The case against Bush’s new intelligence czar

Robert Parry – In These Times has been following the career of John Negroponte for many years. Here is some of what we have reported.

George W. Bush’s choice of John Negroponte to be the first U.S. intelligence czar signals that Washington is heading down the same road that has led to earlier American intelligence failures and controversies—from politicizing analysis to winking at human rights abuses.

“Were you oblivious to the Honduran military’s human rights violations and drug trafficking, or did you just ignore these problems for geopolitical reasons?”

Although Negroponte’s nomination is expected to sail through the Senate, one question that might be worth asking about his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985 is: “Were you oblivious to the Honduran military’s human rights violations and drug trafficking, or did you just ignore these problems for geopolitical reasons?”

Negroponte either oversaw a stunningly inept U.S. intelligence operation at the embassy in Tegucigalpa—missing major events occurring under his nose—or he tolerated atrocities that included torture, rape and murder, while slanting intelligence reports to please his superiors in Washington.

Whichever it is—incompetence or complicity—it is hard to understand how Negroponte, the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, can be expected to fix the intelligence flaws revealed by the Bush administration’s failure to connect the dots before the 9/11 terror attacks or to avert the scandalous use of torture on Muslim suspects captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Despite the bipartisan praise Negroponte’s nomination has elicited, a clear-eyed look at his record suggests that the Bush administration intends to continue making two demands on the U.S. intelligence community: that analysts wear rose-colored glasses when assessing U.S. policies and that field operatives turn a blind eye to atrocities committed by U.S. allies or American interrogators.

A history of oversight
Given the human rights records of the Honduran military and the Nicaraguan contras who set up shop in Honduras during Negroponte’s tenure as ambassador the early ’80s, he will have no moral standing as a public official who repudiates abusive interrogation techniques and brutal counterinsurgency tactics. Indeed, some cynics might suggest that’s one of the reasons Bush picked him.

Negroponte’s work in Honduras means, too, that he will come to his new job with a history of forwarding inaccurate intelligence to Washington and leaving out information that would have upset the upper echelon of the Reagan-Bush administration. For his part, Negroponte, who is now 65, has staunchly denied knowledge of “death squad” operations by the Honduran military in the ’80s.

In 1983, in another move that helped the Honduran military and the contras, the Reagan-Bush administration closed down the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) office at the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, just as Honduras was emerging as an important base for cocaine transshipments to the United States.

“Elements of the Honduran military were involved … in the protection of drug traffickers from 1980 on,” is how a Senate Foreign Relations investigative report, issued in 1989 by a subcommittee headed by Sen. John Kerry, put it. “These activities were reported to appropriate U.S. government officials throughout the period. Instead of moving decisively to close down the drug trafficking by stepping up the DEA presence in the country and using the foreign assistance the United States was extending to the Hondurans as a lever, the United States closed the DEA office in Tegucigalpa and appears to have ignored the issue.”

It’s unclear what role Negroponte played in shutting down the DEA office in Honduras during his time as U.S. ambassador, but it is hard to imagine that a step of that significance could have occurred without at least his acquiescence.

Negroponte’s ambassadorship also coincided with the evolution of the Nicaraguan contra forces from a small band under the tutelage of Argentine intelligence officers into an irregular army supported by the CIA, and later by a secret operation inside the White House run by National Security Council aide Oliver North.
Recent revelations

Despite several investigations into what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, many documents about Negroponte’s involvement remained classified, outside public knowledge. Some of that information bubbled to the surface in September 2001 when Negroponte was facing confirmation to be Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations.

In a Senate floor speech before Negroponte won confirmation, Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said, “The picture that emerges in analyzing this new information is a troubling one.” Summarizing the new documents from the State Department and CIA, Dodd said the evidence pointed to the fact that from 1980 to 1984, the Honduran military committed most of the country’s hundreds of human rights abuses. The documents reported that some Honduran military units, trained by the United States, were implicated in “death squad” operations that employed counterterrorist tactics, including torture, rape, and assassinations against people suspected of supporting leftist guerrillas in El Salvador or leftist movements in Honduras.

Dodd criticized Negroponte’s earlier Senate testimony. In response to questions about one of these units, Battalion 316, Negroponte had said, “I have never seen any convincing substantiation that they were involved in death squad-type activities.”

