I really feel like slamming some of the chickens**t American Jews who regularly comment - both on this blog and on Twitter and Facebook - that Jonathan Pollard should rot in jail because what he did was so terriblethey're afraid of being accused of having 'dual loyalties' if they actually question Pollard's life sentence. Much of the infamous Cap Weinberger memo (that Pollard's lawyers were never allowed to see) has been declassified, and it shows that much of the US government argument for keeping Pollard imprisoned is based on lies and mischaracterizes what Weinberger (an anti-Semite in his own right) wrote (Hat Tip: NY Nana).
Key portions of a critical classified document on which the US
government has cited as justification for keeping Jonathan Pollard in
jail have been declassified – and his lawyers say the government has
been "dishonest" in "hiding behind the mask of 'classified information'
to materially mischaracterize the nature and extent of the harm caused
by Mr. Pollard."
Lawyers Eliot Lauer and Jacques Semmelman, who have represented
Pollard for 15 years pro-bono, say the newly disclosed material shows
that any harm possibly caused by Pollard was only "in the form of
short-term disruption in foreign relations between the United States and
certain Arab countries."
"That is not at all the same thing as harm to U.S. national security," they write in a World Net Daily op-ed, "and it was dishonest for the government to pretend that it is."
The government position for 30 years has been that Pollard must
remain in prison because a secret note from then-Secretary of State
Caspar Weinberger stated that Pollard caused greater harm to U.S.
national security than had ever occurred previously.
"The government has been able to present this harsh characterization
of the Weinberger declaration without fear of contradiction," Semmelman
and Lauer write, because "no one representing Mr. Pollard [was ever]
allowed to see the Weinberger declaration since the day Mr. Pollard was
sentenced" – until now.
...
The lawyers state that the U.S. government's "deception had its most
blatant and prejudicial impact at Mr. Pollard's parole hearing held in
July 2014, during which the government invoked the Weinberger
declaration and - without showing it to the parole commission - urged
the commission to accept its representation that the document
substantiated more harm to the national security of the United States
than had ever occurred previously."
"In its decision denying parole, the commission took the government
at its word and essentially parroted the government's characterization
of the Weinberger declaration when it wrote that Mr. Pollard had caused
'the greatest compromise of U.S. security to that date,'" noted the
lawyers.
"That is an outright falsehood," the lawyers write, "and the recent
revelations prove it... [It] is now revealed that Mr. Pollard provided
Israel with information concerning the 'political-economic affairs of
Middle Eastern nations,' various 'Middle Eastern orders of battle,' and
the 'technology of Soviet weapons and radar systems' used by various
Arab governments."
"The potential consequence [thereof] is described by Mr. Weinberger
as 'a high probability of harm to the foreign relations of the U.S.
with friendly Arab nations'" – and nothing more than that.
The op-ed details the type of information Pollard gave Israel, and the modest and temporary damage it caused to U.S. relations with some countries – but not to U.S. security.
Hang your heads in shame chickens**t American Jews. Maybe you should worry more about why your government has been holding an American Jew imprisoned for 30 years for a crime that normally carries a 2-4-year sentence than you worry about accusations that you hold dual loyalties (as if any of you holds any loyalty to the Jewish state).
So why did then-CIA director George Tenet threaten to resign if Bill Clinton released Pollard (as he promised to do) in exchange for Israel signing the Why Why Wye agreement? Probably because Tenet knew that if what was really in the Weinberger document was made public (and there would have been no more reason to keep it classified 17 years ago had Pollard been released), he and other government officials who had lied about its contents would have found their butts in a sling. Now, they're all dead or retired.
Former Egyptian Interior Minister: We Gave CIA Early Warning about 9/11
Egypt's former interior minister testifies in his trial (for being part of the Mubarak government) that Egypt warned the CIA about 9/11 in advance, but the CIA never passed the warning on, because... you won't believe why.
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.
You don't think someone is trying to change the topic now, do you? A report in Foreign Policy discloses the existence of a 30-year old CIA memo that claims that Israel has a chemical weapons capability.
According to the document, American spy satellites uncovered
in 1982 "a probable CW [chemical weapon] nerve agent production facility
and a storage facility... at the Dimona Sensitive Storage Area in the Negev
Desert. Other CW production is believed to exist within a well-developed
Israeli chemical industry."
"While we cannot confirm whether the Israelis possess
lethal chemical agents," the document adds, "several indicators lead
us to believe that they have available to them at least persistent and
nonpersistent nerve agents, a mustard agent, and several riot-control agents,
marched with suitable delivery systems."
Whether Israel still maintains this alleged stockpile is unknown.
In 1992, the Israeli government signed but never ratified the Chemical Weapons
Convention, which bans such arms. (The Israeli embassy in Washington did not
respond to requests to comment on this article.) The CIA estimate, a copy of
which was sent to the White House, also shows that the U.S. intelligence
community had suspicions about this stockpile for decades, and that the U.S.
government kept mum about Israel's suspected possession of chemical weapons
just as long.
...
But what makes the single page found at the Reagan Library
so explosive is that it contains the complete and unredacted portion of the
intelligence estimate that details what the CIA thought it knew back in 1983
about Israel's work on chemical weapons, which the CIA's censors had carefully
excised from the version released to the National Archives in 2009.
