Peter Dale Scott – Breivik, Destabilization, Far West, and Global Shadow Elites
Far West is not to be thought of as a localized drug mafia like the Zemun gang, but as a multinational linchpin between organized crime, including drug trafficking, and the global intelligence and corporate establishment. From its origins as a Soviet military intelligence (GRU) group in Afghanistan, with responsibility for narcotics matters, it has expanded globally, and now enjoys connections to the intelligence networks of Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Great Britain, and the United States.”57

In particular, as I wrote six years ago : The group’s business front, Far West Ltd [now Far West LLC]. is said to have CIA-approved contractual dealings with Halliburton for geopolitical purposes in the Caucasus, as well as dealings in Iraq with Diligence LLC, a group with connections to Joe Allbaugh (the FEMA chief in 2001) and to the President’s younger brother Neil Bush. The head of Far West recently told a Russian outlet that „a well-known American corporation… is a co-founder of our agency.“

Because of all these connections transcending normal political and ideological differences, I described it as a “meta-group,” like the drug bank BCCI which was in some significant ways its predecessor.58

Today I would say of my essay that I did not distinguish clearly enough between the Far West meta-group itself and its “roof” or protection, the men it dealt with at a still higher level, like Boris Berezovsky’s man Alexander Voloshin in the Kremlin, or the multi-billionaires Roman Abramovich and Adnan Khashoggi. Far West consisted of a multinational connection of structures and networks in particular locations. Those using and protecting it did not constitute a structure, but a paranational milieu without any single location or organization.

These protectors qualify as part of what David Rothkopf has called the illicit “shadow elites, those whose influence stems from illicit or unconventional means.”59 Such illicit elites are not marginal: Khashoggi, for example, was once called by his American biographer “the richest man in the world.”60 The Russian arms merchant Viktor Bout, who conducted arms deals both with Charles Taylor of Liberia and with Far West in the Ukraine, has been called “the Bill Gates or Donald Trump of modern gun running.”61

In an era when the combined wealth of the 225 richest people nearly equals the annual income of the poorer half of the earth’s population,62 it can be assumed that the power and influence of the illicit wealthy is a major force to be reckoned with in world affairs. And it is clear that some in these shadow elites stand to benefit from the crimes Breivik has been charged with: specifically “destabilizing or destroying basic functions of society,” and “creating serious fear in the population.”63

In American War Machine a year ago I characterized Far West as a component of a larger war machine, and specifically as an “ongoing destabilization machine” whose principal aim in destabilization is not ideological, but “to promote conditions that facilitate its own business prospects…and specifically the chaos that makes for future contracts.”64

This brings us back to Ulemek and Filin, whose connection must have been a matter of business rather than of ideology. Ulemek had been involved in killing Muslim minorities, whereas members of Far West (who included Muslims) were allegedly involved in backing ethnic Muslim jihads inside Russia. But Ulemek and Filin, along with Greger and indeed Breivik, had a common interest in one goal: the destabilization of existing society. Obviously, for their activities, whether paramilitary violence, arms trafficking, or drugs, destabilization is beneficial, even necessary.

Of course destabilization is not profitable to drug traffickers alone. It also generates business for the power bureaucracies and private military corporations whose practice it is to intervene in destabilized countries. And finally it is a source of income to those illicit elites who are themselves safely above drug trafficking, but have become rich through banking the proceeds.
Thus Breivik, who must be condemned both as a psychopathic mass murderer and as a threat to world order, can be seen as someone useful to those whose business it is to profit from the destabilization of that world order.

Behind Systemic Destabilization: A Deep State or a Paranational Dark Force?
The Breivik manifesto and video constitute a veritable cherry orchard of planted clues, from which it is possible to cherry-pick a number of alternative explanatory scenarios. In my own case I have been guided by the need to test a double hypothesis I put forward tentatively in the American War Machine:

1) There exists an on-going milieu that is repeatedly a source for the systemic destabilization in many of the world’s major deep events, and
2) there is a congruence between this dark quadrant of systemic destabilization (or what I once called “managed violence”) and the milieu of the international drug traffic.65

I have tried to show in this essay that the events of 7/22, studied in the context of the Breivik-Ulemek-Filin connection, provide an initial corroboration, at this stage admittedly less than definitive, of this double hypothesis.

There was a time when, citing the facts disclosed about the Piazza Fontana bombing in Italy or the Semdinli bombing in Turkey, I tended to identify the source of all such deep events with the parastatal or “deep state” structures in these countries, including the CIA in America. But in American War Machine I give reasons, not easily summarized, for suspecting that for the ultimate source of such deep events we should look beyond the parastatal structures of nations (including the CIA) to a more unstructured and paranational deep force or dark force, or forces, colluding with, and sometimes perhaps manipulating, these parastatal structures.66

In Moscow in 2010 I was invited to attend an International Forum on Afghan Drug Production. There a senior Russian counternarcotics official, in the course of a long and intense conversation, said to me, “For many years I have been trying to fight the drug traffic, and up till now I don’t really know what I’m fighting.” I replied, “You know, on page 5 of my next book, I say almost the same thing.” (In American War Machine, p. 5, I write that in choosing to refer to the CIA’s global drug connection, I was not trying to define the force precisely, but “attempting to denote and describe a deep force, or forces, that I do not fully understand.”)

The events of 7/22 do not by themselves resolve the mystery of this dark force. But they do help to underline its on-going significance.

I would like to thank those researchers who helped me with this essay, in particular Magda Hassan and Jan Klimkowski of Deep Politics Forum, and Ola Tunander.