“Given what we know about the extent and nature of Honduran human rights abuses, to say that Mr. Negroponte was less than forthcoming in his responses to my questions is being generous,” said Dodd. “I was also troubled by Ambassador Negroponte’s unwillingness to admit that—as a consequence of other U.S. policy priorities—the U.S. Embassy, by acts of omissions, end[ed] up shading the truth about the extent and nature of ongoing human rights abuses in the 1980s.”

“The Inter-American Court of Human Rights had no such reluctance in assigning blame to the Honduran government during its adjudication of a case brought against the government of Honduras [in 1987],” Dodd said. “The Court found that ‘a practice of disappearances carried out or tolerated by Honduran officials existed between 1981-84’ … Based upon an extensive review of U.S. intelligence information by the CIA Working Group in 1996, the CIA is prepared to stipulate that ‘during the 1980-84 period, the Honduran military committed most of the hundreds of human rights abuses reported in Honduras. These abuses were often politically motivated and officially sanctioned.’ ”

However, when Bush nominated Negroponte to be ambassador to Iraq in 2004, Dodd and other Democrats largely dropped their objections. The National Catholic Reporter, which had covered the right-wing persecution of Catholic clergy in Central America during the ’80s, was one of the few publications still questioning Negroponte’s fitness.

In an April 2004 article, the magazine recounted a statement from Society of Helpers’ Sister Laetitia Bordes, who had gone to Honduras and approached Negroponte about the “disappearances” of 32 women who had fled to Honduras after rightist death squads in El Salvador assassinated Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.

Later, these women, including one who had been Romero’s secretary, “were forcibly taken from their living quarters in Tegucigalpa, pushed into a van and disappeared,” Sister Laetitia Bordes said. “John Negroponte listened to us as we exposed the facts. … Negroponte denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of these women. He insisted that the U.S. embassy did not interfere in the affairs of the Honduran government.”

The National Catholic Reporter noted, “Years later, the Baltimore Sun would reveal that Negroponte apparently knew more than he was letting on. In fact, charge his many critics, the ambassador oversaw an exponential increase in military aid to the Honduran army, deceptively downplayed human rights violations, and played a key role in supporting the activities of Battalion 316, a CIA-backed Honduran-based regional counterinsurgency unit subsequently found to be among the cruelest of the cruel.”

Many congressional Democrats, as well as Republicans, consider those two-decade-old concerns about Central America stale and irrelevant to Negroponte’s nomination as the nation’s first National Intelligence Director. But his tenure as ambassador to Honduras raises questions not only about his moral judgment and integrity, but his capacity to assess information and to ensure that political pressures don’t influence intelligence reporting.

As the first person chosen to hold this post—with oversight responsibility for all U.S. intelligence activities—Negroponte might legitimately be expected to represent something other than tolerance of death squads and politicization of intelligence information.

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Washington – US-Geheimdienstdirektor John Negroponte wird offenbar neuer Vize-Aussenminister. Sein Amt sei dem früheren Chef der Nationalen Sicherheitsbehörde (NSA) Michael McConnell angeboten worden, hiess es unter Berufung auf einen hohen Regierungsbeamten.

Der Postenwechsel werde voraussichtlich Ende der Woche offiziell bekannt gegeben, meldete FoxNews. Nach Angaben des Senders NBC hat Negroponte bereits akzeptiert, Stellvertreter von Aussenministerin Condoleezza Rice zu werden. Das Vizeamt ist seit dem Rücktritt von Robert Zoellick im Juni vergangenen Jahres unbesetzt.

Vor seinem Wechsel zur NSA 1992 war McConnell Geheimdienstchef des Generalstabes im Pentagon. Er hatte diese Position auch während des ersten Golfkrieges inne. Als NSA-Direktor galt er nach NBC-Angaben als enger Vertrauters von Vizepräsident Richard Cheney, der damals Verteidigungsminister war.

Der 67-jährige frühere UNO-Botschafter Negroponte war erst im Frühjahr 2005 zum ersten Nationalen Geheimdienstdirektor ernannt worden, um künftig die Arbeit der 16 US-Geheimdienste mit rund 100 000 Mitarbeitern weltweit und ihre Haushalte zu beaufsichten.

