ALAN HART: BREAKS SILENCE ABOUT 9/11 ON THE KEVIN BARRETT SHOW
27. May, 2010
Senior BBC Mideast Correspondent: “Here’s what may have REALLY happened on 9/11″!
Breaking his self-imposed rule against talking about 9/11, former Senior BBC Mideast Correspondent and author Alan Hart described what he thinks may have really happened on that fateful day on yesterday’s Kevin Barrett show.
Hart, who got to know Yasser Arafat and Golda Meir while serving as a Security Council-briefed Mideast peace negotiator, said that he has been assured by a top-level demolitions/engineering expert who wishes to remain anonymous that the three World Trade Center skyscrapers were destroyed by controlled demolitions, not plane crashes and fires. (For the names of more than 1000 experts willing to go on the record with the same opinion, see http://www.ae911truth.org).
During the hour-long interview, Hart discussed Israel’s record of engaging in outrageous attacks on friend and foe alike, and spreading even more outrageous lies to cover them up. (Around the midpoint of the show he explained the real reason Israel attacked theU.S.S. Liberty in 1967.)
Regarding 9/11, Hart suggested that while there may have been some original terrorist plot conceived by fellow-travelers of Osama Bin Laden, the Israeli Mossad, with its near-total penetration of Middle Eastern governments and terrorist groups alike, would have quickly detected and hijacked the operation to its own ends, orchestrating a spectacularly successful attack on America designed to be blamed on its Arab and Muslim enemies. Hart added that the Mossad operation that became 9/11 would have been aided and abetted by certain corrupt American leaders.
Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the “loose nukes” rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war–which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
When a warning this serious is delivered by a messenger with the stature of Alan Hart, the American people had better find a way around the news blackout imposed by the Zionist-dominated corporate and pseudo-alternative media. The only thing standing in the way of an Israeli false-flag nuclear attack on America, a disastrous US war on Iran, and a horrendous acceleration of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, is the awareness of the American people. Please copy, post, and mass-email this story.
Kevin Barrett
Author, Questioning the War on Terror: A Primer for Obama Voters: http://www.questioningthewaronterror.com
Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent who covered wars and conflicts wherever they were taking place in the world and specialized in the Middle East.
His Latest book Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is a three-volume epic in its American edition. He blogs on www.alanhart.net and tweets on www.twitter.com/alanauthor
OBSERVATIONS FROM IRAQ, IRAN,
ISRAEL, THE ARAB WORLD AND BEYOND
ISRAEL: Australia expels Mossad station chief over passports in Dubai killing
It would be difficult to weave as intricate a web as the international spy thriller that first unraveled in Dubai in January. Yet another sinew has been threaded out of the ongoing, worldwide investigation on the killing of Hamas arms procurer Mahmoud Mabhouh.
In recent days, the Australian foreign minister informed the Israeli Embassy that its Mossad station chief, whose identity remains secret, would be leaving the island continent within a week.
Stephen Smith spoke to the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, claiming that the officer in question was “involved in state intelligence.” He argued that Australian passports “were deliberately counterfeited and cloned for use” and investigations had proved “beyond doubt” that Israel was involved, reported the Australian publication International Business Times.
Israeli authorities had a warrant out for Mabhouh’s arrest, as did the Egyptians and Jordanians. In 1989, Israeli authorities had failed to arrest Mabhouh for his recently confessed participation in the murder of two Israeli soldiers.
Smith concluded that Australia “remains a firm friend of Israel.”
However, he lamented, “this is not what we expect from a nation with whom we have had such a close, friendly, and supportive relationship.”
The chief of Australia’s Security and Intelligence Organization, David Irvine, managed to convince the Australian government that Israel had a hand in the passport counterfeit after a clandestine trip to Israel earlier this month to investigate foul play. Upon his return, he claimed that four of the passports used during the assassination had been Australian counterfeits, according to news reports.
Smith first announced Canberra’s decision to the U.S. government and then to Israel, and later shared the ruling with the foreign ministers of the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, France, Germany and Ireland. The Brits had also expelled two Israeli diplomats in March because of the use of forged passports in the Mabhouh killing.
Intelligence-sharing between Australian and Israeli agencies has come to a halt, reported Haaretz.
Though it was not the first time that Israel had forged passports, Smith claimed, this time violated “confidential undertakings” between the two countries, the Associated Press reported.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yossi Levy responded, “We regret the Australian move, which in our opinion does not conform to the kind of relations we have with Canberra and their importance.”
Hamas spokesman Dr. Sami Abu Zuhri told the Palestinian Information Center that Australia should also prosecute Mabhouh’s assassins. At least, he explained, other countries have started to recognize the threat that the “Zionist entity” poses to global security.
