New York — The scripted excuses provided by mayors around the country to justify their police-state tactics in rousting peaceful occupation movement activists from their park-based demonstrations now stand exposed as utter nonsense, and, given their uncanny similarity in wording, can be clearly seen as having been drawn up for them by some hidden hands in Washington. the same can be said of the brutal tactics used.
If Mayor Jean Quan in Oakland, or Mayor Mike Bloomberg in New York, had been genuinely concerned about the health and well-being of the people in the encampments in their cities, they would not have dispatched police suited up in riot gear and armed with pepper spray and big clubs into the camps in the dead of night, as each did, and as other mayors are doing. They would not have used tear gas and guns firing projectiles like so called “bean bags” and rubber coated bullets, as police in Oakland reportedly did on several occasions — weapons that can cause severe injury and even death on occasion, especially when fired at close range.
They would not have stormed encampments that are known to have pregnant women, children and even babies living in them.
Rather, they would have come in during broad daylight, peacefully, and accompanied by health inspectors and other personnel who could to try to help solve any problems.
In Bloomberg’s case, if he really cared about the safety and well-being of the protesters, he would have long ago had the city set up a bank of port-a-potties near Zuccotti Park, so protesters could relieve themselves without having to foul the streets. And he would certainly not have barred demonstrators from setting up tents, forcing people, in increasingly harsh weather, including one heavy unseasonal snowstorm, to survive under plastic tarps laid on the cold flagstones over their sleeping bags.
If public safety were seriously an issue, as Quan, Bloomberg and the other mayors have also tried to claim, police would have been told not to direct vagrants and people with mental problems from around the city to head for Zuccotti Square, as New York’s Police Department was caught doing. Instead of acting like thugs and an occupying force penning in demonstrators, police would have worked out a coordinated system with demonstrators to help protect those in the park from any sexual predators or mentally unbalanced persons who might have entered the park to cause trouble.
Actually, the regions in and around the encampments have never been safer than they are now with all those demonstrators on hand. Take Center City in Philadelphia. The area on Dilworth Plaza and around City Hall has always been a scary place to find one’s self alone at night because so few people actually live there, making lone pedestrians up on the street or down in the tunnels of the train station or subways easy targets for muggers, rapists and thieves. The same is certainly also true of downtown Oakland and of New York’s financial district. If there have been crimes committed by people in the encampments, they are few and far between and mostly minor, and it is almost a certainty that overall crime and especially violent crime is down significantly in the areas where the protests are being staged.
There can be no real justification for the growing number of paramilitary police assaults against the occupation camps.
These coordinated assaults on the Occupation Movement are clearly happening not for the reasons stated, but because the ruling elites, particularly the powerful bankers and financiers on Wall Street, and the Obama administration in Washington, are frightened by the growing popularity of the protests, by the movement’s rapid spread to cities across the country, large and small, and to the resonance that chants like “We’re the 99 percent!” and “Banks got bailouts! We got sold out!” are having among the general population of the United States.
Bloomberg and Quan, and the mayors of other cities from Atlanta to Dallas to Portland to Seattle and back to Boston who have been unleashing their police forces on peaceful protesters in their jurisdictions, have been doing the movement a great favor by brutally attacking protesters’ right to demonstrate and present their grievances. The corporate media, which at first tried to ignore the occupations, have had to cover the assaults — even if they misreport them. And the images of idealistic young people being thrown on the ground, hammered with batons, and sprayed in the face with pepper spray, are deeply upsetting to most ordinary people. Workers are increasingly angered and aroused, and many are touched by the support for their struggles being manifested by the young student demonstrators.
And importantly, the enemy of the public is being given a face.
No longer is it just a bunch of unidentified and overly aggressive cops. Now it’s clear that it is the mayors, and whoever it is in the background who is giving them their marching orders, who are instructing the cops to go in and bust heads.
Mayor Bloomberg — a man reportedly worth $19.5 billion, up a staggering $1.5 billion over the last year while other Americans are becoming poorer — is in fact the perfect symbol of what is wrong with today’s America. Having this greedy “one per center” issue the marching orders to the police in New York makes it absolutely clear what this repression is about.
With this wave of assaults, the Occupation Movement is being forced to shift gears — to move out of the cramped spaces to which it has been confined and to become an uprising for economic justice, instead of just an occupation as an act of protest. Zuccotti has been reoccupied, but the movement is busting out of the police barricades that surround the square.
Perhaps a group of young musicians standing on a street corner at 66th and Broadway just off Lincoln Square in New York City, just off Lincoln Square in New York City, doing a “mic check” routine at 11 pm the evening after the police assault on Zuccotti Plaza, said it best with their sign, which read: “Nostalgia for the Student Protests of the Past Dies Here!”
The ’60s are over. It’s the ’10s now and rebellion is in the air.
Israeli paper Israel-Ayomreports today about a recent ‘Congressional bill’ that would require the “American administration to support Israel in a move deemed necessary to defend itself against the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Five Republican congressmen who visited Israel last week disclosed the bill.
The bill states an “expression of support for Israel’s right to defend its sovereignty and to protect the lives and safety of its citizens and use all necessary means to confront and eliminate the nuclear threat that emerges from the Islamic Republic of Iran, including use military force in the absence of other diplomatic means available in the near future.”
The initiator of the bill is Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colorado).
In 1996, an Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, prepared “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In that seminal report, the Richard Perle-led study group suggested that Israel could “shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria.” Comprised mainly of American-based pro-Israel advocates, the group stressed, “Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.”
Although Netanyahu didn’t act on their advice at the time, Perle and two of his co-authors, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, found George W. Bush more receptive to “securing the realm” – for Israel – after September 11, 2001. Nine days after that “catastrophic and catalyzing event,” Perle signed a Project for a New American Century letter to President Bush, urging the United States to “consider appropriate measures of retaliation” against Iran and Syria if they didn’t “immediately cease all military, financial, and political support for Hezbollah” – whose presumably unforgivable crime was that it had “humiliated Israel by driving its army out of Lebanon.” Explaining the Bush administration’s subsequent decision to invade Iraq in 2003, Patrick Buchanan famously wrote in The American Conservative, “In the Perle-Feith-Wurmser strategy, Israel’s enemy remains Syria, but the road to Damascus runs through Baghdad.”
Notwithstanding Syria’s initial cooperation with the Israeli-inspired but American-fought “war on terror,” the Israel lobby ensured that there would be no long-term rapprochement between Washington and Damascus. A September 5, 2002 document, “Working to Secure Israel: The Pro-Israel Community’s Legislative Goals,” declared AIPAC’s intention to “sanction Syria for its continuing support of terrorism” by working “with Congress to pass the Syria Accountability Act.”
In October 2003, Representative Eliot Engel, who sponsored the legislation, proudly reported the bill’s imminent passage to the inaugural Jerusalem Summit, organized by Ariel Sharon’s government and its diehard American supporters (including the ubiquitous Perle) “to work out a joint strategy of resistance to the Totalitarianism of the Radical Islam, and to the moral relativism which in vain tries to placate this Totalitarianism by sacrificing Israel.” Confusing the ultimate target of the AIPAC-crafted legislation with Israel’s more southerly bête noire, the Jewish Democrat from New York informed the summit, “It’s no secret that the people on Lebanon’s southern border, the terrorists, Hamas, are wrecking [sic] havoc and causing all kinds of destruction and could be stopped tomorrow if Syria wanted it. This is Hamas, the group which blew up over 200 US marines. This is the group that goes out not only to destroy Israel, but would destroy the United States as well.”
With Iraq proving to be less of a “cakewalk” than America’s pro-Israel warmongers had breezily predicted, Syria managed to survive two Bush terms. The failure of Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon to dislodge Hezbollah, however, added significantly to the impetus for regime change in Damascus. When Israel’s friends in Washington concluded that the Syrian corridor to Iran was “Hezbollah’s achilles heel,” Bashar al-Assad’s days were increasingly numbered. The Arab uprisings of 2011 provided them with their long-sought opportunity for “rolling back Syria.”
Writing in the Guardian, Alistair Crooke describes how the “great game” of “losing Syria” is currently being played out with the cooperation of the absolute monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Qatar; the also predominantly Sunni secular Republic of Turkey; and France, arch-promoters of Libya’s NATO-backed “revolution” and Syria’s short-lived former colonial rulers, i.e. “set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall.”
Enforcing those AIPAC-endorsed sanctions has been the happy task of the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence. Created in early 2004 after intensive lobbying by AIPAC and its associated think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the TFI unit has been aptly described as “a sharp-edged tool forged principally to serve the Israel lobby.” With David S. Cohen succeeding Stuart Levey as Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in January 2011, a leading journalist on the Middle East was later prompted to call the position “a job which seems reserved for pro-Israeli neo-cons to wage economic warfare against Tehran.”
In recent days, Cohen’s TFI unit has been eagerly waging economic warfare against Damascus. Daniel L. Glaser, the Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing, has just completed a tour of Lebanon and Jordan to secure their compliance with economic sanctions against the Assad government. In Beirut, the U.S. Embassy announced that Glaser was pressing the authorities to “remain vigilant against attempts by the Syrian regime to evade U.S. and EU sanctions.”
In a recent policy alert, WINEP’s executive director, Robert Satloff, urged that “with the strategic opportunity of contributing to the demise of Iran’s premier Arab ally, Washington should be working overtime to act in defense of the Syrian people.” Considering the long road to Damascus pursued by Satloff’s fellow-travellers, it should be clear for which country regime change in Syria presents a “strategic opportunity.”
Saddam… likens Israel to “a cancerous tumor that should be excised from Palestine.”
Unlike some of his fellow Arab leaders, Saddam really means it. With the help of the French, he began construction on a nuclear power plant shortly after his rise to power. Its purpose was clear: foreign countries “should assist the Arabs to obtain… the nuclear bomb in order to confront Israel’s existing bombs,” Saddam declared in 1981. When the Israel air force laid waste to the Osirak nuclear plant that same year, the Iraqi dictator only stepped up his threats to destroy the Jewish state…
In the years since Desert Storm [1991], Iraqi officials have stated explicitly that Iraq maintains biological weapons for use against Israel. Saddam’s son Uday boasts that Baghdad possesses “weapons of comprehensive destruction” for this purpose and that “the extinction of the Zionist entity was a necessity dictated both by the will of God, and the need to recover exclusive Arab rights to Palestine.” …
Israel is not the only country against which the Iraqi dictator wields this peculiar brand of aggression. The United States also has been affected by Iraqi-sponsored acts of terror… American officials have recently documented contacts between Iraqi and Al Qaeda agents, as well as “solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad,” according to CIA director George Tenet…
The United States should… conceive of itself as at once a European power, an Asian power and, of course, a Middle Eastern power. It would act as if threats to the interests of our allies are threats to us, which indeed they are. It would act as if the flouting of civilized rules of conduct are threats that affect us with almost the same immediacy as if they were occurring on our doorstep…
This is Matthew Gould, second from right, British Ambassador to Israel, who was pictured speaking at a meeting of the Leeds Zionist Federation that was also the opening of the Leeds Hasbarah Centre. The Leeds Zionist Federation is part of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, motto “Speaking Up for Israel.” A collection was made at the meeting to send packages to members of the Israeli Defence Force.
On 29 May 2011 The Jerusalem Post reported: “British Ambassador Matthew Gould declared his commitment to Israel and the principles of Zionism on Thursday”.
Remember this background, it is unusual behaviour for a diplomat, and it is important.
The six meetings between British Ambassador to Israel Matthew Gould and Minister of Defence Liam Fox and Adam Werritty together – only two of which were revealed by Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell in his “investigation” into Werritty’s unauthorised role in the Ministry of Defence – raise vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq..
This is a detective story. It begins a few weeks ago, when the Fox-Werritty scandal was first breaking in the media. I had a contact from an old friend from my Foreign Office days. This friend had access to the Gus O’Donnell investigation. He had given a message for me to a trusted third party.
Whistleblowing in the surveillance state is a difficult activity. I left through a neighbour’s garden, not carrying a mobile phone, puffed and panted by bicycle to an unmonitored but busy stretch of road, hitched a lift much of the way, then ordered a minicab on a payphone from a country pub to my final destination, a farm far from CCTV. There the intermediary gave me the message: what really was worrying senior civil servants in the Cabinet Office was that the Fox-Werritty link related to plans involving Mossad and the British Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould.
Since I became a notorious whistleblower, several of my ex-friends and contacts have used me to get out information they wanted to leak, via my blog. A good recent example was a senior friend at the UN who tipped me off in advance on the deal by which the US agreed to the Saudi attack on pro-democracy demonstrators in Bahrain, in return for Arab League support for the NATO attack on Libya. But this was rather different, not least in the apparent implication that our Ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, was engaged in something with Werritty which went beyond official FCO policy.
I was particularly concerned by this because I knew slightly and liked Matthew Gould, from the time he wrote speeches for Robin Cook. I hoped there was nothing much in it. But then Gould’s name started to come up as professional journalists dug into the story, and reported Werritty’s funding by pro-Israeli lobby groups.
I decided that the best approach was for me to write to Matthew Gould. I did so, asking him when he had first met Werritty, how many times he had met him, and how many communications of every kind there had been between them. I received the reply that these questions would be answered in Gus O’Donnell’s report.
But Gus O’Donnell’s report in fact answered none of these questions. It only mentioned two meetings at which Fox, Gould and Werritty were all three present. It did not mention Gould-Werritty bilateral meetings and contacts at all. To an ex-Ambassador like me, there was also something very fishy about the two trilateral meetings O’Donnell did mention and his characterisation of them.
This led me to dig further, and I was shocked to find that O’Donnell was, at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth. In fact there were at least six Fox-Werritty-Gould meetings, not the two given by O’Donnell. Why did GOD lie? I now had no doubt that my informant had pointed me towards something very real and very important indeed.
Matthew Gould was the only British Ambassador who Fox and Werrity met together. They met him six times. Why?
The first meeting to which O’Donnell admits, took place in September 2010. O’Donnell says this was
“a general discussion of international defence and security matters to enable Mr Gould better to understand MOD’s perspective.”
O’Donnell says Werritty should not have been present. An FCO spokesman told me on 21 October that
“Mr Gould’s meeting with the Defence Secretary was arranged by his office as part of his pre-posting briefing calls.”
All Ambassadors make pre-posting briefing calls around Whitehall before taking up their job, as you would expect. But even for our most senior Ambassadors, outside the Foreign Office those calls are not at Secretary of State level. Senior officials are quite capable of explaining policy to outgoing Ambassadors; Secretaries of State have many other things to do.
For this meeting to happen at all was not routine, and Werritty’s presence made it still more strange. Why was this meeting happening? I dug further, and learnt from a senior MOD source that there were two more very strange things about this meeting, neither noted by O’Donnell. There was no private secretary or MOD official present to take note of action points, and the meeting took place not in Fox’s office, but in the MOD dining room.
O’Donnell may have been able to fox the media, but to a former Ambassador this whole meeting stunk. I bombarded the FCO with more questions, and discovered an amazing fact left out by O’Donnell. The FCO spokesman replied to me on 21 October 2011 that:
“Mr Werritty was also present at an earlier meeting Mr Gould had with Dr Fox in the latter’s capacity as shadow Defence Secretary.”
So Gould, Fox and Werritty had got together before Gould was Ambassador, while Fox was still in opposition and while Werritty was – what, exactly? This opened far more questions than it answered. I put them to the FCO. When, where and why had this meeting happened? We only knew it was before May 2010, when Fox took office. What was discussed? There are very strict protocols for senior officials briefing opposition front bench spokesman. Had they been followed?
The FCO refused point blank to answer any further questions. I turned to an independent-minded MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who put down a parliamentary question to William Hague. The reply quite deliberately ignored almost all of Corbyn’s question, but it did throw up an extraordinary bit of information – yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould, which had not been previously admitted.
“Our ambassador to Israel was also invited by the former Defence Secretary to a private social engagement in summer 2010 at which Adam Werritty was present.”
Getting to the truth was like drawing teeth, but the picture was building. O’Donnell had completely mischaracterised the “Briefing meeting” between Fox, Werritty and O’Donnell by hiding the fact that the three had met up at least twice before – once for a meeting when Fox was in opposition, and once for “a social engagement.” The FCO did not answer Corbyn’s question as to who else was present at this “social engagement”.
This was also key because Gould’s other meetings with Fox and Werritty were being characterised – albeit falsely – as simply routine, something Gould had to do in the course of his ambassadorial duties. But this attendance at “a private social engagement” was a voluntary act by Gould, indubitable proof that, at the least, the three were happy in each other’s company, but given that all three were very active in Zionist causes, it was a definite indication of something more than that.
That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room, deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting.
My existing doubts about the second and only other meeting to which O’Donnell does admit make plain why that question is very important.
O’Donnell had said that Gould, Fox and Werritty had met on 6 February 2011:
“in Tel Aviv. This was a general discussion of international affairs over a private dinner with senior Israelis. The UK Ambassador was present.”
There was something very wrong here. Any ex-Ambassador knows that any dinner with senior figures from your host country, at which the British Ambassador to that country and a British Secretary of State are both present, and at which international affairs are discussed, can never be “private”. You are always representing the UK government in that circumstance. The only explanation I could think of for O’Donnell’s astonishing description of this as a “private” dinner was that the discussion was far from being official UK policy.
I therefore asked the FCO who was at this dinner, what was discussed, and who was paying for it? I viewed the last as my trump card – if either Gould or Fox was receiving hospitality, they are obliged to declare it. To my astonishment the FCO refused to say who was present or who paid. Corbyn’s parliamentary question also covered the issue of who was at this dinner, to which he received no reply.
Plainly something was very wrong. I therefore again asked how often Gould had met or communicated with Werritty without Fox being present. Again the FCO refused to reply. But one piece of information that had been found by other journalists was that, prior to the Tel Aviv dinner, Fox, Gould and Werritty had together attended the Herzilya conference in Israel. The programme of this is freely available. It is an unabashedly staunch Zionist annual conference on “Israel’s security”, which makes no pretence at a balanced approach to Palestinian questions and attracts a strong US neo-conservative following. Fox, Gould and Werritty sat together at this event.
Yet again, the liar O’Donnell does not mention it.
I then learnt of yet another, a sixth meeting between Fox, Gould and Werritty. This time my informant was another old friend, a Jewish diplomat for another country, based at an Embassy in London. They had met Gould, Fox and Werritty together at the “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Here is a photo of Gould and Fox together at that conference.
I had no doubt about the direction this information was leading, but I now needed to go back to my original source. Sometimes the best way to hide something is to put it right under the noses of those looking for it, and on Wednesday I picked up the information in a tent at the Occupy London camp outside St Paul’s cathedral.
This is the story I was given.
Matthew Gould was Deputy Head of Mission at the British Embassy in Iran, a country which Werritty frequently visited, and where Werritty claimed to have British government support for plots against Ahmadinejad. Gould worked at the British Embassy in Washington; the Fox-Werritty Atlantic Bridge fake charity was active in building links between British and American neo-conservatives and particularly ultra-Zionists. Gould’s responsibilities at the Embassy included co-ordination on US policy towards Iran. The first meeting of all three, which the FCO refuses to date, probably stems from this period.
According to my source, there is a long history of contact between Gould and Werritty. The FCO refuse to give any information on Gould-Werritty meetings or communications except those meetings where Fox was present – and those have only been admitted gradually, one by one. We may not have them all even yet.
My source says that co-ordinating with Israel and the US on diplomatic preparation for an attack on Iran was the subject of all these meetings. That absolutely fits with the jobs Gould held at the relevant times. The FCO refuses to say what was discussed. My source says that, most crucially, Iran was discussed at the Tel Aviv dinner, and the others present represented Mossad. The FCO again refuses to say who was present or what was discussed.
On Wednesday 2 November it was revealed in the press that under Fox the MOD had prepared secret and detailed contingency plans for British participation in an attack on Iran.
There are very important questions here. Was Gould really discussing neo-con plans for attacking Iran with Werritty and eventually with Fox before the Conservatives were even in government? Why did O’Donnell’s report so carefully mislead on the Fox-Gould-Werritty axis? How far was the FCO aware of MOD preparations for attacking Iran? Is there a neo-con cell of senior ministers and officials, co-ordinating with Israel and the United States, and keeping their designs hidden from the Conservative’s coalition partners?
The government could clear up these matters if it answered some of the questions it refuses to answer, even when asked formally by a member of parliament. The media have largely moved on from the Fox-Werritty affair, but have barely skimmed the surface of the key questions it raises. They relate to secrecy, democratic accountability and preparations to launch a war, preparations which bypass the safeguards of good government. The refusal to give straight answers to simple questions by a member of parliament strikes at the very root of our democracy.
Is this not precisely the situation we were in with Blair and Iraq? Have no lessons been learnt?
There is a further question which arises. Ever since the creation of the state of Israel, the UK had a policy of not appointing a jewish Briton as Ambassador, for fear of conflict of interest. As a similar policy of not appointing a catholic Ambassador to the Vatican. New Labour overturned both longstanding policies as discriminatory. Matthew Gould is therefore the first Jewish British Ambassador to Israel.
Matthew Gould does not see his race or religion as irrelevant. He has chosen to give numerous interviews to both British and Israeli media on the subject of being a Jewish ambassador, and has been at pains to be photographed by the Israeli media participating in jewish religious festivals. Israeli newspaper Haaretzdescribed him as “Not just an ambassador who is Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador”. That rather peculiar phrase appears directly to indicate that the potential conflict of interest for a British ambassador in Israel has indeed arisen.
It is thus most unfortunate that it is Gould who is the only British Ambassador to have met Fox and Werritty together, who met them six times, and who now stands suspected of long term participation with them in a scheme to forward war with Iran, in cooperation with Israel. This makes it even more imperative that the FCO answers now the numerous outstanding questions about the Gould/Werritty relationship and the purpose of all those meetings with Fox.
There is no doubt that the O’Donnell report’s deceitful non-reporting of so many Fox-Gould-Werritty meetings, the FCO’s blunt refusal to list Gould-Werritty, meetings and contacts without Fox, and the refusal to say who else was present at any of these occasions, amounts to irrefutable evidence that something very important is being hidden right at the heart of government. I have no doubt that my informant is telling the truth, and the secret is the plan to attack Iran. It fits all the above facts. What else does?
UPDATE: A commenter has already pointed me to this bit of invaluable evidence:
“My government absolutely agrees with your conception of the Iranian threat and the importance of your determination to battle it.” Dealing with the Iranian threat will be a large part of my work here.” Gould said.
From Israel National News. It also says that he will be trying to promote a positive atmosphere between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority, but the shallowest or the deepest search shows the same picture; an entirely biased indeed fanatical zionist who must give no confidence at all to the Palestinian Authority. He must be recalled.
The government could clear up the issue of Fox Gould and Werritty if it answered these very simple questions. They are questions to which in any real democracy we would be entitled to expect an answer, concerning officials paid by us. I have put these questions to them. Consider why the government refuses to answer these simple and obvious questions.
But the truly terrifying thing is not just that the government refuses to answer these questions from me, it is that the mainstream media refuses even to ask them:
How many times in total did Gould, Werritty and Fox meet?
How many of these are listed in O’Donnell’s official investigation?
Why the discrepancy?
Did the meeting between Fox, Gould and Werritty while Fox was Shadow Defence Secretary follow official rules concerning briefing of opposition front bench spokesmen by officials?
Where did it take place?
When did Gould first meet Werritty?
How many times did Gould meet Werritty without Fox present?
How many communications of all sorts have there ever been between Gould and Werritty?