The estimate shows that in 1983 the CIA had hard evidence
that Israel possessed a chemical weapons stockpile of indeterminate size,
including, according to the report, "persistent and non-persistent nerve agents."
The persistent nerve agent referred to in the document is not known, but the
non-persistent nerve agent in question was almost certainly sarin. That is
believed to be the Assad regime's chemical weapon of choice -- and the agent used
on the morning of August 21, 2013 to strike rebel-controlled or contested
neighborhoods in the eastern suburbs of Damascus. The Obama administration says
that attack killed over 1,400 innocent civilians, mostly women and children. On
Sunday, the Israeli defense minister, Moshe Ya'alon, blasted Assad for "crudely
us[ing] chemical weapons against his own citizens."
The CIA report is vague as to why Israel decided to secretly
build its own stockpile of chemical weapons given that Israel was widely
suspected at the time of having a small but potentially lethal stockpile of
nuclear weapons. Israeli historian Avner Cohen, in his 1988 book Israel and
the Bomb, wrote that Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion secretly
ordered that a stockpile of chemical weapons be built at about the time of the
1956 war between Israel and Egypt. The CIA, on the other hand, believed that
Israel did not begin work on chemical weapons until either the late 1960s or
the early 1970s.
According to the 1983 intelligence estimate, "Israel,
finding itself surrounded by frontline Arab states with budding CW [chemical
weapons] capabilities, became increasingly conscious of its vulnerability to
chemical attack. Its sensitivities were galvanized by the capture of large
quantities of Soviet CW-related equipment during both the 1967 Arab-Israeli and
the 1973 Yom Kippur wars. As a result, Israel undertook a program of chemical
warfare preparations in both offensive and protective areas."
Israeli concerns about Egypt and other Arab states
possessing chemical weapons were legitimate. Documents discovered at the
National Archives confirm that the Egyptian military had possessed a large
stockpile of mustard gas since the early 1960s and had demonstrated that it was
not afraid to use these weapons. A declassified May 23, 1967 intelligence
assessment found at the National Archives reveals that Egyptian forces first
began using mustard gas bombs against Saudi-backed royalist rebel forces in
what was then known as North Yemen as early as 1963.
According to a January 15, 1968 CIA report, U.S.
intelligence learned in early 1967 that Egyptian Soviet-made Tu-16 bombers had
dropped bombs filled with nerve agents on rebel positions in Yemen, marking the
first time that nerve agents had ever been used in combat. And according to a
May 20, 1967 top secret White House memorandum found at the National Archives, the Israelis sent Washington an intelligence report stating that
Israeli intelligence had observed "canisters of [poison] gas" with Egyptian
troops stationed along the Israeli border in the Sinai Peninsula.
If we ever had or currently have chem weapons, the bottom line is that we have never used them, and are highly unlikely to use them. This is meant as a distraction from Syria.
CIA gets lots of job applicants from Hamas, Hezbullah and al-Qaeda
A document turned over to the Washington Post by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden shows that the United States government investigates thousands of employees every year for suspected terror ties, and that Hamas, Hezbullah and al-Qaeda members have repeatedly sought employment with the CIA.
The CIA found that among a subset of job seekers whose backgrounds
raised questions, roughly one out of every five had “significant
terrorist and/or hostile intelligence connections,” according to the document, which was provided to The Washington Post by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.
The groups cited most often were Hamas, Hezbollah, and al-Qaeda and
its affiliates, but the nature of the connections was not described in
the document.
So sharp is the fear of threats from within that
last year the NSA planned to launch at least 4,000 probes of potentially
suspicious or abnormal staff activity after scrutinizing trillions of
employee keystrokes at work. The anomalous behavior that sent up red
flags could include staffers downloading multiple documents or accessing
classified databases they do not normally use for their work, said two
people familiar with the software used to monitor employee activity.
This
shrouded, multimillion-dollar hunt for insider threats has suffered
from critical delays in recent years and uneven implementation across
agencies, the budget records show. And the spy agencies’ detection
systems never noticed that Snowden was copying highly classified
documents from different parts of the NSA’s networks.
The hunt is apparently motivated by Wikileaks. But it's not being done efficiently. As noted, Snowden fell through the cracks, because he was a contractor and not an employee.
Fellow Israelis: Aren't you glad we share intelligence information with the United States while they spy on us? What could go wrong?
Video details about 'black budget' for spying on Israel and the Pollard connection
Here's a report from WJLA-TV in Washington about the US intelligence agencies 'black budgets' for spying on foreign countries, a story I covered originally here.
Let's go to the videotape.
A report at The Hill makes what seems to me to be an obvious connection between the black budget and convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, who is serving a life sentence in the United States, after the US government broke a plea bargain (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
The White House and the Israeli Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.
The
revelations come as no surprise to Georgetown University's Paul Pillar,
who retired as the national intelligence officer for the Near East in
1995 after a 28-year career in U.S. intelligence. Israeli spying, he
said, has remained a major threat since U.S. citizen Jonathan Pollard
received a life sentence in 1987 in a massive spying case that gravely
strained relations between the two countries.
