Stage-Managing the War on Terror
Ensnaring Terrorists Demands Creativity
By Stephan Salisbury | TomDispatch | July 6, 2010
Informers have by now become our first line of defense in our battles with the evildoers, the go-to guys in the never-ending domestic war on terror. They regularly do the dirty work — suggesting and encouraging the plots, laboring as bag men to move the money, fashioning the bombs, and eliciting the flamboyant dialogue, even while following the scripts of their handlers to the letter. They have attended to all the little details that make for the successful and now familiar arrests, criminal complaints, trials, and (for the most part) convictions in the ever-distracting war against… what? Al-Qaeda? Terror? Muslims? The inept? The poor?
The Liberty City Seven, the Fort Dix Six, the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy, the Newburgh Four — each has had their fear-filled day in the sun. None of these plots ever came close to happening. How could they? All were bogus from the get-go: money to buy missiles or cell phones or shoes and fancy duds — provided by the authorities; plans for how to use the missiles and bombs and cell phones — provided by authorities; cars for transport and demolition — issued by the authorities; facilities for carrying out the transactions — leased by those same authorities. Played out on landscapes manufactured by federal imagineers, the climax of each drama was foreordained. The failure of the plots would then be touted as the success of the investigations and prosecutions.
A band of virtually homeless and penniless men in Florida, we were told, were planning to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. They just needed the right combat boots to pull it off, and a little free money.
A cell of New Jersey roofers, handymen, and cab drivers was scheming to use a laminated pizza delivery map to guide them through a devastating attack on Fort Dix, the enormous military base in Burlington County, south of Trenton.
Ex-cons in Detroit, mostly known for patronizing a weekly soup kitchen to stave off hunger, were also planning to set up their own country in Michigan under Islamic law.
And a band of Orange County New York parolees and former drug peddlers placed bombs at two Bronx synagogues and was preparing to launch missile attacks on military cargo planes at Stewart National Guard Air Base in Newburgh.
In the Liberty City Seven case, which revolved around two informants paid in excess of $130,000 for their services, the government tried the hapless defendants three times before finally wresting a conviction from a jury. One defendant was acquitted at the first trial, another in the third, and five were eventually convicted of at least some terrorism-related charges. In the Fort Dix case, jurors were shown horrific films said to be on a computer owned by one of the defendants, who claimed an FBI informant demanded more and more videos for viewing.
Another defendant actually called the Philadelphia police, mid-plot, and said he was being pressured to commit radical acts by what turned out to be an FBI informer. Prosecutors dismissed this as an obvious decoy maneuver. The key informer in that case — the FBI eventually paid two people to spy on the group — an Egyptian on probation, received $236,000 for his services.
Most recently, this duplicitous landscape of war-on-terror “success” has been illuminated yet again by the case of four alleged Newburgh, New York, conspirators — the Newburgh Four — and in the botched arrest and fatal shooting (a first for federal authorities) of an African American imam in Detroit, leader of the so-called Ummah Conspiracy. As the details have slowly emerged, these two cases offer vivid examples of how government-scripted many of the terror plots “uncovered” in the U.S. in recent years have turned out to be. Each case, in fact, offers a window onto a stark world in which nothing is what it seems to be.
The “Un-Terrorism Case”
In the years following 9/11, when I was reporting my book, Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland, many defense and immigration attorneys I interviewed insisted that the mere mention of “terrorism” has often been enough to knock down any and all defenses. In the Newburgh conspiracy, however, the federal judge, Colleen McMahon, has shown a more questioning attitude toward what, in a May 28, 2010, pre-trial hearing, she took to calling the “un-terrorism case.”
After their May 2009 arrests, the four Newburgh conspirators were portrayed as Jew-hating Muslim converts who intended to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes based at Stewart Airport in Newburgh. “It’s hard to envision a more chilling plot,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Snyder at the time, describing the defendants as “extremely violent.”
The men were indeed arrested only after placing bogus bombs (courtesy of the FBI) near two Bronx synagogues. New York Police Chief Raymond Kelly said the plotters believed “it would be alright” to kill Jews. The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a statement noting that the uncovered plot cooked up by “the jihadist terrorists” showed “that the dangers from such fanaticism have not passed and that American Jews must maintain their vigilance.” New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg reiterated that vigilance remains a necessity for all concerned.
With their anti-Semitic bona fides established and the men caught in the act, all that seemed left was a perfunctory trial, followed by life in prison for James Cromitie, David Williams, Onta Williams, and Laguerre Payen. A decade earlier, Cromitie had been arrested for dealing drugs behind a school. Payen, a Haitian immigrant, is a crack addict and certified paranoid schizophrenic, often found living on the street; his earlier deportation had been on hold due to his mental instability. Onta and David Williams, not related, had pasts pocked by drug busts and spotty work at minimum wage jobs scrounged from Newburgh’s depressed economy. All four men were black.
Almost immediately, however, questions about the conspiracy began to arise. For one thing, the FBI informer who broke the case was a Pakistani named Shaheed Hussain, who arrived in Newburgh in the summer of 2008 driving a flashy Mercedes, showing lots of money, and promising jobs to down-and-out African American hangers-on at Masjid al-Ikhlas, Newburgh’s main mosque. Convicted in a fraudulent driver’s license scheme in 2002, he agreed to work undercover for the FBI shortly afterward to avoid deportation and turned out to have been an informer in a previous terrorism case in Albany in 2004.
The Albany case, in which an imam and a pizza shop owner were convicted of money laundering as part of a phantasmagorical scheme to kill a Pakistani diplomat with a missile, was bitterly contested by defense attorneys. They claimed that the elaborate plan had been concocted by Hussain himself. The jury didn’t buy it, convicting both imam and pizza shop owner.
The Newburgh case shares much with the Albany case, especially a fondness for baroque plotting, the flashing of great wads of money in front of needy people, and the aggressive use of an informant by the FBI in a house of worship, in this case Masjid al-Ikhlas. The intricate plotting and the use of an informer made it into the criminal complaint, but all that flashing money didn’t. There was no mention of the enticing job offers made by the seemingly well-to-do informer. Nothing about his offer of a $250,000 payment for carrying out the plot. Nothing about the BMW he pushed on Cromitie, who didn’t even have a driver’s license. Nothing about the $25,000 he was ready to pay anyone willing to act as a “lookout.”
Maybe Cromitie wasn’t the brightest hustler in town, but he was quite capable of grasping the significance of such sums of money in distressed Newburgh. He assured Hussain that dangling cash would lure participants, no matter what. “They will do it for the money,” he said. “They’re not even thinking about the cause.”
Nor did the complaint mention, as the defense now maintains, that even the anti-Semitic talk was triggered by the informant. He baited the defendants, telling them that Jews were responsible for the U.S. wars in the Middle East and for other acts of violence against Muslims. Cromitie had an unexpected reaction during one of these conversations, according to government transcripts. “I’m not gonna hurt anybody,” he said, after being badgered about possible attacks. “The plane thing… is out of the question.”
On the streets of Newburgh, relatives and neighbors say that they have never heard the four men even mention Jews or jihad, let alone link the two together in murderous rants. Lord McWilliams, the severely ill brother of David Williams, called such a characterization “crazy.” Hussain, he insisted, had promised his brother so much money that he would have been able to pay for the liver transplant that Lord desperately needed.
In fact, more substantial members of the mosque had pegged Shaheed Hussain as an informer almost the moment he arrived, but had no idea what to do about him. “Maybe the mistake we made was that we didn’t report him,” Salahuddin Mustafa Muhammad, imam at Masjid al-Ikhlas, told congregants shortly after the May 2009 arrests. “But how are we going to report the government agent to the government?”
The Ummah and the Death of an Imam
Money also played a role in the deadly Detroit case involving 53-year-old Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah, born Christopher Thomas, and gunned down during a sting operation run by the FBI in a Dearborn, Michigan, warehouse on October 28th of last year. For at least three years, FBI informants had filed copious reports on the conversations and activities of Abdullah, as he ministered to his largely indigent congregation at Masjid al-Haqq, a mosque so poor it could not even pay property taxes in disintegrating Detroit. Al-Haqq was evicted from its long-time home on Michigan Avenue early in 2009 and moved its operation — a soup kitchen and religious services regularly attended by several dozen largely African American families, ex-convicts, former addicts and alcoholics, and homeless men and women — into a house on Clairmount Street on Detroit’s west side.
It is from this pathetic building, surrounded by an increasingly vacant and collapsing neighborhood, that the FBI contends Abdullah was plotting rebellion, hiding weapons, and planning efforts to move stolen goods. A 43-page criminal complaint describes Abdullah as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group consisting primarily of African Americans” whose “primary mission is to establish a separate, sovereign Islamic state (‘The Ummah’) within the borders of the United States, governed by Shariah law.”
The complaint opens with page after page of over-the-top political trash talk, provided by three informants listening to (and sometimes recording) Abdullah’s sermons and conversations, tying the imam to H. Rap Brown, a 1960s radical and a former leader in the Black Panther Party now serving life in prison for the shooting deaths of two Georgia state troopers. According to the complaint, Abdullah was rarely without a gun or knife. He daydreamed about cop killing, engaged in elaborate revolutionary plotting, and enthusiastically told anecdotes about past violent encounters, largely with police. In effect, the complaint conjures up an old-time boogeyman: the angry, gun-toting Black Panther given over to “anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric” — now dressed up with sympathy for Osama bin Laden.
But in its efforts to be all-inclusive, the complaint also features an extraordinary section that describes an FBI informant offering Abdullah $5,000 “to pay to have someone ‘do something’ during the 2006 Super Bowl in Detroit.” The imam rejected the offer. “Abdullah said he would not be involved in injuring innocent people for no reason,” the complaint blandly states. So much for entrapment on the political front.
Despite page after page of braggadocio from Abdullah, following the rebuff over Super Bowl violence, no further effort was apparently mounted to entice him into a terrorist “plot.” The complaint outlines no grounds for charges of treason, none for terrorism, and nothing even for a charge of material support for terrorism (that reliable catch-all used to ensnare dozens of American Muslims and institutions and even human-rights groups). Despite the heavy emphasis on descriptions of violent radicalism, the criminal complaint ultimately accuses Abdullah and several congregants of the pettiest of fencing operations — 54 powertools, 46 TVs, and the like — involving small amounts of money ($100, $200, $500).
FBI agents worked out a simple but comprehensive sting. Undercover operatives rented a warehouse and offered the imam and his congregants money for help in moving batches of furs and small electronic items. Money, goods, trucks, warehouse, and plans were all supplied by covert federal agents, and all activities were reported, virtually in real time, by informers close to Abdullah and inside the mosque.
Then, as the sting unfolded on October 28th, Abdullah was gunned down by FBI agents as they sought to round up the purported members of the fencing operation. No one else was harmed. The FBI claimed Abdullah fired first, killing a police dog, which was taken by helicopter to a veterinary hospital. After he was shot, the imam was handcuffed behind the back and dragged from the warehouse into a trailer full of TVs and other “stolen” goods. Presumably, at this point he was dead, though no information has been released describing his condition or the circumstances of his removal from the warehouse. Abdullah’s body was photographed in the trailer and picked up by the Wayne County medical examiner, who then declined to release autopsy findings. The head of the local FBI office claimed that he was “comfortable with what our agents did” to protect themselves.
This whole murky incident with a still unfolding aftermath has caused deep anxiety and not a little anger in Detroit’s African American and Muslim communities. Why was the imam shot in the back? Why was the dog given emergency medical treatment and the imam handcuffed and dragged around? Was he dead when the shooting ended? Did he even have a gun?
Was Abdullah’s death an instance of score settling for his unrepentant association with Rap Brown, known as Jamil Abdullah al-Amin since the 1970s? In a conversation I had recently with a black leader in Philadelphia, he said that rumors are spreading on the street of nationwide interrogations of African American Muslims who, in the past, associated with al-Amin. (In Philadelphia, a mosque founded by civic-minded entrepreneur Kenny Gamble, well known for his efforts to assist the black community, has been attacked by anti-Islamic groups for its purported association with “The Ummah.”)
Members of Abdullah’s congregation and prominent Muslims in Detroit told me that Abdullah was indeed incensed by the poverty and racism he saw all around him and could indeed deliver harsh attacks on the government — but that hardly distinguished him in a city as ravaged and beaten down as Detroit. Moreover, those who knew Abdullah insist that they never heard him promote any violent separatist effort on behalf of any organization.
National Islamic organizations, such as the Muslim Alliance in North America, insist as well that “The Ummah” is nothing more than an association of largely African American mosques. (“Ummah” is an Arabic term that refers to the Muslim community.) The alliance calls the FBI description of the Ummah “an offensive mischaracterization.” (Abdullah El-Amin, an imam at the largest African American Detroit mosque, told the New York Times that he had heard Abdullah discuss a separatism that would be “sort of like the Pennsylvania Dutch have their own communities and stuff.” There are similar comments from Abdullah in the criminal complaint.)
In any event, the indictment that followed Abdullah’s death, naming 11 of his congregants and associates, makes no mention of radical politics or the shadowy “Ummah” or “offensive jihad” — all highlighted in the earlier criminal complaint. The 11 were indicted as petty criminals, charged with selling and receiving stolen goods, tampering with vehicle identification numbers, and weapons offenses.
Many officials and organizations, including Congressman John Conyers, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, the local chapters of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil-rights and advocacy organization, the ACLU, and the NAACP, have called for an investigation of the killing — calls unanswered so far by the Obama administration. The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is reviewing the case. The state attorney general named a prosecutor to look into the matter after the FBI refused to hand over documents to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office because, the bureau said, the documents were “classified.”
In early June, Cyril Wecht, a well-known forensic pathologist asked by CAIR to review the autopsy findings (they were finally released in February), said Abdullah’s face was pierced by wounds and lacerations consistent with a dog attack. His jaw was fractured. Wecht also said there were two gunshot wounds in Abdullah’s back, not one. This prompted Wayne County Medical Examiner Carl Schmidt to defend his findings and accuse Wecht of emotionalism, according to a Detroit Free Press report. “We don’t always say what others would like us to say,” Schmidt commented. “We can only describe what we see.”
As the wait for reviews and investigations and answers drags on, the immediate area served by Abdullah’s mosque — blighted, black, and destitute — frays further, and is in danger of losing a small but critical social and economic resource. Abdullah ran a well-attended soup kitchen for years, worked to rid the neighborhood of gang violence, and sought to provide support for the poor, the homeless, and ex-convicts. His family and his depleted mosque are now struggling to keep the house of worship and soup kitchen going. Mosque attendance has plummeted and contributions, never robust, have evaporated; law-enforcement investigators continue to fan out through the community.
“People are still scared,” said Omar Regan, one of Abdullah’s 13 children, who makes his living as an actor, comedian, and motivational speaker based in Los Angeles. “They are still interrogating people. The more people push about injustice, the more they harass Muslims in that area [of Detroit]. My father took care of all these people. They leaned on him. He was a reason a lot of them didn’t commit suicide. They came for food. For shelter.”
Regan is incensed that the FBI provided the money to acquire stolen goods, the actual goods as well, and even the warehouses to store them in, while working out plans for moving the goods through informants and undercover employees clustered around Luqman Abdullah and the Masjid al-Haqq mosque. And now Omar Regan’s father is dead.
“It’s the FBI setting the whole thing up,” he lamented. “How can that be legal?”
It’s a question more and more people are asking as the war on terror grinds on, now directed by the Obama administration. If nothing else, the cases of the Newburgh Four and the Detroit Ummah Conspiracy show that street-smart accused conspirator James Cromitie knew what he was talking about when he said that chronically poor people will “do it for the money” and “don’t care about the cause.”
This simple fact underlies both the Detroit and Newburgh cases. The FBI contends that the Detroit sting was not about terror, but about mundane criminal activity. If that’s the case, why was the criminal complaint larded with characterizations of Luqman Abdullah’s supposed violent political views? What relevance does H. Rap Brown, now in prison, have to moving stolen goods in Dearborn?
Beyond that, what justification do federal authorities have for characterizing “the Ummah” as a threatening separatist movement? Many Muslim leaders argue that such a characterization is a fantasy akin to tales spun by the FBI’s most imaginative informers. Both Newburgh and Detroit are, indeed, instances of “unterrorism,” as the Newburgh judge said of the “plot” before her. Yet both are starkly framed by the on-going war on terror, both involve elaborate set-ups arranged by federal informers and covert agents, and both ensnared inept, virtually destitute black people scrambling to get by in post-racial America.
It remains to be asked: How expansive will the stage become for creative informers and their government directors now working the theater of the Great Recession?
Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. His most recent book is Mohamed’s Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland (Nation Books). Catch Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Salisbury discusses how terror cases are created via entrapment and informers by clicking here, or to download to your iPod, click here.
[Note on sources: The criminal complaint for the Detroit Ummah conspiracy can be found in pdf file format by clicking here.]
Daniel Ellsberg Exposed Along with the Real Purpose of the Wikileaks Psyop
By Scott Creighton | 5 December 2010
Daniel Ellsberg has been running around singing the praises of Julian Assange ever since his first big-time leak, the Collateral Damage video, which showed a U.S. gunship killing various unarmed civilians in Iraq two of whom happened to be reporters. With the recent pile of “leaked” state department memos, Ellsberg can’t hardly take a breath between interviews and round table discussions, where he is the primary focus and a staunch supporter of everything Wikileaks.
But there is something rotten in Denmark, folks.
It’s not a stretch to say that most Americans don’t believe a thing that comes out of the state department or the government in general for that matter. Confidence in the word of our elected (and unelected) leaders must be at or near an all-time low. If you think this fact is lost on the PR (propaganda) experts working on contracts for the various branches of government, guess again. Mark Penn of Burson-Marsteller gained all of his access to power (and considerable wealth) by being a gifted and relentless pollster. He was able to put his finger directly on the pulse of the public at large and this made him invaluable to corrupt politicians and corporations everywhere. Penn is still deeply connected with the Clinton regime having run her campaign in 2008.
So what do you do when you want to feed the generally left-leaning public a pack of lies given that you know most of them are extremely skeptical about everything you tell them? Well, if “you” are the problem, then you take the “you” out of the equation.
Get someone else to tell them the lies. Someone they are conditioned to trust.
It’s a pretty simple plan: give the leaker something dramatic (but already well-known) to get attention and build his credibility, prime the pot with promises of massive amounts of ”secret” documents that will reveal “the truth”, see to it that they are published in the biggest newspapers on the planet, put on a big show about how much you don’t want him to reveal “the truth”, and make damn sure you have enough “progressive” figures to run around doing interviews praising the leaker for his courage and commitment to getting “the truth” out there no matter how grave the threat to his personal safety.
If you really examine the meat of the “leaked” documents, it doesn’t take long to notice that generally speaking they strongly support every single state department agenda, from invading Pakistan, regime change in North Korea, regime change in Iran, and supporting the role that Israel is playing in destabilizing the Middle East [a long known Israeli objective in the effort to weaken its foes and establish ‘greater Israel’]. And what have we learned that harms the state department? That Obama gave the orders to fire missiles into Yemen that killed 21 kids? We knew that the day it happened and we certainly knew that after the recent UN report came out which clearly identified the parts of those rockets as ours. We learned that the state department works closely with the CIA, but we knew that already as well. We learned that Hillary Clinton gave the order to spy on people, as if that is news of any kind. In short, we didn’t learn anything new that harms the state department, with the possible exception that Hillary wanted someone to steal the head of the U.N.’s credit card numbers.
In the near future, these “leaked’ documents will help build the pretext for the narrative that we have to force regime change on various targeted nations. They will be referenced in articles written by war mongers in the same MSM news papers who were fed the “leaks” in the first place. When that happens, and it will [it HAS already happenned], we won’t be able to question their validity, because frankly, we don’t question them now. Imagine Dick Cheney’s forged “Yellow Cake from Niger” document being ”leaked” by Wikileaks and praised by the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, Amy Goodman, and Glenn Greenwald… imagine that and you start to get the picture.
You see, it doesn’t work without the amen chorus. Just like 9/11 would never have worked without all the media talking heads reading from the exact same script and endlessly repeating “bin Laden” and “al Qaeda” as the buildings were demolished, the same principle holds true here. It’s so obvious that these “leaks” do nothing more than support the Obama regime’s imperial [and Zionist] agenda, if given half a minute to step back and consider their merit on mere fact alone, the truth is pretty obvious. It’s as obvious as Building 7.
But the amen chorus is out there singing the praises of Wikileaks just as fast and as hard as they can, hoping to create an emotional connection between Assange and the anti-war left. And Daniel Ellsberg is key to that. Whether he actually knows it or not.
In a recent interview with Brad Friedman or Bradblog, Ellsberg tipped his hand and from this moment, the truth of Ellsberg’s role in the Wikileaks psyop can easily be exposed for all to see. All who want to that is.
Friedman was talking with Ellsberg about the Wikileaks disclosures and specifically he came to start talking about what Assange had said about firing Hillary Clinton for ordering her staff in the state department to spy on the United Nations. Ellsberg’s comments are quite remarkable and I will let them speak for themselves…
But, as Ellsberg revealed during my interview with him on Wednesday, he disagrees with Assange on at least one point in regard to the latest round of documents released by the controversial organization. Unlike Assange, Ellsberg does not believe Hillary Clinton needs to resign.
… During my on-air interview with him Wednesday, when I asked about that point and whether he agrees with Assange’s assessment, he was direct in his response: “In a word, no,” he told me.
… “In a way, I would have to say as a former insider here, he has far too idealistic and romantic a notion of what it means to be Secretary of State or a high official in the U.S. Government — and really any government. Among the various illegalities, the various recklessness and so forth, shown by our policies, this one is indeed illegal, but it’s not high on the list. Probably all countries do it to a large extent.”
… While Ellsberg strongly condemns the Obama Administration for its failure to hold members of the Bush Administration accountable for “war crimes” and “torture” and for escalating a number of “aggressive wars” the U.S. continues to pursue, he reiterated that he doesn’t believe the disclosures to date rise to serious enough crimes to merit Clinton’s resignation.
… “Everybody involved in aggressive war in Iraq should be prosecuted as a war criminal,” he said. “Obama didn’t get us into Iraq or Aghanistan, though he certainly escalated it. But I’m not sure if it’s criminal.” Brad Friedman
So not only does our respected ”progressive” hero, Daniel Ellsberg, breathlessly support the “truthiness” of the Wikileaks psyops, he is also promoting the idea that Hillary Clinton’s crimes don’t rise to the level of something that she should be held accountable for. After all, all politicians commit crimes and certain ones just have to be accepted as par for the course. Personally, I don’t buy Ellsberg’s argument that since former Secretaries of State committed crimes and got away with it, so too should we afford the same luxury to Hillary Clinton.
Remarkably, Ellsberg also asserts that Obama is probably not guilty of war crimes in the continuation and escalation of the obviously criminal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Currently anti-war sites are taking up a collection for Assange (just like last time when he came out with the Collateral Damage video) in order to get his site back up and running. The way I see it, that would be like seeing a donations button for Scooter Libby on World Can’t Wait’s website.
You have to give it to the Clinton regime at the state department. It’s a pretty slick PR campaign and it appears, at least for the time being, to be working. Ironically, the man who helped bring an end to the Vietnam war is inadvertently helping set the stage for the next one while the antiwar activist websites are steadily promoting the propaganda. Gotta hand it to Clinton and her PR team; that’s slick.
Of course, it could never work without the amen chorus and their featured soloist, Daniel Ellsberg.
I just want you all too remember that in 6 months when they are using Wikileaks disclosures to help justify the invasion of Iran and the deaths of thousands more of our service men and women and perhaps a million more civilians in the Middle East.
UPDATE
If you want a clear cut example of what I am talking about, go here to a CNN video of Fareed Zakaria explaining how the Wikileaks documents actually makes him feel better about the state department.
1. The leaks don’t show the state department doing anything nafarious.
“In these cables there are no stories of coups or attempted assasinations or secret deals.”
2. A transparent U.S. diplomacy
3. Astue American Envoys
“I have to confess that the level and quality of analysis in these cables is a lot better than I would have guessed.