Where precisely was the “Pre-posting briefing meeting” for Gould with Werritty and Fox held?
Why was it not held in the Secretary of State’s office?
Why was no MOD official present?
Who paid for the “Private dinner” between Fox, Gould and Werritty and “Senior Israelis” in Tel Aviv in February 2011?
Who was present?
Was any note subsequently made of the discussion?
Who paid for the “social engagement” to which Fox invited Gould and Werritty in summer 2010?
Who was present?
Was the possibility of an attack on Iran discussed in any of the above meetings, events or communications?
These really are very simple questions and I will happily report any answer in full. Every media outlet should be asking these questions. Remember Werritty had no security clearance. It is therefore not possible that the answers to these questions is classified information.
If the explanations are innocent, why should these questions not be answered?
The answer to these questions would not be hidden in a democracy.
~
Please feel free to re-use and republish this article anywhere, commercially or otherwise. It has been blocked by the mainstream media. I write regularly for the mainstream media and this is the first article of mine I have ever been unable to publish. People have risked a huge amount by leaking me information in an effort to stop the government machinery from ramping up a war with Iran. There are many good people in government who do not want to see another Iraq. Please do all you can to publish and redistribute this information.
The state and media responses to this week’s shooting of Rabbi Mertzbach, seen alongside the killing of 10 year-old Abir Aramin, a Palestinian, highlight the difference in treatment of Jewish and Arab blood.
There are difference between the cases. And the death of any human is, of course, tragic. But we can’t ignore the horrible differences in the treatment these two shootings received and continue to receive. In both cases, it can be purported that there was no murderous intent; the soldier that shot at the car of Rabbi Dan Mertzbach certainly didn’t intend to kill a Jewish settler. And it’s possible that the Border Police officer who shot to death Abir Aramin didn’t mean to kill an innocent 10-year-old child.
But consider the differences. First, the media reports: Two days have passed since the shooting that killed Rabbi Mertzbach. A Google search of his name, limited to the last two days, bring up some 20,000 results. No media outlet in Israel failed to deal with the story at length – reporting on the shooting, the investigation launched as a result, the funeral, the family’s history, and so on. A Google search of Abir Aramin, limited to the month and a half following her shooting, brings up exactly seven results in Hebrew, five of which are from left-wing sites, one by Haaretz’s Gideon Levy, and one on the NRG [Maariv] news site. Here, the reports focus on the unique personage of Abir’s father, Bassam Aramin, one of the founders of Combatants for Peace. How many Palestinian children are killed under similar circumstances, without even one such mention of their parents?
And if the media operates as such – what about the state? A day hadn’t passed since Mertzbach’s shooting before the launching of both a standard military inquiry and a military police investigation. The soldier who fired the gun has apologized to the family. The army and the National Insurance Institute quickly announced they would consider Mertzbach a victim of a hostile act, resulting in NII funding of the funeral and further allowances to the family. The NII stated that this is “standard procedure in such cases and that by law, anyone hurt in an action meant to thwart enemy activity is considered a terror victim and recognized as such by the Defense Ministry and National Insurance Institute.”
Apparently the National Insurance Institute hasn’t heard of Abir Aramin, or just doesn’t apply the term “anyone” to Arabs. In that case, it took the police 48 hours to open an investigation into the killing, and five days to go to the scene to collect evidence – after rain had already fallen. The soldier did not express regret, and nobody considered recognizing Abir as someone who was “hurt in an action meant to thwart enemy activity” – despite the fact that the army had maintained the shooting took place in an attempt to scatter stone-throwers.
Since Bassam Aramin was and remains a peace activist who has connections with many Israelis, the case wasn’t closed just like that. Attorney Lea Tsemel fought the state in courts until the family received financial compensation, and the NGO Yesh Din, along with attorney Michael Sfard, undertook an independent inquiry, having to spoon-feed the police investigators. Nonetheless, even these efforts ultimately did not help, and the case was closed six months after Abir’s death. Last July, a panel of three Supreme Court justices, presided over by court president Dorit Beinisch, ruled that the investigation was flawed, as was the state’s handling of the case, but that too much time had passed for another investigation to be launched. The shooters would thus not stand trial. (Read Bassam Aramin’s response to the events, published last month on +972 Magazine)
And what about Nibin Jamjum?
The difference between the treatment of the two cases seems glaring. But it doesn’t end there. Abir Aramin’s story may not have received the attention that Mertzbach’s did, but due to the pressure of human rights organizations and attorneys, it still received more than most deaths of Palestinian children.
Take the example of Nibin Jamjum, who was 14 years old when settlers broke into her house and shot her to death during their 2002 pogroms in Hebron. Another death that went unnoticed. In contrast with the murder of Shalhevet Pass a year earlier, the army and the police did not enable a counter-pogrom of Palestinians against Jews, and the murderers of Jamjum have still not been caught.
During the time I spent in military prison, a soldier named Kobi Hevroni, a settler from of Kiryat Arba, told me that he had taken part in the Hebron pogrom in July 2002. He told, apparently without knowing Jamjum’s name, of a Palestinian girl who had mocked soldiers and settlers, sticking out her tongue or cursing at them. He told me that during the pogrom, some of his friends had entered her home and put a bullet to her head as punishment. When I was in prison, I chose not to believe it. Later, when I read the B’Tselem report on the pogrom, the description seemed to fit perfectly. This was not accidental gunfire. This was murder. The settlers went into her home, shoved her brothers, found her and shot her.
On the advice of the military court, I told everything I knew to the military police. After a few months, they transferred the file to the Hebron police. Both questioned me extensively. After a few months, the case was closed, with no suspects. Just like that – no arrests, no compensation, no media – most killings and murders of Palestinian children, at the hands of settlers and the army, come to a close.
In short: If you’re going to get a bullet to the head, it’s better to be a Jew.
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Haggai Matar is an Israeli journalist and political activist, focusing mainly on the struggle against the occupation. He is currently working at Zman Tel Aviv, the local supplement of Maariv newspaper, and at the independent Hebrew website MySay. This piece originally appeared on MySay. Translated by Noa Yachot.
In an interview with Spiegel Onlineon April 19, 2011, Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, former Director General of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was asked if hewas deceived by the US and its allies when investigating their allegations against Iran’s nuclear program. He answered: “the Americans and the Europeans withheld important documents and information from us. They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change—by any means necessary.”
In his tenure at the IAEA ElBaradei had faced a dilemma. As a politically astute Egyptian, he was well aware of the nature of the US-Israeli policy of dual containment of Iraq and Iran. He was also aware that his own agency had been used as an instrument to pursue this policy. Indeed, when in 2008 ElBaradei assured Iran that the IAEA will protect her legitimate military secrets, if Iran supplied information about some “alleged studies,” this writer wrote an open letter to remind him about how the IAEA had been used by US-Israeli spies in containing Iraq. In particular, I reminded him of David Kay’s comment about the “Faustian bargain.” Kay, who had served as the IAEA/UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) Chief Nuclear Weapons Inspector in Iraq, had been accused by Iraqi officials to be a spy and was instrumental in building the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 1999 he admitted that some inspections in Iraq went hand in hand with spying and called the use of international organizations for spying a Faustian bargain, “a bargain with the Devil—spies spying.”
I also reminded ElBaradei that under his own leadership the IAEA was still being used by the US and its allies to do to Iran what had been done to Iraq. For example, IAEA reports on Iran marked “Restricted Distribution” regularly appeared—and to this day continue to appear—on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), an organization whose agenda to contain Iran on behalf of the US and Israel is clear to everyone who keeps track of its activities, claims and predictions about how soon Iran will develop nuclear weapons.
Dr. ElBaradei, of course, knew all of the above and, yet, there was hardly anything he could do about it, except to try to moderate the IAEA reports that were intended to bring about regime change in Iran after Iraq. He knew well that the US and Israel had been trying desperately to remove him as the head of the IAEA. As I wrote in 2008, the first lines of the AP report on September 9, 2007, read: “Chief nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei is coming under intense pressure for his handling of the Iran file, with the United States and key allies accusing him of overstepping his authority. The diplomats suggested that U.S. disenchantment with the International Atomic Energy Agency chief was at its highest since early 2005.”
The pressure on ElBaradei to produce tough reports on Iran or be forced out of office continued after my open letter. For example, Haaretz reported on August 19, 2009, that according to “senior Western diplomats and Israeli officials” the IAEA “is hiding data on Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear arms.” More specifically, according to some “officials,” the report went on to say, the IAEA under ElBaradei “was refraining from publishing evidence obtained by its inspectors over the past few months that indicate Iran was pursuing information about weaponization efforts and a military nuclear program.” According to the report, these officials claimed that IAEA inspectors had written a “classified annex,” but the annex was not incorporated into the agency’s published reports. Haaretz also stated that “American, French, British and German senior officials have recently pressured ElBaradei to publish the information next month in a report due to be released at the organization’s general conference.” “The efforts to release the allegedly censored report,” Haaretz went on to write, “is being handled in Israel by Dr. Shaul Horev, director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, and the Foreign Ministry.” Haaretz then stated what the crux of the matter was:
Israel has been striving to pressure the IAEA through friendly nations and have it release the censored annex. It hopes to prove that the Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons is continuing, contrary to claims that Tehran stopped its nuclear program in 2003. A confirmation of these suspicion (sic) would oblige the international community to enact “paralyzing sanctions” on Iran.
Throughout his term, Israel has accused ElBaradei of not tackling the Iranian nuclear issue with sufficient determination. As the end of his term in December nears, Israeli diplomats are concerned that he will become less responsive and continue to hide the classified report.
Finally, Haaretz stated: “Jerusalem is hoping, however, that his successor, Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, will take up a tougher line on the Iranian nuclear program.” Israel and the US could not have hoped for a fellow with tougher line on Iran than Amano.
In a highly contested election, and after many rounds of balloting, in July of 2009 the IAEA 35-member board elected the Japanese candidate Yukiya Amano over South Africa’s Abdul Samad Minty. Amano was, as news sources pointed out, the “preferred candidate of the West” (AFP, July 2, 2009 and Bloomberg July 4, 2009). Much later, to be exact on December 2, 2010, theGuardian published a confidential cable, released by WikiLeaks and classified by US Ambassador Glyn Davies on October 16, 2009, which stated:
Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77, which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.
On February 18, 2010, Amano issued his first report on Iran. As expected, the report was one of the longest and harshest reports on Iran that the IAEA had ever issued. It repeated all the old allegations mentioned in previous IAEA reports and presented them as if they were new. However, unlike previous reports, there was no mention of the fact that the IAEA did not have, and could not show to Iran, original documents alleging that Iran had engaged in illicit activities. The last section of the report, entitled “Possible Military Dimensions,” was the harshest and most ominous section. It read:
The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues [alleged activities] is extensive and has been collected from a variety of sources over time. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved. Altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. These alleged activities consist of a number of projects and sub-projects, covering nuclear and missile related aspects, run by military related organizations.
Needless to say that the US, Israel and their “expert” think tanks, such as the ISIS, as well as reporters who have been trying to do to Iran what Judith Miller had done to Iraq, such as David Sanger of The New York Times, had a field day with the report.
Amano’s report was opening the way for imposing more US unilateral sanctions against Iran, as well as the push for the passage of the fourth United Nations Security Council sanction resolution. Reuters had reported on February 2, 2010 that “Western diplomats told Reuters that officials at the U.S. State Department have circulated a paper outlining possible new sanctions to senior foreign ministry officials in London, Paris, and Berlin.” The report added that “Western powers would like to target Iran’s central bank.”
On September 6, 2010, Amano distributed a restricted version of the IAEA report on Iran, which as usual appeared immediately on the ISIS website. Amano’s report was, once again, harsh and confrontational. It contained something quite unusual, passages from the Security Council Resolutions sanctioning Iran. Also, for the first time ever, the report challenged Iran’s right to object to designation of those inspectors that Iran had found objectionable, either for leaking confidential information or false and misleading reporting. On “Possible Military Dimensions,” the report stated that the “passage of time and the possible deterioration in the availability of some relevant information increase the urgency of this matter.”
The next two IAEA reports, on November 23, 2010, and February 25, 2011, were not as confrontational as previous reports. But after the latter report, AP reported on March 7, 2011, that Amano could not “guarantee that Iran is not trying to develop atomic arms.” He was quoted as saying:
Iran is not providing the necessary cooperation to enable the agency to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran . . . [the IAEA cannot] conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities. . . Unfortunately, since I came into office, Iran has not interacted with us. . . There has not been progress.
Afterward, Amano told reporters: “We are not saying that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. . . We have concerns and we want to clarify the matter.”
The next report of IAEA, on May 24, 2011, added something quite menacing. At the very end, the report stated:
Since the last report of the Director General on 25 February 2011, the Agency has received further information related to such possible undisclosed nuclear related activities, which is currently being assessed by the Agency. As previously reported by the Director General, there are indications that certain of these activities may have continued beyond 2004. The following points refer to examples of activities for which clarifications remain necessary in seven particular areas of concern.
This was followed by seven allegations against Iran, such as studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle. These allegations were not new and had been based mostly on the claim by American intelligence officials that they had discovered in 2004 a stolen laptop showing Iran’s attempt to design a nuclear warhead. Indeed, the IAEA report of September 15, 2008, written under ElBaradei, had stated the following about these allegations and Iran’s response:
Iran provided written replies on 14 and 23 May 2008, the former of which included a 117-page presentation responding to the allegations concerning the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle project. While Iran confirmed the veracity of some of the information referred to in the Annex to GOV/2008/15, Iran reiterated its assertion that the allegations were based on “forged” documents and “fabricated” data, focusing on deficiencies in form and format, and reiterated that, although it had been shown electronic versions of the documentation, Iran had not received copies of the documentation to enable it to prove that they were forged and fabricated. Iran also expressed concern that the resolution of some of these issues would require Agency access to sensitive information related to its conventional military and missile related activities.
Even though the above allegations against Iran were very old, they were now resurfacing in Amano’s IAEA reports.
On September 2, 2011, Amano issued yet another restricted report that appeared immediately on the ISIS website. Although the content of the report indicated that Iran had conceded and cooperated with the IAEA on a number of contentious issues, the tone of the report was quite harsh. Under “Possible Military Dimensions,” the report stated ominously: “the Agency is increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations.” Given the wording, one could expect something more drastic to appear in the next report; and this indeed happened.
On November 8, 2011, Amano released the restricted copy of the report that Israel and the US had been waiting for. The release came right after much publicity concerning the alleged plot by Iran to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington and plans by Israel and the UK to attack Iran. Prior to the release of the report, numerous articles appeared in the media as to what it will contain, even though the report was supposed to be restricted until its official de-restriction. On November 5, 2011, Joby Warrick of The Washington Post even wrote about the “12-page annex to the report.” Two days later he wrote the details of the report and referred mostly to the head of ISIS, “David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who has reviewed the intelligence files.”
The reports in the media also indicated that some US government officials knew about the content of the report and were consulted about the report by Amano himself. On November 3, 2011, Reuters quoted President Obama as saying at the G20 summit: “The IAEA is scheduled to release a report on Iran’s nuclear program next week and (French) President (Nicolas) Sarkozy and I agree on the need to maintain the unprecedented pressure on Iran to meet its obligations.” The President’s comment came after Amano had secretly visited the White House. On November 7, 2011, David Sanger wrote in The New York Times that when “Yukia Amano, came to the White House 11 days ago to meet top officials of the National Security Council about the coming report, the administration declined to even confirm he had ever walked into the building.”
The much anticipated report, even though it was for “official use only” and “Restricted Distribution,” appeared once again on the website of ISIS on November 8, 2011, followed by an “analysis” a few hours later. The report had the 12-page “Annex” that the media had already reported. The media, however, had failed to mention, and did not mention even after the release of the report, that this was essentially the same annex that in 2009 Israel had pressured the IAEA to release, hoping that it “would oblige the international community to enact ‘paralyzing sanctions’ on Iran’”.
The annex was detailed, but given that it was basically the same document that ElBaradei had refused to publish, there was hardly anything new in it. Much of it was still no more than “allegations” made by a non-identified “Member State” or “two Member States.” Indeed, the words “alleged” and “allegation” appeared 28 times in the annex. Most of these allegations were the same ones that had been found on the mysterious laptop that somehow landed on the lap of the US government in 2004. Some, however, appeared to be new. For example, the report stated that:
The Agency has strong indications that the development by Iran of the high explosives initiation system, and its development of the high speed diagnostic configuration used to monitor related experiments, were assisted by the work of a foreign expert who was not only knowledgeable in these technologies, but who, a Member State has informed the Agency, worked for much of his career with this technology in the nuclear weapon programme of the country of his origin.
Previously, in his Washington Post article of November 7, 2011, Joby Warrick had identified the “foreign expert” as “Vyacheslav Danilenko, a former Soviet nuclear scientist.” On November 10, 2011, Reuters reported that Danilenko “has denied being the brains behind Iran’s nuclear program.” He was quoted as saying: “I am not a nuclear physicist and am not the founder of the Iranian nuclear program.” The report further added that Danilenko’s expertise was in detonation nanodiamonds, “the creation of tiny diamonds from conventional explosions for a variety of uses from lubricants to medicine.”
Some other allegations were also as flimsy as Danilenko’s case. For example, the report stated that the information “provided by Member States indicates that Iran constructed a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments. The explosives vessel, or chamber, is said to have been put in place at Parchin in 2000.” Parchin is, of course, the same military complex that ISIS had alleged in 2004 to be a possible “site for research, testing and production of nuclear weapons.” It was inspected twice in 2005 and no nuclear activities were found. Amano’s latest report itself admitted that “the Agency’s visits did not uncover anything of relevance.” But now, the report seemed to imply that inspectors had looked in wrong places!
Some other new allegations bordered on the verge of absurdity. For example, the report stated: “Research by the Agency into scientific literature published over the past decade has revealed that Iranian workers, in particular groups of researchers at Shahid Behesti University and Amir Kabir University, have published papers relating to the generation, measurement and modelling of neutron transport.” The report then added that such “studies are commonly used in reactor physics or conventional ordnance research, but also have applications in the development of nuclear explosives.” This allegation is bizarre. Since when publishing papers by some scholars at the most prestigious universities in Iran—whom the report refers to as “workers”—is illegal? What should these “workers” do, submit their papers first to Mr. Amano, or US-Israeli intelligence services, for screening?
In the end, the hyped IAEA report of November 8, 2011, turned out to contain some old allegations that remain unverified and some new ones that appear to be flimsy or strange. So why publish these allegations with fanfare? One can answer the question by paraphrasing the two aforementioned statements by former IAEA Director General ElBaradei and US Ambassador Glyn Davies: the Americans and their allies, particularly the Israelis, are only interested in one thing and one thing only, regime change in Iran by any means necessary. In this endeavor, Mr. Amano is solidly in the US-Israeli court.
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Sasan Fayazmanesh is Professor Emeritus of Economics at California State University, Fresno. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at:sasan.fayazmanesh@gmail.com.
David Albright, the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security appeared on ABC “This Week” on Sunday, “Washington Stakeout” questioned him as he left.
Excerpt from interview and comments below:
Sam Husseini: Did you do any checking on [Vyacheslav] Danilenko biography before passing on the allegation from an unnamed state that he was a quote “former Soviet nuclear scientist?”
Albright: Yes, of course we did. And I know his work pretty well.
SH: What did you find?
Albright: Well I found he was a member of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex at Chelyabinsk-70. And we knew he went into producing nanodiamonds, he worked in the early 60s in the nuclear weapons program and he has an incredible amount of information about how you build a nuclear weapon. And more than one state, in fact the IAEA has said that they think he’s part or — he contributed — to Iran’s effort to build a nuclear explosive device, in particular to diagnose a multi-point initiation system.
SH: So you’re saying that you knew prior to identifying him as a Soviet nuclear scientist that he was actually a nanodiamond expert?
Albright: He’s also a nanodiamond. He has a tremendous amount of knowledge about building nuclear weapons. He’s an ex nuclear weapons expert who went and worked in Iran. Of course he does other things. He left the business of nuclear weapons in about 1990. Now the issue with him is he was recruited and signed a contract with the head of the physics research center which was running the secret nuclear sector for Iran.
I sent my exchange with Albright to Porter, who wrote back to me: “Albright doesn’t offer any offer any evidence that he did any investigation at all. He simply reiterates as a fact the assertion made by the IAEA on the say-so of a member state. He claims that Danilenko was working on nuclear weapons from the beginning, but the only fact that he can cite is that Danilenko was working at the Soviet Institute at Chelyabinsk which was known to produce nuclear weapons. He doesn’t deal with the fact that Danilenko was involved in extremely technical pioneering work in nanodiamonds from the very beginning, and that he had a string of technical publications about them. He is suggesting, by inference, that he had a secret all that time, but clearly neither he nor the IAEA nor the member state have anything on which to base that fantasy. The fact is that by the time, Danilenko left the Institute at Chelyanbinsk in 1989, half the work force there was working on non-military research, according to the Nuclear Threat Institute. So Albright is simply using his imagination in claiming that that Danilenko worked on weapons — that’s all he’s got.”
I also sent the exchange to Muhammad Sahimi who recently wrote the piece “The IAEA Report on Iran’s Nuclear Program: Alarming or Hyped?” He wrote back: “This is an excellent interview and you really pushed Albright. But Albright never concedes anything, least of all his errors, and the fact that, in my opinion, he has an anti-Iran agenda. Several years ago he and his ISIS made a big deal about the Parchin facility. After the IAEA visited there and found nothing, he and his institution never retracted anything. He consistently refers to ‘Iran’s nuclear weapon program,’ whereas even the IAEA does not say that Iran has one, but that some studies might be relevant. He never ever took a public position on the so-called laptop, because he reportedly believed that it was fake, but did not want to say it publicly. After one nuclear test by North Korea, he outrageously insinuated that, “I heard Iranians were there,” meaning what? I can just go on and on with this.”
The day after my exchange with Albright, he was quoted in another piece in the Washington Post, “Russian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko’s aid to Iran offers peek at nuclear program,” also by Warrick, that tried to portray Danilenko’s nanodiamond expertise as a sort of cover, referring to “his diamond-making scheme.” The piece states that Danilenko had contacts with Iranian scientists until 2002, so how was he suppose to help them make advances that have not been detected until now?
Abby Martin of Media Roots went to Occupy Oakland at 4:00 am to cover the second police raid on the encampment and crackdown against the peaceful protesters at Frank Ogawa Plaza.
The footage shows the intensity in the air leading up to the raid and the insane amount of police presence that showed up to crackdown and destroy the camp.
Mayor Jean Quan’s legal adviser resigned at 2 am in protest to the heavy police response.
The Friday resignation of chief White House adviser on the Middle East Dennis Ross drew sharply contrasting reactions that reflected the sectarian, pro-Israel agenda his presence in government represented.
AIPAC, the key arm of the Israel lobby, issued a rare statement hailing Ross’s legacy. “In his tireless pursuit of Middle East peace, Ambassador Ross has maintained a deep understanding of the strategic value of the US-Israel relationship and has worked vigorously to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”
Rashid Khalidi, a former negotiator for the PLO who now directs the Middle East Institute of Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, had a less positive take on Ross’s legacy.
“Since the Reagan administration, Dennis Ross has played a crucial role in crafting Middle East policies that never served peace, which is today farther away than ever,” Khalidi said. “His efforts, which contributed to the growth in the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories, were marked by a litany of failures. It is long overdue for him and the bankrupt policies he represents to be shown the door.”
Despite references to Ross’s pro-Israel leanings by his defenders and detractors, his full impact on the trajectory of US policy towards the Middle East in general and the Arab Israeli conflict in particular remains underrated or under-reported.
Serving in four American administrators and overseeing a long and fruitless process to secure an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Ross did more than any official to advance Israeli ambitions of expansion at the cost of Palestinian pursuit of statehood and freedom.
Inside the Obama White House, Ross made little effort to conceal his pro-Israel agenda. While serving on the President’s National Security Council, Ross actively sought to obstruct the US from pressing Israel to engage in negotiations on final status issues like borders and refugees, or to apply measures to stop its construction of settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. At the same time, Ross spearheaded Washington’s effort to punish Iran for pursuing nuclear energy capacity, pushing for harsh sanctions against Iran that have proven fruitless. The New York Times described Ross simply as “Israel’s friend in the Obama White House.”
When Ross announced his resignation this week, he chose to do so before the board members of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem-based think tank founded by Israel’s Jewish Agency to develop prescriptions for combating threats to “Jewish demographics” in Israel and abroad. Ross directed the think tank for several years before entering the Obama administration. By the time Ross revealed his plans to retire from government, he had already arranged for a golden parachute with one of the key arms of the Israel lobby. In December, Ross will return to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a hawkish think tank that he founded in collaboration with AIPAC. After nearly three decades of advancing Israel’s interests from the inside, Ross’s career had come full circle.
Ross was raised in a strictly secular atmosphere by a Catholic stepfather and a secular Jewish mother. Like many American Jews of his generation, Ross became religiously observant and enthusiastically Zionist following Israel’s lightning victory in the 1967 war. Ross’s first paper for WINEP, which he published in 1985, demanded the appointment of “a non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy” who would not “feel guilty about our relationship with Israel and our reluctance to force Israeli consensus.”
He gathered diplomatic experience at the failed US-brokered Madrid Summit, where Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir privately revealed Israel’s intention to “drag out the talks on Palestinian self-rule for ten years while attempting to settle hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Occupied Territories.”
With the election of Democratic President Bill Clinton, Ross’s dream job finally arrived. Clinton’s presidential campaign drew momentum from the Israel lobby’s anger at President George H.W. Bush, who momentarily withheld loan guarantees to Israel to force Shamir to accept a settlement freeze. Clinton’s top individual donor was Haim Saban, an American-Israeli media tycoon committed to cementing Israeli influence over American policy. Saban raised US$3.5 million at an event he hosted for the Clinton campaign, then helped secure the appointment of WINEP co-founder Martin Indyk as US Ambassador to Israel once Clinton was elected. For his part, Ross was appointed as Clinton’s special Middle East coordinator – his “non-Arabist Special Middle East envoy.”
Ross was the most influential American figure in negotiations between Israel and Palestinian representatives during the 1990’s, arguably more powerful than even the President. As a former senior Clinton official told journalist Clayton Swisher, “Part of the problem was with people like Dennis… instead of being a broker – instead of facilitating the parties making a deal – they started doing it as if they were the principal or the President himself.”
Ross played a central role in negotiating the Oslo Accords, an agreement that postponed all major issues from borders to refugees to a later date while granting full Israeli military control over 60 percent of the West Bank, enabling Israel to transform large swathes of the occupied area into a land of settlers while strategically confining the Palestinian urban population into a series of isolated Bantustans. As new Israeli “facts on the ground” that forever altered the landscape of future negotiations, the settlements stood as symbols of Ross’s legacy.
After repeated Israeli violations of the terms it agreed to at Oslo, Ross urged the White House to avoid making any moves that might cause Israel to question America’s commitment to the special relationship. Behind the scenes, Ross spent hours at a time huddling with Israeli officials, helping them hammer out onerous demands, while hoarding communications that arrived from the Palestinians, refusing to allow National Security Advisors to view them. Ross alienated Palestinian negotiators to the point that Arafat personally asked Clinton for his removal.
Inside the Clinton administration, some national security advisers grumbled about Ross’s behavior, demanding he be replaced even though they knew he was entrenched to the point that he was practically intractable.
“Dennis assumed he knew more about the issue than anyone else,” a former State Department official told Swisher, “and when he felt close to getting a deal, it became evident to everyone that his more pro-Israeli feelings were coming out. As we came very close to the time to do a deal, Dennis became very nervous about the Israelis’ position on the potential deal.”
Though the Clinton administration rarely strayed from the Israel lobby’s diktat, Ross was so determined to extend Israeli influence over American policy that he actively undermined the President. In 1999, when Congress attempted to insert a special provision that would have eliminated the President’s authority to block legislation moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Ross argued at a meeting in the White House, “I just don’t see why we can’t move the embassy to Jerusalem.”
At the time, Ross’s son was interning for Senator Joseph Lieberman, a strong advocate of the legislation to move the embassy. In the end, the congressional initiative failed, while Clinton’s inner circle made efforts to isolate Ross from negotiations.
At Camp David in 2000, the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority met to resolve final status issues. After repeated Israeli violations of the terms of Oslo, however Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat was skeptical about the usefulness of more talks. He agreed to them only after extended pressure from Clinton, who explicitly promised that he would not blame Arafat if the negotiations failed.
Ross returned to his central role at Camp David, using his control over the flow of documents to ensure that Israel had the upper hand. “The ‘no surprises’ policy, under which we had to run everything by Israel first, stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking,” Ross’s deputy, Aaron David Miller complained afterwards. Alluding to his boss, Miller described the American negotiating team at Camp David as “Israel’s lawyer.”
When the talks collapsed, primarily because of Israel’s refusal to relinquish key areas of East Jerusalem – Israel and the United States attempted to force Arafat’s team to agree to terms that stood well outside the Arab consensus – Clinton reneged on his promise to Arafat, publicly blaming him for rejecting a “generous offer” in order to help then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak win re-election.
Ross curiously omitted Clinton’s broken promise from his voluminous, 840-page account of Camp David, “The Missing Peace,” attacking Arafat instead as a “skunk” and offering the Orientalist and ahistorical claim that Arafat was psychologically incapable of making the transition from freedom fighter to statesman.
The American campaign against Arafat enabled Barak to introduce the “no partner” theme – that there was no Palestinian partner for peace – a canard designed to justify Israel’s brutal repression of the Second Intifada and its subsequent strategy of unilateralism. In October 2000, before the Palestinian campaign of suicide bombing had begun in earnest, Israeli troops fired 1.3 million bullets at Palestinians revolting against the occupation. Like the post-Oslo settlement construction boom, the lives – and limbs – shattered in the wake of Camp David symbolized Ross’s legacy of failure.
When the George W. Bush administration took power, Ross cooled his heels at WINEP, collecting a US$230,000 annual paycheck while padding his wallet with over US$220,000 in speaking fees from pro-Israel organizations like AIPAC. Ross delivered a total of zero speeches for Arab and Muslim groups during this period. Ross also found time to join leading neoconservatives in making the case for invading and occupying Iraq.
With the mission accomplished in Iraq, Ross joined John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and a Who’s Who of neocons to produce a report called “Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development.” The paper was a bellicose collection of arguments for ramping up conflict with the evildoers of Iran. Veteran national security analyst Jim Lobe summarized the document most succinctly when he called it “a road map to war.”
The same year, Ross emerged in a novel role as a campaign proxy for Obama, who was attempting to weather a storm of slander from his Republican opponents. The latter accused Obama of everything from crypto-Islamic sentiments to a hidden pro-Palestinian agenda, pointing to a past relationship with Rashid Khalidi (the horror!) that in fact amounted to little more than a casual friendship.
From Obama’s vulnerability on the Israel issue came Ross’s strength, allowing the veteran insider to emerge as Obama’s de facto liaison to the Jewish donors who accounted for so much of the Democratic Party’s base of funding.
During the final months of the campaign, Ross was junketed to synagogues in affluent suburbs from Pennsylvania to Florida to reassure nervous pro-Israel voters that he would be their man on the inside, working for Israel’s interests at every turn.
When Obama appeared at the annual convention of AIPAC in 2008, Ross inserted a provocative line that reflected his personal zealotry: “Jerusalem must remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”
By mouthing the phrase, Obama contradicted official US policy, generating embarrassment and controversy that forced him to backpedal immediately afterwards. But thanks to the guiding hand of Ross, the candidate doubts inside the pro-Israel community that he might prove insufficiently pliant. Thus the flow of bundled donations continued unabated.
Ross’s departure from the Obama administration has fueled concerns about the President’s fundraising potential. “Ross’s departure is not a diplomatic problem for the White House; it is instead a problem for the Obama re-election campaign,” wrote Elliot Abrams, the neoconservative former Assistant Secretary of State for the Bush II administration. “For Ross was the only official in whom most American Jewish leaders had confidence. As most of them are Democrats who have long accepted Ross’s faith in the ‘peace process,’ they viewed his role as the assurance that a steady, experienced, pro-Israel hand was on or near the tiller.”
Ross’s dual role as Obama’s Jewish consigliere and Middle East advisor was the ultimate symbol of the Israel lobby’s corruption of American foreign policy. Ross may have failed at each turn, but each successive failure has enabled maximalist Israeli impulses, from the construction of settlements to the siege of the Palestinian population. In this regard, Ross fulfilled his promises to his cohorts in the lobby. Whether Ross and his allies have advanced the long term Israeli goal of securing international legitimacy is another matter, however. Indeed, it is no coincidence that he left government with the peace process in shambles and with Israeli leaders braying for a war of aggression against Iran. Perhaps nothing summarizes Ross’s career as well as a single line sung by Bob Dylan: “There’s no success like failure, and failure’s no success at all.”
“It is perfectly perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison, and yet not free. To be under no physical constraint and yet to be psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national state or some private interest within the nation wants him to think feel and act.”
Last night’s GOP debate in South Carolina proved a few things (beyond revealing widespread Republican support for torture and the permanent military occupation of Middle Eastern countries): Republican candidates – with the notable exception of Ron Paul – are really scared of an Iranian nuclear weapons program that doesn’t exist. In fact, some of them – not Herman Cain – would really like to see the Islamic Republic bombed by the United States or Israel or both as soon as possible.
Mitt Romney declared, “If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if you elect Mitt Romney, Iran will not have a nuclear weapon.” He added that, if harsh sanctions and continued sabotage and assassinations don’t curb Iran’s uranium enrichment, he would “absolutely” support a military assault to prevent an “unacceptable” Iranian nuclear weapon.
Newt Gingrich agreed, saying, “you have to take whatever steps are necessary.” Rick Santorum was really hopeful that the United States is engaged in international terrorism by murdering Iranian scientists and encouraged the U.S. and Israel to “take out” Iran’s “nuclear capability” with air strikes.
Herman Cain and Rick Perry, meanwhile, suggested that economic warfare is the way to go. Cain advocated further sanctions and financial support to Iranian terrorist groups like the MEK in order to foment violent regime change. Perry said, “This country can sanction the Iranian central bank right now and shut down that country’s economy, and that’s what the president needs to do,” which would undoubtedly be an act of war.
Only Ron Paul dissented, stating that “it isn’t worthwhile” to start a war with Iran. “I’m afraid what’s going on right now,” Paul reminded the crowd, “is similar to the war propaganda that went on against Iraq and, you know, they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction.”
He’s not wrong. By taking a trip down the memory hole, it’s clear that what we’ve been hearing about Iran for the past three decades bears a striking resemblance to the lies we were told about Iraq in the years leading up to the invasion, occupation, and devastation of that country. The record demonstrates, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that fear-mongering and propagandizing about “weapons of mass destruction” was not solely a Republican pastime. Lying about evil Muslim nukes was, and continues to be, a bipartisan affair.
Away we go!
In his State of the Union address on January 27, 1998, Bill Clinton said, “Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized criminals seeking to acquire them. Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and much of his nation’s wealth not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and the missiles to deliver them.” Directing his remarks to the Iraqi leader he added, “We are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.”
The next month, on February 4, 1998, Clinton declared that “one way or the other, we are determined to deny Iraq the capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction. That is our bottom line.” Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott concurred and called for regime change in Iraq: “We should do everything we can to get this resolved and find a way to have him removed from office, one way or the other.” Also in agreement was House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who explained, “My hope is that military planning will be designed to coerce him or replace him and will not simply punish him and leave him in charge of building the weapons. That’s not a victory. That’s a defeat.”
On February 12, 1998, Delaware Senator Joe Biden stated, “Fateful decisions will be made in the days and weeks ahead. At issue is nothing less than the fundamental question of whether or not we can keep the most lethal weapons known to mankind out of the hands of an unreconstructed tyrant and aggressor who is in the same league as the most brutal dictators of this century.” His colleague Senator Tom Daschle added, “It is essential that a dictator like Saddam not be allowed to evade international strictures and wield frightening weapons of mass destruction…Neither the United States nor the global community can afford to allow Saddam Hussein to continue on this path.”
On February 18, 1998, discussing Iraq, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned on CNN “that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.”
In a letter to Bill Clinton, sent on October 9, 1998, twenty-seven members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, including Daschle, Carl Levin, Chris Dodd, Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Jon Kyl, Dianne Feinstein, Strom Thurmond, John Kerry, and Rick Santorum, called upon the president “to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq’s refusal to end its weapons of mass destruction programs.”
On December 16, 1998, California Representative Nancy Pelosi told Congress, “Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process. The responsibility of the United States in this conflict is to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, to minimize the danger to our troops and to diminish the suffering of the Iraqi people.”
On November 10, 1999, Madeleine Albright informed a gathering in Chicago that Saddam Hussein “has chosen to spend his money on building weapons of mass destruction, and palaces for his cronies.”
On December 5, 2001, nine Senators, including John McCain, Trent Lott, Jesse Helms, and Joe Lieberman, sent a letter to George W. Bush appealing for military action against Iraq: “The threat from Iraq is real, and it cannot be permanently contained. For as long as Saddam Hussein is in power in Baghdad, he will seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. We have no doubt that these deadly weapons are intended for use against the United States and its allies. Consequently, we believe we must directly confront Saddam, sooner rather than later.”
In his very first State of the Union address, on January 2002, George W. Bush said, “Iran aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror,” before also claiming that “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror” and insisting that “the Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade.” He then referred to both, along with North Korea, as constituting “an axis of evil,” which “threaten[s] the peace of the world.” Bush continued, “By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger” and warned that “time is not on our side.” Nevertheless, Bush declared, “I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
Speaking to the press from Qatar on June 11, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld respondedto a question about a recent comment he had made doubting Iraqi claims:
I was asked a question about Iraq announcing the day before that they do not have weapons of mass destruction, and they asked me what I thought about that. I said, “That’s a lie,” and I may have even said, “That’s a world class lie.”
Now that’s true; it is a lie. They do have weapons of mass destruction. They’ve used chemical weapons on their people, they have had an aggressive program to develop nuclear weapons, and there is no question that they are developing biological weapons.
Now why did I say that? I said that because it is true. The truth has a certain virtue it seems to me. What I said didn’t raise tensions, what raises tensions in the region is Saddam Hussein developing weapons of mass destruction and threatening neighbors.
Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars 103rd National Convention on August 26, 2002, Dick Cheney said, “But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons…Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon…Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.”
Speaking with former Jerusalem Post correspondent and AIPAC newsletter editor Wolf Blitzer on CNN on September 8, 2002, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said, “We know that [Saddam Hussein] has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.” She famously continued, “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
On September 10, 2002, David Albright and Corey Hinderstein of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) wrote that “[h]igh-resolution commercial satellite imagery shows an apparently operational facility at the site of Iraq’s al Qaim phosphate plant and uranium extraction facility (Unit-340), located in northwest Iraq near the Syrian border” and determined, “Unless inspectors go to the site and investigate all activities, the international community cannot exclude the possibility that Iraq is secretly producing a stockpile of uranium in violation of its commitments under Security Council resolutions. The uranium could be used in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort.”
On September 12, 2002, George W. Bush toldthe United Nations General Assembly, “Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons,” continuing, “United Nations inspections also reveal that Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard, and other chemical agents, and that the regime is rebuilding and expanding facilities capable of producing chemical weapons.” He didn’t stop there:
“Today, Iraq continues to withhold important information about its nuclear program — weapons design, procurement logs, experiment data, an accounting of nuclear materials, and documentation of foreign assistance. Iraq employs capable nuclear scientists and technicians. It retains physical infrastructure needed to build a nuclear weapon…Should Iraq acquire fissile material, it would be able to build a nuclear weapon within a year.”
He also asserted that “Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to hope against the evidence,” before stating, “The first time we may be completely certain he has a — nuclear weapons is when, God forbids, he uses one.”
On September 19, 2002, Carl Levin opened a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing on U.S. Policy on Iraq by stating, “We begin with the common belief that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandates of the United Nations and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.”
On September 23, 2002, former VIce President Al Gore told the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, “What makes Saddam dangerous is his effort to acquire weapons of mass destruction. What makes terrorists so much more dangerous than they have ever been is the prospect that they may get access to weapons of mass destruction,” continuing, “Iraq’s search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to completely deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.” While encouraging diplomatic efforts, Gore concluded, “The president should be authorized to take action to deal with Saddam Hussein as being in material breach of the terms of the truce and therefore a continuing threat to the security of the region. To this should be added that his continued pursuit of weapons of mass destruction is potentially a threat to the vital interests of the United States.”
On September 27, 2002, Senator Ted Kennedy, speaking at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, said, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is a tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.” Later in his speech, Kennedy declared, “We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction,” adding, “Clearly, we must halt Saddam Hussein’s quest for weapons of mass destruction,” then noted he was opposed to war.
In October 2002, a United States National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judged with “high confidence” that “Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.” The NIE also stated, “If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year,” but that even “[w]ithout such material from abroad, Iraq probably would not be able to make a weapon until 2007 to 2009.”
On October 3, 2002, Senator Robert Byrd wrote in The New York Times, “We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities,” adding, “Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons.”
In a radio address on October 5, 2002, George W. Bush stated, “The danger to America from the Iraqi regime is grave and growing.”
The same day, ubiquitous “nuclear expert” David Albrightopined on CNN, “In terms of the chemical and biological weapons, Iraq has those now. How many, how could they deliver them? I mean, these are the big questions.”
During a speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 7, 2002, George W. Bush warned the crowd of Iraq’s “drive toward an arsenal of terror,” insisting that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.” Bush declared, “Saddam Hussein still has chemical and biological weapons and is increasing his capabilities to make more. And he is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon.” He added, “If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.”
The same day, Senator John Edwards addressed the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. and said, “My position is very clear: The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. I am a co-sponsor of the bipartisan resolution we’re currently considering.” He continued,
“Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave threat to America and our allies — including our vital ally, Israel. For more than 20 years, Saddam has obsessively sought weapons of mass destruction through every possible means. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today, that he has used them in the past, and that he is doing everything he can to build more. Every day he gets closer to his longtime goal of nuclear capability. We must not allow him to get nuclear weapons.”
On October 9, 2002, Senator John Kerry determined to “give the President of the United States the authority to use force — if necessary — to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”
On October 10, 2002, John Rockefeller, speaking on the Senate floor, said, “There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years,” he declared that “Saddam Hussein represents a grave threat to the United States,” and determined “we must use force to deal with him if all other means fail.”
Also addressing the Senate on October 10, 2002, Hillary Clinton said, “In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program,” adding, “It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”
The same day, Representative Henry Waxman expressed his agreement with George W. Bush that “we cannot leave Saddam to continue on his present course. No one doubts that he is trying to build a nuclear device, and when he does, his potential for blackmail to dominate the Persian Gulf and Middle East will be enormous, and our efforts to deal with him [will] be even more difficult and perilous. The risks of inaction clearly outweigh the risks of action.”
Two days later, on October 12, 2002, George W. Bush assured his radio audience, “Confronting Iraq is an urgent matter of national security.”
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said on December 2, 2002, “Saddam Hussein does not exactly have a track record of telling the world the truth…If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world…And so it’s, on the one hand, mildly encouraging that Iraq would now admit to what it’s been doing. But on the other hand, a lie is still a lie…they sought to produce these for the purpose of production of nuclear weapons, not conventional.”
On December 8, 2002, Senator Bob Graham revealed on Face the Nation, “We are in possession of what I think to be compelling evidence that Saddam Hussein has, and has had for a number of years, a developing capacity for the production and storage of weapons of mass destruction.” He later repeated that he had personally “seen enough evidence…seen enough just to be satisfied that there has been a continuing effort by Saddam Hussein, since the end of the Gulf War, particularly since 1998, to reestablish and enhance Iraq’s capacity, weapons of mass destruction, chemical, biological and nuclear.”
The next month, on January 9, 2003, when a reporter asked Fleischer whether it would be “disappointing…if there were no weapons there [in Iraq],” Fleischer responded confidently, “We know for a fact that there are weapons there.”
During a speech at Georgetown University on January 23, 2003, John Kerry stated that “without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime” and who “presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation.” Kerry continued, “And now he is miscalculating America’s response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction,” reiterating that “the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real.”
On January 28, 2003, George W. Bush delivered his State of the Union address. In it, he said, “Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent,” and declared:
“The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.”
Furthermore, Bush claimed, “With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region” and could “[s]ecretly, and without fingerprints…provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own.” He assured the American people and the world that, on February 5, 2003, “Secretary of State Powell will present information and intelligence about Iraqi’s legal — Iraq’s illegal weapons programs, its attempt to hide those weapons from inspectors, and its links to terrorist groups.”
Early in Colin Powell’s presentation before the UN Security Council, he declared, “Indeed, the facts and Iraq’s behavior show that Saddam Hussein and his regime are concealing their efforts to produce more weapons of mass destruction,” and doubled-down on this claim toward the end: “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction; he’s determined to make more.” He declared, “We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program,” adding, “Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.”
Three days later, during a radio address, George W. Bush said, “The Iraqi regime has acquired and tested the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction. It has never accounted for thousands of bombs and shells capable of delivering chemical weapons. It is actively pursuing components for prohibited ballistic missiles. And we have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”
On February 10, 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters aboard Air Force One that Iraq was “an imminent threat.”
On March 7, 2003, twelve days before the United States invaded Iraq, Colin Powell again addressed the UN Security Council and commented on a recent IAEA report on Iraq. He said, “As we all know, in 1991 the IAEA was just days away from determining that Iraq did not have a nuclear program. We soon found out otherwise,” adding, that “Iraq has obstructed the inspectors at nearly every turn over the years.” He told the Council, “So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our judgment has to be clearly not.” Though Powell paid lip-service to claim that “Nobody wants war,” he warned against inaction, stating, “Iraq [is] once again marching down the merry path to weapons of mass destruction, threatening the region, threatening the world” and ending his address by stating, “The clock continues to tick, and the consequences of Saddam Hussein continued refusal to disarm will be very, very real.”
On March 16, 2003, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that even positive overtures by Saddam Hussein would be ignored. “If he gave everything up tomorrow and stays in power, you have to assume that as soon as the world is looking the other way and preoccupied with other issues, he’d be back again rebuilding his weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons capabilities and once again reconstituting his nuclear program,” Cheney said. “At the front of our concern is the proposition that the al Qaeda organization is absolutely determined to do everything they can to acquire chemical, biological and nuclear weapons,” Cheney later remarked. “Saddam Hussein becomes a prime suspect in that regard because of his past track record and we know he has developed these kinds of capabilities,” he said, continuing “We know he has used chemical weapons. We know he has reconstituted these programs since the Gulf War. We know he’s out trying again to produce nuclear weapons and we know he has a long-standing relationship with various terrorist groups, including the al Qaeda organization.”
On March 17, 2003, George W. Bush told the nation, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised,” continuing, “The danger is clear: using chemical, biological or, one day, nuclear weapons, obtained with the help of Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country, or any other.”
From the Oval Office on March 19, 2003, George W. Bush said, “The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder” and stressed that “[w]e come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.”
On March 21, 2003, White House spokeman Ari Fleischer told the press, “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly,” and said the U.S. charges would be vindicated “in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.” Regarding the large number of journalists embedded with the invading troops, Fleischer declared, “you will find the answers and they will speak volumes themselves.”
The next day, speaking in Qatar, General Tommy Franks told reporters, “There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.”
On March 23, 2003, Kenneth Adelman, former Reagan official and Pentagon advisor, toldThe Washington Post, “I have no doubt we’re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction,” claiming these caches were around Tikrit and Baghdad. The Post also quoted Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria Clarke as affirming the U.S. knowledge of “a number of sites” where Iraqi WMD would be found.
A week later, in an interview with ABC‘s George Stephanopoulos on March 30, 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld explained that, at that point, the U.S. military invading Iraq “happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed,” but assured his host, “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”
On April 2, 2003, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw noted, “Saddam’s removal is necessary to eradicate the threat from his weapons of mass destruction.”
On April 10, 2003, Ari Fleischer told a White House press briefing, “But make no mistake — as I said earlier — we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found.”
On April 20, 2003, David Albright of ISIS, despite being a source of many of the pre-invasion claims about Iraq’s nuclear program, told the Los Angeles Times, “If there are no weapons of mass destruction, I’ll be mad as hell. I certainly accepted the administration claims on chemical and biological weapons. I figured they were telling the truth. If there is no [unconventional weapons program], I will feel taken, because they asserted these things with such assurance.”
Addressing factory workers at the Lima Army Tank Plant in Ohio on April 24, 2003, George W. Bush stated, “We are now working to locate and destroy Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” adding that “it’s going to take time to find them. But we know he had them. And whether he destroyed them, moved them, or hid them, we’re going to find out the truth. And one thing is for certain: Saddam Hussein no longer threatens America with weapons of mass destruction.”
On April 25, 2003, Donald Rumsfeld explained that the U.S. was close to being able to “track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.” The same day, The New York Timesquoted George W. Bush as telling Tom Brokaw aboard Air Force One, “I think there’s going to be skepticism until people find out there was, in fact, a weapons of mass destruction program,” but acknowledged, “it’s going to take time to find them.”
Speaking from his ranch in Crawford, Texas on May 3, 2003, alongside Australian Prime Minister John Howard, George W. Bush told the press, “Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The United States — United Nations Security Council voted 1441, which made the declaration it had weapons of mass destruction. It’s well-known it had weapons of mass destruction. And we’ve also got to recognize that he spent 14 years hiding weapons of mass destruction. I mean, he spent an entire decade making sure that inspectors would never find them. Iraq’s the size of the state of California. It’s got tunnels, caves, all kinds of complexes. We’ll find them. And it’s just going to be a matter of time to do so.”
On May 4, 2003, Colin Powell told reporters, “And I’m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We’re just getting it just now.”
On May 6, 2003, in the Oval Office, George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld were asked by the press whether evidence of WMD would be forthcoming. Bush responded, “I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein — because he had a weapons program. I will leave the details of your question to the experts, but one thing we know is that he had a weapons program. We also know he spent years trying to hide the weapons program. And over time the truth will come out and the American people will see that when we rid Saddam Hussein from — got him out of power, we made America more secure.” When a reporter asked what the Defense Secretary’s thoughts were, Rumsfeld replied curtly, “I like the President’s answer.”
As the official story began to change, Condoleezza Rice defensively claimed that the U.S. government never expected that “we were going to open garages and find” weapons of mass destruction and, on May 13, 2003, General David Petraeus suggested all weapons may have been “destroyed years ago” or right before the war” or may still be “hidden.” Nevertheless, on May 21, 2003, Marine Corps. commander General Hagee toldThe New York Times, ”Before the war, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.” A few days later, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, in an Today Show interview on NBC, said “Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.”
On May 29, 2003, George W. Bush, during an interview with TVP, a Polish broadcast, “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”
Despite Bush’s protestations, it was clear there were no weapons to find. During a teleconference on May 30, 2003, Lt. General James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq, admitted,
“It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons, as you say, in some of the forward dispersal sites. Again, believe me, it’s not for lack of trying. We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there. Now, what that means in terms of intelligence failure, I think, is too strong a word to use at this point. What the regime was intending to do in terms of its use of the weapons, we thought we understood or we certainly had our best guess, our most dangerous, our most likely courses of action that the intelligence folks were giving us. We were simply wrong. But whether or not we’re wrong at the national level, I think, still very much remains to be seen.”
In stark contrast to this statement, at a press briefing the very same day, Army Major General Keith W. Dayton, Defense Intelligence Agency operations director and head of the government’s Iraq Study Group, said, “Do I think we’re going to find something? Yeah, I kind of do, because I think there’s a lot of information out there, and that’s why I tell you, this is going to be a deliberate process, but it will be a long-term process as well. This is not necessarily going to be quick and easy, but it will be very thorough.”
On June 9, 2003, following a White House Cabinet meeting, George W. Bush was quoted by Reuters as claiming, “Iraq had a weapons program. Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program. I am absolutely convinced with time we’ll find out they did have a weapons program.”
On August 24, 2003, General Myers told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that the discovery of WMD would happen eventually, explaining, “the system we have in place, the process we have in place will work, and we’ll find what we are after.”
On September 14, 2003, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press, “There’s no doubt in my mind but what Saddam Hussein had these capabilities. This wasn’t an idea cooked up overnight by a handful of people, either in the administration or out of the CIA,” later reiterating, “I think in the final analysis, we will find that the Iraqis did have a robust program…So I say I’m not willing at all at this point to buy the proposition that somehow Saddam Hussein was innocent and he had no WMD and some guy out at the CIA, because I called him, cooked up a report saying he did. That’s crazy. That makes no sense. It bears no resemblance to reality whatsoever.”
On October 2, 2003, in a statement before Congress, former weapons inspector and Iraq Study Group head David Kay said, “We have not yet found stocks of weapons, but we are not yet at the point where we can say definitively either that such weapon stocks do not exist or that they existed before the war and our only task is to find where they have gone.” He added, “Despite evidence of Saddam’s continued ambition to acquire nuclear weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce fissile material.”
The consequences of such repeated lies have been devastating. Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqis have been killed. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), “4.7 million Iraqis have been uprooted as a result of the crisis in Iraq. Of these, over 2 million are living as refugees in neighbouring countries.” Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed and an estimated 5 million Iraqi children have been orphaned.
In his 1946 introduction to Brave New World, Aldous Huxley wrote, “The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
Now is not the time to remain silent.
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A debt of gratitude is due to the following sources for helping to make this post possible:
I am a former U.N. weapons inspector. I started my work with the United Nations in September 1991, and between that date and my resignation in August 1998, I participated in over 30 inspections, 14 as chief inspector. The United Nations Special Commission, or UNSCOM, was the organization mandated by the Security Council with the implementation of its resolutions requiring Iraq to be disarmed of its weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities. While UNSCOM oversaw the areas of chemical and biological weapons, and ballistic missiles, it shared the nuclear file with the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA. As such, UNSCOM, through a small cell of nuclear experts on loan from the various national weapons laboratories, would coordinate with the nuclear safeguards inspectors from the IAEA, organized into an “Action Team” dedicated to the Iraq nuclear disarmament problem. UNSCOM maintained political control of the process, insofar as its executive chairman was the only one authorized to approve a given inspection mission. At first, the IAEA and UNSCOM shared the technical oversight of the inspection process, but soon this was transferred completely to the IAEA’s Action Team, and UNSCOM’s nuclear staff assumed more of an advisory and liaison function.
In August 1992 I began cooperating closely with IAEA’s Action Team, traveling to Vienna, where the IAEA maintained its headquarters. The IAEA had in its possession a huge cache of documents seized from Iraq during a series of inspections in the summer of 1991 and, together with other U.N. inspectors, I was able to gain access to these documents for the purpose of extracting any information which might relate to UNSCOM’s non-nuclear mission. These documents proved to be very valuable in that regard, and a strong working relationship was developed. Over the coming years I frequently traveled to Vienna, where I came to know the members of the IAEA Action Team as friends and dedicated professionals. Whether poring over documents, examining bits and pieces of equipment (the IAEA kept a sample of an Iraqi nuclear centrifuge in its office) or ruminating about the difficult political situation that was Iraq over wine and cheese on a Friday afternoon, I became familiar with the core team of experts who composed the IAEA Action Team.
I bring up this history because during the entire time of my intense, somewhat intimate cooperation with the IAEA Action Team, one name that never entered into the mix was David Albright. Albright is the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS, an institute which he himself founded), and has for some time now dominated the news as the “go-to” guy for the U.S. mainstream media when they need “expert opinion” on news pertaining to nuclear issues. Most recently, Albright could be seen commenting on a report he authored, released by ISIS on June 16, in which he discusses the alleged existence of a computer owned by Swiss-based businessmen who were involved in the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market ring. According to Albright, this computer contained sensitive design drawings of a small, sophisticated nuclear warhead which, he speculates, could fit on a missile delivery system such as that possessed by Iran.
I have no objection to an academically based think tank capable of producing sound analysis about the myriad nuclear-based threats the world faces today. But David Albright has a track record of making half-baked analyses derived from questionable sources seem mainstream. He breathes false legitimacy into these factually challenged stories by cloaking himself in a résumé which is disingenuous in the extreme. Eventually, one must begin to question the motives of Albright and ISIS. No self-respecting think tank would allow itself to be used in such an egregious manner. The fact that ISIS is a creation of Albright himself, and as such operates as a mirror image of its founder and president, only underscores the concerns raised when an individual lacking in any demonstrable foundation of expertise has installed himself into the mainstream media in a manner that corrupts the public discourse and debate by propagating factually incorrect, illogical and misleading information.
In his résumé Albright prominently advertises himself as a “former U.N. weapons inspector.” Indeed, this is the first thing that is mentioned when he describes himself to the public. Witness an Op-Ed piece in The Washington Post which he jointly authored with Jacqueline Shire in January 2008, wherein he is described as such: “David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.” His erstwhile U.N. credentials appear before his actual job title. Now, this is not uncommon. I do the same thing when describing myself, noting that I was a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998. I feel comfortable doing this, because it’s true and because my résumé is relevant to my writing. In his official ISIS biography, Albright details his “U.N. inspector” experience as such: “Albright cooperated actively with the IAEA Action Team from 1992 until 1997, focusing on analyses of Iraqi documents and past procurement activities. In June 1996, he was the first non-governmental inspector of the Iraqi nuclear program. On this inspection mission, Albright questioned members of Iraq’s former uranium enrichment programs about their statements in Iraq’s draft Full, Final, and Complete Declaration.”
Now, as I have explained previously, I cooperated actively between 1992 and 1998 with the IAEA Action team, covering the same ground that David Albright claims to have. I do not doubt his assertion that he was in contact with the IAEA during the period claimed; I just doubt the use of the word actively to describe this cooperation. Maybe Albright was part of a top-secret “shadow” inspection activity that I was unaware of. I strongly doubt this. In 1992, when Albright states he began his “active cooperation” with the IAEA, he was serving as a “Senior Staff Scientist” with the Federation of American Scientists. That same year Albright, in collaboration with Frans Berkhout of Sussex University and William Walker of the University of St. Andrews, published “World Inventory of Plutonium and Highly Enriched Uranium,” 1992 (SIPRI and Oxford University Press). From March 1991 until July 1992, Albright, together with Mark Hibbs, wrote a series of seven articles on the Iraqi nuclear weapons programs for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The final three articles of this series, entitled “Iraq’s Bomb: Blueprints and Artifacts,” “Iraq: It’s all over at Al Atheer” and “Iraq’s shop-till-you-drop nuclear program,” were in part based upon information provided to Albright and Hibbs by the IAEA in response to questions posed by the two authors. So far as I can tell, this is the true nature of David Albright’s “active cooperation.” Far from being a subject-matter expert brought in by the IAEA to review Iraqi documents, Albright was simply an outsider with questions.
In the November/December 1995 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Albright wrote an article, co-authored with Robert Kelley, titled “Has Iraq come clean at last?” I know Bob Kelley. In August 1992, it was Kelley, then deputy to Action Team leader Maurizio Zifferero, who helped me and other UNSCOM inspectors gain access to the Iraqi documents under IAEA control. Kelley was, and is, a great safeguards inspector, and among his many accomplishments is his leading role in directing the IAEA’s investigation into South Africa’s unilaterally dismantled nuclear weapons program in the mid-1990s. Bob Kelley had served as David Albright’s “in” at the IAEA since 1992, when he started providing Albright with access to some of the IAEA’s information on Iraq’s nuclear program. The decision to jointly author an article on Iraq was a big step toward legitimizing what had been, up until that time, an informal relationship.
The joint article with Kelley gave Albright a legitimacy within the IAEA, to the extent that there were no objections when Kelley recommended inviting Albright to participate in a surge of inspections. It was during the aftermath of the defection of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, in August 1995, and the subsequent turning over of a massive quantity of previously hidden documents, including those pertaining to nuclear issues. These activities served as the framework around which Albright and Kelley wrote their article. The June 1996 inspection Albright participated in was his one and only foray into Iraq as a weapons inspector. He was not a chief inspector, nor a deputy chief inspector, nor an operations officer. He was a minor member of the team, Bob Kelley’s bag boy, who for the most part was there to observe. In a round-table discussion with Iraqi nuclear scientists, attended by all of the inspectors, Albright was able to ask a few questions, not from the standpoint of an IAEA expert, but more as an informed tourist.
I was in Iraq at the time, spearheading the very controversial UNSCOM 150 inspection, which found our team barred from entering several sensitive sites in and around Baghdad. On the few occasions when I was able to spend some down time at the U.N. headquarters on Canal Street, I would catch up with the status of the other inspections taking place in Iraq at the same time, including the one Albright was attached to. From all accounts, his lone stint as an inspector was at best unremarkable. He was a dilettante in every sense of the word, a Walter Mitty-like character in a world of genuine U.N. inspectors. There was recognition among most involved that bringing an outsider such as David Albright into the inspection process was a mistake. Not only did he lack any experience in the nuclear weapons field (being an outsider with only secondhand insight into limited aspects of the Iraqi program), he had no credibility with the Iraqi nuclear scientists, and his questions, void of any connectivity with the considerable record of interaction between the IAEA and Iraq, were not taken seriously by either side. Albright left Iraq in June 1996, and was never again invited back.
This is the reality of the relationship between Albright and the IAEA, and the singular event in his life which he uses as the justification for prominently promoting himself as a “former U.N. inspector.” While not outright fraud, Albright’s self-promoted relationship with the IAEA, and his status as a “former U.N. inspector,” is at best disingenuous, all the more so since he exploits this misleading biographical data in his ongoing effort to insert himself into the public eye as a nuclear weapons expert, a title not supported by anything in his life experience.
I can’t say for certain when Albright became “Doctor” Albright. A self-described “physicist,” he allows the term to linger, as he does the title “former U.N. inspector,” in order to create the impression that he possesses a certain gravitas. David Albright holds a master of science degree in physics from Indiana University and a master of science in mathematics from Wright State University. I imagine that this résumé permits him to assign himself the title physicist, but not in the Robert Oppenheimer/Edward Teller sense of the word. Whatever physics work Albright may or may not have done in his life, one thing is certain: He has never worked as a nuclear physicist on any program dedicated to the design and/or manufacture of nuclear weapons. He has never designed nuclear weapons and never conducted mathematical calculations in support of testing nuclear weapons, nor has he ever worked in a facility or with an organization dedicated to either.
At best, Albright is an observer of things nuclear. But to associate his sub-par physics pedigree with genuine nuclear weapons-related work is, like his self-promotion as a “former U.N. weapons inspector,” disingenuous in the extreme. His lack of any advanced educational training as a nuclear physicist, combined with his dearth of practical experience with things nuclear, is further exacerbated by his astounding assumption of the title Doctor. In 2007 Albright received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Wright State University. This honorary award is a recognition that should never be belittled, but it in no way elevates Albright to the status of one who has undergone the formal educational training and has actually earned a doctorate, especially in the demanding field of nuclear physics. While I cannot find any evidence of Albright promoting his honorary title in a manner that indicates direct fraud on his part (i.e., falsely claiming to be a Ph.D. in physics), there are far too many instances where he is referred to by those who interview him as being both “Dr. Albright” and a “physicist” that the uninformed reader might be misled into believing that the two were somehow connected.
Albright has spent the past decade building a solid reputation as an analyst of nuclear issues. One only need look at the impressive work he and ISIS have done on the issue of North Korea to understand the potential he brings to the table as an outside observer on nuclear matters. Informed interest, combined with sustained access to critical personalities on both sides of an issue, makes for insights and opinions that contribute in a positive manner to the overall public discourse. No one who is interested in facilitating informed debate, discussion and dialogue about issues such as those facing us in North Korea, Iran and elsewhere can deny the value Albright brings to the table. That his insight into these matters should be shared with members of the media is likewise something that should be encouraged.
But an analyst must be viewed in the proper perspective, and this begins by correctly defining who and what one is. David Albright is not a former U.N. weapons inspector, but rather an accidental tourist. To call oneself a weapons inspector suggests that one participated in the totality of the inspection process, and as such can converse readily, based on firsthand experience, about the total spectrum of issues that entails. Albright, based on his flimsy résumé in this regard, is not capable of such, and therefore should stop referring to himself in this manner, and encourage the media to do the same. Likewise, all reference to Albright as “Dr. Albright” should be eliminated, as should any reference which places the words physicist and nuclear in proximity. Let his work be judged on its own merit, and not camouflaged behind misleading perceptions created through false advertising.
In that he never has designed or worked in a nuclear reactor, never has designed or worked on nuclear weapons, in fact never has done anything of a practical, hands-on nature in the nuclear field, to call Albright an expert is a disservice to the term and, again, misleading in the extreme. It is not a sin to merely be informed, or to possess a specialty. But informed specialists are a dime a dozen. There is a reason mainstream media do not turn to bloggers when seeking out expert opinion. And yet, when they turn to “Dr. Albright, former U.N. weapons inspector,” they are getting little more than a well-funded, well-connected blogger. If one takes a closer look at the ISIS Report published by Albright on June 16 and widely quoted in the press since then, one will realize that there simply isn’t any substance to the allegations. Albright’s sole source seems to be a single, unnamed IAEA official, bringing to mind Bob Kelley and his role in facilitating Albright’s “access” to the IAEA in the 1990s. The remainder of the report comprises information already available to the general public, or sheer speculation.
This is, of course, the problem when someone who is not an expert on a given subject attempts to portray himself as just that. Lacking in the foundation of knowledge and experience which generally is expected of a genuine expert, the false “expert” commits error after error, not only of the factual sort but also in judgment. Had Albright in fact been a true nuclear expert, especially one fortified with firsthand experience as a former U.N. weapons inspector, he would not have had any association with Khidir Hamza, the disgraced Iraqi defector who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program. A true nuclear expert would have recognized the technical impossibilities and inconsistencies in Hamza’s fabrications. And a genuine former U.N. weapons inspector would have known that Hamza had been fingered as a fraud by the IAEA and UNSCOM. David Albright instead employed Hamza as an analyst with ISIS from 1997 until 1999.
Albright likewise facilitated the story of former Iraqi nuclear scientist Mahdi Obeidi being told to the world. As a “former U.N. weapons inspector,” Albright had a passing knowledge of Obeidi; the Iraqi was among the scientists that the IAEA team Albright served on questioned in June 1996 (Albright himself claims to have personally questioned Obeidi). Albright helped sell Obeidi’s story about buried uranium centrifuge parts to the media, even though a true nuclear expert would have known that what Obeidi claims to have hidden possessed absolutely no value in the field of nuclear enrichment, and any former U.N. weapons inspector worth his or her salt would have recognized the inconsistencies and improbabilities in the Obeidi story.
David Albright has a history of being used by those who seek to gain media attention for their respective claims. In addition to the Hamza and Obeidi fiascos, Albright and his organization, ISIS, have served as the conduit for other agencies gaining publicity about the alleged Iranian nuclear weapons program, the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, and most recently the alleged Swiss computer containing sensitive nuclear design information. On each occasion, Albright is fed sensitive information from a third party, and then packages it in a manner that is consumable by the media. The media, engrossed with Albright’s misleading résumé (“former U.N. weapons inspector,” “Doctor,” “physicist” and “nuclear expert”), give Albright a full hearing, during which time the particulars the third-party source wanted made public are broadcast or printed for all the world to see. More often than not, it turns out that the core of the story pushed by Albright is, in fact, wrong.
While Iran did indeed possess uranium enrichment capability at Natanz and a heavy water plant (under construction) at Arak (as reported by Albright thanks to information provided by the Iranian opposition group MEK, most probably with the help of Israeli intelligence), Albright’s wild speculation about weapons-grade plutonium and highly enriched uranium proved to be wrong. There was indeed a building in Syria that was bombed by Israel. But Albright’s expert opinion, derived from his interpretation of photographs, consists of nothing more than simplistic observation (“The tall building in the image may house a reactor under construction and the pump station along the river may have been intended to supply cooling water to the reactor”) combined with unfocused questions that assumed much, but were in fact based on little (“How far along was the reactor construction project when it was bombed? What was the extent of nuclear assistance from North Korea? Which reactor components did Syria obtain from North Korea or elsewhere, and where are they now?”). And, most recently, we have Albright commenting about the contents of a computer he hasn’t even laid eyes on, though he feels confident enough to raise the specter of global nuclear catastrophe (“How will authorities learn if Iran, North Korea, or even terrorists bought these designs?” Albright asks when referring to the contents of the Swiss computer).
Nowhere in his résumé does Albright cite any formal training as a photographic interpreter; in any case, one would have to have an intimate knowledge of nuclear facilities in order to know what one was looking at when examining an aerial image. A genuine nuclear weapons expert would have been able to discern the technical faults in the logic of the stories being peddled by Albright. And a genuine former U.N. weapons inspector, well versed in preparing airtight investigations based upon verified intelligence information, would have balked at the shabby nature of the evidence provided. Again, because Albright is neither, he and ISIS play the role of patsy, the middleman peddling misinformation to a media too lazy to conduct their own due diligence before running with a story.
Albright, operating under the guise of his creation, ISIS, has a track record of inserting hype and speculation about matters of great sensitivity in a manner which skews the debate toward the worst-case scenario. Over time Albright often moderates his position, but the original sensationalism still remains, serving the purpose of imprinting a negative image in the psyche of public opinion. This must stop. It is high time the mainstream media began dealing with David Albright for what he is (a third-rate reporter and analyst), and what he isn’t (a former U.N. weapons inspector, doctor, nuclear physicist or nuclear expert). It is time for David Albright, the accidental inspector, to exit stage right. Issues pertaining to nuclear weapons and their potential proliferation are simply too serious to be handled by amateurs and dilettantes.
Scott Ritter was a U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq from 1991 to 1998.
Editor’s note: Frank von Hippel has written a response to this column in the comments below. Click here to read his rebuttal.
Lawsuits accusing top US universities of harboring antisemitism all originate from one source: a corporate law firm that fielded the pro-settler ex-US ambassador to Israel, and which was registered as a foreign agent of an Israeli principal as recently as 2021.
The firm now represents professional Israel lobby activists posing as victimized “Jewish students” and seeking to crush the free speech rights of Palestine solidarity activists. … continue
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