“Israel should be
assumed to continue to have an aggressive intelligence collection
operations against the United States,” Pillar said. While much
information is collected through traditional political contacts, “I
would personally have no doubt that that is supplemented by whatever
means they can use to find out as much as they can about what we're
doing, thinking, deciding on anything of interest to Israel, which would
include just about any Middle Eastern topic.”
The issues of
continued Israeli settlement construction and Obama's strong interest in
reaching a negotiated settlement to avoid a confrontation with Iran
over its nuclear program, Pillar said, are two issues where U.S. and
Israeli interests “certainly diverge,” he said. Spying, he said, could
give Israel “warning indicators” before any public decisions, and enable
the country to put its “political machine in action” and get the United
States to reconsider.
“If I were in [Prime Minister Benjamin]
Netanyahu's shoes and had his perspective,” Pillar said, “I would spare
no effort to try to collect every bit of intelligence I could, in secret
as well as openly.”
He said the public revelations won't impact U.S.-Israeli relations.
“Everything
is trumped by political realities,” Pillar said. “Don't expect any
statement by the White House press secretary tomorrow that says, 'Oh my
gosh, we are really upset with the Israelis for trying to spy on us'.
You're never going to hear anything like that, because politically it is
hazardous for basically any American politician – and certainly an
incumbent American administration – to underscore ... the divergence of
U.S. and Israeli interests.”
Sounds to me like Pillar should be working the State Department. They have the same sort of Israel-hating perspective on things. Then again, Georgetown probably isn't a bad choice for him either.
I want to point out again that if you look at the list of countries on which the US is spying (China, Russia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan and Cuba), Israel is the only one that is supposedly considered a friend of the United States. No other country on that list would surprise anyone. And you don't see the US spying on Britain or South Korea (to give two non-Arab, non-Muslim countries that are comparable either in terms of a close relationship with the US or in terms of military predicament). You don't think anti-Semitism has anything to do with this attitude, do you? Maybe if the US government was sharing the information it has agreed to share with Israel, and were backing its supposed ally, it wouldn't feel the need to spend billions of dollars spying and counter-spying on Israel.
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?
“This is a decision that could come only from Obama,” a diplomat said.
“[T]his reflects his dismay over the Israeli operations, which the
president believes could result in a regional war.”
...
The diplomats said Israel has protested the U.S. leaks, which increased
tension with Damascus. They said the purported CIA leaks have strained
relations with Israel’s intelligence community, particularly the Mossad.
The CIA director is John Brennan, regarded as a confidant of Obama.
“The Israelis have also been going to their friends in Congress to stop
the leaks,” the diplomat said.
That would be John al-Quds Brennan, who views jihad as a 'legitimate tenet' of Islam.
“The leaks will continue because there is a lot of resentment within the
U.S. intelligence community over Israeli assessments regarding such
countries as Egypt, Iran and Syria,” the diplomat said.
Maybe Obama wants us to go to war with Syria and Iran... because he thinks we'd lose (God forbid).
The Senate confirmed John 'al-Quds' Brennan as director of the CIA on Thursday afternoon. The vote was 63-34.
The Senate voted
63-34 in favor of Brennan, overcoming Republican Senator Rand Paul's
attempt to slow the White House counter-terrorism advisor from becoming
the next head of the CIA.
Paul, who spent nearly 13 hours
speaking on the Senate floor on Wednesday, was irate about the
reluctance of President Barack Obama's administration to declare that
"targeted killings" of American citizens on US soil were
unconstitutional.
Attorney General Eric Holder then clarified the
administration's policy on Thursday and said that Obama would not use
his authority to order a drone to kill an American on US soil who was
"not engaged in combat."
With the man in charge of removing references to Islamic terrorism from all government manuals in charge of the CIA, what could go wrong?
Senator Rand Paul filibustering John 'al-Quds' Brennan
John 'al-Quds' Brennan's nomination to be director of the CIA quietly passed the Senate Intelligence Committee the day before yesterday. But to actually get the job, he's going to have to stop Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) from talking. Paul is doing a filibuster the old-fashioned way: He's speaking. And he says he won't stop until Brennan's nomination is defeated or withdrawn (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
This one actually has nothing to do with Israel.
At first the filibuster, staged by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), was greeted
with skepticism. For the first three hours, he railed alone against
Obama’s refusal to rule out drone strikes on American soil.
“I’m here to filibuster John Brennan’s nomination to be director of
CIA,” Paul announced, later vowing: “I will speak for as long as it
takes.”
But as the day went on, one Republican senator after
another pledged support to Paul’s cause and made their way down to the
Senate floor.
“Americans have every reason to be concerned any
time the government wants to intrude on life, liberty or prosperity,”
said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who was the first Republican to join Paul’s
filibuster. “We’re talking here about the sanctity of human life.”
Maybe they don't trust Obama to only go after terrorists? Hmmm.
UPDATE 10:15 AM
Paul ended his filibuster at 12:40 am on Thursday - when the Senate adjourned. The nomination did not come to a vote of the full Senate.
Here's a video of a 2010 question and answer session with CIA director designate John Brennan at NYU Law School. The session was entitled "A Dialogue on Our Nation's Security." This
public forum was co-hosted by the White House Office of Public
Engagement and the Islamic Center at NYU on February 13, 2010.
Let's go to the videotape (it's rather long) and I will add some highlights after the video, which you can follow along as you watch the video. The highlights come from Walid Shoebat (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).
