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"Ain't Gonna Study War No More"

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Right-To-Life Party, Christian, Anti-War, Pro-Life, Bible Fundamentalist, Egalitarian, Libertarian Left

Sunday, August 29, 2004

FBI Probes Department of Defense Office

The FBI has intensified its investigation of senior members of what was formerly known as the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans on suspicion that one of them passed highly classified U.S. military information to the government of Israel, according to federal law enforcement officials.

In some cases, colleagues, former associates and members of other government agencies have been interviewed as many as four times by teams of FBI agents, FBI officials told United Press International.

Two of the people interviewed are Bill Luti, former chief of OSP, and Harold Rhode of the Near East/South Asia office, according to participants in the investigation.

The OSP, an intelligence unit, was set up by the No. 3 man in the Pentagon, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, according to retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who was a staffer in the office from June 2002 through March 2003.

Luti, a former Navy captain, switched to the Pentagon from Vice President Richard Cheney's staff, according to a congressional investigative memo.

According to other congressional memos, Luti was made deputy undersecretary and reported directly to Feith.

Luti also presided over the NESA office that worked closely with OSP "with sometimes an interchangeable staff," according to one congressional memo described the OSP "as a loose group of acolytes and hired hands" for Cheney, and (Cheney's chief of staff) I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Feith -- all "performing a mixture of intelligence, planning and other unspecified operational duties in support of preordained policy."

According to Kwiatkowski, Luti was a "name-dropper, who often referred to deadlines and assignments coming from 'Scooter.'"

Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col Chris Conway, told UPI that neither Luti nor Rhode had been interviewed or polygraphed by the FBI nor had their bosses alerted them that they were the subjects of an investigation.

A federal law enforcement official was not surprised. He said, "Any target of an investigation is the last person we would talk to. The fact that subjects haven't been approached is part of normal investigative procedure."

Rhode, another prominent official of the NESA office, also works for the Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon officials said.

According to one federal law enforcement official, Rhode and Luti and other OSP officials have been frequently mentioned in FBI interviews, "chiefly the nature and extent of his contacts with Israel," according to federal law enforcement officials.

A Pentagon spokesman said Rhode has been working for Net Assessment "for the last 10 years."

A former very senior CIA official told United Press International that Rhode recently had his security clearances lifted.

In an e-mail to UPI, Rhode denied this. "I have never had my security clearances revoked or canceled."

At least three former CIA officials told UPI that in 1998 Rhode had his clearances suspended, based on allegations he had given classified information to Israel.

In the same e-mail, Rhode denied this as well, adding: "Nor have I been informed that I am under any type of investigation."

Two former senior U.S. intelligence officials also stated that Rhode is on administrative leave.

However, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Conway said answering the question about whether or not Rhode is on administrative leave would violate the privacy act and therefore had no comment.

The NESA/OSP office was located on the fourth floor of the Pentagon, D ring, 7th corridor, according to Kwiatkowski, the former staffer.

According to one former senior U.S. intelligence official who maintained excellent contacts with serving U.S. intelligence officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, "Rhode practically lived out of (Ahmad) Chalabi's office."

This same source quoted the intelligence official with the CPA as saying, "Rhode was observed by CIA operatives as being constantly on his cell phone to Israel," and that the information that the intelligence officials overheard him passing to Israel was "mind-boggling," this source said.

It dealt with U.S. plans, military deployments, political projects, discussion of Iraq assets, and a host of other sensitive topics, the former senior U.S. intelligence official said.

Other members of OSP are also under scrutiny, but federal law enforcement officials declined to confirm additional names furnished them by UPI. Pentagon spokesman Conway said, "We have no knowledge of any probe of particular OSP members."

Rhode is a close member of an inner circle of senior Bush officials who in the past have had skirmishes with the FBI over allegations that they provided classified information to Israel, several serving and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

FBI spokesman, Bill Carter said, "It has been our long-standing policy not to comment on matters of this type or to confirm or deny the existence of any investigation."

A great many examples of this was substantiated by Stephen Green, a highly respected author of two books on U.S.-Israeli relations, who, in a February article in Counterpunch, noted that the Pentagon finally downgraded Ledeen's security clearances from Top Secret-SCI to Secret in the mid-1980s, after an earlier boss, Noel Koch, the Principal Assistant Secretary for International Security Affairs, had urged the FBI to begin a probe of Ledeen, then a consultant on terrorism, for passing classified materials to a foreign country, believed to be Israel. (Green notes that Ledeen "was carried in Agency files as an agent of influence of a foreign government: Israel," a fact he confirmed for UPI in an interview.

Former agency officials said they knew this to be accurate.

In 2001, Ledeen was hired by Feith to work on contract for the Office of Special Plans, which involved the handling of sensitive materials, Green said, a fact confirmed last week to UPI by congressional investigators.