Notes
1 Peter Dale Scott. “Korea (1950), the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9/11: Deep Events in Recent American History,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, June 22, 2008.
2 The unsolved mystery of Aum Shinrikyo’s motive for the mass attack is discussed by James William Jones, Blood That Cries Out from the Earth: the Psychology of Religious Terrorism, 77-79. Cf. Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence and the New Global Terrorism, 68.
3 Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 19-21; Christopher Deliso, The coming Balkan caliphate: the threat of radical Islam to Europe and the West, 100: “Military coups in 1971 and 1980, bookended by chronic massacres of civilian demonstrators throughout the 1970s, were all led by Counter-Guerrilla/Grey Wolves elements. Immediately after the 1980 military coup that brought the Counter-Guerrillas leader, General Kenan Evren to power, American CIA station chief Paul Henze reportedly cabled Washington exulting, ‘our boys have done it.’”
4 Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9/11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 180-84; Anna Cento Bull, Italian neofascism: the strategy of tension and the politics of non-reconciliation, 112-20.
5 Italian Senate, Parliamentary Committee Investigating Terrorism, 2000; quoted in Daniel Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies (London: Frank Cass, 2005), 14; cf. Guardian, June 24, 2000.
6 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 138-47, 228-30.
7 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 14; cf. 17.
8 Bjoern H. Amland and Malin Rising, “Anders Behring Breivik, Norway Attacker, Returns To Crime Scene For Reconstruction ,” Huffington Post, August 14, 2011.
9 Scott, American War Machine, 187-92; Peter Dale Scott, “A Ballad of Drugs and 9/11,” Flashpoint Magazine.
10 David Rothkopf, Superclass: the Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 289; cf. xx.
11 The lethal bomb attack of November 2005 on a bookshop in the Turkish district of Şemdinli, “initially attributed to the Kurdish separatist PKK, turned out to have been committed by members of Turkey’s paramilitary police intelligence service, together with a former PKK member turned informer” (Scott. “Korea [1950], the Tonkin Gulf Incident, and 9/11,” citing Nicholas Birch, Irish Times, November 26, 2005). Cf. Gareth Jones, “Bombing throws spotlight on Turkey,” Hürriyet, November 20, 2005.
12 James Petras, “The Norwegian Massacre, the State, the Media and Israel,” My Catbird Seat, July 2011.
13 Michael Schwartz, “Suspect in Norway Reconstructs Killings for Police,” New York Times, August 14, 2011.
14 Ola Tunander, personal communication, August 4, 2011.
15 Ganser, Nato’s Secret Armies, 176, 181, 183, 289.
16 The term “legend” was popularized by author Edward Jay Epstein with respect to Oswald, in a book with that title. Epstein was suggesting that Oswald’s legend had been created by the KGB for a non-assassination purpose. A CIA monograph by former CIA officer Cleveland C. Cram, “Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature,” criticized Epstein’s book for creating what was in effect another legend: “Epstein, working with James Angleton, was part of a disinformation campaign. Cram writes: ‘Legend… gave Angleton and his supporters an advantage by putting their argument adroitly – if dishonestly – before the public first’” (John Simkin, “Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald.”).
16 Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
17 Olivier Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for a New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
18 Gore Vidal, „The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt,“ New York Review of Books, December 13, 1973, (full disclosure: I wrote most of the brief footnotes for this essay): ”Although H.H. is a self-admitted forger of state papers I do not think that he actually had a hand in writing Bremer’s diary on the ground that the journal is a brilliant if flawed job of work, and beyond H.H.’s known literary competence.”
19 Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 80-92, 262-66.
20 The CIA also made plans to have the Oswald tape translated into Spanish and distributed through Latin America via one of its radio assets. See “AMCOUP-1 Possible Use of DRE Tape,” CIA Dispatch of December 13, 1963, NARA #104-10018-10074, available from Mary Ferrell Foundation website, “The President’s assassination, of course, gave this radio debate newsworthiness of the highest category.” Cf. Peter Dale Scott, „New Documents.“ Open Secrets, I.6/II.1 (Dec.-Jan. 1995/Feb.-Apr. 1996), 20.
21 It can still be seen on Youtube, but on condition that you first sign up and then certify that you are over 18.
22 The video refers to the manifesto, and both are said to be produced by (in the video version) De laude novae militae Productions. De laude novae militae is faulty Latin copied from an amateurish website description of “In Praise of the New Knighthood,” a letter Bernard of Clairvaux sent to Hugues de Payens in support of the Templar order (TemplarHistory.com: A History and Mythos of the Knights Templar, March 2010, link). The same words, corrected to De laude novae militiae, open the manifesto.
23 Andrew Gumbel, “Seeds of Terror in Norway,” Los Angeles Times, July 28, 2011.
24 Dana Rohrabacher, “Chairman’s Report: The Oklahoma City Bombing: Was There A Foreign Connection?“ December 26, 2006.
25 “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – Yousef’s uncle, then located in Qatar – was a fellow plotter of Yousef in the Manila air plot and had also wired him some money prior, to the Trade Center bombing (9/11 Commission Report, 73).
26 J.M. Berger, “Did Nichols and Yousef Meet?” Intelwire.com, 2004. Peter Lance cites a sworn affidavit from a former leader of Abu Sayyaf (a Philippine group being trained by al Qaeda), claiming that at a meeting he had met Yousef together with “a man named Terry Nichols, who was introduced …as ‘a farmer’” (Peter Lance, 1000 Days, 313; cf. 317). Berger argues that this claim “comes up short.”
27 Peter Dale Scott, Road to 9/11, 146-60; Peter Dale Scott, „Bosnia, Kosovo, and Now Libya: The Human Costs of Washington’s On-Going Collusion with Terrorists,“ Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 29, 2011, http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3578.
28 Peter Dale Scott, American War Machine, 193-207; quoting from Joint Chiefs of Staff, “Courses of Action Related to Cuba (Case II),” Report of the J-5 to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 1, 1963, NARA #20-10002-10018, 21.
29 Scott, American War Machine, 167-68, 241-43; discussing 9/11 Commission Report, 171.
30 Justin Raimondo, “Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man: Following the money trail,” Antiwar.com, July 29, 2011; citing Independent (London), July 28, 2001, link: “Exactly what he lived on in the run- up to the massacre remains a mystery. But his bank details reveal that in 2007, a sum equivalent to €80,000 (£70,000) was added to his account, which would have enabled him to live without having to work.”
31 Raimondo, “Anders Behring Breivik, Mystery Man,” citing Sydney Morning Herald, July 25, 2011.
32 Aftenposten, August 3, 2011, link. Cf. Hegnar Online, 03 August 2011, link. In addition the language of the Breivik manifesto hints over and over at a larger entity behind 7/22 – e.g. „It has been decided that the operation will be effectuated in Autumn, 2011. However, I cannot go into factors concerning why, at this point. My current funds are running low, and I have less than 15 000 Euro left with a 30 000 credit backup from my 10 different credit cards. My primary funds should cover all planned expenses without spending any of the credit.
33 Stavanger Aftenblad, August 3, 2011.
34 “Personal facts about Andrew Berwick (Anders Behring Breivik),” Aufgeweckt, July 25, 2011, link.
35 Scott, American War Machine, 163. This arms supply operation is suspected to have been the work of a network headed by a former Mossad agent in Panama, Mike Harari, who was remembered by some Norwegians. In 1973 Harari, when Chief of the Operations Branch of Mossad, had overseen the botched murder of an innocent Moroccan in Lillehammer, Norway.
36 Barry Rubin, „The Region: The Oslo Syndrome,” Jerusalem Post, July 31 2011.
37 Wayne Madsen, “Israeli Co-option of Europe’s Far-right Political Parties” Rense.com, August 3, 2011: “Although various media outlets, known to bend and succumb to the pressure applied by Israel and its global sympathizers, tried to downplay the connections between Breivik and his allies in Zionist circles in Israel and Europe, no less than the Jerusalem Post, an echo chamber for Zionist and neo-conservative interests, reported that Breivik was ‘motivated by Zionism’ in carrying out his deadly attack in Norway.
In fact, Breivik had a keen interest in one such stay-behind network in Turkey, a network that transformed itself into the Israeli Mossad-linked Ergenekon network, which may still be active against the Justice and Development (AK) Party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The German magazine Spiegel has highlighted the growing relationship between heretofore anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi far-right European political parties and Israel’s right-wing parties. Spiegel’s report focused on particularly close ties between Israelis and the Freedom Party of Austria, the National Front of France, the Flemish Vlaams Belang, the National Democratic Party of Germany, the German Freedom Party, True Finns Party of Finland, and the Northern League of Italy.”
38 Quoted in Paul Woodward, “Did Anders Behring Breivik Act Alone? “ Eurasia Review, July 25, 2011.
39 “An illustration of several successful and decisive campaigns: – Serb Volunteer Guard – SDG[1] – Type: Paramilitary organisation – Size: 10 000+ – Garrison HQ: Belgrade – Nickname: Arkan’s Tigers, The Tigers – Commander: Zeljko Raznatovic – Second in command: Colonel Nebojsa Djordjevic Suca and Milorad Ulemek Legija….. The Albanian Muslims in Serbia refused deportation and convertion from Islam (and instead started armed resistance) and as such were targeted for annihilation.” Of those named by Breivik, Ulemek is the sole survivor; Raznatovic (“Arkan”), and Suca were both murdered.
40 Duncan Gardham, “Violent Videos of Oslo Killer’s ‘Mentor,’” Daily Telegraph (London), July 29, 2011.
41 The only exceptions to this style are the stills of Breivik himself at the end of the video.
42 Richard Bartholomew, “Paul Ray Identifies with Northern Ireland Loyalist Groups,” Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, October 23, 2009. Discussed at Richard Bartholomew, “ London Times Highlights Paul Ray,” Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, July 29, 2011.
43 “Tribute to President Charles Taylor The Order 777,” link.
44 Colbert I. King, “Pat Robertson’s Gold,” Washington Post, September 22, 2001. Similarly Laurent Nkunda, another of the video’s heroes, is characterized by Leana Wen in the New York Times (June 21, 2007) as “an actual ‘warlord’ who is accused of raping and massacring thousands.” Wen heard from a pastor that “Nkunda’s faith at one point seemed real;” but “local churches … were finally convinced that he was the one leading the crimes and atrocities, and his own church ended up excommunicating him.” Wen describes Nkunda as sporting a pin, “Rebels for Christ” – a phrase displayed also in Greger’s video.
45 In addition a video posted by “madnick77” says that Greger himself used “drugs and prostitution” in pursuit of his political goals (“Commander Nick Greger A.k.a Mad Nick / The Order 777,” link).
46 Charles Taylor was less known for drug trafficking than for the illicit traffic in blood-diamonds. Nevertheless when Taylor, a fugitive, was finally detained in a Range Rover with Nigerian diplomatic plates, significant amounts of cash and heroin were found in the vehicle (Sunday Times [London], August 8, 2010). Cf. Mail Guardian [South Africa], December 3. 2010, link: “A leading Dutch newspaper, Parool, carried a prominent news story last Friday linking … Liberia’s current leader, Charles Taylor, to a notorious drug syndicate. “
47 For Geagea’s drug trafficking see Jonathan Marshall, Descent into Chaos: Drug Trafficking and the Failure of Lebanon’s State, 1950-1990 (Stanford: Stanford UP, forthcoming), 131; citing Le Monde, May 19, 1990; Labrousse, La droga, 136-137.
48 For Johnny Adair’s drug trafficking see “Johnny Adair: Notorious Loyalist,” BBC News, January 10, 2003, link; cf. Daily Record, February 5, 2011, link.
49 ”UDA hitman muscles in on Scots drugs racket; Adair lieutenant seeks new patch after failed deal leaves him broke,” link.
50 “Billy Wright and INLA carved up drugs market,” NewsLetter.co, link. A seventh man celebrated in the Greger video, Wright’s LTV adjutant, Mark Fulton, has not been personally accused of drug trafficking. But Fulton’s brother, Jim Fulton, was arrested in California with terrorist materials and drugs for sale, and the whole LTV militia has been accused collectively of becoming drug dealers (BBC News, January 16, 2000, link).
51 “Ulemek Made Industry Out of Criminal Gang,” B92-News, December 17, 2997, link: “Ulemek and Spasojević had some 200 men under their direct control, the state said, and established a drug trafficking monopoly in the capital, as well as in Vojvodina and the town of Požarevac. This monopoly came as a result of a series of murders, starting in 2000.”
52 “Killers of Serbia’s first elected PM jailed for 40 years,” Independent (London), May 24, 2007.
53 Cecilia Ferrara, “Against the Mafia,” Balcanicaucaso.org, February 26, 2010.
54 My interest in Breivik and Far West began after reading the claim from Belarus that Breivik “underwent militant-terrorist training under the guidance of 51-year-old Valery Lunev, a former colonel of Belarusian special forces, who now lives in the Netherlands but regularly visits Belarus” (Yuri Mamchur, “Norwegian Terrorist Anders Breivik Trained in Belarus Militant Camps,” Russia Blog, July 28, 2011.) Lunev was a senior officer of Far West, responsible in particular for Far West’s “strong arm operations,” including the violent coup d’etat of 1991 against Georgian Premier Zviad Gamsahurdia, in which at least 113 people died (Peter Dale Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11”; cf. Link.) The Breivik manifesto does mention travel to Belarus. But unfortunately there is no independent corroboration for the claim of a Breivik-Lunev connection, alleged by a Belarusian politician, Mikhail Reshetnikov, with an obvious motive to implicate the Belarus Government of Alexander Lukashenko. (Cf. “Filin – “El Buho” Is Getting Nervous,” Left.ru, June 24, 2006, link: Lunev “serves in the counter-terrorist department of his [Lukashenko’s] KGB.”)
55 “Filin – “El Buho” Is Getting Nervous,” Left.ru, June 24, 2006.
56 Mats R. Berdal and Mónica Serrano, Transnational organized crime and international security: business as usual? (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers 2002).
57 Scott, American War Machine, 188; Peter Dale Scott, “The Real Grand Chessboard and the Profiteers of War (Part Two),” Foreign Policy Journal, January 10, 2010; Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group.”
58 Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group.”
59 Rothkopf, Superclass, 289; cf. xx.
60 Ronald Kessler, The Richest Man in the World: The Story of Adnan Khashoggi (New York: Warner Books, 1988). Khashoggi was also listed in the 1992 Senate BCCI Report as one of the “principal foreign agents of the U.S.” (U.S. Congress. Senate, 102nd Cong., 2nd Sess. The BCCI Affair: A Report to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations from Senator John Kerry, Chairman, and from Senator Hank Brown, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations, 299; Scott, American War Machine, 160-62).
61 Moisés Naím, Illicit: how smugglers, traffickers, and copycats are hijacking the global economy (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 49; quoted in Rothkopf, Superclass, 218. An associate of Viktor Bout, Oleg Orlov of EMM Arab Systems in Cyprus, collaborated both in Bout’s arms sales to Africa and in Bout’s shipping of Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles, illegally exported by Far West, to Iran and China (UN Final report of the Monitoring Mechanism on Angola Sanctions, paragraphs 111 – 144, link (Bout/Orlov/Africa); cf. “Filin-‘El Buho’ is getting nervous:” “[Viktor] Bout-Aminov, [Richard] Chichakli, and Oleg Orlov were ‘outed’ in Angola and later in the rest of Africa in 2002-2005. Then Orlov was ‘outed’ in the X-55 affair, China and Iran in the beginning of 2005. As the result, Orlov is in the Ukrainian jail, Chichakli hides somewhere in the Emirates, and Bout-Aminov keeps a low profile and shuttles between Moscow suburbs and Minsk. As to Bout’s and Chichakli’s friend Mr. [Charles] Taylor, he has been apprehended by the Hague Tribunal.“ It is widely accepted that Bout’s arms shipments to Liberia served the purposes of Taylor. But it can also be assumed that Taylor’s coup and arms purchases served the financial interests of Bout, a much more powerful and well-connected figure
62 Scott, Road to 9/11, 254; citing Daniel Singer, Whose Millennium: Theirs or Ours
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999).
63 Reuters, July 26, 2011, link.
64 Scott, American War Machine, 191-92.
65 Peter Dale Scott, “The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11”; cf. Link.
66 American War Machine, 2-5, 43; cf. 20-22, 134-40, 239-41.

Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites. Part III

Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites. Part II
Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites. Part I

Further reading:

Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic

Part II: The Meta-Group, West, and East

Part III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi
Part IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999
Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
Part VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”

Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
Part VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking

Part IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.
Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
Part XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic.

Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher.

Peter Dale Scott – The planted clues for Breivik’s legend
Breivik the man must be viewed as unreliable, and every statement from him viewed with the greatest suspicion. Yet his extensive autodocumentation — by which I mean the Internet manifesto, video, and Facebook page attributed to him — deserve to be assessed carefully regardless of authorship, especially in the light of later statements he is alleged to have made to the Norwegian police. And here we can say that, whatever the truth about Breivik, the autodocumentation shows connections leading ultimately to the shadowy underworld of arms and drug traffickers that may also have fostered al Qaeda.

It is exceedingly common for high-publicity deep events to be accompanied by such autodocumentation, After the diaries of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, the alleged diary attributed to Arthur Bremer (the man said to have shot the 1972 presidential candidate George Wallace, stimulated Gore Vidal to wonder, in an essay for the New York Review of Books, whether the true author of the diary might not have been the CIA officer and Watergate plotter E. Howard Hunt (or in my terms, whether the Wallace shooting might not have been a systemic deep event).

Nearby in a rented car, the police found Bremer’s diary (odd that in the post-Gutenberg age Oswald, Sirhan, and Bremer should have all committed to paper their pensées).

According to the diary, Bremer had tried to kill Nixon in Canada but failed to get close enough. He then decided to kill George Wallace. The absence of any logical motive is now familiar to most Americans, who are quite at home with the batty killer who acts alone in order to be on television.18

Gore’s perceptive witticism, the “killer who acts alone in order to be on television,” fits Breivik very well: his documents seem clearly designed to generate maximum publicity and speculation.

Somewhat like Breivik, Oswald left behind him a legacy of autodocumentation, some of which proved to be very suited for post-assassination television. This included, besides a diary and extensive political manuscripts, an audio-video tape involving an ex-Army psychological warfare expert, and expounding his alleged political beliefs. Yet the differences are instructive. Oswald’s autodocumentation of his alleged left-wing identity can be seen in retrospect as false, and probably part of FBI-CIA efforts to discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which Oswald tried to penetrate.19

Breivik’s video appears to express his true beliefs, even though I shall argue in a moment that most of the video may have been prepared by someone else. Yet in contrast to Breivik’s, the misleading Oswald audio-video was aired extensively after the JFK assassination, as part of the propaganda campaign to describe him as a leftist.20 The Breivik video, by comparison, has been downplayed, and has indeed disappeared from many if not most of the web sites where it was originally posted.21

This suggests to me that the Breivik video was intended to capitalize on the publicity caused by his actions, but that the group behind this effort was not part of mainstream western society, and is not currently being supported by those in charge of the mainstream media. I shall suggest shortly that it was designed primarily for a different audience: the world of the resentful who find an outlet for their resentments on the Internet.

What Does Breivik’s Video Indicate? That Breivik Did Not Act Alone
Both the content and the authorship of Breivik’s video remain very mysterious. What seems relatively clear is that it was not composed and controlled by Breivik alone.

The evidence for plural authorship for the video is internal.22 Almost all of the video appears to be a speeded-up version of a text-heavy sequence of stills, possibly originally a slideshow presentation about knights templar and their fellow crusaders. It is clear both that a great deal of work has gone into the preparation and presentation of this text, and also that the text serves little or no purpose in the speeded-up Breivik version, For there are sometimes up to about twenty lines of text on a screen page, of which not more than about four or five lines can be read, even swiftly, in the time now allotted to them.

Otherwise the video is of professional quality, definitely not a home movie. One of the stylistic features unifying it is the steady predictable rhythm in the three- or four-second time-lapses allotted to each still. This rhythm is broken, jarringly, at the very end, when three photos of Breivik himself appear. The first two are presented very swiftly, completely out of sync with the rhythmic presentation in the rest of the video.

I am left with the strong impression that whoever added Breivik’s stills at the end of the video – who may possibly even have been Breivik himself – was not the original videographer or slideshow preparer. It was someone instead with a different style, sensibility, and purpose. (It would not surprise me to learn that there are other discernible and even quantifiable differences between the slideshow and Breivik parts of the video, with respect to such details as light.)

Whoever emailed out the video and manifesto just before the attacks was most likely aware of the massacres about to unfold. And if there is more than one author for the video, then Breivik was most probably not acting alone. For the release of the two documents must be considered an integral, indeed an essential, part of the 7/22 event — indeed the point of it. I shall argue shortly that its aim was not just slaughter but publicity: to provoke a heightened discussion of the issues and promoters of counter-jihad.

Norway’s Terror as Systemic Destabilization: Breivik, the Arms-for-Drugs Milieu, and Global Shadow Elites. Part I

Further reading:
Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic
Part II: The Meta-Group, West, and East

Part III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi
Part IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999
Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
Part VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”

Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
Part VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking
Part IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.
Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
Part XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic.

Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher.

Peter Dale Scott – The most surprising aspect of the recent unexpected terrorist violence in Norway is that, in retrospect, it is not surprising. Our revived hopes after the end of the Cold War, that we might finally be emerging into a world of diminishing bloodshed, have been abundantly disabused.

Events of seemingly random irrational violence, such as that which so shocked us when President Kennedy was assassinated, have become a predictable part of the world in which we live.

To some extent we can blame the violence on our social system itself. It is clearly unsatisfactory, and needs fundamental reconstructions that nonviolent actions have been painfully slow to deliver. Thus violence slowly builds up at all levels, from the flash mobs of the hopeless at the base of society to the war schemes of those in high places. In such a milieu Anders Breivik is only one of many, from the Unabomber in America to the jihadi suicide bombers everywhere, who have chosen to dedicate themselves to sacrificial violence, rather than to an eventless survival in an alienating status quo.

But the backgrounds of some violent events are more mysteriously organized than, say, those of a resentful and quasi-spontaneous grudge killing or flash mob. For some time I have discussed acts such as the Kennedy assassination as what I have called deep events: events, obscured and/or misrepresented in mainstream media, whose origins are mysterious but often intelligence-related, attributed to marginal outsiders, but intersecting with large and powerful but covert forces having the power and the intent to influence history. More recently I have emphasized the need to analyze deep events comparatively, as part of an on-going hidden substrate in so-called developed societies. And to raise the question whether key deep events are interrelated.

