[ This tells the story of the Safari Club, the secret organization created by the CIA to circumvent the Congress of the United States. It could be accurately described as the "secret government" of the United States. This secret government is basically a privatized facsimile of the real government with its own financing and intelligence arms, but most of them are not American citizens. "Retired" American intelligence and military men and their Saudi and Pakistani counterparts have joined with this organization, where they have been implementing the covert American foreign policy for thirty years or more. When stories refer to shady mercenary types as "Blackwater," they are usually referring to the Safari Club mercenaries. Some people call them "al CIAda."]

The Safari Club and the ‘Islamic Bomb’

Recorded August 28, 2005
REALAUDIO

Since 9/11, there has been a height ened level of dis cus sion on the pos si bil ity of nuclear ter ror ism, par tic u larly in light of the A.Q. Khan net work and the smug gling of nuclear tech nol ogy from Pak istan to a num ber of other coun tries. This broad cast sets forth infor­ma tion that demon strates the com plic ity of the Safari Club in the devel op ment of the “Islamic Bomb.” An out sourc ing of U.S. intel li gence func tions to Saudi Ara bia and (to a lesser extent) Pak istan, the net work was the prin ci pal ele ment in the CIA’s sup port net­work for the Mus lim mujahideen that drove the Sovi ets out of Afghanistan. Of course, it was that con flict that spawned Osama bin Laden as a war rior. In this pro gram, the devel op ment of the Pak istani “Islamic Bomb” by the A.Q. Khan net work is seen as a quid pro quo for Pak istani and Saudi help in fight ing the Sovi ets. In addi tion to the fact that the Saudis were in effec tive to con trol of the A.Q. Khan network’s oper a tions, the show demon strates that CIA assets asso ci ated with that net work were allowed to oper ate in the United States until well after 9/11!

Pro gram High lights Include: The impor tant role of the BCCI in the financ ing of the A.Q. Khan network’s oper a tions (the BCCI milieu is deeply involved in the events in, and around, 9/11); U.S. pres sure on British inves ti ga tors to aban don their inves ti ga tion of the A.Q. Khan net work; the oper a tions of Nazir Ahmed Vaid, an appar ent CIA asset whose oper­a tions on behalf of the A.Q. Khan net work con tin ued in the United States until after 9/11; the George W. Bush administration’s relax ing of sanc tions imposed on Pak istan by the Clin ton admin is tra tion because of its efforts at pro­mot ing the spread of nuclear tech nol ogy; the par tic i pa tion by the Theodor Shackley/Thomas Clines/Edwin Wil son net­work in the Afghan Mujahideen sup port effort.

1. The broad cast begins by pre sent ing back ground infor ma tion on the Safari Club. That infor ma tion is con tained in FTR#522. Under writ ten by Saudi Ara bia, the Safari Club entailed the out sourc ing of U.S. intel li gence oper a tions to the Saudis and other coun tries. It is in the con text of the Safari Club that the Saudi-funded Islamic Devel op ment Bank under took much of the financ ing of the A.Q. Khan net work and its devel op ment of the Islamic bomb.

“The same lead er ship that pro mul gated the Safari Club—the Saudi royals—also strongly funded and sup ported the Islamic Devel op ment Bank. Begun in 1973, the IDB now has 55 mem ber states, with Saudi Ara bia dom i nat ing, with 27.33 per cent of the bank’s fund ing. As a com par i son, Egypt con tributes 9.48% and Pak istan just 3.41% of the bank’s total cap i tal. It was through the bank’s sci en tific and eco nomic devel op ment efforts that huge amounts were fun neled into Pak istan, which ended up in the hands of A.Q. Khan and his now-infamous nuclear bomb-building syndicate.”

(Pre lude to Ter ror; by Joseph Trento; Copy right 2005 by Joseph J. Trento; Car roll & Graf [HC]; ISBN 0–7867-1464–6; p. 313.)

2. U.S. involve ment with the A.Q. Khan network’s devel op ment of the Islamic bomb was a quid pro quo for Pak istani coop er a tion with the covert war against the Sovi ets in Afghanistan—the same war that spawned Osama bin Laden.

“The effort that began prior to the Soviet inva sion of Afghanistan—and that Pres i dent Carter’s National Secu rity Adviser warned was a seri ous effort to build the first Islamic bomb—was delib er ately ignored by Carter in order to secure Saudi and Pak istani coop er a tion for the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan. Like almost every thing about the anti-Soviet effort, the Rea gan admin is tra tion expanded on it; and the CIA directly assisted the Pak istani nuclear effort by allow ing Pak istani nation als to pro cure hard ware for the pro gram in vio la tion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.”

(Idem.)

3. In RFA’s 4, 29, 30—avail able from Spitfire—we exam ined the pri va tized intel li gence net work devel oped to extend U.S. intel li gence oper a tions beyond the over sight of Con gress. Uti liz ing the tal ents of Edwin Wil son and Frank Ter pil, this net work was oper ated prin ci pally by Theodore Shack ley and Thomas Clines, two of the lead ing fig ures in CIA covert oper a tions through out much of the agency’s exis tence. This net work was deeply involved with the Afghan sup­port effort. It should be noted that the elder George Bush was deeply involved with the Wilson-Shackley-Clines oper a­tions, as well as the Safari Club. As we saw in FTR#522, the Safari Club, in turn, sub sumed the oper a tions of the Wilson-Shackley-Clines net work to a con sid er able extent.

“ ‘There was noth ing more impor tant than prop ping up a free Afghanistan. One of the things I did was try to get the Afghan king, then liv ing in exile in Italy, to come back to Afghanistan so we could build a new gov ern ment,’ Tom Clines recalled. Although he was out of the CIA and offi cially retired, ‘I was try ing to do my part in keep ing Afghanistan in our col umn. . . .Shack ley was work ing with the Royal fam i lies in the Gulf . . . all were con tribut ing to the effort in the early 1980’s.’”

(Idem.)

4.

“Clines con ceded that the off-the-books intel li gence oper a tions had been melded into the Afghan war effort. ‘We worked for who was help ing the United States the most. The Saudis worked very closely with us.’ Clines recalled how Bernard Houghton, who had run Nugan Hand Bank in Saudi Ara bia until it ran out of money, played a key role, work ing with Prince Turki and the Saudi GID.”

(Idem.)

5. Out of the enor mous amounts of money the Saudis and the Safari Club chan neled to the Afghan mujahideen sup­port effort, the Pak ista nis diverted a large sum in order to under write the cost of their nuclear network.

“What many peo ple do not know was that the Safari Club had made a deal with Pak istan at the expense of the Afghan peo ple. The Safari Club was run by the Saudis. It was a club to serve their pur poses through the CIA. Shack ley and Wil son were not mem bers; only nations could belong. Shack ley and Wil son were men who served the club in exchange for power, influ­ence, and money. Pak istani Intel li gence would han dle all the money going to facil i tate the proxy war against the Sovi ets. That meant that hun dreds of mil lions of dol lars from the United States and Saudi Ara bia were being run through Pak istan with no account abil ity. ‘Unfor tu­nately,’ said Robert Crow ley, ‘the Pak ista nis knew exactly where their cut of the money was to go.’ Where the money went was into an Islamic nuclear-weapons pro gram sup ported by Saudi Ara bia and accepted by the United States.”

(Ibid.; p. 314.)

6. Despite U.S. claims to the con trary, this coun try did not inter dict the A.Q. Khan net work. On the con trary, the U.S. blocked British attempts at inter dict ing A.Q. Khan’s operations

“Dur ing the early 1990’s, British Cus toms began look ing closely at the United States—Pakistan nuclear net work. One of their top agents was an Arabic-speaking Mus lim who trav eled the world track ing down A.Q. Khan’s net work. The British soon learned that the United States had no inter est in shut ting down the net work, which had been oper at ing for years. The Mus lim cus­toms agent, whose iden tity must be pro tected for his own safety, was actu ally con fronted by Khan in Dubai, where the agent had traced a num ber of Khan’s front com pa nies. The agent tes ti fied in a trial involv ing asso ciates of Khan’s that the father of the Pak istani bomb con­fronted the Mus lim cus toms agent and called him ‘a trai tor to Mus lim peo ple’ for uncov er ing the nuclear net work that was sup ply ing weapons equip ment to Libya, Iran, Malaysia, and North Korea.”

(Idem.)

7.

“A top French Intel li gence offi cial, who asked that his name be with held from pub li ca tion, described the U.S.—Pakistani cover-up of the Khan net work as hav ing ‘an impor tant prece­dent. Just as the U.S. allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons, under pres sure from the Saudis, the U.S. allowed Pak istan to be Saudi Arabia’s proxy as the first Islamic nuclear state. The Saudis put up the cash and have clean hands as Pak istan builds the bomb for its sup­posed defense against India over Kash mir . . . but my coun try and the British received no coop er a tion start ing in the 1980’s when we dis cov ered traces of Khan’s net work. The U.S. did not want to dis cuss it.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 314–315.)

8. The U.S. actu ally shipped some of the hard ware to A.Q. Khan’s operation!

“A senior source in the British gov ern ment, who asks not to be named, con firms that Khan ran the net work and that parts for the nuclear-weapons pro gram came from the United States. Khan’s daugh ter, attend ing school in Eng land, was being tutored, and at the ends of faxes deal ing with logis tics for her edu ca tion, Khan would some times write, in his own hand, items he needed for the nuclear program.”

(Ibid.; p. 315.)

9. Next, the pro gram details some of the his tory and back ground of the Pak istani nuclear effort:

“Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons had begun some fif teen years ear lier. Shortly after tak­ing office in 1972, Pak istani Prime Min is ter Zul fiker Ali Bhutto expressed his deter mi na tion to develop a nuclear capa bil ity. His pur pose was two fold: to off set the inher ent threat posed by Pakistan’s much larger neigh bor and avowed enemy, India; and to make his coun try a leader of the Islamic world. After India det o nated its first atomic weapon on the Pak istani bor der in 1974, Bhutto pushed his nuclear pro gram into high gear. To lead the effort, he tapped Abdul Qadeer Khan, an accom plished met al lur gist and busi ness man with a strong desire for wealth. To finance his ambi tious pro gram, Bhutto turned to his country’s oil-rich ally, Saudi Ara bia, and to Libya. China also pledged assis tance. By 1976, when George Bush served as CIA Direc tor, U.S. intel li gence esti mates reported, in a secret CIA report on Pak istan, that Pak istan was engaged in ‘a crash pro gram to develop nuclear weapons.’”

