And the Oscar goes to... the CIA By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE And the Oscar goes to... the CIA By Pepe Escobar  Even in his wild, stoned to death, easy rider cuckoo times, Jack Nicholson would never have imagined he would one day tag team with the First Lady of the United States to present an Oscar for Best Picture.  This is more Hunter S Thompson than Academy territory - and hardly presidential. But it did - beautifully - make the point about the marriage between Washington and Hollywood. If George Clooney marries Sudan (but not Palestine), why not Jack schmoozing with Michelle? What next? Obama sharing intel with Jessica Chastain?  The marriage that really counts - for the future - may be at the heart of the military-industrial-security-Hollywood complex, as in Zero Dark Thirty and endless variations of the Marvel ethos (see Zero Dark Oscar, Asia Times Online, February 22, 2013). But for now, in terms of poetic justice, nothing makes more sense than Best Picture going to the Ben Affleck-directed (and Clooney co-produced) Argo.  Those 6,000-plus Academy voters simply could not resist a plot loosely based in facts in which a patriotic and resourceful Hollywood saves the CIA. And with a certified Hollywood ending as a bonus. Thus, predictably, this was Hollywood awarding an Oscar to itself, to hyper-nationalism, to American heroes and of course to good (Americans) over evil (Iranians).  And how poetically towering this justice becomes when a movie about a fake movie that fooled revolutionary Iranians during the 444-day hostage crisis is crowned Best Picture just two days before the US and other members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, go back to the table to discuss whether Iran is now fooling them - and going for a nuclear weapon.  Argo strives to prove the point that Iran hates the American Satan but Iranians love Hollywood. Over three decades later, Iranians are not so gullible; they are even going to shoot their counter-Argo. And the absolute majority of the population - even under harsh US and European Union sanctions - supports a civilian nuclear program. In parallel, it will be fun to watch how Argo plays from Karachi to Caracas.  Back in Hollywood, as Orson Welles taught us all, it's all fake. Even former president Jimmy Carter admitted on CNN that the Argo plot itself was Canadian - mostly concocted by then ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor. Everybody knows this in Canada. But obviously not in the US.  Ask Christoph Shultz What really matters at the Oscars is the red carpet - with its immortal inbuilt phrase "What are you wearing". In a festival of wardrobe malfunctions worthy of an FBI investigation at least there was Charlize Theron in Dior, Naomi Watts in Armani Prive and Anne Hathaway in Prada to soothe weary eyes. This is what will be doing the rounds digitally all over the planet - as most of the winners are already forgotten by now.  There were no surprises. If Daniel Day-Lewis playing the American God, aka Lincoln, didn't get his (third) Oscar, that would be blamed on a Chinese cyber attack. Actually, there was a surprise; Hollywood's Zeus, Steven Spielberg, was spurned to the benefit of Life of Pi director Ang Lee. Cynics immediately volunteered this has a lot to do with Hollywood's pivoting towards the lucrative Asian market.  Quentin Tarantino said this was the year of the writers at the Oscars. It was certainly his year. It makes total sense that his revenge classic Django Unchained won for Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor (the Viennese master, Christoph Waltz).  For Tarantino, only a humongous body count can lead us to Justice. One may occasionally be fed up with his perennial over-the-top antics. But the fact is that his prescription for America - when evil stares into your face you go out all guns blazing - is believable because his characters are so splendidly written. No wonder the gun lobby and assorted National Rifle Association fanatics are using Django as prime PR among African Americans. Were they to follow Django ("the D is silent") to the letter, post-apocalyptic US would probably look like this Django Uncrossed spoof.  The Academy may in fact have redeemed itself a bit for its love story with the CIA when Best Screenplay went to Tarantino instead of Tony Kushner for the totemic Lincoln. Arguably Kushner - and Spielberg - built their anti-slavery epic without so much as a glance towards Frederick Douglass or W E B DuBois's Black Reconstruction in America - where it's clear that "it was the fugitive slaves who forced the slaveholders to face the alternative of surrendering to the North or surrendering to the Negro."  Without at least 200,000 black people in the Army and another 200,000 working in supporting roles, the North would have lost the war. Or, at best, the white supremacist South would have remained as it was - slavery and all. None of this is addressed in Lincoln.  What Django's two Oscars prove once again is that Hollywood is a sucker for revenge. Even when it comes in the form of a warped, cripto-psychedelic spaghetti-western that would make John Ford puke. Well, it's still a Wild West. Wilder than Jack Nicholson's wildest dreams.  Tarantino may now be the best-qualified screenwriter to decode Barack Obama, the new Lincoln. What about a gourmet western showing the passage from GWOT (global war on terror) to invisible, shadow war, while internally the new Lincoln goes for gun control mixed with drone surveillance.  What about Christoph Waltz playing the devious John Brennan - a confidante to then CIA director George Tenet fully updated on "the intelligence and facts being fixed around the policy" to justify the war on Iraq, and later setting the parameters on torture and seeking Justice Department approval for it.  Picture a scene with Waltz, with his trademark delivery, testifying to the Senate Intelligence Committee - as Brennan did early this month - that "the regimes in Tehran and Pyongyang remain bent on pursuing nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missile delivery systems."  Argo is for pussies. The time has come for Obomber Unchained.  Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Zero Dark Oscar By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE Zero Dark Oscar By Pepe Escobar  The buzz in Los Angeles is that Argo will win this year’s Oscar for Best Picture.  The Ben Affleck-directed CIA thriller has already won Best Picture at the Golden Globes, the Directors Guild of America, the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild. Only in Hollywood you can win Best Picture without the guy who put it all together being nominated for Best Director (that will most certainly be Hollywood’s Zeus, Steven Spielberg, for his Civil War epic Lincoln).  Are we talking politics and movies? You betcha. It’s impossible to understand Washington without spending time in Hollywood. I had a ball doing it – from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. Never bothered to join the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) though; just a bunch of twats in awe of the star system whose only purpose in life is to be wined and dined before voting for the Golden Globes.  And still I went to all the junkets, all the screenings in the studios, all the parties, met a galaxy of stars and lesser "stars", saw how deals were cut, enrolled in the annual pilgrimage Hollywood-Cannes (for the film festival). I even held an Oscar in my hands once; in 1993, from Emma Thompson, in the press room, while she was composing herself to call then-husband "Kenneth" [Branagh]. Oscar is not heavy, and not particularly handsome. But yes, it's the Holy Grail, like being a tenant in the White House. If you nail how the industry works in Hollywood, you nail Washington politics virtually from A to Z.  So let's talk about this year's key political contenders; Spielberg's Lincoln, Affleck's Argo and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (ZD30).  ET come home In the Hollywood ethos, nothing is political; everything must be subordinated to an intoxicating haze of bipartisan hyper-nationalist myth. For Hollywood, wars and history must always be subordinated to ideology (and that explains why Coppola's Apocalypse Now - an ideology strip-tease - "is" the real Vietnam war).  No wonder Argo is being defined in Hollywood by the innocent cliche of a "liberally Hollywood-ized chronicle", when it's in fact a hard-hitting CIA promo about an agent coming up with a scheme to extract a few diplomats caught inside the American embassy during the 1979 Iran hostage crisis; the plan is to disguise them as a - what else - Hollywood film crew.  Affleck is embraced in Hollywood as a "liberal", much as George "Free Sudan" Clooney. Long gone is his Nespresso poster-boy gig; Clooney - quintessential Hollywood royalty - is an Argo co-producer, alongside Affleck and Grant Heslov.  In a neat juxtaposition, Argo is the story of a rescue while ZD30 is the chronicle of a hit foretold (as is Lincoln, incidentally). Where Argo meets ZD30 is that both are CIA eulogies. Thus, inevitably the Iranians depicted by "liberal" Affleck are nothing but a hysterical, fanatical mob, as much as the Arabs and Pakistanis depicted by Bigelow are either to be tortured, or merely qualify as nuisance in the backdrop.  Argo displays its claims of historical credibility with a cartoonish five-minute initial presentation supplying minimal background for audiences to understand the complex forces at play in the Iranian revolution. From then on, it's the CIA in the saddle. Forget about context - not to mention an attempt at dramatization of at least a single Iranian character; just wave after wave of that screaming, irrational mob.  Not a word that Iran's democracy was assassinated by - who else - the CIA in 1953. Not a word that the Shah's secret police, the Savak, had "disappeared", tortured and assassinated at will, trained by - who else - the CIA.  It's enlightening to remember that immediately after the Iranian revolution, throughout the 1980s Afghan jihad, the CIA channeled loads of money and weapons to Salafi-jihadis, including one Osama bin Laden, and alongside Saudi funds, propped up a Frankenstein - the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence. Nowadays, the CIA supports Salafi-jihadis from Libya to Syria - a remix of 1980s Afghanistan.  These CIA exploits cannot but be contrasted with the (not exactly subliminal) message peddled by "liberal" - as in "progressive" - Affleck; all over Argo, Iranians are depicted as terrorists who hate "our values".  Lincoln is just as "liberal" as Argo. But Spielberg is a cinematic master, way more effective in manipulating emotions. If Baudrillard was alive he would have deconstructed Lincoln as a sterling example of history as simulacrum.  Spielberg's Lincoln is a larger than life icon, an ahistorical totem in front of which audiences should ritually prostrate themselves, part of a perpetual sacrifice in the altar of politics as the supreme affirmation of the US political system. He is the perfect representation of the American dream and American values. Lincoln is on screen to be adored. Lincoln is, not surprisingly, ET. Suspension of disbelief? Oh yes, we shall all remain in awe.  Hit me with your rhythm stick Kathryn Bigelow is a very good filmmaker. Her Strange Days (1995) is arguably one of the best cult movies of the swingin' 90s supervised by William "Bubba" Clinton. It's a matter of no debate in Los Angeles that Bigelow is the female version of the late Tony Scott.  With ZD30, the point is not whether Bigelow has turned into the American Leni Riefenstahl (sorry, Leni). The point is - and you don't have to ask Godard at his apex in the 1960s - it's all in the editing (even when it was not in the screenplay to begin with).  ZD30 opens with a black screen and an audio mix of terrified phone calls on 9/11. Cut to the torture of "Ammar" in a CIA black site, the prelude for upcoming soft waterboarding. That sets the tone; ZD30, as it is edited, is an awesome commercial for the Bush-Cheney GWOT (global war on terror).  In this filthy Oz, the CIA only tortures certified evil terra-rists; the US government never kills innocent civilians; and all torturers, analysts and high-tech killers are unimpeachable selfless heroes.  Gotta love this CIA who relentlessly lied to get a war on Iraq; who engaged on a torture fest in endless black sites after endless extraordinary renditions; and who now has switched to a Drone War - HUMINT takes too long and is too costly - to improve its killing performance, frequently adorned with collateral damage.  A digital tsunami has been devoted to torture as depicted in ZD30. Bigelow has essentially defended the torture scenes as "depiction", not "endorsement". Well, once again it starts with the screenplay - written by Mark Boal, a former hack who was briefly embedded in Iraq. He based the screenplay on exclusive, privileged, "firsthand" access to CIA torturers and assorted CIA sources. Boal and Bigelow have stressed for months that ZD30 is a documentary-style "factual" narrative of the Osama bin Laden hunt and then the hit. They say it's factual. But they also say it's just a movie.  Here's the most articulate Bigelow has been in defending ZD30. She insists she was not "interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences". She insists ZD30 is "rigorous" - as in stressing its "documentary" side. She also insists she is a "lifelong pacifist".  Bigelow did shoot ZD30 - aesthetically - almost as a documentary. She depicts torture not graphically, but in a carefully sanitized way. Torture, in ZD30's terms, feels entirely justified. Thus entirely normalized. Thus entirely endorsable; after all the torturers themselves are so human - just like the hostages in Argo. Sartre to the rescue: hell is indeed other people, especially if they are Muslims.  Boal and Bigelow have also insisted they worked in a "journalistic" way. That's - literally - the killer; it proves ZD30 is the ultimate product of GWOT, embedded journalism. Once upon a time, the blues had a baby, and they named it rock'n roll. In post-modern America, the Pentagon created embedded journalism; and the CIA had its baby, embedded moviemaking.  ZD30 should be seen as the ultimate cinematic product of the Obama era. The record shows how the ""Yes we can" icon with silky rhetorical skills (wake up Spielberg, here's your new Lincoln) has trampled everything from ethics to the rule of law - not closing Guantanamo yet effortlessly pivoting from GWOT to shadow war and an exclusive kill list (no, "we don't torture", as he says in a TV interview in the background of a scene in ZD30). In the meantime, major sponsors - as in the CIA - merrily bask in the glow of cinematic myth.  The beauty of it is that Hollywood, the way it works, does not even need the CIA - or the Pentagon - as sponsors. Hollywood does His Master's Voice by default. And it already starts with a winning hand, technically - because nobody, save the odd European or Asian epic, can fight its unrivalled production values and period recreation know-how.  Still, Hollywood prides itself as "liberal". Argo may get Best Picture and Spielberg may get Best Director. But make no mistake; as the supreme representative of the post-modern military-industrial-security-Hollywood complex, nothing beats ZD30.  Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

The illusory state of the Empire By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE The illusory state of the Empire By Pepe Escobar  Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an "axis of evil". No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a "smart" - not bigger - US government, he kept his foreign policy cards very close to his chest. Few eyebrows were raised on the promise that "by the end of next year our war in Afghanistan will be over"; it won't be, of course, because Washington will fight to the finish to keep sizeable counterinsurgency boots on the ground - ostensibly to fight, in Obama's words, those evil "remnants of al-Qaeda". Obama promised to "help" Libya, Yemen and Somalia, not to mention Mali. He promised to "engage" Russia. He promised to seduce Asia with the Trans-Pacific Partnership - essentially a collection of corporate-friendly free-trade agreements. On the Middle East, he promised to "stand" with those who want freedom; that presumably does not include people from Bahrain. As this was Capitol Hill, he could not help but include the token "preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons"; putting more "pressure" on Syria - whose "regime kills its own people"; and to remain "steadfast" with Israel. North Korea was mentioned. Always knowing what to expect from the horse's mouth, the foreign ministry in Pyongyang even issued a preemptive attack, stressing that this week's nuclear test was just a "first response" to US threats; "second and third measures of greater intensity" would be unleashed if Washington continued to be hostile. Obama didn't even bother to answer criticism of his shadow wars, the Drone Empire and the legal justification for unleashing target practice on US citizens; he mentioned, in passing, that all these operations would be conducted in a "transparent" way. Is that all there is? Oh no, there's way more. Double O's game Since 9/11, Washington's strategy during the George W Bush years - penned by the neo-cons - read like a modified return to land war. But then, after the Iraq quagmire, came a late strategic adjustment, which could be defined as the Petraeus vs Rumsfeld match. The Petraeus "victory" myth, based on his Mesopotamian surge, in fact provided Obama with an opening for leaving Iraq with the illusion of a relative success (a myth comprehensively bought and sold by US corporate media). Then came the Lisbon summit in late 2010, which was set up to turn the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) into a clone of the UN Security Council in a purely Western format, capable of deploying autonomous military interventions - preemption included - all over the world. This was nothing less than classic Bush-Obama continuum. NATO's Lisbon summit seemed to have enthroned a Neoliberal Paradise vision of the complex relations between war and the economy; between the military and police operations; and between perennial military hardware upgrading and the political design of preemptive global intervention. Everything, once again, under Obama's supervision. The war in Afghanistan, for its part, was quite useful to promote NATO as much as NATO was useful to promote the war in Afghanistan - even if NATO did not succeed in becoming the Security Council of the global American Empire, always bent on dominating, or circumventing, the UN. Whatever mission NATO is involved in, command and control is always Washington's. Only the Pentagon is able to come up with the logistics for a transcontinental, global military operation. Libya 2011 is another prime example. At the start, the French and the Brits were coordinating with the Americans. But then Stuttgart-based AFRICOM took over the command and control of Libyan skies. Everything NATO did afterwards in Libya, the virtual commander in chief was Barack Obama. So Obama owns Libya. As much as Obama owns the Benghazi blowback in Libya. Libya seemed to announce the arrival of NATO as a coalition assembly line on a global scale, capable of organizing wars all across the world by creating the appearance of a political and military consensus, unified by an all-American doctrine of global order pompously titled "NATO's strategic concept". Libya may have been "won" by the NATO-AFRICOM combo. But then came the Syria red line, duly imposed by Russia and China. And in Mali - which is blowback from Libya - NATO is not even part of the picture; the French may believe they will secure all the gold and uranium they need in the Sahel - but it's AFRICOM who stands to benefit in the long term, boosting its military surge against Chinese interests in Africa. What is certain is that throughout this convoluted process Obama has been totally embedded in the logic of what sterling French geopolitical analyst Alain Joxe described as "war neoliberalism", inherited from the Bush years; one may see it as a champagne definition of the Pentagon's long, or infinite, war. Double O's legacy  Obama's legacy may be in the process of being forged. We might call it Shadow War Forever - coupled with the noxious permanence of Guantanamo. The Pentagon for its part will never abandon its "full spectrum" dream of military hegemony, ideally controlling the future of the world in all those shades of grey zones between Russia and China, the lands of Islam and India, and Africa and Asia. Were lessons learned? Of course not. Double O Bama may have hardly read Nick Turse's exceptional book Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, where he painstakingly documents how the Pentagon produced "a veritable system of suffering". Similar analysis of the long war on Iraq might only be published by 2040. Obama can afford to be self-confident because the Drone Empire is safe. [1] Most Americans seem to absent-mindedly endorse it - as long as "the terrorists" are alien, not US citizens. And in the minor netherworlds of the global war on terror (GWOT), myriad profiteers gleefully dwell. A former Navy SEAL and a former Green Beret have published a book this week, Benghazi: the Definitive Report, where they actually admit Benghazi was blowback for the shadow war conducted by John Brennan, later rewarded by Obama as the new head of the CIA. The book claims that Petraeus was done in by an internal CIA coup, with senior officers forcing the FBI to launch an investigation of his affair with foxy biographer Paula Broadwell. The motive: these CIA insiders were furious because Petraeus turned the agency into a paramilitary force. Yet that's exactly what Brennan will keep on doing: Drone Empire, shadow wars, kill list, it's all there. Petraeus-Brennan is also classic continuum. Then there's Esquire milking for all it's worth the story of an anonymous former SEAL Team 6 member, the man who shot Geronimo, aka Osama bin Laden. [2] This is familiar territory, the hagiography of a Great American Killer, whose "three shots changed history", now abandoned by a couldn't-care-less government machinery but certainly not by those who can get profitable kicks from his saga way beyond the technically proficient torture-enabling flick - and Oscar contender - Zero Dark Thirty. Meanwhile, this is what's happening in the real world. China has surpassed the US and is now the biggest trading nation in the world - and counting. [3] This is just the first step towards the establishment of the yuan as a globally traded currency; then will come the yuan as the new global reserve currency, connected to the end of the primacy of the petrodollar... Well, we all know the drill. So that would lead us to reflect on the real political role of the US in the Obama era. Defeated (by Iraqi nationalism) - and in retreat - in Iraq. Defeated (by Pashtun nationalism) - and in retreat - in Afghanistan. Forever cozy with the medieval House of Saud - "secret" drone bases included (something that was widely known as early as July 2011). [4] "Pivoting" to the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea, and pivoting to a whole bunch of African latitudes; all that to try to "contain" China. Thus the question Obama would never dare to ask in a SOTU address (much less in a SOTE - State of the Empire - address). Does the US remain a global imperial power? Or are the Pentagon's - and the shadow CIA's - armies nothing more than mercenaries of a global neoliberal system the US still entertains the illusion of controlling? Notes: 1. Poll: 45% approve of Obama's handling of the economy, CBS News, February 12, 2013. 2. The Man Who Killed Osama bin Laden... Is Screwed, Esquire, February 11, 2013.  3. China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation, Bloomberg News, February 10, 2013.  4. Secret drone bases mark latest shift in US attacks on al-Qaeda, The Times, July 26, 2011.  Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).  He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.  (Copyright 2013 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

Saudi recruitment pipeline for "Al Qaeda" running at full capacity

 

Saudi recruitment pipeline for "Al Qaeda" running at fullcapacity

The Saudi government's support for "Al Qaeda" and its spin-offs is, once again, running at full capacity. In a little-publicized report from the Middle East, the Saudi government has been emptying its prisons of death row inmates, some jailed for drug smuggling and rape in the kingdom and destined for a beheading in Riyadh's infamous "Chop Chop Square," in return for their joining the "Jihad" in Syria. The Saudis held the families of the prisoners as hostages to ensure the released prisoners went to Syria to fight Assad. 

According to a report by the Assyrian International News Agency (AINA), the Saudi Interior Ministry commuted the death sentences of several inmates in return for their going to Syria to fight against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The CIA and Britain's MI-6 has been providing intelligence, weapons, and training to Jihadists, who have also been supplemented by Jihadists from Libya, armed by the CIA in the overthrow of Muammar Qaddafi. Shortly before his suspicious death in Scotland in 2005, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote in The Guardian that "Al Qaeda" was a CIA database of mercenaries, financiers, and interlocutors used by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan: "Throughout the 80s he [Osama bin Laden] was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally 'the database,' was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians."

It now appears that Al Qaeda and its spin-off Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have been revived to target not the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist in 1991, but former Soviet-supported Arab socialist governments throughout the Middle East: Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, South Yemen, Syria, and lastly, Algeria. In her testimony before Congress, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for the first time, admitted that the attack on the BP-Statoil-Sonatrach natural gas facility in Algeria involved Jihadists from Libya. These same Jihadists were involved in the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, in which four Americans, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed. The recent attack on the Algerian facility killed three Americans. A total of seven Americans, as well as foreigners and tens of thousands of Syrians and Libyans, have been killed as a result of the CIA and MI-6 operation to revitalize "Al Qaeda" as an effective fighting force in the Middle East. The CIA's support for Saudi Arabia's program to breathe new life into Al Qaeda goes a long way into explaining the secrecy surrounding the attack on the Benghazi compound and the gas plant in Algeria. Rather than pound Mrs. Clinton with questions about Benghazi, skeptical congressmen should hold their fire for incoming CIA chief John O. Brennan, President Obama's national security confidante and clandestine services veteran of the CIA. What did Brennan know about the Saudi program to supplement Al Qaeda forces in Syria and Libya and when did he know it?

The Al Qaeda presence in North Africa is being used to justify a massive buildup of U.S. military forces from Mauritania to Somalia.

The prisoners released from Saudi jails to fight in Syria against Assad, as well as to Libya to fight Qaddafi and Iraq to fight the Sh'ia government of Nouri al-Maliki, included Saudi nationals, as well as Iraqis, Yemenis, Palestinians, Sudanese, Jordanians, Afghanis, Syrians, Egyptians, Kuwaitis, Pakistanis, and Somalis.

This is not the first time that the Saudi Interior Ministry has been directly linked to Al Qaeda. On April 21, 2006, WMR reported: "Saudi informers have revealed that Al Qaeda members routinely traveled through Riyadh on their way to Pakistan and then to Taliban Afghanistan. These insiders report that Salman's [Governor of Riyadh Province Prince Salman] office arranged for cash payments, hotels, and air fares for the Al Qaeda members." Salman is now the Crown Prince, heir to the Saudi throne and Minister of Defense.

The authenticity of the Top Secret Saudi document [below] has been verified unofficially by the Saudi government and also by the governments of Yemen and Russia.

Translation of Saudi memo:

This is a document issued by
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia  Ministry of Interior  Follow-up	LOGO	Number: 71466/J/H  Attachments:  Date: 25/5/1433 H. [April /17/2012 AD]
	(Top Secret)
His Excellency General Suood Al-Thnayyan  The Classified [Secret] Office at the Ministry of Interior		May Allah protect him
Peace be upon you and Allah's mercy and blessings
In reference to the Royal Court telegram No. 112, dated on 04/19/1433 H [March 3, 2012], referring to those held in the Kingdom jails accused with crimes to which Islamic Sharia law of execution by sword [decapitation] applies, we inform you that we are in dialogue with the accused criminals who have been convicted with smuggling drugs, murder, rape, from the following nationalities: 110 Yemenis, 21 Palestinians, 212 Saudis, 96 Sudanese, 254 Syrians, 82 Jordanians, 68 Somalis, 32 Afghanis, 94 Egyptians, 203 Pakistanis, 23 Iraqis, and 44 Kuwaitis.  We have reached an agreement with them that they will be exempted from the death sentence and given a monthly salary to their families and loved ones, who will be prevented from traveling outside Saudi Arabia in return for rehabilitation of the accused and their training in order to send them to Jihad in Syria.  Please accept my greetings.  [Signed]  Director of follow up in Ministry of Interior  Abdullah bin Ali al-Rmezan  CC:  Authority of enforcement of the common good and prevention of forbidden  Copy for general intelligence

This is not the first time a classified document has pointed to the Saudi Interior Ministry as covering for drug dealers. When a Saudi Prince named Nayif was caught trafficking in cocaine in 1999, the Saudi Interior Ministry informed Paris in 2000 that if France brought criminal charges against Nayif, a lucrative $7 billion radar defense contract, Project SBGDP (Garde Frontiere), with the French firm Thales would be canceled. The details are found in the confidential French diplomatic cable obtained by WMR [below]. The cocaine trafficked by Nayif was being used to fund Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the cash paid to terrorist recruits passing through Riyadh was paid by the Interior Ministry from the drug proceeds coffers. The CIA was aware of and encouraged the off-the-books payments to the Al Qaeda recruits, just as it is doing today with the Al Qaeda recruits being emptied from Saudi prisons and paid by Saudi government interlocutors.

Obama’s inauguration, Rhetoric versus Reality. “I The People Still Believe in War”

 

Obama’s inauguration, Rhetoric versus Reality. “I The People Still Believe in War”

What does this new 'liberal vision' actually mean?

By Richard Becker

Global Research, January 23, 2013

Region: USA

President Obama’s second Inaugural Address, Jan. 21, Washington, D.C.

President Barack Obama’s second Inaugural Address has been greeted by much of the corporate media and his supporters as a new “liberal vision,” in the words of a New York Times headline.

But while much of the president’s rhetoric was progressive-sounding and strongly delivered, there was little actual content, and most of that was decidedly unprogressive and/or dishonest.

“A decade of war is now ending,” Obama stated. In fact, U.S. military attacks and interventions are continuing in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and other countries. Every Tuesday, there is a gathering in the White House where the president signs-off on the assassination-by- drone-missile of targeted individuals—and anyone who has the misfortune of being near them at the time of the strike—in a number of countries, none of which is actually at war with the U.S. .

While declaring that “We, the people, still believe that enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war,” Obama boasted that “America will remain the anchor of strong alliances in every corner of the globe.” The Pentagon continues to maintain 900+ bases on every continent. The U.S. military budget is larger than all other countries in the world combined! These are, in fact, the essential elements of perpetual war and empire.

In his speech, the president referenced “Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall,” seeking to present himself as a continuator of the historic movements for women’s, African American and LGBT equal rights. The advances of these movements have been the results of determined mass movements over decades and centuries.

Despite the reality that more immigrants have been deported during his administration than any other in history, Obama called for “bright young students and engineers” to be “enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country.”

Some passages of the speech seemed to come from a parallel universe. “We know that America thrives when every person can find independence and pride in their work, when the wages of honest labor will liberate families from the brink of hardship.”

In the real world United States of 2013, more than 23 million people are unemployed or severely underemployed. More than 146 million—or 48 percent of the population—is classified as low-income or living in poverty, a record. Real wages have been relentlessly driven down over the past three decades. When adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage now is worth 45 percent less than it was in 1968.

Yet, the word “poverty” was only mentioned twice in the speech, once in the past tense, “when twilight years were spent in poverty …” as if millions of elderly people are not today among the poor.

The other reference to poverty: “We are true to our creed when a little girl born into the bleakest poverty knows that she has the same chance to succeed as anybody else because she is an American, she is free, and she is equal ….” That may sound noble, but why not put forward a plan to end the “bleakest poverty” in this, the richest country in history?

Consistent with his first term record, the president advanced no proposals for how to address growing impoverishment, hunger and homelessness. None.

A strikingly deceptive paragraph in the speech read: “We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit.”

Translation: We believe everyone deserves security and dignity, so we will be cutting your health care benefits very soon to meet the demands of the big banks.

Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008 was an historic occasion in the history of a country blighted by extreme racism. It broke a 220-year streak of only white, northern European-descended males, nearly all wealthy, being allowed to occupy the highest elective office.

But regardless of who is elected, the job of U.S. president comes with a job description: CEO of the imperialist empire and protector of Corporate America.

Syria: A Jihadi Paradise by Pepe Escobar

So Bashar al-Assad hath martially spoken -- for the first time in seven months -- predictably blaming the Syrian civil war on "terrorists" and "Western puppets."  

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, he of the former "zero problems with our neighbors" policy, commented that Assad only reads the reports of his secret services. C'mon, Ahmet; Bashar may be no Stephen Hawking, but he's certainly getting his black holes right.  

Assad, moreover, has a plan: a national dialogue leading to a national charter -- to be submitted to a referendum -- and then an enlarged government and a general amnesty. The problem is who is going to share all this bottled happiness because Assad totally dismisses the new Syria opposition coalition as well as the Free Syrian Army (FSA), describing them as foreign-recruited gangs taking orders from foreign powers to implement one supreme agenda: the partition of Syria.   

Still, Assad's got a plan. First stage: all foreign powers financing the "terrorists" -- as in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Gulf Cooperation Council compound -- must stop doing so. That's already a major no-no. Only in a second stage would the Syrian Army cease all its operations, but still reserve the right to respond to any -- inevitable -- "provocation."  

Assad's plan does not mention what happens to Assad himself. The only thing the multiple strands of the opposition agree on is that "the dictator must go" before any negotiations take place. Yet he wants to be a candidate to his own succession in 2014.  

As if this was not a humongous "detail" torpedoing the whole construct of current UN mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, there's still the crucial nagging point of Brahimi insisting on including the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in a Syrian transitional government. Brahimi should know better. It's as if the UN was praying for a Hail Mary pass -- that is, Assad's voluntary abdication.  

This ain't Tora Bora

If you want to know what's really going in Syria, look no further than Hezbollah secretary-general Sheikh Nasrallah. He does tell it like it is.  

Then there's what Ammar al-Musawi, Hezbollah's number 3 -- as in their de facto foreign minister -- told my Italian colleaguem Ugo Tramballi. The most probable post-Assad scenario, if there is one, will be "not a unitary state, but a series of emirates near the Turkish border, and somebody proclaiming an Islamic state." Hezbollah's intelligence -- the best available on Syria -- is adamant: "one third of the combatants in the opposition are religious extremists, and two-thirds of the weapons are under their control." The bottom line -- this is a Western proxy war, with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) acting as a "vanguard" for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.  

Asia Times Online readers have already known this for eons, as much as they know about the tectonic-plates-on-the-move fallacy of GCC autocracies promoting "democracy" in Syria. While the geologically blessed House of Saud has bribed every grain of sand in sight to be immunized against any whiff of Arab Spring, at least in Kuwait the winds of change are forcing the Al-Sabah family to accept a prime minister who is not an emir's puppet. Yes, petromonarchs; sooner or later you're all going down.  

As for those who ignore Musawi, they do it at their own peril; blowback is and will remain inevitable, "like in Afghanistan." Musawi adds, "Syria is not Tora Bora; it's on the Mediterranean coast, close to Europe." Syria in the 2010s is the 1980s Afghan remix -- with exponential in-built blowback.  

And for those who blindly follow the blind in repeating that Hezbollah is a "terrorist" organization, Hezbollah is closely cooperating with the UN -- on the ground with over 10,000 blue helmets, under the command of Italian General Paolo Serra -- to keep southern Lebanon free from Syrian civil war contamination.  

The dictator has fallen -- again

Not surprisingly, that motley crew branded as the "Syrian opposition" rejected Assad en bloc. For the Muslim Brotherhood -- the self-styled power in waiting -- he is a "war criminal" who should go on trial. For Georges Sabra, the vice-president of that American-Qatari concoction, the National Coalition, Assad's words were a "declaration of war against the Syrian people."  

Predictably, the US State Department -- not yet under John Kerry -- said Assad was "detached from reality." London said it was all hypocrisy and immediately launched yet another "secret" two-day conference this week at Wilton Park in West Sussex mingling coalition members with the usual gaggle of "experts," academics, GCC officials and "multilateral agencies." The spectacularly pathetic UK Foreign Secretary William Hague twitted -- for the umpteenth time -- that "Assad's departure from power is inevitable."  

Facts on the ground though spell that Assad is not going anywhere anytime soon.  

As for British claims that "the international community can provide support to a future transitional authority," that doesn't cut much slack among war-weary informed Syrians -- who know this civil war has been funded, supplied and amply coordinated by the West, as in the NATO component of the NATOGCC compound.  

They smell a -- Western -- rat in the obsessive characterization of everything in Syria as a sectarian war, as they see how loads of influent Sunnis have remained loyal to the government.  

They smell a -- Western -- rat when they look back and see this whole thing started just as the US$10 billion Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline (crucially bypassing NATO member Turkey) had a chance to be implemented. This would represent a major economic boost to an independent Syria, an absolute no-no as far as Western interests are concerned.  

The Obama 2.0 administration -- and Israel -- would be more than comfortable with the MB in power in Syria, following the Egyptian modus operandi. The Brotherhood promotes the idea of a "civil state"; one just has to check the few "liberated areas" across Syria to detect rebel civility inbuilt in hardcore Sharia law and assorted beheadings.  

Yet what the NATOGCC compound and Israel really want is a Yemeni model for Syria; a military dictatorship without the dictator. What they're getting instead, for the foreseeable future, is Jihadi Paradise.  

Off with their heads   
Almost a year ago, al-Qaeda number one Ayman al-Zawahiri called on every Sunni hardcore faithful from Iraq and Jordan to Lebanon, Turkey and beyond to take a trip to Syria and merrily crush Assad.  

So they've kept coming, including -- just like in Afghanistan -- Chechens and Uyghurs and Southeast Asians, joining everything from the FSA to Jabhat al-Nusra, the number one killing militia, now with over 5,000 jihadis.  

A report published this week by the London-based counterterrorism outfit Quilliam Foundation confirms Al-Nusra's role. The lead author of the report, Noman Benotman, happens to be a former Libyan jihadi very cozy with al-Zawahiri and the late "Geronimo," aka Osama bin Laden.  

Al-Nusra is in fact the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the terrorist brand of late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also known as Islamic State of Iraq after Zarqawi was incinerated by a US missile in 2006. Even the State Department knows that AQI emir Abu Du'a runs both AQI and al-Nusra, whose own emir is Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani.  

It's AQI that facilitates the back-and-forth of Iraqi commanders -- with plenty of fighting experience on the ground against the Americans -- to sensitive areas in Syria, while the Syrians, Iraqis and Jordanians at al-Nusra also work the phones to extract funding from Gulf sources. Al-Nusra wants -- what else -- an Islamic State not only in Syria but all over the Levant. Favorite tactic: car and truck suicide bombings as well as remote-controlled car bombs. For the moment, they keep a tense collaboration/competition regime with the FSA. 

What happens next? The new Syrian National Coalition is a joke. Those GCC bastions of democracy are now totally spooked by the jihadi tsunami. Russia drew the red line and NATO won't dare to bomb; Russians and Americans are now discussing details. And sooner or later Ankara will see the writing on the wall -- and revert to a policy of at least minimizing trouble with the neighbors.
 
Assad saw The Big Picture -- clearly, thus his "confident" speech. It's now Assad against the jihadis. Unless, or until, the new CIA under Terminator John Brennan drones itself into the (shadow war) picture with a vengeance. 

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times. His regular column, "The Roving Eye," is widely read. He is an analyst for the online news channel Real News. He argues that the world has become fragmented into "stans" -- we are now living an intestinal war, an undeclared global civil war. He has published three books on geopolitics, including the spectacularly-titled “Globalistan: How the Globalised World Is Dissolving Into Liquid War”. 
His latest book is "Obama Does Globalistan."

SPECIAL REPORT: Israeli Spy Jonathan Pollard damage report reveals nuclear bombshell

January 8-9, 2013 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Pollard damage report reveals nuclear bombshell

Israeli and American Jews often brush aside the damage that convicted Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Pollard did to U.S. national security. However, the recent disclosure of formerly redacted pages in the Pollard Damage Assessment prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence's Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987 has revealed that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic near Prince Edward Islands. The unredacted damage assessment report also provides details of Pollard's espionage work for South Africa before or at the same time he was spying for Israel.

Pollard's joint espionage for Israel and South Africa point to him likely playing a role on providing faulty intelligence to upper intelligence echelons concerning the nuclear test.

The report describes Pollard's work in September 1979 in the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO). The report states: "He began work as an Intelligence Research Specialist assigned to the Naval Ocean Surveillance Information Center (NOSIC} of the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office in September 1979." The report also states that during the same month of the South African-Israeli nuclear test Pollard "admitted that he
had attended a clandestine meeting with the South African Defense Attache."

The report's description of Pollard's early association with South Africa at the same time Israel and the apartheid regime were cooperating on nuclear weapons development is as follows:

"The following factors that have come to light about his employment with the Navy indicate that Pollard was unsuited for access to sensitive. national security information:

-- False claims concerning professional qualifications. Pollard falsely stated on his naval employment application that he had a 'provisional' M.A. degree from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy. Moreover, in February 1980 during an interview with Task Force 168, the intelligence element charged with HUMINT collection, Pollard falsely
claimed to have an M.A. degree, to be proficient in Afrikaans, and to have applied for a commission in the naval reserve. Pollard made another, more farfetched statement to
his immediate supervisor in NOSIC: he said he had key South African contacts who could provide him with valuable information, and that he had known South African citizens
for many years because his father bad been the CIA Station Chief in South Africa."

The report also states: "Pollard claimed in a post-arrest debriefing that he had come
very close to volunteering to commit espionage while holding a conversation in Hebrew with the Israeli Naval Attache during a U.S.-Israeli intelligence exchange in 1983. Although it is not clear exactly when Pollard first began to consider espionage, we believe it was at least as early as 1980-81."

In July 1980, after the successful nuclear test the previous year and after Pollard and, presumably other Israeli moles, tainted U.S. intelligence into believing that the "flash" spotted on September 22, 1979 by orbiting U.S. VELA satellites was nothing more than a meteor entering the atmosphere, Pollard admitted he lied earlier about his contacts in South African intelligence.

The damage report's Executive Summary is surprisingly soft on Israel's use of Pollard as a spy. The summary states that Pollard's "short but intensive espionage career on behalf of Israel lasted from June 1984 until his arrest on 21 November 1985."  However, other sections of the report state that Pollard considered spying for Israel at least as early as 1980-81. Other parts of the report indicate that Pollard's espionage for both Israel and South Africa began much earlier and that even as a teen Pollard was a committed Zionist who placed loyalty to Israel above the United States, a lesson learned that was later ignored when the U.S. government security apparatus appointed card-carrying Zionists to top jobs in the Defense Department, Justice Department, and CIA.

Since his sentencing to life imprisonment on March 4, 1987, Pollard has seen one after another Israeli leader -- Yitzhak Shamir, Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, and Binyamin Netanyahu -- pressure the White House for a pardon and safe passage for Pollard to Israel. Netanyahu has even visited Pollard in the Butner Federal Correctional Institution in North Carolina, nicknamed "B'nai Butner" because it has its own kosher kitchen. In fact, Pollard has become a folk hero to many Israelis, an action that shows the true nature of Israel and its people as documented enemies of the United States and the American people.

Pollard was viewed as a security risk early on in his career but his protectors in the Naval Intelligence chain-of-command laughed off Pollard's sure signs of betrayal as due to "eccentricity." In 1983 and 1984, this editor was assigned computer security responsibilities for the Naval Telecommunication Command and Pollard's Special Security Officer (SSO) at the Naval Intelligence and Security Command in Suitland, Maryland personally told me about the trouble he was having in trying to convince his superiors that Pollard was a bona fide security risk. When I asked the SSO about details, he claimed that Pollard was always crying discrimination because he was Jewish. In fact, the Damage Report refers to Pollard's use of the anti-Semite canard to remain in his position and with his access to Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) left intact. The report states; "[Pollard] claimed he
developed a strong perception of anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues and of inadequate US intelligence support for Israel." The report fails to mention what many in the CIA and U.S.  intelligence knew in the aftermath of the 1983 terrorist bombing of the U.S. Marine Barracks in Beirut, that  Israel knew about the attack in advance and failed to warn U.S. commanders beforehand. In retrospect, Pollard was merely using his Jewishness to cover for his espionage for Israel.

The report also states that Pollard argued with his superiors over priorities. As a Naval Intelligence analyst Pollard Pollard wanted to concentrate on research related to the Middle East to the exclusion of littoral Africa.

The damage report cites Pollard's personal and employment history as "replete with incidents of irresponsible behavior that point to significant emotional instability." Yet, he continued to have his security access reinstated after repeated suspensions. U.S. intelligence sources have told WMR that Pollard had a protector high up in the Reagan administration, someone the Mossad code-named "Mega." There has been an ongoing debate on the identity of Mega for the past thirty years.

But only a high-level sponsor in the administration would have enabled Pollard to continue to have access to the most sensitive U.S. intelligence information, especially when considering that the damage report later concluded: "Despite his emotional and behavioral difficulties, Pollard managed to gain the respect of most of his superiors, as evidenced by his achievement of promotions from GS-07 to GS-12 over a six-year period."

The report also states that while a student at Stanford University, Pollard bragged about being a Mossad agent: "former student acquaintances told investigators that he bragged about his role as a Mossad agent and, on one occasion, waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him." Thus began Pollard's modus operandi: because he appeared crazy, there was no way Pollard could be a Mossad agent. Surely, the Mossad screened its agents and would drum out anyone with psychological problems. If anyone believed that, they fell right into the trap Mossad had cleverly laid.

Consider for a moment the following bizarre behavior exhibited by Pollard while he was with Navy intelligence: "After Pollard' a arrest, I [REDACTED] observed that Pollard's sometimes strange behavior -- including, inter alia, the telling of bizarre stories about his
adventures as a CIA agent in Syria and being captured and tortured by Syrian authorities -- had taken on new importance after his discovery and arrest, but noted further that the most important thing known about Pollard before his arrest was that he was an intelligent, energetic, and often productive analyst whose faults could be overlooked in light of his obvious value to the components to which he was assigned."

Pollard apparently did not fool the CIA. The report states: "Pollard in 1978 had been rejected for a CIA Graduate Fellowship." The reason given was Pollard's admission that he used marijuana, along with another reason that the report continues to withhold from disclosure.

The Damage Report states; "Pollard's success rested upon an academic background that included graduate study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, upon his considerable skills as an analyst, and upon deficiencies in administrative procedures and record-keeping -- since rectified --that allowed Pollard to change jobs without adverse aspects of his past performance coming to the attention of his new supervisors."

The report points to factors that any legitimate background investigation would have discovered about Pollard and which should have resulted in a veto of his security clearance. The report states; "Pollard claimed that he had begun dreaming about
future emigration to Israel at age 12 when that country won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967." The report adds, "another influence was his attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, which featured strong
encouragement to emigrate."

The Damage Report appears to have had competing sets of authors -- one group trying to emphasize the aggressive nature of Israeli intelligence targeting of the United States and the other trying to slough off Pollard's treason as relatively insignificant. On one hand, the report claims that Pollard began spying for Israel in 1984 but on the other it states that one of the Pollard family's old friends and "pro-Israeli activist" was closely linked to a top Israeli intelligence operative: "He [Pollard] eagerly seized an opportunity to volunteer his services to Israeli intelligence in late June 1984. At that time, Pollard met his initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviem Sella -- a noted fighter pilot on study leave in the United States --through a pro-Israeli activist, who was an old friend of the Pollard family."
Sella became Pollard's principal point of contact: "Pollard passed classified material to Sella concerning military developments in several Arab countries during at least three meetings, June-August 1984 . . . Pollard received initial, formal instruction from the Israelis during three days of operational planning and tasking 1984 sessions in Paris in November 1984. Here, Pollard met Rafael Eitan, advisor on counterterrorism to Prime Minister Shamir and the
senior Israeli in charge of the case, as well as Joseph Yagur, Counselor for Scientific Affairs at the Israeli Consulate in New York, who immediately replaced Sella as Pollard's direct handler. Pollard's initial monthly salary of $1,500 was agreed upon in [REDACTED].

The Israelis were clearly concerned that Pollard would soon be tripped up on a polygraph and urged him to resign before one could be administered. The report states that Pollard's primary task was "to provide Israel with the best available U.S. intelligence on Israel's Arab adversaries and the military support they receive from the Soviet Union. Eitan emphasized that Pollard should resign from naval intelligence rather than undergo a polygraph examination; we assume that Pollard at some point told the Israelis that his application for a graduate fellowship had been rejected by CIA."

The report contains several lengthy and unredacted descriptions of Pollard's espionage for the Jewish state and the timing of the most recent CIA declassification and disclosure, December 16, 2012, may have been agreed upon to point out Israel's duplicity with regard to the United States a few weeks prior to the political firestorm from mainly Jewish neo-conservatives upset about the nomination of former Republican senator Chuck Hagel from Nebraska as the next Secretary of Defense. The neo-con meme is that Hagel is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

The report states: "After returning from Paris, Pollard shifted his espionage into high gear. Beginning in/late January 1995, he made large biweekly deliveries of classified material, on every other Friday, to the apartment of Irit Erb, a secretary at the Israeli Embassy in
Washington. Pollard recalled that his first and possibly largest delivery occurred on 23 January and consisted of five suitcases full of classified material, and that he maintained the biweekly schedule -- interrupted only by a second operational trip abroad -- until his arrest in November 1995. Pollard also met Yagur at Erb's apartment on the last Saturday of each month to discuss additional taskings and the value of the intelligence he delivered. Pollard recalled that Yagur on at least two occasions indicated that selected items of his intelligence were known and appreciated by 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government.' Pollard's monthly salary was raised to $2,500 in February 1995 in appreciation for his productivity; and he made a second operational trip to meet his Israeli handlers in Tel Aviv in July-August 1995.

By the fall of 1985, Pollard's Navy supervisor had become suspicious of his activities because Pollard seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East and unrelated to Pollard's legitimate duties, which concerned North America and the Eastern Caribbean. An investigation ensued that led to Pollard being questioned by FBI and NIS officials beginning on 18 November and arrested on 21 November after an unsuccessful effort to gain asylum at the Israeli Embassy.

During post-arrest debriefings, Pollard said that if his espionage had remained undetected, he would have been inclined to seek a job with the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research because he would not have been required to undergo a polygraph and major intelligence products were readily available there. He also indicated he could have assumed a less risky role as an agent of influence at State."

It was this information that led some law enforcement investigators to believe that "Mega" held a high-level post in the State Department.

According to Pollard, Israel's laundry list for intelligence was extensive:

"According to Pollard, the Israelis submitted the following collection requirements, in descending order of priority, to Pollard:

-- Arab (and Pakistani) nuclear intelligence;
-- Arab exotic weaponry, including chemical and
weapons;
-- Soviet aircraft;
-- Soviet air defenses;
-- Soviet air-to-air missiles and air-to-surface missiles;
and
-- Arab order-of-battle, deployments, readiness, [REDACTED}

Eitan provided additional tasking for [REDACTED] material reporting "dirt" on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States [REDACTED]."

Eitan's request for "dirt" on Israeli officials was likely that collected by the CIA's agents in Israel, particularly inside the Israeli government. It was well-known by the CIA at the time that Netanyahu, as an example, was a fairly open homosexual from the time that he spent in Philadelphia, especially as a member of the Rittenhouse Square gay scene, to his start in Israeli politics. Later, U.S. government surveillance of Netanyahu placed him on numerous occasions at sado-masochistic gay theaters in Greenwich Village in New York.  In addition, the CIA amassed a great deal of "dirt" on the questionable financial activities of Sharon and his sons.

Continuing, the report states:

"We believe that Pollard responded effectively to the general Israeli taskings, but that he himself exerted the strongest influence on what was compromised by virtue of his own access, interests, and collection initiatives. U.S. investigators, with Pollard's assistance, identified the following categories and approximate numbers of compromised published documents, plus an estimated 1,500 current intelligence summary messages:

Special compartmented information (SCI)
Top Secret, non-codeword
Secret, non-codeword
Confidential
Unclassified and unknown classification

The Jewish media, upon the most recent disclosures in the Damage report, described Pollard as only providing information on the Soviet union and the Arab states, not on the United States. However, what the Jewish press conveniently ignores is that what Pollard provided to Israel was based on sensitive U.S. sources and methods, many inside Arab and eastern European governments. When the identities of these sources were determined by Pollard's disclosures, the Mossad approached them to accept one of two offers: either work for Mossad or their espionage for the United States would be conveyed to their own security services, with dire, if not fatal, consequences resulting. In any event, these U.S. intelligence sources were compromised and, therefore, "burned."

The paragraphs on Israel's intelligence gains from the Pollard disclosures are totally redacted but likely contain the aforementioned information gathered from U.S. intelligence sources at the time of Pollard's arrest.

The report does state: "The unauthorized disclosure to the Israelis of such a large and varied body of classified material poses risks of several kinds to US intelligence sources and methods, analytical capabilities and intelligence exchanges, and foreign-policy interests, including the possibility of extended compromise of some of Pollard's material to third countries."

The reference to "third countries" is particularly noteworthy. It is known that Israel traded some of the classified information provided to Pollard to the Soviet Union. In return, the Soviets agreed to increase the number of exit visas for Soviet Jews to emigrate to Israel. Some of these Jews only used Israel as a transit country because many eventually ended up in the United States.

Other excerpts of the report of interest include:

"Pollard's role in providing Israel with intelligence that assisted its planning for the 1985 raid on PLO headquarters near Tunis."

"Pollard's espionage has put at risk important U.S. intelligence and foreiqn-policy interests."

"Pollard granted a detailed, on-the-record interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer."

"Pollard showed additional evidence of emotional instability and ah obsession with helping Israel."

The following statement appears to have come right from the editorial offices of the Anti-Defamation League and bears no relation to other sections of the report about Pollard's failed loyalties to the United States:

"Jonathan Jay Pollard's childhood and adolescence were marked by material sufficiency, strong intellectual stimulation within a closely knit family, and some bruising experiences as a member of the Jewish-American minority growing up in Middle America. Born as the youngest of three children to Morris and Mildred Klein Pollard on 7 August 1954, Jonathan
Pollard spent his early childhood in Galveston, Texas, and his adolescence in South Bend, Indiana, where his father is a prominent virologist at the University of Notre Dame. The family has been strongly pro-American and also active in support of the State of Israel.  Jonathan Pollard indicated that he felt ethnically isolated in South Bend and was uncomfortable in an environment he perceived to be strongly anti-Semitic."

There are disturbing sections that call into question the loyalties of Pollard's family:

"In a Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing, Pollard wrote that 'the first flag I could recognize in my early youth was that of Israel and for years our family took quiet pride in my late uncle's decision to provide the fledgling Israeli Army in 1948 with military boots and medical supplies 'liberated' from the American Hospital in Paris, which he commanded at the time." Pollard also states in the memorandum, 'my parents never ceased in their
efforts to portray this land [USA] ... as a Godsend for Jews . . . '"

Pollard also related that "the first indication I had that life would be an agonizing struggle between competing values rather than one of coherent academic absolutes occurred when my family moved to Indiana, where I suddenly found myself confronting a community in which racism and bigotry were acceptable social practices. I was never able to establish friendships in my neighborhoods and was compelled to spend most of my time around the city's Hebrew Day School, where I felt at least physically safe and emotionally protected."

By Pollard's own admission, his dubious loyalties to the United States at an early stage should have barred his access to classified material:

"Pollard indicated that he already had begun fantasizing about future emigration to Israel when that state won a dramatic victory in the six-day war of June 1967. This event evidently made a lasting impression upon him; from then on he increasingly considered emigration to or other means to assist Israel. Another influence was Pollard's attendance in the summer of 1971 at a three-month science camp in Israel, sponsored by the Weizman Institute, which featured patriotic field trips and strong encouragement for young Jewish-Americans to emigrate to Israel."

Other red flags appeared in Pollard's background, any one of which was grounds to deny him a security clearance"

"Pollard's attendance at Stanford University from 1972-76 was marked both by significant academic achievement and signs of emotional instability. On the one hand, he graduated with a B.A. in political science, emphasizing national-security studies, with a grade point average of 3.5. On the other hand, after Pollard's arrest, former Stanford acquaintances alleged that he was involved in several bizarre incidents. They, for example, claim that he told them he worked for the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, and was being groomed to work for it within the United States Government. On another occasion, Pollard waved a pistol in the air and screamed that everyone was out to get him."
Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu is among the many religious and political leaders of Israel who have called for Pollard's release. Eliyahu gave the eulogy at the funeral of Jewish Defense League terrorist group founder Meir Kahane. Eliyahu also called the 2005 Indian Ocean tsunami "God's punishment" for Asian nations like India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia that refused to support Israel. He also said the life of one Israeli yeshiva student is worth more than the lives of 1,000 Arabs. U.S. political leaders refuse to condemn the vile hatred and racism that emanate from the mouths of Israel's top rabbis.

The report continues:

"Throughout his time at Stanford, Pollard apparently retained a fixation on emigrating to Israel or providing other direct assistance to Tel Aviv. He claims to have volunteered to work on a kibbutz during the Yom Kippur War in 1973 as part of a program to permit Israeli men to be transferred from the kibbutzim to the war fronts . . . his [Pollard's] volunteer group spent five frustrating days waiting for an El Al flight in Los Angeles before being told the need for had passed with Sharon's crossing of the Suez Canal."

Pollard's work history is provided in the report:

Pollard's Assignments and Security-Clearance Actions
With Naval Intelligence, 1979-85

September 1979             Research analyst, Naval Ocean Surveillance 
Information Center, Suitland, Maryland (merchant shipping analyst and watch
officer).

November 1979        
                                  Interim Top Secret clearance granted.
February 1980                                  Volunteer to Task Force 168 (TF-168), the
naval intelligence .element responsible for HUMINT collection; Pollard was assigned to
collect information from a South African defense attache.

April 1980                      Pollard temporarily reassigned to position in
Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC)-34 that did not require access to SCI material, owing to reservations concerning his emotional stability.


May 1980                      Assigned as Middle Eastern warship analyst, Free World Branch, NISC-33; SCI access
reinstated.

August 1980                  Association with TF-168 terminated owing to evidence of gross unreliability and recommendation by clinical psychologist that Pollard be assigned to non-sensitive duties. Top Secret clearance and SCI access suspended; Pollard reassigned as research ship analyst, NISC-34, pending fitness for duty evaluation by one of four cleared psychiatrists identified to Pollard by Commanding Officer, NISC.

April 1981                    Psychiatrist diagnosed Pollard as having a [REDACTED] but also
deemed him "thoroughly capable of handling the duties of his job and not a security
risk." The psychiatrist recommended further treatment, but Pollard did not seek or
receive any.

January 1982               Reinstatement of Pollard's Top Secret clearance and SCI access ordered by Commander, Naval Intelligence Command (NIC).

February 1982.            Pollard returned from NISC-34 to assignment as Middle East warship analyst in NISC-33.

June 1984                  Began temporary duty with Anti-Terrorist
Alert Center (ATAC), Naval Investigative Service (NIS); worked rotating shift as
watchstander.

October 1984             Permanently assigned to ATAC, NIS, as analyst responsible for assessing terrorist activities, narcotics traffic, and instability in North America and Eastern
Caribbean. Remained in this assignment until arrest.

Task Force 168 worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency on overt human intelligence collection operations. It was closed down in October 1991. Before he was arrested, Pollard tried to reapply for a position with TF-168. The report states: "Pollard, surprisingly, once again sought to be assigned or detailed to TF-168 despite his
previous problems with that component. He arrived late and disheveled for an applicant interview and offered a preposterous explanation, to the effect that the Irish Republican Army had kidnapped his wife and he had spent the weekend getting her released."

Pollard's time with TF 168 was rife with signs that he was a hostile intelligence agent. The report states:

"-- Adverse record with Task Force-168. Pollard repeatedly violated his instructions -- for example, by attending meetings against orders and disclosing classified information without authorization -- during his assignment to collect intelligence on Soviet naval activities in the South Atlantic from a South African defense attache. Pollard's superiors quickly developed misgivings concerning his erratic behavior and then learned he had lied about his qualifications and disclosed classified information to the South African attache without authorization.* As a result of his unacceptable behavior, Pollard was examined by a clinical psychologist, who described Pollard as grandiose and manipulative. The psychologist felt that the risk of unintentional compromise of information, but not espionage, by Pollard was high. He recommended therapy and assignment to nonsensitive duties.

* The TF-168 collection operation was converted to counterintelligence case "Operation swan Song," under the auspices of NIS, in July 1980, for the purpose of clarifying Pollard's activities. Operation Swan Song was terminated in early August following Pollard's admissions, noted above, and a determination that further investigation would be unproductive.

-- Lifestyle Problems. Pollard experienced intermittent financial difficulties and behavioral problems, and the post-arrest investigation turned up allegations of drug abuse. Pollard's rent check was returned owing to insufficient funds in March 1983, and he was late paying
rent due in December 1993, and March and April 1984. In May 1984, he borrowed money from a co-worker and over the next few months bounced several checks attempting to repay it. In July 1984, a letter of indebtedness from the Navy Federal Credit Union reported that Pollard was delinquent in repaying a $4,175.00 loan. Meanwhile, Pollard and his fiancee Anne Henderson allegedly used marijuana and cocaine occasionally at parties in the Washington area from 1982-84. In late 1983, an anonymous telephone caller informed a NISC official that Pollard had been observed in an altercation in a bar in Georgetown and had identified himself as an intelligence analyst during the incident.

In post-arrest debriefings, Pollard claimed that what he perceived to be anti-Israeli attitudes among his colleagues in naval intelligence contributed to his decision to commit espionage for Israel. For example, Pollard claimed that the U.S. delegation to a US-Israeli scientific and technological intelligence-exchange conference, which he attended in 1982, failed to follow established disclosure guidance by withholding information releasable to Israel. Pollard also claimed he overheard comments from U.S delegates that he viewed as either anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic.

Pollard claimed that another key contributing factor was his concern and frustration over the inadequate U.S. reaction following the bombing of the U.S. Marine headquarters in Beirut in October 1983. Pollard rationalized that if the U.S. Government were unwilling to take effective countermeasures to protect its own interests in Lebanon, then it might be unwilling or unable to provide Israel with adequate assistance in the event of critical need. Pollard stated he 'walked out of the memorial service [for the Marines] committed to doing something that would guarantee Israel's security even though it might involve a degree
of potential risk and personal sacrifice.'

Pollard stated that in the fall of 1983 he made a final decision to assist Israel through espionage, and he soon sought means to initiate the activity. He thought initially that he would need an associate to act as an intermediary with the Israelis. Accordingly, Pollard -- accompanied by Anne Henderson -- in the spring of 1984 approached [REDACTED] a friend who worked [REDACTED] with a proposal for an ill-defined effort to aid Israel.

Pollard's access to classified information and, according to Pollard, would have known intuitively that Pollard would welcome an opportunity to provide classified material to the Israeli Government. In late June 19841 shortly after Pollard was detailed to the Naval Investigative Service's newly-created Anti-Terrorist Alert Center (ATAC), Pollard received a phone call from [REDACTED] who wanted Pollard to meet a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer. [REDACTED] stated this officer had been involved in the 'raid on the reactor,' which Pollard understood to be the October 1981 Israeli air raid on the Osirak nuclear facility in Iraq. Pollard claims he immediately viewed this proposal as an opportunity for him to volunteer his services to Israel. A few days later, Pollard was telephoned at his residence by "Avi," who introduced himself as a friend of [REDACTED] and arranged to meet with Pollard in Washington.

Pollard said his initial meeting with Col. Aviem Sella* occurred a week to 10 days after Sella's initial phone call. They met at a bar in the Washington Hilton Hotel [REDACTED]
---
*Sella is not an intelligence careerist but a highly successful fighter pilot who was being groomed for senior rank with the expectation that he eventually might become Chief of staff of the Israeli Air Force. Sella's official reason for residency in the United States in 1984 was his pursuit of a doctorate in computer sciences at New York University while on study leave from the Israeli Air Force.

intelligence information to Israel. Speaking in Hebrew, Pollard described his job at the ATAC and his extensive access to classified material both in the center and elsewhere in the US
Intelligence Community. While Sella seemed skeptical that security could be as lax as Pollard described, he identified the general targets of his collection efforts -- the Soviet Union and Arab States. Sella emphasized that Israel would not request information on US military capabilities, then told Pollard that he wanted to see an example of the material he could provide. Sella suggested that Pollard obtain classified documents on Saudi Arabia and Soviet air-defense systems, as well as photographs of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility.

Sella established a secure procedure for setting up future clandestine meetings. He directed that Pollard obtain a listing of several pay telephones within a few blocks of his
residence, also located near the Hilton Hotel. Once this was accomplished, Sella assigned a Hebrew letter to each number and explained that he would call Pollard at his residence, mention a Hebrew letter, and thereby direct Pollard to a particular pay telephone to await an operational telephone call.

Using this procedure, Sella contacted Pollard within a few days to arrange a second meeting for the purpose of viewing and evaluating the information requested at the first.
After again making contact at the Hilton, Sella drove Pollard to a secluded outdoor location near Dumbarton Oaks. Pollard had brought a briefcase full of classified documents for Sella's review, including a three-volume study of Saudi Arabian military forces, a [REDACTED] study of Saudi ground forces' logistics, and [REDACTED] satellite imagery of the bomb-damaged Iraqi nuclear facility. Sella commented that the material was much better than what was currently available in Israel and would be of great assistance to his country.

A third meeting with Sella was scheduled for the purpose of copying all material collected to date. In the week or so between the second and third meetings, Pollard assembled
information from the National Security Agency, including daily Middle East and North African Summaries and a study on Egyptian air defenses. He also screened and obtained numerous us·defense attache reports from embassies in various Arab countries.

The meeting began at a Holiday Inn in Bethesda, Maryland, and proceeded by car via a circuitous route to a residence on Deborah Street in Potomac, Maryland. Subsequent investigation identified the Deborah Street residence as the house of Ilan Ravid, Attache for Scientific Affairs of the Israeli Embassy in Washington. Pollard saw a man in the house whom he identified during subsequent investigation as similar in appearance to Ravid.

During the third meeting, Sella informed Pollard that he would have to travel to Europe -- Paris was agreed upon -- to meet the Israeli intelligence official in charge of the
operation. Pollard was told to make his own travel arrangements and charge the expense to a credit card, as he would be reimbursed after arriving in Paris. Anne Henderson, to whom Pollard had become engaged in July 1994, was to accompany Pollard, but the Israelis did not want her to know the true purpose of the trip. To assist Pollard in explaining how he could afford such a 'vacation,' Pollard and Sella created a fictitious 'Uncle Joe Fisher' who was paying for the trip as an engagement present. Sella also told Pollard to arrange for him to meet Henderson socially so that she could see a familiar face in Paris; Pollard, Henderson, Sella, and his wife met subsequently for dinner at the Four Ways Restaurant in
Washington, D.C. Finally, Sella told Pollard to bring his latest Navy leave-and-earnings statement to Paris for examination by Israeli Intelligence officers, so that they might use it as a basis for establishing payment for his espionage.

Meetings between Pollard and his Israeli handlers on 8, 9, and 10 November in Paris essentially completed Pollard's assessment and recruitment and prepared him to undertake the most productive period of his espionage career. Several important developments occurred during the meetings:

-- Pollard met Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, a senior career official in Israeli intelligence, former adviser on counterterrorism to the Israeli Prime Minister, and the person in charge of the operation.
-- Direct handling of Pollard in the United States was transferred from Sella to Joseph (Yossi) Yagur,  Counselor for Scientific Affairs, Israeli Consulate New York; Eitan and Yaqur warned Pollard against further operational contact with Sella.
-- Yaqur and Eitan provided initial, detailed taskings on the intelligence Pollard was to obtain. Yagur emphasized that Pollard should seek military and scientific intelligence on Arab States, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union in its role as military patron of the Arabs. Eitan requested the only specific document mentioned at the Paris meetings, the 'RASIN Manual,' which he could only describe as a document concerning signals intelligence. Eitan also requested information on PLO Force 17, material reporting 'dirt' on Israeli political figures, any information that would identify Israeli officials who were providing information to the United States, and any information on U.S. intelligence operations targeted against Israel.

In addition to conveying operational instructions and taskings, Eitan used the Paris meetings to test and strengthen Pollard's motivation. Eitan presented a formal, highly alarmist briefing to Pollard on the Middle East situation, which described how Israel could be quickly overrun by a Syrian attack. He emphasized that Israel faced a 'technological Pearl Harbor' [where did that phrase appear again? Of course, it was the 'electronic Pearl Harbor" used by the neo-cons to help set the stage for the 9/11 attacks] and badly needed access to the material Pollard could provide. In his debriefings, Pollard commented that the presentation was calculated to strengthen his commitment to the espionage operation, and it was accompanied by a 'ceremony' wherein he was 'sworn in' as an Israeli citizen.

During the post-arrest interviews, Pollard recalled an additional meeting at the Deborah Street residence in Potomac sometime between his return to the United States and the January 1985 meeting -- probably in December 1984. Pollard recalled that the purpose of that meeting was to pick up the ring for Henderson and the 'Uncle Joe Fisher' letter. Yagur also told Pollard that this meeting and all future meetings would be in an apartment on
Van Ness Street, N.W. in Washington, D. C. Pollard received a key to the apartment at that time.

The biweekly drop schedule and monthly face-to-face meetings with Yagur at Erb's apartment continued up to the time of Pollard's initial questioning by NIS and FBI personnel in November 1985. He made his last drop on Friday, 15 November. The only interruption in the routine occurred during Pollard's second and last operational trip overseas in July and August 1985. During this trip, Pollard met with Eitan and Yagur in Tel Aviv and married Anne Henderson in Venice, Italy.

