense companies.

"It is well-known that the Iraqis use front companies to try to obtain a number of prohibited items," a senior Bush administration official said before the war, refusing to discuss Iraq's purchase of French warplane and helicopter parts.

The State Department confirmed intelligence indicating the French had given support to Iraq's military.

"U.N. sanctions prohibit the transfer to Iraq of arms and materiel of all types, including military aircraft and spare parts," State Department spokeswoman Jo-Anne Prokopowicz said. "We take illicit transfers to Iraq very seriously and work closely with our allies to prevent Iraq from acquiring sensitive.

Sen. Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican and chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, declared that France's selling of military equipment to Iraq was "international treason" as well as a violation of a U.N. resolution.

"As a pilot and a former war pilot, this disturbs me greatly that the French would allow in any way parts for the Mirage to be exported so the Iraqis could continue to use those planes," Stevens said.

"The French, unfortunately, are becoming less trustworthy than the Russians," said Rep. Curt Weldon, Pennsylvania Republican and vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "It's outrageous they would allow technology to support the jets of Saddam Hussein to be transferred."

The U.S. military was about to go to war with Iraq, and thanks to the French, the Iraqi air force had become more dangerous. 
    
The pipeline

French aid to Iraq goes back decades and includes transfers of advanced conventional arms and components for weapons of mass destruction.

The central figure in these weapons ties is French President Jacques Chirac. His relationship with Saddam dates to 1975, when, as prime minister, the French politician rolled out the red carpet when the Iraqi strongman visited Paris.

"I welcome you as my personal friend," Chirac told Saddam, then vice president of Iraq.

The French put Saddam up at the Hotel Marigny, an annex to the presidential palace, and gave him the trappings of a head of state. The French wanted Iraqi oil, and by establishing this friendship, Chirac would help France replace the Soviet Union as Iraq's leading supplier of weapons and military goods.

In fact, Chirac helped sell Saddam the two nuclear reactors that started Baghdad on the path to nuclear weapons capability.

France's corrupt dealings with Saddam flourished throughout the 1990s, despite the strict arms embargo against Iraq imposed by the United Nations after the Persian Gulf war.

By 2000, France had become Iraq's largest supplier of military and dual-use equipment, according to a senior member of Congress who declined to be identified.

Saddam developed networks for illegal supplies to get around the U.N. arms embargo and achieve a military buildup in the years before U.S. forces launched a second assault on Iraq.

One spare-parts pipeline flowed from a French company to Al Tamoor Trading Co. in the United Arab Emirates. Tamoor then sent the parts by truck through Turkey, and into Iraq. The Iraqis obtained spare parts for their French-made Mirage F-1 jets and Gazelle attack helicopters through this pipeline. 
    
A huge debt

U.S. intelligence would not discover the pipeline until the eve of war last year; sensitive intelligence indicated that parts had been smuggled to Iraq as recently as that January.

"A thriving gray-arms market and porous borders have allowed Baghdad to acquire smaller arms and components for larger arms, such as spare parts for aircraft, air-defense systems and armored vehicles," the CIA said in a report to Congress made public that month.

U.S. intelligence agencies later came under fire over questions about prewar estimates of Iraq's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But intelligence on Iraq's hidden procurement networks was confirmed.

An initial accounting by the Pentagon in the months after the fall of Baghdad revealed that Saddam covertly acquired between 650,000 and 1 million tons of conventional weapons from foreign sources. The main suppliers were Russia, China and France.

By contrast, the U.S. arsenal is between 1.6 million and 1.8 million tons.

As of last year, Iraq owed France an estimated $4 billion for arms and infrastructure projects, according to French government estimates. U.S. officials thought this massive debt was one reason France opposed a military operation to oust Saddam.

The fact that illegal deals continued even as war loomed indicated France viewed Saddam's regime as a future source of income. 
    
Telltale chemical

Just days before U.S. and coalition forces launched their military campaign against Iraq, more evidence of French treachery emerged.

In mid-March 2003, U.S. intelligence and defense officials confirmed that exporters in France had conspired with China to provide Iraq with chemicals used in making solid fuel for long-range missiles. The sanctions-busting operation occurred in August 2002, the U.S. National Security Agency discovered through electronic intercepts.

