February 22, 2006 -- BREAKING NEWS. Cheney/Libby compromises of CIA nuclear counter-proliferation operations rolled up ultra-sensitive maritime interdiction operation in Southeast Asian waters.
According to two CIA sources, the revelations by Vice President Dick Cheney and his former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, about classified CIA counter-proliferation operations, including the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates clandestine work, eventually resulted in the compromise of the CIA's most sensitive nuclear components interdiction program. Cheney recently contended that he has the unilateral right to declassify classified information per an Executive Order signed by President Bush.
The CIA's maritime interdiction program was designed to stop suspect cargo vessels on the high seas, mostly in the Straits of Malacca and the South China Sea, and search them for nuclear material and missiles and their respective components. The unique and most sensitive aspect of the CIA program was the use of Southeast Asian sea pirates to gain access to the interdicted vessels. The CIA's interdiction program began in the early 1990s, around the same time that Brewster Jennings and Associates began its counter-proliferation activities.
Special armed CIA units, masquerading as pirates themselves, accompanied the actual pirates on their fast boats when they attacked merchant vessels identified by other intelligence as likely trafficking in nuclear and missile cargo. The CIA teams, wearing personal dosometers and using Geiger counters and other radiation detection equipment, would inspect cargo holds and containers as the "official pirates" off-loaded commercial cargo such as electronic equipment, small vehicles, and other merchandise. The quid pro quo was that the CIA would not interfere with the pirates' looting of commercial cargo and the pirates would give the CIA teams first access to the cargo holds and containers. The two teams also provided each other mutual security. In most cases, the CIA had arranged to pay off local police, maritime police, and coast guards not to interfere with the joint CIA-pirate gang operations. The U.S. Navy was also instructed not to interfere in the pre-arranged piracy actions.
Another neo-con compromise of a super-secret CIA counter-proliferation operation revealed
The success of the program was measured in the amount of material and components interdicted -- for about a decade, the CIA managed to interdict tons of uranium, plutonium, nuclear triggering components, and missiles and missile components such as guidance systems and other military electronics.
After the exposure of the CIA's other counter-proliferation activities, it was not long before Asian and other international criminal gangs and syndicates, particularly those involving Russian-Israeli gangsters and smugglers tied to Cheney, Libby, and convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and police and military forces in the region realized that a cooperative arrangement existed between certain pirate groups and U.S. intelligence. The joint CIA-pirate gang interdictions affected a very small percentage of the tens of thousands of vessels that annually transited the Straits of Malacca.
The joint operations were launched from numerous small islets, coves, sheltered rivers, and lagoons that predominate the Malay peninsula, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and other islands in the South China Sea and Straits of Malacca. Aceh-based pirates in northern Sumatra and Philippines-based pirates reportedly proved to be the most reliable for the CIA. Targeted merchant ships included North Korean-, Panamanian-, Liberian-, Iranian-, Pakistani-, Chinese-, Ukrainian-, Honduran-, and Bahamian-flagged ships. Most of the vessels were transiting between North Korea, China (including Macao), Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
