The Guardian: Different donors in Saudi Arabia were channelling money to a powerful Lebanese politician in Istanbul.
It was past midnight in Aleppo when Captain Abu Mohamed and Captain Abu Hussein received a phone call informing them the ammunition from Turkey had arrived. Abu Mohamed, a portly 28-year-old member of Aleppo military council, perched unsteadily on a plastic chair in a garage on the edge of the Salah al-Din neighbourhood.
Abu Mohamed described where the weapons had come from. Different donors in Saudi Arabia were channelling money to a powerful Lebanese politician in Istanbul, he said. He in turn co-ordinated with the Turks – “everything happens in co-ordination with Turkish intelligence” – to arrange delivery through the military council of Aleppo.
via Syrian TV – The Guardian: Different donors in Saudi Arabia were channelling money to a powerful Lebanese politician in Istanbul..
Israel fears the highly sensitive technology may be passed on to a hostile third party.
15 May 11 09:49, Globes’ correspondent
Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. (IAI) (TASE: ARSP.B1) and Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE:ESLT) unit El-Op Ltd. are delivering highly sensitive intelligence systems to the Turkish Air Force, Israeli daily newspaper “Maariv” reported today.
The systems will be delivered in the next few weeks to Turkey, despite the deterioration in relations between Israel and Turkey, because the contract was signed before the diplomatic crisis between the two countries following the flotilla to Gaza last year.
Israel reportedly fears that Turkey may pass on the technology behind the system to a third party, possibly a hostile country. The system can scan areas of dozens of square kilometers from a long distance even during difficult weather conditions and at night.
The contract is worth about $100 million to the Israeli companies.
Published by Globes, Israel business news – www.globes-online.com – on May 15, 2011
JEFF GATES : WIKILEAKS AND ESPIONAGE – ISRAELI STYLE
To whom should this release be attributed? Who benefitted?
WikiLeaks Disinformation Campaign
The U.S. is under attack by an enemy within. Skilled at game theory warfare, this foe targets the most sensitive realm of U.S. national security: its relations with other nations.
The online publication of a quarter-million documents chronicling diplomatic exchanges is notable both for what’s omitted and what’s included. To determine whether this latest release was a form of espionage, analysts need only examine how this treasure trove of trivia was peppered with documents certain to damage U.S. relations.
To identify its origins, analysts must answer a key question:
Cui Bono? To whose benefit?
One clue: the release of degrading and insulting language about Turkish leaders soon after they insisted in late October that the U.S. no longer share Turkish intelligence with Tel Aviv.
That request from a valued ally marks a critical step in isolating Israel by requiring that the U.S. shut down Israeli operations inside its 16 intelligence agencies, the White House and the Intelligence Committees in both the House and Senate. Tel Aviv was not pleased.
Turks remain outraged at the lack of accountability for the execution-style killing by Israel Defense Forces of nine Turkish citizens aboard a humanitarian ship that was boarded in international waters while sailing to Gaza with provisions to relieve an Israeli siege.
Was this release a tit-for-tat, Tel Aviv style? Is WikiLeaks
the visible face of an Israeli disinformation campaign? Whose
interests were served by disrupting U.S.-Turkish relations?
Intent is Determinative
A leak on this scale is only a leak if it is a random data dump. If items were purposely included or excluded based on their intended effect, it’s an intelligence operation. Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski points out how this release is “seeded” with information that is “surprisingly pointed.”
Take for example the cables indicating that Chinese leaders are inclined to cooperate with the U.S. in reunifying North and South Korea under the leadership of the south. That information was guaranteed to embarrass China’s leaders, damage U.S. relations with Beijing and make reunification more difficult.
From a game theory perspective, that damaging result was fully
foreseeable. With the U.S. economy teetering on a meltdown, the
creation of a rift with America’s largest trading partner was
also an assault on the economic strength required for the U.S.
to sustain a viable defense.
Similarly, the pointed references to Arab leaders were destined
to weaken their political credibility at home while complicating
relations abroad. By exposing Arab displeasure with Iran, this
operation also sharpened the divide between Sunni and Shiite
Muslims, a source of ongoing tensions and a key barrier to
forming a viable government in Iraq.
The effect was certain to complicate U.S. disengagement and raise America’s costs in both blood and treasure.
The cables involving Saudi leaders were released soon after Washington agreed to allow Riyadh to purchase $60 billion in U.S. aircraft and armaments over a multi-year period. Tel Aviv was not pleased.
By targeting the credibility of both Saudi Arabia and the U.S., this operation targeted the two nations pressing hardest for an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
Transparency is the Biggest Threat
Has Tel Aviv panicked? After more than six decades of nonstop provocations while routinely portraying itself as the perennial victim, has Israel’s storyline lost traction?
Zionism faces an existential threat though not from Iran or those Tel Aviv portrays as “Islamo-fascists.” The threat lurks in the fast-emerging transparency that confirms pro-Israelis as the source of the intelligence that took the U.S. to war on false premises.
A critical mass of disinformation persuaded the U.S. to wage war in pursuit of an agenda long sought by Zionist extremists.
Steve Rosen, a former employee of the Israel lobby, has promised to testify on the lobby’s routine receipt of classified U.S. intelligence. Is this massive release of classified materials meant to make the lobby’s intelligence-gathering operation appear routine?
What’s included in the WikiLeaks release is pointed. What’s excluded is even more so: the lack of facts chronicling the role that Israel has long played in undermining U.S. interests.
Israel has escaped accountability for more than six decades. Was the WikiLeaks release “seeded” to discredit the U.S. at this time-critical juncture? The evidence suggests that what we see is not a data dump but a disinformation operation.
Last week, Israeli resistance to a peace plan was front-page news. This week the news is all about war with Iran. The Jerusalem Post immediately crowed that WikiLeaks “vindicated Israel” by citing Arab leaders’ concerns about Iran.
These latest releases even enabled Tel Aviv to suggest that if
U.S. intelligence was flawed on a nuclear-armed North Korea,
how can anyone trust America to contain a nuclear Iran?
To whom should this release be attributed? Who benefitted?
Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association – How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War.
2010 Copyright – Jeff Gates
Comments
Danton says:
December 2, 2010 at 12:22 pm
The following quote is from today’s (Dec. 2) online Haaretz:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday defended his disclosure of classified U.S. documents by singling out Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as an example of a world leader who believes the publications will aid global diplomacy.
What stronger indication does one need of the Israeli origins of WikiLeaks?
[…]
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/12/02/jeff-gates-wikileaks-and-espionage-–-israeli-style/, December 2, 2010
Hakan Fidan was chosen to lead Turkey's National Intelligence Organization.
Turkish newspaper reports agencies stopped exchanging intelligence and conducting joint operations following Turkish government decision.
By Zvi Bar’el and Barak Ravid
Amid the strained relations between Ankara and Jerusalem, Turkish intelligence has severed its working relations with the Mossad, the Turkish newspaper Sabah reported on Monday.
The report stated that the two agencies, which once enjoyed tight cooperation, had stopped exchanging intelligence and conducting joint operations following a Turkish government decision on the matter.
The report’s credibility remains unclear, but high-ranking Israeli officials privy to the matter neither confirmed nor denied it on Monday, and the prime minister’s bureau declined to comment.
In June, Amir Oren reported in Haaretz that Israeli security officials were deeply concerned by the appointment of Hakan Fidan to lead Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization. Fidan, a close associate of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is viewed as a proponent of closer relations between Turkey and Iran.
Meanwhile, Turkey has conditioned its consent to stationing a NATO missile-defense system on its territory on a guarantee that no information collected by the system be transferred to Israel.
Since the American-sponsored plan’s original purpose was to defend NATO countries against the possibility of an Iranian attack, this means Turkey is essentially demanding that Israel not be given vital information about Iranian missiles.
The previous U.S. administration had planned to station the system in eastern Europe. But due to fierce opposition from Russia, the Obama administration decided to relocate and scale back the system, which will now focus mainly on deterrence and on monitoring Iran’s missile program.
Turkey was initially reluctant to host the system at all, lest it damage Ankara’s relationship with Tehran. But since it is a NATO member, and since it faces growing criticism in the United States for its seeming turn away from the West, it said it would agree under certain conditions.
One was that the system officially be designated as aimed not against threats from Iran (or from Syria or Russia ), but against missile threats to Turkey and Europe in general. Another was direct Turkish access to any information gathered by the system. A third was full Turkish participation in any and all decisions stemming from information gathered by the system – which would enable it to work against any NATO move to attack Iran. And the fourth was that information gathered by the system not be given to any non-NATO member, and especially not to Israel.
Turkish sources said Washington has agreed to the demand that Iran not be designated as one of the system’s targets. They said it has also agreed that no information from the system will be shared with Israel, on the grounds that Israel has its own advanced missile-detection systems for tracking Iranian threats.
Washington, they noted, has little choice but to agree, since Turkey’s opposition would kill the plan: Aside from the fact that Washington needs Ankara’s consent to put the system on Turkish soil, the decision to establish the system requires unanimous consent by all NATO members. Moreover, Washington is under severe time pressure, as it hopes to get the project approved at the upcoming NATO summit on November 19.