Bei der Umsetzung dieser Mammutaufgabe war Negroponte im Kongress bei Demokraten wie Republikanern in die Schusslinie geraten.

Parlamentarier beider Couleur warfen ihm vor, den bürokratischen Wust der einzelnen Dienste nicht konsequent genug zurückgestutzt zu haben. Zudem habe er die im Zuge der Anschläge vom 11. September 2001 offen zu Tage getretenen Schwächen in der Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem FBI und dem Geheimdienst CIA nicht effektiv genug angehalten, ihre Arbeit besser zu koordinieren.

Die Nachricht von Negropontes Wechsel fällt in eine Zeit, in der Präsident Bush wichtige Weichenstellungen für seine verbleibende zweijährige Amtszeit unter veränderten politischen Machtkonstellationen vornimmt. Die Demokraten übernehmen an diesem Donnerstag wieder die Macht im US-Kongress.

Alle Artikel über Negroponte

World Content News – Ein neuer Report der US- Bundespolizei FBI listet 26 Fälle von Misshandlungen auf, die sie im US-Gefangenenlager Guantanamo Bay auf Kuba beobachtet hat. Demnach ist vor Ort anwesenden FBI-Mitarbeitern wiederholt aufgefallen, wie Gefangene an Händen und Füßen gefesselt in „Verhörräumen“ über Tage hinweg ohne Nahrung oder Wasser in Embryostellung am Boden gelegen hätten. Oft seien die hilflosen Häftlinge dabei im eigenen Urin und Kot gelegen. Andere wiederum wären in Kälteräume oder bei glühender Hitze eingesperrt gewesen.

Das FBI berichtet von „aggressiven Misshandlungen“ und „besonders harten Verhörmethoden“, bei denen FBI-Mitarbeiter zwar anwesend, aber selbst nicht an den Folterungen beteiligt gewesen sein sollen. Befragt wurden alle 483 Mitarbeiter, die sich seit 2001 auf der Gefangeneninsel aufgehalten haben.

Der 244 Seiten starke Bericht listet auch besonders perfide und kuriose Fälle auf. Einem Gefangenen mit Vollbart z.B. sei das Gesicht mit Klebeband umwickelt worden. Ein anderer wiederum wurde in eine israelische Fahne eingewickelt. Auch sexuelle Demütigungen stehen in der Liste der „Vorkommnisse“.

Über welche Verhörmethoden das sonst auch nicht zimperliche FBI selbst verfügt und bei Inlandsgefangenen zuweilen auch anwendet, geht aus dem Report natürlich nicht hervor.

Dass durch die Veröffentlichung im Internet jedoch der alte Kompetenzstreit in der Terrorbekämpfung zwischen FBI und CIA wieder aufzubrechen scheint, bei dem möglicherweise politische Kräfte im Spiel sind, lässt sich auch daraus ersehen, dass erst Mitte Dezember von unbekannter Seite umfangreiche Informationen an die Öffentlichkeit gelangt sind, die bezeugen, dass Bushs „Anti-Terror-Krieg“ bisher äußerst magere Erfolge erzielt hat. Unter den Dokumenten finden sich auch Statements des FBI-Direktor Robert Mueller, von Top-Agenten und Nahostexperten über Fehler innerhalb des FBI, die über hierzulande zitierte Themen wie z.B. mangelnde arabische Sprachkenntnisse weit hinausgehen.

Quellen:
FBI-Mitarbeiter bestätigen Misshandlungen in Guantanamo
(sueddeutsche.de, 03.01.07)
Guantanamo Bay Inquiry – Summary (foia.fbi.gov, 02.01.07)
Report: Detainee positive responses (pdf-Datei, 5,25 MB, 02.01.07)
Inside the FBI (whistleblowers.org, 18.12.06)
FBI-Dateien: John Lennon (lennonfbifiles.com, 19.12.06)

Dieser Artikel erschien erstmalig bei World Content News

Stephan Fuchs – Obwohl die Bundesanwaltschaft bei Justizminister Christoph Blocher ein Gesuch einreichte um gerichtlich gegen die CIA vorzugehen, erteilte das Bundesamt für Zivilluftfahrt erneut die Überflug Bewilligung für amerikanische Regierungsflugzeuge. Kritisch: auch in jenen sitzen Kandidaten für die Folterbank.