4. Arab Leaders Fear Iran
“They have been urging Washington to do something about Iran including using military force.”
“The cables make clear that far from being loved in the region as he claims, he is feared and despised.”
“But reading through the sum total of this data dump, I came away more impressed and reasured by the way Washington works, or at least the state department, then I was before.” Fareed Zakaria, CNN
WIKILEAKS REPRISED — A WHIFF OF…WHAT?
From what the press is reporting about this Wikileaks “dump,” perhaps 10% are Secret or Confidential, the rest Unclassified, and nothing is Top Secret or above.
ALAN SABROSKY – My Catbird Seat – December 8, 2010
I have followed the unfolding teapot-tempest drama of the latest Wikileaks release with a certain bemusement, accompanied by a growing suspicion shared with others that all is not as it seems with these supposed revelations. But my initial impression, based of course on what I am reading in the mainstream and alternative media and not in the cables themselves, is that it is surprising how little damaging material is there about much of the world. Secretary Clinton cannot be happy at having the UN people know what she told her people there to do, of course, and there is a great deal to whet assorted salacious appetites. More substantive issues will doubtless emerge, but I expect most if not all to be embarrassing rather than destructive.
The Cables
Perhaps the principal reason for this largely titillating, trivial aspect of so many of the released cables is the cables themselves. It is worth understanding that in the US government, even material that is taken from newspapers and clipped together can end up being classified “Secret” or “Confidential.” Really important or sensitive material (as in truly “national security” sensitive) is classified “Top Secret” or above.
From what the press is reporting about this Wikileaks “dump,” perhaps 10% are Secret or Confidential, the rest Unclassified, and nothing is Top Secret or above. This reflects the VERY low-level diplomatic “gossip column” character of much of what has been released and discussed in the media so far. But I suspect the general reaction of politicians and diplomats everywhere, all of whom send the same type of cables about others, will be a blend of public umbrage and private amusement, coupled with overtures to Ukraine for nursing support.
The Middle East Exception
The one striking exception in all of this global tour de farce <sic.> is the Middle East. Certainly, even aside from Wikileaks founder Julian Assange’s fulsome praise of Binyamin Netanyahu, what is said and what is not represent the message Israel and its partisans in the US Government (itself heavily Zionist and “Israel First” in orientation) want the world to hear, believe and accept. The message coming across in the US diplomatic cables could have been designed and drafted by Avigdor Lieberman, and who knows? It may have been….
The overt theme in the Middle East cables consists of a blend of attacks on prominent political figures in Turkey and Iran, coupled with critical and disparaging commentaries about their actual or alleged policies and ambitions. One might think that the architects of the Ottoman and Persian Empires in their times of splendor were simultaneously on the move again, with everything between them (except poor, brave, steadfast and enduring Israel, of course) trembling in fear and awe.
Complimenting this is a region-wide belief attributed to many Arab leaders of the need for stronger action, including military strikes, to thwart Iran’s regional and especially nuclear ambitions — precisely what Israel has been saying all along. Now, this may be true. I know, for example, that the Sunni leadership in many of those countries have their own concerns about Iran, just as Iran’s current leadership have with some of them.
But at least two things cause me to question this supposed thesis. One is the odd attribution in at least one of the cables to an Arab leader of a remark on Iran being an “existential threat.” Yet no one except Israel and its proponents refer to any other country as an “existential threat” to anyone, suggesting quite clearly that either some of the released cables regarding Iran are forgeries, or they were deliberately cast in terms to create an impression that Arab leaders really want the US and/or Israel to attack Iran, true or not.
And the Israeli Exception
The other part of the covert theme is the apparent absence of anything tough on Israel, which means that anything of the sort is Top Secret or better, was excised from the cables that were released, or simply doesn’t matter at all to anyone in or out of the Middle East. The Arab nations for many years have feared a real nuclear threat from Israel, not a fabricated threat by Iran, but nothing like that comes across, despite 60-plus years of hostility from most to Israel and its ambitions.
Far more significant to me is the utter lack to date of scathing commentaries on Israel and its policies, leadership and actions from SOMEWHERE in the world. Even if Arab leaders felt there was no point in doing so with the Americans, most others would not feel so constrained. Something surely must have come to the attention of the US ambassadors to (e.g.) Turkey, South Africa, Brazil and Ireland, just to name a few of the many who have bitterly condemned Israel, and especially the disgusting duo of Netanyahu and Lieberman to say nothing of their predecessors, for what they have done to Palestine and the Lebanon; for Operation Cast Lead; for the settlements; for flagrant violations of UN Resolutions and the murder of UN officials; for Israel’s hostility to the Goldstone Report; for the blockade; for land expropriation; and for sheer thuggery and brutality.
Surely something so scathing would have been communicated back to Washington, alongside which Iran and its president would come off smelling like several bouquets of roses — slightly wilted roses, perhaps, but vastly better than the Israeli stinkpot.
Reprise
But nothing like that is there, or at least has yet surfaced, which makes me increasingly inclined to see this as just another game of rhetorical smoke and mirrors, with a lot of real cables and real victims (like the poor US soldier who presumably gave Assange at least some of the cables), but with many or most of the Middle East cables “cooked” if not fabricated outright.
So these, at least, are probably the handiwork of Israeli-Americans or just Israelis putting their own spin on things, included in a mass of otherwise legitimate cables as camouflage and for validation. An Australian news website concluded that “[the] WikiLeaks cables [are] the 9/11 of world diplomacy.” Too, too true – same source, different vehicle and venue, all helping pave the road to yet another needless war in Israel’s service, this time against Iran. The gods weep — but not, presumably, Yahweh.
Alan Sabrosky (Ph.D, University of Michigan) can be contacted at docbrosk@comcast.net
Hasbara at Work: Oren Promotes Fantasies
By Ira Glunts | Palestine Chronicle | December 6, 2010
Three years ago I heard the American-born Israeli Michael B. Oren promoting his new book Power, Faith and Fantasy: America in the Middle East, 1776 to the Present at a university near my home in upstate New York.
Oren is a tall, good looking man who radiated a quiet confidence. His book had the truly fanciful goal of showing that the intense American involvement in the Middle East and especially our engagement with the idea of a renewal of Jewish sovereignty in the region was not a recent development. Oren claimed that both the Zionist idea and the friction between Americans and Muslims is an important and persistent narrative thread running through American history from very early times. For instance, he describes the military confrontations of a young American republic with the Barbary pirates as the first battles in what we now call the “War on Terror.” My own conclusion after reading his book, was that Oren’s role as a conservative Israeli think-tanker had completely subsumed any desire he may have had to be an honest American historian. I assumed that he believed that this was a good career move for someone who simultaneously lived in Israel and taught at Yale University. At that point this apparently mild-mannered, obviously intelligent scholar seemed harmless enough. Of course, it was impossible to have known then that Oren would become Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s ambassador to the United States.
Last week Michael Oren, as Israeli Ambassador to the United States, visited Atlanta in order to lay a wreath upon the grave of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King. In addition to the wreath, Oren used his Atlanta visit to lay some of his country’s particularly odious hasbara (meaning public relations, some say propaganda) upon no doubt unsuspecting Georgians.
According to Martha Dalton of Atlanta radio station WABE, Oren exploited the ceremony honoring King by making a statement about the imminent danger Iran’s nuclear program presents to both Israel and the rest of the world. This is far from a universally accepted claim, but after having it repeated enough times in the U.S. media, most accept it as fact. The ambassador also expressed concern about fallout from the recent Wikileaks release of thousands of diplomatic cables, some of which were embarrassing to Israel. [Oren’s fantasy world hasbara at work]
In an opinion piece in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on November 26 entitled “A 63-Year Search For Mideast Peace” Oren took full advantage of the leeway American newspaper editors give to public figures and especially to pro-Israel columns. According to Oren, Israel has been engaged in a 63-year struggle to make its neighbors and those it expelled from its territory understand that all it has ever wanted is to peacefully share the land it claims for itself with its indigenous population.
The United Nations voted to partition what is now Israel 63 years ago into Jewish and Palestinian states. The wisdom of this decision, which was rejected by the region’s Arab governments and populations, is very much in question today. However to Oren, whose views reflect his own blind faith in Israeli power and a generous serving of fantasy, the partition decision (UN resolution 181) expresses the incontestable truth that “[t]he Arab world was to welcome the Jews, after 2,000 years of exile back to their homeland.”
