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Tag: Intelligence

  • Ex-MI5 chief admits Iraq was no threat

    Ex-MI5 chief admits Iraq was no threat

    mi5Paddy McGuffin, Home Affairs Reporter

    Iraq posed no threat when Tony Blair led the country into war in 2003, Britain’s former top spy admitted at the weekend.

    Former MI5 boss Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller made the comment in an interview with the Radio Times before the broadcast of a series of BBC lectures this week.

    It is not the first time that the former MI5 chief has spoken out about the conflict.

    In evidence to the Chilcot inquiry in 2010 she said she had warned senior government figures that the war had the potential to increase radicalism at home and abroad.

    The invasion of Iraq “undoubtedly” increased the terrorist threat in Britain, she said.

    In her most recent interview, she said: “Iraq did not present a threat to the UK.

    “The service advised that it [the war] was likely to increase the domestic threat and that it was a distraction from the pursuit of al-Qaida.”

    She added that it was “for others to decide” whether the war was a mistake.

    “Intelligence isn’t complete without the full picture and the full picture is all about doubt. Otherwise, you go the way of George Bush.”

    Stop the War Coalition convener Lindsey German said: “It may well be that, in advance of Chilcot, which is due to publish its findings in the autumn, various people are distancing themselves from the decision to go to war.

    “I’m glad she has said what she has as it is a vindication of the anti-war campaign but the decision to go to war was a failure not just of Blair but the whole Establishment including the security services and Parliament itself.

    “There was no serious attempt by any of them to stop Blair. The only attempt came from the streets.”

    Elsewhere in the interview, Ms Manningham-Buller defended MI5 against suggestions that it could have prevented the July 7 bombings.

    “In intelligence, you can know of someone, without knowing exactly what they are going to do.

    “The next time there is an attack, the same could be true – though I hope it won’t be.”

    Regarding the likelihood of further bombings in Britain in the future, she said: “I assume there will be. This isn’t a ‘war’ you win in a military sense, and you can’t anticipate everything.”

    paddym@peoples-press.com

    www.morningstaronline.co.uk, 28 August 2011

  • CIA Chief in surprise visit to Turkey

    CIA Chief in surprise visit to Turkey

    ANKARA, July 18 (KUNA) — US Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) General David Petraeus, arrived on Monday in Ankara in a surprise visit where he holds talks with Turkish officials on developments in Afghanistan.

    Petraeus, who recently was appointed to the top CIA post, will have several meetings with officials from the Turkish foreign ministry and general command, US Embassy in Turkey said in a statement.

    The statement noted that the purpose of the visit was to inform the Turkish side on the latest developments in Afghanistan, including the reassessment of Turkish involvement with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul.

    Last May, Petraeus handed over his post as the General Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan to US Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen, Petraeus’s successor.

    Petraeus is expected to leave Turkey tomorrow after his talks, the statement added.

    Turkey has committed 1,750 soldiers to ISAF. Their main mission is providing technical and logistic support to ISAF troops. (end) mm.mb KUNA 182019 Jul 11NNNN

    via كونا : CIA Chief in surprise visit to Turkey – الشؤون السياسية – 18/07/2011.

  • Mossad Losing its Reputation of Invincibility

    Mossad Losing its Reputation of Invincibility

    Ben Gurions Scandals1By Richard Walker

    There was a time when the very mention of Mossad, Israel’s premier spy agency, sent shivers through its friends and enemies alike. It had an almost mythical status and its highly trained assassins were the stuff of Hollywood legend. Mossad agents, both men and women, would be parachuted into a country or would arrive on its coastline from a submarine or fishing trawler. Teams providing technical back-up and other logistical support, including vehicles and escape routes, would already be in place.

    Kidon, as the agency’s assassins were known, would use guns, knives, chemical weapons or secret means of assassination, which left few forensic traces. They even knew how to conceal a bomb in a target’s phone and activate it with a phone call.

    Mossad spies also had a legendary status. Some were sleeper agents for decades, living a lie in other communities and waiting for a phone call or coded letter to activate them.

    It has therefore come as a shock to the Israeli public and spy watchers across the globe that Mossad is showing signs it is no longer the invincible agency it was once cracked up to be.

    A former British intelligence officer,     who spoke to AMERICAN FREE PRESS on condition of anonymity, felt Mossad had fallen into the trap of thinking it was so superior to its enemies that it did not need to worry about them. In this officer’s view, it failed to recognize that Israel has fewer friends across the globe and therefore the Mossad’s mistakes, which might have been glossed over in the past, are now more likely to make headlines.

    “Mossad was never going to maintain the level of success it once had because countries it targeted in the past have improved their intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities,” he said. “Mossad has taken on more tasks than it can handle with the assets available to it. There is a finite limit to the number of jobs any agency can handle because training agents for work in the field is a costly, time-consuming job and top-class talent is limited. Few people realize that Israel’s growing dependency on the CIA for running ops in the Middle East is a sign of Mossad’s limitations,” the former intelligence officer explained.

    The assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai in 2010 was an operation the former intel officer singled out as an example of Mossad’s decline. The 11-person hit team that carried out the Dubai killing was caught on camera and the agents’ identities were compromised.

    So, too, was the way they operated, using fake passports and credit cards supplied by private American financial institutions. The operational base used for the hit was located in Europe, not Israel, but even some of the people who ran it are now known to the German authorities.

    The former British spy has this to say about the Dubai hit: “It was a disaster and it did a lot of damage to Mossad. Having those operatives on camera and later on an Interpol wanted list means their training was wasted. They are of no further value in the field. For that to happen was proof, if anybody needed it, that Mossad had become sloppy and overconfident.”

    There is now evidence Mossad has recently been dealt an even bigger blow by the exposure of 10 of its spies in Iran, where it has been busy running a dirty war with the direct assistance of the CIA and U.S. Special Operations agencies. One element of this undercover war has been the targeted assassinations and abductions of Iranian scientists and other Iranian nuclear experts.

    Some of the Mossad-CIA operatives used in Iran were trained at a joint Mossad-CIA facility within an Israeli base close to Herzliya on the Mediterranean Sea coastline. The base is classified within CIA files as one
    of a number of U.S. military-intelligence sites in Israel.

    The sites have numbers from 51 through 56. Most of the sites contain military and technical equipment to be used in the event of a war with Iran but the one at Herzliya is also reserved for managing combined CIA Mossad operations aimed at Iran.

    The Mossad and the CIA appear to have underestimated their Iranian counterparts because it took just one year for Iran’s internal security apparatus to unmask the spy network, which Iran says was involved in killing one of its scientists. Among the spies seized was a young man who admitted he was trained by the Mossad in electronic surveillance and counter surveillance, as well as in techniques for attaching bombs to cars.

    Israel did not deny Iran’s claims about the spy network. In the past year, Iranian intelligence has also captured and executed leaders and senior fighters of the Jundallah terror network, which has been used by America and Israel against Iran. [See AFP issue 1/2, 2011 for more.—Ed.]

    Much to the displeasure of Mossad and the CIA, Pakistan has begun handing over Jundallah fighters it has captured to the Iranian military, as well.

    Richard Walker is the pen name of a former N.Y. news producer.


  • Sudan Division: Mossad Wrote the Script

    Sudan Division: Mossad Wrote the Script

    PH FactotIsraelis can tell the whole story of Sudan’s division – they wrote the script and trained the actors

    By Fahmi Howeidi

    Now that we have been unable to defend the unity of Sudan, it might benefit us to understand what has happened there. Perhaps that will alert us to the fact that secession of the south is not the end, but is one of a series of splits intended to dismantle the Arab world surrounding Egypt.

    From very early on, Zionists realized that minorities in the Arab world represent a natural ally to their state of Israel and so they planned to build bridges with them. Zionist representatives communicated with the Kurds in Iraq, the people in southern Sudan, the Maronites in Lebanon, Kurds in Syria, and the Copts in Egypt; Zionism adopted the principle of divide and conquer, and saw that the most effective way to fragment the Arab world was to create secessionist movements within it. In doing so, it sought the redistribution of power in the region in such a manner to make a group of marginal countries lacking unity and sovereignty, all the easier for Israel, in cooperation with non-Arab countries to control them one after the other later. All the rebel movements triggered by ethnic and sectarian groups in the Arab world have drawn support and advocacy from Israel, which has adopted these separatist movements, as witnessed by the Kurds in Iraq and the rebel movement in southern Sudan.

    This situation helps us to understand Israel’s strategy towards the Arab world, which is designed to encourage minorities to express themselves so that they may eventually seize self-determination and independence from the state. What helps in all of this is that the Arab world, contrary to what the Arabs claim, does not consist of one cultural and civilized unity – the mythical “Arab nation”   but it is a diverse mix of cultures, religions, ethnicities and multilingualism. Israel has been used to  portraying the region as a mosaic that includes in its midst a complex network of multi-linguistic, religious, nationalism forms between Arabs, Persians, Turks, Armenians, Israelis themselves, Kurds, Baha’is, Druze, Jews, Protestants, Alawites, Sabians, Shiites, Sunnis, Maronites, Circassians, Turkomans, Assyrians and so on.

