Wayne Madsen Report - DIPLOMATIC CABLES

November 1, 2005 -- BEIRUT, BERLIN AND WASHINGTON -- WMR has obtained the Confidential version of the Mehlis Report on the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Mehlis is the Senior Public Prosecutor in the Attorney General's Office in Berlin. He was named Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the Hariri assassination. Mehlis is a darling of neocons who served in the Reagan administration. It was his investigation of the 1982 La Belle Discotheque bombing in West Berlin that was used as justification by Reagan to launch a 1986 bombing attack on Libya. Mehlis concluded that Libya was behind the attack conveniently at the same time that pro-Israelis in the Reagan administration, including Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Scooter Libby, and others were calling for an attack on Muammar Qaddafi.

The Mehlis Report, dated October 19, 2005, states the Commission "focused on the crime scene, technical aspects of the crime, analysis of telephone intercepts, the testimony of more than 500 witnesses and sources, as well as the institutional context in which the crime took place."

The confidential copy indicates that certain information, all of which implicates Syria and pro-Syrian Lebanese officials, was added just before the report was issued. The following is an example of a conclusion seemingly added as an afterthought and based on envisaging a scenario, hardly concrete evidence:

"Building on the findings of the Commission and Lebanese investigations to date and on the basis of the material and documentary evidence collected, and the leads pursued until now, there is converging evidence pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist act. It is a well known fact that Syrian Military Intelligence had a pervasive presence in Lebanon at the least until the withdrawal of the Syrian forces pursuant to resolution 1559. The former senior security officials of Lebanon were their appointees. Given the infiltration of Lebanese institutions and society by the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to envisage a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge"