Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

U.S. Intelligence Found Iran Nuke Document Was Forged

By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Dec 28 (IPS) – U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official.

Philip Giraldi, who was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1976 to 1992, told IPS that intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect. The sources do not rule out a British role in the fabrication, however.

The Times of London story published Dec. 14 did not identify the source of the document. But it quoted “an Asian intelligence source” – a term some news media have used for Israeli intelligence officials – as confirming that his government believes Iran was working on a neutron initiator as recently as 2007.

The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran and reminders of Israel’s threats to attack Iranian nuclear programme targets if diplomacy fails.

U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document’s authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue.

Giraldi’s intelligence sources did not reveal all the reasons that led analysts to conclude that the purported Iran document had been fabricated by a foreign intelligence agency. But their suspicions of fraud were prompted in part by the source of the story, according to Giraldi.

“The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis and occasionally from the British government,” Giraldi said.

The Times is part of a Murdoch publishing empire that includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant.

The document itself also had a number of red flags suggesting possible or likely fraud.

The subject of the two-page document which the Times published in English translation would be highly classified under any state’s security system. Yet there is no confidentiality marking on the document, as can be seen from the photograph of the Farsi-language original published by the Times.

The absence of security markings has been cited by the Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as evidence that the “alleged studies” documents, which were supposedly purloined from an alleged Iranian nuclear weapons-related programme early in this decade, are forgeries.

The document also lacks any information identifying either the issuing office or the intended recipients. The document refers cryptically to “the Centre”, “the Institute”, “the Committee”, and the “neutron group”.

The document’s extreme vagueness about the institutions does not appear to match the concreteness of the plans, which call for hiring eight individuals for different tasks for very specific numbers of hours for a four-year time frame.

Including security markings and such identifying information in a document increases the likelihood of errors that would give the fraud away.

The absence of any date on the document also conflicts with the specificity of much of the information. The Times reported that unidentified “foreign intelligence agencies” had dated the document to early 2007, but gave no reason for that judgment.

An obvious motive for suggesting the early 2007 date is that it would discredit the U.S. intelligence community’s November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran had discontinued unidentified work on nuclear weapons and had not resumed it as of the time of the estimate.

Discrediting the NIE has been a major objective of the Israeli government for the past two years, and the British and French governments have supported the Israeli effort.

The biggest reason for suspecting that the document is a fraud is its obvious effort to suggest past Iranian experiments related to a neutron initiator. After proposing experiments on detecting pulsed neutrons, the document refers to “locations where such experiments used to be conducted”.

That reference plays to the widespread assumption, which has been embraced by the International Atomic Energy Agency, that Iran had carried out experiments with Polonium-210 in the late 1980s, indicating an interest in neutron initiators. The IAEA referred in reports from 2004 through 2007 to its belief that the experiment with Polonium-210 had potential relevance to making “a neutron initiator in some designs of nuclear weapons”.

The National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the terrorist organisation Mujahedeen-e Khalq, claimed in February 2005 that Iran’s research with Polonium-210 was continuing and that it was now close to producing a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon.

Sanger and Broad were so convinced that the Polonium-210 experiments proved Iran’s interest in a neutron initiator that they referred in their story on the leaked document to both the IAEA reports on the experiments in the late 1980s and the claim by NCRI of continuing Iranian work on such a nuclear trigger.

What Sanger and Broad failed to report, however, is that the IAEA has acknowledged that it was mistaken in its earlier assessment that the Polonium-210 experiments were related to a neutron initiator.

After seeing the complete documentation on the original project, including complete copies of the reactor logbook for the entire period, the IAEA concluded in its Feb. 22, 2008 report that Iran’s explanations that the Polonium-210 project was fundamental research with the eventual aim of possible application to radio isotope batteries was “consistent with the Agency’s findings and with other information available to it”.

The IAEA report said the issue of Polonium-210 – and thus the earlier suspicion of an Iranian interest in using it as a neutron initiator for a nuclear weapon – was now considered “no longer outstanding”.

New York Times reporters David Sanger and William J. Broad reported U.S. intelligence officials as saying the intelligence analysts “have yet to authenticate the document”. Sanger and Broad explained the failure to do so, however, as a result of excessive caution left over from the CIA’s having failed to brand as a fabrication the document purporting to show an Iraqi effort to buy uranium in Niger.

The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick dismissed the possibility that the document might be found to be fraudulent. “There is no way to establish the authenticity or original source of the document…,” wrote Warrick.

But the line that the intelligence community had authenticated it evidently reflected the Barack Obama administration’s desire to avoid undercutting a story that supports its efforts to get Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran.

This is not the first time that Giraldi has been tipped off by his intelligence sources on forged documents. Giraldi identified the individual or office responsible for creating the two most notorious forged documents in recent U.S. intelligence history.