— Becky Lee Katz in Beirut
Photos:
Top: One of possibly 26 forged passports, this copy of an Australian counterfeit was used in the assassination attempt. Credit: Dubai authorities.
Bottom: Chief of Australian intelligence David Irvine led the Australian investigation into the passport forgery case in Israel. Credit: Andrew Taylor / The Sydney Morning Herald.
Exclusive:Secret apartheid-era papers give first official evidence of Israeli nuclear weapons
Chris McGreal in Washington
The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South Africa. Photograph: Guardian
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state’s possession of nuclear weapons.
The “top secret” minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa‘s defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel’s defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them “in three sizes”. The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that “the very existence of this agreement” was to remain secret.
The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of “ambiguity” in neither confirming nor denying their existence.
The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa’s post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky’s request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week’s nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.
They will also undermine Israel’s attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a “responsible” power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.
A spokeswoman for Peres today said the report was baseless and there were “never any negotiations” between the two countries. She did not comment on the authenticity of the documents.
South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.
The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975. Polakow-Suransky writes in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials “formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal”.
Among those attending the meeting was the South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong. He immediately drew up a memo in which he laid out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Jericho missiles but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
The memo, marked “top secret” and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israelis, has previously been revealed but its context was not fully understood because it was not known to be directly linked to the Israeli offer on the same day and that it was the basis for a direct request to Israel. In it, Armstrong writes: “In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: a) That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere.”
But South Africa was years from being able to build atomic weapons. A little more than two months later, on 4 June, Peres and Botha met in Zurich. By then the Jericho project had the codename Chalet.
The top secret minutes of the meeting record that: “Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available.” The document then records: “Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice.” The “three sizes” are believed to refer to the conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The use of a euphemism, the “correct payload”, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it been referring to conventional weapons. It can also only have meant nuclear warheads as Armstrong’s memorandum makes clear South Africa was interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
In addition, the only payload the South Africans would have needed to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of putting together other warheads.
Botha did not go ahead with the deal in part because of the cost. In addition, any deal would have to have had final approval by Israel’s prime minister and it is uncertain it would have been forthcoming.
South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs, albeit possibly with Israeli assistance. But the collaboration on military technology only grew over the following years. South Africa also provided much of the yellowcake uranium that Israel required to develop its weapons.
The documents confirm accounts by a former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt – jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union. After his release with the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called Chalet which involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho missiles with “special warheads”. Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer.
Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha, the two defence ministers signed a covert agreement governing the military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: “It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement… shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party”.
The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally renounce it.
The existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons programme was revealed by Mordechai Vanunu to the Sunday Times in 1986. He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site and gave detailed descriptions of the processes involved in producing part of the nuclear material but provided no written documentation.
Documents seized by Iranian students from the US embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution revealed the Shah expressed an interest to Israel in developing nuclear arms. But the South African documents offer confirmation Israel was in a position to arm Jericho missiles with nuclear warheads.
Israel pressured the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky. “The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the Secment agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date,” he said. “The South Africans didn’t seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime’s old allies.”
Israeli president denies offering nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa
Shimon Peres dismisses claims relating to secret files but US researcher says denials are disingenuous
Chris McGreal in Washington, Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem and David Smith in Johannesburg
Shimon Peres (left), whose office says Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa, pictured with Ariel Sharon in Egypt in 1975. Photograph: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Israel‘s president, Shimon Peres, today robustly denied revelations in the Guardian and a new book that he offered to sell nuclear weapons to apartheid South Africa when he was defence minister in the 1970s.
His office said “there exists no basis in reality” for claims based on declassified secret South African documents that he offered nuclear warheads for sale with ballistic missiles to the apartheid regime in 1975. “Israel has never negotiated the exchange of nuclear weapons with South Africa. There exists no Israeli document or Israeli signature on a document that such negotiations took place,” it said.
But Sasha Polakow-Suransky, the American academic who uncovered the documents while researching a book on the military and political relationship between the two countries, said the denials were disingenuous, because the minutes of meetings Peres held with the then South African defence minister, PW Botha, show that the apartheid government believed an explicit offer to provide nuclear warheads had been made.
Polakow-Suransky noted that Peres did not deny attending the meetings at which the purchase of Israeli weapons systems, including ballistic missiles, was discussed. “Peres participated in high level discussions with the South African defence minister and led the South Africans to believe that an offer of nuclear Jerichos was on the table,” he said. “It’s clear from the documentary record that the South Africans perceived that an explicit offer was on the table. Four days later Peres signed a secrecy agreement with PW Botha.”
While Peres’s office said there are no documents with his signature on that mention nuclear weapons, his signature does appear with Botha’s on an agreement governing the broad conduct of the military relationship, including a commitment to keep it secret.
