Daveed Gartenstein-Ross – I just spoke with a military intelligence source who confirmed that the Bajur airstrike was conducted by a U.S. Predator, adding that helicopters were also involved. The strike occurred around dawn, as people in the camp were preparing for their morning prayers. My source is skeptical of speculation that Zawahiri may have been killed in the strike, saying that Zawahiri sightings are a dime a dozen. He says it’s possible that Matiur Rehman was killed, but is also skeptical of that.

The strike came just as the Bajur accords were supposed to take place (similar to the Waziristan accords that now prevent Pakistan’s military from operating in that region). Officials within the Pakistani government were supposedly worried when early reports surfaced that Faqir Mohammed may have been killed. Faqir Mohammed is a Taliban leader in the region who would have been a major signatory to the accords: if he were killed, the Pakistanis wouldn’t know who could enter into the accords with them (or, to put it cynically, with Faqir Mohammed dead they wouldn’t know who they were supposed to surrender to). However, Mohammed survived. He apparently felt so confident in his safety that he gave an interview to NBC News at the scene near the blasted school, and also attended — and spoke at — the funeral for the 80 who died in the strike.

At this point, the Bajur Accords are on hold. While we will probably see some payback from al-Qaeda and the Taliban, my source noted that there’s not a whole lot more they can do: these groups tried to kill Musharraf less than a month ago, and are already carrying out terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

It’s worth noting that Faqir Mohammed also hosted Zarqawi when a U.S. strike missed him back in January, and left before that strike as well. It’s unlikley that Mohammed had advance warning of either the Damadola strike or this one (too many high-value terrorists were killed at Damadola, and Mohammed almost certainly would have alerted them). Some guys are apparently just that lucky.

Karl Weiss – In England hat man den größten Waffen- und Sprengstoff-Fund in einem Privathaus gemacht, den es je gegeben hat in diesem Land – und nirgends wird das gemeldet. Lediglich vier lokale nordwest-englisches Blätter, die „North-West Evening Mail“, der „Burnley Express“, der „Burnley Citizen“ und der „Lancashire Telegraph“ brachten die Nachricht.

Hätten eine Anzahl englischer Internet-Sites sie nicht bestätigt, man hätte sie für eine Ente halten können, so völlig war der Medienboykott gegen diese Meldung. Man stelle sich vor, es wäre ein Muslim gewesen, der eine solche Sprengstoff- und Waffensammlung, einschließlich eines Raketenwerfers, angehäuft hätte – aber es war – ein Faschist.

Der geneigte Leser mag sich die Mühe machen, „Grange dentist explosives“ zu googlen und er wird seitenweise Internetseiten mit dieser Meldung finden, aber nicht eine einzige eines bürgerlichen Massenmediums!

Explosiver Zahnarzt
Ein Zahnarzt im nordwestenglischen Städtchen Grange-over-Sands in der Provinz Lancashire hat riesige Mengen von Sprengstoffen und auch Waffen in seinem Haus bzw. seiner Praxis angehäuft. Es handele sich um einen Rekord für ganz England, meldet das Blatt. Der Sprengstoff-Freak heißt Jackson, ist 62 Jahre alt und lebte in der Trend Road im Städtchen Nelson, Nachbarstadt von Grange. Am Freitag, den 6. Oktober 2006 hob die Polizei sein Waffen- und Sprengstoff-Nest aus und verhaftete den Mann in seiner Praxis. Es wurde unter anderem auch ein Schutzanzug gegen atomare und biologische Waffen gefunden.

Er wurde angeklagt, einen Sprengstoff-Anschlag vorbereitet zu haben. Neben Raketenwerfern und Chemikalien zur Sprengstoffherstellung sowie anwendungsfertigen Sprengstoffen fand die Polizei in seinem Haus Literatur der „British National Party“, das ist das englische Gegenstück zur NPD.

Link zur British National Party
Man war auf die Spur des Zahnarzt-Terroristen gekommen, als man im Haus seines mutmaßlichen Komplizen, einem Subjekt mit Namen Cottage aus der Stadt Colne in der gleichen Region, 22 verschiedene Chemikalien gefunden hatte, die zur Sprengstoffherstellung dienen können. Cottage ist ein früherer Wahlkandidat der British National Party.

Eigentlich ist dies keine Überraschung. Man weiß auch in Deutschland: Die wirklich gefährlichen Terroristen sind die Faschisten, Tausende von Gewalttaten jährlich gehen auf ihr Konto. Aber die bürgerlichen Massenmedien wollen uns lieber weismachen, die Muslime seien die Gefahr.

So unterschlägt man eben einfach solche Meldungen, während jeder Muslim, der auch nur eine Waffe hat, zum Terroristen hochstilisiert wird. In München gab es letztlich einen Prozeß gegen eine Gruppe von Faschisten, die ebenfalls einen Sprengstoffanschlag vorbereitete. Auch dies wurde von den Medien „auf kleiner Flamme gekocht“.

Dagegen werden Festnahmen wie kürzlich in England und den USA, die Muslims betreffen, an die große Glocke gehängt und von der ständig steigenden Gefahr geredet. Es werden neue Gesetze, neue Videokameras beschlossen, bürgerliche Rechte abgebaut usw. Nur leider fand man in beiden Fällen gar nichts in den Wohnungen und mußte die angeblich gefährlichen Terroristen sang- und klanglos wieder freilassen.

Wo sind sie nun, die Herren Stoiber, Pofalla, Schönbohm, Beckstein und Konsorten, die immer sofort zur Stelle sind, wenn es um Muslime geht, wo ist Herr Broder vom Spiegel mit seinem Kommentar? „Na, es sind Faschisten, die sind auf „unserer“ Seite, gegen die werden wir nichts sagen?“ Ist dies das Schema?

Wo sind die Meldungen als Aufmacher in der „Tagesschau“ und „heute“? Wo die dicken Schlagzeilen der „Bild“? Wo der Spiegel, die Welt und die FAZ? Sie alle waren nicht in der Lage, die Meldung zu finden so wie der Berichterstatter?

Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up mentions that the division „offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations,“ spanning the globe „from Aachen to Zhengzhou.“ The paragraph concludes, „Jeppesen has done it all.“

Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report, that Jeppesen’s clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international trips that the company plans for the agency are secret „extraordinary rendition“ flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.