Auch der amerikanische SPAR 92, ein Learjet der 76th Airlift Squadron, überquerte die Schweiz mindestens 29-mal. Am 17. Februar, dem Tag der Entführung des Imam in Mailand gleich zweimal. Einmal vom amerikanischen Airforce Stützpunkt Ramstein in Deutschland nach Aviano in Italien und dann mit dem in Mailand gekidnappten Imam Abu Omar (Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr) von Aviano zurück nach Ramstein. Von Rammstein wurde er mit der “Gulfstream” N85VM nach Ägypten gebracht, wo er laut Europaparlament bis heute eingebunkert ist. Der Kopf der Entführer, CIA-Beamte Bob Lady hielt sich nach Medienberichten anschliessend mit Wissen von Regierungsbehörden mehrere Wochen in der Schweiz auf.

SPAR ist die Abkürzung für „Special Air Resources“ – ein militärischer Flugdienst – der unter anderem hohe Militärs oder wichtige Persönlichkeiten transportiert. Mit einer regulären US Regierungsmaschine wie einer SPAR zum Foltern geflogen zu werden, das ist eher die Ausnahme in Europa. Viel eher und reibungsloser für alle beteiligten Regierungsstellen (auch die Schweizer und ihre europäischen Kollegen) fliegen die Foltertaxis mit privat immatrikulierten Maschinen die über ein kompliziertes Firmengeflecht aus Scheinfirmen hin- und her geschoben werden und als „Shell Game“ (Muschelspiel) bekannt ist. Jene „privaten Flüge“ sind schwer zu beobachten, fallen nicht auf und müssen lediglich den Flugplan einreichen. Ein Routine Prozedere unter den täglich hunderten Überfliegern im Schweizer Flugraum.

Als den Amerikanern überaus freundlich gesinntes Land ist es, trotz der Affäre des Berner CIA Agenten Tom, trotz des eingereichten Gesuches der Bundesanwaltschaft, gegen die CIA vorzugehen, trotz der freundlichen „Asyl“ – Aufnahme einiger Exponenten des CIA Entführungsteams aus Italien und trotz des seit 2002 unter Verschluss gehaltenen und für nächstes Jahr neu ausgehandelten „legalisierten Spionageabkommens“ namens „Operative Working Arrangement“, das von Experten als „verbotener politischer Nachrichtendienst“ bezeichnet wird und einigen bewiesenen CIA Landungen in Genf, Basel, Zürich und Sion, verständlicherweise klar, dass alle erdenklichen Bewilligungen erteilt werden. Wir sind ja schliesslich neutral.

Mehr Artikel zu dem Thema

Wellington / dpa – The world’s top spy chiefs – including the heads of the CIA and British, Australian and Canadian agencies – have been meeting in secret in New Zealand.

The elite Anglo-Saxon group is known as Echelon. It intercepts and records telephone calls, e-mails and other forms of electronic communication.

The gathering was held in New Zealand because the country’s spy agency, the Security Intelligence Service (SIS), is celebrating its 50th anniversary.

A spokesman for New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said the gathering was part of ongoing cooperation between the New Zealand intelligence community and its international counterparts.

Her government refused to give any details about the meeting, saying it does not comment on security matters.

Michael Hayden, the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, left Wellington Wednesday after a three-day visit.

Other guests included David Irvine of the Australian SIS, Paul O’Sullivan of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, Jim Judd of the Canadian SIS, John Scarlett of Britain’s MI6 and Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller of MI5.

All member countries of Echelon have claimed they do not spy on their own citizens, but the European Union has charged its activities constitute and invasion of privacy and are used for industrial espionage.

The case of Litvinenko

David Dastych – When you compare a today’s BBC report based on Yuri Shvets interview to the explanations of Dmitri Kovtun and the statement of Alex Goldfarb (below), there is a principal controversy: Shvets claims Litvinenko was poisoned by Po-210 on November 1, during his meeting with 2 or 3 Russians at the Millennium Hotel in London.