In 2005, Giraldi identified Michael Ledeen, the extreme right-wing former consultant to the National Security Council and the Pentagon, as an author of the fabricated letter purporting to show Iraqi interest in purchasing uranium from Niger. That letter was used by the George W. Bush administration to bolster its false case that Saddam Hussein had an active nuclear weapons programme.

Giraldi also identified officials in the “Office of Special Plans” who worked under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith as having forged a letter purportedly written by Hussein’s intelligence director, Tahir Jalail Habbush al-Tikriti, to Hussein himself referring to an Iraqi intelligence operation to arrange for an unidentified shipment from Niger.

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”, was published in 2006.

December 28, 2009 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

‘I will pay the price for this testimony when I return’

December 28, 2009

The Saraya prison and police compound was
bombed the second day of the war [MaanImages]

Bethlehem – Ma’an – An estimated 300 Palestinians were killed in the first 48 hours of Israel’s winter assault on the Gaza Strip, which entered its second day one year ago today.

With an increased focus on Rafah, Israeli warplanes bombarded around 100 more targets on 28 December 2008, leaving about 70 more Palestinians dead, and raising the child death toll to 22 and the civilian toll to 60, including nine women.

Israeli jets struck Islamic University in Gaza City, the offices of de facto Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, and the Saraya prison, ironically killing four members of Hamas’ domestic rival Fatah, as well as three mosques and 11 homes and apartments.

Fires engulfed Rafah after Israeli missiles hit underground fuel pipelines in some 40 sorties on the Strip’s tunnel network. Fleeing the flames, terrified residents of Gaza’s south attempted by the hundreds to escape to Egypt, but were prevented from leaving by Egyptian security forces. A Palestinian and an Egyptian policeman were killed in the ensuring chaos; at least 10 others were hurt.

West Bank protest

Palestinians in the West Bank, horrified by the numbers of dead and more than 1,000 injured, protested against the operation on its second day. Palestinian Authority security forces broke up a demonstration in Ramallah when activists urged support for Hamas, while Israeli forces shot dead three demonstrators nearby.

“There was a significant increase in the use of force by Israeli security forces during demonstrations in the West Bank after the start of the Israeli operations in Gaza,” according to the final report of the UN Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. “The degree of force used against protests during the previous year had already been high … New tactics and weapons used by the Israeli security forces aimed at suppressing the popular movement have resulted in deaths and injuries.”

In July 2009, two witnesses, Mohamed Srour and Jonathan Pollak, described to the UN investigators in Geneva the fatal shooting of the two young men from the West Bank village of Ni’lin during a demonstration against the Gaza operation. Srour, elected mayor in 2005, was himself shot in the leg during the same protest.

“This demonstration was like any other demonstration. These demonstrations always took place and were peaceful demonstrations,” Srour explained. “And there was the presence of Israeli and foreign supporters and very high-level MPs. So it was very clear that this demonstration was a peaceful one.”

As the protest was winding down, Israeli forces used tear gas and stun grenades to disperse the crowd. The two young men who died were part of a small group of demonstrators, some of whom had thrown stones at the soldiers. In video footage, four or five soldiers appeared to be casually walking around and not seemingly threatened. Dozens of rounds of live ammunition were fired in the direction of the group of young men, hitting three of them within minutes of each other.

“Unfortunately, I have experienced, and it’s very easy to distinguish between, the shooting of rubber bullets and tear gas and between live ammunition,” recounted Pollak, an Israeli activist. “When I told them that it’s live ammunition, they didn’t believe me. They said, ‘No, it’s just blanks that they’re shooting. And they’re not going to shoot us.'”

Mohamed Khawaja was shot in the forehead; Arafat Khawaja, who had turned to run away, was shot in the back, and Srour was shot in the leg. Subsequently, an ambulance was prevented from reaching the victims, who had to be carried some distance and were eventually put onto a pick-up truck, at which the army fired tear gas.

“There were shouts that another person was shot. People said, ‘Call the medics. There’s another person wounded.’ And we put Mohamed on the ground. Some people stayed with him and I ran back immediately.

“And then I saw Arafat Khawaja being carried. And there weren’t enough people carrying him. His head was slinging back, and I grabbed his head and my hand was covered with his blood. He was shot in the back. … I got to him and I looked back. And I saw Mohamed being shot – I saw Mohamed fall down. And people were shouting that another person was shot.