Surprisingly, at least according to Oren, the Arabs did not understand the imperative that they were morally obligated to welcome the Zionists and their proposed Jewish State on lands upon which the Palestinians had lived for centuries. A war ensued, in which according to Oren (repeating one of the favorite false claims of countless pro-Israel propagandists) “the weakly-armed Israeli defenders defeated the much stronger Arab armies.” This description is on its face false. Of course, the stronger army won, do you think it was God who made the Israelis triumph despite their weakness? (For an extensive and detailed description of the relative military strengths of both sides in the 1948 War see the Israeli historian, Benny Morris’ The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949.)
Continuing to mercilessly ladle on the hasbara (which literally means explanation in Hebrew), Oren writes that despite the Palestinians’ history of rejection of continuous Israeli goodwill, his government persists in reaching out with generous peace proposals. The ambassador points to examples of Palestinian recalcitrance in their refusal to accept the Israeli offers of “full statehood” in 2000 and 2008. The reader is not told how full statehood for the Palestinians is compatible with Israeli control of Palestinian water sources, no foreign policy, no army, and Israeli overflight rights among many other crippling limitations, which are conditions upon which the Israelis always insist. Oren also neglects to mention that this “generous offer” of statehood does not now include Gaza nor its democratically-elected government.
To this point Oren’s op-ed had been a rehash of the Israeli and pro-Israel lobby talking points. But suddenly and unexpectedly the mild mannered ex-historian turned diplomat seeks to incite his audience with an original gem of hasbara. Oren declares, “Hamas …[is a]… group dedicated to the murder of all Israelis – indeed all Jews worldwide.”
Hamas is a political party and a social service organization which was democratically elected to rule the Palestinian territories. It also is a liberation and resistance movement which has employed violence against the Israeli army of occupation, the illegal Israeli settler/colonists, and ordinary Israeli civilians. However, the general statement that Hamas is dedicated to the murder of all Israelis is as valid as saying that the Israeli occupation army is dedicated to killing all Palestinians. The second charge, that Hamas is dedicated to killing all Jews worldwide is as fantastic as Oren’s claim in Power, Faith and Fantasy that the American founding-fathers were proto-Zionists who spent inordinate amounts of resources fighting implacable Muslim enemies. Actually, Hamas explicitly rejects the use of violence against targets outside the occupied territories and Israel. Its behavior has reflected that policy.
Before Oren went to Atlanta he made an appearance at the Jewish Federations General Assembly in New Orleans. In addressing the assembly, Oren urged American Jews to make it a priority to ensure that US politicians continue to give Israel “bipartisan support” even if these same American Jews may believe that Israel’s policies are wrong. Oren insisted that it is not only the duty of American Jews to fall into line with Israel’s wishes, but he further declared, “we [Israelis] expect American Jews to refute” any criticism of Israeli policy.
Ambassador Oren wants American Jews to become hasbara agents who blindly follow Israeli government policy while simultaneously inciting them with false fears of being murdered by what for them is a totally imagined enemy. In assuming his new diplomatic role, Michael B. Oren has, unfortunately, been given the authority and platform to promote fantasies about which he could only theorize, three years ago, when I heard him merely urging his audience of college students to buy his book.
– Ira Glunts first visited the Middle East in 1972, where he taught English and physical education in a small rural community in southern Israel. He was a volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces in 1992. Mr. Glunts lives in Madison, New York where he operates a used and rare book business, writes and is a part-time reference librarian. Contact him at: gluntsi[at]morrisville[dot]edu.
Pearl Harbor: A Successful War Lie
An excerpt from War Is A Lie
By David Swanson | December 7, 2010
One type of “defensive” war is one that follows a successful provocation of aggression from the desired enemy. This method was used to begin, and repeatedly to escalate, the Vietnam War, as recorded in the Pentagon Papers. Setting aside the question of whether the United States should have entered World War II, in either Europe or the Pacific or both, the fact is that our country was unlikely to enter unless attacked. In 1928 the U.S. Senate had voted 85 to 1 to ratify the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a treaty that bound — and still binds — our nation and many others never again to engage in war.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter the war in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry, as it had been doing. On April 28, 1941, Churchill wrote a secret directive to his war cabinet:
“It may be taken as almost certain that the entry of Japan into the war would be followed by the immediate entry of the United States on our side.”
On May 11, 1941, Robert Menzies, the prime minister of Australia, met with Roosevelt and found him “a little jealous” of Churchill’s place in the center of the war. While Roosevelt’s cabinet all wanted the United States to enter the war, Menzies found that Roosevelt,
“. . . trained under Woodrow Wilson in the last war, waits for an incident, which would in one blow get the USA into war and get R. out of his foolish election pledges that ‘I will keep you out of war.'”
On August 18, 1941, Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: “The President had said he would wage war but not declare it.” In addition, “Everything was to be done to force an incident.”
Japan was certainly not averse to attacking others and had been busy creating an Asian empire. And the United States and Japan were certainly not living in harmonious friendship. But what could bring the Japanese to attack?
When President Franklin Roosevelt visited Pearl Harbor on July 28, 1934, seven years before the Japanese attack, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up of the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands:
“Such insolent behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted.”
Whether it was actually regretted or not is a separate question from whether this was a typical and predictable response to military expansionism, even when done in the name of “defense.” The great unembedded (as we would today call him) journalist George Seldes was suspicious as well. In October 1934 he wrote in Harper’s Magazine: “It is an axiom that nations do not arm for war but for a war.” Seldes asked an official at the Navy League:
“Do you accept the naval axiom that you prepare to fight a specific navy?”
The man replied “Yes.”
“Do you contemplate a fight with the British navy?”
“Absolutely, no.”
“Do you contemplate war with Japan?”
“Yes.”
In 1935 the most decorated U.S. Marine in history at the time, Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, published to enormous success a short book called “War Is a Racket.” He saw perfectly well what was coming and warned the nation:
“At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals… don’t shout that ‘We need lots of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.’ Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate our 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
“The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline in the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.
“The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern, through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.”
In March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan. Norman Thomas wrote in 1935:
“The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which they know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the denizens of a lunatic asylum.”
The U.S. Navy spent the next few years working up plans for war with Japan, the March 8, 1939, version of which described “an offensive war of long duration” that would destroy the military and disrupt the economic life of Japan. In January 1941, eleven months before the attack, the Japan Advertiser expressed its outrage over Pearl Harbor in an editorial, and the U.S. ambassador to Japan wrote in his diary:
“There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course I informed my government.”
On February 5, 1941, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson to warn of the possibility of a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.
As early as 1932 the United States had been talking with China about providing airplanes, pilots, and training for its war with Japan. In November 1940, Roosevelt loaned China one hundred million dollars for war with Japan, and after consulting with the British, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made plans to send the Chinese bombers with U.S. crews to use in bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. On December 21, 1940, two weeks shy of a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, China’s Minister of Finance T.V. Soong and Colonel Claire Chennault, a retired U.S. Army flier who was working for the Chinese and had been urging them to use American pilots to bomb Tokyo since at least 1937, met in Henry Morgenthau’s dining room to plan the firebombing of Japan. Morgenthau said he could get men released from duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps if the Chinese could pay them $1,000 per month. Soong agreed.
On May 24, 1941, the New York Times reported on U.S. training of the Chinese air force, and the provision of “numerous fighting and bombing planes” to China by the United States. “Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected” read the subheadline. By July, the Joint Army-Navy Board had approved a plan called JB 355 to firebomb Japan. A front corporation would buy American planes to be flown by American volunteers trained by Chennault and paid by another front group. Roosevelt approved, and his China expert Lauchlin Currie, in the words of Nicholson Baker, “wired Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault a letter that fairly begged for interception by Japanese spies.” Whether or not that was the entire point, this was the letter:
“I am very happy to be able to report today the President directed that sixty-six bombers be made available to China this year with twenty-four to be delivered immediately. He also approved a Chinese pilot training program here. Details through normal channels. Warm regards.”
Our ambassador had said “in case of a break with the United States” the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor. I wonder if this qualified!