Kovtun and Lugovoy claimed in their interviews to the Russian and German media that the poisoning of Litvinenko and the contamination of them by Po-210 happened earlier, on October 16, when they visited the London office of a security company Erinys International Ltd. It looks like these two Russian ex-agents (Kovtun, Lugovoy) are trying to put the blame on Erinys International, to exculpate themselves from a supposed treating of Litvinenko to a cup of tea (with Po-210) at the Millenium Hotel, on November 1, 2006. After this last meeting Litvinenko fell ill and he was admitted to a hospital. Probably, if he were poisoned on October 16, he might get ill before their November 1 meeting.

If the statement of Yuri Shvets is true (that Litvinenko was killed „over a dossier“ of a prominent Kremlin’s associate), then Dmitri Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy might act on orders of somebody from the FSB or the Kremlin. But there is no proof of it, however. There is a dirty game going on on both sides. The Kremlin’s associates try to put the blame for the assassination on „rogue elements“ or on Berezovski, or on nuclear traders etc.

They deny any engagement of the Russian officialdom and Intelligence in the murder of Alex Litvinenko, a vocal critic of Putin and his regime, linked to Berezovski’s political opposition network. Putin himself and his power elite (siloviki) had plenty of reasons to get rid of a man, who did everything possible to compromise them. But they (the Putin’s associates) must have fully realized that the assassination would be blamed on the Kremlin and would seriously damage the reputation of the present Russian regime.

What one could do in such an embarassing situation? Probably the Kremlin power elite would resort to using of some „outsiders“, who were defectors from the Russian secret services or Putin’s critics. Could Kovtun and Lugovoy become the „hit men“? Probably. If they agreed to poison Litvinenko, then their natural refuge would be Russia and their claims of being „seriously radiated with Po-210“, and their stay in hospitals during the Moscow part of the British investigation could be a good excuse to avoid a direct questioning by the British investigators. Moscow also stated officially that the Russian government would not allow extradiction of the Russian citizens, eventually involved in the plot against Litvinenko.

On the other hand, a powerful group of the exiled oligarchs, most distinctively represented by Boris Berezovski, had plenty of reasons to get rid of a „much too loose“ ex-agent, Litvinenko, who began to act on his own. They might take advantage of Litvinenko’s „business associations“. They knew that this man wanted to make a lot of money in short time and that he could enter into any lucrative deal, proposed to him . If Litvinenko could be lured into a criminal activity, involving illicit nuclear trafficking and trade, then it could be easy to kill him, puting the blame on Putin’s mob.

The very curious background of the whole „Litvinenko’s affair“ is that Litvinenko himself could make a suitable victim to both sides: the Kremlin clique and the oligarchs‘ opposition based abroad. The poor Sasha put his finger on Putin before dying. And that was expected of him. But probably he wasn’t aware before that he got himself between the millstones of the power-struggle for the future of Russia.

As about 78 per cent of the present political elite in Russia is composed of the former KGB/GRU operatives, they want to decide about the future of their country. For the most, they are nationalistic, anti-Semitic, greedy and ruthless. They might split into fractions, fighting each other, but on the whole, they have common interests, which are contrary to the interests of the exiled oligarchs, predominantly Russians of Jewish origin. Some of the foreign-based oligarchs, like Roman Abramovich, cooperate with Putin and his close circle. But most of the other ones oppose Putin and his Kremlin ruling group.

The assassination of a minor opposition figure, like Litvinenko, with the use of a very expensive killing agent (Po-210), causing contamination and spreading public fear, could be a thundering „shot“ in a „war“ for the future of Russia and for the control over the Russian resources. Sasha Litvinenko was not the first victim in this war. But he was made a very popular victim, after his terrible death. It looks like this war (which is not a „turf war“ in the American meaning of this term) is going to intensify now, in Russia and beyond Russia.

Read these extractes:

The Moscow Times, December 14, 2006
But Litvinenko’s friend, Alex Goldfarb, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was certain Litvinenko had been in perfect shape the morning before his meeting with Kovtun and Lugovoi, because a car in which he had driven the day before was later found to be free of radiation.

Russians Say Their Radiation Exposure Occurred During Earlier Trip to London
Peter Finn and Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign Service, Thursday, December 14, 2006; Page A20
Two key figures in the poisoning of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko said in news media interviews Wednesday that they had been contaminated with radiation in London earlier than is widely supposed. This, they contended, explains a trail of polonium-210 later left in Hamburg by one of the men.

