Showing posts with label Al-Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al-Qaeda. Show all posts

Thursday 25 April 2013

Terry The Farmer




Late 1992-Early 1993 and Late 1994:
Future Oklahoma City Bomber Said to Meet with Ramzi Yousef in Philippines


Terry Nichols makes a number of trips to the Phillippines, apparently to meet with al-Qaeda bomber Ramzi Yousef and other radical Islamists. Nichols will later help plan and execute the Oklahoma City bombing

Nichols’s wife is a mail-order bride from Cebu City; Nichols spends an extensive amount of time on the island of Mindanao, where many Islamist terror cells operate. This information comes from a Philippine undercover operative, Edwin Angeles, and one of his wives. Angeles is the second in command in the militant group Abu Sayyaf from 1991 to 1995 while secretly working for Philippine intelligence at the same time

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Angeles will claim in a videotaped interrogation that in late 1992 and early 1993 Nichols meets with Yousef and a second would-be American terrorist, John Lepney. In 1994, Nichols meets with Yousef, Lepney, and others. For about a week, Angeles, Yousef, Nichols, and Lepney are joined by Abdurajak Janjalani, the leader of Abu Sayyaf; two members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF); Abdul Hakim Murad and Wali Khan Amin Shah, both of whom are working with Yousef on the Bojinka plot ; and a half-brother of Yousef known only by the alias Ahmad Hassim (this is a probable reference to Yousef’s brother Abd al-Karim Yousef, who is living in the Philippines at this time).

Elmina Abdul, Angeles’s third wife, will add additional details about these 1994 meetings in a taped 2002 hospital confession to a Philippines reporter days before her death. She only remembers Nichols as “Terry” or “The Farmer,” and doesn’t remember the name of the other American.

She says: “They talked about bombings. They mentioned bombing government buildings in San Francisco, St. Louis, and in Oklahoma. The Americans wanted instructions on how to make and to explode bombs. [Angeles] told me that Janjalani was very interested in paying them much money to explode the buildings. The money was coming from Yousef and the other Arab.”
[GULF NEWS, 4/3/2002; INSIGHT, 4/19/2002; MANILA TIMES, 4/26/2002; INSIGHT, 6/22/2002; NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003]

(“The other Arab” may be a reference to the Arab Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, because Janjalani’s younger brother later claims Abu Sayyaf was funded in its early years by Yousef and Khalifa.) [CNN, 1/31/2007]

Abdul claims Nichols and Lepney are sent to an unnamed place for more instructions on bomb-making to destroy a building in the US. She also says that Angeles and others in Abu Sayyaf believe Yousef works for the Iraqi government. [INSIGHT, 6/22/2002]

The Manila Times later reports that “Lepney did indeed reside and do business in Davao City [in the Southern Philippines] during 1990 to 1996.” One bar owner recalls that when Lepney got drunk he liked to brag about his adventures with local rebel groups. [MANILA TIMES, 4/26/2002]

In 2003, Nicole Nichols (no relation to Terry Nichols), the director of the watchdog organization Citizens against Hate, will explain why an American white supremacist would make common cause with Islamist terrorists. Two unifying factors exist, she writes: an overarching hatred of Jews and Israel, and a similarly deep-seated hatred of the US government. [NICOLE NICHOLS, 2003]

After Nichols takes part in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Wali Khan Amin Shah will attempt to take the credit for plotting the bombing for himself and Yousef, a claim federal authorities will not accept.


April 19, 1995:
Bojinka Plotter Takes Credit for Oklahoma City Bombing;
Claim Later Discredited


Abdul Hakim Murad is in a US prison awaiting trial for his alleged role in the Bojinka plot. 


Told about the Oklahoma City bombing that took place earlier in the day, he immediately takes credit for the bombing on behalf of his associate Ramzi Yousef. However, Yousef, also in US custody at the time, makes no such claim. 

An FBI report detailing Murad’s claim will be submitted to FBI headquarters the next day. [LANCE, 2006, PP. 163-164] 

A Philippine undercover operative will later claim that Terry Nichols, who will be convicted for a major role in the Oklahoma City bombing, met with Murad, Yousef, and others in the Philippines in 1994, and discussed blowing up a building in Oklahoma and several other locations.

Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke will later comment: “Could [Yousef] have been introduced to [Nichols]? We do not know, despite some FBI investigation. We do know that Nichols’s bombs did not work before his Philippine stay and were deadly when he returned.” 
[CLARKE, 2004, PP. 127] 

Mike Johnston, a lawyer representing the Oklahoma City bombing victims’ families, will later comment: “Why should Murad be believed? For one thing, Murad made his ‘confession’ voluntarily and spontaneously. Most important, Murad tied Ramzi Yousef to the Oklahoma City bombing long before Terry Nichols was publicly identified as a suspect.” 
[INSIGHT, 6/22/2002] 

Also on this day, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, an associate of Yousef and Murad who is being held in the US, is moved from a low security prison to a maximum security prison. 
[LANCE, 2006, PP. 164] 

But despite these potential links to Muslim militants, only five days after the Oklahoma City bombing the New York Times will report, “Federal officials said today that there was no evidence linking people of the Muslim faith or of Arab descent to the bombing here.” 
[NEW YORK TIMES, 4/24/1995] 

Murad’s claim apparently will not be reported in any newspaper until two years later [ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS, 6/17/1995] , when lawyers for Nichols’s bombing partner, Timothy McVeigh, tell reporters that their defense strategy will be to claim that the bombing was the work of “foreign terrorists” led by “a Middle Eastern bombing engineer.” 

The lawyers will claim that the bombing was “contracted out” through an Iraqi intelligence base in the Philippines, and it is “possible that those who carried out the bombing were unaware of the true sponsor.” 

The lawyers also say it is possible, though less likely, that the bombing was carried out by right-wing white supremacists, perhaps from the Elohim City compound.
[NEW YORK TIMES, 3/26/1997] 

The claims of foreign involvement will be discredited.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Well, there's something you don't see every day...




Things visibile in this raw video feed released by NIST under FOIA:

* The attack run / final approach dive of United 175

* Jumpers seen from a distance

* "Edna Citron" can be seen waving in the plane-hole - her head is not yet on fire, however....

* An awful lot of paper.

* Building 7 (in the foreground) looks absolutely fine.

Sunday 24 February 2013

The CIA and "Al-Qaeda" in Afghanistan - The 1990s




Abu Hamza al-Masri, 



who will later become a leading Islamic radical in Britain, travels to Afghanistan and, as he is a qualified civil engineer, helps with reconstruction efforts there after the Soviet withdrawal. He later receives paramilitary training at Darunta camp and loses his hands and the sight in one eye while practicing making explosives there. He is taken to Pakistan for emergency treatment, but refuses to hand over a set of passports he has to that country’s ISI intelligence agency, and flees to Britain with his family due to fears of a reprisal."
[O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 21-29]

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

In a Hollywood movie Hekmatyar would be the evil foil to the heroic Abdul Shah Masud. He would be an angry Islamic fundamentalist dressed in black, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women and assassinating local tribal leaders that might rival his power. He would be the pawn of foreign secret service paymasters like the ISI, CIA, and Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia. He would unfeelingly sacrifice peasants for his cause, rocket the helpless civilians mixed in with his enemies, and his ruthless ambition would prevent the creation of a new peace. Unfortunately, in real life Hekmatyar was all these things.

Hekmatyar was one of the early Islamic rebels that came out of the University of Kabul. In the beginning Hekmatyar and Masud worked together. During the Soviet occupation Hekmatyar ran one of the two largest mujahideen organizations out of Peshawar in Pakistan. There he became the favorite of the Pakistani secret service, the ISI. Billions of dollars in US aid flowed through the ISI to Hekmatyar. Nervous CIA agents wondered whether Hekmatyar hated the United States as much as the Soviets, but the ISI assured them he was ok. United States money and weapons flowed to our enemy for over a decade.

When Masud finally defeated Najibullah in 1992, all the mujahideen factions converged on Kabul. Masud outwitted Hekmatyar and slipped into the city before him. A round robin of side-swapping, backstabbing, and massacre among Hekmatyar, Masud, Dostum, and Mazari followed. The citizens and buildings of Kabul were the big losers. The problem was that Masud could not be president as he was a Tajik, not a Pashtun. Afghan kings had been Pashtun for hundreds of years. Hekmatyar was the most powerful Pashtun, and had he not been such an evil sod, Masud might have accepted some kind of deal. In the end neither prevailed. The ISI switched support from the stalemated Hekmatyar and backed Mullah Omar, the new leader of the Taliban. Without ISI support, Hekmatyar’s men deserted wholesale to Mullah Omar, and he was a contender no longer.

Today Hekmatyar is finally the enemy of the United States that he should have been all along. He either took refuge in Iran, or sneaks around the tribal zone, periodically calling for holy war against the Americans. Sometimes his name is used by others, mostly as someone to blame for car bombs and other such mischief.



Osama bin Laden and Hassan al-Turabi in Sudan in the early 1990s. [Source: PBS]Hassan al-Turabi comes to power in Sudan in 1989, and his beliefs are ideologically compatible with bin Laden’s. With the Afghan war ending and the Afghans beginning to fight amongst themselves, al-Turabi sends a delegation and a letter to bin Laden, inviting him to collaborate and move to Sudan. Bin Laden agrees to the offer, but moves slowly. He sends advance teams to buy businesses and houses. He also visits Sudan himself to establish a relationship with al-Turabi. Gradually, about 1,000 bin Laden supporters move to Sudan. But bin Laden also keeps offices and guest houses in Pakistan, as well as training camps in Afghanistan, including the Darunta, Jihad Wal, Khaldan, Sadeek, Al Farooq, and Khalid ibn Walid camps. US-al-Qaeda double agent Ali Mohamed plays an important role in the move (see Summer 1991). [GUNARATNA, 2003, PP. 39-41]




Abu Hamza al-Masri, who will later become a leading Islamic radical in Britain, travels to Afghanistan and, as he is a qualified civil engineer, helps with reconstruction efforts there after the Soviet withdrawal. He later receives paramilitary training at Darunta camp and loses his hands and the sight in one eye while practicing making explosives there. He is taken to Pakistan for emergency treatment, but refuses to hand over a set of passports he has to that country’s ISI intelligence agency, and flees to Britain with his family due to fears of a reprisal.[O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 21-29]


  
Mahmoud Jaballah.Mahmoud Jaballah. [Source: Public domain via Toronto Star]I

slamic Jihad operative Mahmoud Jaballah enters Canada on May 11, 1996 and applies for refugee status. There is evidence Canadian intelligence, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), begins monitoring him shortly after his arrival. A 2008 CSIS report mentions details of phone calls Jaballah makes to high-ranking Islamic Jihad leaders as early as June 1996. The CSIS will later conclude that his “primary objective incoming to Canada was to acquire permanent status in a country where he would feel secure in maintaining communications with other [Islamic Jihad] members.” Jaballah is wary his calls may be monitored, and uses code words to discuss sensitive topics. But the CSIS is able to figure out many of the code words, for instance the mention of clothes to refer to travel documents. 

Jaballah frequently calls Thirwat Salah Shehata, one of nine members of Islamic Jihad’s ruling council; the Egyptian government will later also call Shehata “a key figure in bin Laden’s organization.” They are in regular contact until August 1998, when Shehata moves to a new location in Lebanon but does not give Jaballah his new phone number. 

Jaballah also stays in frequent contact with Ahmad Salama Mabruk, another member of Islamic Jihad’s ruling council. Mabruk is arrested in 1998. 

Jaballah is also in frequent contact with Ibrahim Eidarous and Adel Abdel Bary, two Islamic Jihad operatives living in London and working closely with Khalid al-Fawwaz, Osama bin Laden’s de facto press secretary. He calls them over 60 times between 1996 and 1998. Bin Laden is monitored by Western intelligence agencies as he frequently calls Bary, Eidarous, and al-Fawwaz until all three are arrested one month after the 1998 African embassy bombings (see Early 1994-September 23, 1998). Jaballah presumably becomes more suspicious that he is being monitored in September 1998, when Canadian officials interview him and tell him they are aware of his contacts with the three men arrested in London. 

The CSIS will later call Jaballah an “established contact” for Ahmed Said Khadr, a founding al-Qaeda member living in Canada. Khadr had been arrested in Pakistan in 1995 for suspected involvement in an Islamic Jihad bombing there, but he was released several months later after pressure from the Canadian government. After returning to Canada, Khadr ran his own non-profit organization, Health and Education Projects International (HEPI), and allegedly used the money he raised to help fund the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan. If the CSIS was aware of Khadr’s activities through Jaballah, it is not clear why no action was taken against him or his charity before 9/11. 

Essam Marzouk is an al-Qaeda operative living in Vancouver, Canada. During one call, Jaballah is asked for Marzouk’s phone number. He says he does not have it, but gives the name of another operative, Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub, who is known to be in contact with Marzouk. Marzouk will later leave Canada to train the African embassy bombers, stopping by Toronto to visit Mahjoub on the way out of the country. 

Jaballah is monitored communicating with other Islamic Jihad operatives, including ones in Germany, Yemen, and elsewhere in Canada. 

He is arrested in March 1999, but after his arrest his wife warns him to reduce his communications and offers to help obtain information from his associates. He acquires a post office box in August 1999 and uses it to continue communicating with militants overseas. He is released in November 1999 and the CSIS will later claim he continues to communicate with other militants until he is arrested again in August 2001. [CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE, 2/22/2008 ]


1997 and 1999: FBI and Canadian Intelligence Investigate Member of Boston Al-Qaeda Cell


In 1997, Canadian intelligence begins investigating Abdullah Almalki, a Canadian exporter originally from Syria. Almalki is working with Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi and Abdelrahman Elzahabi, who are brothers and business partners, to send electronic equipment to Pakistan. Around 1995, the three of them sent large numbers of portable field radios to Pakistan. Apparently, some of them are used by Taliban and al-Qaeda forces (the US will later recover many field radios of the same make and model in Afghanistan after 9/11). 

However, there is no law against exporting the radios, and investigators are unable to prove any crime was committed. Abdelrahman is working in New York City as a mechanic while Mohamad Kamal is working in Boston as a taxi driver. Three other taxi drivers at the same company are al-Qaeda operatives who knew each other and Mohamad Kamal in Afghanistan (see Late 1980s and June 1995-Early 1999), and he will later admit to being a sniper instructor at the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan in the early 1990s. The FBI in Boston begins investigating him in 1999, but fails to prove he is a terrorist. They lose track of him when he leaves the US later that year to fight the Russians in Chechnya. The FBI later discovers him driving trucks in Minnesota and arrests him for lying to federal agents about his knowledge of the field radios (see Mid-August 2001). [GLOBE AND MAIL, 3/17/2007

It seems probable that the investigation of Mohamad Kamal Elzahabi strengthens suspicions about a Boston al-Qaeda cell. One of his associates at the taxi company, Raed Hijazi, works as an FBI informant starting in 1997 (see Early 1997-Late 1998]), and another, Nabil al-Marabh, is questioned by the FBI in 1999 (see April 1999-August 1999). Almalki is later arrested in Syria while visiting relatives there and severely tortured before eventually being released and returned to Canada (see September 19 or 20, 2003).



Radical London imam Abu Hamza al-Masri sends money to bin Laden’s Darunta camp, which is part of al-Qaeda’s network of training camps in Afghanistan. Abu Hamza, who is under investigation by Scotland Yard at this time for his involvement in a kidnapping and murder scheme in Yemen, apparently diverts the money from a fund at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, which he runs. The US will later say it has e-mail traffic that proves the transfer. Abu Hamza trained at the camp in the mid-1990s. [O'NEILL AND MCGRORY, 2006, PP. 74-5]




In the late autumn of 2001, when US-allied forces are overrunning Taliban positions in Afghanistan, the Darunta camp run by al-Qaeda is seized and searched. Al-Qaeda leader Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab al-Masri) ran al-Qaeda’s WMD program and conducted crude chemical weapons experiments there. The CIA recovers one document there by Mursi that refers to connections between al-Qaeda and Pakistani nuclear scientists. It reads, in part, “As you instructed us you will find attached a summary of the discharges from a traditional nuclear reactor, amongst which are radioactive elements that could be used for military ends. One can use them to contaminate an area or halt the advance of the enemy. It is possible to get more information from our Pakistani friends who have great experience in this sphere.” [BERGEN, 2006, PP. 345; LEVY AND SCOTT-CLARK, 2007, PP. 294] This could be a reference to links between al-Qaeda and the Pakistani nuclear scientists working with the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau charity front (see 2000and Mid-August 2001).



At a Guantanamo Bay tribunal to decide his combat status (see March 9-April 28, 2007), militant Islamist logistics manager Abu Zubaida (see March 28, 2002) is accused of heading Khaldan and Darunta training camps in Afghanistan and of co-ordinating their operation with Osama bin Laden, as well as moving money for al-Qaeda, desiring fraudulently-obtained Canadian passports for a terrorist plot, and making diary entries about planned attacks in the US. [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007

Complaints of Torture, Admission of False Confessions - Zubaida complains of being tortured in US custody (see Mid-May 2002 and After and March 10-April 15, 2007). 

Zubaida’s statements about his treatment in US custody will be redacted from the trial transcripts, but a few remarks remain. In broken English, Zubaida states: “I was nearly before half die plus [because] what they do [to] torture me. There I was not afraid from die because I do believe I will be shahid [martyr], but as God make me as a human and I weak, so they say yes, I say okay, I do I do, but leave me. They say no, we don’t want to. You to admit you do this, we want you to give us more information… they want what’s after more information about more operations, so I can’t. They keep torturing me.” The tribunal president, a colonel whose name is also redacted, asks, “So I understand that during this treatment, you said things to make them stop and then those statements were actually untrue, is that correct?” Zubaida replies, “Yes.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007 ; VANITY FAIR, 12/16/2008

Denies Being Al-Qaeda Member or Enemy of US - He goes on to deny that he is an “enemy combatant,” saying that the Khaldan training camp, which he admits being logistics manager of, was around since the Soviet-Afghan War and was also used to train Muslims who wanted to fight invaders in Muslim lands, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, the Philippines, and Bosnia, where “America helped us.” After he was captured the US administration exaggerated his importance, and some media accounts have suggested his role was greatly exaggerated (see Shortly After March 28, 2002).

He denies being an official member of al-Qaeda and says he disagrees with attacks on civilians. However, he admits some of his trainees subsequently decided to join al-Qaeda and that he did not prevent them from doing this. He also denies moving the money and submits a volume of his diary that apparently shows he was in Pakistan when the charges state he went to Saudi Arabia to collect the money.

He requests the production of other volumes of his diaries, on which some of the charges are based, but they are not made available to the tribunal. In addition, he denies corresponding with bin Laden before 2000 and details a dispute that arose between them after that time. He says his diary entries about military targets are “strictly hypothetical,” and the passports are for non-terrorist travel.

Following the US invasion of Afghanistan, he admits he helped non-aligned fighters escape from South Asia. He states that he is an enemy of the US because of its alliance with Israel, which he claims is oppressing his fellow Palestinians, saying, “A partner of a killer is also a killer.” [US DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, 3/27/2007 ]






Saturday 23 February 2013

Vince



"A Defence Intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said,
 "The Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies
It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target."  "

"The Document concludes: 
"Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."



FOSTERGATE

by James R. Norman 
[Resigned from Forbes because this story was spiked.]

"Was White House Deputy Counsel Vince Foster selling US secrets to Israel?
The CIA suspects he was."


TWO weeks before his death on July 20, 1993, White House Deputy Counsel
 Vincent W. Foster went into a deep funk. The official cause of death, given
by former Independent Counsel Robert Fiske Jr. (who was later replaced by
Kenneth Starr), was suicide driven by depression over, among other things,
several newspaper editorials. But Vince Foster had a much bigger and darker
reason to be seriously burned out. He had just learned he was under
investigation for espionage.

Outrageous? To say the least. But a lengthy investigation has located over
a dozen sources with connections to the intelligence community who confirm
a shocking story of money laundering and espionage connected to the highest
levels of the White House. Without grants of immunity, the sources risk
going to prison for violation of the National Security Act. Virtually all
have demanded anonymity.

According to a veteran Central Intelligence Agency operative close to the
Foster investigation, Foster's first indication of trouble came when he
inquired about his coded bank account at Banca Della Svizzera Italiana in
Chiasso, Switzerland and found the account empty. Foster was shocked to
learn from the bank that someone using his secret authorization code had
withdrawn all $2.73 million he had stashed there and had moved it to, of
all places, the U.S. Treasury.

Then, according to credit card records reviewed by a private investigator
who has revealed them, Foster canceled the two-day round-trip TWA and Swiss
Air plane tickets to Geneva he had purchased on his American Express card
through the White House travel office on July 1.

Discreetly he began asking what was afoot, says the CIA source, confirming
that someone in the White House tipped him off. It was bad news. The CIA
had Foster under serious investigation for leaking high-security secrets to
the State of Israel.

For months, a small cadre of CIA computer hackers known as the Fifth
Column, armed with a Cray supercomputer, had been monitoring Foster's Swiss
account. They had located it by tracking money flows from various Israeli
government accounts after finding Foster's name while secretly snooping
through the electronic files of Israel's Mossad. Then by snooping through
the bank files, they gathered all the information needed to withdraw the
money.

Foster was just one of the first of scores of high level U.S. political
figures to thus have their secret Swiss accounts looted of illicit funds,
according to both this veteran CIA source and a separate source in another
intelligence agency. Over the past two years, they say, more than $2
billion has been swept out of offshore bank accounts belonging to figures
connected to the U.S. government with nary a peep from the victims or their
banks. The claim that Foster and other U.S. figures have had offshore
accounts has been confirmed by a separate high-ranking CIA source and
another in the Department of Justice.

Various sources, some of them controversial, have contributed other pieces
to this puzzle. Whatever their motivations, those sources have proven
remarkably consistent. Their stories jibe well with known facts and offer a
most plausible explanation for Foster's mysterious depression. It would
also explain Washing-ton's determined effort to dismiss the Foster affair
as a tragic but simple suicide.

Vince Foster a spy? Actually, it is much worse than that, if the CIA's
suspicions are confirmed by the ongoing foreign counterintelligence probe.
He would have been an invaluable double agent with potential access to not
only high-level political information, but also to sensitive code,
encryption and data transmission secrets, the stuff by which modern war is
won or lost. That is because for many years, according to nine separate
current and former U.S. law enforcement or intelligence officials, Foster
had been a behind-the-scenes manager of a key support company in one of the
biggest, most secretive spy efforts on record, the silent surveillance of
banking transactions both here and abroad.

This bank snooping effort began in earnest soon after Ronald Reagan became
president in 1981. Its primary aim was to track the money behind
international terrorist groups and soon came to be dubbed, "Follow the
money", according to the originator of the program Norman A. Bailey. Now a
private Washington consultant on international banking, Bailey was an
economist and Reagan advisor on the National Security Counsel. It was
Bailey's idea to begin using powerful new computer and electronic
eavesdropping technologies then emerging to let the intelligence community
monitor the previously confidential flow of bank wire transfers.

This was no small task; more than $1 trillion a day moves through New York
alone.

Bailey, himself constrained by the National Security Act, claims he doesn't
know exactly how the data was collected. But he confirms that within a few
years (of 1981) The National Security Agency (NSA), the signals
intelligence arm of the government, had begun vacuuming up mountains of
data by listening in on bank wire traffic. It became a joint effort of
several Western governments with the Israelis playing a leading role, since
they were the main targets of terrorism.

Other intelligence experts say the flow of bits and bytes was captured by
various means; from simply tapping phone lines to implanting customized
chips in bank computers to store up and periodically "burst-transmit" data,
to a passing van, or low-flying "sig-int" or signals intelligence
satellite. Another part of the problem was to get the world's banks to
standardize their data so that it could be easily analyzed. And that brings
up to PROMIS, powerful tracking software developed for the U.S. Government
and then further enhanced by a little company called Inslaw Inc.

PROMIS stands for Prosecutor's Management Information Systems and was
designed to manage legal cases. In 1982, just as Bailey's follow-the-money
effort was gaining steam, the Reagan Justice Department eagerly snapped up
Inslaw's newest version of PROMIS. But the government refused to pay the $6
million owed for it, claiming part of the contract was not fulfilled.
Inslaw, forced into Chapter 11 reorganization, and nearly driven to quick
liquidation by the government and its former partner AT&T, hotly denied
that claim. Ultimately, a bankruptcy judge ruled the government stole the
PROMIS software by "trickery, fraud and deceit."

Why PROMIS? Because it was adaptable. Besides tracking legal cases, it
could be easily customized to track anything from computer chip design to
complex monetary transactions. It was especially useful for tracking
criminals or just plain political dissidents. Inslaw claims the software
was eventually illegally sold to as many as 50 countries for use by their
police, military or intelligence agencies, including such bloody regimes as
Guatemala, South Africa and Iraq (before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait).
Profits on these sales, Inslaw claims, went mainly into the private pockets
of Republican political cronies in the 1980s, including Reagan confidante
Barl Brain, former part-owner of UPI and FNN.

Among the biggest profiteers on PROMIS, according to the 1992 book by
former Israeli anti-terrorism staffer Ari Ben-Menaseche, was former British
publisher Bob Maxwell. On behalf of the Israelis, Maxwell aggressively
marketed a doctored version of PROMIS equipped with one or more "back
doors" to allow an outsider to tap into the user's data base without
leaving an audit trail. In fact, it may have been such rigged programs that
allowed noted Israeli spy Jonathon Pollard, from his computer terminal at
the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, to download vast amounts of
top secret U.S. nuclear weapons and code data in the mid-1980s.

According to a heavily-redacted New Mexico FBI counterintelli-gence report,
Maxwell was apparently allowed to sell two copies of PROMIS back to the
U.S. weapons labs at Sandia and Los Alamos, for what Inslaw claims was a
hugely inflated price of $87 million. That would have allowed Pollard, if
he was using the rigged program, to obtain U.S. missile targeting data long
before Israel had its own satellite capability, thus making it a real
nuclear threat to the Soviet Union. Pollard was convicted of espionage and
sentenced in 1986 to life imprisonment. U.S. officials have vehemently
opposed efforts to gain his early release.

Maxwell, according to Ben-Menaseche and nine other sources, was also
selling pirated versions of PROMIS to major world banks for use in their
wire transfer rooms to track the blizzard of numbers, authorization codes
and confirmations required on each wire transaction. Don't expect any banks
to admit running PROMIS software. They probably now know it was pilfered.
But they readily took it both because it was the best tracking software
available at the time and because the U.S. government was tacitly leaning
on them to go along with the surveillance effort or face regulatory
reprisals or prosecution on money laundering charges. With the widespread
adoption of PROMIS, the data became standardized and much easier to analyze
by the NSA.

It took some effort to install and support PROMIS in the banking industry.
That's where Vince Foster came in. Sources say that since at least the late
1970s, Foster had been a silent, behind-the-scenes overseer on behalf of
the NSA for a small Little Rock, Ark., bank data processing company. Its
name was Systematics Inc., launched in 1967 and funded and controlled for
most of its life by Arkansas billionaire Jackson Stephens, a 1946 Naval
Academy graduate along with Jimmy Carter. Foster was one of Stephens'
trusted deal makers at the Rose Law Firm, where he was partner with Hillary
Rodham Clinton, Webster Hubbell and William Kennedy (whose father was a
Systematics director). Hubbell also played an overseer role at Systematics
for the NSA for some years according to intelligence sources.

