Remember this News Story

According to a reporter with Reuters, The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report says Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and it remains on hold.

Tehran's decision to halt its nuclear weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005.

Will this news story be forgotten by the Corporate media if Bush presses to attack Iran sometime in the future? Not if we hold them accountable.

CLICK to Contact The Media and tell them you'll be watching them in the future if Bush tries to play the mushroom cloud card to justify attacking Iran.

Sources:

Reuters, Report contradicts Bush on Iran nuclear program, Matt Spetalnick, December 3, 2007.

Outsourced by R. J. Hillhouse

According to DemocracyNow, "Author [and blogger] R.J. Hillhouse caused a stir in Washington last month when she revealed more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service has been outsourced to private firms." She did a back-calculation based on information in the public domain. In her own words:

It was actually the journalist Tim Shorrock who first found that PowerPoint presentation and the slide that showed the 70% [of the US Intelligence budget is allocated to private contractors]. My contribution to it was recognizing that because, based of the information in it and in a hidden table in the presentation, it was possible to reverse-engineer the national intelligence budget, which appears that we’re really spending about $60 billion on intelligence each year, and out of that, $42 billion is going to private corporations.

I ran across Hillhouse's blog, The Spy Who Billed Me, when she posted a piece about Blackwater USA sponsoring NASCAR. Her niche? The outsourcing of intelligence gathering, processing, analyzing and presentation to our leaders. The word "yikes" comes to mind.

I generally read non-fiction, but was enticed to buy her book when she said, in the interview on DemocracyNow:

I found that there were things that could only be written about in fiction. It’s amazing for someone who has lived in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe to find that in this country we’re in a similar place. In the repressive regimes, literature has often played the role of bringing things to light that could not otherwise be discussed. And I found that there are some things that are going on in the intelligence community or things that are going on with our government with relationships between corporate and government that it was only safe to discuss under the guise of fiction.

So, what are those things? As I read the book, I noted things that might be either "classified" or "insightful" information that is being "leaked" by Hillhouse's book. The one thing that doesn't come out as a quote, but does so in her book, is that a lot of Americans are killing other Americans in a Wild East sort of way. It makes one wonder about the "friendly" fire death of Pat Tillman.

Insightful Information:

(Explaining why an operative had distanced himself) "Around that time a couple of my teammate's wives and kids had suspicious accidents. There was a lot of talk of families being targeted. I couldn't risk that happening to you too." (We know the US has used the threat of harm towards family members during interrogations).

"Please don't tell me you're spying for the Pentagon. Those guys learned their tradecraft from Get Smart - it's a known fact." (True sentiments among intelligence circles?)

"... it was the sweet scent of life on the edge, the smell of money, the perfume of Iraq." (True sentiments among private contractors in Iraq.)

"Black Management (a competing contractor) is muscling in on our turf and we need to kick ass and get out of there before they show." (Money-driving turf wars among private contractors undermining unity of mission? Not that there aren't inter-service rivalries in the military).

"The last thing he wanted to do was take down some goat herder's mud shanty by mistake like another Rubicon Team had done a few nights ago." (Bad intelligence leading to killing civilians by private contractors).

"Rubicon snarfed up table scraps without even doing background checks. More than once he had heard troops bragging about the criminal records they had left behind, including a South African who boasted he was a bona fide war criminal." (Private contractors hiring anyone to fill the positions).

"He leaned against the SUV and popped a couple of Motrin - Grunt candy."

Speaking of contractor Rubicon moving in on their turf... a plausible, and revealing, hypothesis is posed: "Rubicon Solutions was trying to woo the CIA for another major no-bid contract."

Discovering what appeared to be an under cover operative mixed in among the Iraqi resistance, "Hunter wasn't sure who he worked for, but Hunter guessed the Other Government Agency - the CIA. He wasn't going to blow the spook's cover, not even with Stella [his close associate].

Skirting political pressure not to deploy more troops to Iraq, the Pentagon quietly increased the number of boots on the ground with soldiers from private military corporations.

Other companies were there claiming to work for the State Department, even though everyone knew there were no diplomats in Anbar.

CIA funds were being dumped into Rubicon to run it, but he still couldn't tell if the money was because it was a covert Agency project or because another rogue CIA case officer was setting up lucrative retirement plans with corporate America.

"Eliminate him yourself. Jesus, you've got more hunters on the payroll here than we do. Tell the guy's family he died killing terrorists and let them collect the death benefits." (Can you say "Pat Tillman"?)

(continuing) "No one will think twice about it, let alone call for an investigation. The family will probably be happy not to have to deal with Rambo coming home and fighting a war at the local 7-Eleven. The guys who succeed over here make lousy civilians and families know that."

A variant on a 'snow ball's chance in hell,' "A goat in an Afghan mujahedin camp had a better chance of dying a virgin."

"After they screwed us at Haditha, I'm happy to keep those CID turds from nosing around my camp." (Reflection of some Army officer's views on the Army Investigation Division).

Referring to one way the CIA gets rid of unwanted operatives: "They would've fucked you good, left you alone, hanging in the cold on some mission, expecting an extraction that would never come. I've seen them do it to others."

"Come on. You know how the world works. If an Agency analyst betrays us, US courts try him for treason. If a case officer betrays us, we eliminate him."

"Oil here is a disaster. They're not back to prewar levels and if anyone tires to tell you they ar, they're lying."

The war had been good for business and the current drawdown of troops was a bonanza. Each soldier pulled out mean a vacuum that had to be filled. The Iraqis weren't up to the task and America was too deeply involved to roll over an allow room for al Qaeda to move in. Enter ... a list of private corporations.

Only families cared about dead contractors - Pentagon body counts didn't.

"Through most of the Bush administration, the CIA high command has been engaged in a bitter struggle with the Pentagon." CNN, September 27, 2004 as reported by Robert Novak

"This is a turf battle." said retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle Eastern affairs for the Defense Intelligence Agency. "All of this represents that clandestine human intelligence in the Department of Defense is a growth industry and that it is no longer regarding itself as under the control of the CIA." Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2005, as reported by Mark Mazzetti, and Greg Miller.

Rubicon [a US contractor] was probably torturing him right now.

"The bottom line is we're all operating outside of Iraqi law, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice doesn't apply to private security companies like us."

"The last thing we need is to pay for some creative legal work, set a precedent that somebody's law actually applies here in the Wild West and have it come back and bite us in the butt. Can you imagine the civil liability for property damage alone? [Our corporation] has taken out over five thousand insurgents and we all know the definition of an insurgent is pretty damn loose around here. It's more ore less anyone we take out. I don't even want to think about the wrongful death claims Iraqis could come after us with."

Head of a contractor speaking, "Sometimes I lie awake at night - you know Washington is a mercurial place. Sure, we're saving the president's ass in Iraq, but do you ever stop to think about what could happen if the other guys sweep in the next election?"

A contractor executive speaking to subordinates, "Tangos [insurgents] are sure busy tonight. Must've cashed another Saudi check. They always seem to shoot their wad on payday - I'm sure non of you can relate to that."

The contractor's spooks were coordinating with [another contractor], a British firm, to purchase signals intelligence on [a competitor contractor's] Iraq operations and they were also working with the American agencies, [contractor 4 and contractor 5], to see if they had any assets on the inside at [the competitor contractor] that could be purchased [turned].

The Agency didn't create sophisticated aliases in-house anymore, but outsourced them too a boutique firm called Abraxas.

"I know." "[the competitor contractor] has raked in over fifteen billion in Iraq contracts. That's a hell of a lot at staek, but you know, if peace breaks out and things settle down here, all that goes away. Maybe they're doing us all a big favor and making sure it doesn't."

In discussing the CIA's covert role, "Ah, if the Agency's no violating someone's human rights, they're not doing their job." (otherwise, someone else could do it overtly).

He [Bob Baer, former CIA case officer] says, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."

"Try recruiting an agent when you can't go anywhere without have a platoon of security guards around you. Now if somehow you're lucky enough to snag one, you have to hand him off in a few weeks to some new guy fresh from Langley. And the agent's supposed to trust the stranger with his life. If I were an Iraqi, Id never spy for us. Splendid system."

"It was an Agency contract to take out one of their own before the KGB soften him up too much."

A French man responds to the quip, "I thought we were all friends." "We used to be. Then you started kidnapping innocent civilians and torturing them in your secret prisons. You start wars under the pretext of preventing Saddam from getting nuclear devices, even though you know he doesn't have them - because you manufactured the evidence. Now America and its corporations are addicted to the War on Terror like a user to heroin. Your president flouts your laws and constitution. And what do the American people do? They supersize another order of French fries."

Classified Information?:

"One of the Israelis who trained black units at Fort Bragg works for me out of Kandahar."

Ever since Rumsfeld had created Force Zulu [an intelligence and covert operations unit], a cold war had been raging between the two clandestine services [the other service being the CIA]. It wouldn't be the first time the CIA had sent someone to spy on a Zulu operator to make sure the Pentagon didn't beat them to any significant intel prize.

"You know I actually typed up a resignation letter the day I heard the President authorized Cambone and that born-again whack-job Boykin to round up a bunch of soldiers and start playing I Spy. I predicted this was going to happen - us tripping all over each other."

"Osama bin Ladin's Successor. I've been hearing a lot about that lately. So did some al Qaeda lieutenants finally catch on you've been holding the fucker for years and seize the opportunity to take over the network?"

passing reference.... "... when you and I were undercover after those suitcase nukes in Turkmenistan?"

The operative wasn't officially read into the project, but he know that the CIA and Pentagon immediately took joint control of al Qaeda, feeding its lieutenants with useless orders which rendered the organization ineffective.

"Even though Pakistan is our good friend in the fight on terror, as far as I'm concerned Pakistani intelligence is the most functional part of al Qaeda."

"Their fingers are in everything," she said. "Don't you know the [competitor contractor] story? While Dick Cheney left Halliburton to run for VP, some execs split off and formed [competitor contractor] Group. The government throws nobid contracts at them all the time."

Together with her operators, she had raided apartment buildings with sarin and VX chemical weapons labs.

They apparently wanted information from him [an American], so that meant he probably had a few day, if not weeks, to live, but that was only a guess. Rubicon had the means to make anyone disappear - hell, they did it under government contract all the time.

A contractor subordinate reporting to the executive: "Things were hopping today along the Syrian border. It started in Tal Afar, then spilled over into the Syrian side. The first Rumor I heard was they thought they had al-Zahrani, then some of our guys came back with conflicting reports they'd nailed a French spy in Syria."

Discussing secret prisons, "You know that Halliburton built it back when Cheney was running the outfit?"

Speaking of secret prisons... "The Poles and Romanians kicked them out. The Supreme Court ruling extending the Geneva Convention to detainees really mucked things up."

"Hold on. The Agency's been scrabling to come up with a new way to keep control over prisoners and interrogations. Word is they've privatized."

"Remember the President's speech about how the CIA was no longer in the business of black sites? He was telling the truth, more or less. The CIA isn't doing it anymore - [the competitor contractor] is."

"That's the beauty of outsourcing: you can do whatever the fuck you want. You don't need a presidential finding because you're not the SOB doing it - the contractor is. Things go south, the contractor went too far. And god only knows if any laws apply to them. Geneva Conventions sure as hell don't. So much for the Supreme Court ruling. It's a beautiful workaround."

A CIA case officer speaks: "Lets be clear. When it comes to stopping terrorists, we're allies - the War on Terror is where we have differences." (Get it?)

Intelligence Agencies Blame Bush for Increased Terrorist Threat

My first reaction to the new intelligence agency reports on Al-Qaida was to wonder if the findings are politicized by the Bush administration. Now I'm wondering if maybe they are politicized against the Bush administration.

Everyone is familiar with the politicization of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war; some call it an "intelligence failure," as if the information was wrong. No. Thanks to Richard Dryfuss, Karen Kwiatikowski and others, we know that Dick Cheney created a lie factory in the Pentagon that gave false intelligence to the establishment media, Congress and the American people.

Many may also be familiar with the case against former CIA Director, and current Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. During past Senate confirmation hearings, numerous intelligence analysts, such as Jennifer Glaudemans and Ray McGovern, spoke out against Gates due to their concerns about his politicization of intelligence.

But we also know that Bush and Cheney set up the CIA to take the blame for the administration's abuse of intelligence, calling it "intelligence failures." So, we know that the intelligence community has an axe to grind against Bush/Cheney. We might be seeing that happening today.

The retribution comes through in the following message from the intelligence agencies: Bush's war in Iraq is undermining National security by creating a terrorist training ground. With that in mind, read the following:

National Intelligence Council Chairman Thomas Fingar warned that the group's operatives in Iraq are getting portable, firsthand experience in covert communications, smuggling, improvised explosive devices, understanding U.S. military tactics and more.

Thomas Finger is still a new face, not even written up on Wikipedia as of the writing of this blog essay. Finger comes out of the US State Department intelligence department, one of the agencies that got it right before the Iraq war, but was shouted down. I'm guessing he's telling it straight.

Finger is not alone in broadcasting subtle public messages that point the blame towards Bush and Cheney:

Ted Gistaro, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats, said al-Qaida in Iraq did not have any active cells when the U.S. invaded in March 2003. He said the watershed moment was when its now-deceased leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, declared his allegiance to bin Laden in an October 2004 Internet message.

The story of Zarqawi is interesting. Briefly, he was originally a small-time, locally-based operator. According to Zarqawi researcher, and economist, Loretta Napoleoni:

al-Zarqawi met Osama Bin Laden in 2000 in Kandahar, and it was a meeting in which he refused to join Al Qaeda because he could not share Osama Bin Laden's view of far-away enemy, i.e., the United States. He was very much focused on the existing Arab regimes, in particular Jordan.

Zarqawi ran a little training camp in Herat, but was forced to flee to Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish secret service informed the US that Zarqawi was "Al Qaeda," which was false, but the Bush needed some kind of evidence of Iraqi wrong doing. Zarqawi became their tumped up link of Al Quaeda to Iraq. Bush proclaimed Zarqawi to be "number 2" in Al Qaeda, and the corporate media fell in line with the story.

It was only after the Bush administration artificially pumped up Zarqawi's public image as a major terrorist that Zarqawi was able to attract support in the Muslim world.[1] That is, Bush created Zarqawi as a bogeyman image, which enabled Zarqawi to attract the resources needed to become a real threat. Bush literally helped create Zarqawi, even if unintentionally.

All of this points to more evidence of the Iraq Effect. This is the notion that the Iraq war correlates with a 600 percent increase in terrorist attacks since the US invasion of Iraq. This is according to research by Paul Cruickshank, Fellow at New York University Law School’s Center on Law and Security.

Although Bush might think this intelligence report serves his need to ratchet up the fear factor for his benefit, I suspect the intelligence community is conducting a secondary information campaign to undermine Bush's credibility. It's pay-back time.

Sources:

1. Democracy Nowm, June 8, 2006. Loretta Napoleoni, Italian economist and writer. She is the author of several books including "Insurgent Iraq: Al Zarqawi and the New Generation" and "Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks."

Improper Media Contact by Security Contractor

Today I read that the U.S. government has outsourced the monitoring of al-Qaida messages to contractor, IntelCenter.

We also read that Ben Venzke at IntelCenter interpret the information, saying the group likely did not believe any of its demands would be met; "It essentially allows al-Qaida to say that it has provided fair warning and is thus no longer responsible for the outcome."

Aside from the obvious security risks of having a for-profit corporation responsible for screening intelligence data, why is the contractor allowed to have contacts with the media? Interpretation of that information for public dissemination

should only be developed by US officials who are are properly accountable.

I certainly hope agents of the U.S. government are spying on IntelCenter.

Sources:

Associated Press, Al-Qaida video threatens attacks on U.S., ANNA JOHNSON, May 30, 2007.

Why Did Fox News Fire Larry Johnson?

Larry Johnson got fired by FOX News for sharing insights that didn't conform with their right-wing, false view of the World.

According to transcripts cited below, Larry Johnson was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1985 to 1989. He served in the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism from 1989 to 1993. He now provides consulting services and helps the U.S. train military forces carrying out counterterrorism missions.

Unfortunately, Johnson has a loose definition of terrorism, which undermines the intellectual integrity of his cause. He considers the 1995 Iraqi attempted assasination of George H.W. Bush to be a terrorist act. Assasination of a head of state shouldn't be categorized as "terrorism." Terrorism traditionally involves attacks on civilian targets to influence a political goal.

So, back to why FOX News fired Larry Johnson:

I would like to say I was one of those who, before the [Iraq] war started, said, "this is a crock." I didn't. However, I did get fired from the Fox News network as a news analyst for having the audacity in November of 2002 to say, that if we went into Iraq, it would be a diversion in the war on terror.

Of course, we all know, and Johnson should too, that the "war on terror" is also a crock. It's surprising how long it takes some insiders to catch on.

Johnson continues with a commentary on the value of blogs:

And in January of 2003, I put together a paper — this was in my pre-blog days. I'm convinced, if I'd known more about blogs then, and there were more blogs active, we might have stopped the war.

Sources:

No Quarter Blog, May 24, 2007. The transcript is to appear in the in the May 25, 2007 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Why Did Saddam Hussein say "No" to Weapons Inspectors?

Actually, at the end, the inspectors weren't "kicked out" by Saddam Hussein. They left in advance of the pending US assault.

But earlier, Hussein had said no. Why? Because he was hiding something? Mel Goodman, a 24-year veteran as a CIA analyst on the Soviet Union, with 18 years experience on the faculty of the National War College, gives us a good clue why Hussein resisted the inspectors:

... you have to realize that the best source of intelligence that the CIA had, was the fact that they had operational people on the United Nations inspector teams. They had a significant number in every round of inspection. And they were there to collect intelligence, not only in terms of WMD, but on Saddam Hussein, and on a variety of Iraqi chiefs.

When the UN inspectors left, and tried to get back in after Desert Fox, the Clinton bombing attack on Iraq in 1998, Saddam Hussein said no.

Sources:

No Quarter Blog, May 24, 2007. The transcript is to appear in the in the May 25, 2007 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Is the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq Politicized?

That's the question the Democratic Congress must answer. They must call hearings, examine the process and actors who had editorial control, and also interview lower level staff to determine whether there is any political spin in the assessment.

There is ample evidence that politicization occured in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq that was developed prior to the 2003 US invasion. For example, Robert Dryfus, and others, exposed the Pentagon's system of short-circuiting the formal chain of intelligence designed to inform the President (The Lie Factory). John Negroponte, who served as the first Director of National Intelligence while this NIE was under development, is a netorious political operator who effectively led America's dirty wars involving death squads in Cenral America during the 1980s.

Current Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who could have influenced the final touches on the NIE, also has a history of bending to political will during his tenure as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1985 Gates was both deputy director of CIA, and chairman of the National Inelligence Committee (NIC) that drafted the Iran NIE. Having a political director position serve as chair creates the opportunity for politicization. Jennifer Glaudemans, A former CIA analyst on the 1985 Iran NIE, said that, "Now, not since he held that position has anyone ever yet again held a conflict of interest position of holding those two jobs." She also said, "...the CIA never took a footnote to an estimate, could not dissent to an estimate, as long as Mr. Gates was also the chairman of the NIC." [1]

Glaudemans explains, "What happened in the Third World Activities Division [of the CIA] was analytical judgments were put out as [intelligence] community view in estimates or as CIA view, for which there was no evidence. The Iran estimate in 1985 is just a classic example of that, and one I was personally involved with. There was no evidence to support the key judgment about the Soviets in that Iranian estimate. There was a ton of evidence that contradicted that. So it’s not a question of a young junior analyst not getting her view taken, it was a question of evidence versus no evidence." [1]

According to Glaudemans, "there was an Inspector General investigation. Many analysts, not just myself, many managers -- I think everyone in the Office of Soviet Analysis was interviewed. And one of the judgments of that IG report was that the perception of politicization of analysis was pervasive." This isn't directed solely at Gates, but is another demonstration that intelligence findings are subject to politicization.

Given the track record of the current administration, it is highly likely the current Iraq NIE is politicized. Given the high stakes, the Democratic Congress must investigate that question.

You can help make that happen by contacting Congress and by raising the question with media outlets.

Write the US House of Representatives
Write the US Senate
Write the Major Media Outlets

Sources:

[1] DemocracyNow! December 5, 2006. Interview of Jennifer Glaudemans and Ray McGovern