Who's responsible for nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri's death? Not just Hillary
Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton went on Fox News over the weekend, and blasted Hillary Clinton for endangering the life of Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiri, who was hung over the weekend.
Let's go to the videotape.
While there's no doubt that Clinton mishandled the Amiri case, the real question is why Amiri was brought to the US without his wife and child in the first place. This is from a post I did in 2010.
Finally, for those who wonder - as I do - why the CIA didn't just bring his family along.
One
of the mysteries about Amiri is why he decided to defect without his
young wife and child, leaving them -- and himself -- vulnerable to
Iranian pressure. The CIA often tries to arrange for the escape of a
defector’s family, to avoid just this sort of squeeze.
“The
choice to come to this country, and who he brought with him, were his,”
said a U.S. official who is familiar with the details of Amiri’s case.
I would guess that Amiri's wife refused to defect. As my mother-in-law
often reminds me, whom you marry is the most important decision you make
in life.
Amiri should never have been brought to the US without his family unless everyone was sure that he wished to abandon them, which was clearly not the case. That's what Bolton discusses around the 4:30 mark. Who's responsible for that? Certainly, Obama is responsible, as is the CIA and its director Leon Panetta (later Secretary of Defense), who ran the CIA from 2009-11.
But Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State at the time, also bears some responsibility for what happened, and she may have been the one who disclosed to the Iranians just what Amiri had done.
And you want to make her President and keep her party in power?
Iranian nuclear scientist who defected to US and returned is executed
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
Nearly seven years ago, Iranian nuclear scientist Shahram Amiridefected to the United States. Once his presence in the United States was confirmed, Amiri's family in Iran was threatened, leading to his return to his home country. Amiri was promptly arrested and tortured, and then charged with treason. This evening, the BBC is reporting that Amiri was executed. He was 39.
Shahram Amiri's mother said the body of her son had been returned to
their hometown with rope marks around his neck, showing that he had been
hanged.
He was later buried. Amiri had been held at a secret
location after returning from the US, where he said he had been forcibly
taken by the CIA.
Some reports say he had in-depth knowledge of Iran's nuclear programme.
Mr Amiri, who was born in 1977, went missing after taking a pilgrimage to Mecca in 2009.
He
surfaced in the US a year later saying he had been kidnapped and put
under "intense psychological pressure to reveal sensitive information"
by the CIA.
In a video recording - apparently made in the US - he
said: "They took me to a house located somewhere that I didn't know.
They gave me an anaesthetic injection."
In another video he claimed he had escaped from US custody. He returned to Tehran in 2010 to a hero's welcome.
US
officials told the BBC at the time that Mr Amiri had defected of his
own free will and provided "useful information" to the US.
He was later reported to have been given a long prison sentence after his return to Tehran.
His family confirmed at the time that he had been detained and told the BBC that they feared for his life.
Something tells me that Amiri's widow got part of that $400 million in cash that Obama gave to the Iranians. I've suspected all along that she was the reason for his return to Iran. And you will note that none of the more recent reports about him even mention her trying to see him - only his parents. Nice woman, eh?
Barack Obama’s
repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that
there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him –
has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition,
among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff.
Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s
fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama
is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn’t
adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share
Washington’s anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria;
like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped.
The military’s resistance dates back to the summer of 2013, when a
highly classified assessment, put together by the Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then led by General Martin
Dempsey, forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to chaos
and, potentially, to Syria’s takeover by jihadi extremists, much as was
then happening in Libya. A former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs
told me that the document was an ‘all-source’ appraisal, drawing on
information from signals, satellite and human intelligence, and took a
dim view of the Obama administration’s insistence on continuing to
finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups. By then, the CIA
had been conspiring for more than a year with allies in the UK, Saudi
Arabia and Qatar to ship guns and goods – to be used for the overthrow
of Assad – from Libya, via Turkey, into Syria. The new intelligence
estimate singled out Turkey as a major impediment to Obama’s Syria
policy. The document showed, the adviser said, ‘that what was started as
a covert US programme to arm and support the moderate rebels fighting
Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, and had morphed into an
across-the-board technical, arms and logistical programme for all of the
opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State. The so-called
moderates had evaporated and the Free Syrian Army was a rump group
stationed at an airbase in Turkey.’ The assessment was bleak: there was
no viable ‘moderate’ opposition to Assad, and the US was arming
extremists.
Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA
between 2012 and 2014, confirmed that his agency had sent a constant
stream of classified warnings to the civilian leadership about the dire
consequences of toppling Assad. The jihadists, he said, were in control
of the opposition. Turkey wasn’t doing enough to stop the smuggling of
foreign fighters and weapons across the border. ‘If the American public
saw the intelligence we were producing daily, at the most sensitive
level, they would go ballistic,’ Flynn told me. ‘We understood Isis’s
long-term strategy and its campaign plans, and we also discussed the
fact that Turkey was looking the other way when it came to the growth of
the Islamic State inside Syria.’ The DIA’s reporting, he said, ‘got
enormous pushback’ from the Obama administration. ‘I felt that they did
not want to hear the truth.’
‘Our policy of arming the opposition
to Assad was unsuccessful and actually having a negative impact,’ the
former JCS adviser said. ‘The Joint Chiefs believed that Assad should
not be replaced by fundamentalists. The administration’s policy was
contradictory. They wanted Assad to go but the opposition was dominated
by extremists. So who was going to replace him? To say Assad’s got to go
is fine, but if you follow that through – therefore anyone is better.
It’s the “anybody else is better” issue that the JCS had with Obama’s
policy.’
But what's more shocking is what the Joint Chiefs decided to do about it.
The Joint Chiefs felt that a direct challenge to Obama’s policy would
have ‘had a zero chance of success’. So in the autumn of 2013 they
decided to take steps against the extremists without going through
political channels, by providing US intelligence to the militaries of
other nations, on the understanding that it would be passed on to the
Syrian army and used against the common enemy, Jabhat al-Nusra and
Islamic State.
Germany, Israel and Russia were in contact with the
Syrian army, and able to exercise some influence over Assad’s decisions
– it was through them that US intelligence would be shared. Each had
its reasons for co-operating with Assad: Germany feared what might
happen among its own population of six million Muslims if Islamic State
expanded; Israel was concerned with border security; Russia had an
alliance of very long standing with Syria, and was worried by the threat
to its only naval base on the Mediterranean, at Tartus. ‘We weren’t
intent on deviating from Obama’s stated policies,’ the adviser said.
‘But sharing our assessments via the military-to-military relationships
with other countries could prove productive. It was clear that Assad
needed better tactical intelligence and operational advice. The JCS
concluded that if those needs were met, the overall fight against
Islamist terrorism would be enhanced. Obama didn’t know, but Obama
doesn’t know what the JCS does in every circumstance and that’s true of
all presidents.’
Once the flow of US intelligence began, Germany,
Israel and Russia started passing on information about the whereabouts
and intent of radical jihadist groups to the Syrian army; in return,
Syria provided information about its own capabilities and intentions.
There was no direct contact between the US and the Syrian military;
instead, the adviser said, ‘we provided the information – including
long-range analyses on Syria’s future put together by contractors or one
of our war colleges – and these countries could do with it what they
chose, including sharing it with Assad. We were saying to the Germans
and the others: “Here’s some information that’s pretty interesting and
our interest is mutual.” End of conversation. The JCS could conclude
that something beneficial would arise from it – but it was a military to
military thing, and not some sort of a sinister Joint Chiefs’ plot to
go around Obama and support Assad. It was a lot cleverer than that. If
Assad remains in power, it will not be because we did it. It’s because
he was smart enough to use the intelligence and sound tactical advice we
provided to others.’
'Israeli sources': We killed Mughniyah, not the CIA
Who carried out the bombing in the video above? Seven years later, the denials have toned down, and there are now claims of credit. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration 'anonymously' told the Washington Post that the CIA was behind the Mugniyah assassination. That has apparently ruffled some feathers in the Mossad, who got word to Dan Raviv that it was really behind the terrorist's death.
One result was that some of those Israelis - apparently miffed that
the Americans were taking too much credit - went to the trouble of
speaking with Western officials and diplomats to offer corrections.
Basically,
using a phrase inspired by the blue-and-white flag of Israel, they
suggested that the assassination of Mughniyeh was "almost all
blue-and-white, and just a little bit red-white-and-blue."
Based
on what they told their Western contacts this month, the Israelis claim
that their Mossad and Aman (military intelligence) agencies managed to
pick up the trail of the elusive terrorist - despite plastic surgery
that changed his appearance. His biggest mistake was moving around
Damascus without bodyguards, and specifically an unguarded area in front
of his apartment building in the Syrian capital.
Contrary to the
recent reports, the Israelis claim to have designed and tested the bomb,
while respecting the CIA's insistence that it not be too large so as
not to kill any innocents.
According to this version, then-Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert kept track of the testing and - during a trip to
Washington - even showed some of the videos to George W. Bush, who was
impressed and enthusiastic about eliminating Mughniyeh. The CIA had
briefly withdrawn from the mission, but President Bush brought the
agency back in.