Breivik’s mayhem on July 22, 2011, (henceforth 7/22) has forced me to clarify my definition of a deep event, to distinguish between those which are merely unsolved or mysterious in themselves, and those which have proved to be part of a larger systemic mystery grounded in the structures of either society itself, or its shadow underworld (demi-monde, Irrwelt), or in some combination of the two. As I wrote three years ago, “The unthinkable – that elements inside the state would conspire with criminals to kill innocent civilians – has become not only thinkable but commonplace in the last century.”1

Breivik under arrest
There is no evidence that Unabomber’s actions, or the two assassination attempts against President Gerald Ford (by Lynette Fromm and Sara Jane Moore) were deep events in this second, more limited sense. The still not understood nerve gas attacks of 1995 in the Tokyo subway, by the Buddhist group Aum Shinrikyo, can be seen as a possible deep event.2

The attack on Pope John Paul II is a more probable one, because of the murderer’s membership in the Turkish Grey Wolves, an activist movement close to the Turkish security apparatus now known as Turkey’s gizli devlet or deep state.3

As examples of systemic deep events, we can point to two spectacular bombings in Italy, the Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan and simultaneous Rome bombing of 1969. These were initially blamed on marginal left-wing anarchists, but were ultimately revealed to have been false-flag attacks organized, as part of a strategy of tension, by right-wing neo-fascists inside the Italian military intelligence agency SISMI, with a possible green light (according to the chief of SISMI) from elements in the CIA.4

Since then an Italian premier has confirmed that the parallel intelligence structure responsible for the bombings was part of a stay-behind network, Gladio, which we now know was originally organized by NATO as a potential resistance in the event of a Soviet occupation of western Europe. Moreover, in the words of an Italian parliamentary commission, “Those massacres, those bombs, those military action had been organized or promoted or supported…by men linked to the structures of the United States.”5

In country after country, the Gladio networks soon deteriorated into activist anti-democratic cells with intelligence connections. They have been shown to have been behind other acts of violence, including the actions of the Grey Wolves in Turkey, and the Brabant massacres of 1983-85 in Belgium.6 Nor is this ancient history. In November 1990 Italian Premier Andreotti revealed that Italy, along with France and the other NATO countries, had just convened at a secret NATO Gladio meeting just the month before – i.e., after the fall of the Berlin Wall.7

This persisting presence of Gladio networks throughout Europe, including Norway, raises the question: was 7/22 a systemic deep event, or at least a possible deep event? Having pondered this for a month, my conclusions, all tentative except the first, are these:
1) Breivik most probably did not act alone, despite the latest official reports: “prosecutors and police have said they are fairly certain that Breivik planned and committed them on his own.”8

2) We should probably look for his associates in the demi-monde mobilized outside and against the state, rather than in the structures of the state itself.

3) 7/22 is probably not a traditional false-flag operation; the milieu of Breivik’s associates is indeed probably that pointed to, without incrimination, in the alleged Breivik manifesto and video.

4) The motive of 7/22 may have been to maximize publicity for the political message of one particular group in this milieu, the Euronationalist Knights Templar of former neo-Nazi turned counter-jihad publicist Nick Greger.

5) We should look behind the counter-jihad ideology of Breivik and Greger’s Knights Templar to the arms-for-drugs trafficking connections of their avowed heroes and contacts – particularly of the Serbian Mafioso and Red Beret veteran Milorad Ulemek.

6) Of particular interest are the criminal connections between the drug trafficker Ulemek (and possibly Breivik) and the Russian arms-and-drugs meta-group Far West LLC – a group I have discussed elsewhere for its involvement in systemic destabilization and conceivably even 9/11.9

7) Far West’s involvement in systemic destabilization was probably not just self-motivated, but had protection if not instigation from Far West’s connections to what David Rothkopf, in an important book, has called the illicit shadow elites that are part of the world’s elite superclass.10

8) Thus Norway’s terror, like comparable bombings in Italy and Turkey, illustrates, once again, the congruence between the dark quadrant of systemic destabilization (or what I once called “managed violence”) and the milieu of the international drug traffic.11

James Petras has wondered whether Breivik’s actions on 7/22 were part of a Norwegian strategy of tension on the model of Piazza Fontana. He has raised what he calls the “obvious question…as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons?”12 He thus suspects the extreme delay of the police in reaching the island of Utøya – a suspicion enhanced by “confirmed reports in the Norwegian news media that Mr. Breivik had called the police several times during the attack on Utoya.”13

The Oslo bombing
In response, the Norwegian peace researcher Ola Tunander has observed that the Norwegian security establishment and police resources are smaller than foreigners might imagine: “Norway is a small country with a relatively unified power structure, where everyone knows each other, and there is less of a clear split between the security forces and the political elite. Close friends of the Chief of Police, for example the Deputy Foreign Minister, were among those with children on the Utøya island.“14

This may not close the debate. For Norway also had a Gladio stay-behind network, ROCAMBOLE (ROC), that was partly funded and controlled by NATO, the CIA, and the British service MI6. ROC was also controversial. In the 1950s a secret controversy arose from Norway’s discovery that an American in Norway’s NATO HQ had “spied upon high-ranking Norwegian officials.” The left-wing Norwegian intelligence chief who discovered this situation and protested it to NATO, Vilhelm Evang, was later forced out of office by other Norwegian security officials, as the indirect result of a secret allegation forwarded by CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton.15 So Norway’s security apparatus was not entirely homogeneous and autonomous.

Whatever the facts, 7/22 must be distinguished from a classical false-flag event by Gladio stay-behind networks. Traditionally in such cases, the designated perpetrator was associated, not with right-wingers, but the left.

The Key to 7/22 Lies in the Event, Not in the Man
Breivik the man is unique, proclaiming his affiliations with both the Unabomber’s philosophy and the right-wing counter-jihad milieu. But 7/22 the event is more familiar, and presents a number of features that are also familiar from past deep events:

1) a “legend” or documented characterization of the perpetrator;
2) “planted clues,” or what I have elsewhere referred to as a “paper trail,” often including videos suitable for post-event promotion of the legend;

3) in particular, planted autodocumentation, a genre ranging in variety from the “historic diary” of Lee Harvey Oswald to the manifesto of the Unabomber;

4) a tested modus operandi for a mass bombing. The word “legend” is a term of art from the intelligence world meaning a myth created around a person, usually to hide their real intent or loyalties.16 I use it here without prejudging the truth or falsity of the myth, or the related question of authorship. Above all, in what follows, I do not mean to imply that the myth can be dismissed as a cynical artifact. Indeed it seems clear that the author of the manifesto/video, whether Breivik alone or someone else, was consciously creating a myth of a crusade against Islam which they sincerely believed in.

Let me digress for a moment, as someone who believes in the long-term future of democracy, open societies, and multiculturalism as it is developing in America. I see the widespread resentments of Breivik and countless others about “multi-cultis” as a serious phenomenon worthy of sympathetic understanding. Technology and globalization, as much in Russia and China as in the West, are creating problems for the survival and health of cultures everywhere, from Thailand to Tibet to the banlieu of Paris, for which it is difficult to see short-term solutions.

One response, ironically shared by Euronationalist crusaders like Breivik and also their jihadi Islamist opponents, is to be drawn to crusader-jihadi violence. (The secular anarchist Unabomber, quoted by Breivik, shows another version of this response.) Olivier Roy and others have sensitively analyzed the appeal of salafi jihad to young Muslims in Europe, with an identity-crisis caused by their alienation from the various distant cultures of their ancestors, as much as from the Western culture in which they are marginalized.17 We need also to address the identity-crises of those who see their traditional monocultures, in Norway as anywhere else, challenged by rapid cultural changes that are inadequately discussed, let alone managed.

Take the example of Switzerland, a country that has learned over centuries to live with four different languages and two versions of Christianity that once warred bitterly against each other. This cultural maturity does not equip the Swiss to deal easily with new immigrants who wish to establish not only mosques but Sharia in their midst.

A much longer essay than this one would be needed to explore the resonances of Breivik’s myth. But our topic here is 7/22, not Breivik the man.

Further reading:
Part I: History and the Political Requirements of the Global Drug Traffic
Part II: The Meta-Group, West, and East

Part III: The Meta-Group, BCCI, and Adnan Khashoggi
Part IV: Dunlop’s Account of the Beaulieu Meeting’s Purpose: The “Russian 9/11” in 1999
Part V: Dunlop’s Redactions of His Source Yasenev
Part VI: The Khashoggi Villa Meeting, Kosovo, and the “Pristina Dash”
Part VII: The Role of Anton Surikov: The Dunlop and Yasenev Versions
Part VIII: Saidov, Surikov, Muslim Insurrectionism, and Drug Trafficking
Part IX: Allegations of Drug-Trafficking and Far West Ltd.
Part X: Far West Ltd, Halliburton, Diligence LLC, New Bridge, and Neil Bush
Part XI: The U.S. Contribution to the Afghan-Kosovo Drug Traffic.

Last Part XII: Concluding Remarks: Meta-Groups and Transpolitics.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher.

Steve Tarlow – The United States’ extraordinary rendition program, which involves transporting and allegedly torturing suspected terrorists, is a controversial aspect of the war on terror. Now, the Guardian reports that the cloak-and-dagger treatment that is bad news for how the world perceives the U.S. and U.K. governments is good news for private American companies. Contracting secret transportation of suspected terrorists to secret prisons amounts to big business.

Fly the unfriendly skies of rendition
As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, records revealed in a New York-based fee dispute lawsuit, including invoices, receipts and more, suggest that a number of private American firms were paid handsomely by the U.S. government to fly terrorism suspects to various locations around the world. Suspects were reportedly sedated via anal suppositories, then hooded and muffled in the back of the aircraft to facilitate easy transport.

Testimony from multiple sources has revealed that torture techniques were used at many, if not all, of the interrogation center destinations.

Records from the lawsuit reveal that a number of high-ranking executives at firms like Sportsflight and Richmor were completely aware of the purpose of the private charter flights. As a result, corporations and individuals are now at risk of being sued by al-Qaida and Taliban suspects who were victimized by the U.S. extraordinary rendition program.

The case against Sportsflight and Richmor
Sportsflight, an aircraft broker, and Richmor, an aircraft operator, entered into a contract agreement with the U.S. government to rent Gulfstream IV executive jets at $4,900 per hour, rather than the market rate of $5,450 per hour. Crews were made available to fly with only 12 hours’ notice.

“(We were told) we’re going to be very, very busy,” he told the court.

Records of known terror suspects such as Egyptian cleric Abu Omar and alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – among others involved in the CIA rendition program – are reportedly among the evidence in the New York lawsuit. Flights to and from Alaska, Japan, Thailand, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka are logged, records which support details previously obtained from Indonesian terror leader Encep Nuraman, the Guardian reports.

Richmor is known to have provided aircraft for a private military company called DynCorp, which was acting on the CIA’s behalf. Bills for aircraft were traced through Sportsflight and another aircraft broker, Capital Aviation.

Legal charity Reprieve allegedly discovered the CIA rendition documents that were taken into evidence against Sportsflight and Richmor. Reprieve director Cori Crider spoke to the Guardian of the “sinister business”:

“These documents reveal how the CIA’s secret network of torture sites was able to operate unchecked for so many years. They also reveal what a farce it was that the CIA managed to get the prisoners’ torture claims kicked out as secret, while all of the details of its sinister business were hiding in plain sight,” she said.