Yet according to Green, in March 1983, Feith, then a Middle East analyst on the National Security Council, was fired by Judge William Clark, who had replaced Richard Allen as national security adviser, because Feith "had been the object of an inquiry into whether he had provided classified material to an official of the Israeli Embassy in Washington" and that the FBI "had opened an inquiry."

Former Counterterrorism Chief Vince Cannistraro confirmed that Feith was fired from the NSC for leaking classified data to Israel.

In 1982, Feith went to work for Pentagon official Richard Perle, according to Green and confirmed by U.S. intelligence sources.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who an administration official described as having played a "large role in getting Feith" his current job, was working for the Arms Control and Disarmament agency in 1978 and was the subject of an investigation that alleged he had provided "a classified document on the proposed sale of U.S. weapons to an Arab government to an Israeli government official" via "an AIPAC intermediary," according to Green. The probe was eventually dropped.

In 1981, Wolfowitz, who was working as head of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, hired Ledeen as a Special Advisor, Green said.


Richard Sale
UPI Intelligence Correspondent
copyright 2004 united press international

In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay

While American troops have been battling Islamic militants to an uncertain outcome in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, events in two Sunni Muslim cities that stand astride the crucial western approaches to Baghdad have moved significantly against American plans to build a secular democracy in Iraq.

Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts who penetrate militant ranks. Even bombing raids appear to strengthen the fundamentalists, who blame the Americans for scores of civilian deaths.

American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib.

In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause.

The national guard commander and the governor were both forced into humiliating confessions, denouncing themselves as "traitors" on videotapes that sell in the Falluja marketplace for 50 cents. The tapes show masked men ending the guard commander's halting monologue, toppling him to the ground, and sawing off his head, to the accompaniment of recorded Koranic chants ordaining death for those who "make war upon Allah." The governor is shown with a photograph of himself with an American officer, sobbing as he repents working with the "infidel Americans," then being rewarded with a weeping reunion with his sons.

In another taped sequence available in the Falluja market, a mustached man identifying himself as an Egyptian is shown kneeling in a flowered shirt, confessing that he "worked as a spy for the Americans," planting electronic "chips" used for setting targets in American bombing raids. The man says he was paid $150 for each chip laid, then he, too, is tackled to the ground by masked guards while a third masked man, a burly figure who proclaims himself a dispenser of Islamic justice, pulls a 12-inch knife from a scabbard, grabs the Egyptian by the scalp, and severs his head.

The situation across Anbar represents the latest reversal for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which sought to assert control with a spring offensive in Falluja and Ramadi that incurred some of the heaviest American casualties of the war, and a far heavier toll, in the hundreds, among Falluja's resistance fighters and civilians. The offensive ended, mortifyingly for the marines, in a decision to pull back from both cities and entrust American hopes to the former Baathists.

The American rationale was that military victory would come only by flattening the two cities, and that the better course lay in handing important government positions to former loyalists of the ousted government, who would work, over time, to wrest control from the Islamic militants who had emerged from the shadows to build strongholds there. The culmination of that approach came with the recruitment of the so-called Falluja Brigade, led by a former Army general under Mr. Hussein, and composed of a motley assembly of former Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, who marched into the city in early May, wearing old Iraqi military uniforms, backed with American-supplied weapons and money.

But the Falluja Brigade is in tatters now, reduced to sharing tented checkpoints on roads into the city with the militants, its headquarters in Falluja abandoned, like the buildings assigned to the national guard. Men assigned to the brigade, and to the two guard battalions, have mostly fled, Iraqis in Falluja say, taking their families with them, and handing their weapons to the militants.

The militants' principal power center is a mosque in Falluja led by an Iraqi cleric, Abdullah al-Janabi, who has instituted a Taliban-like rule in the city, rounding up people suspected of theft and rape and sentencing them to publicly administered lashes, and, in some cases, beheading. But Mr. Janabi appears to have been working in alliance with an Islamic militant group, Unity and Holy War, that American intelligence has identified as the vehicle of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist with links to Al Qaeda whom the Americans have blamed for many of the suicide bombings in Baghdad, which is just 35 miles from Falluja, and in other Iraqi cities.

The videotapes showing the killing of the guard commander, the humiliation of the governor, and the beheading of the Egyptian all display the black-and-yellow flag of the Zarqawi group as a backdrop, and the passages of the Koran chanted as an accompaniment to the killings are drawn from passages of the Muslim holy book that have accompanied some of the videotaped pronouncements by Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Iraqis who have watched the Falluja tapes say the Egyptian's executioner speaks in a cultured Arabic that is foreign, possibly Jordanian or Palestinian.

A Severe Blow in Falluja

Perhaps the harshest blow to the American position in Falluja came with the Aug. 13 execution of the national guard commander, Suleiman Mar'awi, a former officer in Mr. Hussein's army with family roots in Falluja. In the tape of his killing, he is seen in his camouflaged national guard uniform, with an Iraqi flag at his shoulder, confessing to his leadership of a plot to stage an uprising in the city on Aug. 20 that was to have been coordinated with an American offensive. For that purpose, he says, he recruited defectors among the militants' ranks and met frequently with Marine commanders outside the city to settle details of the attack.

American commanders in Baghdad acknowledged ruefully that Mr. Mar'awi had been killed, but they denied that there was any plan for an offensive. Still, Marine commanders at Camp Falluja, a sprawling base less than five miles east of the city, have been telling reporters for weeks that the city has become little more than a terrorist camp, providing a haven for Iraqi militants and for scores of non-Iraqi Arabs, many of them with ties to Al Qaeda, who have homed in on Falluja as the ideal base to conduct a holy war against the United States. Eventually, the Marine officers have said, American hopes of creating stability in Iraq will necessitate a new attack on the city, this time one that will not be halted before it can succeed.

Some of those officers have also acknowledged that Iraqi "scouts" working for the Americans, some disguised as militants, others working for the national guard and police, have been a source of intelligence on militant activities in Falluja, and on the location of bombing targets. The American command says it has carried out many bombing raids since the Marine pullback from the city in May, killing scores of militants. One such raid that was reported this week in a popular Baghdad newspaper, Al-Adala, said that 13 Yemenis had been killed in an air raid in Falluja as they prepared to carry out suicide bombing attacks in Baghdad, and that the Yemeni government was negotiating to bring the bodies home.

Among militants in Falluja, there has been one point of agreement with the Americans - that many of the bombing raids have hit militant safe houses, and with pinpoint accuracy. A clue as to how this has been possible is given in the tapes of the beheadings of Mr. Mar'awi, the national guard commander, and of the Egyptian, a man in his mid-30's who identifies himself on the tape as Muhammad Fawazi. Both men confess to having planted electronic homing "chips" for the Americans. As they speak, the tapes show a man wearing a red-checkered kaffiyeh headdress holding a rectangular device, colored green and encased in clear plastic, about the size of a matchbox.

The tape of Mr. Fawazi's execution breaks from the scene of the Egyptian kneeling in confession to a combat-camera film from a bombing raid on Falluja that has been posted on numerous Internet Web sites in recent weeks. The black-and-white tape, giving the pilot's eye view, shows a district of Falluja on a moonlit night, with the targeting crosshairs fixed on a large, low building across the street from a mosque, whose minaret throws a moon shadow onto the street. The sound of the pilot breathing into his mask can be clearly heard, with an exchange with a controller that speaks for the nonchalance of modern warfare.

"I have numerous individuals on the road, do you want me to take them out?" the pilot asks as the tape shows about 40 men coming out of the building and heading down the street away from the mosque, toward what some Web site accounts said was a firefight between militants and American troops.

After a pause, the controller replies, saying, "Take them out."

The pilot, having fired his weapon, begins the countdown. "Ten seconds," he says.

"Roger," the controller replies. The combat camera swings suddenly, picturing the scene from behind the men below. A huge blast of smoke and flame erupts on the road, enveloping the men, as the pilot cries "Impact!"

The controller then closes the exchange. "Oh dude!" he says, with what appears to be a chuckle.

The execution tape then shifts to scenes of devastation after an air attack on Falluja. It shows a crater, rubble, people piling up belongings, injured being carried into a hospital, and distraught-looking groups of civilians, including children. Shifting back to Mr. Fawazi, it shows him with his hands tied behind his back, looking downcast at the ground, then nervously toward the camera, as the heavyset man towering over him quotes passages from the Koran ordaining death. "He who will abide by the Koran will prosper, he who offends against it will get the sword," he says, his right forefinger pumping in the air, pointing first to heaven, then down to Mr. Fawazi.

"The only reward for those who make war on Allah and on Muhammad, his messenger, and plunge into corruption, will be to be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet severed on alternate sides, or be expelled from the land," the man says. With that, the two gunmen flanking the executioner shout "Allahu akbar!" God is great, drop their Kalashnikovs and tumble Mr. Fawazi face down on the ground. The killer pulls his knife from behind a magazine belt on his chest, grabs Mr. Fawazi by the hair, severs his head, holds it up briefly to the camera, then places it between his rope-tied hands on his back.

Police Chief Presumed Corrupt

On Aug. 21, the Marine headquarters issued a brief news release. The police chief of Anbar, Ja'adan Muhammad Alwan, had been arrested that day in Ramadi on suspicion of "corruption and involvement in criminal activities to include accepting bribes, extortion, embezzling funds, as well as possible connections with kidnapping and murder." A Marine spokesman, Lt. Eric Knapp, declined to offer more details of Mr. Alwan's charges, beyond saying, "everyone knew he was corrupt."