The chemical transferred to Iraq was a transparent liquid rubber called hydroxy terminated polybutadiene, or HTPB, according to intelligence reports.

U.S. intelligence traced the sale to China's Qilu Chemicals, "the largest manufacturer of HTPB in China," one official says.

A French company, CIS Paris, helped broker the sale of 20 tons of HTPB, a controlled export that was shipped from China to the Syrian port of Tartus. The chemical solution was sent by truck from Syria into Iraq, to a missile-manufacturing plant. The Iraqi company that purchased the shipment was in charge of making solid fuel for long-range missiles.

HTPB technically is a dual-use chemical, because it also can be used for commercial purposes such as space launches. However, Iraq often disguised military purchases as commercial ones, as documents found later in Iraq would confirm.

In a report to Congress, the CIA said Iraq had constructed two "mixing" buildings for solid-propellant fuels at a plant known as al-Mamoun. The facility originally was built to produce the Badr-2000, a solid-propellant missile also known as the Condor.

The new buildings "appear especially suited to house large, U.N.-prohibited mixers of the type acquired for the Badr-2000 program," the CIA report stated. 
    
French denials

Despite controversy over prewar intelligence on Iraq, the CIA said its estimates of Iraqi missiles were on target.

Representatives of the French and Chinese governments went on the attack when The Washington Times asked about the chemical sale.

Chinese Embassy spokesman Xie Feng did not address the specifics, but said "irresponsible accusations" about China's exports had been made in the past.

"These accusations are devoid of all foundation," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau declared. "In line with the rules currently in force, France has neither delivered, nor authorized, the delivery of such materials, either directly or indirectly."

By that point, many in the U.S. government were fed up with French denials.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz called in the French ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, to complain about France's covert and overt support for Saddam's regime.

"Twelve years of waiting was too costly in terms of the growing threat from Baghdad," Wolfowitz told the ambassador, according to a U.S. official who was present. 
    
Made in France

The war in Iraq, which began March 19, 2003, provided disturbing evidence that France's treacherous dealings come at a steep cost to the United States.

On April 8 came the downing of Air Force Maj. Jim Ewald's A-10 Thunderbolt fighter over Baghdad and the discovery that it was a French-made Roland missile that brought down the American pilot and destroyed a $13 million aircraft. Ewald, one of the first U.S. pilots shot down in the war, was rescued by members of the Army's 54th Engineer Battalion who saw him parachute to earth not far from the wreckage.

Army intelligence concluded that the French had sold the missile to the Iraqis within the past year, despite French denials.

A week after Ewald's A-10 was downed, an Army team searching Iraqi weapons depots at the Baghdad airport discovered caches of French-made missiles. One anti-aircraft missile, among a cache of 51 Roland-2s from a French-German manufacturing partnership, bore a label indicating that the batch was produced just months earlier.

In May, Army intelligence found a stack of blank French passports in an Iraqi ministry, confirming what U.S. intelligence already had determined: The French had helped Iraqi war criminals escape from coalition forces — and therefore justice.

Then, there were French-made trucks and radios and the deadly grenade launchers, known as RPGs, with French-made night sights. Saddam loyalists used them to kill American soldiers long after the toppling of the dictator's regime.

The intelligence team sent to find Iraqi weapons also discovered documents outlining covert Iraqi weapons procurement leading up to the war. The CIA, however, refused to make public the documents on assistance provided by France or by other so-called allies of the United States.

The clandestine arms-procurement network, disclosed late last year by the Los Angeles Times, put a Syrian trading company in a pivotal role. Documents showed the company, SES International Corp., was the conduit for millions of dollars' worth of weapons purchased internationally, including from France. Al Bashair Trading Co. in Baghdad was the major front used by Saddam to buy arms abroad.

A Defense Department-sponsored report produced in February identified France as one of the top three suppliers of Iraq's conventional arms, after Russia and China. The report revealed that France supplied 12 types of armaments and a total of 115,005 pieces.

A major reason Iraqi militants posed a threat to U.S. forces for so many months was that they had access to weapons that Saddam stockpiled in violation of U.N. resolutions. 
    
A close call

One of the most frightening examples of how the militants put French weapons to use against the Americans came Oct. 26, 2003. That morning, at about 6 o'clock, they bombarded the Rashid Hotel in Baghdad with French missiles.