[…]

“We dropped Arafat on the floor by mistake. And we weren’t far at all from Mohamed. And people grabbing him ran before, like ran and passed up. And I could see that his face was all bloody. And the wound was in the vicinity of his eye. I mean, I would say, at the moment, I thought that the bullet went through is eye. I’m not sure if that’s true. …

“There was no ambulance there because it was prevented from entering the village at the entrance, at the roadblock in the entrance. His blood kept gushing from this back and his legs were a bit higher so it, it dripped, through the back of his head. He was shot in the back, which, I mean, I would tend to say murder because he was with his back to the soldiers and absolutely not endangering anyone. But, I assume, legally it can not be called murder because we can’t prove intent. But in the least, it’s willful killing.”

Added Srour, “There was no care, whatsoever, for human life.”

No reply

According to South African jurist Richard Goldstone’s final report, “The Mission has asked the Government of Israel to explain the increased use of live ammunitions during demonstrations in the West Bank, but has received no reply.”

Both Srour and Pollak said that by the second day of the war, the atmosphere encountered with soldiers and border police had already become markedly different from the situation before the operations in Gaza.

“The atmosphere of the incident, and during and after the start of the war generally, was that all checks and balances had been removed. The soldiers were saying things related to the Gaza war, taunting things like, ‘It’s a shame we’re not in Gaza killing Arabs,'” Pollak said. “They were taunting us. They were cursing at us. They were laughing about what was happening in Gaza at the same time. This was the second day of the war, of the assault. And people were unbelievably angry.”

Israeli forces arrested Srour at the Allenby crossing upon his return to the West Bank on 20 July. He was subsequently released on bail. Israel’s Permanent Representative to Geneva said the arrest was unrelated to his appearance at the public hearing days earlier.

During his testimony, however, Srour had expressed fear Israel would retaliate for his remarks at the UN. “I know full well that I will pay the price for this testimony when I return at Israeli crossing points in my journey of return after this hearing,” he said.

At least 800 Israeli protesters, most of them of Palestinian descent, were arrested during the Gaza war.

Among the UN report’s final recommendations is “that the Government of Israel should cease actions aimed at limiting the expression of criticism by civil society and members of the public concerning Israel’s policies and conduct during the military operations in the Gaza Strip. The Mission also recommends that Israel should set up an independent inquiry to assess whether the treatment by Israeli judicial authorities of Palestinian and Jewish Israelis expressing dissent in connection with the offensive was discriminatory, in terms of both charges and detention pending trial. The results of the inquiry should be made public and, subject to the findings, appropriate remedial action should be taken;

“The Mission recommends that the Government of Israel should refrain from any action of reprisal against Palestinian and Israeli individuals and organizations that have cooperated with the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict, in particular individuals who have appeared at the public hearings held by the Mission in Gaza and Geneva and expressed criticism of actions by Israel.”

December 28, 2009 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Why Hezbollah Should Keeps its Weapons

By Yusuf Fernandez | Al Manar | December 28, 2009

Israel has become a mortal threat for Lebanon since its creation on the Palestinian lands. In an article entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, which appeared in the World Zionist Organization’s periodical Kivunim in February 1982, Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official, told of “…the total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional, localized governments as the precedent for the entire Arab world…”. Therefore, the existence of a strong and independent Lebanon was considered as a main obstacle for Zionist plans for hegemony in the region.

There is no doubt that Israel is now the same threat for Lebanon that it has been for decades. Some weeks ago, Israel announced that it would continue to carry out espionage activities in Lebanese territory. The announcement came after the Lebanese found an Israeli espionage device, which was later destroyed by Israeli aircraft, near the southern village of Houla. The incident was the latest in a long list of Israeli violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which was designed to end the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. Previously, Lebanese Internal Security Forces (ISF), undoubtedly with Hezbollah’s assistance, uncovered 11 Israeli espionage networks made up of 15 suspects involved in these activities.

“Every single Israeli overflight of Lebanon is a violation (of the Resolution 1701),” said the UN special envoy for Lebanon, Michael Williams. “To the best of my knowledge, there is probably no other country in the world which is subject to such an intrusive regime of aerial surveillance.”

The 10th UN report published in June witnessed 388 Israeli airspace violations, 48 territorial violations and 77 sea violations. According to analysts, Israel’s continued violations of Lebanese territory, sea and airspace have rendered the UN Resolution irrelevant.

Israeli media outlets claim that Hezbollah have strengthened its military power and now has more and more advanced missiles than it had before Israeli assault on Lebanon in July 2006. According to Israeli military analysts, any move against Lebanon would require a move first against Hezbollah’s capability to disrupt life in Israel with its rockets and missiles.

Actually, Hezbollah has become an icon of the resistance of the Arab and Muslim world due to its two victories over Israel in 2000 and 2006. With only some thousands of fighters Hezbollah defeated a much larger army equipped with US-supplied state-of-art weapons.