2:57 – The second questioner identifies himself as Omar Shahin, Public Relations Director for Islamic Relief and the chairman of the North American Imam’s Federation.
This was the same Omar Shahin who was one of the six imams in the
“flying imams” case in Minneapolis back in 2006. He was the spokesman
for the group. During that incident,
a concerned passenger handed a note to a flight attendant after
observing suspicious behavior. Based on Shahin’s associations, that
passenger was rightly concerned. CAIR quickly came to Shahin’s defense.
In fact, some might remember that the incident took place two weeks
after the 2006 midterm elections, during which it became apparent that
the very Muslim-friendly Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) would become the
chairman of the House Judiciary. Suspicions were raised that the entire
incident was to make profiling a top issue during Conyers’ tenure as chairman.
...
5:45 – “I was very concerned after the attack in Fort Hood as
well as the December 25th attack, that all of a sudden there were people
who went back into this fearful position, that lashed out, not thinking
through what was reasonable and appropriate.”
Gee, It’s been well over three years since that attack and Nidal
Malik Hasan has waged jihad successfully from his prison cell while
still not being convicted despite countless witnesses who saw him murder
14 and injure 32 as he shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’. That sounds like a case
for Islamophobia.
29:20 – “I consider myself a citizen of the world.”
38:30 – A man in the audience begins his question by saying
that he has a twenty one year-old son and that “every time he passes
through an airport security line, he’s pulled aside and frisked.”
Really? Every time your son goes through an airport, he’s frisked? Why hasn’t CAIR filed a lawsuit about this?
48:00 – “The world is not black and white, it’s not divided into good and evil.”
Interesting theory, considering his company that day.
58:38 – “I’m exceeding my welcome here but I could do this all
day.” – Brennan commenting about going past his time allotment. Again,
can anyone see the Tea Party getting this much time with Brennan?
Shortly thereafter, Brennan calls on a man who identifies himself as
Assad Aktar (sp?), president of the Congressional Muslim Staff
Association (CMSA). Mr. Aktar bemoans the “Unindicted co-conspirator”
label. This is an obvious reference to the Holy Land Foundation trial and the label that has been subsequently applied to groups like CAIR and ISNA successfully.
Andrew McCarthy has a lengthy piece on why John 'al-Quds' Brennan should not be confirmed as director of the Central Intelligence Agency. I urge you to read the whole thing. Here's some of it.
Brennan’s agenda is the antithesis of the intelligence mission. His
goal has been to portray our enemies as a small, unthreatening fringe of
charlatan “violent extremists,” who kill wantonly and are unconnected
to any “legitimate” Islam. Thus, he maintains
for example that the only “legitimate” interpretation of the “tenet of
Islam” known as jihad is: a “holy struggle … to purify oneself or one’s
community.”
Even taken at face value, Brennan’s assertion is absurd. There is
between Islam and the West no common understanding of the good, and thus
no consensus about “purity.” In Islam, to “purify” something means to
make it more compliant with sharia, Islam’s legal code and societal
framework. Sharia is anti-freedom and anti-equality, so to purify
oneself in an Islamic sense would necessarily mean something very
different from what we in the West would think of as struggling to
become a better person.
But there is an even more fundamental reason not to take Brennan’s
remarks at face value: they run afoul of what mainstream Islam itself
says about jihad. Have a look at Reliance of the Traveller,
the popular sharia manual (it is available on Amazon). It is quite
straightforward on the matter: “Jihad means to war against non-Muslims.”
Reliance, you should know, has been expressly endorsed by al-Azhar University in Egypt (Islam’s center of learning since the tenth century) and the International Institute of Islamic Thought
(the Brotherhood’s America-based Islamist think-tank). It is a lot more
authoritative than John Brennan’s wishful meanderings. Maybe the
president actually thinks Brennan knows more about Islam than do these
scholars who have spent their lives steeped in Islamic doctrine and
jurisprudence. I have my doubts … and, judging from the profound
influence of these scholars, so do many millions of Muslims.
In Brennan’s world we’re to believe that holy war is not much
different from the struggle to remember to brush after every meal. In
Brennan’s world, there is also no need to fret over anti-American
terrorists who return to the jihad with alarming regularity once they
are released from Guantanamo Bay. After all, Brennan observes, common
criminals have high recidivism rates, too. Mass-murderers, pick-pockets …
as they say in the administration, “What difference does it make?”
And then there’s the skill of offending our friends while enabling our enemies. Brennan refers
to Jerusalem, the Israeli capital, as “al-Quds.” That is the name used
by Islamists who reject the Jewish state’s right to exist, who claim
Jerusalem and the rest of Israel as their own. In fact, as Brennan
undoubtedly knows, it was Ayatollah Khomeini who denominated Iran’s
annual ritual of anti-Israeli protest as “al-Quds Day.” Moreover, the
Islamic Republic, which has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel off the map,
calls its most lethal terrorist operatives the “al-Quds” forces.
Brennan’s sense of outrage, unnoticeable in response to slights against a faithful U.S. ally, is instead reserved
for the “ignorant feelings” of Americans riled by jihadist attacks
against our country. For Brennan, Americans’ anger at Islamists, our
perception that the ideology that breeds terrorists is just as much a
problem as the terrorists themselves, is “Islamophobia” – a smear
cleverly concocted by Islamists to deflect examination. Brennan claims
to have seen Islamophobia rear its racist head in the public reaction to
the Fort Hood attack – the worst jihadist mass-murder in America since
9/11, but one the Obama administration prefers to think of as “workplace
violence.”
Brennan claims
that Hezbollah, Iran’s Lebanese terror militia, is a “very interesting
organization,” whose “moderate elements” have evolved it from “purely a
terrorist organization” into a political party whose members now serve
in the Lebanese government. This, again, is rose-tinted nonsense,
bespeaking breathtaking ignorance about the history and operations of
jihadists who, until 9/11, had killed more Americans than any other
terror network. Hezbollah has never been “purely a terrorist
organization.” Like the Muslim Brotherhood, which the Brennan-influenced
Obama administration similarly sees as “moderate” (even “largely secular”),
Hezbollah has always seen terrorism as one item in a varied menu. For
three decades, it has also specialized in media campaigns, social
welfare work, lawfare, infiltration of academe, and political activism.
Its objective – again, like the Brotherhood’s – is to advance the
Islamic revolution at the expense of non-Muslims by any method that
shows promise under the circumstances.
Hezbollah is part of the Islamist vanguard waging a global campaign
against liberty. But with their Brennan blinders on, the Obama
administration chooses not to see it. They see “moderates” committed to
participating in a “political process.” This same thinking has led the
administration to issue a visa
to an admitted member of the Blind Sheikh’s terrorist organization (the
Islamic Group) so he could come to the White House with other newly
minted Egyptian “parliamentarians” to discuss U.S. policy in the Middle
East. This mindset also explains why the administration negotiates with the Taliban, just as it negotiated with the terrorists who murdered American troops in Karbala – ultimately releasing the ringleader, Ali Mussa Daqduq.
There may be a place in government, even in the intelligence
community, for discrediting our enemies – for conducting operations that
highlight their excesses and making them appear illegitimate in the
eyes of those whose allegiance they seek to win. There is no place,
however, for deceiving the American people by politicizing intelligence.
That Brennan specialty, an exhaustive effort to miniaturize the threats
against our nation and appease the president’s Islamist allies, is the
antithesis of what we have a CIA for.
...
Chuck Hagel’s confirmation hearing last week only bolstered concerns
that he is utterly unfit to serve as secretary of defense. Yet, some
Republicans have announced that they will vote for him anyway, and some
others who purport to oppose him have signaled that they have no
intention of mounting a filibuster, the only procedure that could derail
him. Consequently, they’ve ensured that he will be confirmed. So let’s
not kid ourselves: Senate Republicans who will let Hagel take control of
the Defense Department, and who just joined Democrats in a 94-3
landslide confirmation of John Kerry – a devotee of Obama’s Muslim
Brotherhood empowerment strategy – are not going to put up a fight over
Brennan.
Some Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including Mark Udall of Colorado and Ron Wyden of Oregon, were miffed that John Brennan
had not read the 300-page executive summary of a Senate report on the
CIA's interrogation program before meeting with them recently.
"Not only was he not prepared to
discuss the important findings, but he hadn't reviewed the report at
all," Udall said in a statement last week, adding that he was "deeply
disappointed." The senator said he wanted Brennan
to arrive Thursday prepared to answer questions about the report.
Brennan will, National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said
Monday.
Republicans
plan to grill Brennan about leaks of classified information and the
administration's characterization of the intelligence surrounding
September's attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that
left four Americans dead.
...
"There's no indication of any trouble" for Brennan's confirmation, Vietor said.
The Zionist Organization of America has put together a list of quotes by John 'al-Quds' Brennan, President Hussein Obama's candidate to lead the CIA. These quotes show why Brennan should be as big a concern to supporters of Israel as is Chuck Hagel.
May 2009: Brennan offered a public apologia for the Obama
Administration’s policy of discarding basic, factual terms like ‘radical
Islam,’ ‘Islamism,’ and ‘jihad’ in reference to the war being waged
against America and its allies by Muslim extremists. Addressing
the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Brennan said
that “describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to
the lie propagated by al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism,
that the United States is somehow at war against Islam. The reality, of
course, is that we have never been and will never be at war with Islam.
After all, Islam, like so many faiths, is part of America … Nor do we
describe our enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is holy
struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam meaning to purify oneself of one’s
community” (Rowan Scarborough, ‘Obama at odds with Petraeus doctrine on
“Islam,”’ Washington Times, July 11, 2010).
In August 2009, Brennan again addressing the CSIS, said the Lebanese
terrorist group Hizballah, “started out as purely a terrorist
organization back in the early ’80s and has evolved significantly over
time. And now it has members of parliament, in the cabinet; there are
lawyers, doctors, others who are part of the Hezbollah organization …
Hamas, on the other hand … developed an extremist and terrorist element
to it that, I think, has unfortunately delegitimized it in the eyes of
many.” The Nation contributing editor Robert Dreyfuss also disclosed
that, before assuming his current position as President Obama’s top
counter-terrorist adviser, Brennan told him that talking to Hamas and
Hezbollah is the right thing to do (Robert Dreyfuss, ‘White House
Opening to Hezbollah, Hamas?’ The Nation, August 10, 2009).
December 2009: When would-be underwear bomber Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a U.S.-bound Northwest Airlines flight
on Christmas Day 2009, Brennan was criticized because British
intelligence authorities had notified their U.S. counterparts of an
“Umar Farouk” meeting with al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, and
Abdulmutallab’s father had warned of his son’s increasing extremism to
CIA officials at the U.S. embassy in Nigeria. However, Abdulmutallab was
never added to the U.S. no-fly list, nor was his U.S. visa revoked.
This led by the House and Senate Intelligence oversight committees to
call for Brennan’s resignation (Patrick Poole, ‘The unprecedented power
has even Obama administration officials worried,’ PJ Media, June 6,
2012).
February 2010, Brennan defended the policy of treating Abdulmutallab
as a criminal by having his rights read to him upon arrest and trying
him in civilian court, rather than transferring the would-be bomber to
military custody as an enemy combatant, claiming during a speech at New
York University’s Law School, that he supported the administration’s
highly unpopular move to try al-Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed in federal court (Joel Gerstein, ‘Brennan, unruffled, talks
terror at NYU,’ Politico, February 28, 2010). In the same speech, he
also referred to Jerusalem by its Arabic name, Al-Quds, saying, “In all
my travels the city I have come to love most is al-Quds, Jerusalem”
(‘Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of Islam,’
Fox News, May 27, 2010).
May 2010, in a speech to the CSIS, Brennan called jihad a “legitimate
tenet of Islam,” arguing that the term “jihadists” should not be used
to describe America’s enemies.” He described violent extremists as
victims of “political, economic and social forces” but said that those
plotting attacks on the U.S. should not be described in “religious
terms” (‘Counterterror Adviser Defends Jihad as ‘Legitimate Tenet of
Islam, Fox News, May 27, 2010).
September 2010: On Brennan’s watch, a top U.S. Hamas official, Kifah
Mustafa, was permitted to tour of the top-secret National
Counterterrorism Center, FBI headquarters in Washington D.C., and the
FBI training academy at Quantico. Mustafa had already been named in 2007
and 2008 as an unindicted coconspirator as a registered agent for Holy
Land Foundation, a Hamas fund-raising front closed by the Bush
administration after the largest terrorism financing prosecution in
American history. Evidence produced in court showed Mustafa to have
participated in a fundraising troupe singing “‘I am a member of Hamas’
as well as other songs glorifying violence and inciting the murder of
Jews” (Patrick Poole, ’10 Failures of the U.S. Government on the
Domestic Terrorism Threat,’ Center for Security Policy, 2010). Following
this, several former top intelligence and defense officials again
called for his resignation (‘National Security Hawks Call for Brennan’s
Resignation,’ Fox News, September 28, 2010).
May 2012: Brennan was implicated in a serious intelligence breach
detailing an ongoing counterterrorism operation led by British and Saudi
intelligence agencies that had placed an operative inside the al-Qaeda
in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) organization. The White House leak
forced the termination of the operation and the immediate withdrawal of
the double agent (‘Exclusive: Did White House “spin” tip a covert op?,’
Reuters, May 18, 2012).
With Brennan as director of the CIA, what could go wrong?
Just when you thought it couldn't get worse: Obama to name John 'al-Quds' Brennan CIA director
President Obama is to name his terrorism 'adviser' John Brennan as director of the CIA on Monday (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, currently holds the title of
Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and
Counterterrorism. He’s expected to appear with Obama later Monday at a
White House event where the president will also announce his nomination
of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to be the next defense secretary.
...
White House officials also underscored the close working relationship
Brennan has developed with the president over the past four years, as
Brennan led the administration’s response to a string of attempted
terrorist attacks.
“Brennan has the full trust and confidence of the President,” the
talking points say. “For four years, he has seen the President every
day, and been by his side for some of his toughest decisions — including
the decision to launch the bin Laden raid. Brennan is as close to
President Obama as any member of his national security team.”
Brennan may have confirmation problems from the Left.
Brennan has been deeply involved in the Obama administration’s
aggressive use of drones to kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan,
Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere. He was reportedly considered as a possible
CIA director at the outset of Obama’s first term but took his name out
of the running after liberals charged that he was complicit in
waterboarding and other tough interrogation tactics that President
George W. Bush’s administration used against terror suspects.
In what appears to be an effort to assuage civil liberties groups and
other activists who spoke out against Brennan four years ago, the White
House underscored that he has worked to make sure that counterterrorism
efforts are closely monitored, conducted according to legal principles
and as transparent as feasible.
“Brennan has been an advocate for greater transparency in our
counter-terrorism policy, and adherence to the rule of law. He has
spoken out repeatedly about the need for strong oversight and review of
our counter-terrorism actions, and has led efforts within the government
to ensure that we put those ideals into practice,” the talking points
say.
But Israel's supporters should also be concerned by the nomination of John Brennan. John Brennan is the guy who looks for moderates in Hezbullah (also here between 6:14 and 9:15), speaks lovingly of 'al-Quds,' and refers to jihad as a 'legitimate tenet of Islam.' Brennan was also the architect of the Obama administration's policy of removing 'jihad' and 'Islam' and 'terrorism' from the discourse of law enforcement agencies (a policy on which he was opposed by outgoing CIA director David Petraeus), and has charged that Americans don't have sufficient sensitivity to the Muslim world.