The French rockets nearly killed Wolfowitz, whom Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has called "the brains" of the Pentagon.

The deputy defense secretary had just gotten dressed in his room that Sunday morning when a car stopped several hundred yards from the hotel. It dropped off what appeared to be one of the blue electrical generators that were common in the power-starved Iraqi capital. The driver stayed just long enough to open a panel on the end of the metal box that was pointing upward toward the hotel.

The car sped off. Minutes later, a pod of 40 artillery rockets set off by remote control began firing at the hotel, their trails leaving sparks as they flew. The rockets hit one floor below where Wolfowitz and about a dozen aides and reporters were staying.

One rocket slammed into the room of Army Lt. Col. Charles H. Buehring, a public-affairs officer. The explosion hit Buehring, 40, in the head. A reporter discovered him and tried to help, but the Fayetteville, N.C., resident died a short time later.

In all, between eight and 10 missiles hit the hotel. The casualties might have been higher, and included Wolfowitz, if the improvised rocket launcher had fired all the missiles.

Because of a malfunction, 11 failed to go off. 
    
Playing defense

Half the missiles fired at Wolfowitz's hotel were French-made Matra SNEB 68-millimeter rockets, with a range of two to three miles. The others were Russian in origin.

The French missiles were "pristine," Navy SEAL commandos reported.

"They were either new or kept in very good condition," said one SEAL who inspected the rocket tubes.

The rockets were thought to have been taken from Iraq's French-made Alouette or Gazelle attack helicopters.

The fact that new French missiles were showing up in the hands of Saddam loyalists months after the fall of Baghdad made Wolfowitz and his close aides livid. Still, others in the U.S. government worked to defend the French.

The CIA, to avoid upsetting ties with French intelligence, played down the French role in helping Saddam. The agency had a weak human intelligence?gathering capability, and France, because of its history of ties to Iraq, was much better at penetrating Saddam's regime.

The State Department's response was not surprising. Asked about French support for Iraq while on a fence-mending mission to Paris in May 2003, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had said: "We're not going to paper over it and pretend it didn't occur. It did occur. But we're going to work through that."

Powell, the retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was too inexperienced in the ways of diplomacy. As a result, he largely had turned over control of State Department policy-making to the Foreign Service.

The problem with the Foreign Service is its culture. It trains diplomats to "get along" with the foreign governments they are sent to work with. Not insignificantly, Paris is among the most coveted postings in the world. 
    
Backing down

Pentagon hard-liners on France, led by Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, carried the day early in the war, but accommodationists within the upper councils of the Bush administration took control as the conflict went on.

Among those who took a softer position on France was National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the former Stanford provost who surrounded herself with State Department officials and Foreign Service officers.

Rumsfeld drew a great deal of attention on Jan. 22, 2003 — and created a backlash within the State Department — when he let fly a verbal salvo against France and Germany for not siding with the United States, describing them as "old Europe" during a meeting with foreign reporters.

Rumsfeld also criticized French and German political leaders for making policy based not on "their honest conviction as to what their country ought to do" but on opinion polls that reflected ever-shifting public sentiments.

As the accommodationists in the Bush administration gained the upper hand, Rumsfeld and others were ordered to tone down the anti-Europe rhetoric. By late last year, the defense secretary's critics within the Foreign Service were crowing that Rumsfeld had been "tamed."

Just a day after the Iraqi attack on Wolfowitz's hotel in Baghdad, in an interview with The Washington Times, Rumsfeld took an even softer approach toward the French.

"People tend to look at what's taking place today and opine that it is something distinctive," Rumsfeld said of the turbulence in Franco-American relations. "I don't find it distinctive. I find it an old record that gets replayed about every five or seven years."

The public soft-policy line was, in many ways, a great victory for France. Even as new evidence poured in that the French had betrayed the United States and cost the lives of American troops, the government backed down from a confrontation with its erstwhile ally.

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" A new video has been posted on the Internet showing the body of Saddam Hussein on a stretcher with a wound in his neck, the BBC reported on its Arabic Web site." Reuters (See article below) 

"President Bill Clinton signed a letter authorizing former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later came up missing, according to a newly released investigation report by the National Archives and Records Administration. " WorldNetDaily.Com


WorldNetDaily Exclusive
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53629

 SECURITY BREECHES
Bill Clinton authorized Sandy Berger's access
Investigation into pilfered documents reveals former president signed letter

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Posted: January 4, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Chelsea Schilling

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© 2007 WorldNetDaily.com

Sandy Berger

President Bill Clinton signed a letter authorizing former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger's access to classified documents that later came up missing, according to a newly released investigation report by the National Archives and Records Administration.

The sensitive drafts of the National Security Council's "Millennium After Action Review" on the Clinton administration's handling of the al-Qaida terror threats in December 1999 suspiciously disappeared after Berger said he intended to "determine if Executive Privilege needed to be exerted prior to documents being provided to the 9/11 Commission." Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft testified before the 9-11 commission about the millennium report, urging the panel to ask why the document's warnings and "blueprint" to thwart al-Qaida's plans to target the U.S. were ignored by the Clinton administration and not shared with the incoming Bush security staff.

The NARA investigation report said Clinton signed an April 12, 2002, letter designating Berger – and another person whose named is redacted – as "agents on his behalf to review relevant NSC documents regarding Osama Bin Laden/Al Qaeda, Sudan and Presidential correspondence from or to (Sudanese President) Omar Bashir, contained in the Clinton Presidential records." A subsequent letter from a National Security Council official, May 14, 2002, said Berger repeatedly was briefed that "he was not allowed to remove any documentation from NARA."

Last year, Berger plea bargained a criminal sentence on the charge of unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. A judge gave him no prison time, a $50,000 fine, 100 hours of community service and a ban from access to classified material for three years.

(Story continues below)

According to the NARA report, after the 9-11 attacks, Clinton administration officials were swamped with calls regarding their handling of terrorist threats, and Berger soon realized he would have to testify. Berger said he put in over 100 unpaid hours of his time to be responsive.

The former White House adviser said the documents up for review were so numerous that he was unable to reconstruct them from memory, so he took 10-to-12 pages of notes and hid them in the pocket of his blazer.

The investigation report says, however, the May 14, 2002, letter stated "notes may be taken but must be retained by NARA staff and forwarded to the NSC for a classification review and appropriate marking. Berger, the letter said, "was made aware of this requirement."

In July 2003, Berger's handling of the papers began to "cause archival concerns in maintaining provenance" after he asked to leave the viewing office several times to hold very private phone calls. Later, in September, Berger once again stepped out of the office and headed for the men's room, but personnel reported an unknown white object beneath his pant leg.

A witness said Berger "bent down, fiddling with something white, which could have been papers, around his ankle."

After Berger's actions aroused suspicion in September 2003, an unnamed archives official hand-numbered drafts provided to Berger as a means of controlling the documents without consulting with NARA general counsel, security, management, the Office of the Inspector General or law enforcement.

In October, Berger returned to the archives office and was given one file folder of documents at a time. The NARA report indicates an e-mail numbered 217 came up missing after he reviewed it. Berger later said he slid the document under his portfolio.

When personnel noticed it was missing, they offered a copy of document 217 to Berger, and he reportedly slid the second file under his portfolio as well. Later, Berger said if he had been asked to return the file "it would have triggered a decision for him to give the documents back."

Instead, Berger said he had to make a private phone call and went to a desk outside the office. However, the phone line remained unlit, and he quickly departed to the restroom, a location from which he was reported to have recently returned.

Berger made numerous suspicious visits to the men's room in which personnel were concerned he might be hiding documents. He said he "went to the restroom on an average of every 30 minutes to one hour to use the facilities and stretch his legs."

According to the NARA report, Berger claimed he accidentally took the files outside of the archives building and didn't want to risk bringing documents back because personnel might notice something unusual. Instead, he took the files to a fenced construction area on Ninth Street, slid them under a trailer and returned to the office to finish his review. After doing so, he returned to the site, reclaimed the documents and took them to his office.

During the visit, Berger is reported to have hidden four documents in his pockets, all versions of the Millennium Alert After Action Review.

Archives officials decided to call Berger and ask him for the documents. He said he didn't think he had any files. They advised him NARA was treating the matter as a security infraction and was going to report the incident to the National Security Council. If Berger admitted to taking the documents by mistake, the incident would be reported as inadvertent removal. But, he maintained that staff members were in error, and he had given the files back to an assistant.

