Wednesday, 27 February 2013

Eisenhower and the Unspeakable




"I must tell you a secret. When I made my first report I deliberately did not say that the pilot was alive and well... and now just look how many silly things the Americans have said."

Soviet Premier Nikita Krushchev










"In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city.



At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government.


The United States, United Kingdom, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.


In May 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference.


Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959.


At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."


Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.


There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other. "There was nothing more inadvisable in this situation," said Eisenhower, "than to talk about ultimatums, since both sides knew very well what would happen if an ultimatum were to be implemented."



Khrushchev responded that he did not understand how a peace treaty could be regarded by the American people as a "threat to peace."



Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."



Khrushchev came away with the impression that a deal was possible over Berlin, and they agreed to continue the dialogue at a summit in Paris in May 1960.




However, the Paris Summit that was to resolve the Berlin question was cancelled in the fallout from Gary Powers's failed U-2 spy flight on 1 May 1960."










Gary Powers Flight Was Sabotaged To Fail!
Col. L.Fletcher Prouty (Ret.)


What I am writing now is already covered in detail and with references in my books and articles. I am writing today because of the good questions you have received and to put the "POWERS U-2" subject on firm ground. For more refer to my book "The Secret Team" or the many essays on the CD-ROM 




The Lockheed U-2 aerial reconnaissance aircraft was ordered after meetings that took place in the Pentagon between Kelly Johnson of Lockheed, Gen. Ken Bergquist of the Air Force and Gen. Charles Cabel, Deputy Director of the CIA in late 1954, and into 1955. 

An Air Force officer in the Pentagon, in the same office as I, worked with them on this special project. Therefore for all practical purposes the U-2 was an Air Force aircraft, and was covered for clandestine reconnaissance purposes by the CIA. As a result of National Security Council Directive #5412 the U.S. Military Services were prohibited from operating clandestine activities. I was responsible for providing the military support for other military aircraft in a similar, for the clandestine activities of the CIA and under CIA cover. 

By 1960 President Eisenhower's biggest wish was to end his presidential service with a massive world around "Crusade for Peace". For example, more than one million people had gathered in New Delhi to honor his visit to India. 

A significant step along this crusade was to be a High-Power Summit Conference in Paris on May 1, 1960 between Eisenhower, Macmillan, DeGaulle and Khrushchev; to be followed by the most massive of all meetings with Eisenhower as a guest of Khrushchev in Moscow in mid summer 1960. This was to be the goal of his "Crusade for Peace." 

Among the "Powers that be" there were those who did not favor that close collaboration between those leaders at that time. They took action to interfere with this plan for a "Summit Conference" and for its Moscow follow-up... in the following manner. 

Sometime earlier, a CIA scheduled U-2 had made a "belly" landing near the CIA U-2 base, Atsugi, Japan. Quite "incidentally" this was the U-2 base where a young U.S. Marine, Lee Oswald, had been assigned. 

Because the U-2 had not been seriously damaged it was shipped back to Lockheed for repair in California. Later it was returned to service and it "just happened" to be one of the available U-2's on the flight-line of the Peshawar air base in Pakistan that morning of May 1, 1960 when Captain Gary Powers was selected to fly it across the Soviet Union. 

We know now that during its preparation for this flight this U-2 had been stripped of its "TOP SECRET" Lundahl aerial reconnaissance camera. (That camera was too valuable to lose on a flight over the Soviet Union.) Furthermore, we have learned that when Captain Powers was given his pre-flight briefing and his medical exam, and other orders he then dressed in the special flight suit for U-2 pilots that had no pockets and no identifying labels of any kind. And, we now know that after his landing, yes... landing, not crash, near Sverdlovsk, the Soviets discovered, packed in his parachute, between the seat and the folded chute, all of his identification papers and such. He even had valuables ostensibly to trade for assistance if captured. (The list is too long; but he had a whole bag full of identification and other gear that is prohibited to "spy" pilots. This list with photos is available.) He was uninjured, and his plane had been only slightly damaged by a "belly" landing. 

On May 30, 1960 Mr. Allen Dulles, Director, Central Intelligence appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, under oath, stated that the U-2 had not been shot dawn. It is well known that if the U-2 had been hit by a missile or gunfire at its service altitude it would have exploded in that thin air. 