The recent discovery of traces of the radioactive isotope in places Dmitry Kovtun visited during a stopover in Hamburg while en route from Moscow to London in late October has been cited by German authorities as potentially incriminating, on grounds that he may have carried the substance from Moscow to London.

Litvinenko ‚killed over dossier‚

Litvinenko’s killers used polonium worth USD 10m

Wake Up by J. R. Nyquist

Novosti – Israel befürchtet die Entwicklung einer Atombombe im Iran. „Sollte Iran die Arbeit an seinem Nuklearprogramm im gegenwärtigen Tempo fortführen, wird dieses Land in drei bis vier Jahren eine (Atom)Bombe haben“, sagte der Chef des israelischen Aufklärungsdienstes Mossad, Meir Dagan, wie französische Medien am Montag berichten.

Eine diesbezügliche Aussage hat Dagan in einer Rede vor der Kommission für Verteidigung und Internationale Beziehungen der Knesset (Parlament) gemacht.

Im November 2003 hatte General Dagan vor den Mitgliedern derselben Parlamentskommission darauf verwiesen, dass Iran „die größte Bedrohung für das Bestehen Israels seit der Gründung dieses Staates im Jahre 1948 darstellt“.

Wie der israelische Premier Ehud Olmert wiederholt äußerte, werde Israel das Bestehen eines mit Nuklearwaffen ausgerüsteten Irans „nicht dulden“. Die Spannungen um diese Frage haben sich nach mehrmaligen Drohungen des iranischen Präsidenten Mahmud Ahmadinedschad, Israel von der Weltkarte zu streichen, noch mehr verschärft.

David Dastych – In mid-December, at 04:00 a.m., I received a sudden phone call: “Your son, Olaf, died tonight.” It was a terrible shock. “Could that be real?”, I thought in the first moment, still emerging from a sound sleep. “Maybe this was a bad dream?” But it wasn’t. I called my ex-wife, Kalina, and she burst into tears. “How did it happen?,” I asked her. And she told me about the sudden death of our son, witnessed by Agnes, his fiancée. It took only a few minutes, and an emergency team arrived very soon, but nothing could be done. Olaf died almost at once. How this could happen to a young, active and full of vigor man of 24? Nobody could explain. Doctors claimed it was a very strong infarct, but they were not sure. Agnes told us, he died in her arms. She was deeply shocked, and so we all were.

Olaf Dastych – „It is a small tree now but will grow straight and strong.“

There was no autopsy made on the body. Olaf’s mother refused it. The funeral was arranged on the fifth day, with a crowd of people attending and Olaf’s friends playing music for him in the funeral house. It was a frosty winter, and a new part of the huge Northern Graveyard in Warsaw, still bare, with almost no trees and bushes, resembled a snow-covered field in Siberia.

Homecoming from Bradford
Olaf Dastych graduated with honors from the Warsaw Higher Economic School (SGH) in 1996. A day after his graduation ceremony, he went to England, where he was granted a scholarship for the MBA studies at the Bradford University. This was not his first term abroad, as he had a chance to study in Denmark before. But this time he expected to accomplish much more: a full post-graduate Master of Business Administration course that could open a bright professional career for him in Poland and elsewhere. He worked very hard. Ged Yardy, his friend at Bradford MBA, wrote to me after Olaf’s death: “I think we were one of the best teams on the MBA. Olaf was central to this, his razor-sharp mind demonstrated an intelligence and maturity beyond his years. I’m sure he would have gone on to do great things. He was well liked by all.”

In December 1996, my son took a flight to Warsaw to spend Chanukah with his fiancée and Christmas with his mother and sister, Natalia. He would also meet me, as Sophie and I have invited him to our house. After New Year, he would return to England to continue his studies. But this homecoming from Bradford turned out to be the last trip in his life. Ged, Jaqueline, Violet, Tomo and Pankar of the MBA group missed him forever.

Before and after Olaf’s funeral, I kept contacts with people in England, who knew him: his student friends, members of the MBA faculty, businessmen and officials. I called them up by phone and I faxed letters to them, trying to find out more details about his studies and his everyday life at the Bradford University.

As soon as on December 17, 1996, I received a letter from Dr. Christine Parkinson, the Chairman of the full-time MBA Programme. She wrote: “Olaf was the youngest student on our MBA. He had a relatively short period of work experience but was accepted on the programme because of his outstanding academic achievements and what we saw as his potential for a very successful future. His progress on the first stage of the course fully justified our confidence in him and members of staff who taught him, and students who worked with him on joint projects, were impressed with his abilities.”

Dr. Parkinson added a bit of non-academic information, too: “He was also a very popular student who had made many friends here. He involved himself in all social activities organized by the MBAs. The last time I saw him was at the MBA Christmas party just before he left to return to Poland…”

From other people I learned, after the funeral held on Friday, December 20, that Olaf suffered a sort of heart-attack with very strong stomach pain after one of the parties he took part in, before homecoming. He was admitted to a hospital in Bradford for medical examination. Doctors asked him to stay longer in bed but Olaf refused, promising to show up for more tests after his holidays in Poland.

This information, and a lack of a post-mortem examination, turned my attention to something very suspicious. Could my son be poisoned in England? If so by whom and for what reason? I was really alarmed and I began to look back at the past events, as for a possible reason for treating my son with a death-causing “cocktail”.

“They never forget”
When I joined the CIA in 1973, in South Vietnam, one of my main concerns was how to protect my family, in case my covert mission was to be discovered by communist authorities. My concerns were met with proper attention in Langley, but there was no absolute guarantee of my family’s safety. A short time before I was arrested in Poland, in 1987, I had met with a high-ranking U.S. diplomat of the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. He was aware of my mission.

I told him that the Polish and probably also the Soviet secret services had been tracing me for a year or so. They had no evidence but they might try to arrest me any time then. I asked for a protection of my close family. As I took no money from the American Intelligence, the only favor I asked for was to help my son to obtain scholarships for his future studies at one of the Western universities. I gave the U.S. diplomat a background on Olaf’s schooling, his language proficiency and other personal details and photos. After some time, I received a positive answer.

I went on with my secret work as usual, traveling to the USSR and to other communist countries. I could not avoid an arrest in March 1987, and I spent three years in communist prisons. In this time, Olaf graduated from his highschool and began his studies. Later on, he was invited to foreign trips, then he earned a scholarship to Denmark, and finally went on to the Bradford University for a post-graduate MBA program. His future looked bright. Until that fatal day…

In the 1980s and then in the 1990s, I survived at least two attempts on my life. The perpetrators were either Soviet operatives or ex-KGB mafia killers. In the early 1990s, after leaving a communist prison in Poland, I went abroad and I volunteered to monitor the illegal nuclear trade and the secret financial deals between some states of the former USSR and “the outside world”. In this activity, I became dangerous to ex-Soviet secret services and to mafia organizations. But after December 16, 1994, when I broke my vertebral column in the French mountains, nobody tried to kill me any more. I was not a worthwhile target.

Why these enemy forces would hit my son? A defector from the Soviet secret services, whom I had met, warned me that: “They never forget”. There is a real possibility that these enemy elements could have revenged themselves on me, poisoning my son with a non-traceable substance, causing a natural death. All leads point to England as a possible place of the poisoning. And the timing of this attempt on Olaf’s life is also ominous: almost exactly two years after my accident in France, in mid-December 1994.

Because of my invalidity, I was not able to go to Bradford and (possibly) to examine Olaf’s medical records there. I am still determined to do that, and to talk to some people, who met my son at the University in December 1996, a week or so before his sudden and mysterious death.

A grave in Poland and a memorial in England
Three months after Olaf’s death, in March of 1997, I received a letter, signed by Professor David T H Weir, Director of the Management Centre at the University of Bradford. He wrote: “I am writing to tell you about a simple ceremony which we held today (March 4, 1996) to commemorate your son, Olaf Lech Dastych, and his time with us as a colleague and friend.

Olaf’s funeral, Warrszawa, Dec.20, 1996

As you will know, we planted a tree and unveiled a simple plaque on a large rock in the grounds of the Management Centre, in Olaf’s memory. Ged Yardy, one of his friends, gave a very moving speech and I read two poems which I felt were appropriate to the occasion. You may know them. Both are by the American poet, Walt Whitman. He was a great internationalist who believed in the brotherhood of all peoples. The first is from Songs of Parting and is called “As the Time Draws Nigh”. This poem looks towards the poet’s own death. He uses the wonderful phrase to justify his life that his soul “has positively appeared.”