Later that evening, Berger claimed to have found two documents, and NARA made arrangements to pick up the files the following morning. However, NARA reports the documents were an e-mail and a facsimile Berger reviewed Sept. 2, 2003, not classified files viewed Oct. 2, 2003.

Berger said he could not find any additional documents and claimed he must have thrown them away. According to the NARA report, "He had destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash. By Saturday, the trash had been picked up. He tried to find the trash collector but had no luck."

The inspector general was briefed on the incidents Oct. 10. That day, OI investigators recovered documents from Berger's home at the request of his attorney. Six months later, the Department of Justice notified the 9/11 commission.

Berger said if someone had always been with him, he would not have taken any documents.

Despite his April 1, 2005, guilty plea for Unauthorized Removal and Retention of Classified Material, Berger still vehemently denies smuggling any documents in his socks. According to the report, he said he was adjusting them "because his shoes frequently come untied and his socks frequently fall down."

Just yesterday, the saga of Berger and the documents was ranked No. 6 on WND's annual list of most underreported news stories of 2006.

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Previous column:

The Sandy Burglar story revisited

Previous stories:

10 most underreported stories of 2006

Sandy Berger appointed CIA officer fired for leak

Judge orders no prison for Berger

Sandy Berger faces Bar complaint

No jail time for Berger

Source: Berger probe before grand jury

Feds say Berger still under probe

Berger blocked 4 plans to get bin Laden

Dems' Berger response from Clinton playbook?

Berger told monitors to break archive rules

Democrats target Bush on file theft

Where's Clinton on Berger affair?

Ashcroft: Berger doc exposes security lapse

N.Y. Times buries Berger story

Clinton aide took home classified 9-11 papers

Berger friends challenge sock-stuffing charge

Speaker Hastert 'troubled' by Berger probe

All Credit Given To WorldNetDaily.Com and Chelsea Schilling
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53629

hydra: a multifarious evil not to be overcome by a single effort

Hydra:a many-headed serpent or monster in Greek mythology that was slain by Hercules and each head of which when cut off was replaced by two others

 

January 02, 2007

" But late on Saturday chilling fresh footage — believed to have been filmed on a mobile phone — emerged on the internet showing Saddam plunging through the trapdoor and then swinging at the end of the rope. "
News on the World UK   http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news1.shtmlck

*Transcript of Saddam's hanging proceedings and what was said by all participants in News on the World UK article below *

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"Unofficial video footage (by mobile phone) of Saddam Hussein's hanging showed the execution to be less dignified than it had seemed in the official video." (paraphrased sentence from Sky News report (article below)

"An Iraqi official has told Sky News that Saddam Hussein should not have been taunted when he was executed."

National security adviser Mowaffak al Rubaie said: "It was very unprofessional, it was disgusting, it shouldn't have happened."   

Unofficial video footage (first article posted here)

Video  (ALL CREDIT GIVEN TO  )

http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,31200-saddam_mobile,00.html

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BAGHDAD: Saddam Hussein was sent to the gallows with final mocking taunts - Shia witnesses chanted the name of one of his most bitter opponents while the noose was readied.

The video, sent to the News of the World, is taken from the foot of a wrought iron staircase leading to the crudely-built scaffold.

Saddam is seen being led on to the death platform by hooded executioners. The waiting noose hangs from a pulley bolted to the gallows' rough concrete ceiling.

The dark room is lit by the flare of flashbulbs as onlookers photograph the gruesome spectacle.

There is a rising chant from the crowd as the grim scene unfolds, which we have had translated:

ONLOOKERS: "May God bless Prophet Mohammed and his family, and curse his enemy."

The chant changes...

ONLOOKERS: "Muktada! Muktada! Muktada!"

This refers to Muktada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric leader and a direct opponent of Saddam. It would have been a galling taunt to the dictator.

ANOTHER VOICE: "Go to hell!"

ONLOOKERS (still chanting): "Long live Mohammed Bakir al-Hakeem."

This is another Shia leader who was killed in a car bomb attack outside a mosque in Najaf in 2003.