(Idem.)

10. As men tioned above, the U.S. “signed on” with the Pak istani nuke pro gram after the start of the Soviet inva sion of Afghanistan.

“In 1979, while await ing exe cu tion fol low ing his over throw, Bhutto wrote in his mem oirs that his goal as prime min is ter had been to put the ‘Islamic Civ i liza tion’ on an even foot ing with ‘Chris t ian, Jew ish and Hindu Civ i liza tions’ by cre at ing a ‘full nuclear capa bil ity’ for the Islamic world. The man who over threw Bhutto, Gen eral Muham mad Zia ul Haq, car ried on that effort. In April 1979, when Pres i dent Zia refused to halt work on the ‘Islamic Bomb,’ Pres i dent Jimmy Carter cut off Amer i can eco nomic and mil i tary aid to Pak istan. Just eight months later, how­ever, fol low ing the Soviet Union’s inva sion of Afghanistan, Carter struck the ulti mate Faus t ian bar gain in order to win Zia’s approval for using Pak istan as a base of oper a tions for the mujahideen. Zia’s for tunes fur ther improved fol low ing the 1980 elec tion of Ronald Rea gan and George H.W. Bush.”

(Ibid.; pp. 315–316.)

11.

“With the covert U.S. war in Afghanistan inten si fy ing, the Pak istani dic ta tor gained sig nif i cant advan tage and used it. In addi tion to win ning large eco nomic and military-aid pack ages for his coun try, he extracted a promise from the Reagan-Bush admin is tra tion that there would be no U.S. inter fer ence in Pakistan’s ‘inter nal affairs.’ That meant no com plaints about Zia’s dic ta to r ial rule and no obstruc tion of his efforts to build an Islamic Bomb. To keep up appear ances, Zia pub licly main tained that he was not devel op ing nuclear weapons. How ever, in 1983, a secret State Depart ment brief ing memo revealed that there was ‘unam bigu ous evi dence’ that Pak­istan was ‘actively pur su ing a nuclear weapons devel op ment pro gram’ and that China was pro vid ing tech no log i cal assis tance. At the time, U.S. law pro hib ited pro vid ing assis tance to any coun try that was import ing cer tain nuclear-weapons tech nol ogy. The Reagan-Bush admin is tra­tion sim ply ignored the leg is la tion, argu ing that cut ting off aid to Pak istan would harm U.S. national interests.”

(Ibid.; p. 316.)

12. Texas Con gress man Char lie Wil son was a major backer of the Afghan mujahideen and actively encour aged the Pak ista nis to con tinue to develop their nuclear program.

“Through out the 1980’s, Con gress man Char lie Wil son, the for mer Ed Wil son asso ciate, act ing in con cert with the CIA, repeat edly blocked Con gres sional efforts to halt Amer i can fund ing of Pak istan in order to pro tect a key ally in the covert Afghan war. Wil son went so far as to tell Zia, ‘Mr. Pres i dent, as far as I’m con cerned you can make all the bombs you want.’ Zia pri vately assured the con gress man that Pakistan’s nuclear pro gram was peace ful and that it would never build a deliv ery sys tem. ‘The truth was the Amer i cans had lit tle choice,’ [Dawud] Salahud din said. ‘Zia was wor shipped by the mujahideen. He was the only for eign leader who attracted uni ver sal admi ra tion amongst them, even though they were well aware that his ISI [Inter Ser vice Intel li gence] guys were tak ing what the Afghans fig ured was a 60-percent cut on all that was being sent to them. None of that took any glow off Zia’s halo. He was the only one to open his coun try to the Afghan resis tance, allowed train ing camps, and there were always more Afghan refugees in Pak istan than in Iran. The Ira ni ans did noth ing of the sort or the scale in the mil i tary sphere. . . .The guy was almost saint-like for the resistance.’”

(Ibid.; pp. 316–317.)

13. Amer i can com plic ity with the pro gram was assisted by Pak istani pres i dent Zia’s equiv o ca tion about the goals of their nuclear pro gram, which he main tained were peaceful.

“Zia con tin ued to deceive the United States about his nuclear-weapons ambi tions. In the mid-1980’s, he flatly told the U.S. Ambas sador to the United Nations, Ver non Wal ters, that Pak­istan was not build ing a bomb. When senior State Depart ment offi cials later con fronted him about the mis rep re sen ta tion, Zia told them, ‘It is per mis si ble to lie for Islam.’ He even tu ally gave up the pre tense, telling Time mag a zine in 1987 that ‘Pak istan has the capa bil ity of build­ing the bomb.’”

(Ibid.; p. 317.)

14.

“By 1985, the Saudi royal fam ily had suc ceeded in draw ing the United States into an Islamic morass. Over the years, the Wah habi sect, a rad i cal form of anti-Western Islam, had increas­ingly caused the high-living royal fam ily polit i cal prob lems at home. To deal with this, the royal fam ily gave the Wah habi lead ers free rein and paid lip ser vice to their dia tribes against the West and Israel. But after the fall of the Pea cock Throne in Iran, reli gious divi sions sur faced within the royal fam ily, con tribut ing to a schiz o phre nia in Saudi Arabia’s for eign pol icy: with one hand the Saudis sup ported the sec u lar Sad dam Hus sein against the Islamic regime in Iran, and with the other they dis patched Osama bin Laden and oth ers as mem bers of Saudi Intel li­gence to work with the most rad i cal Islamic ele ments fight ing to secure con trol of Afghanistan. The anti-Communist Reagan-Bush pol icy mak ers focused only on the goal of weak en ing the Soviet Union, ignor ing the threat of rad i cal Islam.”

(Idem.)

15. The Pak istani nuclear effort was sub si dized through the BCCI—a vehi cle for much of the covert oper at ing of the 1980s. Cur rent FBI direc tor Robert Mueller led the offi cial “inves ti ga tion” into BCCI, and cov ered up much of what was there to be discovered.

“The efforts by the Saudis, Rea gan, Casey, and Bush to desta bi lize the Soviet Union through the war in Afghanistan car ried a huge price in terms of both money and the num ber of Afghan lives lost. Hun dreds of mil lions of dol lars poured into Pak istani Intel li gence from the United States, with almost no con trol on how the funds were spent. The same BCCI bank accounts being used to fund the Afghan resis tance were also used to fund the Pak istani nuclear-bomb pro gram, accord ing to a Sen ate report on BCCI.”

(Idem.)

16.

“The Reagan-Bush pol icy vio lated both Amer i can law and inter na tional non pro lif er a tion treaties. But this type of vio la tion was not unprece dented: the United States had allowed covert aid to Israel to help with their nuclear-weapons pro gram in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. In 1964, Lyn don John son had given James Angle ton per mis sion to assist Israel in fur­ther devel op ing its nuclear-weapons pro gram. Now the Rea gan admin is tra tion was lev el ing the play ing field. The Saudis claimed that Israel had directly aided India in devel op ing its pro­gram and had thus cre ated a dan ger ous imbal ance in the region. Allow ing Pak istan to develop a weapon, but not to deploy it, seemed like a work able com pro mise and, the Saudis argued, the only solu tion. The 1979 memo from Zbig niew Brzezin ski to Pres i dent Carter—had warned that the price of lur ing the Sovi ets might include aban don ing efforts to stop nuclear pro lif er a­tion in Pak istan. Just six years later, the Reagan-Bush team played a huge role in mak ing the first Islamic nuclear weapon possible.”

(Ibid.; pp. 317–318.)

17. CIA Soviet ana lyst Melvin Good man was among those few Amer i can intel li gence ana lysts who noted that we were back ing the wrong Islamic groups in Afghanistan. Arms dealer Sarkis Soghan lian (deeply involved with the Bush-Reagan-Safari Club clan des tine oper a tions of the 1980’s) main tains that the A.Q. Khan net work was at all times directed by the Saudis.

“By the mid-1980’s, so much money was flow ing through the Pak istani ISI that the CIA did not have a han dle on where it ws going, accord ing to Melvin Good man, a for mer CIA ana lyst on the Soviet Union. ‘They were fund ing the wrong Islamic groups . . . ‚’ said Good man, ‘and had lit tle idea where the money was going or how it was being spent.’ Sarkis Soghana lian, who prof ited from pro vid ing arms for the secret-aid pro gram, put it bluntly: ‘As in Iraq, the U.S. did not want to get its hands dirty. So the Saudis’ money and the U.S. money was han dled by ISI. I can tell you that more than three quar ters of the money was skimmed off the top. What went to buy weapons for the Afghan fight ers was peanuts.’ Accord ing to Soghana lian, the funds were first laun dered through var i ous BCCI accounts before being dis bursed to ISI and into an elab o rate net work run by A.Q. Khan. ‘Khan’s net work was con trolled by the Saudis, not Khan and not Pak istan,’ Soghana lian said. [Empha sis added.] ‘The Saudis were in on every major deal includ ing Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Malaysia.’”

(Ibid.; p. 318.)

18.

“After two decades of silence on Pakistan’s nuclear-proliferation net work, the CIA went pub lic in 2004, tak ing credit for uncov er ing the net work. After A.Q. Khan’s bizarre con fes sion, apol­ogy, and sub se quent par don (‘There was never any kind of autho riza tion for these activ i ties by the gov ern ment,’ Khan said on Pak istani tele vi sion. ‘I take full respon si bil ity for my actions and seek your par don’), the CIA claimed it had suc cess fully exposed Pakistan’s nuclear efforts. In fact, Khan’s net work was only the tip of a huge nuclear-technology iceberg.”

(Ibid.; pp. 318–319.)

19. Recent claims by the CIA that they had “uncov ered” and “inter dicted” the A.Q. Khan net work are as disin gen u ous as Khan’s pre pos ter ous pub lic procla ma tion that he alone—and not the Pak istani government—was respon si ble for the oper a tion. That’s right, A.Q. Khan was a “lone nut!”

“The truth of how much the CIA and the pri vate intel li gence net work knew in the 1980’s and what their actual role might have been is sug gested by a pair of crim i nal cases—one in Lon don and one in Hous ton. In each case, the defen dant received very kind treat ment from author i­ties, who allowed the nuclear-proliferation net work to con tinue operating.”

(Ibid.; p. 319.)

20. Much of the rest of the pro gram is devoted to a chill ing dis cus sion of the myr iad oper a tions of Nazir Ahmed Vaid, one of the A.Q. Khan network’s prin ci pal oper a tives. In addi tion to the fact that Vaid’s oper a tions appear to have been con ducted while he func tioned as a CIA asset, it is vitally impor tant to note that his U.S.-based activ i ties were allowed to con tinue after 9/11!! The George W. Bush admin is tra tion turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear efforts as yet another quid pro quo—this one in exchange for Pakistan’s “coop er a tion” in “the war on ter ror.” As was the case with much of the rest of the Khan network’s efforts, Vaid’s activ i ties were also con ducted through the BCCI, to a cer tain extent.

“In June 1984, the U.S. fed eral agents arrested Nazir Ahmed Vaid, a thirty-three-year-old Pak­istani, as he attempted to smug gle out of Hous ton fifty high-speed elec tronic switches of a kind used to trig ger nuclear bombs. At the time of the arrest, U.S. Cus toms agents seized sev­eral let ters directly link ing Vaid to S.A. Butt, the direc tor of Pakistan’s Atomic Energy Com mis­sion. Butt was already well known to U.S. and Euro pean arms con trol offi cials as ‘they key oper a tive in Pakistan’s suc cess ful attempts in Europe in the 1970’s to obtain the tech nol ogy and resources for the enrich ment of ura nium and the repro cess ing of plu to nium.’ Vaid report­edly offered to pay for the switches in gold, later deter mined to have been sup plied by BCCI. U.S. fed eral offi cials, how ever, never informed the pros e cu tors that the let ters con nected Vaid to the Pak istani bomb pro gram. Instead, a very spe cial deal was worked out.”

(Idem.)

21. Note the evi dence of U.S. com plic ity in Vaid’s activities!!

“Vaid ulti mately pleaded guilty to one count of ille gally attempt ing to export the switches, known as kry trons, with out a license. U.S. Dis trict Judge James DeAnda sen tenced Vaid to five years’ pro ba tion, the min i mum pos si ble sen tence. At Vaid’s sen tenc ing, both Judge DeAnda and the pros e cu tor agreed that Vaid was not a for eign agent. DeAnda described him sim ply as a busi ness man ‘try ing to expe dite what he thought was a busi ness deal.’ Just three weeks later, Vaid was deported. Accord ing to reporter Sey mour Hersh, Arnold Raphel, who served as the U.S. Ambas sador to Pak istan, later revealed that there had been a ‘fix in’ on the Vaid case and that the CIA had arranged for the mat ter to be han dled quietly.”

(Ibid.; pp. 319–320.)

22.

“Because of his con vic tion and depor ta tion, Vaid was pro hib ited from return ing to the United States. His name appears on a U.S. Bureau of Immi gra tion and Cus toms Enforce ment (ICE) data base of banned indi vid u als. Nev er the less, accord ing to an ICE spokesman, Vaid has entered the coun try more than a half dozen times dur ing the past sev eral years. By sim ply drop ping his last name and becom ing ‘Nazir Ahmed,’ Vaid ‘fraud u lently’ obtained mul ti ple visas from the U.S. State Depart ment, accord ing to ICE.”

(Ibid.; p. 320.)

23.

“Dur ing his recent visits—some after the Sep tem ber 11, 2001, attacks—Vaid has estab lished, in Texas, a string of com pa nies with for eign affil i a tions. Three in par tic u lar stand out. On July 22, 2002, Vaid, using the name Nazir Ahmed, and his brother, Mohammed Iqbal Vaid, incor po­rated Najood Trad ing, Inc., and Idafa Invest ments, Inc. The sole share holder in Majood is a com pany of the same name based in Dubai, United Arab Emi rates. The Emi rates are known to have been used as a trans ship ment point by the Khan net work. The Dubai com pany iden ti fies itself as being engaged in, among other things, ‘Build ing Ser vice Mate ri als Trad ing, Con struc­tion Mate ri als Trad ing, Roof ing Mate ri als & Acces sories.’ The direc tors of the Texas com pany are ‘Nazir Ahmed’ and Ahmed Ali, whose address is the same as that of the Dubai par ent company.”

(Idem.)

24.

“The sole share holder in Idafa Invest ments is an Islamic invest ment firm of the same name based in Mum bai, India. The Web site for the par ent com pany iden ti fies it as a broad-based invest ment advi sory and man age ment firm that oper ates on Quranic prin ci ples. The founder of the Indian com pany is listed as Ashraf Abdul-Haq Moham edy. One of the direc tors of the Texas com pany is Ashraf Abdul hak [sic] Moham edy. The oth ers are Mohamed Ashraf Abdul hak Moham edy, Moham mad [sic] Vaid, and ‘Nazir Ahmed.’ The Indian company’s Web site pro vides a link to Islamic Quest, an orga ni za tion ‘estab lished to present the cor rect posi tion of Islam to Non-Muslims.’ The con tact per son for Islamic Quest is listed as Ashraf Abdul haq Mohemedy.”

(Idem.)

25.

“Mohammed Vaid signed the incor po ra tion papers for both Majood and Idafa on the same day, July 19, 2002, and before the same notary pub lic. On that same day, and before the same notary. ‘Nazir Ahmed’ signed the incor po ra tion papers for yet another com pany, MEC Enter­prises (USA), Inc. (The sig na ture above the printed words ‘Nazir Ahmed’ appears to read sim­ply ‘Vaid.’) The sole share holder in the com pany is MEC Engi neer ing is a met als machin ing and man u fac tur ing com pany. Its many ‘func tions,’ as listed on its Web site, include: ‘Tanks Ves sels & Shells,’ ‘Phar ma ceu ti cal Machiner ies & Equip ment,’ ‘Waste Water Treat ment,’ and ‘Engi neer­ing Pipeline Con struc tion.’ The own ers of MEC Engi neer ing are Abdul Qavi Qureshi and Abdul Majid Qureshi. The direc tors of the Texas sub sidiary, MEC Enter prises, are ‘Nazir Ahmed’ and Mohammed Aslam Qureshi of Karachi.”

(Ibid.; p. 321.)

26.

“As recently revealed, Khan’s mid dle man, B.S.A. Tahir, helped estab lish a sub sidiary of a Malaysian metal machin ing com pany and used it to man u fac ture parts for high-speed cen­trifuges for enrich ing ura nium. The parts were trans shipped through Tahir’s Dubai-based front com pa nies to end users such as Libya.”

(Idem.)

27.

“The first known U.S. com pany the Vaids set up fol low ing Nazir’s depor ta tion was Fina tra Com­mu ni ca tions, Inc. The com pany was incor po rated by a third party, Ameen M. Ali of Hous ton, in August 1996. The share hold ers were Mohammed Vaid, 20 per cent, and ‘Nazir Ahmed,’ 80 per­cent. Both listed res i den tial addresses in Hous ton. In 1999, the Vaids changed the name of the com pany to Fina tra Group of Companies.”

(Idem.)

28.

“Nazir Vaid also oper ates a branch of Fina tra in Pak istan. A 1997 arti cle in Pak istan & Gulf Econ o mist refers to ‘Nazir Ahmed Vaid’ as the chief exec u tive of Finatra’s Cyber cafe in Karachi, report edly the first such estab lish ment in Pak istan. The par ent of the Cyber-café is the Fina tra Group of Com pa nies, also based in Karachi. Fina tra Group con trols sev eral busi nesses, includ­ing a Web-hosting ser vice, and energy-generation com pany, phone and cell-phone men tal agen cies, and a pre paid call ing card dealer called Fina tra Com mu ni ca tions Pri vate Lim ited. In 1998, Fina tra Com mu ni ca tions signed a con tract with Pakistan’s offi cial phone com pany, Pak­istan Telecom mu ni ca tions Com pany Ltd., to pro vide pre paid phone-card ser vice in Pak istan. The ser vice also allows direct inter na tional dial ing. All of these busi nesses could be use ful to an intel li gence ser vice or a ter ror ist orga ni za tion. In 2004, U.S. Cus toms was plan ning to detain Vaid on his next trip to the United States after being warned by a reporter that Vaid was trav el ing freely between the U.S. and Pak istan. In the fall of 2004, a U.S. Cus toms agent inex plic a bly told Vaid’s son that there was a deten tion order out on his father. That inci dent raises major ques tions about Vaid’s rela tion ship with the United States government—and about secu rity in the Cus toms Service.”

(Ibid.; pp. 321–322.)

29. Again, note that Vaid was able to func tion in the U.S. after 9/11!

“Accord ing to an ICE spokesman, Vaid last left the United States on Novem ber 1, 2002. More than one CIA source said that Nazir Vaid is a CIA ‘asset.’ In a tele phone inter view, Vaid flatly denied work ing for U.S. or Pak istani Intel li gence. He also insists he is not engaged in the trade or ship ment of nuclear technology.”

(Ibid.; p. 322.)

30. The George W. Bush admin is tra tion was “shocked, shocked!” to learn of Pakistan’s Islamic bomb pro gram. Note that the Clin ton admin is tra tion had imposed sanc tions on Pak istan because of its nuclear activ i ties. The Bush admin is­tra tion lifted those sanc tions two weeks after 9/11!

“The George W. Bush admin is tra tion expresses shock at the fact that Pakistan’s declared Islamic Bomb pro gram became just that—a pan-Islamic nuclear-weapons super mar ket. This is the same Bush admin is tra tion that, in an eerily famil iar move—just two weeks after the ter ror­ist attacks on Sep tem ber 11, 2001—lifted the sanc tions that had been imposed by the Clin ton admin is tra tion on Pak istan because of its nuclear-weapons activ i ties. The Bush change was to win Islamabad’s assis tance in the new war in Afghanistan—the ‘war on ter ror ism.’ This is also the same admin is tra tion that—publicly, at least—accepts A.Q. Khan’s absurd con fes sion that he is respon si ble personally—and not as an agent of the Pak istani government—for dis sem i­nat ing nuclear weapons know-how to North Korea, Iran, and Libya.”