The Bush Administration has defended the clandestine rendition program, which began during the Clinton years, as an effective method of transporting terrorists to countries where they can be questioned or held. Human-rights activists and others have said the program’s primary intent is to send suspects to detention centers where they can be interrogated harshly, and have criticized it as an illegal means of „outsourcing torture.“

A former Jeppesen employee, who asked not to be identified, said recently that he had been startled to learn, during an internal corporate meeting, about the company’s involvement with the rendition flights. At the meeting, he recalled, Bob Overby, the managing director of Jeppesen International Trip Planning, said, „We do all of the extraordinary rendition flights-you know, the torture flights. Let’s face it, some of these flights end up that way.“

The former employee said that another executive told him, „We do the spook flights.“ He was told that two of the company’s trip planners were specially designated to handle renditions. He was deeply troubled by the rendition program, he said, and eventually quit his job. He recalled Overby saying, „It certainly pays well. They“ – the C.I.A. – „spare no expense. They have absolutely no worry about costs. What they have to get done, they get done.“

Overby, who was travelling last week, did not return several phone calls. Mike Pound, the head of corporate communications for Jeppesen, said that he would have no comment, and he added, „Bob Overby will have no comment as well.“ Tim Neale, the director of media relations for Boeing’s corporate office in Chicago, said, „The flight-planning services we provide our customers are confidential, and we do not comment publicly on any work done for any customer without their consent.“ The C.I.A. had no comment.

The British journalist „Ghost Plane,“„>Khaled el-Masri, a German car salesman who was apparently mistaken for an Al Qaeda suspect with a similar name, in January of 2004. (Although documents show that Jeppesen provided this support, Grey’s book does not mention the company.) Masri, who is a Muslim, was arrested at the border while crossing from Serbia into Macedonia by bus.

He has alleged in court papers that Macedonian authorities turned him over to a C.I.A. rendition team. Then, he said, masked figures stripped him naked, shackled him, and led him onto a Boeing 737 business jet. Flight plans prepared by Jeppesen show that from Skopje, Macedonia, the 737 flew to Baghdad, where it had military clearance to land, and then on to Kabul. On board, Masri has said, he was chained to the floor and injected with sedatives.

After landing, he was put in the trunk of a car and driven to a building where he was placed in a dank cell. He spent the next four months there, under interrogation. Masri was released in May, 2004, on the orders of Condoleezza Rice, then the national-security adviser, after she learned that he had mistakenly been identified as a terrorism suspect.

Ben Wizner, an A.C.L.U. attorney who is representing Masri in his lawsuit against the former C.I.A. director George Tenet and private aviation companies, says that if Boeing can be proved to have played a role in Masri’s rendition the A.C.L.U. may amend the lawsuit to name the company as a defendant.

The American flight crew fared better than their passenger. Documents show that after the 737 delivered Masri to the Afghan prison it flew to the resort island of Majorca, where, for two nights, crew members stayed at a luxury hotel, at taxpayers‘ expense.

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

This Article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available for purposes of education and discussion in order to better understand the complex nature of today’s world. This constitutes a „fair use“ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this email magazine is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes only.

Henry Schuster – An al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings was killed in April in Pakistan, American officials have confirmed.

Pakistani officials had said that Muhsin Musa Matwalli Atwah was killed in North Waziristan during an airstrike by Pakistani forces near the border with Afghanistan.

DNA testing confirmed the Pakistani government’s claim, U.S. officials said, and Atwah’s name was removed from the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists.

Atwah, 42, was born in Egypt. He was indicted in connection with al Qaeda’s suicide bombings of U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The attacks killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.

There was a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

Atwah, who also went by the alias Abdel Rahman al-Muhajer, had been a member of al Qaeda since at least 1990 and provided explosives training in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan, according to his indictment.

The indictment also charged that Atwah had been part of an al Qaeda cell operating in Somalia in the early 1990s that provided training to Somali tribesmen who attacked U.S. forces in that country.

This Article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available for purposes of education and discussion in order to better understand the complex nature of today’s world. This constitutes a „fair use“ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this email magazine is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes only.

Democracy Now!

STEPHEN GREY: Hi.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you first learn about these renditions?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, funnily enough, I was first told about renditions by a man who became the head of the CIA, Porter Goss. He was then a congressman and head of the House Intelligence Committee. And he told me — I asked him whether they would find a way of capturing bin Laden, and he said, “Oh, this is called rendition. Do you know about this?” And I said, “No, I have not heard of it.” He said, “It’s a way of bringing people to a kind of justice.” And that really set me on the trail to uncover this whole network of prisoner detention in secret.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, where did you go from there?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, when the Guantanamo Bay camp was opened up in Cuba, and we saw all those images of those prisoners there, I asked about this, and some people who are close to the CIA told me, “Look, this is the press release. This is what the they want you to see. This is where they’re taking the cameras. But you should know there’s a much wider system of detention, of camps around the world where people are being taken.” And that really inspired me to try and get behind that and find out where they all were and what was happening to them.

And in fact, quite soon afterwards — well, a few months — actually a year later, when Maher Arar was first released, he was one of the first victims of the rendition program to come out. And he described so compellingly what happened to him and how he was taken in this Gulfstream jet, this executive jet, which seemed bizarre, flown across the Atlantic from America to Syria, and described the terrible torture that he faced. That also quite inspired me to sort of find out what happened to everyone else. And, as you know, that use of these plans proved to be quite a clue as to how we could unlock this whole scandal.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, you actually were able to pinpoint the plane that Maher Arar was put on when he was sent to Syria?

STEPHEN GREY: That’s right. I mean, I was able to find that actually the movements of these private jets, probably through some errors by the agency and others involved, were quite easy to track around the world. So I found out not only his plane, but a total of about 20 different planes used by the CIA and allied agencies to move people around the world. I got thousands of flight plans of these planes. What was important was you had people like Maher Arar and others coming out and making these statements of rendition: “I was sent to Egypt, Morocco, Syria.” And you wondered, you know, should you believe these people? They’re accused of being terrorists, etc. You wanted to find out some way of verifying their statement. And the importance of these planes was, they allowed us to confirm precisely that exactly what they said had happened was true.

AMY GOODMAN: So, tell us, what was the company that owned the plane? What was the plane? How did it work?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, one of the main companies that is being used for these renditions is called Aero Contractors. It’s a company based in North Carolina

AMY GOODMAN: That’s A-E-R-O?

STEPHEN GREY: That’s right, yeah. And this is a company that is at the center of the CIA’s aviation network. I was initially wondering whether it was just a normal private company that perhaps had a contract with the CIA. As we dug into it more deeply, we discovered it actually was the CIA, and I eventually found some pilots who used to work there, who described how they got their job working for Aero Contractors by being interviewed by the CIA.

There was an advertisement. There were adverts from the CIA saying, you know, we need all these kind of people, including pilots. And they replied to those jobs. They got vetted by the CIA. They got put on what they called “the box,” the polygraph, in a hotel not far from the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Finally, they were taken to Langley and provided with a series of cover identities, false aviation licenses, false credit cards, false driving licenses by the CIA. Funny enough, actually, one of them involved said that he was given a form to sign when he joined the CIA, saying, “I will never claim I’m from the CIA. I’ll never say I’m a CIA employee.” He signed the form, but the CIA kept all the copies. But he knew who he was working for, and they all spent many years working with the CIA around the world. It’s definitively a CIA operation.

AMY GOODMAN: And where did they fly Maher Arar out of from the New York area?

STEPHEN GREY: Yeah, he was flown out of the local airport here in New Jersey, Teterboro, picked up there. There was an FBI involvement in that particular operation, because it came out of New York, the U.S. airspace. So it wasn’t a sort of typical rendition. My understanding is the CIA took over. He was flown from Teterboro to Dulles Airport, where a new team took over. And then he was flown from there to — via Athens — sorry, via Rome in Italy, and then the plane then landed in Jordan. At that point, I think, the CIA took over.

He was then taken — he was beaten in Jordan, and then he was driven over the border into Syria to this place. You’ve mentioned the Palestine Branch. It’s one of the worst interrogation centers in the world. And what I found that what I’ve — in this book, in researching this book, that when he got there, he wasn’t the only person that had been sent there by the United States. Up to seven other prisoners were sitting in these same cells about the size of graves, three-foot wide, six-foot wide. And up to seven other prisoners there at the time had all been sent there by the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Are they still there?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, some them are. I mean, the whole story of this rendition program is that there are only a few people who have emerged to tell their stories, and so many others have disappeared completely. We don’t know where they are. There’s no accountability as to what’s happened to them.

There was one man connected with the Hamburg cell, probably a suspected terrorist who was sent there in December 2001. He’s quite a big man. He couldn’t even fit in the cell. And he’s been held there for over a year in this tiny solitary cell, beaten and beaten constantly and never brought to trial. So, although people say that he’s a man who’s been involved in the 9/11 attacks, he was deliberately sent to a place where he couldn’t be brought to trial, where we couldn’t hear the evidence against him. So we don’t know the truth about these allegations.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Stephen Grey, an award-winning investigative reporter who’s contributed to the New York Times, Newsweek, the Atlantic Monthly, many other publications, first exposed the rendition program back in 2004. His book is called Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. We’ll be back with him in a minute.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re continuing our conversation with Stephen Grey. [He] has authored Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. You have documented in this book something like, what, 87 people who have been the victims of this program?

STEPHEN GREY: That’s right, yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Why is it called “extraordinary rendition”?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, it’s extraordinary because of the way that it was transformed from a program that brought people back to justice in the United States to a public trial before a judge and jury to a program that took people to places where they wouldn’t face such justice. So, rendition itself has been around for a long time, in fact since the 1880s, and has always been about, you know, snatching people where you wanted in the world. It’s been legal in U.S. law — and not perhaps in other countries — but in the 1990s they started using it to send people to other countries. So it actually started under President Clinton.

But the difference that occurred after September 11th was that it greatly expanded, but also it was used after that period to send people to places where there weren’t even any charges against them. It was used to take people off the streets that were considered a threat and were sent to countries where they had no connection at all. I mean, Maher Arar, as you know, was a Canadian citizen, was sent to Syria. We’ve got an Egyptian citizen sent to Libya. We’ve got Ethiopian citizens sent to Morocco, really showing how it was used as a method of outsourcing of interrogation, not simply just to imprison people somewhere else.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the case of Muhammad Haydar Zammar?

STEPHEN GREY: Right. Well, he was one of the key suspects from 9/11. In fact, when he was captured, he was captured in Morocco in December of 2001. He was one of the first people in U.S. custody for the 9/11 attacks. And you would have thought that after those attacks, when the FBI and the other agencies were given the mission of finding those responsible, that he would have been held by the United States, brought to trial perhaps, questioned in New York. But, in fact, he was sent to Syria. His interrogation was outsourced to Syria.

And I got hold of a German intelligence report, which specifically states how the U.S. organized that transfer to Syria, and what’s more, there were trade-offs involved. They asked the Moroccan government, which was involved in that transfer — sorry, they asked the European Union not to criticize Morocco over human rights, because of this transfer, because of Morocco’s cooperation in the war on terror. So you see that behind this network of transfers and cooperation, there are trade-offs in the way that we deal, with soft glove, some of the people that we would otherwise criticize over human rights.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I mean, astoundingly, Syria itself. You had President Bush, just a few weeks ago at the UN General Assembly, calling Syria the crossroads for terrorism. Yet behind the scenes the U.S. is cooperating with Syria in having prisoners sent there to be tortured?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, I think the contradictions here have been so apparent that the relationship probably has deteriorated recently. But even going back to this period — busy period after 9/11, 2001, 2002, at that point the State Department was saying very clearly that people would be tortured in Syria. The Syrian regime was put on the candidate list, if you like, of the axis of evil. It was stated very clearly, this is a country condemned by George Bush for its legacy of torture and oppression. And at the same time, they were sending people to Syria.

And the key thing was, this was a covert operation. It was embarrassing, and it’s still the most embarrassing country for the administration, because they’ve talked about their agenda of spreading freedom and democracy in the Middle East, and yet the same people who are preventing that democracy from happening, the secret police of these countries, are on the other hand referred to as liaison partners in the war on terror, people we work with, the same people who are locking up dissidents who want to bring the kind of democracy that everyone, I think, in the United States would like to see in these countries.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, last December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “The United States has not transported anyone and will not transport anyone to a country, when we believe he will be tortured.”

STEPHEN GREY: Well, it’s not true. And I think she knows that. They have preserved a legal fiction, when they’ve sent people to these countries, by asking those countries — sometimes just verbally — to say that they won’t be tortured, to say that they’ll be given a fair treatment, they’ll be brought to trial. But what was interesting in researching this book was, I went back to some of the people involved in this rendition program from the earliest period, and they said quite categorically — some of these people, you know, believe that rendition is a good thing, and they still defend it, but the one thing they’re absolutely clear about is, they told everyone in concern, they told the White House, they told the directors of the CIA, they told the State Department, that sending people to these countries would involve torture. They knew there would be torture involved and all those promises that they got were a legal fiction. And one of the ambassadors — United States ambassadors to Egypt told me — it was kind of nod-nod-wink-wink that went on — they knew perfectly well these people would be tortured. So when Condoleezza Rice says that they had credible promises these people wouldn’t be tortured, she’s not telling the truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, right now there are investigations going on of people being kidnapped off the streets — for example, in Milan, the Sheikh who was kidnapped. Can you talk about the prosecutors and the, was it, two dozen CIA agents who were involved with this?

STEPHEN GREY: That’s right. And they left a trail of clues behind them. They were quite surprising in the way they allowed themselves to be uncovered. What happened there was, there was a man called Abu Omar. He was under investigation for involvement in terrorism, and the Italian prosecutor involved wanted to bring him to court. In fact, if he was still in Italy now, he would be in court. He would have been prosecuted in a normal way in an open court. They were collecting evidence against him.

But what happened instead was that in February of 2003, he was snatched off the streets and taken in a series of executive jets via Germany to a jail cell in Cairo, where he says he was severely tortured. He was released briefly, and he made a phone call back home to his family in Milan and explained what had happened and how he had been kidnapped. And because Italian police were listening to that phone call, the story was revealed.

He was quickly re-arrested after making that call. Presumably the Egyptians were listening, too. But that unlocked that whole scandal in Italy. And the Italian prosecutors, who believe that terrorists should be prosecuted in a court of law, rather than being tortured in a jail cell in Egypt, have pursued this case absolutely vigorously.

And there’s going to be a trial very shortly of the CIA agents involved. There are arrest warrants for them. None of them are being caught. Perhaps they never will be, but there will be an open trial, perhaps held in their absence, that’s going to take place in Italy and will expose further details of this whole operation.

AMY GOODMAN: What about Khaled El-Masri and the German investigation that’s going on into that?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, this is a pretty live story. The German government have treated the rendition of their citizen, Khaled El-Masri, who was on holiday in Macedonia in Eastern Europe — he was picked up and flown to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, held for five months without any charges, without any accusations made against him, finally released without any compensation, without any apology, without any confirmation by the CIA that they carried out this act. He has returned to Germany and made the complaint to the German government. And what’s interesting is the German government are treating that as a criminal offense, as a suspected kidnapping. And now they’re looking to find those responsible. And it looks like, in the coming weeks, they’re going to issue an arrest warrant for some of the people they believe carried out that transfer from Macedonia into Afghanistan. I mean, it’s one of those things.

We’ve — in order to investigate this story, I’ve had to try and trace some of the companies involved, some of the individuals, to try and prove what has been kept secret, the fact that the U.S. government has been responsible for these transfers. And, you know, we wouldn’t have had to do any of that, we wouldn’t have had to dig into any of these CIA operations, if the government had actually just come clean and said, “Yes, we are the ones that were responsible for this transfer. And if we made a mistake, we’ll apologize.”

There’s, you know, an old phrase: trust, but verify. If you want to trust these people, you want to send prisoners to countries like Uzbekistan, for example, where they boil prisoners alive — they’ve been known to do that. I mean, I don’t know how many people have been treated in that way, but it’s a country run by an ex-communist who’s known for that treatment. Well, if we’re going to send people to that country, the least you can do is confirm that you’ve done that. Instead of taking part in a disappearance, take part in an open procedure, where there’s a chance of verifying how these people are being treated. But, in fact, the whole program is being protected by secrecy, and it’s kind of forced us to do all these investigations just to prove what’s been going on.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Stephen Grey. He’s author of Ghost Plane. You make the argument in your book that the harsh treatment, that the torture, that the extraordinary renditions that are used to talk about fighting the war on terror is actually hurting the war on terror. How?

STEPHEN GREY: Yeah, it’s not a point that I really make myself, but a point that has been made to me by many of those involved, some of the most experienced people in fighting to counter insurgency around the world, military officers and CIA — and former CIA operatives. It’s hurting, because — I think you have to go back to what would people like Osama bin Laden like us to do. What do they want us to do? They want us to torture. They want us to take oppressive acts, because that wins recruits to their causes. It’s an old lesson of — an old method of terrorists. Take a small minority extremist group, how do they win support? How do they turn themselves into a mass movement?

The answer is, cause a terrorist action, kill an innocent people, provoke an enormous reaction which rounds up people who are innocent, causes people to want to take revenge for what’s happened to their families. And this is what’s happened. There’s been a massive reaction. There are people who have been turned into terrorists, as a result of some of the repressive actions that have taken place. And rendition is one of those repressive actions.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, I want to ask you about Venezuela. In your book, you write, “The data exposed secret operations by the CIA around the world, even the presence of planes previously used by the CIA in Venezuela at the time, as activists there were alleging, the CIA was plotting a coup back in 2002.”

STEPHEN GREY: Right. This is a story that needs further investigation, and I mention it because I think it’s quite important to know what really happened there and whether the CIA was involved, and other agencies, in trying to prevent Chavez from taking power in Venezuela. What we do know is that there were allegations of a coup attempt against Chavez. And what’s very interesting is to see that planes that have been used by the U.S. government and, for example, have appeared at Guantanamo Bay — it’s not like ordinary planes that go and visit Guantanamo — and have been chartered for various other operations. In fact, you know, the same plane that took Maher Arar from John F. Kennedy to Syria, the man we’ve discussed who was tortured in Syria, that plane also turned up in Venezuela. And it’s just interesting to see the dates of when these planes go to Venezuela at some pretty crucial moments. But, as I say, this is a story that needs further investigation. I mention it because I think it’s important that we find out what was going on there.

AMY GOODMAN: In the footnotes of your book, you say the first appearance of a possible CIA plane in Venezuela was March 4th, 2002, one day before the coup that temporarily ousted President Hugo Chavez. The possible CIA planes also returned to Venezuela on November 19, 2002; December 6, 2003; January 3, 2004; September 3, 2003; September 4, 2003; November 9, 2004. Now, doesn’t Chavez know these planes are flying in?

STEPHEN GREY: I don’t know. They don’t come saying CIA on them. They come as private business jets that are coming into Venezuela, so I’m not sure he would know who was on board. It wasn’t the actual day before the coup. It was the day before there was a plan signed to remove Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Right. The coup was in April.