As the time draws nigh glooming a cloud,
A dread beyond of I know not what darkens me.
I shall go forth,
I shall traverse the States a while, but I cannot tell whither or how long,
Perhaps soon some day or night while I am singing my voice
will suddenly cease.
O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this?
Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us? – and yet it is
enough, O soul;
O soul, we have positively appear’d – that is enough.
[Then follows the second poem called “So Long!”]

Professor Weir concluded: “Olaf was with us for a very short time but he certainly “positively appeared”. He left an indelible mark in the memories of the students and staff who came into contact with him. And as the poet said: “He offered his style to everyone”. He was a highly intelligent and contributive young man. We are pleased and proud that he spent some time with us.

When you come to Bradford, you will see the small memorial that we have created to remember him. It is a small tree now but will grow straight and strong. When you come to Bradford, you will know that, as Olaf’s parents, you are among friends.”

Thank you, Professor David T H Weir. Thank you all of Olaf’s Friends. I shall come to Bradford in the footsteps of my late son. I will also try to find out when and where my unknown, ruthless enemies eventually poisoned him. “They never forget”, these hoodlums on Earth. But I, Olaf’s mourning father, “I will always remember”.

God Merciful, Thou only knows the truth.

SDA – Die Entführung des Mailänder Imams Abu Omar durch den US-Geheimdienst CIA kommt vor den Bundesrat. Wegen des Verdachts, dass der Entführte via Schweizer Luftraum aus Italien ausgeflogen wurde, muss das Gremium weitere Ermittlungen absegnen.

Justizminister Blocher habe ein «Gesuch um eine Ermächtigung zur gerichtlichen Verfolgung eingereicht», bestätigte der Sprecher des Justiz- und Polizeidepartements, Livio Zanolari, einen Bericht der «SonntagsZeitung». Wann der Bundesrat sich mit dem Fall befassen werde, sei noch offen.

Ende 2005 Strafverfahren eröffnet
Bei politischen Delikten muss der Bundesrat grünes Licht für deren Verfolgung geben. Die Bundesanwaltschaft eröffnete Ende 2005 ein Strafverfahren, weil am Tag der Entführung Abu Omars, dem 17. Februar 2003, ein Flugzeug des US-Verteidigungsministeriums zweimal die Schweiz überflog.

Der Ägypter ist in Mailand auf offener Strasse von 26 CIA-Agenten entführt worden . Danach wurde er gemäss eigenen Aussagen in ein ägyptisches Gefängnis gebracht und dort gefoltert.

In Italien will die Staatsanwaltschaft die US-Agenten deswegen vor Gericht stellen. Ausserdem sollen sich der frühere Chef des italienischen Militär-Geheimdienstes SISMI, Nicolo Pollari, sowie vier weitere italienische Geheimdienstler wegen Beteiligung verantworten. Pollari musste unter anderem wegen der CIA-Affäre Ende November den Hut nehmen.

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Washington – Die designierte Präsidentin des US-Abgeordnetenhauses, Nancy Pelosi, will einen neuen Kongressausschuss zur Überprüfung des Geheimdiensthaushalts schaffen. Er solle sicherstellen, dass das Geld der Regierung regelgerecht ausgegeben werde. Die Geheimdienste würden damit stärker überwacht, und das amerikanische Volk gewinne an Sicherheit, sagte Pelosi am Donnerstag bei einer Pressekonferenz in Washington.

Pelosis Demokratische Partei hat das Verhalten der Geheimdienste in der Zeit vor den Terroranschlägen vom 11. September 2001 und vor dem Einmarsch in den Irak scharf kritisiert. Pelosi erklärte, nach ihrem Amtsantritt im Januar werde eine der ersten Aufgaben des neuen Kongresses darin bestehen, die Empfehlungen der Kommission zur Aufarbeitung der Terroranschläge vom 11. September 2001 zu billigen. Dazu zählen Schritte, Entscheidungen der Geheimdienste transparenter zu machen. Als geheim eingestuftes Material müsse mehr Kongressmitgliedern zugänglich gemacht werden. «Es gibt viele Dinge, zu denen alle Kongressmitglieder Zugang haben sollten», sagte Pelosi.