NSA and Israel targeted Lebanese leaders by Wayne Madsen

NSA and Israel targeted Lebanese leaders

by Wayne Madsen
For years the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU), also known as Unit 8200, which is a Third Party partner of the U.S. National Security Agency, has maintained a massive communications surveillance operation against Lebanon. Of particular interest to ISNU is the highly-advanced fiber optics network installed by Lebanese Hezbollah for its own operations. WMR has learned that in some cases, the Lebanese government has used the Hezbollah network because is affords more security against Israeli eavesdropping than official Lebanese government networks.

The latest release of classified NSA documents provided by Edward Snowden reveal that NSA's Information Technology Directorate (ITD) has maintained a surveillance operation against Lebanese communications since at least 2007. Although the latest released information does not specifically state that Israel receives intercepted signals intelligence gathered by ITD and NSA Georgia from Lebanon, a previously-released NSA-ISNU memorandum of understanding (MOU) states that ISNU is provided "raw SIGINT data (i..e., signals intelligence information that has not been reviewed for foreign intelligence purposes or minimized)."

In January 2007, NSA Georgia at Fort Gordon, Georgia maintained surveillance of Lebanon's leadership, including the "Ministry of Interior, Parliament Members, and Presidential Palace." Also targeted were the former commander of the Common Border Force. Lebanon is the only country in the world with an agency called the "Common Border Force." The presidents of Lebanon at the time of the surveillance were Emile Lahoud and acting president Fouad Siniora, who was previously prime minister. The Interior Ministers was Hassan Sabeh. The prime minister until 2005 was Najib Mikati.
  
Targeted by NSA acting in concert with Israel: President Emile Lahoud [left], Prime Minister and President Fouad Siniora [center], and Interior Minister Hassan Sabeh [right].
According to the United Nations, the Lebanese Common Border Force was "established by the Lebanese Council of Ministers on 28 July 2007, within the context of a pilot project led by Germany along Lebanon's northern border with the Syrian Arab Republic. Responsible for the surveillance and control of Lebanon's northern border with the Syrian Arab Republic to ensure that the passage of all goods is restricted to legal crossing points only, preventing the smuggling of weapons, ammunition and prohibited material through the establishment of permanent and mobile observation points. The Common Border Force brings together elements from the four principal security agencies responsible for border management and security, namely the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Internal Security Forces, General Security and Customs."

Other Lebanese military officers monitored by NSA Georgia were a colonel in the Information Technology (IT) Directorate, a general in the Medical Command, a general whose affiliation was unknown, an instructor colonel in the Army Staff and Command College, and a Lieutenant Colonel in the Defense Ministry.

Incredibly, NSA Georgia gave high priority to downloading from the Lebanese Defense Ministry a document on the Lebanese Armed Forces review of personnel issues regarding retirement, communications, and health care.



The most recent release of documents from NSA also includes one describing how GSM cellular equipment bound for the "Syrian Telecommunications Establishment (STE)" GSM network were implanted with a "beacon implanted through supply-chain interdiction." The beacon, once in place, "called back" to the "NSA covert infrastructure." The call back enabled NSA to "further exploit the device and survey the network." This black bag work was carried out under the auspices of NSA's "Tailored Access Operations" or TAO.

TAO oversees an operation where shipments of computer network devices (servers, routers, etc.) are intercepted. Next, they are redirected to a secret location where TAO/Access Operations (NSA AO-S426), with the support of Remote Operations Center (S321), enable the installation of beacon implants directly into NSA's targets' electronic devices. Hard-target networks around the world provide pre-positioned access points for NSA eavesdropping.

On June 20, 2008, WMR reported: "A cable-based telecommunications system installed by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Bekaa Valley, and Beirut was so elaborate, the Israelis could neither destroy it nor eavesdrop on it during Israel's 2006 war against Lebanon, according to an Egyptian intelligence source. It is being reported that the sophisticated Hezbollah system is now being extended to northern Lebanon. In addition to the Israelis, the US National Security Agency (NSA) is having trouble conducting surveillance on the Hezbollah system.


Is NSA doing Israel's dirty work in the Middle East?

. . . It is also believed that the January 2008 car bombing of Lebanese Internal Security Force Information Branch officer, Captain Wissam Eid, a noted communications engineer, may have been linked in some way to the Hezbollah communications network. Although the bombing was blamed on Hezbollah, Syria, Hezbollah's ally, was among the first to condemn Eid's assassination."

NSA, according to the Snowden release, managed to intercept communications on the Hezbollah cable communications system by bugging it with implanted Cisco routers and other devices.

There are limits to inciteful speech by Wayne Madsen

There are limits to inciteful speech by Wayne Madsen

As unlikely a pair as Pope Francis I and Charlie Hebdo founder have weighed in on the flagrant incitement of believers of a major religion with the intent of causing violence. On his way to the Philippines, the Pope said, "You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others." He also said that if someone insulted his mother, he "could expect a punch" in return.

The founder and former editor of Charlie Hebdo, Henri Roussel, voiced his misgivings about one of his successors as editor, Stephane Charbonnier, among the satirical newspaper's staff gunned down by two Islamist radicals seeking revenge for the paper's cartoon portrayals of the Prophet Mohammed. Roussel blamed Charbonnier for needlessly dragging his staff to their deaths, pointing out that the late editor, known as "Charb" played a dangerous "game of one-upmanship" in provoking radical Muslims to act. Roussel said that after the paper's offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed considered by Muslims to be blasphemous.

Roussel criticized the most recent management of Charlie Hebdo. He accused Charbonnier's predecessor as editor, Philippe Val, of turning the paper into a "Zionist and Islamophobic organ," especially after Val fired longtime cartoonist Maurice Sine for publishing a cartoon of the marriage of former President Nicolas Sarkozy' son to a Jewish electronic chain heiress. Val considered that cartoon to be anti-Semitic, but, as Roussel pointed out, the paper's management had no problem repeatedly mocking and insulting Islam. Roussel pointed out that after "Charb" published an offensive Mohammed cartoon in 2011 and the paper's offices were firebombed, he proceeded to do the same thing again in 2012. Roussel said Charbonnier "shouldn’t have done it."

The peak inside the inner workings of Charlie Hebdo is reminiscent of the activities of the neo-conservative-influenced and financed protest groups FEMEN, Pussy Riot, and Voina, which have received international publicity over their inciteful and lewd protests at Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian cathedrals, as well as Islamic mosques. There is no record of these protesters committing any actions against Jewish synagogues in any of the countries where they have protested against Christianity and Islam. 

These facts certainly point to the actions of Charlie Hebdo, FEMEN, Pussy Riot, and Voina being directed by well-organized and money-flush Zionist interests. The corporate news media have been full of stories on the sale of over five million copies of the "survivors' edition" of Charlie Hebdo and how French police have been rounding up those who have been charged with inciting "anti-Semitic" speech. At the same time, the Pope, Muslim clerics, and informed observers like Roussel have been slammed hard by the corporate, and largely Zionist-owned media, for their views on what can only be termed as "anti-Gentilic" speech. It certainly appears that the Pope and France's four top imams had Charlie Hebdo's actions in mind when they issued a joint statement condemning the Paris attacks on Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher Jewish market but urging the media to restrain itself from publishing content disrespectful of religious faiths.

The Charlie Hebdo "survivors' edition" can be downloaded by clicking here. Apparently, the surviving staff saw fit to disregard the wishes of their former editor and founder, the Pope, and France's four chief imams. After examining this much-heralded issue, it is clear that Charlie Hebdo's modus operandi is to provide a single stock caricature of a bearded Jewish man in a one cartoon while devoting the remainder of its pages to bashing Islam and Christianity. A single caricature does not constitute a license to incite. 

Anti-Christian and Islam "comedian" Bill Maher recently said the following in comparing Christianity and Islam, "one is herpes and one is cancer." Not everyone in Hollywood thinks Maher is funny and actor Ben Affleck called Maher on his Islamophobia. The Zionists, using their Talmud as their inspirational guide, want to convince the world that it is perfectly okay to mock, ridicule, blaspheme, and incite Muslims and Christians but to utter one word of condemnation of Jewish practices, including the ritual genital mutilation of infant boys, is "anti-Semitic." Monsieur Roussel, Pope Francis, the French imams, and others, including this website, see the hypocrisy being carried out. President Obama was right to miss out on the navel-gazing "march," that is, the photo-op, of world leaders in Paris. The only march the world needs is one to expose the hypocrisy of the world's elites because once again, they have perpetrated a cruel hoax on the civilized people and nations of the world.