(Idem.)

31.

“The fact that the United States had pro tected the Islamic Bomb pro gram also emerged in the Edwin Wil son case. Dur ing the time Wil son was fugi tive, the for mer CIA front man sent the Rea gan White House and the CIA detailed infor ma tion about the Libyan nuclear pro gram. The mem o ran dum went from Wil son in Libya, through his lawyers, to Ted Shack ley and the National Secu rity Adviser. Wil son would later say he was never asked or ques tioned about what he had learned about the Libyan nuclear program. . . .”

(Ibid.; pp. 322–323.)

Cyberwar and Repression: Corporatist Synergy Made in Hell

Unfailingly, defense industry boosters and corporate media acolytes promote the disturbing hypothesis annunciated by former Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, that the nation is in peril.

In a February Washington Post op-ed, the latest version of the "grave and gathering danger" big lie repeated endlessly by former President Bush during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, McConnell claims that "the United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing."

Since leaving the secret state's employ, McConnell returned to his old beltway bandit firm, Booz Allen Hamilton, as a senior vice president in charge of the company's national security business unit, a position he held after "retiring" as Director of the National Security Agency back in 1996.

Critics, including security system design experts and investigative journalists, question the alarmist drumbeat that promises to dump tens of billions of federal dollars into the coffers of firms like McConnell's.

Indeed, Washington Technology reported two weeks ago that Booz Allen Hamilton landed a $20M contract to "foster collaboration among telecommunications researchers, University of Maryland faculty members and other academic institutions to improve secure networking and telecommunications and boost information assurance."

While we're at it, let's consider the deal that L-3 Communications grabbed from the Air Force just this week. Washington Technology reports that L-3, No. 8 on that publication's "2009 Top Ten" list of federal prime contractors, "will assist the Air Forces Central Command in protecting the security of its network operations under a contract potentially worth $152 million over five years."

Or meditate on the fact that security giant Raytheon's soaring first quarter profits were due to the "U.S. military demand for surveillance equipment and new ways to prepare soldiers for wars," MarketWatch reported Thursday.

Chump-change perhaps in the wider scheme of things, considering America's nearly $800B defense budget for FY2011, but fear sells and what could be more promising for enterprising security grifters than hawking terror that comes with the threat that shadowy "asymmetric" warriors will suddenly switch everything off?

As Bloomberg News disclosed back in 2008, both Lockheed Martin and Boeing "are deploying forces and resources to a new battlefield: cyberspace."

As journalist Gopal Ratnam averred, the military contractors and the wider defense industry are "eager to capture a share of a market that may reach $11 billion in 2013," and "have formed new business units to tap increased spending to protect U.S. government computers from attack."

Linda Gooden, executive vice president of Lockheed's Information Systems & Global Services unit told Bloomberg, "The whole area of cyber is probably one of the faster-growing areas" of the U.S. budget. "It's something that we're very focused on."

Lockheed's close, long-standing ties with the National Security Agency all but guarantee a leg up for the firm as it seeks to capture a large slice of the CYBERCOM pie.

The problem with a line of reasoning that U.S. efforts are primarily concerned with defending Pentagon networks reveals a glaring fact (largely omitted from media accounts) that it is the Pentagon, and not a motley crew of hackers, cyber-criminals or "rogue states" that are setting up a formidable infrastructure for launching future high-tech war crimes.

This is clearly spelled out in the DOD's 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). In that document Pentagon planners aver that CYBERCOM "will direct the operation and defense of DOD's information networks, and will prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum cyberspace military operations. An operational USCYBERCOM will also play a leading role in helping to integrate cyber operations into operational and contingency planning."

The QDR promises to stand-up "10 space and cyberspace wings" within the Department of the Air Force that will work in tandem with Cyber Command.

Last week, Antifascist Calling reported how the mission of that Pentagon Command is primarily concerned with waging offensive operations against "adversaries" and that civilian infrastructure is viewed as a "legitimate" target for attack.

In that piece, I cited documents released by the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), publicly available, though buried within a mass of Broad Agency Announcements, that solicited bids for contracts by the various armed service branches from private defense and security corporations for the design of offensive cyber weapons.

Accordingly, the Air Force Research Laboratory-Rome issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA-10-04-RIKA) February 25, for "Full Spectrum Cyber Operations Technology" that will address issues related to "the integration and better coordination of the day-to-day defense, protection, and operation of DoD networks as well as the capability to conduct full spectrum cyberspace military operations."

The BAA explicitly states that "research efforts under this program are expected to result in functional capabilities, concepts, theory, and applications ideally addressing cyber operations problems including projects specializing in highly novel and interesting applicable technique concepts will also be considered, if deemed to be of 'breakthrough' quality and importance."

Unsurprisingly, "technical information relevant to potential submitters is contained in a classified addendum at the Secret level to this BAA."

But the military aren't the only players leading the charge towards the development of highly-destructive cyberweapons. Indeed, the Cyber Conflict Research Studies Association (CCSA), a Washington, D.C. based think tank is top-heavy with former intelligence, military and corporate officials doing just that.

The group's board of directors are flush with former officers or consultants from the FBI, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Air Force, National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security and the CIA. Other board members are top officers in the spooky "public-private" FBI-affiliated spy outfit InfraGard, the Council on Foreign Relations as well as high-powered firms such as General Dynamics, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Goldman Sachs.

Demonstrating the interconnected nature of domestic surveillance, repression and military cyberwar operations, CCSA's Treasurer, Robert Schmidt, is currently a member of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Council on Domestic Intelligence and the secretive Intelligence and National Security Association (INSA). Additionally, Schmidt is the President/CEO of InfraGard and "leads the operational side of private sector involvement with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's InfraGard program." How's that for a hat trick!

What that "operational side" entails has never been publicly disclosed by the organization, but as I wrote back in 2008, citing Matthew Rothschild's chilling piece in The Progressive, martial law is high on InfraGard's agenda.

Members on CCSA's board of directors, like others whirling through the revolving door between government and the private sector were/are officers or consultants to the FBI, NSA, DHS and other secret state intelligence agencies. Others were/are key advisers on the National Security Council or serve as consultants to industry-sponsored associations such as the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) and INSA.

Dovetailing with research conducted by the Pentagon and their Intelligence Community partners, one CCSA study will explore "the full spectrum of military computer network operations, defined as computer network defense (CND), computer network exploit (CNE) and computer network attack (CNA), and examines the potential synergies and tradeoffs between those three categories."

As befitting research conducted by the Military-Industrial-Security-Complex (MISC), CCSA's study "will involve key academicians, strategists, military and intelligence community leaders and operational cyber practitioners to analyze key dilemmas of doctrine, organization, training, and planning, particularly with respect to integrating cyber warfare capabilities with kinetic operations."

Key questions to be answered, among others, include "How can cyberwarfare capabilities be best integrated with other military forces?" and "How can leaders and personnel for conducting cyberwarfare be trained, educated and grown?"

Clearly, these are not academic issues.

DARPA to the Rescue

The Pentagon's "blue sky" research arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is chock-a-block with programs investigating everything from Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts to Operationally-Focused Systems Integration (OFSI) "that align DARPA technologies with explicit opportunities for military operational impact."

Certainly, given the precarious state of the global capitalist economy, the enfeebled nature of American democratic institutions, and with no end in sight to planet-wide imperial adventures to secure access to increasingly shrinking energy reserves and other strategic resources, technological "silver bullets" are highly sought-after commodities by corporate and military bureaucracies. Such technophilic preoccupations by the MISC all but guarantee that the "state of exception" inaugurated by the 9/11 provocation will remain a permanent feature of daily life.

Several, interrelated DARPA projects feed into wider Pentagon cyberwar research conducted by the Army, Navy and Air Force.

One component of this research is DARPA's National Cyber Range (NCR). The brainchild of the agency's Strategic Technical Office (STO), NCR is conceived as "DARPA's contribution to the new federal Comprehensive National Cyber Initiative (CNCI), providing a 'test bed' to produce qualitative and quantitative assessments of the Nation's cyber research and development technologies."

While DARPA claims that it is "creating the National Cyber Range to protect and defend the nation's critical information systems," a "key vision" behind the program "is to revolutionize the state of the art of test range resource and test automation execution."

While short on specifics, DARPA's "vision of the NCR is to create a national asset for use across the federal government to test a full spectrum of cyber programs."

Many of the military programs slated for testing at NCR are highly classified, including those that fall under the purview of Pentagon Special Access or black programs. As defense analyst William M. Arkin pointed out in Code Names, such programs are hidden under the rubric of Special Technical Operations that have their own "entire separate channels of communication and clearances." STO's "exist to compartment these military versions of clandestine and covert operations involving special operations, paramilitary activity, covert action, and cyber-warfare." Arkin identified nearly three dozen cyberwar programs or exercises back in 2005; undoubtedly many more have since come online.

As Aviation Week reported in 2009, "Devices to launch and control cyber, electronic and information attacks are being tested and refined by the U.S. military and industry in preparation for moving out of the laboratory and into the warfighter's backpack."

But as "with all DARPA programs," the agency "will transition the operation of the NCR at a later date to an operational partner. No decision has been made on who will operate the final range."

Amongst the private defense, security and academic "partners" involved in NCR's development are the usual suspects: scandal-tainted BAE Systems; General Dynamics-Advanced Information Systems; Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory; Lockheed Martin; Northrop Grumman-Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Systems Division; Science Applications International Corporation; and SPARTA.

The aggressive nature of what has since evolved into CYBERCOM is underscored by several planning documents released by the U.S. Air Force. In a 2006 presentation to the Air Force Cyber Task Force, A Warfighting Domain: Cyberspace, Dr. Lani Kass unabashedly asserts: "Cyber is a war-fighting domain. The electromagnetic spectrum is the maneuver space. Cyber is the United States' Center of Gravity--the hub of all power and movement, upon which everything else depends. It is the Nation's neural network." Kass averred that "Cyber superiority is the prerequisite to effective operations across all strategic and operational domains--securing freedom from attack and freedom to attack."

Accordingly, she informed her Air Force audience that "Cyber favors the offensive," and that the transformation of the electromagnetic spectrum into a "warfighting domain" will be accomplished by: "Strategic Attack directly at enemy centers of gravity; Suppression of Enemy Cyber Defenses; Offensive Counter Cyber; Defensive Counter Cyber; Interdiction."

While the Pentagon and their embedded acolytes in academia, the media and amongst corporate grifters who stand to secure billions in contracts have framed CYBERCOM's launch purely as a defensive move to deter what Wired investigative journalist Ryan Singel has denounced as "Cyberarmaggedon!" hype to protect America's "cyber assets" from attack by rogue hackers, states, or free-floating terrorist practitioners of "asymmetric war," CYBERCOM's defensive brief is way down the food chain.

Indeed, "options for the Operational Command for Cyberspace" include the "scalability of force packages" and their "ease of implementation" and, as I wrote last week citing but two of the fourteen examples cited by the Senate, "research, development, and acquisition" of cyber weapons. This is attack, not defense mode.

Americans' Privacy: a Thing of the Past

Situating CYBERCOM under the dark wings of U.S. Strategic Command and the National Security Agency, is a disaster waiting to happen.

As we now know, since 2001 NSA under dubious Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) findings that are still classified, and the despicable 2008 FISA Amendments Act, the Executive Branch was handed the authority the spy on American citizens and legal residents with impunity.

During his confirmation hearing as Cyber Command chief on April 15, NSA Director Lt. General Keith Alexander sought to assure the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) that "this is not about the intent to militarize cyber-space. My main focus is on building the capacity to secure the military's operational networks."

He told the Senate panel that if called in to help protect civilian networks, both NSA and Cyber Command "will have unwavering dedication to the privacy of American citizens."

Alexander was far cagier however in his written responses in a set of Advanced Questions posed by the SASC.

While corporate media like the dutiful stenographers they are, repeated standard Pentagon boilerplate that the secret state has an "unwavering dedication" to Americans' privacy, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding answers and the release of the classified supplement.

Alexander stated in his written testimony that although "U.S. Cyber Command's mission will not include defense of the .gov and .com domains, given the integration of cyberspace into the operation of much of our critical infrastructure and the conduct of commerce and governance, it is the obligation of the Department to be prepared to provide military options to the President and SECDEF if our national security is threatened."

He also defended the statement that "DOD's mission to defend the nation 'takes primacy' over the Department of Homeland Security's role in some situations."

"Of greater concern" EPIC wrote in their brief, "may be the questions that Lt. Gen. Alexander chose to respond to in classified form. When asked if the American people are 'likely to accept deployment of classified methods of monitoring electronic communications to defend the government and critical infrastructure without explaining basic aspects of how this monitoring will be conducted and how it may affect them,' the Director acknowledged that the Department had a 'need to be transparent and communicate to the American people about our objectives to address the national security threat to our nation--the nature of the threat, our overall approach, and the roles and responsibilities of each department and agency involved--including NSA and the Department of Defense,' but then chose include that the rest of his response to that question in the 'classified supplement'."

"Most troubling of all" EPIC averred "is the classified nature of the responses to advance questions 27b) and 27c). After responding to the question of how the internet could be designed differently to provide greater inherent security by describing vague 'technological enhancements' that could enhance mobility and possibly security, Lt. Gen. Alexander responded to 'Is it practical to consider adopting those modifications?' and 'What would the impact be on privacy, both pro and con?' by referring the Senators to the 'classified supplement.' No answer to either question was provided in the public record."

But in considering these questions, perhaps the SASC should have referred to ex-spook McConnell's February Washington Post op-ed: "More specifically, we need to reengineer the Internet to make [it] more manageable. The technologies are already available from public and private sources and can be further developed if we have the will to build them into our systems and to work with our allies and trading partners so they will do the same."

Is this a great country, or what! It is a police state a la USSR of Stalin all over again.....

The US Support for Violence in Chechenya

http://www.oilprice.com/article-europes-latest-tinder-box-and-global-mega-trends-the-us-support-for-violence-in-chechenya-part-2-265.html

By 1999, the US had given up on reconciling Azerbaijan and Armenia in order to construct pipelines to Turkey, and instead Washington started focusing on building pipelines via Georgia.

For such a project to be economically viable, the Russian pipelines would have to be shut down. Hence, in early October 1999, senior officials of US oil companies and US officials offered representatives of Russian “oligarchs” in Europe huge dividends from the proposed Baku-Ceyhan pipeline if the “oligarchs” convinced Moscow to withdraw from the Caucasus, permit the establishment of an Islamic state, and close down the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline. Consequently, there would be no competition to the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline. The “oligarchs” were convinced that the highest levels of the Clinton White House endorsed this initiative. The meeting failed because the Russians would hear nothing of the US proposal. http://en.trend.az/news/society/religion/1676914.html

Consequently, the US determined to deprive Russia of an alternate pipeline route by supporting a spiraling violence and terrorism in Chechnya, as well as the political fallout of media accusations of Russian war crimes. The Clinton White House sought to actively involve the US in yet another anti-Russian jihad as if reliving the “good ol’ days” of Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces in yet another strategic region.

In mid-December 1999, US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahedin from the Caucasus, Central and South Asia, and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly the intelligence services of Turkey, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type that did Washington’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in spring 2000. [Here we have it from the most knowledgeable expert on Osama bin Laden on the planet, that the United States was actively supporting " al Qaida and al Qaida-linked" groups at the time of the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack upon the USS Cole, and the beginning stages of the 911 terror attacks. Clinton is the father (or the Godfather) of "al Qaida."] Citing security concerns vis-à-vis Armenia and Russia, Azerbaijan adamantly refused to permit training camps on its soil.
Meanwhile, back in 1995 the Clinton White House started threatening Serbian leader Slobodan Milošovic that the US would adopt the “cause” of the Kosovo Albanians in order to coerce Belgrade to support the US-mediated Dayton Accords.

To add pressure on Belgrade,

US and NATO intelligence services began sponsoring Kosovo Albanian terrorist and insurgency networks even though they were intimately connected to jihadist terrorist forces from the Middle East,

Afghanistan-Pakistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina under the command of Muhammad al-Zawahiri (Ayman’s brother), as well as drug dealing and human smuggling networks. By early 1999, the situation was getting out of hand, and

in March NATO found itself going to war in support of organized crime gangs and Osama bin Laden’s declared allies. (read HERE)

Read the other articles in this series:

Europe’s Latest Tinder Box and Global Mega Trends – The EU’s Failure (Part 1)

Europe’s Latest Tinder Box and Global Mega Trends – Russia’s pre-eminence in the EU Energy Market (Part 3)

Was Israel ever legitimate?

Was Israel ever legitimate? By Jeff Gates http://www.rense.com/general44/maf.htm Apr 9, 2010,

The history of Israel as a geopolitical fraud will fill entire libraries as those defrauded marvel at how so few deceived so many for so long. Those duped include many naive Jews who -- even now -- identify their interests with this extremist enclave.

Israeli leaders are wrong to worry about “de-legitimization.” They are right to fear that a long-deceived public is fast realizing that Israel’s founding was key to an ongoing deception.

The Invention of the Jewish People did not begin with Shlomo Sand’s 2009 bestseller by that title. There was no Exile says this Jewish scholar. Nor was there an Exodus. So how could there be a Return, the core premise of Israeli statehood?

If this patch of Palestinian land never rightly belonged to a mythical Jewish People, what then for the legitimacy of the “Jewish homeland”? And for that depiction by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour in his November 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild?

Were Christians likewise seduced by Sunday school teachings reliant on the phony findings of Biblical archeologist William Albright? Shlomo Sand chronicles how in the 1920s Albright interpreted every excavation in Palestine to “reaffirm the Old Testament and thereby the New.”

In 1948, President Harry Truman, a Christian Zionist, was advised by Secretary of State George Marshall not to recognize this enclave as a state. This WWII general assured Truman that he would vote against him -- and did.

That military tradition resurfaced in January 2010 when General David Petraeus dispatched a team to brief Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the perils that Israel still poses to U.S. national security. Mullen was reportedly shocked. See: The Petraeus Briefing.

He should not have been surprised. Such insights are hardly new. More than six decades ago the Joint Chiefs of Staff cautioned Truman about the “fanatical concepts of the Jewish leaders” and their plans for “Jewish military and economic hegemony over the entire Middle East.”

In December 1948, Albert Einstein and 27 prominent Jews urged us “not to support this latest manifestation of fascism.” They warned that a “Leader State” was the goal of the “terrorist party” that has governed Israel over all but a handful of the past 62 years.

The Joint Chiefs foresaw the “Zionist strategy will seek to involve [the U.S.] in a continuously widening and deepening series of operations intended to secure maximum Jewish objectives.”

Soon after Truman recognized Israel, his presidential campaign train was “refueled” by Zionist Jews with $400,000 in contributions ($3.6 million in 2010 dollars). Soon thereafter, Israel betrayed the U.S. by allying with the British and the French to invade Egypt.

Though London and Paris soon abandoned the operation, months more were required to dissuade Tel Aviv from pursuing their expansionist agenda then -- as now -- for Greater Israel.

Outraged by Israeli duplicity, Eisenhower sought help to rein them in. He soon found that even then (as now) the Israel lobby dominated Congress. Thus the former Supreme Allied Commander appeared on television with an appeal directly to the American people. Then -- unlike now -- a U.S. Commander in Chief threatened to reduce assistance to Israel.

To revamp Israel’s tattered image, New York public relations expert Edward Gottlieb retained novelist Leon Uris to write Exodus. Jewish Zionists have routinely proven themselves skilled storytellers and masterful mythmakers.

This 1958 bestseller was translated into dozens of languages and quickly made into a movie for the 1960 Christmas season starring Paul Newman and featuring Peter Lawford, brother-in-law of the just-elected President John F. Kennedy. See: Time for an American Intifada?