    According to Israel’s view, when a land or part of a land has minority groups within it but no collective history, the real history is the history of each minority. This has the purpose of achieving two main objectives:

    First, it rejects the concept of Arab nationalism and the call for Arab unity; Arab nationalism in the Israeli perception is an idea shrouded in mystery, if not irrelevant. Arab unity is a myth because the Arabs pay lip service to one nation, but live within mutually incompatible states. It is true that most are united by language and religion, but that is also the case with people across the English- or Spanish-speaking worlds, but that does not make them one nation.

    Second, this is used to justify the legitimacy of Israel’s presence in the region as just one more to add to the mix of nationalities, peoples and languages, for which the perception of unity is an illusion. The logical conclusion of this train of thought is that each group of people (whether calling themselves a nation or not) has its own state; thus does Israel gains its legitimacy as one of many nation-states in the Middle East.

    The preceding thesis is taken from a text book: “Israel and the South Sudan Liberation Movement”, published in 2003 by the Dayan Centre for Research on the Middle East and Africa. The author is retired head of Mossad Moshe Faraji. I have referred to him on more than one occasion. He is worth looking at again as the crop sown by Israel and its allies since the 1950s is beginning to bear fruit.

    Another senior Israeli, former Minister of Internal Security Avi Dichter, referred to Sudan in his 2008 lecture delivered to the Institute for Zionist National Security Studies. “There have been Israeli estimates since Sudan’s independence in the mid-fifties that this country, although far from us, should not be allowed to become a force added to the power of the Arab world because if its resources continue under stable conditions, it will make it a power to be reckoned with.” Hence, Israel’s attention has been directed towards Sudan, hoping to exploit the situation.

    Sudan provides strategic depth to Egypt. This was evident post-1967 when Sudan and Libya provided training facilities for the Egyptian air force and army; Sudanese forces were sent to the Suez Canal zone during the war of attrition waged by Egypt between 1968 and 1970. For these two reasons, Dichter added, Israel had to work on weakening Sudan and prevent it from becoming a strong, unified state. This strategic perspective is necessary, he said, for Israeli’s national security. It is worth noting that Dichter’s lecture took place almost thirty years after the peace agreement signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

    When asked about the future of southern Sudan, Dichter replied: “There are international forces led by the United States that are determined to intervene in Sudan so that the South will become independent, and the same for the Darfur region, like the independence of Kosovo. The situation in southern Sudan is not unlike that in Darfur and Kosovo, in that the two regions aspire to independence and acquire the right to self-determination after their citizens fought for that.”

    Israeli support for the rebels in southern Sudan has gone through five stages notes Colonel Faraji:

    Phase 1 started in the fifties. For nearly a decade, Israel focused on providing humanitarian aid (medicines, food and doctors) and was keen to provide services to refugees who were fleeing to Ethiopia. The first attempts to invest in the tribal differences in southern Sudan itself began in order to intensify the conflict and encourage the South to secede from the Arab north. Israeli intelligence officers stationed in Uganda opened channels of communication with the leaders of the southern tribes to study the demographic map of the area.

    Phase 2 began in the sixties with Israel providing military training in special centres established in Ethiopia. At this stage, the Israeli government became convinced that keeping Khartoum busy with internal wars was sufficient to make sure that it would be unable to provide any support for Egypt’s struggle with the Zionist state.

    Proselytizing organizations active in the south encouraged Israel to send members of its intelligence services under the cover of humanitarian aid; the prime goal was to train influential people to sustain the tension in the region. At this stage, Israel also expanded its support to the rebels by providing weapons through Ugandan territory; the first of such deals was in 1962, with mainly Russian armaments which had been captured by Israel when it took part in the aggressive Suez campaign in 1956. Fighters were trained in southern Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya before being pushed over the border to fight inside Sudan.

    Phase 3 extended from the mid-sixties into the seventies, when the flow of arms to Southern Sudan was facilitated by an Israeli arms dealer called Gabi Shafine, who was working for Israeli intelligence. Shipments of Russian weapons won by Israel in 1967 were dropped by Israeli cargo planes. Israel also established a school for infantry officers to train the cadres necessary to lead the rebel factions. Israeli elements were involved in the fighting to lend their expertise to the South. At this stage groups were taken to Israel to receive military training. At the beginning of the seventies another channel for the delivery of Israeli support to South Sudan through Uganda was opened officially.