Powers himself has said that he felt a rumble toward the rear of the aircraft, and that his engine quit. Even U-2 pilots in those days had not been told that their extremely high altitude operation required a special pure hydrogen additive to their more ordinary fuel. If the U-2 ran out of this hydrogen additive, at altitude, the engine would flare out and it could not be re-started until it had descended to a much lower altitude. 

Powers knew that and began to let down, and then found that he was surrounded, at the lower altitude, by Soviet interceptors. He had but one choice...LAND. He did, and survived to tell his story. 

This is an interesting story because so much of what we have heard and read has been contrived to cover actual events. For example: once the Paris Summit Conference of May 1, 1960 had been scheduled the CIA was ordered to ground all "Over" flights of Communist territory - worldwide". The U-2's were grounded. I was responsible for supporting a large number of "over" flights" primarily in Asia to support the Tibetans who were being invaded by the Chinese, and to support major lower-level reconnaissance programs operating out of Taiwan, Thailand, and a few other places. Despite the fact that many of our flights were solely humanitarian, especially for the Khambas in Eastern Tibet, my special request, to the National Security Council, for permission to continue those flights was denied until after the Paris meetings. 

This was a strict and blanket order to us all. With that in mind, who was it then with the authority to "order the Powers U-2 flight"? It had to have been ordered from a very high echelon of the true power structure above the customary military or civilian elements of the government. 

Think back: 

a) Who (used here in the plural: WHO?) ordered that crashed U-2 in Japan to be repaired and to be refitted? 

b) Who knew so much about the U-2 that they knew that the U-2 was equipped with the finest, and most valuable high-altitude camera, the "Lundahl"? 

c) Who had the authority to order that precious camera to be saved in favor of a standard U.S.Air Force model that was used on May 1, 1960? 

d) Who knew enough about the CIA-operated U-2s to know that they functioned at extreme altitude on a mix of regular jet fuel and pure hydrogen? 

e) Who ordered the hydrogen bottle (like a fire extinguisher) to be half-filled, or half-empty? 

f) Who was familiar enough with U-2 operations to know that all U-2 pilots before take-off had been stripped to the bone, and dressed in a specially made flight suit with no pockets, etc.? 

g) Who was able to have someone else assemble Powers personal "pocket" belongings and other selected items such as gold rings, identification, etc. and pack them between the seat of Powers' chute and its folded fabric below? 

h) who had the authority to set this whole train of events that involved so many other skilled people, in motion early that morning from Peshawar, Pakistan? 


Scenario by L. Fletcher Prouty and based upon considerable "Over Flight" operations and support experience, 1955-1963. 

http://www.prouty.org/sabotage.html


































"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"


"On May 18, 1987, President Reagan met with his speechwriters and responded to the speech by saying, "I thought it was a good, solid draft."

White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker objected, saying it sounded "extreme" and "unpresidential," and Deputy US National Security Advisor Colin Powell agreed.

Reagan then made his speech at the BrandenburgGate, in front of two panes of bulletproof glass protecting him from potential snipers in East Berlin.



What, you mean by violating the UN Charter?

Why would you encourage the violation of East German sovereignty by destroying property and attacking their borders?

It's not a Russian wall, it's a German wall - they put it up, it was their idea, it's their property, their borders, their national security and their country.

In what way is it down to the Soviet Premier to unilaterally move to carry out an act of destruction inside a completely different sovereign nation?

That's an act of war!

Talk to the Germans.



In November 1958, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev issued an ultimatum giving the Western powers six months to agree to withdraw from Berlin and make it a free, demilitarized city.

At the end of that period, Khrushchev declared, the Soviet Union would turn over to East Germany complete control of all lines of communication with West Berlin; the western powers then would have access to West Berlin only by permission of the East German government.

The United States, United Kingdom, and France replied to this ultimatum by firmly asserting their determination to remain in West Berlin and to maintain their legal right of free access to that city.

In May 1959 the Soviet Union withdrew its deadline and instead met with the Western powers in a Big Four foreign ministers' conference.

Although the three-month-long sessions failed to reach any important agreements, they did open the door to further negotiations and led to Premier Khrushchev's visit to the United States in September 1959.