Rumänien soll Ziel für CIA-Geheimflüge gewesen sein

Rumänien könnte dem US-Geheimdienst CIA zwischen 2002 und 2005 als Landeziel für Geheimflüge zum Transfer von Terrorverdächtigen gedient haben. Dies geht laut mehreren internationalen Medienberichten aus einer Reihe von Dokumenten hervor, die als Beweismittel in einem Rechtsstreit zwischen zwei von der CIA beauftragten privaten Fluggesellschaften an die Öffentlichkeit gelangten.

Gefangentransporte sollen neben Bukarest auch nach Baku, Kairo, Dschibuti, Islamabad und Tripoli geführt haben. Auch Guantanamo, Deutschland und Ziele im Nahen Osten sollen oft angeflogen worden sein.

Die rund 1.500 Seiten umfassenden internen Dokumente der Firmen Sportsfight und Richmor Aviation, die über Flugrouten und eine Gesamtanzahl von 1.258 Flugstunden Auskunft geben, wurden von einer Londoner Anwaltskanzlei der Agentur „Associated Press“ sowie den Tageszeitungen „Washington Post“ und „The Guardian“ zur Verfügung gestellt.

Der Skandal um angebliche Gefangenentransporte und geheime CIA-Gefängnisse war in Rumänien 2005 ausgebrochen und erreichte 2006 seinen Höhepunkt, nachdem in einem Bericht des Europarats festgestellt wurde, dass mindestens 100 Personen von der CIA an geheime Orte transportiert worden seien und ein Europarat-Vertreter Rumänien als eines der Ziele identifizierte. Nachdem rumänische Verantwortliche die Existenz der Geheimgefängnisse stets bestritten hatten, kam 2006 auch die einschlägige parlamentarische Untersuchungskommission zum Schluss, dass Rumänien keine CIA-Gefängnisse beherbergt habe. Deren Vorsitzende, Norica Nicolai von der Nationalliberalen Partei (PNL), erklärte am Donnerstag für Radio France International, dass die Existenz der Gefängnisse, nicht aber der Transfer von Gefangenen ausgeschlossen worden sei.

Die Tageszeitung „New York Times“ hatte 2009 ein CIA-Gefängnis in der Hauptstadt Bukarest, in der Nähe des Gebäudes des Innenministeriums vermutet. Auch im ehemaligen Militärstützpunkt Mihail Kogalniceanu im Südosten des Landes soll es laut damaligen Medienberichten geheime Gefängnisse gegeben haben.

Amnesty International wirft europäischen Regierungen Komplizenschaft bei Folter-Flügen vor
N34315: Welcome to Vienna

Jason Grant – He operated out of The Netherlands. But according to federal authorities, the Dutch national brazenly flouted U.S. export laws again and again, directing cloaked shipments of American munitions from New York to Iran for nearly a year.

At least some of those munitions, authorities said, may have landed in the hands of the Iranian military.

Ulrich Davis, 50, a former manager of a Dutch freight-forwarding company was arrested this weekend while trying to board a flight to his homeland at Newark Liberty International Airport, authorities said.

Davis used various methods in order to hide the nature of what his company was up to. He‘d have invoices and item-lists removed from shipments, according to the criminal complaint unsealed in Newark federal court today. He’d also direct employees to wrongly list The Netherlands as the ultimate country of destination for shipments, rather than Iran, the complaint alleges.

His company, described in the complaint as a „Netherlands freight forwarding company“ and a subsidiary of an Austrian-based company, also allegedly had an affiliate freight-forwarding company in New York that was used to send out the American products.

In 2007 and 2008, Davis conspired with others to export a variety of goods, from aircraft parts that included altitude direction indicators and fuel control units, to peroxide and aerosols, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman said.

According to the complaint, Davis‘ freight-forwarding company even shipped out parts that were stamped „Country of Origin: USA“ while also saying the parts were intended for the „C-130 Red Half Moon.“ „Red Half Moon,“ authorities explained, is a companion organization to the American Red Cross – but the C-130 is an American-manufactured military transport aircraft that is used by the U.S. but „is also currently in service with the Iranian Air Force.“

Davis, the complaint alleges, was listed as the employee responsible for the shipment.

Today, authorities said, Davis appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Patty Shwartz in Newark on a charge of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transactions Regulations, and he was detained.

Davis sent prohibited shipments to Iran, intentionally hiding the nature of sensitive materials to be provided to the Iranian military, said Fishman.

„The violation of export laws designed to keep American munitions out of the wrong hands is more than shady business practice; it is a threat to national security,“ he added.

Authorities said Davis got some of the materials shipped to Iran between August 2007 and January 2008 from a New Jersey Company – including adhesive primer, peroxide and aerosols. The company remained unnamed in the complaint, as did the Dutch freight forwarding company.

In a January 2008 e-mail he allegedly sent to a representative of another company, Davis wrote: „99% of these goods were destined to be send to Teheran [sic]/Iran, which was and still is a very difficult destination due to political reasons.“

Fishman‘s office credited both the Boston and New York offices of Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement in the investigation leading to the arrest and charge against Davis.

„This investigation demonstrates our ongoing commitment to pursue individuals, including those in the freight forwarder community, who knowingly violate U.S. export control laws no matter where in the world they set up their illicit operations,“ said Eric Hirschhorn, Under Secretary for Industry and Security.
Davis faces up to 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Glorai La Riva – On June 14, 2011 Carlos Hernandez, the mayor of Hialeah, a city in Miami-Dade County, “honored” the FBI and CIA funded terrorist Luis Posada Carriles by giving him the key to the city. As many know, there is overwhelming evidence linking Luis Posada Carriles to the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban airliner, which killed 73 people, on October 6, 1976. In addition, there is ample evidence Posada was involved in the Hotel Copacabana bombing in Havana that killed Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, in 1997.

While Miami officials shamelessly “honor” the anti-Cuban terrorist Posada, the Cuban Five anti-terrorists have remained imprisoned for over 13 years. In 2001, the five men were convicted for spying on the US military and Cuban exiles in southern Florida. However, the men say they weren’t spying on the U.S. government. Rather, the five claim they were monitoring violent right-wing Cuban exile groups that have organized attacks on Cuba. In a 2009 interview with Cuban Five attorney Thomas Goldstein, Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow! asks about the conspiracy to commit murder charges on one of the five men and the flawed prosecution. Thomas Goldstein, quote:

“Sure. Well, this is the most serious charge that was brought against any of the five, and the United States contends that Gerardo Hernandez, when he gathered information on flights by Brothers to the Rescue — so what happened is that Brothers to the Rescue, which is a very anti-Castro organization, really, really opposed to the regime, really tried to bring about regime change, in part by doing overflights of Cuban territory — and Gerardo Hernandez passed on information to Cuba about when the planes would be going. Now, the planes showed up on radar anyway; it wasn’t a particularly huge deal. But then Cuba shot two of the planes down, and he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for that, even though he had nothing to do with any plan to shoot the planes down, much less a plan to shoot the planes down in US jurisdiction. You know, it’s not true, and there’s literally no evidence of it.

And we think this is kind of the best example of how this jury, and in this environment, wasn’t able to look fairly at the case and say, look, maybe these people were unregistered agents, and you’re not supposed to do that, and we have a way of dealing with those sorts of issues, but the charges here were much more serious. And this is usually resolved diplomatically, not through criminal convictions.”

Goldstein’s comments reveal the two important elements to this story. The first is the fact that the Cuban 5 was found guilty of spying on ultra-Right anti-Cuban extremists groups in the U.S., including the organization Brothers to the Rescue. Second, the government went to extraordinary lengths, including the planting of stories in the media, to paint an unflattering and false portrait of the Cuban Five, thus denying the men of a fair-trial.

In order to provide some context, it is important to understand a little history. As mentioned above, ever since 1959, Cuba has been the target of U.S. sanctions, invasions, sabotage, and violent attacks. This U.S. orchestrated campaign of violence has lead to the deaths of 3,478 and wounded another 2,099 Cubans.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, militant anti-Cuban extremists groups, operating out of Miami, began a violent bombing campaign that targeted Cuba’s tourist industry. 1998, President Fidel Castro sent Nobel Prize laureate Gabriel Garcia Marques as his personal emissary to deliver a handwritten letter to President Bill Clinton. In the letter, Castro reportedly states, “If you really want to do so, you can put a stop to this new form of terrorism. It is impossible to stop this terrorism without United States involvement . . . Unless it is stopped now, in the future any country could be victimized by this new terrorism.”

According the official website for the National Committee to Free the Cuban 5, “In the wake of the Garcia Marquez visit, the United States sent an FBI team to Havana a month later to discuss collaboration with Cuba on stopping acts of aggression emanating from Miami. At the meeting Cuba handed over 64 files containing the results of its investigation into 31 different terrorist acts and plans against the island in the decade of the 90s. The Cuban government enclosed details of operations against Cuba, including photographs of the explosives used.

Cuba then waited for the FBI to start arresting the architects of these operations, but instead, on September 12, 1998, it arrested the Cuban Five; the very men who had come to Miami to monitor the activities of the violent Miami exile groups.”

The Cuban Five were reportedly monitoring extremists organizations included Alpha 66, the F4 Commandos, the Cuban American National Foundation (said to have funded Posada), and Brothers to the Rescue. So who are the Cuban Five? The Cuban Five are Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, Ramón Labañino Salazar, Rene González Sehwerert, Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez and Fernando González Llort.. Three of the Cuban Five were born in Cuba and two were born in the United States. After a long dragged out trial, Fernando Gonzalez and René Gonzalez, received 19 and 15 years respectively. Gerardo Hernandez received a double life sentence plus 15 year. Antonio Guerrero received life sentences plus 10 years and Ramon Labañino received life sentences plus 18 years.

