Covert meeting in Seychelles revives memories of a planned CIA "false flag" attack BY THE WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

Covert meeting in Seychelles revives memories of a planned CIA "false flag" attack BY THE WAYNE MADSEN REPORT

A January 11, 2017 covert meeting in the Seychelles has revived memories of an all-but-forgotten Cold War plan by Central Intelligence Agency-linked mercenaries to attack a U.S. military base and blame it on the Soviets. Reportedly, a clandestine meeting was

arranged on or about January 11 by the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi between Blackwater founder Erik Prince, representing the Donald Trump transition team, and a Russian government envoy in Seychelles. Prince currently heads up an Abu Dhabi-based mercenary firm, Reflex Reponses (R2), and a Hong Kong-based company also involved with mercenaries called Frontier Services Group. Prince's companies have been involved in civil wars in Yemen, Libya, South Sudan, Somalia, and Syria.

The January meeting between Prince, the brother of Trump's Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and the Russian representative was reportedly designed to establish a back channel between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In addition, the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahayan, was trying to broker a deal with the Trump administration that would see Russia curtail its support for Syria and Iran in exchange for a lessening of Western sanctions against Russia. The Crown Prince reportedly met with key Trump transition figures Jared Kushner and Stephen Bannon in New York in December. 

The Russian government denied the Seychelles meeting took place. The identity of the Russian envoy supposedly involved was never disclosed in press reports. Seychelles Foreign Secretary Barry Faure said he was not surprised that such a meeting could have taken place in his nation, adding, "The Seychelles is the kind of place where you can have a good time away from the eyes of the media." It is also a place from which the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and CIA operate MQ-9 Reaper drones, some armed with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs, in operations in the Horn of Africa.

The Indian Ocean multi-island nation of Seychelles is certainly no stranger to international intrigue. During the Reagan administration, when CIA director William Casey gave the green light for CIA "off-the-shelf" companies to engage in coup plotting and arms and drug smuggling, there were several aborted attempts to overthrow the Seychelles government of President France Albert Rene. One, in 1981, saw South African-based mercenaries led by the noted British-Irish mercenary Colonel "Mad Mike Hoare" attempt to overthrow Rene. Hoare and his mercenary team were working directly for former Seychelles president James Mancham, who was ousted in a 1977 coup by Rene. Hoare and his team masqueraded as drunken tourists but exposed when a rifle was uncovered by Seychelles Customs personnel at the international airport in Victoria on the main island of Mahe. Operation Anvil ended after fighting broke out at the airport. Several Seychelles security personnel were killed along with one of Hoare's team members. Six South African mercenaries were taken prisoner by the Seychelles government.

Hoare and his team managed to commandeer a recently-arrived Air India plane and directed the pilot to fly them to Durban, South Africa. The 1981 coup attempt was directly linked to the South African intelligence services. 

The coup also involved Kenyan Attorney General Charles Njonjo and Irish-Kenyan national Bill Parkinson, a former Kenyan Special Branch officer and owner of Kenyan-based airlines, some tied to previous CIA and British MI6 operations in Africa. Parkinson was also known to have significant links to South African intelligence.

Parkinson was involved in the 1981 coup plot against Rene and it was one of Parkinson's aircraft that was to fly exiled Seychelles President Mancham and his cabinet back to Seychelles on the day of the planned coup to resume power after Rene's ouster. Parkinson's Sunbird Aviation Beechcraft 200 was to fly a "Mr. Morgan," an American tourist with a U.S. passport, from Mombasa, Kenya to the Seychelles. "Mr. Morgan" was, in fact, Mancham. The U.S. passport was courtesy of the CIA.

The CIA decided that the South Africans were incapable of ousting the pro-Soviet Rene, and opted to stage its own coup in 1983. A 1982 coup involving South Africa and disgruntled Seychelles military personnel, many of whom disliked the North Korean advisers salted througout their ranks, also failed.

The December 1983 coup plan, signed off by Langley, involved coup plotters assassinating President Rene and launching a "false flag" attack on a U.S. Air Force satellite tracking station, near Victoria International Airport atop La Misere (Poverty) Mountain. The blueprint was a duplicate of the scenario that resulted in the U.S. invasion of Grenada two months earlier. A Marxist coup that overthrew the leftist government of Grenada Prime Minister Maurice Bishop saw U.S. troops invade the island nation to "protect" U.S. medical school students on the island. U.S. forces subsequently expelled Cuban and other Soviet bloc and Libyan personnel from Grenada. 

In the case of Seychelles, an attack on the U.S. Air Force facility would result in calls for U.S. military troops to invade and occupy Seychelles, resulting in the expulsion of Soviet, Chinese, North Korean, and East German personnel. According to declassified CIA documents, the scenario in Seychelles would have involved CIA-supported coup plotters potentially killing U.S. Air Force and NASA personnel working at the satellite station. The coup plotters involved two British nationals, a dual British-Zimbabwe citizen, and two French nationals.

In 1983, CIA-backed mercenaries in the Seychelles planned to attack the U.S. Air Force satellite tracking station on Mahe island in a "false flag" attack designed to bring about a U.S. military invasion of the Indian Ocean islands. In the 1960s, there were proposals for the U.S. to buy the Seychelles from Britain and turn the islands into an "Indian Ocean Hawaii."

Today, on the grounds of the satellite station is now found a massive palace built by Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahayan, the Emir of Abu Dhabi and President of the United Arab Emirates. The palace is heavily guarded by Gurkha mercenaries from Nepal.

In 1986, there was another coup attempt against the Rene government. Code named Operation Distant Lash, the revolt involved Seychelles Defense Minister Ogilvy Berlouis, 30 mercenaries, and 350 Seychelles citizens, including military personnel. 

The 1986 plot against Rene involved his assassination upon his return from the Non-Aligned Summit in Harare, Zimbabwe. While in Harare, Rene was tipped off about the coup plot by Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, a summit participant. Gandhi arranged for Rene to be flown back to Seychelles in the Indian Prime Minister's official airplane, "Air India One." In what Indian intelligence dubbed "Operation Flowers are Blooming,” Rene was disguised upon arrival as an Indian woman wearing a traditional sari dress. The coup, like its predecessors, was a failure, as Rene rallied his supporters in the Seychelles capital.

The Seychelles has now drawn the malevolent attention of Prince and his CIA-linked mercenary armies. There is an ironic postscript to the story about the failed Seychelles coups. Before his recent death, Parkinson agreed to sell his Phoenix Aviation Ltd. aircraft company, based at Nairobi's spy-infested Wilson Airport, to Prince's Frontier Services Group. Prince had previously established Phoenix Aviation Malta Limited that is believed to be involved in Libya's civil war.

With Prince's sister Betsy, a Mormon convert and wife of Amway co-founder Dick DeVos, firmly ensconced in Trump's Cabinet and Christian creationist Mike Pompeo in charge of the CIA, Africa should be very wary of "Christian missionary" organizations and their "flying services." In fact, Africa should be doubly-wary of Prince, a convert to the far-right Opus Dei sectarian wing of Roman Catholicism.

Trump administration produces fake intelligence on Russia in Syria and Afghanistan By The Wayne Madsen Report

 Trump administration produces fake intelligence on Russia in Syria and Afghanistan By The Wayne Madsen Report
The Trump administration, which is increasingly coming under the grip of Bush 43-era neoconservatives, has been formally issuing and "leaking" fake intelligence reports on Russia not only being involved in the alleged April 4 Sarin gas attack by the Syrian government in the village of Khan Sheikoun but also alleged Russian military support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. The U.S. intelligence community appears to have taken a cue from the constantly-lying Donald Trump to come up with its own lies, in the form of "intelligence," to further its aims.

During a joint press conference with visiting NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Trump said he was open to the idea that Russia had advanced knowledge of the Syrian Sarin attack. He based his claims on information he received from Defense Secretary James Mattis and a "Pentagon group that does that kind of work." In fact, there is alternate and more credible intelligence that it was not Russia that had advance warning of a Sarin gas attack, but Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. In 2013, the Syrian government was blamed for a similar chemical gas attack on civilians in Ghouta. However, Syrian rebels admitted to the Associated Press reporter on the ground that they had been given the banned weapons by Saudi Arabia but that they exploded after being handled by the rebels improperly.

There are reports, not tainted by the Pentagon or General H. R. McMaster's National Security Council, that the Sarin was delivered by an Israeli drone that took off from the al-Tanf secret joint Israeli-Saudi base in rebel-held southern Syria, just over the Jordanian border, that is used to militarily support the Syrian rebels. The base operates with the full backing of Jordanian King Abdullah. Trump and the Jordanian king were meeting at the White House just hours after the reported Sarin gas attack took place in Syria. Trump met with the influential Saudi Deputy Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the son of King Salman, in mid-March.

The Trump White House insists the "evidence" that Syria launched the attack is contained in a four-page highly-subjective declassified National Security Council report titled, "The Assad Regime's Use of Chemical Weapons on April 4, 2017." In the report, Syrian and Russian complicity in the attack is claimed from "signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence, laboratory analysis of physiological samples collected from multiple victims, as well as a significant  body of credible open source reporting." The report concedes that the "open sources" that it relied upon included "pro-opposition social media reports." Moreover, there is no indication in the NSC report that U.S. imagery satellite intelligence was used to blame Syria and Russia. The report states, "Commercial satellite imagery from April 6 showed impact craters around the hospital [where the gas victims were allegedly taken] that are consistent with open source reports of a conventional attack on the hospital after the chemical attack."

The NSC is being totally disingenuous in its white paper. Commercial satellite imagery is not separate from open sources, it is an open source. If the imagery intelligence cited in the NSC is open source, what defines "signals intelligence?" Perhaps, the NSC now regards commercial and Internet radio broadcasts from the Syrian opposition as "signals intelligence." The NSC report is a shoddy piece of work that is not based on legitimate U.S. or foreign government intelligence sources but on the propaganda constantly issued forth by such tainted groups as the World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and the Syrian "White Helmets."


Fake intelligence alert! Trump's NSC report alleging Syrian and Russian involvement in Khan Sheikoun gas attack was not based on U.S. intelligence imagery but that obtained from open source commercial satellite vendors.

National Security Adviser McMaster is a veteran of the "cherry picking" of intelligence to fit a pre-conceived narrative, something that was used effectively by the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to "prove" that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Now, this same methodology is being used to justify U.S. military action against Syria and Assad's government. Unlike Iraq, however, the Trump administration is trying to paint Russian President Vladimir Putin into the circle of outlaw renegade leaders, who also include Assad and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The Trump administration has shown the world that it is as reliant on bogus military attacks as was the Obama administration. Even the two photographs of senior White House officials huddled around tables in their respective "situation rooms" -- Obama and his advisers witnessing the alleged Seal Team 6 killing of "Osama Bin Laden" at the White House and Trump and his advisers dealing with the cruise missile attack on the Shayrat airbase in Syria at Mar-a-Lago -- are similar.

 
No difference in the phoniness scale between Obama and Trump. Trump even copied Obama's pose at situation room "crisis" meeting.

Just as it is doing with regard to Syria and Russia, the Pentagon is trying to link Russia to support for the Taliban in Afghanistan. Mattis and his Pentagon team are relying on reports from a dubious former Taliban leader who defected to the West that Russia is strengthening its links with the Taliban. The allegations are preposterous. Russia has been the victim of Taliban-trained jihadists, who have gone back to Russia to commit a number of bloody terrorist attacks. Russia, which was then the Soviet Union, fought a long war against CIA-supported Afghan jihadists. These jihadists ultimately morphed into the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The Pentagon is pushing unsubstantiated "intelligence" that Russian -- and Iranian -- arms are pouring into Afghanistan. In the case of Russia, weapons for the Taliban are said to be coming from Tajikistan, where Russia has important bases to check any advance of jihadists into the former "Soviet space" that includes Tajikistan.

Russia and Iran both supported the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance before the 9/11 attack. At the same time, the United States supported the Taliban, even though it was harboring Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. For Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the Taliban's help in building a pipeline for UNOCAL across Afghanistan was more important than ideology. The Iranians have never forgiven the Taliban for executing 9 Iranian diplomats, an Iranian journalist, and another civilian at the Iranian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan in 1998. There is zero reason to believe that Shi'a Iran would easily forget what the extreme Sunni sect did to its citizens in Herat and suddenly "make nice" with the Taliban. Ditto the Russians. Russia is fully aware that Taliban-trained Chechen jihadists have committed some of the most horrendous attacks on Russian civilian targets, including schools, trains, and subway stations.
 
Military juntas are known for telling big lies based on fake intelligence

Mattis and his advisers are either woefully ignorant of the recent history of Afghanistan and the south-central Asian region or are trying, as they and General McMaster are doing with respect to Assad and Russia, to hoodwink the American public. The Trump administration, with so many ignorant generals calling the shots, more resembles a military junta than a civilian administration. Juntas are known for spinning lies, something that was witnessed constantly by the bogus propaganda coming forth from the Galtieri junta in Argentina during the 1982 Falklands War, the Franco junta in Spain, and the military junta that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974.