At the end of this visit, Khrushchev and President Dwight Eisenhower stated jointly that the most important issue in the world was general disarmament and that the problem of Berlin and "all outstanding international questions should be settled, not by the application of force, but by peaceful means through negotiations."

Khrushchev and Eisenhower had a few days together at Camp David, the presidential retreat.

There the leaders of the two superpowers talked frankly with each other. "There was nothing more inadvisable in this situation," said Eisenhower, "than to talk about ultimatums, since both sides knew very well what would happen if an ultimatum were to be implemented."

Khrushchev responded that he did not understand how a peace treaty could be regarded by the American people as a "threat to peace."

Eisenhower admitted that the situation in Berlin was "abnormal" and that "human affairs got very badly tangled at times."


Khrushchev came away with the impression that a deal was possible over Berlin, and they agreed to continue the dialogue at a summit in Paris in May 1960. However, the Paris Summit that was to resolve the Berlin question was cancelled in the fallout from Gary Powers's failed U-2 spy flight on 1 May 1960."


"US and UK sources had expected the Soviet sector to be sealed off from West Berlin, but were surprised by how long the East Germans took for such a move. They considered the wall as an end to concerns about a GDR/Soviet retaking or capture of the whole of Berlin; the wall would presumably have been an unnecessary project if such plans were afloat. Thus they concluded that the possibility of a Soviet military conflict over Berlin decreased.


The East German government claimed that the Wall was an "anti-fascist protective rampart" (German: "antifaschistischer Schutzwall") intended to dissuade aggression from the West.

(Their fears about the failure of denazification were entirely justified)

Another official justification was the activities of western agents in Eastern Europe.

(That would be the Gehlen Organisation and the Boorman Group)

The Eastern German government also claimed that West Berliners were buying out state-subsidized goods in East Berlin.

(Ecconomic warfare is the Capitalist way)

In some European capitals at the time there was a deep anxiety over prospects for a reunified Germany. In September 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleaded with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to let the Berlin Wall fall and confided that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

"We do not want a united Germany. This would lead to a change to postwar borders and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security", Thatcher told Gorbachev.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, French President François Mitterrand warned Thatcher that a unified Germany could make more ground than Adolf Hitler ever had and that Europe would have to bear the consequences."

Tuesday, 26 February 2013

Why You Should Give Obama the Benefit of the Doubt


There is a secret war being waged in plain sight between the Cryptocracy, the rich and powerful Military Industrial Malthusian billionaires who run the world and the President of the United States.


Typically, they kill or neutralise anyone who tries to end wars, extend or preserve social welfare, introduce universal healthcare, protect jobs and stand up for working people.



So far, having fooled them into thinking he works for them, he is successfully kicking their ass.



But they are fighting back HARD. And they don't care how many dead babies they have to pitchfork onto the front lawn of the White House to make him look bad and destroy him politically.



A Short Film about Richard Nixon — Paranoia And Moral Panics

"This is a film about how all of us have become Richard Nixon.

Just like him, we have all become paranoid weirdos.

Its the story of how television and newspapers did this to us and how it has paralysed the ability of politics to transform the world for the better"...






The President does NOT control the country, and he is only in charge to the extent he is allowed to be.


Those men who try to fulfil their mandate and job description usually end up dead.


Unless they are EXTREMELY astute, and a good and tireless scholar of history.





Or studied revolutionary politics and the strategic paramilitary history of counter-revolutionary covert subversion by the forces of reactionary international finance capital at the feet of Billy Ayers and spent four decades preparing to do the job, and not get taken out.


They got Jack. They got Bobby.


They did for Ted.


They sucker-punched Carter.


They hamstrung and blackmailed Clinton by making him appear central (rather than peripheral to their own worst scadals.


As Jimmy Carter said of Watergate and how he honed his art in 1974:


"I read a lot and I listen a lot."


Best advice ever offered in the history of politics.: Many times bitten, forever shy. Learn well from the mistakes of those you admire you came before you. And pull your enemy in close to you that you may know of his scheming before his intruiges to injure you bear their rancid fruits....





Vive la Revolution.


Ron Paul: Globalist



"We have Nothing to fear from globalism" (C-SPAN March 13th 2001)




“There’s nothing to fear from globalism, free trade and a single worldwide currency.... 