    When it seemed that the rebel movement was about to collapse in 1969, Israel made a tremendous effort to urge the rebels to continue their fight, and used every method available to them to persuade southerners that they were engaged in a national struggle between Arab-Muslims in the north who were dominating a Black-African-Christian-Animist south.

    Phase 4 from the late seventies through the eighties saw the African continent witness several major diversions (e.g. drought in Ethiopia) which did not stop Israel from supporting the rebels; indeed, support increased after Ethiopia became a regular conduit for the delivery of weapons to the South. John Garang emerged at this stage as a leader supported by Israel; he was received in Tel Aviv and given money and weapons. Israel was keen to train his men in various martial arts; ten pilots were trained to use light fighter aircraft.

    Phase 5 started in late 1990 with expanding Israeli support; shipments reached the south through Kenya and Ethiopia. Israel provided the south with heavy anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft guns. At the beginning of 1993, the coordination between Israel and the SPLA (the southern army) included funding, training, armament, information and supervision by Israeli technicians of military operations.

    It is clear that Israel has been eyeing southern Sudan for more than half a century.

    A worthy observation is that the insurgency in the south began in 1955, one year before the Declaration of Independence of the state of Sudan. This illustrates that the oft-cited reason for southern secession – the implementation of Shari’a Law by the government of Al-Turabi in 1989 – is merely an excuse; this is a struggle that has gone on long before such proposals were even mooted.

    While Israel was supporting the southern rebels with arms, Western countries were continuing their diplomatic efforts to arrange the division of Sudan through a referendum. The peace accord signed between the Khartoum government and the rebels was reached with British, American and Norwegian sponsorship. For more than fifty years, the people of Sudan have faced armed insurrection on one side and diplomatic pressure and dirty tricks on the other. If just a quarter of such an effort had been applied on the situation in Palestine, the problem would have been resolved decades ago. Self-determination appears to be acceptable, indeed highly desirable, if it will weaken a predominantly Arab state, but off the agenda when it involves the Palestinians obtaining their rights against the Zionist state of Israel.

    They have planned for this division of Sudan and look set to get what they wanted. As for the Arabs, they have stood and watched as mere spectators. I hope that this is not a precursor for further disappointments to come.

    Source: Al-Khaleej Times

    www.shoah.org.uk, 16 January 2011

  • In State of the Union, Obama to call for ‘competitiveness’

    In State of the Union, Obama to call for ‘competitiveness’

    24 January 2011

    By Perry Bacon Jr.Washington Post Staff Writer

    President Obama will call for a broad “competitiveness” initiative in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, proposing a series of steps the United States should take to retain its standing as the world’s largest and most influential economy.

    White House officials say the speech will include a number of ideas, from increasing the number of U.S. exports to improving the American education system.

    In speeches over the last two months, the president has previewed this competitiveness theme–warning in a December address in North Carolina, for example, that without greater innovation, the U.S.could fall behind other countries, as it did briefly in the 1950s when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the earth.

    In a speech Friday at General Electric plant in upstate New York, Obama said that the “new mission” of his administration’s policies would be to “do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root and folks can find good jobs and America is leading the global competition that will determine our success in the 21st century.”

    The competitiveness idea is supposed to link the administration’s proposals for increasing spending on education and other long-time Democratic priorities with its agenda to create more jobs as America recovers from the recession.

    “My principal focus . . . is going to be making sure that we are competitive, that we are growing, and we are creating jobs,” Obama said in a preview video of the speech sent to supporters Saturday.

    But officials have bumped up against multiple problems as they have worked on the economic components of the address, which comes weeks before the White House will release the budget for the next fiscal year.

    Administration officials said they do not believe another major stimulus bill is possible with Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, leaving them struggling to find another mechanism to create jobs. At the same time, many ideas Republicans are willing to embrace – such as a reduction in the payroll tax – have already been included in the December tax deal.

    Along with the economic focus, Democratic officials briefed on the speech said, Obama will challenge members of both parties to prove wrong the widely-held perception that the next two years will be full of political gridlock.

    With members of both parties seated together in the gallery for the first time, the appeal will dovetail with Obama’s new-found emphasis on reaching out to Republicans and working more closely with the business community, which opposed much of his agenda during his first two years in office.

    In discussing foreign policy, Obama is expected to underscore the end-of-year deadline for all U.S. troops to leave Iraq. Regarding Afghanistan, Obama will highlight the July deadline he has set for the start of troop withdrawals, a process scheduled to unfold through 2014 at a pace to be determined by conditions on the ground.