On the night of the assassination seven years ago
this week, the surveillance team in Damascus held off when noticing that
Mughniyeh was not alone. He headed into his apartment with his Iranian
handler and a Syrian general, Muhammad Suleiman, who was a senior
advisor to President Bashar al-Assad.
The Iranian and the Syrian
left, and half an hour later the Hezbollah man walked out alone. The
button was pushed at Mossad headquarters - a privilege Israel wanted,
because Mughniyeh had killed dozens of Israelis and other Jews in car
bomb attacks - and the terrorist was blown to bits. No one else was
hurt.
Assad's aide, General Suleiman, was assassinated less than six months later by a long-range sniper. Intelligence sources said
Israel did that because Suleiman had been in charge of Syria's secret
nuclear reactor, which Israel's air force had destroyed the year before.
According to the Israeli version of events, Vice President Dick Cheney
phoned Prime Minister Olmert to exchange praise for the Mughniyeh
assassination.
The United States helped build
the bomb, the former official said, and tested it repeatedly at a CIA
facility in North Carolina to ensure the potential blast area was
contained and would not result in collateral damage.
“We probably blew up 25 bombs to make sure we got it right,” the former official said.
The
extraordinarily close cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli
intelligence services suggested the importance of the target — a man who
over the years had been implicated in some of Hezbollah’s most
spectacular terrorist attacks, including those against the U.S. Embassy
in Beirut and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.
The United States
has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which
Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail
about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car
bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the
2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most
high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.
Israel, of course, has said 'no comment.' So has the CIA. But over the past week we've been warned repeatedly about how Prime Minister Netanyahu would be 'jeopardizing' cooperation with the United States if he comes to Washington to speak to Congress in March. Cooperation like this? Well, maybe.
Really? This comes out right now? The “new” book by Robert B. Baer cited in the article was actually published in October — and it doesn’t say there was collaboration. Baer and unnamed others have been gotten to confirm it, apparently. But the timing is distinctly odd, given the recent dust-ups between Hezbollah and the IDF.
You might almost think someone was trying to add fuel to the fire.
Notice how the finger points at an event in the Bush years, and not at
cooperation since Obama took office, although there undoubtedly has been
such cooperation.
So Obama is burning the bridges between the US and Israel because he's ticked off that Netanyahu is coming to the US to tell Congress that Israel is opposed to Obama's weak policies on Iran. How short sighted!
Where's the outrage over US spying? CIA agents instructed how to avoid secondary screening at Ben Gurion
Wikileaks has released a CIA document entitled "CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover." The document, which is dated September 2011, has instructions for CIA agents traveling on false identities on how to avoid secondary screenings at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport.
"Secondary screening – a potentially lengthy and detailed look by
airport officials at passengers not passing initial scrutiny – can
significantly stress the identities of operational travelers," reads the
introduction. "Referral to secondary screening can occur if
irregularities or questions arise during any stage of airport processing
– immigration, customs, or security – and regardless of whether the
traveler is arriving, in transit, or departing. Officials may also
randomly select travelers."
...
The document details the reasons that could lead to security agents at
Ben-Gurion to refer a traveler to secondary screening. "A review of
clandestine reporting reveals examples of what various countries
consider to be suspicious," it is written.
"Israel’s security personnel focus on frequent travel to Islamic
countries," the document explains. "Security personnel at Ben Gurion
Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, commonly refer military-aged males
traveling alone with backpacks to secondary screening, regardless of
their nationality or skin color."
The document includes a detailed description of secondary checks at Ben-Gurion.
"At Ben Gurion airport in Israel, the secondary screening room contains
trace-detection equipment for explosive residue; tools for dismantling
passengers’ personal items for inspection, particularly items unfamiliar
to security officers; and a disrobing area, divided by privacy
curtains, to conduct strip searches of individuals, if necessary,"
according to the document.
The CIA's internal guide book also refers to an internal manual from
2004 published by International Consultants on Targeted Security, an
Israeli-founded company, which provides security advice to various
governments on matters such as profiling techniques. The manual
reportedly "lists suspicious signs in passenger behavior, documentation,
tickets, or baggage." The document adds, "Although dated, the ICTS
guidelines probably are typical and remain valid."
Now imagine what would happen if a Mossad manual were released that showed how to avoid being stopped at TSA checks in the US.... I know - it would be laughable.... But you can bet the Americans would be outraged.
This line is particularly telling:
"With the exception of Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and a few others,
immigration inspectors conducting primary screenings generally lack the
time and tools to conduct in-depth examination of travelers’ bona
fides," according to the document released by WikiLeaks.
Sounds to this frequent traveler like a great argument for implementing Israeli-style security everywhere....
Former CIA director James Woolsey told a security conference on Monday that Iran does not fear the Obama administration and that therefore only Israel can stop Iran. He also talked about the 'peace process.'