SADDAM (With the rope around his neck, he twice repeats this phrase): "I too bear witness that there is no God but Allah, and I too bear witness that Mohammed is his prophet."

By this time the dictator has been kept standing on the platform with the noose tight round his neck for 45 seconds before suddenly, mid-prayer, the trapdoor springs open and he plunges to his death.

ONLOOKERS (chanting): "May God bless prophet Mohammed and his family, and curse his enemy.

Again, the chant changes...

ONLOOKERS: "The tyrant is dead! May God curse him!"

Then there is a voice in the background from someone who appears to be one of those in charge.

OFFICER: "Leave him for three minutes. Everybody move to the back."

As the world shuddered with relief at his historic execution, a witness revealed: "We heard his neck snap instantly and we even saw blood on the rope."

Sami al-Askari, a prominent politician close to the Iraqi Prime Minister, added: "In fact, they left him hanging for 10 minutes before a doctor confirmed his death and they untied him and placed him in a white body bag."

Before the corpse was taken away, officials took DNA samples to convince sceptics that they'd rid the world of the right man. Another witness—who lost 26 family members to Saddam's regime—said: "Now he is in the garbage of history."

Jawad Abdul-Aziz, there as a representative of all the tyrant's victims, added: "When I saw the body in the coffin, I cried. I remembered my three brothers and my father who he had killed. I approached the body and told him, ‘This is the well-deserved punishment of every tyrant'".

Iraqi national security adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie told in astonishing detail how he stared into Saddam's eyes as the fallen dictator muttered reassurance to himself.

Mr al-Rubaie, one of a handful of witnesses, said: "He was very, very broken. He looked really, really weak. He looked at the gallows not believing what was going to happen. He kept on staring at me. I couldn't see any remorse in his look.

ALL CREDIT GIVEN HERE FOR THIS REPORT AND VIDEO TO NEWS OF THE WORLD.CO.UK
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news1.shtml
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http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1245830,00.html

Shouldn't Have Happened'  

An Iraqi official has told Sky News that Saddam Hussein should not have been taunted when he was executed.

National security adviser Mowaffak al Rubaie said: "It was very unprofessional, it was disgusting, it shouldn't have happened."

Unofficial video footage showed the execution to be less dignified than it had seemed in the official video.

Mr al Rubaie conducted interviews at the weekend to say the procedure had been calm and professional.

But pressed on the chaotic scenes which the mobile footage revealed, he said: "It was meant to be peaceful.

"These are guards, low-level, not educated people, they respond in a natural way, they couldn't control their feelings.

"But their feelings were expressed in an unacceptable way. We will take a real hard measure to punish those who were involved in it."

However, Mr al Rubaie warned: "It should not detract people's minds from the crimes Saddam was sentenced to death for."

There has been some concern expressed over who was responsible for security at the execution, with US officials saying they had no responsibility for it.

Mr al Rubaie said: "When we arrived there we found a few guards with telephones and cameras in addition to the official video recorder and the camera guy.

"There were people there from the local guard who attended as well as the execution team. They were not under our control.

"Coalition forces were surrounding the building when we arrived. We were searched and checked by coalition forces."

He denied reports that radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr attended the execution and said it was important for all Iraqis to now move forward in unison.

He said he was not certain whether anybody had been arrested over the images, but it has been reported that someone is being held.

An aide to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki said: "He was an official who supervised the execution and now he is under investigation."

Saddam is taunted on the footage, while it also shows the moment when he died, which is not featured in the official film.

A prosecutor who was a witness to the hanging said some of the taunting came from guards outside the execution chamber.

Munqith al Faroon said two top officials had their mobile phones with them, adding: "I do not know their names, but I would remember their faces."

The video has inflamed tensions between the Shi'ite majority and the Sunnis, who ran the country until Saddam was overthrown in 2003.

Some of the last words Saddam heard, according to the leaked cell phone video, were a chant of "Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada".

The chant referred to al Sadr whose Mahdi Army militia is believed responsible for many recent killings targeting Sunnis.

Al Sadr's father was killed by Saddam, while the militant cleric is a key backer of Mr al Maliki.

Sunni Muslims have taken to the streets in mainly peaceful demonstrations since the execution.

Also In World News

ALL CREDIT FOR VIDEO AND ARTICLE GIVEN TO