Obama's 'intelligence' agencies urge preparing for a 'post-Israel Middle East'
Remember Chas Freeman (pictured), President Obama's original choice for Director of National Intelligence? Chas didn't get the position because 'powerful bloggers' like yours truly worked hard to expose his indifference to the torture and murder of Chinese dissidents and his being deep in the pockets of the Saudi royal family.
So Clapper is now the Director of National Intelligence and Freeman remains influential. Therefore, it's not surprising that President Obama's 'intelligence agencies' have prepared a report on a 'post-Israel Middle East' (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News). (By the way, the author of this piece is VERY anti-Israel).
It’s a paper entitled “Preparing For A Post Israel Middle East”, an 82-page analysis that concludes that the American national interest in fundamentally at odds with that of Zionist Israel. The authors conclude that Israel is currently the greatest threat to US national interests because its nature and actions prevent normal US relations with Arab and Muslim countries and, to a growing degree, the wider international community.
The study was commissioned by the US Intelligence Community comprising 16 American intelligence agencies with an annual budget in excess of $ 70 billion. The IC includes the Departments of the Navy, Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Defense Intelligence Agency, Departments of Energy, Homeland Security, State, Treasure, Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency commissioned the study.
Among the many findings that Ros-Lehtenin and Kristol and other unregistered agents of Israel will likely try to exploit politically between now and November 6, by using them to attack the Obama Administration are the following:
Israel, given its current brutal occupation and belligerence cannot be salvaged any more than apartheid south Africa could be when as late as 1987 Israel was the only “Western” nation that upheld diplomatic ties with South Africa and was the last country to join the international boycott campaign before the regime collapsed;
The Israel leadership, with its increasing support of the 700,000 settlers in illegal colonies in the occupied West Bank is increasing out of touch with the political, military and economic realities of the Middle East;
The post Labor government Likud coalition is deeply complicit with and influenced by the settlers’ political and financial power and will increasingly face domestic civil strife which the US government should not associate itself with or become involved with;
The Arab Spring and Islamic Awakening has to a major degree freed a large majority of the 1.2 billion Arab and Muslims to pursue what an overwhelming majority believe is the illegitimate, immoral and unsustainable European occupation of Palestine of the indigenous population;
Simultaneous with, but predating, rapidly expanding Arab and Muslim power in the region as evidenced by the Arab spring, Islamic Awakening and the ascendancy of Iran, as American power and influence recedes, the US commitment to belligerent oppressive Israel is becoming impossible to defend or execute consistent given paramount US national interests which include normalizing relations with the 57 Islamic countries;
Gross Israeli interference in the internal affairs of the United States through spying and illegal US arms transfers. This includes supporting more than 60 ‘front organizations’ and approximately 7,500 US officials who do Israel’s bidding and seek to dominate and intimidate the media and agencies of the US government which should no longer be condoned;
That the United States government no longer has the financial resources, or public support to continue funding Israel. The billions of dollars in direct and indirect aid from US taxpayers to Israel since 1967 is not affordable and is increasingly being objected to by US taxpayers who oppose continuing American military involvement in the Middle East. US public opinion no longer supports funding and executing widely perceived illegal US wars on Israel’s behalf. This view is increasingly being shared by Europe, Asia and the International public;
Israel’s segregationist occupation infrastructure evidenced by legalized discrimination and increasingly separate and unequal justice systems must no longer be directly or indirectly funded by the US taxpayers or ignored by the US government;
Israel has failed as a claimed democratic state and continued American financial and political cover will not change its continuing devolution as international pariah state;
Increasingly, rampant and violent racism exhibited among Jewish settlers in the West Bank is being condoned by the Israeli government to a degree that the Israel government has become its protector and partner;
The expanding chasm among American Jews objecting to Zionism and Israeli practices, including the killing and brutalizing of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, are gross violations of American and International law and raise questions within the US Jewish community regarding the American responsibility to protect (R2P) innocent civilians under occupation;
The international opposition to the increasingly apartheid regime can no longer be synchronized with American claimed humanitarian values or US expectations in its bi-lateral relations with the 193 member United Nations;
The Draft ends with language about the need to avoid entangling alliances that alienate much of the World and condemn American citizens to endure the consequences.
Interestingly, it notes Iran as an example of a country and people that have much in common and whose citizens have a real interest in enjoy bilateral associations (here an apparent reference to Israel and its US lobby) not determined by the wishes of other countries and their agents. It also highlights the need for the US to undertake the repairing of relations with Arab and Muslim countries, including the drastically curtained use of drone aircraft.
The source for the report is someone in the CIA.
Each point in the report can be refuted. But that's not the key here. The key is that this report represents the Obama administration's thinking. Four more years of this - God forbid - could be disastrous for Israel. And most American Jews are more concerned about unrestricted abortions.
Only in America.... The head of the CIA's counter-terrorism center - the unit that is responsible for all those drone strikes against members of the religion whose name must never be mentioned alongside the word 'terrorism' - is a convert to Islam (Hat Tip: MFS - The Other News).