As Thomas Goldman noted, Hernandez’s especially stiff sentence has to do him passing of information about the Brothers to the Rescue organization. Many readers might remember in February, 1996 two of the groups plans were shot down by Cuban Air-Force MiG’s. Brothers to the Rescue had been doing flyovers into Cuban airspace and dropping leaflets. Two days before the shootdown incident, one of the pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, Juan Pablo Roque, unexpectedly showed up in Cuba. He had defected back to Cuba and claimed the Brothers to the Rescue were planned to do more than drop leaflets. While Roque was in Miami piloting planes for the Brothers to the Rescue he was also talking with and was paid by the FBI.

Two days after Roque’s return to Cuba. In spite of being warned several times by the U.S. government and Cuban officials, three Brothers to the Rescue planes headed once again to Cuban airspace. Cuban radar picked up the plans, along with the U.S. and a couple ships in the area. Cuba scrambled two MiG’s as one of the planes swept into Cuban airspace. Within minutes, the two Cuban Air-Force jets fighters shot down two planes killing all four people on board. The third Bothers to the Rescue plane escaped back to the U.S.

Understandably there was a national outcry in the U.S. and the international community stepped in and condemned Cuba for shooting down two civilian planes. Cuba claimed it had a right to defend is boarder from attacks and they had good information which lead them to believe these planes had violent intentions. And, with the return of Roque, they may very well have had proof to back up their claims. Nonetheless, the victim’s wives and mothers along with the support of the international community called for a U.N investigation.

The Inter-America Commission on Human Rights investigated the downing of the two planes and cites a study done by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and concluded, “The fact that weapons of war and combat-trained pilots were used against unarmed civilians shows not only how disproportionate the use of force was, but also the intent to end the lives of those individuals. Moreover, the extracts from the radio communications between the MiG-29 pilots and the military control tower indicate that they acted from a superior position and showed malice and scorn toward the human dignity of the victims.”

The report declared Cuba responsible for violating the right to life and the right to a fair trial of the four Brothers to the Rescue victims. Ironically, when it comes to the Freedom Flotilla campaigns to Gaza, the U.S. and much of the international community has no such concerns for unarmed civilian’s right to life, fair trial, or Israel’s use of disproportionate force. But I digress.

After the Cuban government handed over evidence of extremist Right-wing organizations in Miami plotting violence in Cuba, the FBI responded by arresting the Cuban 5. Remember, the Cuban 5 attorney pointed out that his clients were unable to get a fair trial.

Last year, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, and recently Liberation newspaper released information uncovered from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition that exposed the U.S. government orchestrated an illegal operation to influence Americans. Coordinator for Free the Cuban Five, Gloria La Riva, said of the journalist for hire operation, “Many of the articles and commentaries by the government-paid journalists were highly prejudicial and biased, with the obvious aim of negatively influencing the Miami public and the jury pool, convicting the Cuban Five, and depriving them of the fundamental right to a fair trial.”

The FOIA petition uncovered more than 2,200 pages of contracts between the U.S. and members of the Miami media. Here is a bit of an extended excerpt from the FOIA disclosures:

“The BBG and its Office of Cuba Broadcasting have operated Radio Martí since 1985 and TV Martí since 1990. They broadcast into Cuba with the intent to destabilize the government. They also broadcast directly into Miami.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 regulating U.S. “public diplomacy” abroad—Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio and TV Martí, etc.—prohibits the U.S. government from funding activities to influence and propagandize domestic public opinion, see 22 U.S.C. § 1461.

The U.S. government has funneled nearly half a billion dollars into the Office of Cuba Broadcasting in Miami. With an annual budget nearing $35 million, the OCB and BBG put on their payroll domestic journalists to broadcast the same message inside and outside the United States on Cuba-related issues, effectively violating the law against domestic dissemination of U.S. propaganda.

These contracts evidence the U.S. government’s payments to journalists in Miami whose reports constituted a sustained effort to create an atmosphere of hysteria and bias against Cuba and the Cuban Five. Three of the Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero and Ramón Labañino—have filed habeas corpus appeals arguing that their constitutional rights to due process were grossly undermined by the government’s media operation in Miami and payments to the Miami reporters.”

In 2005, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned the Cuban Five conviction ruling that the Miami venue violated the men’s right to a fair trial. A year later, the 11th Circuit en banc panel reinstated the convictions. In 2009, the Cuban Five petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court which refused to hear the case with no explanation. Later that year the U.S. District Court in Southern Florida imposed new sentences of 21 years and 10 months in prison to Antonio Guerrero, who was serving a life sentence plus 10 years. A a new sentence of 17 years and nine month to Fernando Gonzalez, who was serving a 19 years sentence and of 30 years to Ramón Labañino, who was serving a life sentence plus 18 years.

In May 2005, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted a report by its Working Group on Arbitrary Detention stating “The Working Group notes that it arises from the facts and circumstances in which the trial took place and from the nature of the charges and the harsh sentences handed down to the accused that the trial did not take place in the climate of objectivity and impartiality that is required in order to conform to the standards of a fair trial defined in article 14 of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, which the United States of America is a party.”

Last year, when Antonio Guerrero was resentenced receiving life plus ten years, in a maximum security prison, Guerrero explained to the judge why Cuba had sent him to the U.S.:

“Allow me to explain my reasons, your Honor, in the clearest and most concise way: Cuba, my little country, has been attacked, assaulted, and slandered, decade after decade by a cruel ,inhuman and absurd policy. A real terrorist war. . . . . Where have such unceasing ruthless acts been hatched and financed? For the most part, in the United States of America.”

While the Cuban Five languish in prison, Luis Posada Carriles, a terrorists and mass murderer, is honored with the key to the city. In the war on terrorism, this is one story rarely reported in the main stream media.

Terrorism case of Luis Posada debated on Capitol Hill
Fighting Terror Selectively: Washington and Posada
Mit dem Flugzeugbomber, Oli North & Felix Rodriguez auf der Pista Coca
Kuba Flugzeugbomber war CIA Agent

Democracy Now! correspondent and The Nation investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill provides an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesperson with the location of the secret prison used by the CIA he uncovered in the Somali capital of Mogadishu, which the Red Cross says it didn’t know existed. „There are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement, some of them, as far as we can document, for more than 18 months,“ Scahill says. „The Red Cross should be insisting on access to this prison, which is actually within [a] Somali government compound.“

Guests:
Yves van Loo, spokesperson for International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia
Jeremy Scahill, national security correspondent for The Nation magazine and author of the new Nation article, „The CIA’s Secret Sites in Somalia.“ He recently returned from Somalia. He is the author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

AMY GOODMAN: Yves van Loo, since you are a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Somalia, in our last segment, we were talking with investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill about the secret prison in Mogadishu and wondering whether the ICRC knows about it and is visiting the prisoners inside?

YVES VAN LOO: No, we are not visiting, and we’re not aware of any secret prison there. What I know is that, of course, in Somalia you have secret services, and you have also foreign intervention, like African Union there. So, of course, we suspect that some of the people there belong to intelligence. But now we do not conduct any activities with them. I saw that—I heard your correspondent refer to the arrest and the transfer of Mr. Warsame. But so far, I mean, we—yeah, we’ve been notified by the Department of State, but yeah, we do not have any detention activities so far in Somalia.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I’m happy to provide you with the location of the secret prison. Just go to where President Sheikh Sharif’s office is, and it’s right behind it in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency. And I think that the Red Cross should demand immediate access to this prison from both the United States government and the Somalia Transitional Federal Government, because, according to former prisoners, lawyers and Somali intelligence officials, there are scores of people that have been held without charge in this basement, some of them, as far as we can document, for more than 18 months. And the Red Cross should be insisting on access to this prison, which is actually within the TFG’s, the Somali government’s compound in Villa Somalia.

YVES VAN LOO: OK. So, just thank you for the information. What I suggest is maybe offline that you give me your contact. Then we can speak further on this matter. But I think—I mean, with no information from my side, it’s difficult to make any comment on that. But that’s very interesting.

This was published at Democracynow.com

Jeremy Scahill – Nestled in a back corner of Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport is a sprawling walled compound run by the Central Intelligence Agency. Set on the coast of the Indian Ocean, the facility looks like a small gated community, with more than a dozen buildings behind large protective walls and secured by guard towers at each of its four corners. Adjacent to the compound are eight large metal hangars, and the CIA has its own aircraft at the airport.

The site, which airport officials and Somali intelligence sources say was completed four months ago, is guarded by Somali soldiers, but the Americans control access. At the facility, the CIA runs a counterterrorism training program for Somali intelligence agents and operatives aimed at building an indigenous strike force capable of snatch operations and targeted “combat” operations against members of Al Shabab, an Islamic militant group with close ties to Al Qaeda.

As part of its expanding counterterrorism program in Somalia, the CIA also uses a secret prison buried in the basement of Somalia’s National Security Agency (NSA) headquarters, where prisoners suspected of being Shabab members or of having links to the group are held. Some of the prisoners have been snatched off the streets of Kenya and rendered by plane to Mogadishu.

While the underground prison is officially run by the Somali NSA, US intelligence personnel pay the salaries of intelligence agents and also directly interrogate prisoners. The existence of both facilities and the CIA role was uncovered by The Nation during an extensive on-the-ground investigation in Mogadishu. Among the sources who provided information for this story are senior Somali intelligence officials; senior members of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG); former prisoners held at the underground prison; and several well-connected Somali analysts and militia leaders, some of whom have worked with US agents, including those from the CIA. A US official, who confirmed the existence of both sites, told The Nation, “It makes complete sense to have a strong counterterrorism partnership” with the Somali government.