For his part, Hezbollah’s Secretary-General, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, has pointed out that the resistance will continue to boost its capacities in order to fulfill its role in liberating the Lebanese territory remaining in the hands of Israeli occupiers. The statement acknowledges the right of “the Lebanese people, army and the resistance to liberate the Shebaa Farms, Kfar Shuba hills and the northern part of the village of Al-Ghajar, as well as to defend Lebanon and its territorial waters in the face of any enemy by all available means.”

Hezbollah’s military role will be implemented by cooperating with the Lebanese army. In its new manifesto, Hezbollah says “The Israeli threat calls for Lebanon to have a defence strategy built on a marriage between a popular resistance that helps to defend the country against Israeli aggression and a national army that protects the country and its stability.” In this sense, Hezbollah has called on the Lebanese state to strengthen the capacity of the regular army and to acquire advanced weapons for it. A strong Lebanese army has been always a basic point in Hezbollah’s project for Lebanon.

Military analysts in the West agree that Hezbollah’s defensive strategy -the cooperation between a regular army and a highly motivated guerrilla army- is the most successful formula for Lebanon to confront a new Israeli aggression. There have been other examples of such type of cooperation in history. In Vietnam, the National Liberation Front or Vietcong cooperated during the anti-imperialist war with the North Vietnamese army in order to develop a successful war strategy against US invaders. In China, Mao Zedong created a guerrilla army that was able to defeat the regular army of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949. The same thing happened in Cuba in 1959 and in other places.

History shows that a highly-motivated and ideologically united irregular army can fight a powerful enemy army better than a regular army due to several reasons, including its capacity to mobilize the population in a people’s war against an invader. In this sense, no military analyst considers that the Lebanese regular army is able play the same role as Hezbollah in a conflict.

Therefore, Hezbollah and its arms have become a critical deterrent against Israel’s ambitions and aggressiveness. A strongly armed Hezbollah will persuade any Israeli leader to have second thoughts before launching any war on Lebanon, Syria or another country in the region. This is why Hezbollah has become the main obstacle for the US-Zionist project in the Middle East.

Knowing that Israel is unable to defeat Hezbollah, US lawmakers, many of whom are bribed by US pro-Israeli organizations, want Hezbollah to be stripped of its deterrence ability against Israel. A few days before the visit of Lebanese President Michel Suleiman to Washington due on 12 December, US lawmakers urged the Obama administration to condition the military assistance for the Lebanese army on the agreement of Hezbollah to hand in its arms. “We must seek to support stronger multilateral efforts to disarm Hezbollah and clear southern Lebanon of Iranian weapons,” 31 lawmakers wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

US President Barack Obama has also called on Lebanon to crack down on arms smuggling into the country, saying the weapons posed a potential threat to neighboring Israel. Obama did not explain why Lebanon should become defenceless just to please its mortal enemy. Actually, the US, which gives billions of dollars in military aid to Israel each year, has denounced any foreign military aid to the Lebanese Resistance, especially that coming from Syria or Iran. “What we see is absolute American commitment to Israeli interests, Israeli conditions, and Israeli security … while disregarding the dignity or feelings of the Arab and Muslims people and their nations and governments,” Sayyed Nasrallah said in a recent speech broadcast to tens of thousands of supporters in a southern Beirut suburb.

The United States has long provided military assistance to Lebanon — including 410 million dollars to the army and the police. But Washington has not handed over any sophisticated arms for fear they could end up being used against Israel. No one can think seriously that US aid is aimed at protecting Lebanon against an Israeli aggression. Actually, the purpose of this aid is only to “strengthen” the Lebanese army enough so that it could be used by a hypothetical pro-West government in Lebanon, willing to do the “dirty work” for the US and Israel, against the Resistance. However, the US will only give Lebanon second-class weapons in order to prevent this country from developing an effective defense against the Israeli enemy.

No serious politician in Lebanon can trust the US. Washington’s ultimate plan for Lebanon is to have a Western controlled government ready to sacrifice Lebanese and Arab interests, force the Resistance to disarm and transform the country into a launching pad against Damascus, an Israeli and US puppet. However, in order to implement this scheme, Washington needs “partners” inside Lebanon.

Christian 14 March forces, backed by Maronite Patriarch Sfeir, share the US and Israeli view about the disarmament of the Resistance. However, the influence of these groups is not large in Lebanon, particularly after the strengthening of relations between Syria and Lebanon, which has isolated those parties and their hidden or public anti-Syrian views. Although these groups have shown their reservations or objections to the Sixth Article of the Ministerial Statement, which has been overwhelmingly passed recently  by the Lebanese Parliament, few people in Lebanon agree with them. Most Lebanese understand what the reality is and this is why the largest and most important Lebanese parties agree on supporting the Resistance’s right to confront Israeli occupation and threats.

December 28, 2009 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment