Documents Spotlight Role of Reagan, Top Aides – Pentagon Nominee Robert Gates Among Many – Prominent Figures Involved in the Scandal

The National Security Archive – On November 25, 1986, the biggest political and constitutional scandal since Watergate exploded in Washington when President Ronald Reagan told a packed White House news conference that funds derived from covert arms deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran had been diverted to buy weapons for the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

In the weeks leading up to this shocking admission, news reports had exposed the U.S. role in both the Iran deals and the secret support for the Contras, but Reagan’s announcement, in which he named two subordinates — National Security Advisor John M. Poindexter and NSC staffer Oliver L. North — as the responsible parties, was the first to link the two operations.

The scandal was almost the undoing of the Teflon President. Of all the revelations that emerged, the most galling for the American public was the president’s abandonment of the long-standing policy against dealing with terrorists, which Reagan repeatedly denied doing in spite of overwhelming evidence that made it appear he was simply lying to cover up the story.

Despite the damage to his image, the president arguably got off easy, escaping the ultimate political sanction of impeachment. From what is now known from documents and testimony — but perhaps not widely appreciated — while Reagan may not have known about the diversion or certain other details of the operations being carried out in his name, he directed that both support for the Contras (whom he ordered to be kept together „body and soul“) and the arms-for-hostages deals go forward, and was at least privy to other actions that were no less significant.

In this connection, it is worth noting that Poindexter, although he refused to implicate Reagan by testifying that he had told him about the diversion, declared that if he had informed the president he was sure Reagan would have approved. Reagan’s success in avoiding a harsher political penalty was due to a great extent to Poindexter’s testimony (which left many observers deeply skeptical about its plausibility). But it was also due in large part to a tactic developed mainly by Attorney General Edwin Meese, which was to keep congressional and public attention tightly focused on the diversion. By spotlighting that single episode, which they felt sure Reagan could credibly deny, his aides managed to minimize public scrutiny of the president’s other questionable actions, some of which even he understood might be illegal.

Twenty years later, the Iran-Contra affair continues to resonate on many levels, especially as Washington gears up for a new season of political inquiry with the pending inauguration of the 110th Congress and the seeming inevitability of hearings into a range of Bush administration policies.

For at its heart Iran-Contra was a battle over presidential power dating back directly to the Richard Nixon era of Watergate, Vietnam and CIA dirty tricks. That clash continues under the presidency of George W. Bush, which has come under frequent fire for the controversial efforts of the president, as well as Vice President Richard Cheney, to expand Executive Branch authority over numerous areas of public life.

Iran-Contra also echoes in the re-emergence of several prominent public figures who played a part in, or were touched by, the scandal. The most recent is Robert M. Gates, President Bush’s nominee to replace Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense (see below and the documents in this compilation for more on Gates‘ role).

This sampling of some of the most revealing documentation (Note 1) to come out of the affair gives a clear indication of how deeply involved the president was in terms of personally directing or approving different aspects of the affair. The list of other officials who also played significant parts, despite their later denials, includes Vice President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, CIA Director William J. Casey, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, and numerous other senior and mid-level officials, making this a far broader scandal than the White House portrayed it at the time. Read it all @ The National Security Archive

A partial list of some of the more prominent individuals who were either directly a part of the Iran-Contra events or figured in some other way during the affair or its aftermath:

Elliott Abrams – currently deputy assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, Abrams was one of the Reagan administration’s most controversial figures as the senior State Department official for Latin America in the mid-1980s. He entered into a plea bargain in federal court after being indicted for providing false testimony about his fund-raising activities on behalf of the Contras, although he later accused the independent counsel’s office of forcing him to accept guilt on two counts. President George H. W. Bush later pardoned him.

David Addington – now Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, and by numerous press accounts a stanch advocate of expanded presidential power, Addington was a congressional staffer during the joint select committee hearings in 1986 who worked closely with Cheney.

John Bolton – the controversial U.N. ambassador whose recess appointment by President Bush is now in jeopardy was a senior Justice Department official who participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal in late November 1986. There is little indication of his precise role at the time.

Richard Cheney – now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf. He later pointed to the committees‘ Minority Report as an important statement on the proper roles of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

Robert M. Gates – President Bush’s nominee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld, Gates nearly saw his career go up in flames over charges that he knew more about Iran-Contra while it was underway than he admitted once the scandal broke. He was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of suspicions about his role but managed to attain the position when he was re-nominated in 1991. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)

Manuchehr Ghorbanifar – the quintessential middleman, who helped broker the arms deals involving the United States, Israel and Iran ostensibly to bring about the release of American hostages being held in Lebanon, Ghorbanifar was almost universally discredited for misrepresenting all sides‘ goals and interests. Even before the Iran deals got underway, the CIA had ruled Ghorbanifar off-limits for purveying bad information to U.S. intelligence. Yet, in 2006 his name has resurfaced as an important source for the Pentagon on current Iranian affairs, again over CIA objections.

Michael Ledeen – a neo-conservative who is vocal on the subject of regime change in Iran, Ledeen helped bring together the main players in what developed into the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985 before being relegated to a bit part. He reportedly reprised his role shortly after 9/11, introducing Ghorbanifar to Pentagon officials interested in exploring contacts inside Iran.

Edwin Meese – currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, he was Ronald Reagan’s controversial attorney general who spearheaded an internal administration probe into the Iran-Contra connection in November 1986 that was widely criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

John Negroponte – the career diplomat who worked quietly to boost the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central America as ambassador to Honduras, he also participated in efforts to get the Honduran government to support the Contras after Congress banned direct U.S. aid to the rebels. Negroponte’s profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)

Oliver L. North – now a radio talk show host and columnist, he was at the center of the Iran-Contra spotlight as the point man for both covert activities. A Marine serving on the NSC staff, he steadfastly maintained that he received high-level approval for everything he did, and that „the diversion was a diversion.“ He was found guilty on three counts at a criminal trial but had those verdicts overturned on the grounds that his protected congressional testimony might have influenced his trial. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from Virginia in 1996. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)

Daniel Ortega – the newly elected president of Nicaragua was the principal target of several years of covert warfare by the United States in the 1980s as the leader of the ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front. His democratic election in November 2006 was not the only irony — it’s been suggested by one of Oliver North’s former colleagues in the Reagan administration that North’s public statements in Nicaragua in late October 2006 may have taken votes away from the candidate preferred by the Bush administration and thus helped Ortega at the polls.

John Poindexter – who found a niche deep in the U.S. government’s post-9/11 security bureaucracy as head of the Pentagon’s Total Information Awareness program (formally disbanded by Congress in 2003), was Oliver North’s superior during the Iran-Contra period and personally approved or directed many of his activities. His assertion that he never told President Reagan about the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras ensured Reagan would not face impeachment.

Otto Reich – President George W. Bush’s one-time assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Reich ran a covert public diplomacy operation designed to build support for Ronald Reagan’s Contra policies. A U.S. comptroller-general investigation concluded the program amounted to „prohibited, covert propaganda activities,“ although no charges were ever filed against him. Reich paid a price in terms of congressional opposition to his nomination to run Latin America policy, resulting in a recess appointment in 2002 that lasted less than a year.

Related articles covering the Iran Contra affair

Jill Lawless / AP – A former KGB agent turned Kremlin critic who blamed a „barbaric and ruthless“ Russian President Vladimir Putin for his fatal poisoning had a toxic radioactive substance in his body, the British government said Friday.

In the statement dictated from his deathbed, Alexander Litvinenko accused the Russian leader of having „no respect for life, liberty or any civilized value.“ In his first public response to the allegations, Putin said he deplored the former spy’s death but called the statement a political provocation.

The Health Protection Agency said the radioactive element polonium-210 had been found in Litvinenko’s urine.

The agency’s chief executive, Pat Troop, said that the high level indicated Litvinenko „would either have to have eaten it, inhaled it or taken it in through a wound.“

„We know he had a major dose,“ she said.

Earlier, Home Secretary John Reid said Litvinenko’s death Thursday night was „linked to the presence of a radioactive substance in his body.“

Litvinenko, a vociferous critic of the Russian government, suffered heart failure late Thursday after days in intensive care at London’s University College Hospital battling a poison that had attacked his bone marrow and destroyed his immune system.

„You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed,“ Litvinenko said in the statement read by his friend and spokesman Alex Goldfarb. The former spy said „the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr. Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life.“

Goldfarb said Litvinenko had dictated the statement before he lost consciousness on Tuesday, and signed it in the presence of his wife, Marina.

Litvinenko’s father Walter said his son „fought this regime and this regime got him.“

„It was an excruciating death and he was taking it as a real man,“ Walter Litvinenko said.

Putin’s government strongly denied involvement.

„A death of a man is always a tragedy and I deplore this,“ Putin said after being asked about Litvinenko during a news conference after summit talks with European Union leaders.

Putin said the fact that Litvinenko’s statement was released only after his death showed it was a „provocation.“

„It’s extremely regrettable that such a tragic event as death is being used for political provocations,“ he said.

Litvinenko told police that he believed he had been poisoned on Nov. 1, while investigating the slaying of crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya. His hair fell out, his throat became swollen and his immune and nervous systems were severely damaged.

He was transferred from a north London hospital to University College Hospital on Nov. 17 when his condition deteriorated.

Doctors treating him acknowledged they could not explain his rapid decline. They discounted earlier theories that the 43-year-old father of three had been poisoned with the toxic metal thallium and cast doubt on an alternative diagnosis of a radioactive substance.

The hospital said Friday it could not comment further because the case was being investigated by police. London’s Metropolitan Police said it was treating the case as an „unexplained death“ _ but not, yet, a murder.

Litvinenko’s friends had little doubt about who was to blame.

They said Litvinenko, who sought asylum in Britain in 2000, had been on a quest to uncover corruption in Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, and unmask the killers of Politkovskaya, another trenchant critic of Putin’s government.

Goldfarb said the attack on Litvinenko bore „all the hallmarks of a very professional, sophisticated and specialist operation.“

„The very fact that experts are still at a loss to say what poisoned him tells you it is not a sleeping pill that has been given to him,“ he said.

Another friend, Andrei Nekrasov, said Litvinenko had told him: „The bastards got me, but they won’t get everybody.“

He said Litvinenko believed he had been targeted by the Kremlin because he had threatened to uncover embarrassing facts.

„The only logic is revenge, they consider him an enemy _ every week he was in Putin’s face, he was a tireless critic of Putin’s regime … He had a mission to uncover what he felt were crimes his former colleagues had committed,“ Nekrasov said.

Litvinenko worked for the KGB and its successor, the FSB. In 1998, he publicly accused his superiors of ordering him to kill tycoon Boris Berezovsky and spent nine months in jail from 1999 on charges of abuse of office. He was later acquitted and in 2000 sought asylum in Britain, where Berezovsky is now also living in exile.

On the day he first felt ill, Litvinenko said he had two meetings, the first with an unnamed Russian and Andrei Lugovoy, an-KGB colleague and bodyguard to former Russian Prime Minster Yegor Gaidar.

Later, he dined with Italian security expert Mario Scaramella to discuss the October murder of Politkovskaya.

Scaramella said he showed Litvinenko an e-mail he received from a source naming Politkovskaya’s killers, and naming other targets including Litvinenko and himself.

Russischer Ex-Agent Litwinenko in London gestorben

Drei Wochen nach dem mutmasslichen Giftanschlag ist der russische Ex-Agent Alexander Litwinenko gestorben.

David Stringer – Litwinenko starb gestern Abend auf der Intensivstation der Londoner Universitätsklinik an einem Herzversagen, wie das Krankenhaus mitteilte. Die Londoner Polizei teilte mit, es werde wegen unbekannter Todesursache ermittelt. Die Ärzte konnten bis zuletzt nicht klären, womit und wie Litwinenko möglicherweise vergiftet wurde.

«Die Bastarde haben mich gekriegt»
Litwinenko selbst erklärte, er sei am 1. November vergiftet worden, als er zum Mord an der Kremlkritikerin und Journalistin Anna Politkowskaja recherchierte. Sein Haar fiel aus, seine Kehle schwoll an und sein Immun- und Nervensystem wurde schwer geschädigt.

Nur wenige Stunden bevor er gestern das Bewusstsein verlor erklärte Litwinenko in einem Interview mit der Zeitung «The Times», er sei vom Kreml zum Schweigen gebracht worden. «Ich will überleben, nur um es ihnen zu zeigen», erklärte Litwinenko. «Die Bastarde haben mich gekriegt, aber sie werden nicht jeden kriegen.»

Litwinenkos Freund Andrei Nekrasow sagte der Nachrichtenagentur AP, seine Frau Marina, sein Vater Walter und sein zehnjähriger Sohn Anatoli seien in den letzten Stunden bei ihm gewesen. «Ich kann es nicht anders sagen: sie haben wieder einen von uns erschlagen. Es war ein unglaublich professioneller und zugleich sadistischer Mord», sagte Nekrasow. «Sie haben ihn aus Hass ermordet, aus Rachsucht. Es gibt einen Machtkampf in Moskau und er wurde ein Opfer davon.»

Russischer Auslandsgeheimdienst weist Vorwurf zurück
Litwinenko war ein ausgesprochener Kremlkritiker. Er war nach einem Treffen mit einem italienischen Sicherheitsexperten in einem Londoner Sushi-Restaurant Anfang November erkrankt. Seine Freunde haben die russische Regierung beschuldigt, einen Giftanschlag veranlasst zu haben. Der russische Auslandsgeheimdienst hat den Vorwurf scharf zurückgewiesen. «Litwinenko ist nicht die Art Person, für die wir bilaterale Beziehungen aufs Spiel setzen würden», zitierte die Nachrichtenagentur Interfax einen Geheimdienstsprecher.

Ratlose Ärzte
Die Ärzte haben nach eigenen Angaben keine Hinweis darauf, warum sich der Gesundheitszustand Litwinenkos so dramatisch verschlechterte. Der Chefarzt der Intensivstation am Londoner Universitätsklinikum, Geoff Bellingan, erklärte, die Mediziner seien überzeugt, dass Litwinenko nicht mit einem Schwermetall wie Thallium vergiftet wurde. Auch eine radioaktive Substanz sei allem Anschein nach nicht die Ursache seines Leidens. Der Chefarzt wies ferner Spekulationen zurück, dass Fremdkörper im Darm des Patienten für dessen schlechten Zustand verantwortlich sein könnten.

Die BBC hatte unter Berufung auf Krankenhauskreise berichtet, aus Röntgenaufnahmen gehe hervor, dass Litwinenko drei Gegenstände dichter Struktur verschluckt habe. Bellingan erklärte dagegen, die vermeintlichen Fremdkörper auf den Röntgenbildern seien in Wahrheit Flecke, die von der Behandlung des Patienten mit Preussisch-Blau herrührten. Diese Farbstoffsubstanz wird in der Medizin häufig als Mittel zur Bindung von Giften wie Thallium und Cäsium eingesetzt.

Oberst im Geheimdienst
Litwinenko trat zu Sowjetzeiten dem Geheimdienst KGB bei und stieg bei dessen Nachfolgeorganisation, dem russischen Inlandsgeheimdienst FSB, zum Oberst auf. Im November 2000 floh er aus Russland und bat in Grossbritannien um Asyl. Zwei Jahre zuvor hatte er seine Vorgesetzten beim FSB öffentlich beschuldigt, ihm die Tötung des russischen Milliardärs Boris Beresowski befohlen zu haben, der damals zum Machtzirkel des Kremls gehörte. Ausserdem beschuldigte Litvinenko FSB-Beamte, 1999 Bombenanschläge auf Wohnhäuser in Russland koordiniert zu haben. Diese kosteten rund 300 Menschen das Leben und lösten den zweiten Tschetschenien-Krieg aus.

James Bamford – Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran.

I. The Israeli Connection
A few blocks off Pennsylvania Avenue, the FBI’s eight-story Washington field office exudes all the charm of a maximum-security prison. Its curved roof is made of thick stainless steel, the bottom three floors are wrapped in granite and limestone, hydraulic bollards protect the ramp to the four-floor garage, and bulletproof security booths guard the entrance to the narrow lobby. On the fourth floor, like a tomb within a tomb, lies the most secret room in the $100 million concrete fortress—out-of-bounds even for special agents without an escort. Here, in the Language Services Section, hundreds of linguists in padded earphones sit elbow-to-elbow in long rows, tapping computer keyboards as they eavesdrop on the phone lines of foreign embassies and other high-priority targets in the nation’s capital.

Illustration by Matt Mahurin

At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications that a rogue group of senior Pentagon officials were already conspiring to push the United States into another war—this time with Iran.

A few miles away, FBI agents watched as Larry Franklin, an Iran expert and career employee of the Defense Intelligence Agency, drove up to the Ritz-Carlton hotel across the Potomac from Washington.

A trim man of fifty-six, with a tangle of blond hair speckled gray, Franklin had left his modest home in Kearneysville, West Virginia, shortly before dawn that morning to make the eighty-mile commute to his job at the Pentagon. Since 2002, he had been working in the Office of Special Plans, a crowded warren of blue cubicles on the building’s fifth floor. A secretive unit responsible for long-term planning and propaganda for the invasion of Iraq, the office’s staffers referred to themselves as „the cabal.“

They reported to Douglas Feith, the third-most-powerful official in the Defense Department, helping to concoct the fraudulent intelligence reports that were driving America to war in Iraq.

Just two weeks before, in his State of the Union address, President Bush had begun laying the groundwork for the invasion, falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had the means to produce tens of thousands of biological and chemical weapons, including anthrax, botulinum toxin, sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. But an attack on Iraq would require something that alarmed Franklin and other neoconservatives almost as much as weapons of mass destruction: detente with Iran. As political columnist David Broder reported in The Washington Post, moderates in the Bush administration were „covertly negotiating for Iran to stay quiet and offer help to refugees when we go into Iraq.“

Franklin—a devout neoconservative who had been brought into Feith’s office because of his political beliefs—was hoping to undermine those talks. As FBI agents looked on, Franklin entered the restaurant at the Ritz and joined two other Americans who were also looking for ways to push the U.S. into a war with Iran. One was Steven Rosen, one of the most influential lobbyists in Washington. Sixty years old and nearly bald, with dark eyebrows and a seemingly permanent frown, Rosen was director of foreign-policy issues at Israel’s powerful lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Seated next to Rosen was AIPAC’s Iran expert, Keith Weissman. He and Rosen had been working together closely for a decade to pressure U.S. officials and members of Congress to turn up the heat on Tehran.

Over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton, Franklin told the two lobbyists about a draft of a top-secret National Security Presidential Directive that dealt with U.S. policy on Iran. Crafted by Michael Rubin, the desk officer for Iraq and Iran in Feith’s office, the document called, in essence, for regime change in Iran. In the Pentagon’s view, according to one senior official there at the time, Iran was nothing but „a house of cards ready to be pushed over the precipice.“ So far, though, the White House had rejected the Pentagon’s plan, favoring the State Department’s more moderate position of diplomacy. Now, unwilling to play by the rules any longer, Franklin was taking the extraordinary—and illegal—step of passing on highly classified information to lobbyists for a foreign state. Unable to win the internal battle over Iran being waged within the administration, a member of Feith’s secret unit in the Pentagon was effectively resorting to treason, recruiting AIPAC to use its enormous influence to pressure the president into adopting the draft directive and wage war against Iran.

It was a role that AIPAC was eager to play. Rosen, recognizing that Franklin could serve as a useful spy, immediately began plotting ways to plant him in the White House—specifically in the National Security Council, the epicenter of intelligence and national-security policy. By working there, Rosen told Franklin a few days later, he would be „by the elbow of the president.“

Knowing that such a maneuver was well within AIPAC’s capabilities, Franklin asked Rosen to „put in a good word“ for him. Rosen agreed. „I’ll do what I can,“ he said, adding that the breakfast meeting had been a real „eye-opener.“

Working together, the two men hoped to sell the United States on yet another bloody war. A few miles away, digital recorders at the FBI’s Language Services Section captured every word.

II. The Guru and the Exile
In recent weeks, the attacks by Hezbollah on Israel have given neoconservatives in the Bush administration the pretext they were seeking to launch what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls „World War III.“ Denouncing the bombings as „Iran’s proxy war,“ William Kristol of The Weekly Standard is urging the Pentagon to counter „this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.“ According to Joseph Cirincione, an arms expert and the author of Deadly Arsenals: Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Threats, „The neoconservatives are now hoping to use the Israeli-Lebanon conflict as the trigger to launch a U.S. war against Syria, Iran or both.“

But the Bush administration’s hostility toward Iran is not simply an outgrowth of the current crisis. War with Iran has been in the works for the past five years, shaped in almost complete secrecy by a small group of senior Pentagon officials attached to the Office of Special Plans. The man who created the OSP was Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy. A former Middle East specialist on the National Security Council in the Reagan administration, Feith had long urged Israel to secure its borders in the Middle East by attacking Iraq and Iran. After Bush’s election, Feith went to work to make that vision a reality, putting together a team of neoconservative hawks determined to drive the U.S. to attack Tehran. Before Bush had been in office a year, Feith’s team had arranged a covert meeting in Rome with a group of Iranians to discuss their clandestine help.

The meeting was arranged by Michael Ledeen, a member of the cabal brought aboard by Feith because of his connections in Iran. Described by The Jerusalem Post as „Washington’s neoconservative guru,“ Ledeen grew up in California during the 1940s. His father designed the air-conditioning system for Walt Disney Studios, and Ledeen spent much of his early life surrounded by a world of fantasy. „All through my childhood we were an adjunct of the Disney universe,“ he once recalled. „According to family legend, my mother was the model for Snow White, and we have a picture of her that does indeed look just like the movie character.“

In 1977, after earning a Ph.D. in history and philosophy and teaching in Rome for two years, Ledeen became the first executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, a pro-Israel pressure group that served as a flagship of the neoconservative movement. A few years later, after Reagan was elected, Ledeen had become prominent enough to earn a spot as a consultant to the National Security Council alongside Feith.

There he played a central role in the worst scandal of Reagan’s presidency: the covert deal to provide arms to Iran in exchange for American hostages being held in Lebanon. Ledeen served as the administration’s intermediary with Israel in the illegal-arms deal. In 1985, he met with Manucher Ghorbanifar, a one-time Iranian carpet salesman who was widely believed to be an Israeli agent. The CIA considered Ghorbanifar a dangerous con man and had issued a „burn notice“ recommending that no U.S. agency have any dealings with him. Unfazed, Ledeen called Ghorbanifar „one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known.“

The two men brokered the arms exchange—a transaction that would result in the indictment of fourteen senior officials in the Reagan administration.

„It was awful—you know, bad things happened,“ Ledeen says now. „When Iran-Contra was over, I said, Boy, I’m never going to touch Iran again.“But in 2001, soon after he arrived at the Pentagon, Ledeen once again met with Ghorbanifar. This time, instead of selling missiles to the Iranian regime, the two men were exploring how best to topple it.

„The meeting in Rome came about because my friend Manucher Ghorbanifar called me up,“ Ledeen says. Stout and balding, with a scruffy white beard, Ledeen is sitting in the living room of his white-brick home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, smoking a Dominican cigar. His Airedale terrier, Thurber, roams the room protectively. In his first extensive interview about the covert Pentagon operation, Ledeen makes no secret of his desire to topple the government in Tehran. „I want to bring down the regime,“ he says. „I want the regime gone. It’s a country that is fanatically devoted to our destruction.“

When Ghorbanifar called Ledeen in the fall of 2001, he claimed, as he often does, to have explosive intelligence that was vital to U.S. interests. „There are Iranians who have firsthand information about Iranian plans to kill Americans in Afghanistan,“ he told Ledeen. „Does anyone want to hear about it?“

Ledeen took the information to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser at the White House. „I know you’re going to throw me out of the office,“ Ledeen told him, „and if I were you I would throw me out of the office too. But I promised that I would give you this option. Ghorbanifar has called me. He said these people are willing to come. Do you want anybody to go and talk to them?“

Hadley was interested. So was Zalmay Khalilzad, then the point man on Near East issues for the National Security Council and now the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad. „I think we have to do this, we have to hear this,“ Hadley said. Ledeen had the green light: As he puts it, „Every element of the American government knew this was going to happen in advance.“

III. The Meeting in Rome
Weeks later, in December, a plane carrying Ledeen traveled to Rome with two other members of Feith’s secret Pentagon unit: Larry“>Ahmed Chalabi, the Iraqi dissident whose discredited intelligence helped drive the Bush administration to invade Baghdad. According to UPI, Rhode himself was later observed by CIA operatives passing „mind-boggling“ intelligence to Israel, including sensitive information about U.S. military deployments in Iraq.

Completing the rogues‘ gallery that assembled in Rome that day was the man who helped Ledeen arrange the meeting: Nicolò“>uranium from West Africa—a key piece of false intelligence that Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq.

To hide the shadowy rendezvous in Rome, Pollari provided a well-protected safe house near the noisy espresso bars and busy trattorias that surround the Piazza di Spagna in central Rome. „It was in a private apartment,“ Ledeen recalls. „It was fucking freezing—it was unheated.“ The Pentagon operatives and the men from Iran sat at a dining-room table strewn with demitasse cups of blackish coffee, ashtrays littered with crushed cigarette butts and detailed maps of Iran, Iraq and Syria. „They gave us information about the location and plans of Iranian terrorists who were going to kill Americans,“ Ledeen says.

Ledeen insists the intelligence was on the mark. „It was true,“ he says. „The information was accurate.“ Not according to his boss. „There wasn’t anything there that was of substance or of value that needed to be pursued further,“ Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld later conceded. „It went nowhere.“

The men then turned their attention to their larger goal: regime change in Iran. Ghorbanifar suggested funding the overthrow of the Iranian government using hundreds of millions of dollars in cash supposedly hidden by Saddam Hussein. He even hinted that Saddam was hiding in Iran.

Ledeen, Franklin and Rhode were taking a page from Feith’s playbook on Iraq: They needed a front group of exiles and dissidents to call for the overthrow of Iran. According to sources familiar with the meeting, the Americans discussed joining forces with the Mujahedin-e Khalq, an anti-Iranian guerrilla army operating out of Iraq.

There was only one small problem: The MEK had been certified by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In fact, the White House was in the midst of negotiations with Tehran, which was offering to extradite five members of Al Qaeda thought to be of high intelligence value in return for Washington’s promise to drop all support for the MEK.

Ledeen denies any dealings with the group. „I wouldn’t get within a hundred miles of the MEK,“ he says. „They have no following, no legitimacy.“ But neoconservatives were eager to undermine any deal that involved cooperating with Iran. To the neocons, the value of the MEK as a weapon against Tehran greatly outweighed any benefit that might be derived from interrogating the Al Qaeda operatives—even though they might provide intelligence on future terrorist attacks, as well as clues to the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

Ledeen and his Pentagon cabal were not the only American officials to whom Ghorbanifar tried to funnel false intelligence on Iran. Last year, Rep. Curt Weldon, a Republican from Pennsylvania, claimed he had intelligence—from an „impeccable clandestine source“ he code-named „Ali“—that the Iranian government was plotting to launch attacks against the United States. But when the CIA investigated the allegations, it turned out that Ali was Fereidoun Mahdavi, an Iranian exile who was serving as a frontman for Ghorbanifar and trying to shake down the CIA for $150,000. „He is a fabricator,“ said Bill Murray, the former CIA station chief in Paris. Weldon was furious: The agency had dismissed Ali, he insisted, „because they want to avoid, at all costs, drawing the United States into a war with Iran.“

After the Rome rendezvous, Ledeen and Ghorbanifar continued to meet several times a year, often for a day or two at a time. Rhode also met with Ghorbanifar in Paris, and the Iranian phoned or faxed his Pentagon contacts almost every day. At one point Ledeen notified the Pentagon that Ghorbanifar knew of highly enriched uranium being moved from Iraq to Iran. At another point, in 2003, he claimed that Tehran was only a few months away from exploding a nuclear bomb—even though international experts estimate that Iran is years away from developing nuclear weapons. But the accuracy of the reports wasn’t important—what mattered was their value in drumming up support for war. It was Iraq all over again.

IV. On the Trail of Mr. X
Such covert efforts by Feith’s team in the Pentagon started to have the desired effect. In November 2003, Rumsfeld approved a plan known as CONPLAN“>Bruce Carlson, commander of the 8th Air Force. „We have the capacity to plan and execute global strikes in half a day or less.“

But as the Pentagon moved the country closer to war with Iran, the FBI was expanding its investigation of AIPAC and its role in the plot. David Szady, then the bureau’s top spy-catcher, had become convinced that at least one American citizen working inside the U.S. government was spying for Israel. „It’s no longer just our traditional adversaries who want to steal our secrets, but sometimes even our allies,“ Szady declared. „The threat is incredibly serious.“ To locate the spy sometimes referred to as Mr. X, agents working for Szady began focusing on a small group of neoconservatives in the Pentagon—including Feith, Ledeen and Rhode.

The FBI also had its sights on Larry Franklin, who continued to hold clandestine meetings with Rosen at AIPAC. Apparently nervous that the FBI might be on to them, the two men started taking precautions. On March 10th, 2003, barely a week before the invasion of Iraq, Rosen met Franklin in Washington’s cavernous Union Station. The pair met at one restaurant, then they hustled to another, and finally they ended up in a third—this one totally empty. As an added precaution, Franklin also began sending faxes to Rosen’s home instead of to his AIPAC offices.

A few days later, Rosen and Weissman passed on to Israeli-embassy officials details about the draft of the top-secret presidential directive on Iran, saying they had received the document from a „friend of ours in the Pentagon.“ They also relayed to the Israelis details about internal Bush-administration discussions on Iran. Then, two days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Rosen leaked the information to the press with the comment „I’m not supposed to know this.“ The Washington Post eventually published the story under the headline „Pressure Builds for President to Declare Strategy on Iran,“ crediting the classified information to „well-placed sources.“ The story mentioned Ledeen, who helped found the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, a pressure group dedicated to the overthrow of the Iranian government, but gave no indication that the leak had come from someone with a definite agenda for planting the information.

That June, Weissman called Franklin and left a message that he and Rosen wanted to meet with him again and talk about „our favorite country.“ The meeting took place in the Tivoli Restaurant, a dimly lit establishment two floors above the metro station in Arlington that was frequently used by intelligence types for quiet rendezvous. Over lunch in the mirrored dining room, the three men discussed the Post article, and Rosen acknowledged „the constraints“ Franklin was under to meet with them. But the Pentagon official placed himself fully at AIPAC’s disposal. „You set the agenda,“ Franklin told Rosen.

In addition to meeting Rosen and Weissman, Franklin was also getting together regularly with Naor“>Judith Miller.

At one point, Gilon suggested that Franklin meet with Uzi Arad, Mossad’s former director of intelligence and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign-policy adviser. A week later, Franklin had lunch in the Pentagon cafeteria with the former top Israeli spy.

V. Iran’s Double Agent
Larry Franklin, it turns out, wasn’t the only person involved in the Pentagon’s covert operation who was exchanging state secrets with other governments. As the FBI monitored Franklin and his clandestine dealings with AIPAC, it was also investigating another explosive case of espionage linked to Feith’s office and Iran. This one focused on Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, the militant anti-Saddam opposition group that had worked for more than a decade to pressure the U.S. into invading Iraq.

For years, the National Security Agency had possessed the codes used by Iran to encrypt its diplomatic messages, enabling the U.S. government to eavesdrop on virtually every communication between Tehran and its embassies. After the U.S. invaded Baghdad, the NSA used the codes to listen in on details of Iran’s covert operations inside Iraq. But in 2004, the agency intercepted a series of urgent messages from the Iranian embassy in Baghdad. Intelligence officials at the embassy had discovered the massive security breach—tipped off by someone familiar with the U.S. code-breaking operation.

The blow to intelligence-gathering could not have come at a worse time. The Bush administration suspected that the Shiite government in Iran was aiding Shiite insurgents in Iraq, who were killing U.S. soldiers. The administration was also worried that Tehran was secretly developing nuclear weapons. Now, crucial intelligence that might have shed light on those operations had been cut off, potentially endangering American lives.

On May 20th, shortly after the discovery of the leak, Iraqi police backed by American soldiers raided Chalabi’s home and offices in Baghdad. The FBI suspected that Chalabi, a Shiite who had a luxurious villa in Tehran and was close to senior Iranian officials, was actually working as a spy for the Shiite government of Iran. Getting the U.S. to invade Iraq was apparently part of a plan to install a pro-Iranian Shiite government in Baghdad, with Chalabi in charge. The bureau also suspected that Chalabi’s intelligence chief had furnished Iran with highly classified information on U.S. troop movements, top-secret communications, plans of the provisional government and other closely guarded material on U.S. operations in Iraq. On the night of the raid, The CBS Evening News carried an exclusive report by correspondent Lesley Stahlthat the U.S. government had „rock-solid“ evidence that Chalabi had been passing extremely sensitive intelligence to Iran—evidence so sensitive that it could „get Americans killed.“

Chalabi behind the first Lady

The revelation shocked Franklin and other members of Feith’s office. If true, the allegations meant that they had just launched a war to put into power an agent of their mortal enemy, Iran. Their man—the dissident leader who sat behind the first lady in the president’s box during the State of the Union address in which Bush prepared the country for war—appeared to have been working for Iran all along.

Franklin needed to control the damage, and fast. He was one of the very few in the government who knew that it was the NSA code-breaking information that Chalabi was suspected of passing to Iran, and that there was absolute proof that Chalabi had met with a covert Iranian agent involved in operations against the U.S. To protect those in the Pentagon working for regime change in Tehran, Franklin needed to get out a simple message: We didn’t know about Chalabi’s secret dealings with Iran.

Franklin decided to leak the information to a friendly contact in the media: Adam Ciralsky, a CBS producer who had been fired from the CIA, allegedly for his close ties to Israel. On May 21st, the day after CBS broadcast its exclusive report on Chalabi, Franklin phoned Ciralsky and fed him the information. As the two men talked, eavesdroppers at the FBI’s Washington field office recorded the conversation.

That night, Stahl followed up her original report with „new details“—the information leaked earlier that day by Franklin. She began, however, by making clear that she would not divulge the most explosive detail of all: the fact that Chalabi had wrecked the NSA’s ability to eavesdrop on Iran. „Senior intelligence officials were stressing today that the information Ahmed Chalabi is alleged to have passed on to Iran is so seriously sensitive that the result of full disclosure would be highly damaging to U.S. security,“ Stahl said. „Because of that, we are not reporting the details of what exactly Chalabi is said to have compromised, at the request of U.S. officials at the highest levels. The information involves secrets that were held by only a handful of very senior intelligence officials.“ Thanks to the pressure from the administration, the public was prevented from learning the most damaging aspect of Chalabi’s treachery.

Then Stahl moved on to Franklin’s central message. „Meanwhile,“ she said, „we have been told that grave concerns about the true nature of Chalabi’s relationship with Iran started after the U.S. obtained, quote, undeniable intelligence‘ that Chalabi met with a senior Iranian intelligence officer, a, quote, nefarious figure from the dark side of the regime, an individual with a direct hand in covert operations against the United States.‘ Chalabi never reported this meeting to anyone in the U.S. government, including his friends and sponsors.“ In short, the Pentagon—and Feith’s office in particular—was blameless.

VI. The Cabal’s Triumph
Soon after the broadcast, David Szady’s team at the FBI decided to wrap up its investigation before Franklin leaked any more information. Agents quietly confronted Franklin with the taped phone call and pressured him to cooperate in a sting operation directed at AIPAC and members of Feith’s team in the Pentagon. Franklin, facing a long prison sentence, agreed. On August 4th, 2005, Rosen and Weissman were indicted, and on January 20th, 2006, Franklin, who had earlier pleaded guilty, was sentenced to twelve years and seven months in prison. In an attempt to reduce his sentence, he agreed to testify against the former AIPAC officials. The case is set to go to trial this fall.

So far, however, Franklin is the only member of Feith’s team to face charges. The continuing lack of indictments demonstrates how frighteningly easy it is for a small group of government officials to join forces with agents of foreign powers—whether it is AIPAC or the MEK or the INC—to sell the country on a disastrous war.

The most glaring unindicted co-conspirator is Ahmed Chalabi. Even top-ranking Republicans suspect him of double dealing: „I wouldn’t be surprised if he told Iranians facts, issues, whatever, that we did not want them to know,“ said Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., who chairs the House subcommittee on national security. Yet the FBI has been unable to so much as question Chalabi as part of its ongoing espionage case. Last November, when Chalabi returned to the United States for a series of speeches and media events, the FBI tried to interview him. But because he was under State Department protection during his visit, sources in the Justice Department say, the bureau’s request was flatly denied.

„Chalabi’s running around saying, “I have nothing to hide, “ says one senior FBI official. „Yet he’s using our State Department to keep us from him at the same time. And we’ve got to keep our mouth shut.“

In the end, the work of Franklin and the other members of Feith’s secret office had the desired effect. Working behind the scenes, the members of the Office of Special Plans succeeded in setting the United States on the path to all-out war with Iran. Indeed, since Bush was re-elected to a second term, he has made no secret of his desire to see Tehran fall. In a victory speech of sorts on Inauguration Day in January 2005, Vice President Dick Cheney warned bluntly that Iran was „right at the top“ of the administration’s list of „trouble spots“—and that Israel „might well decide to act first“ by attacking Iran. The Israelis, Cheney added in an obvious swipe at moderates in the State Department, would „let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward.“

Over the past six months, the administration has adopted almost all of the hard-line stance advocated by the war cabal in the Pentagon. In May, Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, appeared before AIPAC’s annual conference and warned that Iran „must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences.“ To back up the tough talk, the State Department is spending $66 million to promote political change inside Iran—funding the same kind of dissident groups that helped drive the U.S. to war in Iraq. „We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran,“ Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared.

In addition, the State Department recently beefed up its Iran Desk from two people to ten, hired more Farsi speakers and set up eight intelligence units in foreign countries to focus on Iran. The administration’s National Security Strategy—the official policy document that sets out U.S. strategic priorities—now calls Iran the „single country“ that most threatens U.S. interests.

The shift in official policy has thrilled former members of the cabal. To them, the war in Lebanon represents the final step in their plan to turn Iran into the next Iraq. Ledeen, writing in the National Review on July 13th, could hardly restrain himself. „Faster, please,“ he urged the White House, arguing that the war should now be taken over by the U.S. military and expanded across the entire region. „The only way we are going to win this war is to bring down those regimes in Tehran and Damascus, and they are not going to fall as a result of fighting between their terrorist proxies in Gaza and Lebanon on the one hand, and Israel on the other. Only the United States can accomplish it,“ he concluded. „There is no other way.“

James Bamford is the author of A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies. His story for RS on consultant John Rendon, „The Man Who Sold the War“ [RS 988], won the 2006 National Magazine Award for reporting. And he wrote the classic „Puzzle Palace“ on the NSA.

This article was published @ RollingStone

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Part 1: The Foreign Agent Factor

Sibel Edmonds – In his farewell address in 1796, George Washington warned that America must be constantly awake against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence…since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.”

Today, foreign influence, that most baneful foe of our republican government, has its tentacles entrenched in almost all major decision making and policy producing bodies of the U.S. government machine. It does so not secretly, since its self-serving activities are advocated and legitimized by highly positioned parties that reap the benefits that come in the form of financial gain and positions of power.