The effort in recent decades to unify government surveillance over all world trade and international financial transactions through the UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO, ICC, the OECD, and the Bank of International Settlements can never substitute for a peaceful world based on true free trade, freedom of movement, a single but sound market currency, and voluntary contracts with private property rights.... 

The ultimate solution will only come with the rejection of fiat money worldwide, and a restoration of commodity money. Commodity money if voluntarily and universally accepted could give us a single world currency requiring no money managers, no manipulators orchestrating a man-made business cycle with rampant price inflation.”

"Persia, Ethiopia, and Libya are with them, all of them with shield andhelmet;": Ronald Reagan and the End Times


"I will call for a sword against Gog throughout all My mountains,” says the Lord God. “Every man’s sword will be against his brother.

And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.

Thus I will magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations.

Then they shall know that I am the Lord.”’




“Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “On that day when My people Israel dwell safely, will you not know it? 15

Then you will come from your place out of the far north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great company and a mighty army. 16



You will come up against My people Israel like a cloud, to cover the land. It will be in the latter days that I will bring you against My land, so that the nations may know Me, when I am hallowed in you, O Gog, before their eyes"

9 “Then those who dwell in the cities of Israel will go out and set on fire and burn the weapons, both the shields and bucklers, the bows and arrows, the javelins and spears; and they will make fires with them for seven years. 10 They will not take wood from the field nor cut down any from the forests, because they will make fires with the weapons; and they will plunder those who plundered them, and pillage those who pillaged them,” says the Lord God.


"In the 38th chapter of Ezekiel, it says that the land of Israel will come under attack by the armies of the ungodly nations, and it says that Libya will be among them. Do you understand the significance of that? Libya has now gone Communist, and that's a sign that the day of Armageddon isn't far off.

Biblical scholars have been saying for generations that Gog must be Russia. What other powerful nation is to the north of Israel? None. But it didn't seem to make sense before the Russian revolution, when Russia was a Christian country. Now it does, now that Russia has become communistic and atheistic, now that Russia has set itself against God. Now it fits the description of Gog perfectly.

For the first time ever, everything is in place for the battle of Armageddon and the Second Coming of Christ. It can't be too long now. Ezekiel says that fire and brimstone will be rained upon the enemies of God's people. That must mean that they will be destroyed by nuclear weapon."


Kaufman

Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)


"I was brought up as an orthodox Jew and a Zionist.

On a shelf in our kitchen, there was a tin box for the Jewish National Fund, into which we put coins to help the pioneers building a Jewish presence in Palestine.

I first went to Israel in 1961 and I have been there since more times than I can count. I had family in Israel and have friends in Israel. One of them fought in the wars of 1956, 1967 and 1973 and was wounded in two of them. The tie clip that I am wearing is made from a campaign decoration awarded to him, which he presented to me.

I have known most of the Prime Ministers of Israel, starting with the founding Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Golda Meir was my friend, as was Yigal Allon, Deputy Prime Minister, who, as a general, won the Negev for Israel in the 1948 war of independence.

My parents came to Britain as refugees from Poland. Most of their families were subsequently murdered by the Nazis in the holocaust. My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszow. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed.

My grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The current Israeli Government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count.

On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli army, Major Leibovich, was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, 800 Palestinians—the total is now 1,000. She replied instantly that

“500 of them were militants.”

That was the reply of a Nazi.

I suppose that the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.

The Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asserts that her Government will have no dealings with Hamas, because they are terrorists. Tzipi Livni’s father was Eitan Livni, chief operations officer of the terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi, who organised the blowing-up of the King David hotel in Jerusalem, in which 91 victims were killed, including four Jews.

Israel was born out of Jewish terrorism. Jewish terrorists hanged two British sergeants and booby-trapped their corpses. Irgun, together with the terrorist Stern gang, massacred 254 Palestinians in 1948 in the village of Deir Yassin.

Today, the current Israeli Government indicate that they would be willing, in circumstances acceptable to them, to negotiate with the Palestinian President Abbas of Fatah.

It is too late for that.

They could have negotiated with Fatah’s previous leader, Yasser Arafat, who was a friend of mine.

Instead, they besieged him in a bunker in Ramallah, where I visited him.

Because of the failings of Fatah since Arafat’s death, Hamas won the Palestinian election in 2006.

Hamas is a deeply nasty organisation, but it was democratically elected, and it is the only game in town.

The boycotting of Hamas, including by our Government, has been a culpable error, from which dreadful consequences have followed.

The great Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban, with whom I campaigned for peace on many platforms, said:

“You make peace by talking to your enemies.”

However many Palestinians the Israelis murder in Gaza, they cannot solve this existential problem by military means. Whenever and however the fighting ends, there will still be 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza and 2.5 million more on the west bank. They are treated like dirt by the Israelis, with hundreds of road blocks and with the ghastly denizens of the illegal Jewish settlements harassing them as well. The time will come, not so long from now, when they will outnumber the Jewish population in Israel.

It is time for our Government to make clear to the Israeli Government that their conduct and policies are unacceptable, and to impose a total arms ban on Israel. It is time for peace, but real peace, not the solution by conquest which is the Israelis’ real goal but which it is impossible for them to achieve.

They are not simply war criminals; they are fools."



"It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."










I noticed just yesterday this little bit of Black Hat SEO;

Sir Gerald Kuafman is one of the most influential and prominent leading Jewish, Zionist critics of Isreali domestic and foreign policy.

If you begin typing "Gerald Kaufman" into Google, the autocomplete will suggest as the top two searchterm hits "Gerald Kaufman paedo" and "Gerald Kaufman rumours"

Now, I wonder who could have possibly arrange for that to happen....



Sunday, 24 February 2013

"Mega"


"...Israel is believed to still have a spy very high up within the US administration, sometimes known as 

"Mega"


The Washington Post reported in a front-page story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. 

One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega" - apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.




This revelation has been treated by much of the press as something of an aberration, as Israeli officials have claimed that they do not spy on the US. Israel Foreign Minister David Levy told the Washington Post (5/8/97) that :

"Our diplomats all over the world, and of course specifically in the US, don’t deal with such a thing." 

Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office declared: 

"Israel does not use intelligence agents in the United States. Period."


ISRAEL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS 


Israeli Government statement on Jonathan Pollard~ 12 May 1998: 




"For the first time since his arrest and I trial and as part of the ongoing efforts to secure Pollard's release,  the  Government of Israel publicly admitted that Jonathan Pollard was an Israeli agent. "


Text:                "Within the framework of intensive government activities to achieve the release of Jonathan Pollard, Pollard's legal counsel has asked that his appeal be cancelled, after the State of Israel reiterated its readiness to recognize  its commitment to and responsibility for him. 


In accordance with the recommendation of the professional team headed by Cabinet Secretary Danny Naveh, the State of Israel has announced that Jonathan Pollard served as an  Israeli agent handled by senior members of the Scientific Liaison Bureau (Lekam). 


It should be noted that this position is consistent with the facts that have already found expression in the publicly issued conclusions of the Knesset Intelligence and Security Services Subcommittee, and by the Rotenstreich-Tzur Commission of Inquiry, established by the Prime Minister in early 1987 Naveh Is expected to meet with Pollard in  prison on Friday."




"Of all the spy cases from 1985, the Pollard case has been the one that has had the longest life in terms of media coverage - in part because of efforts, both by private citizens and the Israeli government to have his life sentence commuted.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's 1993 appeal to President Bill Clinton resulted in a letter from defense secretary Les Aspin expressing his opposition and stressing three points: the requirement to maintain control over the disclosure of intelligence to foreign governments, the damage done by Pollard's disclosures, and Pollard's alleged inclusion of classified information in letters from prison.

In 1998, in an attempt to facilitate his release, the Israeli government publically acknowledged Pollard's role as an Israeli asset. And, former Director of Central Intelligence, George J. Tenet reports that the subject was raised by the Israeli government in 2006, and he threatened to resign if Pollard was released.


As recently as January 2011, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked President Barack Obama, without success, to free Pollard.


Richelson, A Century of Spies, pp. 401-402,Ibid., p. 403; George J. Tenet with Bill Harlow, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 67; M.E. "Spike" Bowman, "The Drumbeats for Clemency for Jonathan Jay Pollard Reverberate Again," Intelligencer, Winter/Spring 2011, pp. 7-10; Jonathan S. Tobin, "The Pollard Spy Case, 25 Years Later," Commentary, March 2011, pp. 37-43.