The CIA presence in Mogadishu is part of Washington’s intensifying counterterrorism focus on Somalia, which includes targeted strikes by US Special Operations forces, drone attacks and expanded surveillance operations. The US agents “are here full time,” a senior Somali intelligence official told me. At times, he said, there are as many as thirty of them in Mogadishu, but he stressed that those working with the Somali NSA do not conduct operations; rather, they advise and train Somali agents. “In this environment, it’s very tricky. They want to help us, but the situation is not allowing them to do [it] however they want. They are not in control of the politics, they are not in control of the security,” he adds. “They are not controlling the environment like Afghanistan and Iraq. In Somalia, the situation is fluid, the situation is changing, personalities changing.”

According to well-connected Somali sources, the CIA is reluctant to deal directly with Somali political leaders, who are regarded by US officials as corrupt and untrustworthy. Instead, the United States has Somali intelligence agents on its payroll. Somali sources with knowledge of the program described the agents as lining up to receive $200 monthly cash payments from Americans. “They support us in a big way financially,” says the senior Somali intelligence official. “They are the largest [funder] by far.”

According to former detainees, the underground prison, which is staffed by Somali guards, consists of a long corridor lined with filthy small cells infested with bedbugs and mosquitoes. One said that when he arrived in February, he saw two white men wearing military boots, combat trousers, gray tucked-in shirts and black sunglasses. The former prisoners described the cells as windowless and the air thick, moist and disgusting. Prisoners, they said, are not allowed outside. Many have developed rashes and scratch themselves incessantly. Some have been detained for a year or more. According to one former prisoner, inmates who had been there for long periods would pace around constantly, while others leaned against walls rocking.

A Somali who was arrested in Mogadishu and taken to the prison told The Nation that he was held in a windowless underground cell. Among the prisoners he met during his time there was a man who held a Western passport (he declined to identify the man’s nationality). Some of the prisoners told him they were picked up in Nairobi and rendered on small aircraft to Mogadishu, where they were handed over to Somali intelligence agents.

Once in custody, according to the senior Somali intelligence official and former prisoners, some detainees are freely interrogated by US and French agents. “Our goal is to please our partners, so we get more [out] of them, like any relationship,” said the Somali intelligence official in describing the policy of allowing foreign agents, including from the CIA, to interrogate prisoners. The Americans, according to the Somali official, operate unilaterally in the country, while the French agents are embedded within the African Union force known as AMISOM.

Among the men believed to be held in the secret underground prison is Ahmed Abdullahi Hassan, a 25- or 26-year-old Kenyan citizen who disappeared from the congested Somali slum of Eastleigh in Nairobi around July 2009. After he went missing, Hassan’s family retained Mbugua Mureithi, a well-known Kenyan human rights lawyer, who filed a habeas petition on his behalf. The Kenyan government responded that Hassan was not being held in Kenya and said it had no knowledge of his whereabouts. His fate remained a mystery until this spring, when another man who had been held in the Mogadishu prison contacted Clara Gutteridge, a veteran human rights investigator with the British legal organization Reprieve, and told her he had met Hassan in the prison. Hassan, he said, had told him how Kenyan police had knocked down his door, snatched him and taken him to a secret location in Nairobi. The next night, Hassan had said, he was rendered to Mogadishu.

According to the former fellow prisoner, Hassan told him that his captors took him to Wilson Airport: “‘They put a bag on my head, Guantánamo style. They tied my hands behind my back and put me on a plane. In the early hours we landed in Mogadishu. The way I realized I was in Mogadishu was because of the smell of the sea—the runway is just next to the seashore. The plane lands and touches the sea. They took me to this prison, where I have been up to now. I have been here for one year, seven months. I have been interrogated so many times. Interrogated by Somali men and white men. Every day. New faces show up. They have nothing on me. I have never seen a lawyer, never seen an outsider. Only other prisoners, interrogators, guards. Here there is no court or tribunal.’”

After meeting the man who had spoken with Hassan in the underground prison, Gutteridge began working with Hassan’s Kenyan lawyers to determine his whereabouts. She says he has never been charged or brought before a court. “Hassan’s abduction from Nairobi and rendition to a secret prison in Somalia bears all the hallmarks of a classic US rendition operation,” she says. The US official interviewed for this article denied the CIA had rendered Hassan but said, “The United States provided information which helped get Hassan—a dangerous terrorist—off the street.”

Human Rights Watch and Reprieve have documented that Kenyan security and intelligence forces have facilitated scores of renditions for the US and other governments, including eighty-five people rendered to Somalia in 2007 alone. Gutteridge says the director of the Mogadishu prison told one of her sources that Hassan had been targeted in Nairobi because of intelligence suggesting he was the “right-hand man” of Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, at the time a leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa.

Nabhan, a Kenyan citizen of Yemeni descent, was among the top suspects sought for questioning by US authorities over his alleged role in the coordinated 2002 attacks on a tourist hotel and an Israeli aircraft in Mombasa, Kenya, and possible links to the 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

An intelligence report leaked by the Kenyan Anti-Terrorist Police Unit in October 2010 alleged that Hassan, a “former personal assistant to Nabhan…was injured while fighting near the presidential palace in Mogadishu in 2009.” The authenticity of the report cannot be independently confirmed, though Hassan did have a leg amputated below the knee, according to his former fellow prisoner in Mogadishu.

Two months after Hassan was allegedly rendered to the secret Mogadishu prison, Nabhan, the man believed to be his Al Qaeda boss, was killed in the first known targeted killing operation in Somalia authorized by President Obama. On September 14, 2009, a team from the elite US counterterrorism force, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), took off by helicopters from a US Navy ship off Somalia’s coast and penetrated Somali airspace. In broad daylight, in an operation code-named Celestial Balance, they gunned down Nabhan’s convoy from the air. JSOC troops then landed and collected at least two of the bodies, including Nabhan’s.

Hassan’s lawyers are preparing to file a habeas petition on his behalf in US courts. “Hassan’s case suggests that the US may be involved in a decentralized, out-sourced Guantánamo Bay in central Mogadishu,” his legal team asserted in a statement to The Nation. “Mr. Hassan must be given the opportunity to challenge both his rendition and continued detention as a matter of urgency. The US must urgently confirm exactly what has been done to Mr. Hassan, why he is being held, and when he will be given a fair hearing.”

Gutteridge, who has worked extensively tracking the disappearances of terror suspects in Kenya, was deported from Kenya on May 11.

The underground prison where Hassan is allegedly being held is housed in the same building once occupied by Somalia’s infamous National Security Service (NSS) during the military regime of Siad Barre, who ruled from 1969 to 1991. The former prisoner who met Hassan there said he saw an old NSS sign outside. During Barre’s regime, the notorious basement prison and interrogation center, which sits behind the presidential palace in Mogadishu, was a staple of the state’s apparatus of repression. It was referred to as Godka, “The Hole.”

“The bunker is there, and that’s where the intelligence agency does interrogate people,” says Abdirahman “Aynte” Ali, a Somali analyst who has researched the Shabab and Somali security forces. “When CIA and other intelligence agencies—who actually are in Mogadishu—want to interrogate those people, they usually just do that.” Somali officials “start the interrogation, but then foreign intelligence agencies eventually do their own interrogation as well, the Americans and the French.” The US official said that US agents’ “debriefing” prisoners in the facility has “been done on only rare occasions” and always jointly with Somali agents.

Some prisoners, like Hassan, were allegedly rendered from Nairobi, while in other cases, according to Aynte, “the US and other intelligence agencies have notified the Somali intelligence agency that some people, some suspects, people who have been in contact with the leadership of Al Shabab, are on their way to Mogadishu on a [commercial] plane, and to essentially be at the airport for those people. Catch them, interrogate them.”

In the eighteen years since the infamous “Black Hawk Down” incident in Mogadishu, US policy on Somalia has been marked by neglect, miscalculation and failed attempts to use warlords to build indigenous counterterrorism capacity, many of which have backfired dramatically. At times, largely because of abuses committed by Somali militias the CIA has supported, US policy has strengthened the hand of the very groups it purports to oppose and inadvertently aided the rise of militant groups, including the Shabab. Many Somalis viewed the Islamic movement known as the Islamic Courts Union, which defeated the CIA’s warlords in Mogadishu in 2006, as a stabilizing, albeit ruthless, force. The ICU was dismantled in a US-backed Ethiopian invasion in 2007. Over the years, a series of weak Somali administrations have been recognized by the United States and other powers as Somalia’s legitimate government. Ironically, its current president is a former leader of the ICU.

Today, Somali government forces control roughly thirty square miles of territory in Mogadishu thanks in large part to the US-funded and -armed 9,000-member AMISOM force. Much of the rest of the city is under the control of the Shabab or warlords. Outgunned, the Shabab has increasingly relied on the linchpins of asymmetric warfare—suicide bombings, roadside bombs and targeted assassinations. The militant group has repeatedly shown that it can strike deep in the heart of its enemies’ territory. On June 9, in one of its most spectacular suicide attacks to date, the Shabab assassinated the Somali government’s minister of interior affairs and national security,

Abdishakur Sheikh Hassan Farah, who was attacked in his residence by his niece. The girl, whom the minister was putting through university, blew herself up and fatally wounded her uncle. He died hours later in the hospital. Farah was the fifth Somali minister killed by the Shabab in the past two years and the seventeenth official assassinated since 2006. Among the suicide bombers the Shabab has deployed were at least three US citizens of Somali descent; at least seven other Americans have died fighting alongside the Shabab, a fact that has not gone unnoticed in Washington or Mogadishu.

During his confirmation hearings in June to become the head of the US Special Operations Command, Vice Admiral William McRaven said, “From my standpoint as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard” at Somalia. McRaven said that in order to expand successful “kinetic strikes” there, the United States will have to increase its use of drones as well as on-the-ground intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance operations. “Any expansion of manpower is going to have to come with a commensurate expansion of the enablers,” McRaven declared. The expanding US counterterrorism program in Mogadishu appears to be part of that effort.

In an interview with The Nation in Mogadishu, Abdulkadir Moallin Noor, the minister of state for the presidency, confirmed that US agents “are working with our intelligence” and “giving them training.” Regarding the US counterterrorism effort, Noor said bluntly, “We need more; otherwise, the terrorists will take over the country.”

It is unclear how much control, if any, Somalia’s internationally recognized president, Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, has over this counterterrorism force or if he is even fully briefed on its operations. The CIA personnel and other US intelligence agents “do not bother to be in touch with the political leadership of the country. And that says a lot about the intentions,” says Aynte. “Essentially, the CIA seems to be operating, doing the foreign policy of the United States. You should have had State Department people doing foreign policy, but the CIA seems to be doing it across the country.”

While the Somali officials interviewed for this story said the CIA is the lead US agency on the Mogadishu counterterrorism program, they also indicated that US military intelligence agents are at times involved. When asked if they are from JSOC or the Defense Intelligence Agency, the senior Somali intelligence official responded, “We don’t know. They don’t tell us.”

In April Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, a Somali man the United States alleged had links to the Shabab, was captured by JSOC forces in the Gulf of Aden. He was held incommunicado on a US Navy vessel for more than two months; in July he was transferred to New York and indicted on terrorism charges. Warsame’s case ignited a legal debate over the Obama administration’s policies on capturing and detaining terror suspects, particularly in light of the widening counterterrorism campaigns in Somalia and Yemen.

On June 23 the United States reportedly carried out a drone strike against alleged Shabab members near Kismayo, 300 miles from the Somali capital. As with the Nabhan operation, a JSOC team swooped in on helicopters and reportedly snatched the bodies of those killed and wounded. The men were taken to an undisclosed location. On July 6 three more US strikes reportedly targeted Shabab training camps in the same area. Somali analysts warned that if the US bombings cause civilian deaths, as they have in the past, they could increase support for the Shabab. Asked in an interview with The Nation in Mogadishu if US drone strikes strengthen or weaken his government, President Sharif replied, “Both at the same time. For our sovereignty, it’s not good to attack a sovereign country. That’s the negative part. The positive part is you’re targeting individuals who are criminals.”

A week after the June 23 strike, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, described an emerging US strategy that would focus not on “deploying large armies abroad but delivering targeted, surgical pressure to the groups that threaten us.” Brennan singled out the Shabab, saying, “From the territory it controls in Somalia, Al Shabab continues to call for strikes against the United States,” adding, “We cannot and we will not let down our guard. We will continue to pummel Al Qaeda and its ilk.”

While the United States appears to be ratcheting up both its rhetoric and its drone strikes against the Shabab, it has thus far been able to strike only in rural areas outside Mogadishu. These operations have been isolated and infrequent, and Somali analysts say they have failed to disrupt the Shabab’s core leadership, particularly in Mogadishu.

In a series of interviews in Mogadishu, several of the country’s recognized leaders, including President Sharif, called on the US government to quickly and dramatically increase its assistance to the Somali military in the form of training, equipment and weapons. Moreover, they argue that without viable civilian institutions, Somalia will remain ripe for terrorist groups that can further destabilize not only Somalia but the region. “I believe that the US should help the Somalis to establish a government that protects civilians and its people,” Sharif said.

In the battle against the Shabab, the United States does not, in fact, appear to have cast its lot with the Somali government. The emerging US strategy on Somalia—borne out in stated policy, expanded covert presence and funding plans—is two-pronged: On the one hand, the CIA is training, paying and at times directing Somali intelligence agents who are not firmly under the control of the Somali government, while JSOC conducts unilateral strikes without the prior knowledge of the government; on the other, the Pentagon is increasing its support for and arming of the counterterrorism operations of non-Somali African military forces.

A draft of a defense spending bill approved in late June by the Senate Armed Services Committee would authorize more than $75 million in US counterterrorism assistance aimed at fighting the Shabab and Al Qaeda in Somalia. The bill, however, did not authorize additional funding for Somalia’s military, as the country’s leaders have repeatedly asked. Instead, the aid package would dramatically increase US arming and financing of AMISOM’s forces, particularly from Uganda and Burundi, as well as the militaries of Djibouti, Kenya and Ethiopia. The Somali military, the committee asserted, is unable to “exercise control of its territory.”

That makes it all the more ironic that perhaps the greatest tactical victory won in recent years in Somalia was delivered not by AMISOM, the CIA or JSOC but by members of a Somali militia fighting as part of the government’s chaotic local military. And it was a pure accident.

Late in the evening on June 7, a man whose South African passport identified him as Daniel Robinson was in the passenger seat of a Toyota SUV driving on the outskirts of Mogadishu when his driver, a Kenyan national, missed a turn and headed straight toward a checkpoint manned by Somali forces. A firefight broke out, and the two men inside the car were killed. The Somali forces promptly looted the laptops, cellphones, documents, weapons and $40,000 in cash they found in the car, according to the senior Somali intelligence official.

Upon discovering that the men were foreigners, the Somali NSA launched an investigation and recovered the items that had been looted. “There was a lot of English and Arabic stuff, papers,” recalls the Somali intelligence official, containing “very tactical stuff” that appeared to be linked to Al Qaeda, including “two senior people communicating.” The Somali agents “realized it was an important man” and informed the CIA in Mogadishu. The men’s bodies were taken to the NSA. The Americans took DNA samples and fingerprints and flew them to Nairobi for processing.

Within hours, the United States confirmed that Robinson was in fact Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, a top leader of Al Qaeda in East Africa and its chief liaison with the Shabab. Fazul, a twenty-year veteran of Al Qaeda, had been indicted by the United States for his alleged role in the 1998 US Embassy bombings and was on the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. A JSOC attempt to kill him in a January 2007 airstrike resulted in the deaths of at least seventy nomads in rural Somalia, and he had been underground ever since. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called Fazul’s death “a significant blow to Al Qaeda, its extremist allies and its operations in East Africa. It is a just end for a terrorist who brought so much death and pain to so many innocents.”

At its facilities in Mogadishu, the CIA and its Somali NSA agents continue to pore over the materials recovered from Fazul’s car, which served as a mobile headquarters. Some deleted and encrypted files were recovered and decoded by US agents. The senior Somali intelligence official said that the intelligence may prove more valuable on a tactical level than the cache found in Osama bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, especially in light of the increasing US focus on East Africa. The Americans, he said, were “unbelievably grateful”; he hopes it means they will take Somalia’s forces more seriously and provide more support.

But the United States continues to wage its campaign against the Shabab primarily by funding the AMISOM forces, which are not conducting their mission with anything resembling surgical precision. Instead, over the past several months the AMISOM forces in Mogadishu have waged a merciless campaign of indiscriminate shelling of Shabab areas, some of which are heavily populated by civilians. While AMISOM regularly puts out press releases boasting of gains against the Shabab and the retaking of territory, the reality paints a far more complicated picture.

Throughout the areas AMISOM has retaken is a honeycomb of underground tunnels once used by Shabab fighters to move from building to building. By some accounts, the tunnels stretch continuously for miles. Leftover food, blankets and ammo cartridges lay scattered near “pop-up” positions once used by Shabab snipers and guarded by sandbags—all that remain of guerrilla warfare positions. Not only have the Shabab fighters been cleared from the aboveground areas; the civilians that once resided there have been cleared too. On several occasions in late June, AMISOM forces fired artillery from their airport base at the Bakaara market, where whole neighborhoods are totally abandoned. Houses lie in ruins and animals wander aimlessly, chewing trash. In some areas, bodies have been hastily buried in trenches with dirt barely masking the remains. On the side of the road in one former Shabab neighborhood, a decapitated corpse lay just meters from a new government checkpoint.

In late June the Pentagon approved plans to send $45 million worth of military equipment to Uganda and Burundi, the two major forces in the AMISOM operation. Among the new items are four small Raven surveillance drones, night-vision and communications equipment and other surveillance gear, all of which augur a more targeted campaign. Combined with the attempt to build an indigenous counterterrorism force at the Somali NSA, a new US counterterrorism strategy is emerging.

But according to the senior Somali intelligence official, who works directly with the US agents, the CIA-led program in Mogadishu has brought few tangible gains. “So far what we have not seen is the results in terms of the capacity of the [Somali] agency,” says the official. He conceded that neither US nor Somali forces have been able to conduct a single successful targeted mission in the Shabab’s areas in the capital. In late 2010, according to the official, US-trained Somali agents conducted an operation in a Shabab area that failed terribly and resulted in several of them being killed. “There was an attempt, but it was a haphazard one,” he recalls. They have not tried another targeted operation in Shabab-controlled territory since.

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The US Attorney General’s latest decree for a criminal investigation into the death in detention of only two CIA captives has spared the US spy agency from further torture and abuse probes.

The US Justice Department announced on Thursday Attorney General Eric Holder’s order for a probe into the deaths of two detainees interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which effectively terminates any future investigations into the agency’s other state-sponsored torture deaths and abuses.

Holder’s prosecution order will then throw out over 100 other inquiries into cases involving the abuse of detained suspected ‚terrorists‘ by CIA operatives and contractors during years of military operations following September 11, 2001 incidents, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Justice Department has not revealed which cases will be probed, but US officials said they are the death of an Afghan, Gul Rahman, in 2002 at a prison known as the Salt Pit in Afghanistan, and that of an Iraqi, Manadel al-Jamadi, who was interrogated by three CIA officers at Abu Ghraib in 2003.

While Jamadi’s body was placed on ice to preserve it for autopsy, American soldiers posed for photographs with the body- – including some in which they gave the thumbs-up sign – – provoking international outrage when the images surfaced in media.

The outgoing CIA director, Leon Panetta, who was just confirmed in the US Senate as the new defense secretary, hailed the Justice Department’s decision to ignore further probes into the state-sponsored ‚enhanced interrogation methods‘. Panetta said in a statement that “on this, my last day as director, I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us.”

“We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency’s history,“ he added.

Critics, however, have demanded that the Justice Department continue to look into torture methods applied in interrogating those in CIA custody.