Foreign governments and foreign-owned private interests have long sought to influence U.S. public policy. Several have accomplished this goal; those who are able and willing to pay what it takes. Those who buy themselves a few strategic middlemen, commonly known as pimps, while in DC circles referred to as foreign registered agents and lobbyists, who facilitate and bring about desired transactions. These successful foreign entities have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying influence in Washington DC. They have the required recipe down pat: get yourself a few ‘Dime a Dozen Generals,’ bid high in the ‘former statesmen lobby auction’, and put in your pocket one or two ‘ex-congressmen turned lobbyists’ who know the ropes when it comes to pocketing a few dozen who still serve.

The most important facet of this influence to consider is what happens when the active and powerful foreign entities’ objectives are in direct conflict with our nation’s objectives and its interests and security; and when this is the case, who pays the ultimate price and how. There is no need for assumptions of hypothetical situations to answer these questions, since throughout recent history we have repeatedly faced the dire consequences of the highjacking of our foreign and domestic policies by these so-called foreign agents of foreign influence.

Let’s illustrate this with the most important recent case, the catastrophe endured by our people; the September Eleven terrorist attacks. Let’s observe how certain foreign interests, combined with their U.S. agents and benefactors, overrode the interests and security of the entire nation; how thousands of victims and their loved ones were kicked aside to serve the interests of a few; foreign influence and its agents.

Senator Graham’s Revelation
It has been established that two of the 9/11 hijackers had a support network in the U.S. that included agents of the Saudi government, and that the Bush administration and the FBI blocked a congressional investigation into that relationship.

In his book, „Intelligence Matters,“ Senator Bob Graham made clear that some details of that financial support from Saudi Arabia were in the 27 pages of the congressional inquiry’s final report that were blocked from release by the administration, despite the pleas of leaders of both parties in the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Here is an excerpt from Senator Graham’s statement from the July 24, 2003 congressional record on the classified 27 pages of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11: “The most serious omission, in my view, is part 4 of the report, which is entitled Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters. Those 27 pages have almost been entirely censured [sic]….The declassified version of this finding tells the American people that our investigation developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. In other words, officials of a foreign government are alleged to have aided and abetted the terrorist attacks on our country on September 11, which took over 3,000 lives.”

In his book Graham reveals, “Our investigators found a CIA memo dated August 2, 2002, whose author concluded that there is incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists within the Saudi government. On September 11, America was not attacked by a nation-state, but we had just discovered that the attackers were actively supported by one, and that state was our supposed friend and ally Saudi Arabia.” He then cites another case, “We had discovered an FBI asset who had a close relationship with two of the terrorists; a terrorist support network that went through the Saudi Embassy; and a funding network that went through the Saudi Royal family.”

The most explosive revelation in Graham’s book is the following statement with regard to the administration’s attitude on page 216: “It was as if the President’s loyalty lay more with Saudi Arabia than with America’s safety.” Further, he states that he asked the FBI to undertake a review of the Riggs Bank records on the terrorists’ money trail, to look at other Saudi companies with ties to al-Qaeda, to plan for monitoring suspect Saudi interests in the United States; however, Graham adds: “To my knowledge, none of these investigations have been completed…Nor do we know anything else about what I believe to be a state-sponsored terrorist support network that still exists, largely undamaged, within the United States.”

What Graham is trying to establish in his book and previous public statements in this regard, and doing so under state imposed ‘secrecy and classification’, is that the classification and cover up of those 27 pages is not about protecting ‘U.S. national security, methods of intelligence collection, or ongoing investigations,’ but to protect certain U.S. allies. Meaning, our government put the interests of certain foreign nations and their U.S. beneficiaries far above its own people and their interests. While Saudi Arabia has been specifically pointed to by Graham, other countries involved have yet to be identified.

In covering up Saudi Arabia’s direct role in supporting Al Qaeda, the 9/11 Commission goes even a few steps further than the congress and the Executive Branch. The report claims „there is no convincing evidence that any government financially supported al-Qaeda before 9/11.“ Their report ignores all the information provided by government officials to Congress, as well as volumes of published reports and investigations by other nations, regarding Muslim and Arab regimes that have supported al Qaeda. It completely disregards the terrorist lists of the Treasury and State Departments, which have catalogued the Saudi government’s decades of support for Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

Why in the world would the United States government go so far to protect Saudi Arabia in the face of what itself declares to be the biggest security threat facing our nation and the world today?

Why is the United States willing to set aside its own security and interests in order to advance the interests of another state?

How can a government that’s been intent upon using the terrorist attacks to carry out many unjustifiable atrocities, prevent bringing to justice those who’ve been established as being directly responsible for it?

More importantly, how is this done in a nation that prides itself as one that operates under governance of the people, by the people, for the people?

How did our government bodies, those involved in drafting and implementing our nation’s policies, evolve into this foreign influence-peddling operation?

In order to answer these questions one must first establish who stands to lose and who stands to gain by protecting Saudi Arabia from being exposed and facing consequences of its involvement in terrorist networks activities. In addition to identifying the nations in question, we must identify the interests as well as the actors; their agents. Let’s look at Saudi Arabia as one of the successful foreign nations that have mastered the art of ‘covering all the bases’ when it comes to buying and peddling influence in Washington DC, and identify its hired ‘agents’ and ‘agents by default.’

Foreign Agents by Default
Although when it comes to our complex diplomatic threading with Saudi Arabia the easiest answer appears to be the ‘oil factor,’ upon further inspection the Saudi’s influence and role extends into other areas, such as the Military Industrial Complex and the too familiar Lobbying Games.

According to the report published by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), Saudi Arabia is America’s top customer. Since 1990 the U.S. government, through the Pentagon’s arms export program, has arranged for the delivery of more than $39.6 billion in foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia, and an additional $394 million worth of arms were delivered to the Saudi regime through the State Department’s direct commercial sales program. Oil rich Saudi Arabia is a cash-paying customer; a compulsive buyer of our weaponry. The list of U.S. sellers includes almost all the major players such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing.

The report by FAS establishes that despite the show of U.S. support demonstrated by this astounding quantity of arms sales, Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is extremely poor; see the U.S. State Department’s 2000 Human Rights Report. Saudi Arabia’s position as a strategic Gulf ally has blinded U.S. officials into approving a level and quality of arms exports that should never have been allowed to a non-democratic country with such a poor human rights record.

Further, there are indications of Saudi’s active role as a player in the nuclear black-market. According to Mohammed Khilewi, first secretary at the Saudi mission to the United Nations until July 1994, the Saudis have sought a bomb since 1975; they sought to buy nuclear reactors from China, supported Pakistan’s nuclear program, and contributed $5 billion to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program between 1985 and 1990. While the U.S. government vocally opposes the development or procurement of ballistic missiles by non-allies, it has been very quiet in Saudi Arabia’s case, considering the fact that it possesses the longest-range ballistic missiles of any developing country.

The Military Industrial Complex certainly seems to be a winner in having the congressional report pertaining to the Saudi government’s role in supporting the 9/11 terrorist activities being classified. The exposure would have meant grounds for U.S. sanctions and retributions; it would have risked the loss of billions of dollars in revenue from its ‘top customer.’ These companies don’t even have to officially register as foreign agents; after all, their strong loyalty and unbreakable bond with foreign elements exists by default; it is called mutual benefit. They are ‘Foreign Agents by Default.’

This holds true for other parties and players involved within the MIC network; the contractors and the investors. Let’s look at one of these famous and influential players; another foreign agent even if only by default; a man who defended the Saudis against a lawsuit brought by the 9/11 victims’ family members; a man who happens to be the senior counsel for the Carlyle Group, which invests heavily in defense companies and is the nation’s 10th largest defense contractor with ties to the Saudi Royal Family, Enron, Global Crossing, among others; James Baker; Papa Bush’s Secretary of State. On the morning of September 11th, 2001, Baker was reportedly at a Carlyle investor conference with members of the Bin Laden family in the Ritz Carlton in Washington DC, while Bush Sr. was on the payroll of the Carlyle group.

The Carlyle Group, a Washington, DC based private equity firm that employs numerous former high-ranking government officials with ties to both political parties, was the ninth largest Pentagon contractor between 1998 and 2003, an ongoing Center for Public Integrity investigation into Department of Defense contracts found. According to this report, overall, six private investment firms, including Carlyle, received nearly $14 billion in Pentagon deals between 1998 and 2003. Considering the fact that Saudi Arabia is the top buyer of the U.S. weapons industry, Carlyle’s investment and its stake, and of course Jimmy Baker’s far reaching influence within the Pentagon and congress, everything seems to come together and fit perfectly to shield this foreign interest no matter the price to be paid by the American public.

The political action committees (PACs) of the biggest defense companies have given $14.2 million directly to federal candidates since Clinton’s first presidential bid, according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP). In 1997 alone the defense industry spent $49.5 million to lobby the nation’s decision-makers.

Between 1998 and 2004, for the six-year period, Boeing Company spent more than $57 million in lobbying. For the same period of time, Lockheed Martin poured over $55 million into lobbying activities. Northrop Grumman exceeded both by investing $83 million in lobbying, and based on a report issued by POGO, it contributed over $4 million to individuals and PACs.

With ‘dime a dozen’ generals on their boards of directors, numerous high-powered ex congressmen and senators at their disposal in the ‘K Street Lobby Quarter,’ tens of millions of dollars in campaign donations, and billions of dollars at stake, the Military Industrial Complex surely had all the incentives to act just as foreign agents would, and fight for their highly valued client; the Saudi Government. They appear to have had all the reasons to ensure that the report would not see the light of the day; no matter what the effect on the country, its security, and its interests.

K Street Lobby Quarter
The fact that Saudi Arabia pours large sums into lobbying firms and public relations companies with close ties to congress does not come as a big surprise. The FARA database under the DOJ website lists Qorvis Communications as one of Saudi Arabia’s registered foreign agents. In 2003, for only a six months period, Qorvis received more than $11 million from the Saudi government. Another firm, Loeffler Tuggey Pauerstein Rosenthal LLP, another registered foreign agent, received more than $840,000 for the same six-month period, and the list goes on. Just for this six month period the government of Saudi Arabia paid a total of more than $14 million to 13 lobbying and public relations companies; all registered as foreign agents.

Why do the Saudis spend nearly $20 million per year in lobbying activities in the U.S. via their hired agents? What kind of return on investment are they getting out of the United States Congress?

Let’s take Loeffler’s group and examine its value for the Saudi government, since it was paid over $3 million in three years between 2003 and 2005. The firm was founded by former Republican Congressman Tom Loeffler of Texas. Loeffler served in the Republican Leadership as Deputy Whip, and as Chief Deputy Whip during his third and fourth term.

He was a member of the powerful Appropriations Committee, Energy and Commerce Committee and Budget Committee. In the two Bush campaigns for governor, Loeffler, who contributed $141,000, was the largest donor. In 1998, he served as national co-chair of the Republican National Committee’s „Team 100“ program for donors of $100,000 or more, and afterwards held the same title during George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. Loeffler’s generosity extends to the members of congress as well. In 6 years, he has given more than $185,000 to members of congress, 97% of it going to only Republican members. During the same six-year period, Loeffler’s firm received more than $18 million in lobbying fees.

The firm’s managing director happens to be William L. Ball. Ball served as Chief of Staff to Senators John Tower (R-TX) and Herman Talmadge (D-GA). In 1985, he joined the Reagan Administration as Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. Later he was assigned to the White House to serve President Reagan as his chief liaison to the Congress. Wallace Henderson is also a Partner; he was Chief Counsel and Chief of Staff to Representative W. J. Tauzin (R-LA), Chief of Staff to U.S. Senator John Breaux (D-LA).

By having foreign agents such as the Loeffler Group, in addition to their foreign agents by default, the MIC, the Saudis seem to have all their bases covered. Former secretaries and deputy secretaries with open access to the current ones, former congressmen and senators who used to be positioned on strategically valuable committees and know the rules of the congressional game, and millions of dollars available to be spent and channeled and re-channeled to various PACs go a long way toward ensuring results. Money counts. Money is needed to bring in votes.

Professional skills and discretion are required to get this money to various final destinations. The registered foreign agents, the lobby groups, are geared for this task. The client is happy in the end; so are the foreign agents and the congressional actors.

Other Savvy Nations
Of course, the sanction and legitimization of far reaching foreign influence and strongholds in the U.S., despite the many dire consequences endured by its citizens, is not limited to the government of Saudi Arabia. Numerous well-documented cases can be cited for others such as Turkey, Pakistan, and Israel, to name a few.

I won’t get into the details and history of my own case, where the government invoked the state secrets privilege to gag my case and the congress in order to ‘protect certain sensitive diplomatic relations.’ The country, the foreign influence, in this case was the Republic of Turkey. The U.S. government did so despite the far reaching consequences of burying the facts involved, and disregarded the interests and security of the nation; all to protect a quasi ally engaged in numerous illegitimate activities within the global terrorist networks, nuclear black-market and narcotics activities; an ally who happens to be another compulsive and loyal buyer of the Military Industrial Complex; an ally who happens to be another savvy player in recruiting top U.S. players as its foreign agents and spending million of dollars per year to the lobbying groups headed by many ‘formers.’

Turkey’s agent list includes generals such as Joseph Ralston and Brent Scowcroft, former statesmen such as William Cohen and Marc Grossman, and of course famous ex-congressmen such as Bob Livingston and Stephen Solarz. Turkey too seems to have all its bases covered.