The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force, also known as the Flying Tigers, moved ahead with recruitment and training immediately and first saw combat on December 20, 1941, twelve days (local time) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
On May 31, 1941, at the Keep America Out of War Congress, William Henry Chamberlin gave a dire warning: “A total economic boycott of Japan, the stoppage of oil shipments for instance, would push Japan into the arms of the Axis. Economic war would be a prelude to naval and military war.” The worst thing about peace advocates is how many times they turn out to be right.
On July 24, 1941, President Roosevelt remarked, “If we cut the oil off , [the Japanese] probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had a war. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific. So our foreign policy was trying to stop a war from breaking out there.”
Reporters noticed that Roosevelt said “was” rather than “is.” The next day, Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing Japanese assets. The United States and Britain cut off oil and scrap metal to Japan. Radhabinod Pal, an Indian jurist who served on the war crimes tribunal after the war, called the embargoes a “clear and potent threat to Japan’s very existence,” and concluded the United States had provoked Japan.
On August 7th four months before the attack the Japan Times Advertiser wrote: “First there was the creation of a superbase at Singapore, heavily reinforced by British and Empire troops. From this hub a great wheel was built up and linked with American bases to form a great ring sweeping in a great area southwards and westwards from the Philippines through Malaya and Burma, with the link broken only in the Thailand peninsula. Now it is proposed to include the narrows in the encirclement, which proceeds to Rangoon.”
By September the Japanese press was outraged that the United States had begun shipping oil right past Japan to reach Russia. Japan, its newspapers said, was dying a slow death from “economic war.”
What might the United States have been hoping to gain by shipping oil past a nation in desperate need of it?
In late October, U.S. spy Edgar Mower was doing work for Colonel William Donovan who spied for Roosevelt. Mower spoke with a man in Manila named Ernest Johnson, a member of the Maritime Commission, who said he expected “The Japs will take Manila before I can get out.” When Mower expressed surprise, Johnson replied “Didn’t you know the Jap fleet has moved eastward, presumably to attack our fleet at Pearl Harbor?”
On November 3, 1941, our ambassador tried again to get something through his government’s thick skull, sending a lengthy telegram to the State Department warning that the economic sanctions might force Japan to commit ” national hara-kiri.” He wrote: ” An armed conflict with the United States may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness.”
Why do I keep recalling the headline of the memo given to President George W. Bush prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks? “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”
Apparently nobody in Washington wanted to hear it in 1941 either. On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as “the Marshall Plan.” In fact we don’t remember it at all.” We are preparing an offensive war against Japan,” Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.
Ten days later Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that he’d met in the Oval Office with Marshall, President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Harold Stark, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Roosevelt had told them the Japanese were likely to attack soon, possibly next Monday. That would have been December 1st, six days before the attack actually came. “The question,” Stimson wrote, ” was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.” Was it? One obvious answer was to keep the fleet in Pearl Harbor and keep the sailors stationed there in the dark while fretting about them from comfortable offices in Washington, D.C. In fact, that was the solution our suit-and-tied heroes went with.
The day after the attack, Congress voted for war. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R., Mont.), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II (just as Congresswoman Barbara Lee [D., Calif.] would stand alone against attacking Afghanistan 60 years later). One year after the vote, on December 8, 1942, Rankin put extended remarks into the Congressional Record explaining her opposition. She cited the work of a British propagandist who had argued in 1938 for using Japan to bring the United States into the war. She cited Henry Luce’s reference in Life magazine on July 20, 1942, to “the Chinese for whom the U.S. had delivered the ultimatum that brought on Pearl Harbor.” She introduced evidence that at the Atlantic Conference on August 12, 1941, Roosevelt had assured Churchill that the United States would bring economic pressure to bear on Japan. “I cited,” Rankin later wrote, ” the State Department Bulletin of December 20, 1941, which revealed that on September 3 a communication had been sent to Japan demanding that it accept the principle of ‘nondisturbance of the status quo in the Pacific,’ which amounted to demanding guarantees of the inviolateness of the white empires in the Orient.”
Rankin found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been “cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade.” Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the slogan “kill Japs, kill Japs!” ) had given instructions to him and others to “shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea.”
Whether or not World War II was the “good war” we are so often told it was, the idea that it was a defensive war because our innocent imperial outpost in the middle of the Pacific was attacked out of the clear blue sky is a myth that deserves to be buried.
Some on the Internet Start to Wonder—Is WikiLeaks for Real?
By Behrouz Saba | New America Media | December 02, 2010
The quarter of a million American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks reveal that American diplomats have a low opinion of the thuggish Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. They call him “feckless.” Equally underwhelming are the revelations that Nikolas Sarkozy is “temperamental” and Muammar al-Gaddafi likes flamenco and blondes. What is more, some of Iran’s Arab neighbors look to Tehran with fear and loathing, Afghan politicians are corrupt, and American corporations lobby the Congress.
The global media is in a tizzy, repeating the same mundane, stale information from 251,287 cables released by WikiLeaks, a media organization that claims a loosely organized network of international contributors. Curiously, such publications as The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, Le Monde and Spain’s El País have carried the leaks dutifully, even though their well-policed pages are otherwise governed by highly divergent philosophies, policies and practices. Even more curiously, all news organizations repeat the same cherry-picked factoids that their ace reporters apparently culled from the documents.
No wonder that some on the Internet believe WikiLeaks to be a “false flag” operation—part of a Big Lie mounted by the American intelligence community.
Julian Assange, the curious-looking founder of WikiLeaks—a cross between Casper the Friendly Ghost and Illya Kuryakin of the 1960s TV spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.—has the kind of checkered, globe-trotting past that makes him a prime recruit for intelligence services.
At the same time, most Americans quickly dismiss these charges, asking why their government would covertly conspire to release information that is potentially damaging to itself.
A closer look shows the many ways that these revelations bolster the status quo in Washington. They mainly deflect public attention from far more urgent issues—including a broken economy, dysfunctional governmental services, Obama’s chimera of hope and change, and a general hollowing out of America at its core, commensurate with its imperial reach.
More than that, the leaks characterize an increasingly unaccountable United States as the “victim,” equate investigative journalism with treason, and communicate without repercussion Washington’s frank opinion of world leaders with whom it is less than pleased. (It doesn’t hurt the Obama administration a bit for the world to know that certain Arab capitals are just as opposed to the Ahmadinejad regime as Tel Aviv is.)
Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of spy craft and the long history of similar false-flag operations would never question the benefits of such ruses to preserving many vested interests. This history includes the Gulf of Tonkin report, the counterproductive “war on drugs,” and “detection” of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, to name just a few.
Yet the majority of Americans would be hard pressed to name even one or two agencies in the vast, well-funded intelligence apparatus that sucks up their taxes while remaining virtually unanswerable to them and their elected representatives.
In reality, the system is composed of 16 agencies whose existence is verifiable and another six that are thought to act in total secrecy. Most Americans know about the Central Intelligence Agency, but it is among the smallest, least well-funded of the group, which is mostly under the Pentagon command with a total annual budget of nearly $50 billion. The fact that the State, Treasury and Energy departments also have covert operations will come as a surprise to many Americans. Asking people on Main Street to define the functions of the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is sure to invite blank stares.
America’s covert machinery, easily the largest in world history, reaches every corner of the globe, gathering, hiding, publishing or distorting information to suit its own purposes. On its payroll are politicians and artists, scions of noble families and common gangsters, visionaries, crackpots, assassins and healers the world over.
It would not be surprising at all if WikiLeaks were being used by this intelligence network to do its bidding, knowingly or otherwise. Surely this would explain the almost comical spectacle of WikiLeaks “releasing” tons of potentially damaging information while America’s entire intelligence community merely whimpers like a whipped dog— as if the U.S. were not capable of moving the website out of civilian reach and erasing it from existence as easily as it introduced the Stuxnet virus to the computers of an Iranian nuclear plant. (Overshadowed by the WikiLeaks’s non-news was the Monday morning bombing in Tehran that killed one Iranian nuclear scientist and injured another.)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton must be trying hard to keep a straight face as she “apologizes” for or otherwise “explains” the words of the bad boys and girls of American diplomacy. Equally constrained must be Attorney General Eric Holder, who speaks of an “active and ongoing criminal investigation” of WikiLeaks. Sorely missing is a voice sufficiently powerful within the government or major media to question this global spectacle, which doesn’t pass the smell test on many levels.