Today politicians and academics in South Africa said the apartheid regime’s cooperation with Israel was an “open secret” and they welcomed the current government’s move to declassify sensitive documents which provided details of key meetings.
Steven Friedman, the director of Centre for the Study of Democracy at Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg, said: “There was a close cooperation on a range of issues. In the 1970s and 1980s there was a sudden influx of Israeli nuclear scientists. We knew there was extensive military cooperation.”
Professor Willie Esterhuyse, who played a critical role in opening and maintaining dialogue between the apartheid government and the ANC, said: “Most of us knew there was close cooperation on nuclear research with not just Israel but also the French. But we had no factual evidence. We eventually figured out it was more than just rumours, but we never knew the precise details.”
Opposition politicians praised the post-apartheid government for resisting attempts by the Israeli authorities to prevent the documents from becoming public. David Maynier, the shadow defence minister, speculated that the ANC government had decided it would not be damaged by releasing the documents.
“It did not take me entirely by surprise, because I think it was a pretty open secret there was extensive cooperation between South Africa and Israel. But before now the details were super-secret,” he said.
The South African documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky and published in today’s Guardian, include “top secret” South African minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries as well as direct negotiations in Zurich between Peres and Botha.
The South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong, who attended the meetings, drew up a memo laying out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Israeli missiles – but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
Polakow-Suransky said the minutes record that at the meeting in Zurich on 4 June 1975, Botha asked Peres about obtaining Jericho missiles, codenamed Chalet, with nuclear warheads.
“Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available,” the minutes said. The document then records that: “Minister Peres said that the correct payload was available in three sizes”.
The use of a euphemism, the “correct payload”, reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue. Armstrong’s memorandum makes clear the South Africans were interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
The use of euphemisms in a document that otherwise speaks openly about conventional weapons systems also points to the discussion of nuclear weapons.
In the end, South Africa did not buy nuclear warheads from Israel and eventually developed its own atom bomb.
The Israeli authorities tried to prevent South Africa’s post-apartheid government from declassifying the documents.
Peres’s angry response to the revelations is unusual, because of Israel’s policy of maintaining “ambiguity” about whether it possesses nuclear weapons. The Israeli press quoted anonymous government officials challenging the truth of the documents.
Polakow-Suransky said it is possible Peres made the offer without the approval of Israel’s then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. “Peres has a long history of conducting his own independent foreign policy. During the 1950s as Israel was building its defence relationship with France, Peres went behind the back of many of his superiors in initiating talks with French defence officials. It would not be surprising if he broached the topic in discussions with South Africa’s defence minister without Rabin’s authorisation,” he said.
Polakow-Suransky’s book, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa, is published in the US on Tuesday.
Politician at heart of Israel
Shimon Peres, the man at centre of allegations over nuclear links with apartheid South Africa, has spent decades in government in various cabinet posts, including defence and foreign, as prime minister and now as Israel’s president.
Born in Poland in 1923, he and his family moved to Palestine under the British mandate when he was 11. Many of his relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.
In 1947, he joined the Haganah, the Jewish force fighting for Israeli independence. He was placed in charge of personnel and arms purchases.
He Peres rose quickly through the political world in the years immediately after independence, becoming Ddirector general, at 30, of the defence ministry. In the following years, he played a leading role in building strategic alliances and developing arms deals. One of the most important early on was with France, which played a crucial role in the development of Israel’s nuclear programme. Later, as relations with Paris cooled, he was at the forefront of building links with apartheid South Africa.
Peres was first elected to the Knesset in 1959. He persistently challenged Yitzhak Rabin for the Labour party leadership, only becoming leader in 1977 after Rabin was forced out over his wife’s illegal foreign bank account. He became the unofficial acting prime minister but lost the subsequent general election.
Peres, as foreign minister, won the Nobel peace prize in 1994 with Rabin and Yasser Arafat for the negotiations that produced the Oslo accords.
After Rabin’s assassination in 1995, he became PM and lost the subsequent election. In 2005, he quit Labour to back Ariel Sharon’s new Kadima party. Two years later, the Knesset elected Peres president. Peres married Sonya Gelman in 1945. They have three children.
Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende continues to publish more information about ROJ TV and the PKK. Their most recent report reveals that the PKK is using children-fighters. Pictures taken by former ROJ-TV director, Manouchehr Zonoozi, show youth, the youngest of which is supposedly 14-16, and Zonoozi claims, he saw children in the camps as young as 8-9.
Putting aside the issue of using children as soldiers, Zonoozi makes another very interesting claim. He says that most children in the camps come from Iran or Europe, and don’t have their parents with them.
The youngest get school education, the older ones are trained in using weapons, fighting and Kurdish history, with emphasis on the PKK and the movement’s founder, Abdullah Öcalan.