The Israelis warmly praised Pollard's productivity during his first operational meeting in Tel Aviv. Pollard and Yagur met with Eitan in a secure area of the Beilinson Hospital in Tel Aviv, where Eitan was recuperating from eye surgery. Eitan reviewed a computerized listing that Pollard believed contained all the material provided to date. Eitan complimented him on the material, stating that it had been crucial to the security of Israel and had far exceeded
expectations.

Pollard claimed to investigators that he again expressed concern about what would happen to his wife and himself if his espionage was detected. Eitan again assured him that no
drastic action would be taken by the United States. He also repeated his pledge that Israel would take care of Pollard; and informed Pollard that in addition to his salary, Israel was
setting up a Swiss bank account for him, into which Israel would deposit $30,000 per year. Pollard was to continue his espionage for Israel for 10 years, after which Pollard and his
immediate family would emigrate to Israel. He could then use the projected $300,000 to establish himself in his new homeland. The Swiss account would be in the name of 'Danny Cohen,' which would be Pollard's Israeli identity. Eitan commented further that Israeli passports would be prepared for the Pollards.

By the fall of 1985, the ATAC officer-in-charge (OIC) had become auspicious of Pollard's activities because he seemed to be handling large amounts of classified material concerning the Middle East that was unrelated to his legitimate area of concern, North America and the Caribbean. The ore began to monitor more closely Pollard's activities. on 25 October 1985, one of Pollard's co-workers notified the ore that he had seen Pollard apparently removing classified material from the center without authorization. The ore verified that Pollard had removed the material and informed the Counterintelligence Directorate of the Naval Investigative Service. N!S opened an investigation of Pollard and notified the FBI. Pollard was observed removing additional classified material during the
NIS/FBI investigation.

On 18 November 1985, FBI and NIS agents confronted and questioned Pollard for the first time as he left the ATAC building in Suitland, Maryland. They found classified material in Pollard's possession for which he had no authorization to remove from the building. Pollard at first claimed to be delivering the material to another U.S. intelligence organization. Once this story broke down, he alleged that the information was destined for a journalist contact, Kurt Lohbeck, who was interested in helping the Afghan Mujahidin. ([Lohbeck died in 2010. His obituary in the Albuquerque Journal stated that Lohbeck was "a radio and television announcer and news director, a congressional consultant to the U.S. House Interior Committee, an aide for then New Mexico Congressman Manuel Lujan, a NM legislator, a CBS war correspondent covering Afghanistan for ten years during the Soviet invasion, an author (Holy War, Unholy Victory), an expert witness regarding Afghan refugees seeking political asylum, a founder and member of the board of a local bank, founder and president of the regional chapter of the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), and a member of LA's Magic Castle and London's Magic Circle.'] Lohbeck was also a cog in the support network for the Afghan mujaheddin that was featured in the book and movie "Charlie Wilson's War.")

The report provides additional information on Lohbeck and Pollard: "Pollard and Lohbeck had met on a number of occasions to discuss Middle Eastern, Soviet-Afghan, and arms-transfer issues. Lohbeck was a pro-Mujahidin lobbyist, who maintained contacts with Afghan guerrilla leaders as well as US and Pakistani government officials."
The Jewish media concluded Pollard did not jeopardize U.S. national security by spying for Israel. Tell that to crews who flew on the RC-135 (above), the Air Force planes that flew ferret SIGINT and ELINT missions along the Soviet and Chinese coasts. Pollard sold the Israelis the store on RC-135 operations and Israel passed some of the intelligence on to the Soviets in return for more Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel.

In what could be the most damning part of the report, the FBI gave Israel enough time to exfiltrate Pollard's handlers from the United States. The report states: "[During] the three-day period of questioning by NIS and FBI investigators, Pollard alerted Yagur by telephone and volunteered false information to investigators thereby giving Yagur, Erh,. and Sella time to flee the country. Pollard was placed under 24-hour FBI/NIS surveillance on 19 November with the two-fold objectives of identifying his real contacts and preventing his escape from the United States. Pollard and his wife were arrested by the FBI on the morning of 21 November after a security officer at the Israeli Embassy refused to allow them entry into the building. Probably, Yagur, Sella, and Erb already had left the United States."

Wolf Blitzer played an unusual role in the Pollard case. The report states: "While his cooperation in debriefings was most helpful to government investigators, Pollard's willingness to grant an interview to journalist Wolf Blitzer for The Jerusalem Post without obtaining advance approval of the resulting text from the Justice Department violated the terms of his plea bargain. In the Blitzer interview, which was held on 20 November 1986 at Petersburg Federal Penitentiary, Pollard provided extensive information on his motives and objectives in conducting espionage for Israel. He also provided Blitzer a general account, with some important examples,* of intelligence he passed to the Israelis and emphasized that the Israeli Government must have been aware of and have approved of his activities. The interview, first published in excerpted segments in The Jerusalem Postover several months, was replayed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Anne Henderson-Pollard followed up with her own commentary on the case in an unauthorized interview on '60 Minutes' on 1 March 1987, just three days before the Pollards were sentenced.

* Pollard told Blitzer he gave the Israelis "intelligence on PLO headquarters in Tunis, Iraqi and Syrian chemical warfare production facilities, Soviet arms shipments to Syria and other Arab states, Pakistan's nuclear program, and the US Intelligence Community's assessment of a new Soviet fighter."
The U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv (above) bristles with intercept antennas on its roof. The Israelis wanted Pollard to pass on intelligence on what kind of "dirt" the U.S. had on Israeli political leaders and the identities of Israeli informants for U.S. intelligence, called "rats" by the Israelis.

This publicity, which the Pollards apparently hoped would mobilize sympathy and support from the Israeli Government as well as from within the American Jewish community, backfired on both them and on the Israelis.

Israeli discomfiture had been heightened by the U.S. indictment in February 1987 of Pollard-recruiter Col. Aviem Sella and then by the sharp US reaction to Sella's appointment as Commander of Israel's Tel Nof airbase. Although the official Israeli Government investigation announced on 11 March and completed in late May was legally toothless and did not yield findings of complicity on the part of Israeli cabinet officials in the affair, adverse publicity and political pressure forced Sella's resignation from the Tel No£ post.

Nonetheless, Israeli media commentaries and public opinion polls also suggest that many Israeli citizens regard Pollard as an Israeli patriot and believe that their government should have assisted him once he was caught. Moreover, Sella retains his status as an Israeli national hero and his colonelcy in the Israeli Air Force.

In addition to running operations against the Arabs, the Israeli services have high interest in collecting political, economic, and scientific intelligence about the Soviet bloc, the
United States, and the United Nations, whose policy decisions could have repercussions on Israel. Tel Aviv's program for accelerating its technological, scientific, and military development has included attempts to penetrate classified defense [REDACTED but likely refers to U.S. defense contractors. A number of NSA and National Reconnaissance Office programs were compromised in the 1980s by Israeli contractors who received classified information from Jewish American defense contractor engineers and scientists. A particularly damaging compromise occurred in RCA in New Jersey in 1985, the same year Pollard was arrested. Jewish RCA engineers turned over classified information to Israeli engineers working on a firewalled signals intelligence program code named DINDI. The entire program was shut down as a result of the compromise but FBI agents in New Jersey were instructed not to pursue criminal investigations of Jewish American engineers. Another sensitive NSA program, code-named PIEREX, was also compromised to Israeli engineer spies].

Two of Pollard's three handlers, Col. Aviem Sella and Joseph Yagur, emphasized that Pollard should obtain military and technical intelligence on the Soviet Union, Arab states, and Pakistan. The Israelis wanted to be informed of technological advances in Arab military inventories; for example, they wanted Pollard to provide them with information on Soviet reactive-armor technology and on advanced Soviet SAM systems so they could prepare for their appearance in Arab inventories.

Yagur. expressed .interest in intelligence regarding all Middle Eastern countries, which he defined as ranging from Morocco to Pakistan and from Lebanon to the Yemens [REDACTED and REDACTED], Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Algeria, and Pakistan. Pollard also was to
provide indications-and-warning support for the Israelis by contacting them via an emergency telephone number and using a code word, later designated as '20 percent,' if he learned that war in the Middle East was imminent.

[Eitan] asked for information on the PLO's Force 17, CIA psychological studies or other
intelligence containing 'dirt' on senior Israeli officials; information identifying the 'rats' in Israel, by which Eitan apparently meant Israelis who provided information to the United
States.

As the espionage operation accelerated following the Paris meeting, Yaqur extended and refined the Israeli requirements at meetings held monthly with Pollard. During a discussion which accompanied Pollard's first large delivery of classified material on 23 January 1985, Yagur repeated a request that Eitan had made in Paris for the 'RASIN' (Radio Siqnal
Notation) manual. Yagur showed Pollard the first chapter of the manual, which identified it as an NSA document. Yagur told Pollard that Israel had gained access to the communications of the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus and needed the RASIN manual to determine if it were technically feasible to decrypt the signals.

Examples included requests for information on 'CERES,' which Yagur thought was a Syrian research and development facility; data on Syrian remotely piloted vehicles; information on the Ramona ELINT system in Syria, the numbers and locations of all Soviet advisors in Syria; information on the national-level command, control, and communications center in Damascus; the identities of Syrian units with attached Soviet advisors; and all training programs for Syrian personnel in the USSR. Yagur also requested medical intelligence on the health of Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad.

Pollard also received specific requests for intelligence on Egypt and on the Egyptian connection with an Argentinian missile program. Yagur asked for a specific, Egyptian study on the Israeli Air Force and a Westinghouse Corporation study on Egyptian air defenses, neither of which Pollard was able to obtain. Yagur also made a high-priority request for information on the Argentine-Egyptian Condor missile program. DIA documents on the Condor, which Pollard obtained and provided, filled an important gap in Israeli strategic intelligence, according to Yagur. Pollard claimed he later saw an Israeli intelligence report based on his information.

In June or July 1995; Yaqur asked Pollard for all available information on PLO headquarters outside Tunis and on Libyan and Tunisian air defenses. Following the Israeli air attack on the headquarters on 1 October 1985 -- according to Pollard--Yaqur said a contingency plan had been developed and executed based upon Pollard's information. Pollard claimed that Yaqur passed thanks from 'the highest levels of the Israeli Government' for his intelligence support for the raid.

In the absence of an Israeli request, Pollard initiated the delivery of three daily intelligence summaries, prepared by the National Security Agency and by Naval Intelligence and issued by the originators in message format, which the Israelis found useful and asked to receive routinely. These were the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS); and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary (I.O. Littoral Intsum.) Pollard claims to have provided copies of each
summary from mid-July 1994 until a few days before his arrest on 21 November 1985, which would yield a total of roughly 1,500 messages. As an example of their importance to the Israelis, Pollard recalled that Yagur once chided him for missing one day out of a month's collection of MELOS messages. Pollard claims the Israelis used the MENAS to identify new units in Arab orders-of-battle.

Pollard recalled that on two occasions--dates not remembered -- he delivered information on an emergency basis, for warning purposes. In one instance he alerted Yagur that the Soviet T-72M main battle tank had entered the Syrian inventory. On the other occasion he provided information on an impending terrorist truck bombing attack. According to Pollard, the CIA had warned Israel of an impending attack that would occur during the coming week, but had offered no supporting details. Pollard said he found information explaining that the terrorists had planned to use a truck with stolen French diplomatic plates. As a result of his information, Pollard said, the Israelis were able to foil the attack."

Pollard also gave Israel intelligence on:

"-- The State Department's position on Taba, a small disputed area on the Egyptian-Israeli border
-- 'Granite' and 'Have' programs, which involve U.S. exploitation of foreign materiel."

[Note: Granite was a U.S. Army Foreign Science and Technology Center foreign material exploitation program. It ended in 1992. Have was a series of Air Force compartmented intelligence programs that extended beyond exploitation of foreign material to SIGINT and other areas (Have Union RC-135 SIGINT missions, Have Void bunker buster project, Have Glib exploitation of foreign ordnance, Have Crow tactical electronics warfare system, Have Cook Air Force HUMINT collection on C3 systems, Have Flex airborne lasers, Have Quick frequency hopping and anti-jamming communications, and Have Blue stealth fighter development]. The Jewish media reports that Pollard did not provide intelligence on U.S. weapons systems is patently false. Stealth technology and bunker busters were highly-classified programs at the time of Pollard's espionage.]

"Pollard said he provided at his own initiative a DIA study that concluded Syria had a less-than-even chance of retakinq the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in a surprise attack.

Yagur questioned Pollard about the Middle East Arms Transfer (MEAT) Working Group, a State Department-chaired interagency committee that coordinates military-hardware sales to that region, and asked if Pollard could join it.

Pollard's deliveries concerning PLO headquarters near Tunis, Tunisian and Libyan air defenses, and Pakistan's plutonium reprocessing facility near Islamabad.

Pollard told investigators that Joseph Yagur informed him that the RASIN manual permitted Israel to begin the process of attempting to monitor a communications link between the Soviet General Staff in Moscow and the Soviet military assistance group in Damascus, Syria.

Apart from supporting Israeli actions or positions that could harm US relations with friendly Arab states, Pollard's activities have caused some Arab countries to raise unwelcome questions or make critical observations about U.S. evenhandedness
in its Mideast policies.

The Damage report provides a chronology of Pollard's life:

Jonathan Jay Pollard: A Chronology o£ Events

7 August 1954   Born in Galveston, Texas.
1961                Family moved to South Bend, Indiana; father employed asvirologist at Notre Dame University. Pollard complained in pre-sentencing affidavit that the community generally was unfriendly to Jews.June 1967         Pollard indicated in pre-sentencing affidavit that Israel's dramatic victory in the six-day war made a profound and lasting impression upon him.
Summer 1971    Pollard attended Weizman Institute Science Camp in Israel, which extolled Zionism and encouraged emigration to Israel.
1972-1976       Attended Stanford University; graduated with BA in Political Science. GPA 3.5. Displayed first known signs of emotional instability.

The report states that Pollard should have been identified as a security risk at a very early stage: "Pollard's adverse performance record with TF-168 and other manifestations of irresponsibility during his employment with naval intelligence should have been highlighted in his personnel file and been readily available to naval intelligence components (as well as any other intelligence agencies) considering him for reassignment or interagency transfer. Pollard's frequent removal of large numbers of documents from his workspace should have aroused the suspicion of his supervisor and colleagues much sooner despite complicating factors such as flextime (permission for employees to work odd hours) and Pollard's possession of a 'courier card' that afforded him unrestricted permission to transport classified material among DoD facilities. A related factor was that most of the documents Pollard stole were unrelated to his job as a terrorism analyst for North America and the Caribbean. Pollard's acquisition of such documents therefore, constituted a gross violation of the need-to-know principle."

The report's most important recommendation was for the Attorney General to stop treating Israel as a non-hostile ally. The report states: "Israel's absence from the Attorney General's list of 'criteria countries' -- meaning that the U.S. Counterintelligence posture against Israel is not especially high -- points to a need for remedial action. Israel's special relationship with the United States appears to preclude that coutnry's placement on the 'criteria country' list."
The Jewish media called the release of the Pollard Damage Report a vindication for Israel because Pollard didn't hand over classified information on U.S. military or intelligence capabilities. The Jewish media's contention is a not-too-clever lie. By exposing America's sensitive intelligence sources and methods, such as the ability of an NSA outstation on Masirah island off of Oman (above), to gather electronic intelligence from surrounding nations, Pollard placed it and countless other intelligence-gathering operations in extreme jeopardy.

Had the United States adopted a strong counterintelligence stance against Israel in 1987, it is doubtful that Israel would have been able to carry out its various terrorist missions in the United States -- from the Oklahoma City federal building bombing to the 9/11 attacks. Thousands of American would be alive today if the FBI and Justice Department had decided to declare persona non grata a few Israeli spies and deny a few card-carrying Zionists security clearances and sensitive positions in the U.S. government.

There is an interesting side story to the pollard treason and it is germane as the Senate argues over Hagel's nomination to be Defense Secretary. In 1975, a Republican conservative congressman from Virginia, Robert Daniel, Jr., a former CIA employee, asked the CIA to provide him with information on Mossad, as well as three other intelligence services, those of France, West Germany, and China -- seen as threats to U.S. national security.

After Daniel's request, his political career began to sink like the Titanic. Ironically, Daniel's banker father, Robert Daniel, Sr., was returning from a trip to Europe in 1912. The elder Daniel survived his voyage on the ill-fated RMS Titanic and went on to be elected to the Virginia Senate. As far as Daniel, Jr., the whispering campaign began that he was asking too many questions about Mossad's activities in the United States. Daniel was actually trying to defend the policy of keeping the U.S. intelligence budget classified in an era when the intelligence community had come under incessant attack for its abuses of power at home and abroad. A Confidential CIA Office of Legislative Counsel memo dated October 1, 1975, states that Daniel wanted the information on Mossad to argue against an amendment by Rep. Robert Giaimo (D-CT) to make the intelligence budget public. Daniel believed that such information in the hands of Mossad, the West German BND, the Chinese Kung An Po, and the French SDECE would pose a national security threat to the United States.

But for the Jewish Lobby, and we will call it that because its interests extend far beyond the borders of Israel, Daniel had to go. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) began grooming a Jewish Democratic member of the Virginia House of Delegates, Norm Sisisky, to challenge Daniel, a member of an old Virginia plantation family. In 1982, Sisisky defeated Daniel 54 to 46 percent and, as a freshman, was appointed to serve on four major Armed Services Committee subcommittees, including Military Nuclear Systems and Strategic and Critical Materials. Sisisky also was named to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. An ardent Zionist who represented a 40 percent African American district, Sisisky once missed an important civil rights bill vote because it thought it more important to attend his grandson's bar mitzvah at Jerusalem's Western Wall. Sisisky was the president of his Petersburg conservative synagogue and the Virginia United Jewish Appeal, which provided financial aid to Israel. Sisisky, a leader of the Blue Dog Democrats, was one of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress.

In 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin informed President Bill Clinton that Pollard attempted to pass classified information to Israel in 14 letters he wrote from prison. Aspin strongly argued against presidential clemency. Aspin lasted only eleven months as Defense Secretary and he died from a sudden stroke in 1995 at the age of 56. Later, in 1998, CIA director George Tenet threatened to resign if Clinton decided to include Pollard's release as part of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

If it is "anti-Semitic" to place the interests of the United States ahead of those of Israel, so be it. Those who are challenging Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel because he values America's interests over those of Israel should have their own loyalty to America questioned. And if that includes opening up criminal investigations of a few sitting senators and representatives, along with a few Israeli-owned journalists and lobbyists, so be it also.

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• June 9, 2008 -- Modus operandi of a pre-9/11 Israeli "art student" revealed
• November 6, 2008 -- Obama faced with security problem at outset of transition process
• April 25-27, 2008 -- The Kadish-Pollard spy affair grows in scope
• December 29-31, 2008 -- SPECIAL REPORT. Intelligence and blackmail of U.S. politicians
• October 2, 2008 -- Israeli-Saudi intelligence cooperation detailed in new reports
• July 14, 2008 -- FBI dive team ordered away from USS Cole attack site
• Sept. 24, 2007 -- SPECIAL REPORT -- "Lost" B-52 nuke cruise missiles were on way to Middle East for attack on Iran
• November 28, 2007 -- They're back! Israeli art students once again active in the United States
• December 5, 2005 -- Venezuelan oil pipeline suspiciously sabotaged shortly before election boycotted by U.S.-backed opposition
• May 20, 2008 -- Carnaby had access inside the Israeli Prime Minister's office
• June 20-22, 2008 -- U.S. government funded Mossad 9/11-related moving firm
• October 24, 2006 -- US Air Force official's past raises eyebrows
• June 9, 2008 -- Gates names Gen. Norton Schwartz Air Force Chief of Staff
• September 19-21, 2008 -- A suspicious cell in the Pentagon linked to Air Force rival chain-of-command
• May 14, 2008 -- SPECIAL REPORT. CIA agent kept Mossad "close"
• June 23, 2008 -- The backstory to the telecommunications immunity bill
• June 21, 2007 -- Jack Abramoff's major client surfaces in post-9/11 "Air Bin Laden" flights from US
• Sept. 8/9/10, 2006 -- According to a source who knew the late FBI John O'Neill, the head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in New York and the man who fought bureaucratic meddling in his investigation of the October 2000 USS Cole bombing and the Saudi con
• May 13, 2008 -- Carnaby subjected to character assassination campaign
• January 31, 2007 --Phone in a bomb threat to an airplane and get probation
• July 3-4, 2007 -- Libby a long time Israeli intelligence agent.
• November 10, 2008 -- More on Emanuel's shady past with the Clinton administration
• February 8, 2006 -- WMR previously reported on the activities of a group of some 120 Israeli "art students" in the United States prior to the 9-11 attacks.
• June 20-22, 2008 -- Mossad has official and unofficial presence in Houston
• December 5, 2007 -- UPDATED Former Italian President says 9/11 was an "inside job"
• Sep. 28, 2006 -- More details have emerged about an Israeli national who was briefly detained by Maryland State Police on September 22 after he was spotted photographing the I-95 Fort McHenry Tunnel in Baltimore
• September 14, 2005 -- Is Urban Moving Systems chief back in US?
• December 7, 2005 -- The Israeli media is speculating that the Bush administration is considering releasing Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in return for Israel's release of imprisoned Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti
• May 5, 2008 -- Carnaby CIA status confirmed
• May 6, 2008 -- The Middle East firestorm was to have started on April 25
• June 13-15, 2008 -- Carnaby was master of Arabic dialects and disguises
• March 27, 2007 -- Our Indonesian and American sources report that there was a significant U.S. and Israeli military-intelligence connection to the October 12, 2002 bombings of the Sari Club in Bali
• April 6, 2009 -- A "red herring" of "Red China" in Bennett murder case
• Aug. 9, 2006 -- UPDATED 8/10. A U.S. Navy sailor is reportedly under investigation by Navy authorities with spying for Israel and desertion.
• April 4, 2007 -- E-mailed yesterday and received from Leland Lehrman today
• January 16, 2007 -- More on Philly covert arms shipment facility.
• May 19, 2008 -- Behind the anti-Iran terror network: the same people who brought us the Iraq war
• May 15, 2008 -- CIA agent was monitoring Israeli finances
• December 19-21, 2008 -- Another Israeli "art student" story revealed