This is truly a sad story. A story that has remained hidden from view for more than six years has come out. Robert Levinson, who disappeared from the Island of Kish, off the coast of Iran, in 2007, was not on a private trip to Iran as has previously been claimed. He was working for the CIA.
In many ways, the story that emerges from Mr. Levinson’s files and
dozens of interviews is that of an unusual spy, an aging but still
passionate investigator searching for a way to keep his hand in the
game. It is also the story of officials in a relatively obscure C.I.A.
office looking to push the boundaries between the agency’s analytical
side and its covert operations. An agency inquiry concluded that those
analysts had encouraged him to take risks and then misrepresented his
activities after he went missing.
To his family and friends, the government Mr. Levinson served for
decades abandoned him for a time, initially making little attempt to
find him or acknowledge why he went to Iran.
They started their own search, and a cast of unlikely figures was drawn
into the hunt, many seeing it as an opportunity to get something for
themselves. They included an infamous weapons dealer, Sarkis
Soghanalian, and one of Russia’s most powerful businessmen, Oleg
Deripaska.
In late 2010, when his family received the tape of Mr. Levinson, they
saw a man they barely recognized. He was gaunt. His shirt was
threadbare. He was seated in a makeshift prison cell.
“I need the help of the United States government to answer the requests
of the group that has held me,” he said, as music played in the
background. “Please help me get home. Thirty-three years of service to
the United States deserves something.”
In Israel, we would have gone to the other extreme and released 1,000 terrorists for him. But the fact that the CIA and FBI both tried to pawn the case off on each other for at least the first year is despicable.
What a surprise: The United States spies on Israel
The Washington Post reports on the $52.6 billion 'black budget' that the United States has for spying on other countries in fiscal 2013. The Post obtained the budget from Edward Snowden, the former NSA analyst who has currently found temporary asylum in Russia. The Post isn't telling all, but it's telling enough for us to know that Israel is a target.
•U.S. intelligence officials take an active interest in foes as well as
friends. Pakistan is described in detail as an “intractable target,” and
counterintelligence operations “are strategically focused against [the]
priority targets of China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel.”
Let that sink in. Every one of those countries is (or in Pakistan's case ought to be) an enemy of the United States... except Israel. So why are we a target?
"[T]he military coup that overthrew
Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as
an act of U.S. foreign policy," the history reads. The risk of leaving Iran
"open to Soviet aggression," it adds, "compelled the United States ... in planning
and executing TPAJAX."
TPAJAX was the CIA's codename for the overthrow plot, which
relied on local collaborators at every stage. It consisted of several steps:
using propaganda to undermine Mossadegh politically, inducing the Shah to cooperate,
bribing members of parliament, organizing the security forces, and ginning up
public demonstrations. The initial attempt actually failed, but after a mad
scramble the coup forces pulled themselves together and came through on their
second try, on August 19.
Of course, Foreign Policy, where the article was published, goes on to beat its breast because of the CIA's involvement. I disagree. Based on what was known at the time, the CIA's actions may have made sense, and I don't think anyone would argue that Iranians or the interests of the United States are better off since the Islamic revolution.
The CIA added Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his mother Zubeidat to the terror watch list in 2011.
Previously U.S. officials have said
only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan. But in March 2011, the Russians
asked the FBI to look into Tsarnaev and his mother because of concerns
they were religious militants who planned to travel back to Russia, the
official said.
The FBI found nothing to link either
person to terrorism, and the FBI closed the investigations in June 2011.
Then, the Russians in the fall sent the same warning to the CIA. The
CIA asked the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center to add the mother’s
and son’s names to its huge, classified database of people known to be
terrorists and those who are suspected of having terror ties, called the
Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, or TIDE.
Being in that database does not mean
the U.S. government has evidence that links someone to terrorism. About a
year ago, there were some 745,000 names in the database. Intelligence
analysts add names and partial names to TIDE when terror-related
intelligence is shared with them.
Tsarnaeva said it would not surprise her if she was listed in a U.S. terror database.
“It’s all lies and hypocrisy,” she
told the AP from Dagestan. “I’m sick and tired of all this nonsense that
they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular
person, and I’ve never been mixed up in any criminal intentions,
especially any linked to terrorism.”
Note the politically correct third paragraph. Political correctness is behind the failure to take proper precautions in the Tsarnaev case. This is from Breitbart.com's Big Peace.
Of particular concern is that around the same time the FBI was informed
about Tsarnaev, the Obama administration’s policies handling terrorism
relating in any way to Islamic extremists changed.
PJ Media’s Patrick Poole noted in May, 2012 that the FBI training manual's counter-terrorism lexicon made no mention of terrorism in regards to al Qaeda, Hamas, jihad, Islam, or the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The fact is religion has been expunged from counterterrorism training,”
said counterterrorism specialist with the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies Sebastian Gorka to the Washington Times. He added, “The FBI can’t talk about Islam and they can’t talk about jihad.”
In October of 2011, an organization called “Muslim Advocates,” a group
composed of fifty-seven Muslim advocacy groups from across the country,
signed and sent a letter to high level Obama administration officials.
They urged the administration to enact a widespread purge within law
enforcement departments and agencies of any materials that could be
deemed biased or discriminatory against Muslims.
The letter was sent to then-Counterterrorism and Deputy National
Security Advisor (now CIA Director) John Brennan, as well as Attorney
General Eric Holder, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Secretary
of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller,
National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and Deputy National Security
Advisor Denis McDonough.
The Boston Marathon terror attack and the news that members of the Tsarnaev family were marked as potential terrorists ought to raise a huge red warning flag for the United States. Either the US must kill its political correctness or the political correctness will kill it.
National security experts urge rejecting John 'al-Quds' Brennan
The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to vote on Thursday on the nomination of John Brennan to head the Central Intelligence Agency. This video includes several national security experts - household names - speaking out against the Brennan nomination.
Video: Former FBI agent confirms Brennan converted to Islam
Here's what should be another nail in the coffin of John Brennan's nomination to be director of the CIA. A former FBI agent is confirming that Brennan converted to Islamwhile he was the CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia.
'Jill Kelley,' the woman who precipitated the David Petraeus scandal by reporting that she was being harassed by Petraeus paramour Paula Broadwell, is actually a 37-year old Lebanese woman named Jill Khawam (Hat Tip: Sunlight via Daniel Greenfield).
Kelley, 37, hails from a Lebanese family that emigrated to Philadelphia in the mid-1970s.
Her
parents, John and Marcelle Khawam, once operated a restaurant in
Voorhees, N.J., and still live in Washington Crossing, Bucks County,
according to public records. An older brother resides in South Jersey,
records suggest.
...
A 1988 Inquirer feature about the family's culinary roots described
Kelley's father as an accomplished musician in their homeland and her
mother as a chef who liked to entertain political and cultural figures.
At
one point, the Khawams ran a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees
called Sahara. John Khawam also owned an auto tag store in Northeast
Philadelphia, records show.
After living in Northeast Philadelphia, the family moved to Huntingdon Valley.
Jill Khawam and her twin sister, Natalie, were the youngest of four children.
Both
women moved about a decade ago to Tampa, where Jill Kelley's husband
works as a surgeon and the couple are active in the social circuit.
Natalie
Khawam is a lawyer specializing in representing whistleblowers.
According to her online resume, she attended Beaver College (now
Arcadia), and earned graduate degrees from Temple University and
Georgetown University Law School.
An older sister, Caroline, also
lives in Florida, while Kelley's older brother, David Khawam, lives in
Mount Laurel, records show.
Lebanon? Hezb...? Hmmm....
It gets better: According to John Podhoretz, she speaks Arabic.... (And she's a Maronite Christian- Daniel Greenfield had that detail as well).
US focusing on (having Israel) forcibly remove Assad
With the United States stymied at the UN by Russian and Chinese vetoes, the Obama administration is now focusing on removing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by force. And guess who the only ally participating in a military operation is likely to be.
Administration officials have been in talks with officials in Turkey and Israel over how to manage a Syrian government collapse. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is headed to Israel in the next several days to meet with Israeli defense counterparts, following up on a visit last week by President Obama’s national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon, in part to discuss the Syrian crisis.
The White House is now holding daily high-level meetings to discuss a broad range of contingency plans — including safeguarding Syria’s vast chemical weapons arsenal and sending explicit warnings to both warring sides to avert mass atrocities — in a sign of the escalating seriousness of the Syrian crisis following a week of intensified fighting in Damascus, the capital, and the killing of Mr. Assad’s key security aides in a bombing attack.
The administration has had regular talks with the Israelis about how Israel might move to destroy Syrian weapons facilities, administration officials said. The administration is not advocating such an attack, the officials said, because of the risk that it would give Mr. Assad an opportunity to rally support against Israeli interference.
If you read the whole thing, you will see that is the only place in the entire article that talks about actual use of military force and not just providing technical assistance to selected rebels. Hmmm.
Iran claims to have caught more 'assassins' but where is Shahram Amiri?
Iran claims to have broken up another ring of 'assassins' that was killing its nuclear scientists, according to reports in the Iranian media.
The Iranian Intelligence Ministry announced that the suspects were responsible for the killing of Majid Shahriari, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan and Reza Qashqaei - all scientists allegedly working on Tehran's contentious nuclear program.