STEPHEN GREY: Yeah, exactly. So it’s a very interesting area. I’ve concentrated on looking at the role of these planes in rendition, but I’ve actually printed in the back of the book some of the flight logs of these planes around the world and a number of other operations they would have been involved in that would take some investigation.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the CIA or U.S. government still running secret prisons around the world?

STEPHEN GREY: It’s still holding people in secret detention, and there are many people hidden in that system. I think that what’s happened is, with the demands of the Supreme Court that the U.S. follows the Geneva Conventions, which do provide for rights of prisoners wherever they’re held to be brought before a court of law, to be held according to civilized standards, they’ve shut down many of the facilities for now, although they’ve been kind of given a new lease of life this week with the new legislation.

What’s happened is people are being disappeared into foreign facilities, and you can look at some very key people. I mentioned the case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, a very key supposed al-Qaeda operative, who provided some of the false information under interrogation that was used as an argument by Colin Powell to take this country to war in Iraq. That happened after he was rendered to Egypt. He was brought back into U.S. custody, was held in Afghanistan. And now, he’s completely disappeared. So it’s quite chilling really when the President stands up and says these jails are empty, because it makes you wonder, what have they done with everyone else? Where have they put them, you know?

There are hundreds of people that were captured in Afghanistan, for example, that were not sent to Guantanamo. They were sent elsewhere, either held within Afghanistan or sent to other countries. And when they say the jails are empty, it’s quite frightening, because you think, well, where have they put all these people? And it’s still quite a mystery.

AMY GOODMAN: Stephen Grey, we’re going to have to leave it there. His book is called Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program.

Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program

This Article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available for purposes of education and discussion in order to better understand the complex nature of today’s world. This constitutes a „fair use“ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this email magazine is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes only.

Peter Kornbluh and Yvette White – On the 30th anniversary of the first and only mid-air bombing of a civilian airliner in the Western Hemisphere, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web new investigative records that further implicate Luis Posada Carriles in that crime of international terrorism. Among the documents posted is an annotated list of four volumes of still-secret records on Posada’s career with the CIA, his acts of violence, and his suspected involvement in the bombing of Cubana flight 455 on October 6, 1976, which took the lives of all 73 people on board, many of them teenagers.

The National Security Archive, which has sought the declassification of the Posada files through the Freedom of Information Act, today called on the U.S. government to release all intelligence files on Posada. „Now is the time for the government to come clean on Posada’s covert past and his involvement in international terrorism,“ said Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Archive’s Cuba Documentation Project. „His victims, the public, and the courts have a right to know.“ Read More

Kuba Flugzeugbomber war CIA Agent
Mit dem Flugzeugbomber, Oli North & Felix Rodriguez auf der Pista Coca

Mit seiner Unterschrift hat US-Präsident Bush am Dienstag ein Gesetz in Kraft gesetzt, das den Umgang mit Terrorverdächtigen im umstrittenen Gefangenenlager Guantánamo auf eine solide rechtliche Grundlage stellen soll. Bush verteidigte das Gesetz bei der Unterzeichnungszeremonie in Washington gegen Kritiker, die in den Vorschriften eine Verletzung der Bürgerrechte sehen.

„Das ist eine der seltenen Gelegenheiten, bei denen ein Präsident ein Gesetz unterzeichnet und dabei weiß, dass es das Leben von Amerikanern schützen wird“,sagte Bush. Der Unterzeichnung wohnten hochrangige Vertreter von Armee und Geheimdienst bei.

Legalisierter Terror

Das Gesetz erlaubt der US-Regierung, mutmaßliche Terroristen vor Militärtribunale statt vor zivile Gerichte zu stellen. Dabei verbietet es „grausame und unübliche“ Bestrafungen von Gefangenen, ohne jedoch festzulegen, was darunter zu verstehen ist. Bushs Unterschrift unter die Vorlage war nur noch Formsache. Der Kongress hatte dem Gesetz bereits im September zugestimmt.

Die Gesetzesreform wurde erforderlich, nachdem der Oberste Gerichtshof Ende Juni mit den militärischen Sondertribunalen einen zentralen Bestandteil der Anti-Terror-Politik von Bush für rechtswidrig erklärt hatte. In einem Grundsatzurteil stuften die Richter diese geplanten Sondertribunale zur Aburteilung von Terrorverdächtigen im Gefangenenlager Guantánamo auf Kuba als illegal ein.

Die USA am Scheideweg – Inner- oder außerhalb der zivilisierten Welt?

AN al-Qaeda general believed to be plotting dirty bomb attacks on seven US cities could be in Britain, FBI sources said yesterday.

Adnan El Shukrijumah, who has a £2.5million bounty on his head, is suspected of planning a spectacular attack using bombs that spread radioactive waste.

The FBI are investigating the 31-year-old Saudi-born scientist’s UK links, including connections to the Midlands and Birmingham.

A US source said: “He has travelled extensively in the last seven years, and we believe this includes the UK.”

Muslims ordered to leave the United States: Next Attack Imminent

Vikram Sood – They always refer to it in hushed tones, both in awe and fear, and never by the full name. “The Agency” is how the nationalists in Pakistan or any onewho has earned the wrath of this organisation, call the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) of Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, herself a victim of nume-rous murderous ISI conspiracies, described it as “a State within a State,” — which it is and which one of its former chiefs does not hesitate to admit. Other similar honorifics have been bestowed upon this powerful agency over time and not without reason. The most commonly used being “Invisible Government” or Pakistan’s “Secret Godfathers.”

Pakistan’s ISI, created in 1948, came into its own during the US-sponsored Afghan jehad against the Soviet adventure in Afghanistan in 1979. The Pakistan Army and its intelligence had been smarting in the aftermath of 1971 and General Zia-ul-Haq, having hanged ZA Bhutto, was a persona non grata in the West. As Soviet tanks rolled into Kabul that Christmas in 1979, Zia the pariah became Zia the friend along with all the country’s instrumentalities. A tripartite relationship between the Americans, the Saudis and the Pakistanis blossomed as the Afghan jehad began to take shape. This was the beginning of the world’s first State-sponsored global privatised campaign of violence against another State.

The war cry was ‘get the Evil Empire’ and the ISI took full advantage of this. But the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had abdicated its policy on Afghanistan to the ISI and Pakistani agenda in Afghanistan became the CIA’s own. It did not seem to worry too much about the ISI’s or Pakistan’s intentions in the post-jehad phase. The relationship between the two agencies warmed up and the CIA chief, William Casey, regularly briefed General Zia about Indian military deployments and a grateful ISI chief Gen Akhtar Rehman presented a $ 7,000 carpet to Casey. The bonding was mutual and satisfying. The ISI had matured.