The CIA and "Al-Qaeda" in Afghanistan - The 1990s




Abu Hamza al-Masri, 



who will later become a leading Islamic radical in Britain, travels to Afghanistan and, as he is a qualified civil engineer, helps with reconstruction efforts there after the Soviet withdrawal. He later receives paramilitary training at Darunta camp and loses his hands and the sight in one eye while practicing making explosives there. He is taken to Pakistan for emergency treatment, but refuses to hand over a set of passports he has to that country’s ISI intelligence agency, and flees to Britain with his family due to fears of a reprisal."
[O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 21-29]

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Abdul Shah Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

Hekmatyar was one of the early Islamic rebels that came out of the University of Kabul. In the beginning Hekmatyar and Masud worked together. During the Soviet occupation Hekmatyar ran one of the two largest mujahideen organizations out of Peshawar in Pakistan. There he became the favorite of the Pakistani secret service, the ISI. Billions of dollars in US aid flowed through the ISI to Hekmatyar. Nervous CIA agents wondered whether Hekmatyar hated the United States as much as the Soviets, but the ISI assured them he was ok. United States money and weapons flowed to our enemy for over a decade.

When Masud finally defeated Najibullah in 1992, all the mujahideen factions converged on Kabul. Masud outwitted Hekmatyar and slipped into the city before him. A round robin of side-swapping, backstabbing, and massacre among Hekmatyar, Masud, Dostum, and Mazari followed. The citizens and buildings of Kabul were the big losers. The problem was that Masud could not be president as he was a Tajik, not a Pashtun. Afghan kings had been Pashtun for hundreds of years. Hekmatyar was the most powerful Pashtun, and had he not been such an evil sod, Masud might have accepted some kind of deal. In the end neither prevailed. The ISI switched support from the stalemated Hekmatyar and backed Mullah Omar, the new leader of the Taliban. Without ISI support, Hekmatyar’s men deserted wholesale to Mullah Omar, and he was a contender no longer.

Today Hekmatyar is finally the enemy of the United States that he should have been all along. He either took refuge in Iran, or sneaks around the tribal zone, periodically calling for holy war against the Americans. Sometimes his name is used by others, mostly as someone to blame for car bombs and other such mischief.



Osama bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi in Sudan in the early 1990s. [Source: PBS]Hassan al-Turabi comes to power in Sudan in 1989, and his beliefs are ideologically compatible with bin Laden’s. With the Afghan war ending and the Afghans beginning to fight amongst themselves, al-Turabi sends a delegation and a letter to bin Laden, inviting him to collaborate and move to Sudan. Bin Laden agrees to the offer, but moves slowly. He sends advance teams to buy businesses and houses. He also visits Sudan himself to establish a relationship with al-Turabi. Gradually, about 1,000 bin Laden supporters move to Sudan. But bin Laden also keeps offices and guest houses in Pakistan, as well as training camps in Afghanistan, including the Darunta, Jihad Wal, Khaldan, Sadeek, Al Farooq, and Khalid ibn Walid camps. US-al-Qaeda double agent Ali Mohamed plays an important role in the move (see Summer 1991). [GUNARATNA, 2003, PP. 39-41]




Abu Hamza al-Masri, who will later become a leading Islamic radical in Britain, travels to Afghanistan and, as he is a qualified civil engineer, helps with reconstruction efforts there after the Soviet withdrawal. He later receives paramilitary training at Darunta camp and loses his hands and the sight in one eye while practicing making explosives there. He is taken to Pakistan for emergency treatment, but refuses to hand over a set of passports he has to that country’s ISI intelligence agency, and flees to Britain with his family due to fears of a reprisal.[O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 21-29]


  
Mahmoud Jaballah.Mahmoud Jaballah. [Source: Public domain via Toronto Star]I

slamic Jihad operative Mahmoud Jaballah enters Canada on May 11, 1996 and applies for refugee status. There is evidence Canadian intelligence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), begins monitoring him shortly after his arrival. A 2008 CSIS report mentions details of phone calls Jaballah makes to high-ranking Islamic Jihad leaders as early as June 1996. The CSIS will later conclude that his “primary objective incoming to Canada was to acquire permanent status in a country where he would feel secure in maintaining communications with other [Islamic Jihad] members.” Jaballah is wary his calls may be monitored, and uses code words to discuss sensitive topics. But the CSIS is able to figure out many of the code words, for instance the mention of clothes to refer to travel documents. 