    But on other subjects, what exactly the president will say remains unclear.

    Gun-control groups are pushing for Obama to embrace stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting in Tucson. Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said he wants Obama to support specific legislation, but would be satisfied if the president instead appointed a commission to look at the causes of gun violence.

    “A national tragedy took place, there should be a response,” Helmke said. He added of the Tucson shooting, “no laws were broken until [the gunman] starting shooting.”

    White House officials have been non-committal on supporting any new legislation, and have not said if Obama will address gun control in his speech.

    Liberal groups are wary of Obama including in the speech the conclusions of the bi-partisan deficit commission, which released a report in December that proposed controversial ideas such as a gradual increase in the retirement age.

    The president will emphasize the importance of deficit reduction in the speech, but it’s not clear if he will offer specific proposals.

    “The White House has prematurely turned to deficit reduction,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal activist group. “Voters are clear, they care about the deficit, but their first priority is jobs and the economy.”

    The speech is some ways less important than was anticipated a few months ago, because the administration started recalibrating its domestic agenda and approach immediately after the November elections.

    “I think the president has gone to school on lessons learned,” said Kenneth Duberstein, former chief of staff to President Reagan, one of many Washington veterans Obama consulted after his party’s election defeat in November. “One would hope he continues to down the path that began in the lame-duck session as far reaching out.”

    And while the speech will loom large on prime-time television Tuesday night, and in the media stratosphere for many hours afterward, experts cautioned that its shelf life will most likely be relatively short.

    “Who remembers them six weeks later, let alone a year or two,” said Robert Dallek, a presidential historian. “How many State of the Union addresses do people remember? They don’t resonate that way.”

  • Patrick Kennedy: Blame Palin, Tea Partyers

    Patrick Kennedy: Blame Palin, Tea Partyers

    sarah palinn

    Tuesday, 11 Jan 2011 05:53 PM

    By David A. Patten

    Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy, whose uncles John and Robert Kennedy both fell to assassins’ bullets, says there is a direct connection between Sarah Palin and the shooting rampage in Arizona that killed six people and wounded 14 others, including critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

    Kennedy indicated that he also blames the tea parties for the tragedy.

    In an interview published on Politico Tuesday, Kennedy states: “When Sarah Palin puts targets on people’s districts? Or you have 10,000 signs on the mall during the healthcare battle saying ‘Bury Obamacare with Kennedy’? When the vitriol and the rhetoric is so violent, we have to connect consequences to that.”

    Kennedy, the son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, has represented Rhode Island since 1995. He did not run for re-election and left the House of Representatives this month when the new Congress was sworn in.

    Several pundits associated with progressive politics — Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, James Fallows of The Atlantic, Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast, and Juan Williams of Fox News — have denounced left-wing aspersions blaming conservatives for the acts of a deranged gunman.

    There is no evidence that alleged shooter Jared Loughner ever mentioned Palin, or any other prominent conservative, in his writings and videos. He did profess an interest in the Communist Manifesto and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, however. In fact, there is evidence his fixation on Giffords dates to 2007, which predates the rise of both Palin and the grass-roots conservative movement.

    Brent Bozell of the conservative Media Research Center watchdog organization told Newsmax on Monday that liberals seek nothing less than the “criminalization of conservative thought.”

    Kennedy, who has endured a long struggle with chemical dependency, recently founded a nonprofit, “The Next Frontier.” He says it will act as a clearinghouse for scientific information on a variety of brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

    In the Politico interview, an animated Kennedy appeared to come to Loughner’s defense, saying he and others had been unfairly stigmatized.
    “When I hear terms about the alleged shooter in this case, pejorative terms like psycho, lunatic, or they say ‘He’s crazy.’ These are terms we use to describe someone’s mental health?

    “This is a rare opportunity to take all the stigma and stereotyping,” Kennedy said, “and take the terms like crazy and psycho, that are being bandied about by reputable people who should know better, and use this as an opportunity to have some enlightened debate about better public policy that can help respond to the real need amongst many families whose family members are part of that very small subset of individuals who suffer from violent, paranoid schizophrenia.”

    Although authorities have questioned Loughner’s mental function, no formal medical diagnosis of schizophrenia has been made.

    Kennedy told Politico that, during the healthcare debate, he saw a sign outside Congress that read: “Bury Obamacare With Kennedy,” a reference to his father.

    He later told The Providence Journal: “My family’s seen it up close too much with assassinations and violence in political life. It’s a terrible thing when people think that in order to get their point across they have to go to the edge of violent rhetoric and attack people personally.”

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