His first overseas assignments were in Africa, where the combination of dysfunctional governments, bloody tribal warfare and minimal interference from headquarters provided experience that would prove particularly useful in the post-Sept. 11 world. Many of the agency’s most accomplished counterterrorism operatives, including Black and Richard Blee, cut their teeth in Africa as well.
“It’s chaotic, and it requires you to understand that and deal with it psychologically,” said a former Africa colleague. Roger developed an “enormous amount of expertise in insurgencies, tribal politics, warfare — writing hundreds of intelligence reports.”
He also married a Muslim woman he met abroad, prompting his conversion to Islam. Colleagues said he doesn’t shy away from mentioning his religion but is not demonstrably observant. There is no prayer rug in his office, officials said, although he is known to clutch a strand of prayer beads.
...
“No officer in the agency has been more relentless, focused, or committed to the fight against al-Qaeda than has the chief of the Counterterrorism Center,” [CIA director David] Petraeus said in a statement provided to The Post.
It's a fascinating story, but if I were running the CIA, I think the one detail I would not want revealed about 'Roger' other than his real name is the fact that he is a convert to Islam. That's likely to enrage his targets even more.
Today, as suspicions about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have provoked tough sanctions and threats of military confrontation, top administration officials have said that Iran still has not decided to pursue a weapon, reflecting the intelligence community’s secret analysis. But if that assessment changes, it could lift a brake set by President Obama, who has not ruled out military options as a last resort to prevent Iran gaining nuclear arms.
Publicly and privately, American intelligence officials express confidence in the spy agencies’ assertions. Still, some acknowledge significant intelligence gaps in understanding the intentions of Iran’s leaders and whether they would approve the crucial steps toward engineering a bomb, the most covert aspect of one of the most difficult intelligence collection targets in the world.
Much of what analysts sift through are shards of information that are ambiguous or incomplete, sometimes not up to date, and that typically offer more insight about what the Iranians are not doing than evidence of what they are up to.
As a result, officials caution that they cannot offer certainty. “I’d say that I have about 75 percent confidence in the assessment that they haven’t restarted the program,” said one former senior intelligence official.
Another former intelligence official ... added, “We’re not on the ground, and not having our people on the ground to catch nuance is a problem.”
Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian purposes, but American intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have picked up evidence in recent years that some Iranian research activities that may be weapons-related have continued since 2003, officials said. That information has not been significant enough for the spy agencies to alter their view that the weapons program has not been restarted.
Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, agrees with the American intelligence assessments, even while Israeli political leaders have been pushing for quick, aggressive action to block Iran from becoming what they describe as an existential threat to the Jewish state.
“Their people ask very hard questions, but Mossad does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program,” said one former senior American intelligence official, who, like others for this article, would speak only on the condition of anonymity about classified information. “There is not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts.”
I cannot believe that the Mossad believes this. Israel, as the article goes on to note, has 'assets' on the ground in Iran - mostly from the opposition MEK which is banned as a terror group in the US - but the US discounts that information out of fear of repeating its mistake with Ahmad Chalabi in the run-up to the Iraq war.
But I find it hard to believe that the US believes this either. You don't move innocent civilian nuclear activity 200 meters underground at an enormous cost. What happened at Parchin a few months ago? What was destroyed? Why is Iran now trying to remove nuclear waste from the facility?
I find it hard to believe that the US actually believes this, and there is no way that the Mossad does. Recall that even Meir Dagan only argued for a delay - he didn't argue that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. And he said that there are many more facilities than four.
I've written before about the relations between Adolph Hitler and Yasser Arafat's uncle, the Mufti Haj al-Amin al-Husseini (may both of their names be obliterated). The New York Times discloses that it wasn't just Adolph Hitler who was enamored with the Mufti. Britain and France were also fans (Hat Tip: Daled Amos).
The report details how Mr. Husseini himself was allowed to flee after the war to Syria — he was in the custody of the French, who did not want to alienate Middle East regimes — and how high-ranking Nazis escaped from Germany to become advisers to anti-Israeli Arab leaders and “were able to carry on and transmit to others Nazi racial-ideological anti-Semitism.”
“You have an actual contract between officials of the Nazi Foreign Ministry with Arab leaders, including Husseini, extending after the war because they saw a cause they believed in,” Dr. Breitman said. “And after the war, you have real Nazi war criminals — Wilhelm Beisner, Franz Rademacher and Alois Brunner — who were quite influential in Arab countries.”
In October 1945, the report says, the British head of Palestine’s Criminal Investigation Division told the assistant American military attaché in Cairo that the mufti might be the only force able to unite the Palestine Arabs and “cool off the Zionists. Of course, we can’t do it, but it might not be such a damn bad idea at that.”
And lest you think that the British and the French can be excused, because they didn't know what we know about Husseini today...
“We have more detailed scholarly accounts today of Husseini’s wartime activities, but Husseini’s C.I.A. file indicates that wartime Allied intelligence organizations gathered a healthy portion of this incriminating evidence,” the report says. “This evidence is significant in light of Husseini’s lenient postwar treatment.” He died in Beirut in 1974.
By the way, the Americans shielded plenty of Nazis too. I picked on the British and the French because they were the rulers in this region and because of their relationship to Husseini (with whom the Americans also had a relationship). Read the whole thing.
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