Another well-known and documented case involves Pakistan. Over two decades ago Richard Barlow, an intelligence analyst working for then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney issued a startling report. After reviewing classified information from field agents, he had determined that Pakistan, despite official denials, had built a nuclear bomb. In the March 29, 1993 issue of New Yorker, Seymour Hersh noted that “even as Barlow began his digging, some senior State Department officials were worried that too much investigation would create what Barlow called embarrassment for Pakistan.

Barlow’s conclusion was politically inconvenient. A finding that Pakistan possessed a nuclear bomb would have triggered a congressionally mandated cutoff of aid to the country, and it would have killed a $1.4-billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Islamabad. A few months later a Pentagon official downplayed Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities in his testimony to Congress. When Barlow protested to his superiors, he was fired. A few years later, the Executive Branch would slap Barlow with the State Secrets Privilege.

As we all now know, Pakistan provided direct nuclear assistance to Iran and Libya. During the Cold War, the U.S. put up with Pakistani lies and deception about their nuclear activities, it did not enforce its restrictions on Pakistan’s nuclear program when it counted, and as a result Pakistan ended up with a U.S.-made nuclear weapons system. Yet again, after 9/11, the Bush administration issued a waiver ending the implementation of almost all sanctions on Pakistan because of the perceived need for Pakistani assistance in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who ironically were brought to power by direct U.S. support in the 1980s in the first place.

Weiss, in the May-June 2004 issue of the Bulletin states: “We are essentially back where we were with Pakistan in the 1980s. It is apparent that it has engaged in dangerous nuclear mischief with North Korea, Iran, and Libya (and perhaps others), but thus far without consequences to its relationship with the United States because of other, overriding foreign policy considerations–not the Cold War this time, but the war on terrorism.” He continues: “But now there is a major political difference. It was one thing for Pakistan, a country with which the United States has had good relations generally, to follow India and produce the bomb for itself. It is quite another for Pakistan to help two-thirds of the „axis of evil” to get the bomb as well.”

FARA & LDA
An agent of a ‘foreign principal’ is defined as any individual or organization which acts at the order, request, or under the direction or control of a foreign principal, or whose activities are directed by a foreign principal who engages in political activities, or acts in a public relations capacity for a foreign principal, or solicits or dispenses any thing of value within the United States for a foreign principal, or represents the interests of a foreign principal before any agency or official of the U.S. government.

In 1938, in response to the large number of German propaganda agents in the pre-WWII U.S., Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) was established to insure that the American public and its lawmakers know the source of propaganda intended to sway public opinion, policy, and laws. The Act requires every agent of a foreign principal to register with the Department of Justice and file forms outlining its agreements with, income from, and expenditures on behalf of the foreign principal. Any agent testifying before a committee of Congress must furnish the committee with a copy of his most recent registration statement. The agent must keep records of all his activities and permit the Attorney General to inspect them. However, as is the case with many laws, the Act is filled with exemptions and loopholes that allow minimization of, and in some cases complete escape from, warranted scrutiny.

There are a number of exemptions. For example, persons whose activities are of a purely commercial nature or of a religious, academic, and charitable nature are exempt. Any agent who is engaged in lobbying activities and is registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is exempt. The LDA of 1995 was passed after decades of effort to make the regulation and disclosure of lobbying the federal government more effective.

However, LDA also has serious and important loopholes and limitations that can be summed up as: Inadequate Disclosure, Inadequate Enforcement, and Inadequate Regulation of Conduct. The recent congressional scandals make this point very clear.
In addition, neither act deals with an important issue: Conflict of Interest. Many of these agents, with their loyalty to the foreign hand that feeds them, end up being appointed to various positions, commissions and special envoys by our government.

Recall Kissinger and his appointment to head the 9/11 Commission, and of course the recent revelation by Woodward on his advisory position to the current White House. Take a look at Jimmy Baker’s current appointment on the Iraq commission. Same goes for the father of all the ‘dime a dozen generals’, Brent Scowcroft, and one of his new protégés, General Joseph Ralston. In short, neither FARA nor LDA creates meaningful oversight, control, or enforcement; neither deals with conflict of interest issues, and neither provides any deterrence or consequences for unethical or illegal conduct.

It used to be congressional ‘pork projects’ and ‘corporate influence’ that raised eyebrows now and then; here and there. Gone are those days. Today the unrestricted and uncontrollable money game and influence peddling tricks within the major decision-making and policy producing bodies of the U.S. government have reached new heights; yet, no raised eyebrows are registered. Sadly, today, a new version of ‘The Manchurian Candidate’ would have to be produced as a documentary.

The other day I received a request to sign on to a petition put forth by a group of 9/11 family members urging the congress to reopen the investigations of 9/11 and declassify the infamous 27-pages which deal with foreign governments, U.S. allies, that provided support for those who carried out the attacks on our nation. My heart goes out to them. I do sympathize with them. I am known to take on similar propositions and methods of activism myself. However, looking at the realities, seeing what it takes to get things done in Washington, realizing how this beast works in the Real Sin City, I would encourage them to look at the root cause, rather than the symptoms. There are only two ways I can see that can bring about what they have been fighting for and what the majority of us desire to see in terms of bringing about Truth, Oversight, and Accountability; Justice.

The family members, and their supporters, us, either have to tackle the major cause; the corruption of our government officials via unrestricted and undisciplined ‘revolving doors’ and ‘foreign influence & lobby’ practices, and push for expedient meaningful reforms by the new ambitious congress, and have them prove to us their worth. Or, they may as well give up their long-held integrity, go bid high for one or two former statesmen, hire a few dime a dozen generals, and buy themselves a couple of ex-congressmen turned lobbyists; that will do the job.

National Security Whistleblowers Coalition

Der Chef des italienischen Militärgeheimdienstes Sismi, General Nicolo Pollari, ist heute von der Regierung Prodi entlassen worden. Er steht im Verdacht, an der Entführung eines Imams in Mailand im Februar 2003 beteiligt gewesen zu sein.

Seit Monaten ermitteln die Behörden wegen möglicher Verstrickungen von Sismi und dem US-Geheimdienst CIA in die Entführung. Gegen Pollari und seinen Mitarbeiter Marco Mancini läuft deswegen ein Verfahren. Abgelöst wurde heute auch der Chef des zivilen Geheimdienstes.

Überfallen und entführt
Der muslimische Geistliche Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr alias Abu Omar behauptet, er sei 2003 am helllichten Tag in Mailand auf der Strasse überfallen, in ein Auto gebracht und auf den US-Stützpunkt Aviano in Norditalien gefahren worden. Von dort sei er nach Ägypten ausgeflogen worden, wo ihn die Behörden gefoltert haben sollen.

Die Staatsanwaltschaft in Rom vermutet, dass der US-Geheimdienst CIA die Entführung organisiert hat. Die italienischen Behörden werfen den USA vor, mit der Entführung von Nasr nicht nur gegen geltendes Recht verstossen, sondern auch wertvolle Aufklärungsarbeit zerstört zu haben.

Italienische Ermittler waren Nasr bis zu seiner Verschleppung auf den Fersen gewesen und hatten seine Gespräche abgehört. Er soll Verbindungen zur Terrororganisation al-Qaida haben und Kämpfer für den Aufstand im Irak rekrutiert haben.

Auch in Abhörskandal verwickelt
Pollari ist in den letzten Wochen auch in den Sog eines Skandals um illegale Telefonabhörungen geraten. Verhaftet wurden im September einige Manager der Telecom Italia und des Mutterkonzerns Pirelli sowie hochrangige Polizeifunktionäre und Militärs.

Sie sollen Telefongespräche von Politikern, Grossunternehmern und Journalisten abgehört und aufgenommen haben. Die Verdächtigten werden beschuldigt, geheime Informationen an Privatdetektive und Geheimdienste weitergegeben zu haben.

Auch die Steuerdateien prominenter Politiker wurden ausspioniert- darunter Regierungschef Romano Prodi, Staatspräsident Giogio Napolitano und Oppositionschef Silvio Berlusconi. Die Ermittler gehen davon aus, dass der Spionagering in Übereinstimmung mit dem Militärgeheimdienst gehandelt hatte.

Italien: Spitzenermittler „fiel von Brücke“
Two Strange Deaths In European Wiretapping Scandal

William A. Hamilton / Washington DC – Resolving the FBI’s persistent and incapacitating information technology problems was one of the main recommendations of the Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 in its December 2002 Final Report. The “persistence” is the result of efforts to conceal the fact that the FBI’s primary information management system is based on software the U.S. Department of Justice stole from a vendor. Justice covertly disseminated the software beyond U.S. Attorneys Offices, the entities authorized to use it, and the government then converted PROMIS to track wire transfers in banks, to track intelligence information in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies, and to steal intelligence secrets from foreign governments by selling them a Trojan-horse version.

The FBI’s cover-up of its role in the early 1980s theft of the PROMIS case management software from INSLAW, Inc. prevented the FBI from taking advantage in the mid-1990s of new computing technology that would have enabled dramatic improvements in the software’s ease-of-use. The FBI’s decision to disguise the PROMIS origins of its software, rather than upgrade its ease-of-use, not only fooled experts appointed by a court at the behest of Congress in 1996 but also prevented the FBI from connecting the dots five years later on 9/11 between investigative leads about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training. Connecting those dots might have unraveled the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI. The FBI then wasted the first several years of the war on terrorism on a failed $170 million project to upgrade the ease-of-use on its own.

The cover-up also prompted the FBI to pull its punches when the FBI’s Albuquerque office conducted an investigation into a PROMIS sale in New Mexico during the summer of 1984, the same year the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters created the first Bureau-wide case management system using a stolen copy of PROMIS. Employees of New Mexico’s Sandia National Laboratory, one of the two main U.S. intelligence centers on nuclear warfare, complained to FBI Albuquerque that the foreign national who made the PROMIS sale was simultaneously doing business with the Soviet Union. The Intelligence Division supervised all FBI counterintelligence investigations. FBI Albuquerque abruptly terminated its investigation without reversing the illegal PROMIS sale, and advised the Sandia witnesses that they could appeal the decision to FBI Headquarters if they wished.

The example the FBI gave to its own employees in 1984 of the FBI as lawbreaker was not lost on an American spy, an FBI Agent with an unusual interest in software, who worked in the Intelligence Division at FBI Headquarters while it was installing PROMIS. When the FBI’s PROMIS became operational in 1985 under the name FOIMS, FBI Agent Robert Hanssen began the most productive phase of his 20 years of espionage for the Soviet Union and Russia. Hanssen made extensive use of the FBI’s software in his espionage, according to the FBI’s early 2001 complaint against him. The U.S. Government also used Hanssen, a senior FBI counterintelligence agent, to help Germany and England with the installation and use of their stolen copies of PROMIS.

Hanssen also gave the Russians copies of the PROMIS software code used in the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies to track their intelligence information, and installed by in banks to enable U.S. intelligence to track electronic fund transfers. This software later made its way on the Russian black market to al Qaeda, which used it both to find out what the United States knew about al Qaeda’s plans, by accessing U.S. Government intelligence systems, and to move its funds through the banking system.

INSLAW retained attorney C. Boyden Gray in October 2001 to seek a settlement of its PROMIS copyright-infringement claims by having the government buy a license to the new and fully-tested and debugged point-and-click generation of PROMIS for the war on terrorism. The Bush Justice Department stonewalled Gray, while the FBI worked secretly and in vain to upgrade its version of PROMIS, then and now known as ACS, on its own. Two months after Gray became Ambassador to the European Union in January 2006, Gray’s co-counsel wrote to White House Counsel Harriet Miers to arrange to send her a document on a national security case for which Gray had been lead counsel. He also explained the President’s intervention was essential. Miers telephoned to say that she had spoken to Ambassador Gray in Brussels, and that Gray identified the case as the INSLAW case and added that the government owes INSLAW money. Miers emphasized, however, that INSLAW’s problem is with the government, and she represents the President, and, consequently, INSLAW’s only recourse is to Congress.

There were three significant developments during the summer of 2001 on the connection between the PROMIS software scandal and U.S. vulnerability to al Qaeda.

The first development, the debriefing in 2001 of former FBI Agent Robert Hanssen, revealed that al Qaeda had acquired copies of PROMIS used in the FBI, U.S. intelligence agencies, and banks, and was using the software to stay one step ahead of the United States. On June 14, 2001, The Washington Times published a front-page story entitled Software Likely in Hands of Terrorist, attributed to federal law enforcement staff familiar with Hanssen’s debriefing. The story appeared three months before 9/11, on the day Justice submitted its plea agreement with Hanssen in court under seal. Through that agreement, Justice abandoned its demand for the death penalty in exchange for Hanssen’s confession. The article stated that Hanssen gave copies of PROMIS to his Russian handlers, who later sold copies to bin Laden for $2 million, and that the sophisticated software gives bin Laden access to databases on specific targets of his choosing and the ability to monitor electronic banking sources, easing money-laundering …

The second development, also in June 2001, was the FBI’s award of its Virtual Case File contract to retrofit a point-and-click User Interface to the FBI’s case management software. A point-and-click User Interface is as important to software’s ease of use as an automatic transmission is to an automobile’s ease of use. The technology for building a system with a point-and-click User Interface has been available in the computer industry since 1993, two years before the FBI began the development of the current ACS version of its PROMIS software. However, the FBI not only failed to take advantage of the new point-and-click technology under its $67 million ACS Project in 1995 and 1996, but also failed in its unacknowledged effort to retrofit point-and-click technology to ACS under its four-year, $170 million Virtual Case File project that began in 2001. The use of outdated 1980s case management software in the 21st Century leaves FBI agents at a severe disadvantage in performing their duties, according to Justice’s Inspector General.

The third development during the summer of 2001 was the failure of the FBI to connect the dots between a July 2001 lead from its Phoenix office about Arab men coming to the United States for flight training, and the FBI’s August 2001 arrest of al Qaeda terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui, at a flight training school in Minneapolis. Both FBI Phoenix and FBI Minneapolis had entered leads into ACS about these items. Because the FBI had never upgraded ACS with a point-and-click User Interface, ACS was difficult to use, and the FBI did not bother to search it to find connections. Minneapolis sent 70 messages in the weeks before 9/11 fruitlessly seeking support from FBI Headquarters for a national security warrant to search Moussaoui’s laptop computer. Had Minneapolis checked ACS, it would have discovered the Phoenix lead, and it could have used it to bolster its request to FBI Headquarters. Minneapolis obtained the warrant after 9/11. What it found could have enabled it to unravel the 9/11 plot, according to the FBI.

Approximately a month after 9/11, on October 16, 2001, Fox News reported that it had learned from government officials that Osama bin Laden may have purchased PROMIS from Russian sources after Russia got it from Robert Hanssen and that the concern is that bin Laden or al Qaeda could get on-line and use it to monitor the worldwide criminal investigation and hide themselves, to monitor the worldwide financial investigation and hide their money, or monitor operations of governments that use the software. Fox News also reported that Hansen, on behalf of the U.S. Government, had helped allies like Germany and England with the installation and use of their versions of the PROMIS program, and that both Germany and England had stopped using PROMIS in the several months since Hanssen’s mid-2001 confession. When Fox News asked what the U.S. Government was doing to plug the holes in U.S. security caused by the software being in the wrong hands, the government’s spokesperson replied that the United States had stopped using PROMIS, but refused to say when. This was the first time the government admitted, even indirectly, its use of PROMIS for intelligence applications.

In reality, the FBI never stopped using PROMIS. The FBI used its ACS software development project in 1995 and 1996 to disguise the PROMIS origins of FOIMS, the FBI’s primary information management system, by converting (translating) the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS from the COBOL computer programming language in which INSLAW had written it, to the NATURAL language made by Software AG. The FBI also later changed the name from FOIMS to ACS. The following excerpt from a May 1996 email message from Software AG in Reston, Virginia to its parent company in Germany is about the conversion of the PROMIS-derivative FOIMS:

Subject: Press Q[uery] on Promis
Fritz: To answer your questions, I would say:
1.Yes, our Federal Professional Service group is in the process of conversting [sic] Promis from Cobol to ADABAS/NATURAL and has just started doing the final testing. So the software is not in use anywhere now; it’s just now getting up and running in the test phase.

The FBI has such a large volume of contracts and work orders with Software AG that the FBI cannot retrieve a copy of the requested 1995/1996 FBI contract with Software AG for the conversion of FOIMS from COBOL to NATURAL without the contract number, according to its response to INSLAW’s pending Freedom of Information Act request.

The FBI’s primary information management system, designed using 1980s technology already obsolete when installed in 1995, limited the Bureau’s ability to share its information internally and externally. This April 2004 9/11 Commission report unraveled at least part of what the FBI did under its mid-1990s ACS software project.

A brief explanation is needed to understand the FBI’s use of its $67 million ACS Project for a PROMIS cover-up. INSLAW, the federal courts, and Congress had been trying for several years to determine the validity of sworn statements, acquired in early 1991, about the unauthorized use of PROMIS in the FBI and intelligence agencies. In April 1991, Chief Judge Aubrey Robinson of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. ordered the FBI to give INSLAW a copy of FOIMS for comparison with PROMIS. One day before the 30-day deadline, a federal appellate court, on a jurisdictional technicality, set aside the fully-litigated decisions of the first two courts about the Justice Department’s theft of PROMIS through trickery, fraud, and deceit. The year of PROMIS’ theft, 1983, was the year the FBI at first said it planned to contract with INSLAW to help its Intelligence Division install PROMIS, but then, a few months later, told INSLAW it had changed its mind and decided to create new software from scratch.

The appellate decision effectively eliminated the scheduled FOIMS/PROMIS software comparison. The following year, the House Judiciary Committee reconfirmed Justice’s theft of PROMIS, and also complained that Justice had obstructed its attempt to investigate the alleged dissemination of PROMIS to the FBI and U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies, and its plan to compare FOIMS with PROMIS. The Committee demanded that the Attorney General immediately compensate INSLAW for the harm egregiously inflicted, and it threatened to pass a Congressional Reference resolution if necessary. In May 1995, the Senate passed a Congressional Reference resolution on INSLAW, automatically waiving technical defenses available to the government, such as sovereign immunity, and ordering the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to determine whether the United States owes INSLAW compensation for the government’s use of PROMIS.

In January 1996, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims ordered the FBI to produce copies of FOIMS, from its inception in the mid-1980s, to court-appointed experts for comparison with PROMIS. The FBI stalled delivery of FOIMS for six months, ostensibly to process security clearances. In mid-1996, the FBI suddenly announced that the only version of FOIMS still available was the 1996 version. The FBI delivered to the experts in the second half of 1996 what it claimed was the 1996 version of FOIMS. It was written in NATURAL. The FBI later backdated the NATURAL-language version to October 1995, claiming that it had replaced FOIMS with ACS as of that date. These actions were intended to obscure the nexus in 1996 between the FBI’s introduction of the NATURAL-language version of its software, and the court-ordered comparison between the FBI’s software and PROMIS.

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims has exclusive jurisdiction over software copyright infringement claims against the government. In August 1998, the court’s Chief Judge sent an Advisory Report to the Senate stating that the United States would be liable to INSLAW for copyright infringement damages if the government had made any unauthorized derivatives from PROMIS but that INSLAW had not proved that the government had done so. Although the NATURAL-language version of FOIMS is obviously an unauthorized, copyright-infringing derivative of PROMIS, the experts were unable to find the DNA of INSLAW’s PROMIS through their line-by-line code comparison between PROMIS and the FBI’s newly-created NATURAL-language version. The reason is the conversion had automatically reduced the number of lines of the FBI’s code by approximately 90%, invalidating the line-by-line code comparison.

The court-appointed experts were similarly unable to find the PROMIS DNA in other intelligence community software, including software provided by NSA. CIA Director James Woolsey, however, had informed INSLAW Counsel Elliot Richardson three years earlier that an investigation by the CIA’s General Counsel had confirmed that NSA and the CIA were using the identical PROMIS software to keep track of their intelligence information. Richardson memorialized this in his October 1, 1993 letter to Woolsey.

Because of (1) the catastrophic U.S. intelligence failure on 9/11, (2) the government’s admission to Fox News in October 2001 that it had used PROMIS to track its intelligence information, and (3) the fact that INSLAW had a fully-tested and debugged native, point-and-click generation of PROMIS (New PROMIS) operating nationwide in other large public and private sector enterprises, INSLAW retained C. Boyden Gray, White House Counsel to the first President Bush, as its counsel in October 2001 to seek a settlement of INSLAW’s software copyright claims against the United States.

This effort, the first since INSLAW’s counsel Elliot Richardson’s death in 1999, had two objectives: (1) to offer the government use of the latest, completely revamped but fully-tested, version of INSLAW’s PROMIS software for the war on terrorism, and (2) to realize just compensation for the government’s use of unauthorized derivatives of the 1980’s PROMIS in intelligence applications.

Gray met with FBI Director Robert Mueller in late December 2001 and made INSLAW’s proposal. Mueller responded that the FBI did not have any unmet software needs. When Gray pointed out that the FBI had never paid INSLAW for 1980s PROMIS, Mueller responded that he was confident that there was no longer any of the INSLAW software left at the FBI because of software changes made over the years. Mueller advised Gray that Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson was directly overseeing the FBI’s software problem and that he should direct any INSLAW proposal to him.

Gray had a letter hand-delivered to Thompson on January 8, 2002 requesting a meeting to discuss INSLAW’s proposal. Gray’s letter summarized the government’s misappropriation of the 1980’s generation of PROMIS for intelligence applications and included copies of The Washington Times and Fox News reports. Gray also disclosed in the letter that a former national security colleague of his from the Reagan White House had recently confirmed to him that NSA used INSLAW’s PROMIS to track financial transactions in the banking system. Finally, Gray enclosed two sworn statements from the British author of an early 1999 authorized history of Israeli intelligence concerning admissions about PROMIS made to the British author by a former long-time senior Israeli intelligence official, Rafi Eitan. Defense Minister Ariel Sharon had appointed Eitan in the early 1980s as director of the Israeli intelligence agency that supports Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

The gist of Eitan’s admissions is as follows. A former member of the California cabinet of Governor Reagan arranged for the Reagan Administration to give PROMIS to Israel so friends of that Administration could make money by having Israel sell PROMIS overseas. The version of PROMIS sold overseas was equipped with a trap door to facilitate the theft of intelligence secrets of governments installing PROMIS. The U.S. Justice Department arranged for Eitan to visit INSLAW in early 1983, disguised as a visiting Israeli prosecutor, for a demonstration and briefing on PROMIS. Eitan hired Robert Maxwell, the British publisher, to sell PROMIS overseas, and Maxwell sold over $500 million worth of PROMIS. The CIA also directly arranged the sale of another $30-40 million of PROMIS overseas. PROMIS was a very successful computer-based intelligence initiative. PROMIS was also used by U.S. intelligence in banks, and to track information within such agencies as FBI, CIA, and DEA. Israel eventually exploited PROMIS databases of the U.S. Government in its espionage against the United States.

Deputy Attorney General Thompson, the chief operating officer of the Bush Justice Department, never answered Gray’s letter. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that Thompson assigned Gray’s letter to the Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Management Division for appropriate handling, and that the Assistant Attorney General decided as early as February 1, 2002 that no action was required and that no response was necessary.

The Bush Justice Department’s stonewalling of INSLAW may be explained by a PROMIS sale that Robert Maxwell made for Eitan in New Mexico in the early 1980s, a sale that apparently had disastrous ramifications for U.S. nuclear security. In interviews for the authorized history of Israeli intelligence, Eitan identified friendly and adversarial governments that bought the trap-door version of PROMIS from Israel through Maxwell, but did not mention Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico. That sale was the subject of a brief foreign counter-intelligence investigation by FBI Albuquerque in the summer of 1984, according to heavily-redacted copies of documents provided by the FBI in response to a Freedom of Information Act request on Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico.

Two technology transfer employees of the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, one of the two main U.S. intelligence centers on nuclear warfare, made a complaint to FBI Albuquerque on June 1, 1984 after learning from NSA colleagues that Maxwell was selling the Soviet Union information obtained from computerized U.S. Government databases, while simultaneously selling PROMIS in New Mexico. FBI Albuquerque’s investigation in 1984 took place while the FBI’s Intelligence Division was spearheading the installation of PROMIS at the FBI. Albuquerque aborted its investigation in August 1984 after advising the complainants that their NSA colleagues could contact FBI Headquarters if they wished to challenge the decision.

A U.S. intelligence employee began that year (1984) to steal U.S. nuclear warfare secrets for Eitan, his Israeli spymaster. Jonathan Pollard used a computer terminal at U.S. Navy intelligence in Maryland to access U.S. intelligence database systems to steal U.S. nuclear secrets. According to press reports, Israel may have traded some of these secrets for the release of Soviet Jews. The New Yorker, in a January 1999 article, reported that CIA Director William Casey gave a CIA station chief the following assessment of the damage to U.S. national security from Pollard’s espionage: … the Israelis used Pollard to obtain our attack plan against the U.S.S.R. all of it. The coordinates, the firing locations, the sequences. And for guess who? The Soviets. How’s that for cheating?

Early in 2003, INSLAW Counsel Gray obtained the following explanation for the Bush Administration’s stonewalling of his post-9/11 efforts to settle with INSLAW: Paul Wolfowitz, [Deputy Secretary of Defense], Scooter Libby, [Chief of Staff and National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney], and Richard Perle, [Chairman of the Defense Policy Board], are opposed to a settlement with INSLAW for fear that any settlement could embarrass Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and complicate U.S. policy in the Middle East. Each is intimately familiar with the INSLAW case because the government gave PROMIS to Israel.

Six months before the FBI arrested Pollard for espionage, Assistant Attorney General Wm. Bradford Reynolds sent the following May 16, 1985 letter to William F. Weld, the U.S. Attorney in Boston, about arrangements made by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, and two Middle Eastern middlemen who later surfaced in the Iran/Contra scandal, for the sale and distribution of a trap-door version of PROMIS to governments in the Middle East. The Arab broker identified in the letter headed Saudi Arabia’s National Commercial Bank. INSLAW received a copy of the letter in late 2004 from a U.S. intelligence source, and has since obtained convincing indications of its authenticity.