Jaballah frequently calls Thirwat Salah Shehata, one of nine members of Islamic Jihad’s ruling council; the Egyptian government will later also call Shehata “a key figure in bin Laden’s organization.” They are in regular contact until August 1998, when Shehata moves to a new location in Lebanon but does not give Jaballah his new phone number. 

Jaballah also stays in frequent contact with Ahmad Salama Mabruk, another member of Islamic Jihad’s ruling council. Mabruk is arrested in 1998. 

Jaballah is also in frequent contact with Ibrahim Eidarous and Adel Abdel Bary, two Islamic Jihad operatives living in London and working closely with Khalid al-Fawwaz, Osama bin Laden’s de facto press secretary. He calls them over 60 times between 1996 and 1998. Bin Laden is monitored by Western intelligence agencies as he frequently calls Bary, Eidarous, and al-Fawwaz until all three are arrested one month after the 1998 African embassy bombings (see Early 1994-September 23, 1998). Jaballah presumably becomes more suspicious that he is being monitored in September 1998, when Canadian officials interview him and tell him they are aware of his contacts with the three men arrested in London. 

The CSIS will later call Jaballah an “established contact” for Ahmed Said Khadr, a founding al-Qaeda member living in Canada. Khadr had been arrested in Pakistan in 1995 for suspected involvement in an Islamic Jihad bombing there, but he was released several months later after pressure from the Canadian government. After returning to Canada, Khadr ran his own non-profit organization, Health and Education Projects International (HEPI), and allegedly used the money he raised to help fund the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. If the CSIS was aware of Khadr’s activities through Jaballah, it is not clear why no action was taken against him or his charity before 9/11. 

Essam Marzouk is an al-Qaeda operative living in Vancouver, Canada. During one call, Jaballah is asked for Marzouk’s phone number. He says he does not have it, but gives the name of another operative, Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub, who is known to be in contact with Marzouk. Marzouk will later leave Canada to train the African embassy bombers, stopping by Toronto to visit Mahjoub on the way out of the country. 

Jaballah is monitored communicating with other Islamic Jihad operatives, including ones in Germany, Yemen, and elsewhere in Canada. 

He is arrested in March 1999, but after his arrest his wife warns him to reduce his communications and offers to help obtain information from his associates. He acquires a post office box in August 1999 and uses it to continue communicating with militants overseas. He is released in November 1999 and the CSIS will later claim he continues to communicate with other militants until he is arrested again in August 2001. [CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE, 2/22/2008 ]


1997 and 1999: FBI and Canadian Intelligence Investigate Member of Boston Al-Qaeda Cell


In 1997, Canadian intelligence begins investigating Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian exporter originally from Syria. Almalki is working with Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi and Abdelrahman Elzahabi, who are brothers and business partners, to send electronic equipment to Pakistan. Around 1995, the three of them sent large numbers of portable field radios to Pakistan. Apparently, some of them are used by Taliban and al-Qaeda forces (the US will later recover many field radios of the same make and model in Afghanistan after 9/11). 

However, there is no law against exporting the radios, and investigators are unable to prove any crime was committed. Abdelrahman is working in New York City as a mechanic while Mohamad Kamal is working in Boston as a taxi driver. Three other taxi drivers at the same company are al-Qaeda operatives who knew each other and Mohamad Kamal in Afghanistan (see Late 1980s and June 1995-Early 1999), and he will later admit to being a sniper instructor at the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. The FBI in Boston begins investigating him in 1999, but fails to prove he is a terrorist. They lose track of him when he leaves the US later that year to fight the Russians in Chechnya. The FBI later discovers him driving trucks in Minnesota and arrests him for lying to federal agents about his knowledge of the field radios (see Mid-August 2001). [GLOBE AND MAIL, 3/17/2007

It seems probable that the investigation of Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi strengthens suspicions about a Boston al-Qaeda cell. One of his associates at the taxi company, Raed Hijazi, works as an FBI informant starting in 1997 (see Early 1997-Late 1998]), and another, Nabil al-Marabh, is questioned by the FBI in 1999 (see April 1999-August 1999). Almalki is later arrested in Syria while visiting relatives there and severely tortured before eventually being released and returned to Canada (see September 19 or 20, 2003).



Radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri sends money to bin Laden’s Darunta camp, which is part of al-Qaeda’s network of training camps in Afghanistan. Abu Hamza, who is under investigation by Scotland Yard at this time for his involvement in a kidnapping and murder scheme in Yemen, apparently diverts the money from a fund at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, which he runs. The US will later say it has e-mail traffic that proves the transfer. Abu Hamza trained at the camp in the mid-1990s. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 74-5]




In the late autumn of 2001, when US-allied forces are overrunning Taliban positions in Afghanistan, the Darunta camp run by al-Qaeda is seized and searched. Al-Qaeda leader Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri) ran al-Qaeda’s WMD program and conducted crude chemical weapons experiments there. The CIA recovers one document there by Mursi that refers to connections between al-Qaeda and Pakistani nuclear scientists. It reads, in part, “As you instructed us you will find attached a summary of the discharges from a traditional nuclear reactor, amongst which are radioactive elements that could be used for military ends. One can use them to contaminate an area or halt the advance of the enemy. It is possible to get more information from our Pakistani friends who have great experience in this sphere.” [BERGEN, 2006, PP. 345; LEVY AND SCOTT-CLARK, 2007, PP. 294] This could be a reference to links between al-Qaeda and the Pakistani nuclear scientists working with the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau charity front (see 2000and Mid-August 2001).



At a Guantanamo Bay tribunal to decide his combat status (see March 9-April 28, 2007), militant Islamist logistics manager Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) is accused of heading Khaldan and Darunta training camps in Afghanistan and of co-ordinating their operation with Osama bin Laden, as well as moving money for al-Qaeda, desiring fraudulently-obtained Canadian passports for a terrorist plot, and making diary entries about planned attacks in the US. [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007

Complaints of Torture, Admission of False Confessions - Zubaida complains of being tortured in US custody (see Mid-May 2002 and After and March 10-April 15, 2007). 

Zubaida’s statements about his treatment in US custody will be redacted from the trial transcripts, but a few remarks remain. In broken English, Zubaida states: “I was nearly before half die plus [because] what they do [to] torture me. There I was not afraid from die because I do believe I will be shahid [martyr], but as God make me as a human and I weak, so they say yes, I say okay, I do I do, but leave me. They say no, we don’t want to. You to admit you do this, we want you to give us more information… they want what’s after more information about more operations, so I can’t. They keep torturing me.” The tribunal president, a colonel whose name is also redacted, asks, “So I understand that during this treatment, you said things to make them stop and then those statements were actually untrue, is that correct?” Zubaida replies, “Yes.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007 ; VANITY FAIR, 12/16/2008

Denies Being Al-Qaeda Member or Enemy of US - He goes on to deny that he is an “enemy combatant,” saying that the Khaldan training camp, which he admits being logistics manager of, was around since the Soviet-Afghan War and was also used to train Muslims who wanted to fight invaders in Muslim lands, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, and Bosnia, where “America helped us.” After he was captured the US administration exaggerated his importance, and some media accounts have suggested his role was greatly exaggerated (see Shortly After March 28, 2002).

He denies being an official member of al-Qaeda and says he disagrees with attacks on civilians. However, he admits some of his trainees subsequently decided to join al-Qaeda and that he did not prevent them from doing this. He also denies moving the money and submits a volume of his diary that apparently shows he was in Pakistan when the charges state he went to Saudi Arabia to collect the money.

He requests the production of other volumes of his diaries, on which some of the charges are based, but they are not made available to the tribunal. In addition, he denies corresponding with bin Laden before 2000 and details a dispute that arose between them after that time. He says his diary entries about military targets are “strictly hypothetical,” and the passports are for non-terrorist travel.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, he admits he helped non-aligned fighters escape from South Asia. He states that he is an enemy of the US because of its alliance with Israel, which he claims is oppressing his fellow Palestinians, saying, “A partner of a killer is also a killer.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007 ]