The myth of a loyal ally

Phil Tourney survived the June 8, 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 Americans dead and 175 wounded. The region-wide dynamics accompanying that provocative Six-Day land grab guaranteed the conflicts that remain so perilous to U.S. national security.

It was during this Israeli operation that Tourney gave a one-fingered salute to armed Israeli troops as they hovered in helicopters over the USS Liberty while preparing to rappel to the deck and, he surmises, kill the survivors and sink the ship.

Just then the captain aboard a nearby U.S. carrier scrambled jets to assist a vessel under attack by an “ally.” When Israeli intelligence intercepted the transmission, the helicopters fled only to have President Lyndon Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara recall our fighters.

Soon thereafter, Israeli torpedo boats pulled alongside the USS Liberty to inquire if those aboard needed assistance. Those same boats had just blown a hole in the hull, killing 25 Americans. Israeli machine-gunners had then strafed stretcher-bearers, firemen, life rafts and even the fire hoses -- all clear war crimes. Only then did this ally display the chutzpah to ask if our servicemen required assistance.

Had that notorious land grab failed to advance the narrative of Israel as the victim, what might be the condition of U.S. national security today? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently conceded the duplicity that continues to typify this “special relationship.”

As he confessed: “Our policy on Jerusalem is the same policy followed by all Israeli governments for 42 years, and it has not changed. As far as we are concerned, building in Jerusalem is the same as building in Tel Aviv.”

In other words, the 1967 war was neither defensive nor preemptive but an outright taking of land that, one year later, Tel Aviv acknowledged as precisely what concerned the Pentagon 62 years ago.

In effect, Netanyahu confirmed that this relationship reflects multi-decade premeditation. The U.S. has since discredited itself by protecting this “ally” from the rule of law for its taking and brutal occupation of land that rightly belongs to others.

Even now, few know that Mathilde Krim, a former Irgun operative, was “servicing” our Commander-in-Chief in the White House the night the 1967 war began. Her husband, Arthur, then chaired the finance committee for the Democratic National Committee.

Even now, few Americans know the role in that cover-up played by Admiral John McCain, Jr. Or the role still played in this sordid history by his son, Republican Senator John McCain III. See: McCain Family Secret.

Are those who champion this “state” the same belief-makers responsible for the myth of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction? Iraqi meetings in Prague? Iraqi mobile biological weapons laboratories? High-level Iraqi contacts with Al Qaeda? Iraqi yellowcake uranium from Niger?

Was any of that intelligence legitimate? Whose interests were served by deceiving the U.S. to wage war in the Middle East? By the Suez Crisis? By the Six-Day War? By covering up the attack on the USS Liberty?

Adhering to an Enemy?

How are U.S. interests served by treating Israel as a legitimate state? When was Israeli behavior anything other than duplicitous? At what point do we concede the common source of the storylines foisted on an imperiled global public?

Who created the narrative that saw us segue seamlessly from a global Cold War to a global War on Terrorism? Remember the promise of a post-Cold War “peace dividend”? Who induced the U.S. to wage a war whose costs could total $3 trillion, including $700 billion in interest?

Why is debt always the prize? At the end of WWII, the U.S. was home to 50% of the world’s productive power. Were we induced to hollow out our economy by the same consensus-shapers that induced us to wage war in the Middle East?

Do these devastating dynamics trace to a common source?

Who benefits from the “Islamo” fascist narrative? Whose storyline -- really -- is The Clash of Civilizations? Who has long spied on the U.S. and routinely transferred to other nations our most sensitive defense technologies?

Who had the means, motive, opportunity and, importantly, the stable nation state intelligence required to perpetrate such a debilitating fraud from inside the U.S. government? And from inside other governments that joined the “coalition of the willing”?

If not Israel and its supporters -- who? In effect, are those now advocating an “unbreakable bond” with Israel giving aid and comfort to an enemy within?

Israel is right to worry. It was never legitimate. As both an enabler and a target of this fraud, the U.S. has an obligation to concede its source -- and to secure the weapons of mass destruction now under the control of this enclave.

Jeff Gates is a US attorney and author of Guilt By Association, Democracy at Risk and The Ownership Solution. See www.criminalstate.com.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30112.html

http://www.voltairenet.org/article30022.html

[The following, by a former RAW chieftain, is a daring assessment of America's foreign policy of fomenting democratic-revolution, or outright terrorism by the NED, Reagan's privatized CIA. It is brutally honest about the repercussions for India for supporting such a policy in Asia, without condemning the criminal American policies that are discussed. This position of the author is predicated on the prevailing wisdom in India that the American side will be victorious in its grand game. My own assessment is in RED, embedded within Mr. Raman's work.--.]