The origins of the ISI were fairly mundane. There were the usual reasons — the Pakistan Military Intelligence had failed in the 1947-48 invasion of Kashmir. There was need for a new agency manned by officers from the three wings of the armed forces. The charter was to collect and assess external intelligence, both military and non-military, with India as the main focus of attention. This was well intended but the continued military suzerainty or direct control in Pakistan and suspicions about ethnic minorities gradually gave the ISI an ever-increasing role in Pakistan’s internal politics.

In the early days, the ISI was given an internal role in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan. It was a matter of time before the ISI would begin to get a greater role inside Pakistan. There were suspicions about the loyalty and integrity of Bengali officers in the Pakistan Intelligence Bureau operating in distant East Pakistan and Bengali politicians. General Ayub Khan asked the ISI to take over the responsibility of covering internal political intelligence in East Pakistan. There were similar suspicions about the loyalties of politicians in western Pakistan. The Baluch were always suspected and when the revolt in Baluchistan gathered steam in the 70s, Baluch police officers came under the scanner. The Pakistan Army, suspicious of everything not directly controlled by it, worked on ZA Bhutto to hand over the charge of internal intelligence to the ISI. Besides, it needed a ‘victory’ in the post 1971 era to re-establish itself and Baluchistan was the perfect arena.

Pakistan’s brief flirtation with democracy ended in 1977 when Zia took over, locked up Bhutto and had him murdered by a pliant judiciary. Relations between the Bhutto family, the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the Army soured forever. A paranoid Zia moved the ISI into Sindh to cover not only the Bhuttos, but also Sindhi nationalists and the Shias following the Iranian revolution in 1979. The PPP campaign led by the Bhutto ladies, Nusrat and Benazir, gathered momentum and the Movement for Restoration of Democracy was seen as a threat by Zia. Surveillance of all political parties in Pakistan was therefore considered necessary and the ISI, already the favourites in the Afghan campaign, had become the master. Not above skulduggery of the worst kind, the ISI arranged to have Benazir’s brother, Shah Nawaz, poisoned to death when he was in Cannes in 1985. But the lady was not intimidated; nor again when they had her elder brother, Murtaza, assassinated outside his house in Karachi in September 1996. At that time Benazir was prime minister in her second term.

Earlier, the Bhutto and ISI/Army animosity was one of the reasons that led Benazir to take the unheard of step of sacking her ISI chief, Hameed Gul, in 1989, and appoint a Bhutto loyalist, Lieutenant General Shamsur Rehman Kallue. This was the beginning of an open rift between her and Army chief Aslam Beg. The pms’ ISI bosses were completely ostracised from attending meetings of Pakistan’s super-cabinets — the meetings of the corps commanders. They, thus, had no access to real information. Nawaz’s ISI chief, Ziauddin, had no clue about the Kargil operation being planned by Musharraf. Nominally, the ISI chief was supposed to report to the prime minister, but in reality he was always the Army chief’s man. Pakistan Army chiefs have never hesitated to countermand political instructions. When Nawaz Sharif sent his ISI boss Lieutenant General Ziauddin to Kandahar to request Mullah Omar to call off assistance to the Sunni sectarian militia, the Sipah-e-Sahaba, Musharraf instructed Omar not to follow these instructions. Whenever Pakistan prime ministers tried to have their own man as the ISI chief, the Army ensured that it was the prime minister who lost his job. Nawaz Sharif had tried to mess with the ISI and the Army and he eventually had to go, for he had violated the first commandment.

Domestic political gamesmanship has become a way of life for the ISI. The idea was to keep the political parties divided, the nationalists and religious groups were also manipulated so that opposition and dissent were stifled. The Muttahida Qaumi Movement was split, religious parties were encouraged to weaken nationalist forces, sectarian mafia was encouraged and elections were rigged. This has become a fine art in the ISI where even Sunni organisations are split periodically to prevent any single organisation from becoming too powerful. Assassinations of recalcitrant leaders of these organisations are the favoured method of terminating arrangements. Afzal Beg had no hesitation in accepting that Rs 140 million, had been taken from the Mehran Bank to plot against the PPP in the elections. The Army is to remain supreme domestically and the ISI is the handmaiden.

The ISI has played a crucial role in Pakistan’s quest for the nuclear bomb, in association with the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International, to be in league with many of the well-known arms smugglers like Viktor Bout, and subsequently in the elaborate AQ Khan caper. The Afghan jehad enriched the ISI professionally and personally where narcotics smuggling added to the ISI and personal coffers. Its assistance to India-specific terrorist outfits justified as jehad against the ‘infidel’ is much too well documented and known in India but the ethos of these organisations has rubbed off on their managers in the ISI. There is an internal struggle also being played out in Pakistan. Any attempt by Musharraf to control these jehadi Frankenstein’s at the insistence of the US is proving difficult. The murder of Daniel Pearl, the attempts on Musharraf’s life, the targeted killings of professionals, Shias and Barelvis have trails leading to the ISI’s doorsteps. The message is for the General of Enlightened Moderation.

While on India, the ISI consists of chest-thumping hardliners, internally it is perceived as the essence of Punjabi domination. Pakistan establishment as represented by the ISI is far too much down the radical path for others to be comfortable or for it to turn back. The ISI has acquired this control on the body-politic of Pakistan because the Pakistan Army was not willing to trust its politicians, the elite in the Punjab did not want to lose their stranglehold and were willing to play along with forces of control in the name of a strong Pakistan against enemy India.

A Pakistan rapidly being guided into a vortex of extremist beliefs is the result of this unbridled control by its intelligence agencies.

This Article contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The material is being made available for purposes of education and discussion in order to better understand the complex nature of today’s world. This constitutes a „fair use“ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this email magazine is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes only.

David Dastych – The best Polish weekly „Wprost“ (vprost) reported about new evidence, leading to an investigation by Polish authorities into the 25-year-old assassination attempt against John Paul II on St Peter’s Square in Rome.

In a four-page article, written by Leszek Szymowski and consulted by Marek Lasota, a research fellow of the Polish Institute of the National Memory, the Warsaw-based weekly magazine (comparable to „Time“) reports about new facts, confirming that the Soviet KGB planned and led all efforts to „eliminate“ the Polish Pope, from 1978 up to 1989, when the Communist regime finally collapsed in Poland, and soon after in all Eastern and Central European countries of the former Soviet Bloc.

Ali Agca: Member and executor of the extreme-right Grey Wolves

New evidence is a crushing blow to all „conspiracy theories“, invented by the Soviet disinformation experts or circulated in the West. These theories, disseminated by the communist propaganda machine all over the World, pointed to the extreme-right Grey Wolves organization in Turkey (of which Mehmet Ali Agca was member and executor), to the CIA (what for, while it was known that the CIA helped the Polish Pope) and to the Vatican itself (to put the blame on the political rivalry in the Holy See).

It is already known, beyond any doubt, that the Bulgarian secret services helped Agca in the execution of the attempt. New evidence, found in Berlin, in the archives of the East German communist secret service (STASI) confirms this conclusion. The East German intelligence was also allotted by the Kremlin a task to counter all reports and accusations against the Bulgarians. It looks like the Moscow-led efforts to get rid of the dangerous Pontiff were shared by other secret services of the Warsaw Pact countries and were well coordinated by the KGB. What was not known earlier, is the participation of the Polish secret services in the preparations for all plots.

The over-all picture of these assassination attempts (some 21-22 of them in total, from 1978 to 1989) is still dim. In spite of the 25 years since the May 13, 1981 assault made by Mehmet Ali Agca and probably one or more of his accomplices, the whole puzzle could not be put together. Only fragments of the truth are known. „The whole truth“ — writes „Wprost“ — could compromise not only the Soviet Union, but also the secret services of the satellite countries, including the Polish ones. These services wanted to reach the Pope and undercut his anti-communist crusade. Polish special services played a key part in this criminal plan.“

„Operation Triangolo“
For a long time, this code-name used by the Polish special service (SB), was mistakenly linked to a singular provocation, led by a super-secret „Section D“ of the SB in Cracow, in 1983. „Section D“ was a special operations group, secretly organized in the Polish Ministry of Interior to carry out criminal operations against the Catholic Church. This particular action aimed at compromising a Cracow priest, Andrzej Bardecki, an editor of „Tygodnik Powszechny“ weekly paper and one of the closest friends of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, elected pope John Paul II. In 1983, special SB agents Grzegorz Piotrowski, Barbara Szydlowska and Barbara Borowiec (women agents) broke into the apartment of the priest and left there provocative materials. The provocation failed.

Only in 2005, the researches and investigators of the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) discovered that the „Operation Triangolo“ embraced all hostile actions against the Pope, carried out by the Polish communist secret services. These findings were really shocking: it became evident that the assassination of John Paul II was the most important goal in the whole history of the communist special services in Poland. No other intelligence operation lasted so many years, involved so many people and used as big financial and other resources. The Polish communist services worked out a plan to kill the Polish Pope for at least four years. Fortunately, they scored no success.

The secret files, concerning the „Operation Triangolo“ disappeared from the archives of the secret service (SB) in the Polish Ministry of Interior (the equivalent of the Home Office) on the 11th of April in the year 1989. A special delegation of the KGB officers came to Warsaw to secure and move out these documents. They are still kept as „top secret“ in Moscow.

Imposimato: It was planned in Moscow
„It wasn’t done by Grey Wolves at all“, a retired Italian Judge, Ferdinando Imposimato, told Wprost during his recent visit in Poland. He only repeated the words of Mehmet Ali Agca, whom he had questioned only hours after the May 13, 1981 attempt in Rome. Agca confirmed to him that he acted on behalf of the KGB. He added: „The Soviet Union directed my hand“. As Richard Owen wrote in London’s „The Times“ (January 10, 2006):
„Ferdinando Imposimato, the retired judge who led the initial inquiry and has since conducted his own research, said that 25 years after the shooting in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, ‘many mysteries remain’. He told The Times that he remained ‘120 per cent convinced that the murder attempt was planned in Moscow’. […] ‘The Kremlin started to plot the Pope’s murder the moment he was elected in October 1978’ Signor Imposimato said.“

A retired Italian judge, Imposimato, has no right to conduct an official investigation on his own. But he continues his private inquiry as one of the best informed officials, who participated in the investigation of Ali Agca and Sergei Antonov (a Bulgarian spy, released for lack of formal evidence for his part in the plot). He came to Poland to inspect the archives of the IPN and to meet Polish investigators, who plan to open an official investigation into the attempted murder of John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, a Polish citizen.

SB-men on St Peter’s Square
In March 2005, archivists working in the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) found an interesting note, with information about a trip of an SB General, Zenon Platek, to Vienna, after April 3, 1979, for a 6 day’s meeting with a secret informant called „Tom“. The trip was organized as part of the „Operation Triangolo“. Researches of the IPN have examined the passports of the secret service (SB) officers, employed in the so called „4th Department“ (an anti-Church unit) of the Ministry of Interior, from 1971 to 1989.

The results were very interesting. Usually one officer of this department traveled with pilgrims from Poland to Rome and attended a public general audience of the Pope. Only two times, three high officers of the SB attended Vatican public events: first time on the 22d of October 1978, during an inaugural pontificate Holy Mass, the second time on the 13th of May, 1981 — during the tragic general audience, when Agca was shooting at John Paul II. The names of these officers are known: Adam Pietruszka, Zenon Chmielewski and Jan Zacherowski, all employed in the 4th Department. They always used their service passports (perhaps also diplomatic passports were in use by some of these Polish communist spies).

In a document of the IPN, concerning „The travels out and in Poland of the employees of the 4th Department“, there is also some evidence of the trips to Moscow for official meetings with representatives of the 5th Main Directorate of the KGB. Some notes from these meetings, fragmentarily conserved, indicate that these meetings were devoted to the planning of joint actions against the Catholic Church. Similar meetings took also place in Czechoslovakia. Usually, these meetings were attended by General Zenon Platek, then the Director of the 4th Department of the Ministry of Interior, his deputy, Colonel Adam Pietruszka and Captain Grzegorz Piotrowski, the head of the special „Section D“.

IPN researchers are convinced that a decision to kill the Pope had been taken by the top KGB leaders during one of these meetings. Tactical operations were also decided about there, and tasks were allotted to the particular communist secret services. The Polish services claimed that, apart from the KGB, they had the best informers inside the Vatican.

Vatican’s ring of insiders
The attempt in St Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981, was the second known criminal act to attempt to murder John Paul II. The first occurred already in 1979, in the holy shrine city of Czestochowa, in Poland, when John Paul II celebrated a mass at Jasna Gora (a cloister with a holy painting of the Black Madonna, the most adored by the Polish Catholics). Some notes found in the SB archives testify that in 1979 a regional prosecutor investigated a case of placing explosives to detonate them when the Pope visited the Jasna Gora Church. This case was to be examined by a special SB team from Warsaw, under the command of General Platek. No documents of this case had ever been discovered.

In Rome and in the Vatican, a Polish communist spy-group began to invigilate the Pope and his close aides. The spies were supervised by General Zdzislaw Sarewicz, then the head of the 1st Department (Intelligence) of the Ministry of Interior. After the regime change in 1989, Gen. Sarewicz was officer and chief of the Intelligence Directorate of the State Protection Office (UOP), a new secret service. Until November 2005, he was still president of the Consultative Board of the Intelligence Seniors, serving the Chief of the Intelligence Agency.

Professional spies changed, working under diplomatic cover (like Colonel Adam Pietruszka) or even posing as agents of the Western services, like Andrzej Maczynski, code-named „Lakar“, who was chief of the Polish intelligence station in Cologne and posed as officer of the West German intelligence, the BND. He had excellent contacts among the Polish clergy in the Vatican. And he recruited the most important (known until now) agent in the Vatican, a Dominical monk, Father Konrad Hejmo (code names „Hejnal“, ‘Dominik“ or „Vox“).

Hejmo, whose longtime collaboration with the communist Polish intelligence has been recently discovered and made public by the IPN, was „duped“ by Lakar and produced (until December 1, 1983) 17 large information sheets (115 pages). A part of his information, which was very important, concerned the policy of the Vatican and highly placed officials. His caretaker in Rome was the chief of the Rome Station of the Polish Intelligence, Major Edward Kotowski („Pietro“), who also paid him money for his work „for the BND“.

Father Hejmo’s reports were examined and evaluated by Colonel Tadeusz Grunwald, until 1982 the chief of the 4th Department’s Warsaw „Section D“. In the 1990s, Grunwald became a businessman. An other agent, recruited by „Lakar“ in the Vatican, was Father Piotr R., a close friend of John Paul II, code-named „Hrabia“ (Count).

Italian secret services began to trace him as a possible communist informer. Polish SB service organized a disinfo action to turn the attention from Father Piotr to other persons. Father Hejmo was a voluntary informer, while Father Piotr R. was blackmailed to become one. The IPN is continuing the research to discover more Polish SB agents in the Vatican.
The Soviet communist secret services in Warsaw communicated directly with the KGB HQ in Moscow. One of the reports communicates: „Our friends [of the SB] dispose of a powerful operational force [agents] in the Vatican, which enables them to reach directly at the Pope and to the Rome Congregation…“ This report has been made public by a Russian KGB defector, Vasilij Mitrokhin.

A failed journalist’s investigation
The attempt to assassinate the Polish Pope, on May 13, 1981, was a shock to the great majority of the Polish people. The Polish media was strictly controlled by the state censorship and only „approved“ news and comments were released. In the early 1980s, I decided to do some research on my own. Working on the staff of a popular weekly paper and also for Polish Radio and the TV, I had a chance to travel to the countries of the Soviet Bloc, while my trips to the West had been cancelled by the secret services (SB).

In 1983, I decided to go to Sofia, and to interview two Bulgarian intelligence officers, Vasiliev and Ayvazov, who escaped from Italy after the attempt on the pope. I succeeded to meet them, but only Vasiliev granted an interview to me. Of course, he denied any Bulgarian involvement in the attempted killing. But he also told me that he was very depressed, because many people associated him with Agca and the attempt, and his family was suffering because of this situation.

Then, I was asked to write an epilogue for a book on the attempt, which was originally published in France. My text was heavily censored, but some hints were left about the future of the investigation. When I was in Hungary, some Hungarian intelligence officers (with whom I worked in South Vietnam in 1973) told me they had doubts about the official outcome of the Agca trial. They told me Agca could not work alone, and Bulgarians helped him. Choosing an extreme right-wing killer was a purposeful choice of the Soviet KGB.

Then, in 1987, I was arrested as a „spy“ and put to jail for 8 years in Poland, after a secret trial by a Warsaw Military Tribunal. While in a communist jail, in Barczewo near Olsztyn (North-Eastern Poland), serving my sentence in a special prison ward, I incidentally met…Colonel Adam Pietruszka of the SB. Pietruszka, who was serving his 25 year’s sentence for his alleged part in the brutal murder of a „Solidarity“ chaplain, priest Jerzy Popieluszko (beatificated by John Paul II, after his death as a martyr). The chief of the killers’ squad was Major Grzegorz Piotrowski, the former chief of „Section D“ in Cracow. Pietruszka, who has been already released from jail and who told me in 1989 about his work in Rome, under a diplomatic cover, developing secret SB agents in the Vatican. He also told me that many high priests in Poland and in the Vatican did not believe in his participation in Popieluszko’s murder. He said that Piotrowski was „out of control“ and probably cooperated with the KGB. I couldn’t verify his claims.

I traveled to the USSR many times, in the 1970s and 1980s. Each time, Soviet officials asked me about the Pope and they regretted that John Paul II was still alive and active. My efforts to get out any details, concerning the May 13, 1981 attempt, produced no results. One time I was warned that if I continued to ask questions, I might never return home.

In 2005, I tried to reach Sergei Antonov in Sofia, Bulgaria, and interview him. But my Bulgarian journalist friends told me Antonov was insane, and in a psychiatric ward. True or not, he was fed special medicaments to „forget“. The KGB developed at least equal methods of mind control, as the CIA, or even better. Bulgaria is still under a Russian supervision, though a candidate-state to join the EU soon.

The 20-21 attempts on the life of the late Pope, John Paul II, still remain a mystery unsolved. „Wprost“ ends the article by a description of the pope’s meeting with Agca in a Rome prison, in 1982. The cameras of the Italian TV, filming the scene from a distance, recorded a moment, when John Paul II, after a short conversation with Agca, covered his face with the palms of his hands. He seemed to be very upset but calmed down and said to his would-be-killer: „What we told each other, that will remain our secret“ — he told the journalists. Did Agca reveal to the Pope who ordered to kill him? Did he point to the Polish accomplices? We shall never know.

In Poland, Judge Imposimato met with Polish researchers and investigators and examined some documents in the IPN. A final decision to begin an official investigation into the attempt at the life of the Polish Pope has not been made yet. But it is being considered by the Polish authorities the head of the investigative section of the IPN, Professor Witold Kulesza, told `Wprost’.