“In an asylum camp in Iraq, I met a Syrian-origin Kurdish family. They were looking for their daughter, who fled to the PKK. But the PKK didn’t want to give her back to the family. I was really upset at that,” says Manouchehr Zonoozi.
May 25 (Bloomberg) — Iranian filmmaker and opposition supporter Jafar Panahi, who was invited to be a juror at the Cannes film festival, will be freed on bail late today, weeks after directors including Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese called for his release.
A bail equivalent to $200,000 was posted, Panahi’s wife, Tahereh Saeedi, told the Iranian Labour News Agency today. “Based on what we are told, he will be released tonight between 7 and 11 p.m.” Iran time.
“It has been agreed for him to be released on bail and the legal process and the judicial steps are being followed,” Prosecutor General Abbas Jafari-Dolatabadi was quoted as saying yesterday by the state-run Iranian Students News Agency. He didn’t say when the release or further court proceedings in the case would take place.
Panahi, a backer of the movement that grew out of protests against last year’s disputed re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was detained on March 2. Charges against him include making a movie without a permit and wearing a green scarf, a symbol of the opposition, at a film festival abroad, his wife said last month.
Saeedi, who was detained with Panahi and later released, has said he was planning to direct a film about the problems of a family of four amid the political unrest prompted by Ahmadinejad’s victory in the June 12 vote.
Spielberg, Coppola and Scorsese were among directors who signed a petition last month urging the Iranian government to release Panahi, saying filmmakers in Iran “should be celebrated, not censored, repressed and imprisoned.”
‘Attack on Art’
Fellow Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, whose film “Certified Copy” premiered at the Cannes film festival, also made an appeal at the event last week for Panahi’s release, the U.K.’s Guardian reported.
“When a filmmaker is imprisoned, it is an attack on art as a whole,” Kiarostami told reporters, according to the newspaper. “We need explanations. I don’t understand how a film can be a crime, particularly when that film has not been made.”
French actress Juliette Binoche, who starred in Kiarostami’s film and won the best actress award for the role at Cannes, wept when she heard that Panahi started a hunger strike on May 16, Agence France-Presse reported. Binoche brandished a sign with the name of Panahi as she faced the audience after receiving her award, AFP said on May 23.
Several of Panahi’s films have been banned in Iran, including “Crimson Gold,” which looks at the privileges of Iran’s upper class through the eyes of a pizza-delivery man and won the Prix Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2003. Also banned is “The Circle,” which portrays the harsh aspects of life for several women in the Islamic nation. It won the Golden Lion award at the 2000 Venice film festival.
More recently, Panahi won the second-highest award at the 2006 Berlin film festival with “Offside,” a comic tale about a government ban on women and girls attending soccer games.
–Editors: Philip Sanders, Heather Langan
To contact the reporter on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Beirut at [email protected].
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg at [email protected].
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called for young people to take an active role in the world of politics in a remarking speech at Boğaziçi University on Friday.
“As young people living in Turkey you should aim beyond here for broader security and prosperity in the world,” said Ban.
Referring to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to Greece last week and Turkey’ efforts to come to an agreement with Iran on the exchange of enriched uranium, Ban said Turkey has a dynamic diplomacy and a solid economy in times of crisis.
He said Turkey’s credibility is increasing more and added that Turkey has three ways to go further in the international arena. First is by increasing its active contribution to the issues in its region and the world. “Turkey has learned the right to speak up, let your voice be heard and clear on the issues of security and peace. You have to become a force of progress in the region,” said Ban.
Secondly, Turkey should do more efforts to give power to women. Thirdly, the alliance of civilizations, an initiative supported by Turkey and many other states, should be an ongoing project. “I feel proud to be part of this process and the United States will join as the hundredth member. Turkey has been second to none in supporting this initiative and as students of this university you have the power to contribute,” said Ban.
As a former diplomat from South Korea, Ban made an emotional speech on Turkey’s deployment of troops to Korea back in the early 1950s. “We are all grateful to your sacrifice; you were one of the first to answer the call from the U.N. back then. Turkish soldiers went to fight for liberty and peace in a place where they didn’t know following their government’s orders. Out of 5,000 Turks who fought, nearly 500 of them died, but in the end they were there celebrating the victory with us,” said Ban, adding that Turks and South Koreans have been friends and brothers since then.
Meanwhile, Ban said the Cyprus issue would definitely be on his agenda on his meeting with Erdoğan on Saturday.
The chief of Australia’s Security and Intelligence Organization, David Irvine, managed to convince the Australian government that Israel had a hand in the passport counterfeit after a clandestine trip to Israel earlier this month to investigate foul play. Upon his return, he claimed that four of the passports used during the assassination had been Australian counterfeits, according to news reports.