As agreed, Messrs. Manichur Ghorbanifar, Adnan Khashoggi, and Richard Armitage will broker the transaction of Promise [sic] software to Sheik Khalid bin Mahfouz for resale and general distribution as gifts in his region contingent upon the three conditions we last spoke of. Promise must have a soft arrival. No paperwork, customs, or delay. It must be equipped with the special data retrieval unit. As before, you must walk the financial aspects through Credit Suisse into National Commercial Bank. If you encounter any problems contact me directly.

William A. Hamilton is a computer software specialist, former NSA expert and the inventor of PROMIS software; President of Inslaw Inc. company in Washington D.C.
Contact: w.hamilton(at)inslawinc.com

List of references:
1.The Washington Times article of June 14, 2001.
2. Fox News transcript of October 16, 2001.
3. May 1996 email message from Software AG in Reston, Virginia to Software Ag in Darmstadt, Germany.
4. Elliot Richardson’s letter to CIA Director James Woolsey on October 1, 1993.
5.C. Boyden Gray’s January 8, 2002 letter to Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson.
6. Two sworn statements by Gordon Thomas about Rafi Eitan’s admissions to him about PROMIS while he was researching Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the Mosssad, published in early 1999.
7. Two documents obtained under Freedom of Information Act about the Bush Justice Department’s stonewalling of INSLAW Counsel C. Boyden Gray.
8. Documents obtained from FBI under a Freedom of Information Act request about Robert Maxwell’s sale of PROMIS in New Mexico.
9. W. Bradford Reynold’s May 16, 1985 letter to William Weld.

Further Reading
Promisgate: World’s longest spy scandal still glossed over / Part I
Promisgate: World’s longest spy scandal still glossed over /Part II
Promisgate: World’s longest spy scandal still glossed over /Part III

US-Vizepräsident Dick Cheney hat gestern die Einstellung des Verfahrens gegen ihn im Zusammenhang mit der Enttarnung der CIA-Agentin Valerie Plame gefordert.

Die ehemalige CIA-Agentin Valerie Plame hatte geltend gemacht, dass ihre Identität von ranghohen Regierungsbeamten gezielt an die Presse verraten worden sei, um ihren Mann, den früheren US-Botschafter Joseph Wilson, für seine Ablehnung des Irak-Krieges zu bestrafen.

Das Justizministerium hat betont, dass ranghohe Regierungsbeamte Immunität vor Strafverfolgung geniessen, es sei denn, es handle sich um die Verletzung von Grundrechten. Eben diesen Nachweis habe Plame nicht erbracht, argumentierte Cheney in seinem Antrag auf Verfahrenseinstellung.

Weiter argumentierte er in seinem Einstellungsbegehren, dass die Klage von Plame grundlos sei sowie die nationale Sicherheit beeinträchtige und ausserdem zwei Jahre nach einschlägigen Verjährungsfristen eingereicht worden ist.

Robert Parry – Robert Gates, George W. Bush’s choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family’s inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official.

The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers – three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director – and the current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated.

If Bush’s timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates’s past. Read more @ ConsortiumNews

Defense Secretary Nominee Robert Gates Tied to Iran-Contra Scandal and the Secret Arming of Saddam Hussein

Democracy Now – President Bush nominated former CIA director Robert Gates on Wednesday to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. We take a look at Gates‘ role at the CIA in connection to the Iran-Contra scandal and the secret arming of Saddam Hussein with former CIA analyst Mel Goodman, who testified before the Senate in 1991 against the nomination of Gates as CIA director, and investigative journalist Bob Parry who helped expose Iran-Contra.

AMY GOODMAN: Today, we’re joined by two people in Washington, D.C., who have closely followed the career of Robert Gates. Melvin Goodman is a former CIA analyst. In ’91, he was one of three former CIA officials to testify before the Senate against the nomination of Robert Gates as director of Central Intelligence. Mel Goodman now serves as senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and director of the Center’s National Security Project.

We’re also joined by Robert Parry, an investigative journalist who helped expose the Iran-Contra affair while working as a reporter for the Associated Press and for Newsweek. He now serves as editor of the online e-zine consortiumnews.com and is author of the book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.

Mel Goodman, I want to begin with you. Go back to the beginning of the ’90s. Why did you testify against Bob Gates?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I testified, Amy, against Bob Gates for one very simple reason: Bob Gates, over the period of the 1980s, as a deputy for Intelligence and then as a deputy to CIA director Bill Casey, was politicizing intelligence. He was spinning intelligence on all of the major issues of the day, on the Soviet Union, on Central America, on the Middle East, on Southwest Asia. And I thought this record, this charge, should be presented before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

I think also it’s important that Bob Gates is a graduate of the Iran-Contra class of 1986. And the reason why he had to withdraw his nomination in 1987 was simply because the majority of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, when Ronald Reagan nominated Gates as CIA director, did not believe Gates’s pleas that he knew nothing about Iran-Contra and this was happening around him, but he wasn’t part of it.

And, of course, in 1991, he attracted 31 negative votes, more than all of the votes against all of the CIA directors in history going back to 1947. So I think the committee believed that he was spinning the intelligence, and there was this great controversy, but the Republicans held the line. They made this a loyalty test to President George Bush, and so he was confirmed. But 31 negative votes was very significant.

AMY GOODMAN: Melvin Goodman, you didn’t just testify, you spent days with the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Why?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I thought it was very important for people such as Bill Bradley and Sam Nunn, who were very opposed to Bob Gates, to understand how intelligence was politicized, how it was made up out of whole cloth; how if you look at the papal assassination plot that Gates commissioned in 1985, how this had no bearing on intelligence whatsoever. And I think there is a rather delicious irony in the fact that here is a nation that went to war with politicized intelligence, and now it’s naming as a CIA director someone who was the most important practitioner of politicized intelligence in the history of the CIA. So, as Yogi Berra would have said, “This is deja-vu all over again.”

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. And then, when we come back, we’ll continue with you, Mel Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst, now at Center for International Policy, testified against Bob Gates when he was put forward as director of Central Intelligence in 1991. We’ll also speak with journalist Bob Parry.

AMY GOODMAN: Our guests, Mel Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst, now a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, co-author of the book, Bush League Diplomacy. We’re also joined by Bob Parry, veteran investigative journalist, editor of consortiumnews.com, for years worked as an investigative reporter for both Associated Press and Newsweek magazine, where he was key in exposing the Iran-Contra scandal. His latest book is called Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Bob Parry, I’d like to ask you — Mel Goodman mentioned Bob Gates as being part of the Iran-Contra class, but in this world of ahistorical journalism that we live in today, where very few people — Iran-Contra is practically ancient history to most of the — especially the young Americans in this country, could you give us a quick snapshot of what the Iran-Contra scandal was?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, in a synopsis, the Iran-Contra scandal was an effort by the Reagan administration to circumvent various restrictions on carrying out their foreign policy, both in the Middle East and also in Central America.

The Contra part related to the Nicaraguan Contras who were put in place to fight the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. And when Congress tried to cut off that support from the CIA, the Reagan administration went around Congress by having Oliver North of the National Security Council, in essence, sort of oversee this operation of getting weapons and money to the Contras. But it still involved many people in the CIA, even when they were denying they were involved. We now know, based on the investigations, that CIA Director William Casey, who was Bob Gates’s direct supervisor, was deeply involved, as were people lower down the chain, including some of the station chiefs in the field.

In the case of the Middle East, the Reagan administration was carrying out secret policies to arm basically both sides of the Iran-Iraq War. This started, we now know, back in the very early part of the 1980s. By 1981, there were shipments of weapons that had been approved by the Reagan administration that went through Israel to Iran, and that continued on through to the mid-1980s. And at times when the Iranians would get the upper hand in the war with Iraq, the United States would tilt back and start helping the Iraqis, the government of Saddam Hussein.

So there were efforts to move weapons through third countries that would help Saddam Hussein in his fight. There was military intelligence that was provided to assist him and even advice on how to use his air force. So there was this whole secret policy that was operating behind the scenes, and the Reagan administration essentially was trying to go around Congress, keep the intelligence committees as much in the dark as possible, and Bob Gates was in the center of almost all of that.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of — I’d like to get back to Mel Goodman. After initially rejecting Gates for an appointment, the Senate then later confirmed him. In your estimation, what were the changes or what happened that the Senate changed its mind?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I think the Senate didn’t change its mind. The man who changed his mind was David Boren, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and his staff director, George Tenet, who, of course, went on to become director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is/was Mr. Slam Dunk for President George Bush in the Iraq war. Boren and Gates developed a very close relationship over the period of the late ’80s and early ’90s. And Gates gave the impression to Boren that Gates would be very careful in running the CIA, that he would pay a lot of attention to the director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and that he would come to the Intelligence Committee to vet covert operations and certain projects of the CIA.

And this is what Boren used to bring some of the Democrats who were opposed to Gates, such as Sam Nunn from Georgia, into line to vote for Bob Gates. But the majority of the Democratic members of the Senate were opposed to him. And if it weren’t for some of the antics of Senator Warren Rudman, who used charges of McCarthyism against the critics of Bob Gates, I think there would have been some Republicans, as well. But the White House did make it a loyalty test, and every Republican voted in favor of Bob Gates in 1991.

AMY GOODMAN: I remember well the Bob Gates hearings. My colleague, Julie Cohen, who was working at WBAI/Pacifica, now is over at NBC, was one who exposed how Gates had lied to Congress, that he had told the Senate Intelligence Committee that in November of 1986 he was preparing testimony for the CIA director, William Casey, about Iran-Contra, that he didn’t realize a presidential finding had been prepared a year before to authorize the CIA’s role in an earlier shipment in 1985, arms shipment to Iran, leading to Casey deceiving Congress. Can you explain what that was all about?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, there were a series of episodes in which Casey had to go to the Congress, because after two years of Bill Casey, the Senate Intelligence Committee really regretted that it had ever confirmed him in the first place. And he really angered the Republican leadership more than the Democratic leadership. And Barry Goldwater became an extremely important critic of Bill Casey.

Bill Casey relied, for all sorts of testimony and briefings and talks that he gave, on Bob Gates. Bob Gates wrote all of his major speeches. He wrote some of his Op-Ed articles, and he wrote all of his testimony. And, of course, there were backdated findings. There were denials of information that was widely known. Bob Gates was told by his deputy about sensitive intercepts involving how we were arming Iraq, how we were getting aid, some of it from the Israeli inventories, to Iran, how we were supplying the Contras with funds that were the profits of these arms sales to Iran. So, Bob Gates and Bill Casey worked extremely closely on all of these matters, and Casey really relied on Bob Gates.

And Bob Gates has always been really a political windsock in these matters in serving the interest of his masters. That’s the way he operated at the National Security Council, and that’s the way he operated at the CIA. And I remember in 1987, he was admonished severely by George Shultz, the Secretary of State at the time, and then in 1989 by James Baker, the Secretary of State at the time, because he was undercutting American policy in trying to serve the interest of the National Security at a time when American policy was changing.

So Bob Gates will serve a master, but I don’t think he’ll be a careful steward of the Pentagon and of the $460 billion defense budget. And the question is, has he now somehow obtained the maturity and integrity to run the Pentagon? I don’t think he has. And now, it’s up to the Senate Armed Forces Committee to make serious decisions about his ability to serve in this very sensitive position.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Bob Parry, in politics at every election time there’s always talk of an “October surprise” that will affect an election. And obviously the phrase „October surprise“ actually goes back to even before this Iran-Contra scandal: the election in 1980 between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Could you talk at all about — was Bob Gates, did he have any role and involvement in that first alleged October surprise?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, when we were doing the Iran-Contra investigations, one of the mysteries was when it really started, and we were able to trace it back initially to 1984, when there were these contacts between some Iranians and some Israelis and some former CIA people, which sort of led to the scandal that we knew at the time. But as we went back, we learned that there the shipments of weapons did not begin in 1985, as we had first thought, but really back in 1981. So we had to look at some of these issues of these allegations that were sort of longstanding from some people who had sort of been in the intelligence world that there had been earlier contacts, that during the 1980 campaign, when 52 Americans were being held hostage in Iran and Jimmy Carter was trying desperately to get them out, that the Republicans went behind his back, first to get information, but also then to make contacts with the Iranians directly.

And the evidence on this has built up over time. We now have a lot of documents. We have some records from that period. We have statements from former Iranian officials, including the former Iranian president, Banisadr, the former defense minister, the former foreign minister, all of whom saying that they had these dealings with the Republicans behind the scenes. So, as we went back through that, the evidence built up that there had been these earlier contacts and that Bob Gates was one of the people involved in them.

Gates, at the time, had been assigned to the National Security Council for Jimmy Carter and then had become the executive director — executive assistant to Stansfield Turner, the CIA director. So he was in a key spot. And he was also, though, developing these close ties to some of the Republicans who were about to come into power. So, as these investigations were sort of picked up on in the early 1990s, there was a real effort to sort of put it aside. There was not much stomach left for this investigation, which was headed at that point by Lee Hamilton, who had been the House Intelligence Committee chairman at one point. He kind of had missed the early part of Iran-Contra. He was then put on the Iran-Contra investigation and kind of bought into the cover-up and the cover stories that were used. And then he was made head of this task force on the so-called October Surprise case and behaved similarly. He didn’t really want to push it very far.

And one of the interesting things, which probably should be looked at now, is that after — because the Gates hearings were in 1991. He denied pretty much everything, but there’s evidence that’s come out since then that he’s never really been confronted with, including a remarkable report that the Russian government prepared at Hamilton’s request in January of 1993, in which the Russian government went back through their KGB files on what they knew about these contacts with Iran, and they reported to Lee Hamilton on January 11, 1993, that in fact these contacts with the Republicans had occurred, the Soviets at that point had intelligence on it, and that Bob Gates was one of the people involved in it. That report was never released by Hamilton. It was put in the unpublished files of this investigation, and I discovered it a couple years later. So you have that kind of evidence that’s important.

And on the Iraq side, you have a very important document that has not gotten much attention, which was an affidavit prepared by Howard Teicher, who had been an NSC official for Ronald Reagan, in which he describes Gates’s role in getting secret weapons to the Iraqis. This affidavit was filed in connection with a criminal case that was then underway in Florida in 1995. But these issues have never been really confronted to Gates. There were earlier allegations that he has denied. Some of the witnesses were dismissed. But now there’s more information that he’s never been presented with. And one of the points —

AMY GOODMAN: And, Bob, when you say “secret weapons to the Iraqis,” you’re talking about during the Iranian-Iraq war?

ROBERT PARRY: Yes, back in the — starting about 1982, President Reagan became concerned that the Iranians, who were secretly getting help from the United States via Israel, had gained the upper hand in the war. And so, there was this effort, as the period went on, to give some more help to Saddam Hussein to keep that war sort of at a more even keel. And one of the guys involved, according to the Teicher affidavit and other witnesses, was Bob Gates. But he’s always denied involvement there. So both the facts of the history are important, as well as his honesty. Did he lie to Congress when he denied being involved in these matters?

AMY GOODMAN: Just on this issue, because it’s so key, I mean, the allegation that Gates personally approved the sale of cluster bombs to Saddam in the 1980s, before the war crimes that he was just convicted of.

ROBERT PARRY: Right. And some of these allegations also go to chemicals, the precursor chemicals that Saddam Hussein allegedly used in his chemical weapons that were deployed against the Iranians and other targets in Iraq. So, Gates was allegedly involved in all those kinds of — that’s the very secretive side of US foreign policy that Casey was overseeing, but Gates was sort of his man handling some of the details.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Mel Goodman, given some of this history, I wonder — and given what you have said about the history of Gates as having a record, as using intelligence, basically spinning intelligence to serve political ends, why would President Bush, facing now a Democratic senate, nominate a guy like Bob Gates to this post?

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I think he needs someone like Bob Gates now, because the Bush administration is really circling the wagons. The policy in Iraq has failed miserably. This has been the most profligate decision that any American president has made with regard to national security and foreign policy. And Bob Gates is a very loyal and obedient servant to his master. In this case, his master will be George Bush. And I think what he needs Bob Gates for is to tone down some of the criticism in the Pentagon. I think Bob Gates is out there in the same way that General Hayden is out at the CIA, to calm down the critics, to calm down the contrarians, to stop some of the negative reporting that’s coming from Iraq from CIA station chiefs and CIA analysts. And I think what Bob Gates will do now is silence some of the military criticism of what’s going on in Iraq. I think you’ll see an end to a lot of the public remarks of our active duty general officers, our flag officers who have been clearly critical of what’s happening in Iraq.

And let me just add one thing to what Bob said, because there’s an intelligence aspect that Bob Gates was responsible for in the 1980s that I am aware of. In order to have arms sales to Iran and secret deliveries from Israel to Iran, you had to change the intelligence analysis on Iran, and Bob Gates was part of that. He worked very closely, again, with Howard Teicher over at the National Security Council and Graham Fuller, his National Intelligence officer for the Middle East, to rewrite the intelligence record to say that Iran was no longer interested in terrorism, Iran was now looking to open up dialogue with the United States, that the Soviet Union was about to move into Iran. And this became the intelligence justification for Iran-Contra and why this operational policy had to be put into play.

There was no truth to any of these three charges, but Graham Fuller managed to get them into a National Intelligence Estimate, and Graham Fuller and Bob Gates regularly briefed the National Security Council on the so-called changes in Iranian policy that were made up out of whole cloth. And there was a record of Bob Gates creating intelligence out of whole cloth and urging Bill Casey to take even more provocative measures than the CIA and the Reagan administration was proposing toward Central America, particularly toward Nicaragua. Remember, the CIA was involved in the mining of the harbors in Corinto, which was clearly an act of war. And Bill Casey had never briefed this to the Senate Intelligence Committee. That’s what led to the extreme anger on the part of Barry Goldwater and why Casey had to be brought back to the Senate Intelligence Committee. And, of course, Gates prepared all of Casey’s testimony at this time.

AMY GOODMAN: And this was condemned by the World Court, the mining of the harbors of Nicaragua. And so, you have two major figures coming together now. You have Casey — rather, you have Bob Gates, who could become director of Central Intelligence Agency, and you have Daniel Ortega now, who has just been elected the president of Nicaragua.

MELVIN GOODMAN: Also part of this delicious irony, that on the same day that Ortega is announced as the president-elect, here’s Bob Gates, again, the Iran-Contra alumni, joining Elliott Abrams at the National Security Council. And remember, John Poindexter for a while had a key role in the Pentagon as part of this Iran-Contra class that George Bush seems to resort to.

AMY GOODMAN: And let me just correct that: of course, he’s been nominated to be head of the Pentagon, to be Defense Secretary. But one other thing I wanted to get to now, because you both have mentioned Lee Hamilton, who was a key figure then. And you’re saying that he very much was there to squelch true investigation of what was going on at the time, that he could be relied upon to do this. Well, now you have the Iraq Study Group that is headed by James Baker and, yes, Lee Hamilton, together with Bob Gates.

MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I think the Iraq Study Group is also a political stratagem on the part of the Bush administration to try to give some chance at damage limitation to this Iraq policy. Lee Hamilton wasn’t very impressive in his 9/11 work as a co-commissioner. I think the study of the intelligence community, and particularly the CIA, was really softened. I think Lee Hamilton had something to do with this. He brought in people like Douglas MacEachin of the CIA. He was also a close colleague of Bob Gates, and he testified in favor of Bob Gates in 1991. And the first personnel appointment that Bob Gates made when he took over the CIA in 1991 was to make Doug MacEachin his Deputy Director for Intelligence. So, I don’t think Lee Hamilton is the zealous investigator that he once was and the kind of junkyard dog that he once was when he was on the Hill in the Congress.

So I think there is an attempt now to soften the debate on Iraq. Getting Rumsfeld out of the Pentagon helps in this direction. Bringing Gates in, and it’s sort of tabula rasa now at the Pentagon with regard to Iraq. And I think the Iraq Study Group — and if you look at the Iraq Study Group — five Democrats, five Republicans — not a one has any experience whatsoever on the Middle East.

There are no Arab experts, no Islamic experts on this group. And I think what Baker is trying to do is trying to limit the damage that Iraq has done to George Bush, the legacy of the Bush family, both Bush the elder and Bush the younger, and try to soften the debate in the American public and divert attention. And clearly, by removing Rumsfeld, Bush has already diverted a great deal of attention from the election loss and from this disaster that Iraq policy is.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Bob Parry, the investigations that you did in the ’80s at least led to congressional investigations into some of these issues. Given what happened now with this election, do you have any hope that the new congress will take a deeper look into some of these issues surrounding Bob Gates and the intelligence failures and spinning of the Bush administration?

ROBERT PARRY: Well, as a journalist, I always hope that information will come out somehow, but it does appear that the strategy that the Bush White House is following is to release — first of all, release this information the day after the election, in a sense give in to one of the chief Democratic demands — that is, the ouster of Rumsfeld — and then say that there must be quick action on Bob Gates’s nomination. I think yesterday there was an announcement by the Armed Services Committee, the chairman and the ranking Democrat, that they would move expeditiously on the Gates nomination and push it through before the end of the year — that is, in the lame-duck session of the Congress, the Republican-controlled congress.

So there doesn’t seem to be much eagerness to sort of go back and sort of confront Bob Gates with the questions that Mel has raised about his involvement with the politicization of intelligence, which is a key issue obviously in Iraq war, and his involvement or lack thereof with secret arms deals with the Iranians and the Iraqis, two of the countries that the Defense Department is most interested in at this point. So, but whether those questions will even be asked is a question here, that apparently the idea is to sort of just sort of have the Democrats show their bipartisanship again by not asking tough questions of Bob Gates. And this is very similar to what happened in 1991, when Senator Boren backed away from the gates, from pressing on the Gates nomination for the CIA director.

And it goes back, really, to what Lee Hamilton was doing in the 1980s. I do have to disagree a bit with Mel in that I never found Hamilton to be a junkyard dog in his investigations. When we did our first stories about Oliver North in ’85 and ’86 at the Associated Press, they finally — those stories finally went to Lee Hamilton at the Intelligence Committee. He arranged a meeting with Oliver North, which involved Dick Cheney, who was on the Intelligence Committee at the time, and Henry Hyde and some other members, and they essentially asked Ollie if these stories were true, and he said they weren’t. And that was pretty much the end of the investigation at that point. And it was only because a plane was shot down, one of Ollie’s planes was shot down, in October of 1986 that the Nicaraguan side of the story started spilling out.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the downing of Eugene Hasenfus’s plane?

ROBERT PARRY: Correct. Eugene Hasenfus survived the crash and began talking about what was actually going on. And that sort of put Hamilton back on the spot. When the Iran-Contra scandal sort of broke open in November of ’86, he was made head of the investigation. But again, he led it in a way that was not designed to find the truth. It was designed to sort of reach a political solution, which was not to have impeachment of Ronald Reagan, not to have it go too far, not to damage the CIA. It wasn’t to find the facts, as much as it was to sort of reach a consensus that enough people could agree on.

And we’ve seen that repeatedly with Hamilton. We saw it in the October Surprise investigation, which he headed in 1992, which, when at the end of that investigation so much evidence was pouring in, in late 1992, about this 1980 matter that the chief counsel, Larry Barcella, went to Hamilton and said, “We need another three months, another few months to review all this new incriminating evidence about the Republicans.” And Hamilton said “No,” that “we’re not going to continue this. We’re wrapping it up.”

AMY GOODMAN: And just to be clear, you’re talking about 1980, this allegation that somehow the Reagan forces, before Ronald Reagan became president, worked to stop the hostages from being released under Carter, what would have been the October Surprise, and have them released on Inauguration Day, when President Reagan was being sworn in, that allegation, and this possibility, though many have discounted it, of a meeting that was held in Paris in October, where US officials, perhaps like Vice President George H.W. Bush, met with Iranian officials.

ROBERT PARRY: Right. And there’s actually a great deal of evidence that has built up to support that. But again, the idea was, of that investigation, was to avoid having the kind of political crisis, the crisis of confidence, that might occur if the American people began to see their government as it was actually functioning, not as some people in Washington would like them to see it, which is as a more fair, a more decent operation. So, Hamilton has always been the guy who sort of steps in and sort of smoothes things over, tries not to have too many rough edges, and moves on. So that’s been his record and, of course, now he’s working on the Iraq Study Group. But he’s never been the fellow who actually goes to find the truth and lets the facts stand where they may. He has never been that guy.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to break. Bob Parry is our guest, author of the new book called Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. He does consortiumnews.com. Mel Goodman, also our guest, former CIA and State Department analyst, who has co-authored the book, Bush League Diplomacy, and spoke out against Bob Gates when he was nominated to be director of Central Intelligence. And when we come back, we’re going to ask the question: would Donald Rumsfeld stepping down leave him open to prosecution? We’ll also be joined by the president for the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner. Stay with us.

Source: Democracy Now

Further Reading
Vielen Dank Herr Rumsfeld – gehen Sie nun ins Gefängnis?
Ortega bringt Amerikas Albtraum zurück</b>

Mena Drug Connection / Iran Contra Affäre
The Crimes of Mena
Ollie North and the C-123 Story
Fallout an Heroin
Mit dem Flugzeugbomber, Oli North & Felix Rodriguez auf der Pista Coca
Pizza aus dem Hindukusch gefällig?
Islamische Mullahs & kalte Krieger in der Liebkosung
Krausköpfe mit Stinger-Raketen
Raul Castro’s fidele Kokain Connection

Kokainaffäre / Skyway / N900SA & Royal Sons Inc.
Koks in Mexiko – Heisse Kartoffeln in Clearwater
Bermudadreieck: Koks, Gambling & Politik
Mit Nebelgespenstern, Koks & Poker rund um die Welt
Skyway und die Räuberpistolen
Der seltsame Weg einer DC-9
Hasenfus Kokain? Oder kein Hasenfus Kokain?
Swissair DC-9 „Graubünden“ steckt mit in der Kokain Affäre
Special Operation Samurais & die 5.5 Tonnen Koks
Kokain nicht nur Straffrei sondern bald Pflicht?
Wer war denn Mr. Bramble?
In Coca Mekka Schnee bis in die Niederungen
Die Old Boys Dirigenten von Genf
Das Old Boys Netzwerk
CIA-Flieger in Mexiko mit 128 Koffern voll Kokain erwischt
Verbindung von US-Politiker zu 5,5 Tonnen Kokain

Meta Group & the Global Drug Traffic Serie:
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.

Waffen – Drogenhandel
Geheimer Waffendeal mit MEK Terroristen?