National Endowment for Democracy of US

By B.Raman The post-Watergate enquiries into the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the US exposed details of its covert political activities in other countries in order to promote US foreign policy objectives. Amongst such activities were the secret funding of individuals, political parties and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) favourable to US interests and funneling of money to counter the activities of those considered anti-US.After taking over as the President in January, 1977, Mr.Jimmy Carter banned such activities and imposed strict limits on the CIA’s covert operations in foreign countries. During the election campaign of 1980, Mr.Ronald Reagan used effectively against Mr.Carter the argument that the post-Vietnam and post-Watergate decline of the US under Mr.Carter was due to the emasculation of its military and intelligence apparatus. [The real reason for the American decline was the period of national shame we had entered into, for what we had sent our sons to Vietnam to do, and what we, as a people, had become in the process. The falsehoods at the base of every Reagan Doctrine, both economic and military, created the national delusion that we had not become monsters in our lust to kill and dominate the world. The national Republican delusion must be brought to an end, by clarifying the moral focus of what monsters we have become, by highlighting our monstrous crimes against humanity that take place everyday, all over the world.] After his election in November, 1980, and before his taking-over as the President in January, 1981, Mr.Reagan appointed a transition group headed by the late William Casey, an attorney and one of his campaign managers, who was to later take over as the CIA Director, to recommend measures for strengthening the USA’s intelligence capability abroad. [Mr. Raman tends to hide the worst truths about the lone superpower, in this case, covering-up Casey's purloining of Jimmie Carter's debate preparation book, as well as his helping George Bush pull-off the October Surprise and the deal to hold the Iranian hostages until after Carter left office. Wm. Casey was an amoral monster who created the menace of international "Islamic" terrorism and set it loose upon the world, in a concerted plan to gain total American world dominion. That plan (later dubbed by others, the New American Century) included future false flag "Pearl Harbor type attacks to shock the American people into accepting the final steps into a militarized garrison state as the ultimate price tag for totally dominating the world by seizing control over limited energy reserves. The United States has been on the course to total world war set by Mr. Casey and all his collaborators in the greatest crime wave that the world has ever seen.] One of its recommendations was to revive covert political activities. Since there might have been opposition from the Congress and public opinion to this task being re-entrusted to the CIA, it suggested that this be given to an NGO with no ostensible links with the CIA. [Right here is the point in the narrative of an insane Republican foreign policy, where the Constitution was subverted, international law was thrown out the window, and the American anti-Communist right wing created a private CIA, beyond the control and oversight of the American people. With the help of America's foreign partners in previous CIA crimes (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, France, Israel and others), an international organization was begun, that worked through the subversive NED, dedicated to helping Reagan's CIA bypass the American Congress and Constitution. The new multinational entity, called the "Safari Club" was a secret funding and recruitment effort for illegal foreign wars. The international "Islamic" army organized by it, was known as bin Laden's "International Islamic Front," Arabic elements of this group later became known as "al Qaida."] The matter was further examined in 1981-82 by the American Political Foundation’s Democracy Programme Study and Research Group and, finally, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was born under a Congressional enactment of 1983 as a “non-profit, non-governmental, bipartisan, grant-making organisation to help strengthen democratic institutions around the world.” Though it is projected as an NGO, it is actually a quasi-governmental organisation because till 1994 it was run exclusively from funds voted by the Congress (average of about US $ 16 million per annum in the 1980s and now about US $ 30 million) as part of the budget of the US Information Agency (USIA). Since 1994, it has been accepting contributions from the private sector too to supplement the congressional appropriations. Thirty per cent of the budgetary allocations constitute the discretionary fund of the NED to be distributed directly by it to overseas organisations and the balance is distributed through what are called four “core organisations”—the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) and the Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI). In 1994, the NED set up two other organisations called the International Forum for Democratic Studies (IFDS) and the Democracy Resource Centre (DRC), both largely funded by the private sector. Since its inception, the NED and its affiliates have been mired in controversy in the US itself as well as abroad. Amongst its strongest supporters in the US is the Heritage Foundation of Washington DC, a conservative think tank, which played an active role in influencing the policies of the Reagan and Bush Administrations. [The Heritage Foundation is at the center of the American brainwashing campaign/arms venture described in the Iran/Contra reports' "Lost Chapter," entitled “Launching the Private Network.”] It brought out two papers on the justification for the NED, when questions were raised in the US on the continued need for it after the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe. In the first paper of July 8,1993, (Executive Memorandum No. 360) it described the NED as “an important weapon in the war of ideas” and said:” The NED has played a vital role in providing aid to democratic movements in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Nicaragua, Vietnam and elsewhere….. Communist dictatorships still control China, Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam. Moreover, ex-communists masquerading as nationalists continue to dominate several of the Soviet successor states. The NED can play an important role in assisting those countries in making the turbulent transition to democracy….. Local political activists often prefer receiving assistance from a non-governmental source, as aid from a US government agency may undermine their credibility in the eyes of their countrymen.” In the second paper of September 13, 1996, (Executive Memorandum No.461), it said:”The NED advances American national interests by promoting the development of stable democracies friendly to the US in strategically important parts of the world. The US cannot afford to discard such an effective instrument of foreign policy at a time when American interests and values are under sustained ideological attack from a wide variety of anti-democratic forces around the world…The NED has aided Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement in Poland, Harry Wu’s human rights efforts in China and independent media outlets in former Yugoslavia. Russian political activists affiliated with the NED also played a major role in President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election campaign against the reinvigorated Communist Party earlier this year…. The NED is a cost-effective way to encourage captive nations to liberate themselves without committing the US to a prohibitively risky and costly military crusade to free them from communism.” Testifying before the Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights of the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives on March 13,1997, Mr.Carl Gershman, President of the NED, said: ” I just want to say that the Endowment’s work is based upon a very, very simple proposition. And that is, where there are people who share our values, where there are people who might be called the natural friends of America, then it is our obligation to help those people in some way.” Amongst the critics of the NED are Ms. Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute of Washington D.C. and Mr. Ralph McGehee, stated to be a former CIA official. In a paper of November 8,1993(Foreign Policy Briefing No.27), Ms.Conry said: “NED is resented (abroad) as American interference; it is often further resented because it attempts to deceive foreigners into viewing its programmes as private assistance…. On a number of occasions, NED has taken advantage of its alleged private status to influence foreign elections, an activity that is beyond the scope of AID (Agency For International Development) or USIA and would otherwise be possible only through a CIA covert operation….. What finally drew public attention to NED’s meddling in foreign elections was an aborted attempt to provide opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro with $ 3 million in funding for her 1989 election campaign against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. The plan was abandoned after it was determined that NED’s charter, which expressly forbids campaign contributions, would be violated. In the end, the money was channeled to programmes that aided Chamorro indirectly rather than through direct campaign contributions.” In a statement of January 19,1996, Mr.McGehee described the post-1991 activities of the NED as “political action operations targeting China and Cuba.” Another NGO of the US has said: ” NED engages in much of the same kinds of interference in the internal affairs of foreign countries, which were the hallmark of the CIA. The NED has financed, advised and supported in many ways selected political parties, election campaigns, unions, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, even guerillas in Afghanistan and, in general, organisations and individuals which mesh well with the gears of the globalised-economy machine…. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, and also founded the Centre for Democracy, one of NED’s funding middlemen, was quite candid when he said in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” The NED, like the CIA before it, calls what it does supporting democracy. The governments and movements whom the NED targets call it destabilisation.” Initially, the NED’s activities were directed mainly against the communist regimes of East Europe, but, subsequently, it started combating the communist parties in multi-party democracies of West Europe too. In the 1980s, when the late Francois Mitterrand was the French President, an NED report showed an expenditure of US $ 1.5 million “to promote democracy in France.” There was an uproar in France when the French press discovered that part of this amount had been given by the NED, through the FTUI, to the National Inter-University Union of France, allegedly a right-extremist and xenophobic organisation, in an attempt to use it to defeat communist candidates in the elections to the National Assembly. Embarrassed by the controversy, the Reagan Administration dissociated itself from the NED activities in France. After the collapse of the communist regimes of East Europe, the NED has been focussing its activities against the communist regimes of Cuba, Vietnam, China and North Korea and the Myanmarese military regime and against the resurgence of the communist parties in East Europe due to the economic difficulties there. Its activities relating to China are of two kinds: Those, which are legitimate in the Chinese perception such as training of local village officials in the holding of elections, training of local business executives in better management practices, advice on the drafting of economic reform legislation etc and those, which are legitimate in the US perception, but interference in internal affairs in the Chinese view, such as support to political dissidents, human rights activists and Tibetan exiles and projection of Taiwan as a democratic model worthy of emulation. The first type of activities is carried out by workers of organisations affiliated to the NED, either based in China or visiting the country and the second by off-shore offices of the NED, which were located in Hong Kong before its reversion to China in June, 1997, and which were thereafter reportedly shifted to Australia since the ASEAN countries would not host them. Finding Australia not a convenient place, the NED has reportedly been eyeing India as a possible base for its activities directed against China. Beijing has reasons to be concerned over what it considers as the illegitimate activities of the NED. Of the 28 NGOs of Asia funded by the NED, 14 focus on China, four of them of Tibetan exiles, five on Myanmar, two on Cambodia, and one each on Vietnam and North Korea and the remaining five on the Asia-Pacific region as a whole. In his testimony of March 13,1997, before the House Sub-committee on International Operations and Human Rights, Mr.Gershman said:” There has been a doubling of resources spent in Asia (primarily China, Burma and Cambodia) and a tripling of resources for the Middle East. There were also dramatic increases in Central Asia and the former Yugoslavia…While the discretionary programmes and those of our affiliated labour institute support the activities of various pro-democracy networks, among them Human Rights in China, the China Strategic Institute, the Laogai Research Foundation, and the Hong Kong based activities of labour activist Han Dongfang, IRI and CIPE have targeted opportunities created by the official reform policy in the areas of local elections and economic modernisation.Additional grants support the democracy movements in Hong Kong and Tibet and,through the International Forum, we have highlighted the role of Taiwan as an Asian model of successful democratisation.” The trans-border activities of the NED against the Myanmarese military regime seem to be directed mainly from Thailand and India. This is evident from a testimony given by Ms.Louisa Coan, NED’s Programme Officer for Asia, before the House Sub-committee on Asia and the Pacific on September 17,1997. She said: “NED has been able through its direct grants programme to support the dissidents, to support the democracy movement of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, particularly through assistance to the groups along the borders in Thailand and in India, including twice daily radio programming through the Democratic Voice of Burma (author’s comment: based in Scandinavia), newsletters, underground newspaper, underground labour organising, particular programmes to foster inter-ethnic co-operation and unity among the opposition forces in support of Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for tripartite dialogue and national reconciliation.” It is not known whether New Delhi was aware of the India-based activities of the NED against the Yangon regime. Before the recent visit of the US President, Mr.Bill Clinton, to India, the NED headquarters in Washington issued the following press release: “Secretary of State Madeleine Albright announced on Tuesday March 14 that the US and India will launch a joint non-governmental initiative called the Asian Centre for Democratic Governance during President Clinton’s upcoming trip to South Asia. “Jointly organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the NED, the Centre will be based at CII’s offices in New Delhi, The Bureau of Parliamentary Studies and Training, an affiliate of the Indian Parliament, will partner with the CII in implementing the activities of the Centre.” The press release said the expenditure on the initiative would be shared by the CII and the NED. It is an interesting case of an important member of the Clinton Cabinet, announcing on behalf of a self-proclaimed NGO of the US funded by the Congress, a non-governmental initiative in collaboration with a non-governmental Indian business organisation with which an office of the Indian Parliament would also be associated. This launching was duly done at New Delhi. There are three likely implications of this unusual venture: Possibility of misunderstanding with China which might interpret it as directed against it and its presence in Tibet. Impropriety in co-operating with an American organisation working against the present Government at Yangon, which has normal diplomatic relations with New Delhi and has been co-operating in counter-insurgency measures in the North-East. The presence in Indian territory, with official blessing, of an organisation, which aims to wipe out communism as a political and ideological movement all over the world and which might utilise its presence to undermine the Indian communist movement. NED has never criticised the Indian Communist parties, but a reading of the past statements of those in the US supporting the NED would indicate that they hold communism and democracy as incompatible. [Mr. Raman's honesty in appraising the dangers to India from cooperating with the American destabilization program, without describing it as criminal actions in the extreme, is an act of well-intentioned cowardice. Terrorism and overthrowing foreign governments who have no disagreements with the United States other than resistance to domination are war crimes, considering that the intended purpose of all these intrigues is world war III, the military's "generational war," which we engineered.] The US has also announced the association of India as co-sponsor with a forthcoming conference of “communities of democracies ” in Poland being funded by the Stefan Batory Foundation of Poland, set up by George Soros in 1998, to counter the resurgence of communism in East Europe, and the Freedom House of the US. The Freedom House was founded in the 1940s “to strengthen free institutions at home and abroad”. It played an active role in carrying on a psychological warfare (psywar) against the troops of the USSR and the late President Najibullah in Afghanistan during the 1980s through the Afghanistan Information Centre set up by it, allegedly with CIA funds. The offices of this centre at Peshawar in Pakistan trained the Afghan Mujahideen groups and Pakistani organisations such as the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (formerly known as the Harkat-ul-Ansar) and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, presently active in Kashmir, in techniques of media management and psywar. [Freedom House is the instrument for all the colored revolutions in Central Asia. The MAK office in Peshawar was bin Laden's supply and recruitment headquarters. The following was the address for bin Laden's MAK office: MAKHTAB AL-KHIDAMAT/AL KIFAH, House no. 125, Street 54, Phase II, Hayatabad, Peshawar, Pakistan] Since 1983, part of the funds voted by the Congress to the NED are funneled to the Freedom House, which also gets contributions from the private sector. The Freedom House focuses its activities on media and communications and, according to a 1990 study by the Interhemispherique Resource Centre of the US, more than 400 journalists in 55 countries were collaborating with the Freedom House in its activities against communist parties and regimes. Before going ahead with these projects, there is an urgent need for an examination of the implications of our collaboration with such organisations from the point of view of our national security and political stability.

Reuters Photographer and children gunned-down by Apache gunship

A rare voice of courage: journalist Gideon Levy

A rare voice of courage: journalist Gideon Levy


Gideon Levy (Haim Taragan/Haaretz)

Gideon Levy is a rare voice of courage in an Israeli media generally
supine towards the political establishment. Since 1988, he has written
the "Twilight Zone" column for the Israeli daily Haaretz, documenting
unflinchingly the myriad cruelties inflicted on the Palestinian people
under occupation. In his new book Gaza, a collection of articles which
has just been published in French, Levy utters phrases that, by his
own admission, are considered "insane" by most of his compatriots. The
Electronic Intifada contributor David Cronin spoke with Gideon Levy
about his background and journalism.

David Cronin: You were born in Tel Aviv in the 1950s. Were your
parents survivors of the Holocaust?

Gideon Levy: They were not Holocaust survivors, they just left Europe
in 1939. My father was from Germany, my mother Czech. Both were really
typical refugees because my father came on an illegal ship, which was
stopped for half a year in Beirut by the British and only after half a
year on the ocean could it make it to Palestine. My mother came on a
project with Save the Children. She came without her parents directly
to a kibbutz.

My father always said he never found his place in Israel. He lived
there for 60 years but his life was ruined. He had a PhD in law but
never practiced it in Israel. He never really spoke proper Hebrew. I
think he was really traumatized all his life.

At the same time, he never wanted to go back [to Europe] even for a
visit. He came from Sudetenland, which became Czechoslovakia. All the
Germans were expelled.

DC: How did your parents' history affect you when you were growing up?

GL: I was a typical first-generation immigrant. When my mother used to
talk to me in German, I was so ashamed that she spoke to me in a
foreign language. Her name was Thea; I always said it was Lea. Thea is
a Greek name from mythology. It is a beautiful name but as a child I
always said Lea just to cover up the fact they were immigrants.

My father's family name was Loewy and for so many years I was called
Loewy. But then I changed it to Levy and now I regret it so much.

DC: Tell me about your military service in the Israeli army.

GL: I did my military service in the [army's] radio station. I was
always a good Tel Aviv boy; I had mainstream views; I was not brought
up in a political home.

I was at the radio station for four years instead of three [the
standard length of military service] but for the fourth year as a
civilian. It's a very popular radio station; the army finances it but
it is totally civilian.

I was totally blind to the occupation. It was a word I didn't dare to
pronounce. I was a typical product of the Israeli brainwash system,
without any doubts or questions. I had a lot of national pride; we are
the best.

I remember my first trip to the occupied territories [the West Bank
and Gaza Strip]. There were a lot of national emotions visiting
Rachel's Tomb and the mosque in Hebron. I didn't see any Palestinians
then; I just remember the white sheets on the terraces. I was even
convinced that they were happy we had conquered them, that they were
so grateful we released the Palestinians from the Jordanian regime.

DC: What was the turning point that caused you to criticize the
occupation?

GL: There was no turning point. It was a gradual process. It started
when I started to travel to the occupied territories as a journalist
for Haaretz. It is not as if I decided one day, "I have to cover the
occupation." Not at all. I was attracted gradually like a butterfly to
a fire or to a light.

My political views were shaped throughout the years; it's not that
there was one day that I changed. It was really a gradual process in
which I realized this is the biggest drama: Zionism, the occupation.
And at the same time I realized there was no one to tell it to the
Israelis. I always brought exclusive stories because almost nobody was
there. In the first [Palestinian] intifada, there was more interest in
the Israeli media. But between the first intifada and the second
intifada, I really found myself almost alone in covering the
Palestinian side.

DC: Have you completely rejected Zionism?

GL: Zionism has many meanings. For sure, the common concept of Zionism
includes the occupation, includes the perception that Jews have more
rights in Palestine than anyone else, that the Jewish people are the
chosen people, that there can't be equality between Jews and Arabs,
Jews and Palestinians. All those beliefs which are very basic in
current Zionism, I can't share them. In this sense, I can define
myself as an anti-Zionist.

On the other hand, the belief about the Jewish people having the right
to live in Palestine side by side with the Palestinians, doing
anything possible to compensate the Palestinians for the terrible
tragedy that they went through in 1948, this can also be called the
Zionist belief. In this case, I share those views.

DC: If somebody was to call you a moderate Zionist would you have any
objections?

GL: The moderate Zionists are like the Zionist left in Israel, which I
can't stand. Meretz and Peace Now, who are not ready, for example, to
open the "1948 file" and to understand that until we solve this,
nothing will be solved. Those are the moderate Zionists. In this case,
I prefer the right-wingers.

DC: The right-wingers are more honest?

GL: Exactly.

DC: As an Israeli Jew, have you encountered hostility from
Palestinians during your work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories?

GL: Never. And this is unbelievable. I've been traveling there for 25
years now. I've been to [the scene of] most of the biggest tragedies
one day after they happened. There were people who lost five children,
seven children in one case.

I was always there the morning after and I would have appreciated if
they told me, "Listen we don't want to talk to an Israeli, go away."
Or if they would tell me: "You are as guilty as much as any other
Israeli." No, there was always an openness to tell the story. There
was this naive belief or hope that if they tell it to the Israelis
through me, the Israelis will change, that one story in the Israeli
media might also help them.

They don't know who I am. The grassroots have never heard about me;
it's not like I have a name there. The only time we were shot in our
car was by Israeli soldiers. That was in the summer 2003. We were
traveling with a yellow-plate taxi, an Israeli taxi: bullet-proof,
otherwise I wouldn't be here now. It was very clear it was an Israeli
taxi. We were following a curfew instruction. An officer told us: "You
can go through this road." And when we went onto this road, they shot
us. I don't think they knew who we were. They were shooting us as they
would shoot anyone else. They were trigger-happy, as they always are.
It was like having a cigarette. They didn't shoot just one bullet. The
whole car was full of bullets.

DC: Have you been in Gaza recently?

GL: I have been prevented from going there. The last time I was there
was in November 2006. As I mention in the foreword of my book, I was
visiting the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Gaza the day after a nurse
[Najwa Khalif], the teacher in the kindergarten, was killed in front
of all her children [by an Israeli missile]. When I came in, they were
drawing dead bodies, with airplanes in the sky and a tank on the
ground. I just went to the funeral of the nurse. It was called the
Indira Gandhi kindergarten not because [assassinated Indian prime
minister] Indira Gandhi was involved but because the owner of this
kindergarten was named Indira Gandhi as an appreciation of Indira
Gandhi.

DC: You have often talked about how you enjoy complete freedom to
write anything you wish. But do you get the impression that life is
getting more difficult for people with critical voices in Israel and
that the government is actively trying to stifle dissent?

GL: Me personally, writing for Haaretz, appearing on TV, practically I
have never gained such freedom. I'm appearing every week on Israeli TV
on a discussion program. There were years in which I had to be more
cautious, there were years in which the words "crimes of war" were
illegal, even in Haaretz. Today, those words are over and I'm totally,
totally free. No pressure from government or army -- nothing.

But for sure, in the last year there have been real cracks in the
democratic system of Israel. [The authorities have been] trying to
stop demonstrators from getting to Bilin [a West Bank village, scene
of frequent protests against Israel's wall]. But there's also a
process of delegitimizing all kinds of groups and [nongovernmental
organizations] and really to silence many voices. It's systematic --
it's not here and there. Things are becoming much harder. They did it
to "Breaking the Silence" [a group of soldiers critical of the
occupation] in a very ugly but very effective way. Breaking the
Silence can hardly raise its voice any more. And they did it also to
many other organizations, including the International Solidarity
Movement, which are described in Israel as enemies.

DC: Did you ever meet Rachel Corrie, the American peace activist
killed by an Israeli bulldozer seven years ago?

GL: I never met her, unfortunately. I just watched the film about her
last week. Rachel, James Miller and Tom Hurndall were all killed
within six or seven weeks, one after the other, in the same place in
Gaza, more or less. It was very clear this was a message.

DC: What do you think of her parents' decision to sue the State of
Israel over her killing?

GL: Wonderful. I saw them both when they were in Israel. They are
really so noble. They speak about the tragedy of the soldier who
killed their daughter, that he is also a victim. And they are so low-
key. I admire the way they are handling it and I hope they will win.
They deserve compensation, apologies, anything. Their daughter was
murdered.

I participated in a film about James Miller, a documentary by the BBC.
James Miller's story is even more heart-breaking. There was a real
murder. They knew he was a journalist, he was a photographer, he had
his vest saying "Press." It was very clear he was a journalist. And
they just shot him.

DC: How do you feel about Israel's so-called insult toward the US,
when it announced the construction of new settlements in East
Jerusalem during a visit to the Middle East by US Vice President Joe
Biden?

GL: I really think it is too early to judge. Something is happening.
For sure, there is a change in the atmosphere. For sure, [Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu is sweating. And the question is:
do the Americans have a clear program?

One thing must be clear: Israel has never depended so much on the
United States like it does today. Until now [Barack] Obama has made
all the possible mistakes. His first year was wasted. But still we
have to give them [the Americans] a chance because for sure there is a
change in the tone. But I'm afraid their main goal now is to get rid
of Netanyahu. And if this is the case, it will not lead anywhere.
Anyone who will replace him will be more of the same, just nicer. It
will be again this masquerade of peace process, of photo
opportunities, of niceties which don't lead anywhere. From this point
of view, I prefer a right-wing government. At least, what you see is
what you get.

DC: Spain, the current holder of the European Union's (EU) rotating
presidency, appears keen to strengthen the EU's relationship with
Israel. What signal would deeper integration of Israel into the EU's
political and economic programs send?

GL: I think it would be shameful to reward Israel now. To reward it
for what? For building more settlements? But I think also that Europe
will follow changes in Washington like it follows almost blindly
anything the Americans do.

DC: There was a minor controversy recently about the fact that Ethan
Bronner, The New York Times' correspondent in Jerusalem, has a son in
the Israeli army. Do you have any children in the army and do you
think that Bronner was compromised by this matter?

GL: My son is serving in the army. My son doesn't serve in the
territories but I have always disconnected myself from my sons. They
have their own lives and I haven't tried to influence them.

About Ethan Bronner, it's really a very delicate question. The fact
there are so many Jewish reporters, Zionist reporters who report for
their national media from the Middle East, for sure is a problem. On
the other hand, I know from my own experience, you can have a son
serving in the army and be very critical yourself. I wouldn't make
this a reason for not letting him cover the Middle East for The New
York Times, even though I must tell you that I don't see the
possibility where The New York Times' correspondent in Jerusalem is
someone whose son is serving in the [Palestinian resistance
organization] al-Aqsa Brigades, for example.

DC: What role can journalists play in trying to achieve a just and
lasting solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

GL: There is an enormous historic role that the Israeli media is
playing. The Israeli media, which is a free media, free of censorship,
free of governmental pressure, has been dehumanizing the Palestinians,
demonizing them. Without the cooperation of the Israeli media, the
occupation would not have lasted so long. It is destructive in ways I
cannot even describe. It's not Romania, it's not Soviet Russia. It's a
free democracy, the media could play any role but it has chosen to
play this role. The main thing is about the flow of information. It is
so one-sided, so much propaganda and lies and ignorance.

The French-language edition of Gideon Levy's book Gaza: Articles pour
Haaretz, 2006-2009, is published by La Fabrique. An English edition
will be available soon.

David Cronin's book Europe's Alliance with Israel: Aiding the
Occupation will be published later this year by Pluto Press.