In the Hussein years, Mr. Alwan was a senior police officer and also a high-ranking Baathist, people who knew him at the time say. But unlike many Iraqis who prospered under Mr. Hussein, those Ramadi residents said, he had never been known as a thug. When the Americans arrived, leaders of a local clan that had secretly cooperated with the invaders vouched for him. But soon, one Ramadi resident said, "People started to hate him because he was too cooperative with the Americans." Repeated death threats followed, and the three assassination attempts. The third, in May, especially shook him, acquaintances said, because he survived a rocket attack on his car, but his eldest son lost a leg.

Soon after, the verdict on the streets of Ramadi about the police chief began to change. Although he may have raked in illegal profits, Ramadi people say, he also began cooperating with Islamic militants, even passing American military plans to them. Although such claims are unverifiable, the assassination attempts stopped. But so too, last week, did Mr. Alwan's tenure as police chief. The Marines say that his arrest followed a three-to-five month investigation, that "countless government officials were afraid of him" and that the provincial chief "contributed to crime and instability."

Asked whether Mr. Anbar was also charged with aiding the insurrection, Lt. Knapp, the spokesman, said tersely by e-mail, "We are investigating suspected ties to the insurgency." Lt. Knapp described how the police chief was lured to captivity. "To avoid bloodshed and to make the arrest as clean as possible," he wrote, a Marine officer who had been working with the police invited him to a meeting in an American camp. On his arrival at the gate he climbed into a car where he was advised of his arrest. The e-mail message concluded, "He was then removed from the vehicle, handcuffed, and blackout goggles were put on him for security reasons."

Sabotage by Humiliation

In the case of the provincial governor, Abdulkarim Berjes, Mr. Zarqawi's group, Unity and Holy War, appears to have decided that it could achieve its ends, nullifying American efforts to build governing institutions in the province, by humiliating him - a punishment many Iraqi men regard as worse than death. They then passed the videotape to the Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera, the most-watched channel in Iraq. "He cried like a woman," one of the Iraqis who watched the tape said, after viewing the governor's reunion with his kidnapped sons in a militant safe house.

At the end of June, Mr. Berjes, a former Anbar police chief under Mr. Hussein, complained in a discussion at Camp Falluja, the Marine base, that his government was riddled with agents of the resistance. "I can no longer trust anybody," Mr. Berjes said in a farewell meeting with L. Paul Bremer III, the departing leader of the American occupation authority. "I don't know if people are working for me, or for the resistance."

Mr. Berjes was visibly shaken, having survived an insurgent ambush on his motorcade as he drove in his old American limousine to the Marine base from Ramadi.

In fact, Iraqis in Anbar say, the governor had become a despised figure, for the same reason as Mr. Alwan, the Anbar police chief - because he too enthusiastically embraced the Americans and took to calling the resistance fighters "terrorists." Following a common ritual among the resistance, militants sent him a note of formal warning, paraphrased by those who say they had been told about it as saying: "We are watching you. Remember that we consider anybody who cooperates with the Americans a traitor, to be killed under Islamic law."

On July 28, assailants entered the governor's residence in Ramadi, snatching his three grown sons and setting fire to the house. The governor got his final warning: repent and resign, or your sons die. His capitulation was broadcast on Aug. 6, in the video now circulating in Anbar markets. Standing under the Zarqawi group's flag, he glumly recites: "I announce my repentance before God and you for any deeds I have committed against the holy warriors or in aid of the infidel Americans. I announce my resignation at this moment. All governors and employees who work with infidel Americans should quit because these jobs are against Islam and Iraqis."

As the governor is reunited with his sons, a voice on the tape recites the Zarqawi group's attacks on public officials in the past three months. "We killed the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, and then the deputy minister of the interior," the voice says. "The minister of justice survived our attack, but we killed the governor of Mosul. And now we have captured the governor of Anbar. The list is just beginning, and is far from finished.'' More than three weeks after Mr. Berjes resigned, the government of Ayad Allawi, seemingly hard put to find anyone to take the job, has yet to appoint a successor.

American commanders confess they have no answers in Anbar, and say their strategy is to curb the militants' ability to project their violence farther afield, especially in Baghdad. A recent meeting between Iraq's interim prime minister, Dr. Allawi, and a delegation of tribal sheiks from Falluja who have pledged fealty to Mr. Janabi is said to have reached a standstill accord, with Dr. Allawi promising not to sanction large-scale American attacks on the Anbar cities, and the sheiks conveying Mr. Janabi's pledge to halt militant attacks on the Americans.