WikiStink
By Susan Abulhawa / Dissident Voice / December 1st, 2010
Over a quarter of a million diplomatic cables, marked – “secret” , “confidential”, or “unclassified” – to and from the US State Department have been “leaked” to the public, presumably by a whistleblower. On the surface, it seems like the sort of thing that restores power to the people. It arms us all with knowledge and reminds those in power that they must answer to the public.
Then you pause to think. And that’s when the holes in this narrative become obvious.
Although WikiLeaks claims to provide a counter balance to the decades of disinformation served up in heaps by the “old media”, it chose to allow the vetting of these documents by these same outlets. Other highly respected media outlets, like al Jazeera and various independent media, were excluded. I find that odd, for starters.
If we take a look at the content of the cables themselves, the most remarkable thing to come out of these secret and confidential memos is what they do not contain. Granted, only 290 have actually been released so far. But it seems far from a coincidence that nearly every cable to and from Arab states released thus far has to do with villainizing Iran and mum’s the word on most major diplomatic hooplas of the past few years.
Take for example the bombshell briefing by a senior military officers to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen earlier in the year. The team was dispatched by Commander General David Petraeus to brief the Pentagon on intelligence that Israeli intransigence in the peace process was jeopardizing American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and that America was perceived as weak, ineffectual, and unable to stand up to Israel. Such political commentary from the highest echelons of the military was unprecedented and when news of this briefing broke, you can bet there was a significant diplomatic flurry. Yet a simple search of Petraeus’ name in the cablegate database on the Guardian website only turns up cables indicating that Arab countries were eager for an attack on Iran, which coincidentally happens to bolster Israel’s drumming for more war.
You can’t even find Vice President Joe Biden’s name in the keyword search even though Israel’s announcement of the construction of more illegal Jewish-only settlements in East Jerusalem on the eve of Biden’s visit to Tel Aviv amounted to an epic public spanking of Obama. Subsequent statements from the White House were as harsh as America ever dares to be with Israel, although they did not approach Obama’s reported ire over the matter. Thus far, there is not a single cable on the matter.
If you search cables originating in Dubai, all you’ll find are those denouncing and accusing Iran in titles like “Arab states scorn ‘evil’ Iran”, “AbuDhabi favors action to prevent nuclear Iran”, or “Emiratis fret over Iranian meddling”. This is quite amazing considering that the biggest diplomatic crisis this year occurred after a senior Hamas leader was assassinated in Dubai. The evidence and the world’s collective finger pointed at the Mossad and several diplomatic fallouts ensued when it was confirmed that Israel had forged foreign passports of the hitmen. And yet, there is not a word about this in any of the cables released so far. Instead, everything referencing the UAE or originating from Dubai only discusses “evil Iran”, much like the cables referencing Gen. Petraeus.
The list goes on. For all of Israel’s well known subterfuge (to put it mildly) – their espionage against the US; their persistent requests for money, weapons, special favors, and political cover; their well documented crimes against Palestinians; their mafia tactics of assassinating leaders, intellectuals, and scientists across the globe; and their US-based powerful lobby, AIPAC, which was the center of an FBI investigation that found their senior officers passing sensitive and classified US intelligence to Israel – there is nothing referencing any of this in the memos to and from the US State Department in the cables thus far released.
Something else to note.
Someone with access to hundreds of thousands of classified communications and with the ability to move them without detection must have exceptionally high security clearance. He or she must be on the far upper end of the ladder. Why would individuals like that risk their careers, possibly their lives, just to embarrass the US, presumably their own country?
Whistleblowers tend to be people who obey the call of their conscience and moral codes to expose crimes and injustices committed. But there is nothing of the sort in this “leak”. Even more absurd is the notion that Manning, a soldier, leaked all these documents while in custody and under surveillance.
Finally, does anyone find it odd that while most world leaders are quietly bracing themselves for embarrassment and diplomatic repercussions, Benjamin Netanyahu is confidently speaking and gloating about how Saudia Arabia has urged attacking Iran? I sure do.
There are still thousands more cables to be reviewed and redacted by the good old boy network of ‘old media’ and I hope that the cables they release in the coming days and months will prove my suspicions moot. I’m willing to keep an open mind until we’ve seen the full leak. In the meantime, what we know so far does not add up and frankly smells rotten.
WIKILEAKS – MORE ISRAELI GAME THEORY WARFARE?
When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.
By Jeff Gates | My Catbird Seat | December 1, 2010
“The United States is the real victim of WikiLeaks. It’s an action aimed at discrediting them.” Franco Frattini, Foreign Minister of Italy
The impact of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables fits the behavior profile of those well versed in game theory warfare.
When Israeli mathematician Robert J. Aumann received the 2005 Nobel Prize in economic science for his work on game theory, he conceded, “the entire school of thought that we have developed here in Israel” has turned “Israel into the leading authority in this field.”
The candor of this Israeli-American offered a rare insight into an enclave long known for waging war from the shadows. Israel’s most notable success to date was “fixing” the intelligence that induced the U.S. to invade Iraq in pursuit of a geopolitical agenda long sought by Tel Aviv
When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.
Why now? Tel Aviv was feeling pressure to end its six-decade occupation of Palestine. With this release, its foot-dragging on the peace process was displaced with talk of an attack on Iran.
While the U.S. bore the brunt of the damage, the target was global public opinion. To maintain the plausibility of The Clash of Civilizations, a focus must be maintained on Iran as a credible Evil Doer.
With fast-emerging transparency, Israel and pro-Israelis have been identified as the source of the intelligence that took coalition forces to war in Iraq. Thus the need to shift attention off Tel Aviv.
WikiLeaks may yet succeed in that mission.
Foreseeable Futures
Game theory war planning aims to create outcomes that are predictable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.
That’s why Israeli war planners focus on gaining traction for a plausible narrative and then advancing that storyline step by gradual step.
For the Zionist state to succeed with its expansionist agenda, Iran must remain at center stage as an essential villain in a geopolitical morality play pitting the West against Islamo Fascists.
To displace facts with false beliefs—as with belief in the intelligence that induced the invasion of Iraq—momentum must be maintained for the storyline. Lose the plot (The Clash) and peace might break out. And those deceived may identify the deceiver.
Thus the timing of this latest WikiLeaks release. Its goal: to have us believe that it is not Tel Aviv but Washington that is the forefront of geopolitical duplicity and a source of Evil Doing.
Intelligence wars rely on mathematical models to anticipate the response of those targeted. With game theory algorithms, reactions become foreseeable—within an acceptable range of probabilities.
Control enough of the variables and outcomes become a mathematical inevitability.
The WikiLeaks Motive
Was the reaction to this latest WikiLeaks foreseeable? With exquisite timing, the U.S. was discredited with an array of revelations that called into question U.S. motives and put in jeopardy U.S. relations worldwide.
As the Italian Foreign Minister summarized: “The news released by WikiLeaks will change diplomatic relations between countries.”
The hard-earned trust of the Pakistanis disappeared overnight. Attempts to engage Iran were set back. The overall effect advanced The Clash storyline. If Washington could so badly misread North Korean intentions, then why is the U.S. to be trusted when it comes to a nuclear Iran?
This Wiki-catalyzed storyline pushed Israel off the front page in favor of Iran.
Even U.S. detainees at Guantanamo are again at issue, reigniting that shameful spectacle as a provocation for extremism and terror. U.S. diplomats will now be suspected of spying and lying. What nation can now trust Americans to maintain confidences?
In short, the risks increased for everyone.
Except Israel.
Should Israel launch an attack on Iran, Tel Aviv can cite WikiLeaks as its rationale. Though an attack would be calamitous from a human, economic and financial perspective, even that foreseeable outcome would be dwarfed by the enduring hatred that would ensue.
That too is foreseeable—from a game theory perspective of those marketing The Clash.
The effect of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was predictable. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia foresaw it, noting simply that the U.S. invasion would “give Iraq to Iran as a gift on a golden platter.”
With the elimination of Sunni leader Saddam Hussein, the numerically dominant Shiites of Iraq were drawn into the political orbit of the Shiite-dominant Iran.
Game theorists focus their manipulation of affairs on their control of key variables. Then events take on a life all their own. The impact of this discrediting release was wide-ranging and fully foreseeable.
A Mossad case officer explained Israel’s success at waging war by way of deception: “Once the orchestra starts to play, we just hum along.”
These, after all, are the leading authorities in the field.
Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide. He served for seven years as counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance.
Wikileaks leaks toxic acid in every direction, except to Israel
By Dr. Tariq Shadid • December 1st, 2010
Let us ponder for a second about the meaning of ‘leaking’. When something is leaking, it is usually understood that some fluid substance that is supposed to be flowing in a certain direction, is escaping from its designed route because of a defect in the structure that was built to guide it. Usually, if you have a leaking pipe in your water system, your main problem is that you are unable to control the flow of it, and water goes into directions where you don’t want it to be going.
However, the definition of ‘Wikileaking’ seems to be following entirely different laws of nature. Indeed, the information is flowing away from the secret pipelines it was originally guided into. However, the strange thing about ‘Wikileaking’ is that Israel, a country widely known for its secret dealings and cunning intelligence service, is managing to keep dry feet in spite of the massive political flooding allegedly caused by Wikileaks’ founding father, Julian Assange.
The lack of control that is so typical of other forms of ‘leaking’, certainly does not seem to apply to ‘Wikileaking’ – instead it looks like it is under perfect control, and carefully guided in such a way that it only serves the interests of one state, namely that of Israel.
Assange takes a leak, the world jumps up
Barely a country in the world that is actively involved in Middle East and other international affairs, either by choice or by geographical location, has been spared by Assange’s latest opening of his Pandora’s box of revelations. It is hard to visit a news source these days, without the word ‘Wikileaks’ jumping into your view at least once, and revealing some scandalous backdoor deal, secret agreement or embarrassing hidden relationship between governments who on the surface seem to be diametrically opposed to each other in the political spectrum.
Since the list of countries that have faced these embarrassments includes Obama’s United States, many anti-imperialist activists around the world have been anxiously awaiting the latest leaks, and are now engaging in discussions about the implications of many of these so-called astounding revelations. Julian Assange is being hailed worldwide by people who are critical of their governments as the activist who was able to embarrass governments, helped only by a small group of independent supporters. His star is rising rapidly, and although sounds of cynicism can be heard here and there, the overwhelming noise resounding in progressive circles is one of loud cheers for this long-awaited ‘champion of the ordinary man’.
What many seem to be failing to be notice however, is that although the list of countries that were painfully embarrassed by the publication of their secret cables, memo’s and meetings, includes the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, Egypt and the United States – where Obama is suffering from serious problems from a ‘Tea Party’ he was not invited to – one of the main actors in the dirty political game of Middle East animosities and alliances is remaining completely unharmed: Israel.
Much ado about old news
What are Wikileaks telling us? That Saudi Arabia poured oil on the flames against Iran? We already knew that. That Abbas’ administration as well as the Egyptian government were very well informed about Israel’s genocidal military assault on Gaza in the winter of 2009? There is nothing new about that either. The list goes on and on, and the main victims of embarrassment are leaders of Arab governments. But what is so new about that? Doesn’t almost every Arab in the world who reads newspapers, watches Al Jazeera and has a certain degree of understanding of Middle East politics, already know about the extent and scope of secret relations in the region? Even many people living outside of the Arab world are largely aware of this.
Oana Lungescu, spokeswoman for NATO, called Wikileaks’ revelations about the presence of American nuclear missiles in Europe – mainly the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany – ‘dangerous’ on November 29. Why exactly would something be dangerous, if it is a commonly known fact that has now only been confirmed yet again? Didn’t earlier revelations have no effect, so why would these new ones do that? Does the fact that Obama, Sarkozy, and the Chinese leadership have all condemned Wikileaks and its founder, make any significant difference?
The answer to these questions is: yes, these revelations are indeed causing unpleasant domestic situations all around the world, and creating electoral problems and other political embarrassments for governments everywhere – except in one place, namely Israel.
No worries: Assange will tell you who to trust
Julian Assange, ‘master revealer’ of international conspiracies, apparently also is highly irritated by people questioning the events of 9/11. In an interview in the Belfast Telegraph on July 19, 2010, he was asked about the 9/11 attack, and answered: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”
Apparently Julian ‘Robin Hood’ Assange finds the story of pilots who fly an airplane full of people straight into a humongous skyscraper full of unsuspecting citizens, just because some hysterical hijacker is holding a box-cutter against their jugular veins, perfectly believable. He apparently also believes that when you fly an airplane into the top floors of one of the world’s largest buildings, in a horizontal direction, the building will not only spontaneously collapse all the way down to its basement in a vertical direction, but will indeed be transformed into a powdery dust – except of course the completely undamaged passport of one of the alleged hijackers, that was miraculously found among the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Unless you, dear reader, also believe in fairy tales, this should certainly make you wonder. So much for your credibility, Mr Assange.
Cui Bono?
In politics there is a golden rule for understanding what may be the driving force behind unexpected mysterious events. This rule is known as ‘Cui Bono’, which is Latin for: ‘who benefits?’
Browse through all the news sources available on the latest Wikileaks revelation, and try to find even only one revelation that actually damages Israel, even though so many of the revealed documents are directly or indirectly connected to Middle East politics, and to a large extent to Israeli affairs. Did you find any document among them that either creates difficulties for the government of the Zionist entity, or even slightly embarrasses it? Think about it well, you will find that the answer is a very simple “No”.
Does it not strike you as interesting or remarkable, that many of the revelations about Middle East affairs are of direct benefit to Israel? If it hasn’t, read them again, and give it some thought.
Cui bono? Israel. Therefore, who is the prime suspect behind the phenomenon ‘Julian Assange’? You tell me, or just prove me wrong by showing me one Wikileaks document that would make Binjamin Netanyahu and his rogue companions scratch their heads, or even become only slightly uncomfortable. My suspicion grows stronger every day, and is not deterred by Interpol’s announcement on December 1 that Julian Assange is wanted for an alleged sexual harassment case in Sweden. It is obvious that he is a man who has angered many people of power, regardless of whether he is actually guilty in that harassment case or not. The problem however is that none of these people of power are Israeli, and that says a lot. You never bite the hand that feeds you, do you, Julian?
Erdogan Calls WikiLeaks Documents “Gossip”
Al-Manar | 01/12/2010
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was enraged Wednesday by documents exposed by WikiLeaks which contend, among other things, that he has secret offshore bank accounts.
“I don’t have a penny in Swiss banks, and I have nothing to prove to anyone,” he told a press conference in Ankara.
Journalists described Erdogan as furious, directing his ire at the Turkish Opposition as well as the free press, which covered the WikiLeaks documents extensively, calling them “opportunists happily engaging in gossip”.
“If you prove the claims are correct, I will announce my resignation forthwith. But if the opposite turns out to be true, will you resign as well?” he asked the journalists. “The US administration must hold the writers of these cables accountable for dealing in baseless reports, slander, and libel.”
Erdogan was mainly upset about a secret document dated December 30, 2004, in which the US ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, wrote he had heard from contacts that Erdogan was holding eight bank accounts loaded with private funds in Switzerland.
Other documents revealed that US officials in contact with Erdogan tended to describe him as an “extremist” who hates Israel and surrounds himself with “fawning” aides and advisors. Memos leaked by the site says the US had defined his foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, as extraordinarily dangerous.
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“Evidence-based medicine has been hijacked:” A confession from John Ioannidis
Retraction Watch – March 16, 2016
John Ioannidis is perhaps best known for a 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” One of the most highly cited researchers in the world, Ioannidis, a professor at Stanford, has built a career in the field of meta-research. Earlier this month, he published a heartfelt and provocative essay in the the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology titled “Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Report to David Sackett.” In it, he carries on a conversation begun in 2004 with Sackett, who died last May and was widely considered the father of evidence-based medicine. We asked Ioannidis to expand on his comments in the essay, including why he believes he is a “failure.” … continue
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