Iran alleged that western spy agencies responsible for carrying out the nuclear assassinations collaborated with People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK,) an exiled Iranian organization dedicated to overthrowing the ruling regime and replacing it with a democratic, secular government.
Following the arrests, Iran announced its commitment to continue with its efforts to bring to justice the "terrorists" who "martyred the young scientists in cold-blooded murder," IRNA reported.
[Iran] provided no details as to the number of suspects, their identities or nationalities, or when or where they were arrested. But it promised further information would be made public once it was declassified.
Right.... I was just thinking about another Iranian nuclear scientist, Shahram Amiri. When we last heard from him, Amiri, who defected from and subsequently returned to Iran, had been arrested, charged with treason and was facing the death penalty. This Iranian blog reported two weeks ago that Amiri was sentenced to ten years in jail and five years in exile. If he lives through his sentence, he'll be a lucky man.
Confirmed: Flame and Stuxnet developed by related groups
Based on similarities in their code, the Russian Kaspersky Labs, which discovered Flame, confirms that Flame and Stuxnet were developed by groups that worked together. Flame was actually developed first. Flame has been used to gather intelligence from computer systems, particularly in Iran, while Stuxnet was used to force Iranian nuclear centrifuges to destroy themselves. As noted on this blog on Sunday, while the Obama administration has attempted to take credit for developing Stuxnet to enhance the President's reelection bid, Stuxnet was likely developed by the Mossad, possibly in coordination with the IDF's unit 8200. It would therefore follow that Flame was a Mossad and/or IDF project.
There were two independent developer teams, with Flame development preceding Stuxnet and each team developing its own code platform since 2007-2008 at the latest, the researchers said. Both projects were state-sponsored, and Stuxnet was specifically designed to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, experts believe.
In addition, a previously undiscovered elevation-of-privilege Windows exploit is in Stuxnet.A, an early variant of the malware, Roel Schouwenberg, senior researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said in a Web conference with reporters.
"We have a new old Zero-Day," he said, referring to an attack that exploits a previously unknown and unpatched vulnerability. "It was a Zero-Day at the time of creation and most likely at the time of deployment." That brings to five the number of Zero-Day exploits Stuxnet used. The exploit, created in February 2009, is "strikingly similar" to one that was patched by Microsoft in June 2009, researchers said.
Stuxnet.A, which dates to about June 2009, contains a module known as "Resource 207, which is an encrypted dynamic-link library file that has an executable file that Kaspersky researchers say shares code with Flame. Resource 207 was not in Stuxnet.B, which came out in 2010. The primary functionality of the code in Stuxnet is to distribute the infection from one machine to another via removable USB drives and exploit the vulnerability in Windows kernel to obtain escalation of privileges within the system, according to a Kaspersky news release. The code responsible for distributing malware via USB drives is completely identical to the one used in Flame, the researchers said. They both use the Autorun function in Windows.
Initially, Kaspersky researchers speculated that the projects were parallel but were hesitant to say they were developed or commissioned by the same party. Now a more definite link has been established and a timeline is more clear.
"We firmly believe the Flame platform predates the Stuxnet platform. It looks like the Flame platform was a kick-starter of sorts to get the Stuxnet project going," Schouwenberg said. "The operations went separate ways, maybe because Stuxnet code was mature enough to be deployed in the wild. Now we are 100 percent sure that the Stuxnet and Flame groups worked together."
Despite the fact that Stuxnet has been the subject of in-depth analysis by numerous companies and experts and lots has been written about its structure, for some reason, the mysterious “resource 207” from 2009 has gone largely unnoticed. But it turns out that this is the missing link between Flame and Stuxnet, two seemingly completely unrelated projects.
...
In October 2010, our automatic system received a sample from the wild. It analyzed the file thoroughly and classified it as a new Stuxnet variant, Worm.Win32.Stuxnet.s.
With Stuxnet being such a big thing, we looked at the sample to see what it was! Sadly, it didn’t look like Stuxnet at all, it was quite different. So we decided to rename it to Tocy.a and thought “silly automatic systems!”.
When Flame was discovered in 2012, we started looking for older samples that we might have received. Between samples that looked almost identical to Flame, we found Tocy.a.
Going through the sample processing system logs, we noticed it was originally classified as Stuxnet. We thought, how was it possible? Why did the system think that this Flame sample was related to Stuxnet? Checking the logs, we discovered that the Tocy.a, an early module of Flame, was actually similar to “resource 207” from Stuxnet. It was actually so similar, that it made our automatic system classify it as Stuxnet. Practically, Tocy.a was similar to Stuxnet alone and to no other sample from our collection.
Going back to the story, this is how we discovered the incredible link between Flame and Stuxnet.
After Stuxnet's discovery, a Congressional report in December 2010 put the U.S. and Israel on a short list of countries believed to be capable of carrying out that attack -- a list that also included Russia, China, the U.K. and France. A month later, The New York Times reported Stuxnet may have been the result of a joint U.S., Israeli project to undermine Iran's nuclear program.
Five different U.S. government agencies declined to comment to ABC News about allegations they were involved in Flame and the Israeli government has reportedly denied any link to the virus.
News of the new connection between the two programs came just days after a U.S.-based cyber security firm, Symantec, reported Flame appears to have been given a "suicide" command that would wipe any trace of it from an infected computer.
I don't believe that Israeli denial for a minute. Our government just doesn't like to look guilty so it wouldn't say 'no comment' like the Americans. For example, to this day, Israel has never officially admitted that it destroyed the Syrian nuclear plant in 2007. And we've never told anyone whether we have nuclear weapons, even though I'm sure you all think that we do.
But don't tell Forbes that. They think the CIA did it. Heh.
Mossad: 'Stuxnet is our baby; Obama disclosed it for his reelection campaign'
A group of Mossad agents speaking with Haaretz's Yossi Melman on condition of anonymity have said that the Mossad - and not the Bush administration - developed Stuxnet, and that President Obama is now trying to take credit for it in a bid to help his reelection campaign (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News via Atlantic Wire). Please recall the David Sanger piece in the New York Times about Stuxnet, which I blogged last week, which claimed that the Bush administration had begun developing Stuxnet, that President Obama had ordered it accelerated, and that Israel had only joined in later. Now, look at what Melman has to say about it.
The Israeli officials actually told me a different version. They said that it was Israeli intelligence that began, a few years earlier, a cyberspace campaign to damage and slow down Iran’s nuclear intentions. And only later they managed to convince the USA to consider a joint operation — which, at the time, was unheard of. Even friendly nations are hesitant to share their technological and intelligence resources against a common enemy.
Melman, and his writing partner Dan Raviv, promise more details on Mossad - CIA cooperation in their upcoming book (maybe if I'm really lucky they'll send me a review copy), which is due out next month. But they do give a hint as to the timing of the New York Times article.
Yet my Israeli sources understand the sensitivity and the timing of the issue and are not going to be dragged into a battle over taking credit. “We know that it is the presidential election season,” one Israeli added, ”and don’t want to spoil the party for President Obama and his officials, who shared in a twisted and manipulated way some of the behind-the-scenes secrets of the success of cyberwar.”
There's nothing Obama won't do to be reelected. Nothing at all.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, May 15.
1) Hungering for more information
Both the New York Times and Washington Post reported on the recently ended prisoners strike. Both reports were pretty straightforward, but not without troubling omissions.
Although only a minority of the hunger strikers were identified with Mr. Abbas’s secularist Fatah Party, he had taken the lead in pressing for a resolution. Israeli officials preferred to give Mr. Abbas the credit, and presented the agreement as a good-will gesture. “In response to the request of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Israel has negotiated the end of the strike,” said Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman. “It is our hope that this decision will serve to build confidence between the parties and further peace.”
We'll see how much more responsive he is to Israeli overtures now.
Most of the 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been tried and convicted of security offenses. Israel’s internal security agency, known as the Shin Bet, said in a statement that the agreement became possible after the prisoners made a commitment “to completely halt terrorist activity inside Israeli prisons,” and “to refrain from all activity that constitutes practical support for terrorism, including recruiting people for terrorist activity, guidance, financing, coordinating among recruits, aiding recruits,” and related activities. The two sides had seemed intent on reaching a deal before Tuesday, when the Palestinians commemorate the “nakba,” or catastrophe, on the anniversary of Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. The war that followed the declaration led to the flight or expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and the day is traditionally observed with protest marches.
The acknowledgement that most of the prisoners had been convicted of security offenses is important. Most of those still in jail committed their crimes after the Oslo accords. In other words they committed terror after the Palestinians officially renounced terror. Yet it was Abbas of Fatah, the moderates who want peace who was interceding for the prisoners.
The officials said Israel also agreed to free about 320 prisoners who are being held without charge or trial in administrative detention, provided they finish their current six-month detention terms and no new evidence against them surfaces. Administrative detention, which can be renewed indefinitely, is a key focus of the detainees who have been on hunger strike the longest. Critics say Israel uses it punitively and, by withholding evidence from both detainees and their lawyers, prevents them from mounting a proper defense. Israel says divulging that information could expose informants and jeopardize national security. Sahar Francis, director of the prisoners’ rights organization Addameer, said the concessions granted by Israel amounted to a success for the prisoners. But the change to administrative detention is vague, she said.