But leaving the militants in control could pose a disabling threat to American political plans, which may already have been shaken more than American officials will admit by events in Najaf. Top American officials say that events there, with Moktada al-Sadr's militiamen finally driven from the Imam Ali Shrine, have set the stage for a turn in American fortunes across the Shiite heartland of Iraq. But even there the prospects seem deeply clouded by the failure to effectively disarm Mr. Sadr's surviving fighters as they left the shrine with shouldered rifles and donkey carts loaded with rockets.

Mr. Sadr has signed a new pledge to join the democratic political process that will be the final measure of American success here. But he has abrogated similar undertakings, and many of his fighters vowed to take up arms again. Coupled with the militants' control in Anbar, that could unsettle plans for elections scheduled across Iraq by the end of January - the next crucial step toward a fully elected government by January 2006, an event American officials see as a way station on the path to a draw down or withdrawal of the 140,000 American troops here.

Those Americans say a rapid buildup of the new Iraqi Army, the national guard and the police, coupled with gathering momentum in "turning dirt" on the thousands of reconstruction projects financed by $18-billion in American money, should eventually improve security across Iraq. But the Americans acknowledge that a full, nationwide election in January may not be possible. For now, they have identified 15 cities across the Arab parts of Iraq that they contend can be stabilized to make voting in January possible. For the moment, they say, Falluja and Ramadi are not among them.

JOHN F. BURNS and ERIK ECKHOLM
Iraqi staff members of The New York Timesin Baghdad contributed reporting for this article.

Iraqis Blow Up Oil Pipeline in Iraq

Basra, Iraq - Saboteurs blew up a pipeline in southern Iraq on Sunday in the latest attack targeting the country's crucial oil industry, a senior oil official said.

The explosion occurred in al-Radgha, about 30 miles southwest of Basra, an official at the state-run South Oil Co. said on condition of anonymity.

The pipeline, which connects the Rumeila oilfields with export storage tanks in the Faw peninsula, was ablaze after the attack and emergency workers were struggling to put the fire out, the official said.

Insurgents have launched repeated attacks on Iraq's vital oil industry in a bid to undermine the interim government and reconstruction efforts.

On Saturday, insurgents blew up another pipeline in the West Qurna oilfields, about 90 miles north of Basra.

Also Saturday, a domestic oil pipeline in Nahrawan, a desert region 20 miles east of Baghdad, was ablaze, though oil officials could not confirm if the fire was the result of sabotage. The pipeline carries oil to the Dora refinery near the capital.

It was unclear how the latest attack would affect exports out of the south, which have already fallen to about 900,000 barrels a day - about half the normal average of 1.8 million barrels a day - after an attack Wednesday on a cluster of pipelines linked to the Rumeila oilfields.

The Associated Press
Sunday 29 August 2004
Basra, Iraq

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The Israeli Spy Ring

Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.

What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA. Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when. Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America. Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well. Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers. "I think there is very compelling evidence that at least some of the terrorists were assisted not just in financing -- although that was part of it -- by a sovereign foreign government... It will become public at some point when it's turned over to the archives, but that's 20 or 30 years from now."
-- Senator Graham as quoted in Senator: At Least One Foreign Country Assisted the 9/11 Terrorists


Let us be clear here. There is nothing benign about Israel spying on the United States. When Jonathan Pollard stole our nuclear secrets (which your taxes paid to develop) and sent them to Israel, Israel did not hesitate to trade those secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas.

The implication of these facts is that the billions of our tax dollars sent to Israel (while women and children sleep in America's alleys and eat out of trash bins) have bought and paid for a monstrous phone tracking and phone tapping system that can eavesdrop on almost any phone call in America. Even the White House phones were open to such tapping by listening in on the other end outside the White House itself.

This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself!

So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America.

That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again. CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.

"Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying ... is considered career suicide."
-- Carl Cameron, as quoted in The Spies Who Came In From The Art Sale
Since then, any and all mention of the Israeli spy ring and phone tapping scandal has resulted in a barrage of shrill screams of "hate" and "anti-Semite", two well worn and frankly over used devices to try to silence discussion on any topic unfavorable to the nation which owns the spy ring in question.
The story of the uncovering of the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States should be the story of the century, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That this spy ring helped drug smugglers evade investigators should be a major scandal, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That the spy ring includes companies able to track and tap into any phone in America, including the White House, should be a cause celebre', if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people.


But they are not. The media is trying to bury this story. They are spiking it, erasing it from their web sites in a chilling real-life Orwellian rewriting of history.

The actions of the US media are those of people trying to protect this spy ring and those that the spy ring worked for. "While I agree with you, if I say anything about US geopolitical interests with Israel, I might as well clean off my desk."
-- Unnamed reporter as quoted in American Media Censorship and Israel


The actions of the US media are those of traitors to the American people.


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Hundreds of Mossad Agents Caught
Running Wild in America!



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WHY IS THE US GOVERNMENT COVERING UP THE LATEST ISRAELI SPY RING? WHAT WAS THE ISRAELI SPY RING DOING THAT IS SUCH A THREAT TO THE US GOVERNMENT THAT THEY WOULD RATHER HAVE OVER A HUNDRED SPIES ESCAPE THAN RISK A PUBLIC TRIAL?
"Evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."

-- US official quoted in Carl Cameron's Fox News report on the Israeli spy ring and its connections to 9-11.



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THE FOX NEWS STORY THAT WAS SPIKED

Part 1

Note in the first segment of the articles that a highly placed US investigator states, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9/11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information." This statement suggests that such evidence must exist, since there would be no need for classification if nothing had been found.

Part 2

In this segment of the report, American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone; information provided by an Israeli-owned (and IDF funded) telephone company at which several of the arrested Israeli 9/11 suspects worked.

Part 3 - video (2.4MB RealVideo)

In this third report, it is revealed that the wiretapping capability that is permanently built into your telephone is built, installed, and maintained by yet another Israeli owned company and that this equipment is suspected of having a "back door" which allows the Mossad to use the same equipment to wiretap any telephone in America by remote control. (Is this how they got "that" tape of Bill and Monica?)

Part 4 - video (2.8MB RealVideo) - video (6.6MB WMV)

In this final part of the report, Fox News shows how the availability of information on police phone calls resulted in the collapse of an investigation of a drug and fraud crime ring with Israeli connections. Investigators traced the information, which included calls to police investigators' beepers, to Amdocs. Note that 50% of the R&D costs of Comverse Infosys are paid by the Israeli Government.




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More holes in US electronic security
The story on Israeli spying inside the focused on three companies, Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for most American phone companies, Comverse Infosys, which installs and mainstains telephone tapping equipment for US law enforcement, and Odigo, which provides services for the various "Instant Message" systems on your computer. All three companies are owned by Israel and have strong ties to the Israeli Defense Force.

Both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys were implicated in the sale of telephone data which compromised US investigations into drug running, and Comverse Infosys phone taps are suspected of being the means by which Bill Clinton's phone sex sessions were recorded, as reported in the Ken Starr Report. Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Towers, is the company which received a two hour advance warning of the attacks of 9-11.

Now, in a chilling real life version of the plotline from "The Net", it turns out that the majority of the firewalls on US corporate and government computer systems are provided by just one company, Checkpoint Systems, which like Amdocs, Comverse Infosys, and Odigo, is headquartered in Israel.



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See also: The Complete Collection of Articles About the Israeli Spy Ring Scandal



Think We're Safe? That's a Real Gas!

They stood in the sun in quiet insanity. There were 27 cops guarding an empty lot on Madison Street yesterday, about a block from Police Headquarters. Sunlight on asphalt. Two sergeants were out directing traffic. A captain stood between slabs of concrete, ready to throw back a tank attack.

The lot was lined with concrete barriers with "NYPD" in blue. An unofficial, yet probably accurate estimate on the low side of the cost of this deployment to city taxpayers is $5,200. I don't know if any were on overtime, which would raise my total. I do know that bin Laden is winning this match.

They stood guard over the asphalt as one or two Chinese-American women came along with shopping carts.

At Police Headquarters they locked the place down. Nobody could get in or out and anybody on the floors inside was not allowed to leave. This made it hard on the couple of thousand cops who spend their days watching to see if the commissioner is in or out of the building.

At a press conference, Bloomberg said New Yorkers love to see people in uniform.

The streets around headquarters were a truck park for cops from everywhere. Standing at one overly large Homeland Security van, a woman reporter was putting on special hazmat pants as her photographer stood by. Cops in groups walked by and went into the headquarters. They had just turned much of downtown into Eastern Europe. For no reason except to help all these groups, FBI, Secret Service, Army Intelligence, Naval Intelligence, ATF, CIA continue to raid the national treasury with cries for more money for more fakes and frauds wearing badges.

I still want to know why they didn't know the World Trade Center was going to be attacked.

Listening to Tom Ridge stumble through a few sentences, I wondered how he ever got where he is. And why I have to be in New York if he has anything to do with us.

Later, there were no police at Riverside Drive and 75th Street, where one of the two 26-inch natural gas pipelines comes into the city. The pipe here at 75th Street comes under a river that is 120 feet deep. It pumps over a million cubic feet of natural gas a day into the city. This pipeline, and one up at 175th Street, provide all the natural gas to New York.

At 75th Street yesterday, behind an empty park bench, were two posts that always held the sign that had been there for years and which stated: "Warning. Do Not Anchor or Dredge, Gas Pipelines Crossing, Continental Gas Pipeline Corp."

As an act of homeland security, the sign has been taken down. This meant that nobody would know anymore that the pipeline was right under their feet.

The sign at the 175th Street site also has been removed. This is bureaucratic voodoo: You take something everybody knows and say it is a secret.

Every couple of blocks, and in Central Park, there are small green posts, amidst shrubbery, with yellow lettering saying, "NG Pipeline," and down another side, "Natural Gas." These are high pressure regulators that control gas flow and combined casing vents that control any escaping gas lingering between the pipeline and its protective casing pipe.

The line that starts at 175th Street had similar regulators.

There does not seem to be any way to keep these vents safe from vandals with a hammer, without imagining terrorists.

You have to try to protect New York's gas as it comes by pipe deep under a summer calm, sparkling Hudson River that is empty of traffic at night. You also have to try to defend all these small regulator valves that pop out of the ground across Manhattan and on to Queens.

Yesterday, that seemed hopeless. As no police were near any of this, you assume the people in charge don't know anything about this. If they happen to, it doesn't make them ambitious. You aim your big rifles at nothing and stand in helmets and sunglasses in emptiness. No cameras like such scene of idleness

Jimmy Breslin, Newsday

The Liberators

The American police used dogs to frighten detained Iraqi teenagers, I see the fear on their faces from the pictures but they keep asking why do they hate us.

The American army were using their animals to make juveniles as young as 15 years old urinate on themselves as part of a competition but they keep asking why do they hate us.

The whole world watched the images of the Iraqi prisoners being strangled and dragged on the floor but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Their military personnel stacked the Iraqi prisoners bodies in a pyramid, wrote on their skin in English but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Male prisoners are positioned to simulate sex with each other, the American soldiers are laughing, posing, pointing or giving the camera a thumbs-up but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Cluster bombs were used against Iraqi civilians but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Iraqi prisoners’ heads were covered with plastic bags, their hands were cuffed with plastic ribbons in front of their wives and children but they keep asking why do they hate us.

More than 10,000 Iraqis were killed during their liberation but they keep asking why do they hate us.

They bombed religious shrines but they keep asking why do they hate us.

They banned the media from their crime stage so there will be no witnesses but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Their bombs destroyed Allah’s name on the walls of shrine but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Iraqi scientists, lawyers, academics were shot in front of the American soldiers’ eyes but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Cemeteries were bombed in Najaf but they keep asking why do they hate us.

They demolished civilian’s houses but they keep asking why do they hate us.

They kidnapped our past, present and future but they keep asking why do they hate us.

There were no weapon of mass destruction and the whole country was destroyed because of their greed for the oil but they keep asking why do they hate us.

Am I loosing my sanity or what? Please give me one reason to love them, to cherish their presence in my country and to see them as liberators.

Copyright: Nesren Melek . n_melek@hotmail.com

Muqtada Al-Sadr: A Voice of Resistance

Immediately after the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US and its allies embarked on a long colonial tradition of divide and rule. The creation of the “Iraqi Governing Council” on ethnic and sectarian divisions is a good example. Iraqis know this very well. The current “Iraqi Interim Government” is a gang of expatriate criminals and quislings. This division is the US prelude to instigate civil war between Iraqis and justify US Occupation of Iraq.

The Iraqi people did not “welcome” the occupying forces. It was a carefully staged lie. Iraqis bitterly resent the occupation forces. After the fall of Baghdad and the emergence of the nature of the Occupation, opposition and resistance to US forces was instant.

The Iraqi resistance groups varied, some are former soldiers and unemployed professionals and workers but others are religious leaders with local and family influence. They spread throughout the country. Although, these groups are not centrally linked, almost all of them shared an enthusiastic devotion to Islam and an enthusiastic rejection of the US-British Occupation of Iraq. The rise of Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr is a good example.

Contrary to Western liberals and pundits, Sayyid Muqtada Al-Sadr is not a “marginal leader”. Muqtada was born and lives in Iraq, and has large following among Iraqis. Muqtada draws on the respect and legacy of his family. Muqtada’s father, Imam Muhammad Sadiq Al-Sadr who was loved and respected for his opposition to the regime of Saddam Hussein was assassinated with his two other sons in Najaf in 1999. Muqtada is also the son-in-law of Imam Muhammad Bakir Al-Sadr. Imam Bakir Al-Sadr was executed in 1980 for his opposition to Saddam’s regime. The family is well respected among Iraqis and Muslims worldwide. It is important to remember that Sayyid Muqtada did not live in exile during Saddam’s regime.

Unlike Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Muqtada Al-Sadr is not controlled by outside forces, such as Iran. Sistani is an Iranian citizen and draws much of his support from Iran. Sistani has good following in Najaf, but very little support in the rest of Iraq. Ayatollah Sistani is like Ayatollah Khomeini who lived in Najaf for many years, and remained unknown to Iraqis until his departure to Iran in 1979. Sistani is promoted by the Occupation authority because of his quietness to the Occupation. He is like a small UN, that is why the US like him. His departure to London, escorted by Ahmad Chalabi, before the US attack on Najaf shows his real concern for Iraqis. His “illness” couldn’t come at a better moment. Bush and Blair must be dancing to the tune of his silence. At least he will show them how peace can be achieved without blood when he returns to Iraq.

The dismantling of the Iraqi state by the US Occupation forced Al-Sadr movement to organise and fill the power vacuum. The movement of young urban and dedicated grassroots Iraqis began providing social and health services and security for neighbourhoods. In a report issued in September 2003, the Belgium-based International Crisis Group credits Al-Sadr's movement for keeping the peace in poor Shiite sections of Baghdad after the fall of Saddam’s regime. ”Within weeks of the regime's collapse, Al-Sadr's representatives claimed to have employed 50,000 volunteers in east Baghdad to provide refuse collection, hospital meals and traffic control,” the report says.

Western media continues using the distorted and misleading terms of calling Muqtada Al-Sadr, “radical cleric”, and Iraqis who are resisting the occupation “militia men”. The media should report honestly instead and show the ugly picture of US violence in Iraq. The sickening lies perpetuated by The New York Times and The Washington Post are shameful.

The allegation that Muqtada Al-Sadr is supported by Iran is unfounded and untrue. Iran and Iraq are neighbours, and shared cultural and religious ties. The people of both countries welcome good relations.

Muqtada call to armed resistance against the US Occupation after he has exhausted the peaceful methods of democratic elections, and protested against the US violence and undermining of democratic means. The US Occupation Authority provoked Al-Sadr movement by closing the Al-Hawza, the movement newspaper, which sparked a wave of peaceful demonstrations and distribution of anti-Occupation information. The US forces violently attacked Al-Sadr followers and arrested many of them, including Al-Sadr communications officer. Thousands of innocent people were killed as a result of US violence. The Mahdi Army is the movement-armed resistance fighting the Occupation forces.

Muqtada was the first to denounce the Occupation and acknowledge publicly that the Americans were in Iraq to stay and rob the country of its wealth. Muqtada is also the first to announce that the Americans and their allies must be expelled by force from Iraq. Muqtada, like all Iraqis, has a legitimate right under international law to denounce and resist the Occupation. More than 800% of Iraqis view Muqtada Al-Sadr favourably and his popularity is rising, thanks to American terrorism.


The Occupation forces and their quislings tried to co-opt Muqtada Al-Sadr, but he refused to support the appointed thugs and the US Occupation. Muqtada said that there could be no ordinary politics under Occupation. He said Iraq must be free of all Occupation and of the authority of collaborators with the Occupation.

The indiscriminate attacks on Kut, Samara, Hilla, and Fallujah and other cities in Iraq show the brutality of a racist and fascist force eager to enforce its corrupt rules on the people of Iraq. The destruction of Iraqi cities and infrastructure is reminiscent of that of Genghis Khan in the Middle Ages. Water and electricity have been cut off in Iraq for a week, leaving the remaining civilians there in dire straits. Is this the freedom and democracy the US is selling? The Occupation brought only miseries to Iraqis.

The attack on Najaf, the holiest city in Iraq, was designed to silence the majority of Iraqis, and legitimise an unelected group of thugs and criminals picked up by the US to serve its interests in Iraq against the interests of the Iraqi People. It is an attack on human civilisation by the forces of evil.

Najaf is visited by Muslims from all over the world. It is in Najaf where Imam Ali ibn Abu Talib, the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammad, was buried. The Imam Ali shrine is the most sacred place in Iraq. For more than a week, US forces have besieged and attacked Najaf with bombs and shells. The Americans should be ashamed of their fascist government.

The Americans are not in Iraq to promote democracy. The US is the enemy of democracy and democratic movements in the Developing World. You only need to look around you to see how brutally the US attacking democracy. There are plenty of examples. Democracy means the people (Iraqis or South Americans) managing their own affairs and wealth. Democracy means independence and sovereignty. Iraqis do not need the type of democracy the US promoted by the power of tanks and cluster bombs. The US is not a good example to emulate; the US is a failed experiment.

Finally, the recent sectarian and ethnic tensions in Iraq are not the product of deep-seated cultural differences. They are the product of Western imperialism and colonialism in the Middle East. The only path for peaceful world is for the US to follow the path of civilised nations and stop acting violently and unjustly. The only path to peace is to end the occupation of Iraq. Iraqis must be free from US tyranny.

Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. He can be contacted at: g.hassan@exchange.curtin.edu.au.