I wish when organizations like Addameer are quoted more background is given. Here's what NGO Monitor has written about the group:
Addameer (Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association) 2009. Addameer refers to the Israeli army as the “Israeli Occupying Forces,” and accuses Israel of “collective punishment” and a “policy of using Palestinian prisoners as pawns to achieve political and military gains.” Addameer endorsed the call for BDS against Israel, which calls for “[e]nding [Israel’]s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall,” and compares Israel to apartheid South Africa, in a manner consistent with the Durban Strategy of anti-Israel demonization and the use of soft-power warfare.
Addameer then is part of the Palestinian society that denies Israel's legitimacy. This is something that should be remembered and reported.
Why did Israel make the deal? Brulliard explained early in the report::
The prisoners — all jailed in Israeli military prisons on suspicion or convictions of terror-related activity — agreed to “completely halt terrorist activity inside Israeli prisons,” Israel’s domestic security agency, the Shin Bet, said in a statement.
Here it would reasonable to point out that Palestinian prisoners often make such promises, but they also regularly violate them. Already a number of those released in the Shalit deal last October have been re-arrested by Israel. Again this is something that needs to be reported.
The final paragraph in the Washington Post report is troubling:
The prisoner issue is deeply emotional for Palestinians, most of whom have relatives who are or have been incarcerated in Israeli prisons. Palestinians said at least 2,500 prisoners participated in the hunger strikes.
There are two ways to read this. The first is that it is emotional for the Palestinians because Israel arbitrarily arrests Palestinians. The second is that even though Israel is fully justified in arresting Palestinians involved in terror, the prisoner issue is emotional.
I have no doubt that the second is true. But what does it say then if Israel justifiably arrests such a high percentage of Palestinians? Shouldn't the prisoner issue then be framed as being indicative of widespread support for terror against Israel in Palestinian society?
By casting the "prisoner issue" as an emotional one for Palestinians with no further background suggests the first option is true.
Two central points are usually omitted from news stories about administrative detention. According to NGO Monitor these are:
Most NGO statements omit the fact that administrative detention is a common procedure used by democratic and rights-respecting states around the world in security-related cases, including the US and the UK. Israel's detention law meets and often exceeds the due process standards required by criminal procedure and human rights law. Contrary to the claims of NGOs, it is not true that administrative detention is “without charge.” The administrative detention laws require that the detainee be brought before a judge within a short period of time and any detention must be based upon credible evidence. All detainees have the right to challenge their detention to the Israeli Supreme Court sitting as the High Court of Justice.
Finally if administrative detention and hunger striking prisoners are worthy of news coverage, shouldn't these twostories also be reported?
The omission of so much information suggests that Israeli arrests and detentions are arbitrary and unique. Unfortunately, when the mainstream media covers this situation its omissions help construct a false narrative.
A drone strike would vaporize this ingenious terrorist intent on attacking the United States. But it would also vaporize all the intelligence inside his brain. Our national security would be better served if the United States captured al-Asiri and kept him alive for questioning, so we can find out what he knows. What would be lost if President Obama chose to kill, rather than capture, al-Asiri? According to former senior intelligence officials involved in terrorist captures, a high-ranking terrorist leader such as al-Asiri could provide us with treasure trove of information on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — the terror network that poses the greatest threat to the homeland today.
As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.” It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort. The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.
Since George W. Bush is no longer president we can't expect the media to look into whether intelligence was compromised for political gain.
But it isn't just the White House that might make such political calculations, sometimes the intelligence agencies do too. Peter Huessy asks (regarding intelligence spending) What are we getting for our $80 billion?
"Don't worry" says the former deputy director of its Counterterrorist Center: it is not the fault of the intelligence community: "They screw things up all by themselves" he states. "On major foreign policy decisions, intelligence is not the decisive factor". Is the intelligence community really that innocent? Now retired, this same 28-year CIA veteran had a hand in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran. The report was a bombshell: its summary dismissed Iran as a threat to US, effectively taking it out of the mix of national security issues in the 2008 Presidential campaign.
No doubt those working in intelligence are devoted to their tasks. The question remains how will what they learn be used?
CIA: Without outside assistance Jews in Palestine won't survive more than two years
Here's a fascinating little document. It's a report issued by the CIA on November 28, 1947, one day before the vote on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, and it argued against the partition.
Among other things, the report claimed that without significant outside assistance, the Zionists (Jews) would not last more than two years (so much for that argument) and that the United States had destroyed its prestige in the Middle East by supporting the partition plan.
I am embedding the report below (Hat Tip: Will). It's only 19 pages.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