Systematics has had close ties to the NSA and CIA ever since its founding,
sources say, as a money-shuffler for covert operations. It is no secret
that there were billions of dollars moving around in "black" accounts -
from buying and selling arms to the Contras, Iran, Iraq, Angola, and other
countries to paying CIA operatives and laundering money from clandestine
CIA drug dealing (such as at Mena, Arkansas). Having taken over the
computer rooms in scores of small U.S. banks as an "out-sourced" supplier
of data processing, Systematics was in a unique position to manage that
covert money flow. Sources say the money was moved at the end of every day
disguised as a routine bank-to-bank balancing transaction, out of view of
bank regulators and even the banks themselves. In short, it became
cyber-money.

One man who uncovered the link between Systematics, Foster and covert money
movements from arms and drugs was Bob Bickel, who was an undercover Customs
investigator in the 1980s. "We found Systematics was often a conduit for
the funds" in arms and drug transactions, says Bickel, now living in
Texas: "They were the money changers." His story is corroborated by a
former CIA employee who says it was well known within the agency in the
late 1970s that Foster was involved with Systematics in covert money
management.

Another source is Michael Ricoposciuto, former research director of the
covert arms operation at California's tiny Cabazon Indian Reservation in
the early 1980s. Ricoposciuto claims his crew of computer programmers
helped customize PROMIS there for banking and other uses. He is now serving
80 years in a South Carolina federal prison ostensibly on drug charges.
Though maybe not a credible source on his own, his story fits well with
other sources.

Systematics' money-laundering role for the intelligence community might
help explain why Jackson Stephens tried to take over Washington-based
Financial General Bankshares in 1978 on behalf of Arab backers of the Bank
of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI). BCCI's links to global
corruption and intelligence operations have been well docu-mented, though
many mysteries remain.

According to a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission,
Stephens insisted on having then-tiny Systematics brought in to take over
all of FGB's data processing. Representing Systematics in that 1978 SEC
case: Hillary Rodham Clinton and Webster Hubbell. Stephens was blocked in
that takeover. But FGB, later renamed First American, ultimately fell under
the alleged domination of BCCI through Robert Altman and former Defense
Secretary Clark Clifford. According to a technician who worked for First
American in Atlanta, Systematics became a key computer contractor there
anyway.

In the 1980s, Systematics' business boomed. When it first sold stock to the
public in 1983, revenues were $64 million. That had risen to $230 million
by the time Stephens arranged Systematics' sale to Alltel Corp., a
telephone holding company which then moved its headquarters to Little Rock.
Last year, Systematics sales hit $861 million - a third of Alltel's total.
Stephens now owns more than 8 percent of Alltel and wields significant
influence over the company.

When Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, bringing Foster, Hubbell
and Kennedy to the White House staff, Systematics' foreign bank business
flourished. It began to announce a flood of data processing deals with
major banks in Moscow, Maoso, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, Trinidad and
elsewhere. According to veteran bank software vendors, and computer
intelligence specialist Wayne Madsen, co-author of a book about the NSA
called "The Puzzle Palace", it is inconceivable any U.S. company could land
such lucrative work without the intimate participation of the NSA. Domestic
business took off as well, with giants like Citibank and NationsBank
signing big data processing deals.

Working alongside Systematics in this spooky world of bank computer spying
appears to be a cluster of other curious, loosely-affiliated companies. For
instance, there is Boston Systematics, headed by former CIA officer Harry
Wechsler, who controls two Israeli companies that also use the name
Systematics. Wechsler denies any connection to the Arkansas company (now
named Alltel Information Services) and claims to know nothing of PROMIS.
Odd, then, that Inslaw claims it got two inquiries in 1987 from Wechsler's
Israeli company seeking marketing data on PROMIS.

Many of the intelligence sources who provided information for this story
insist that Boston Systematics and the Arkansas company are, in fact,
related in some way. And based on his own source in the Justice Department,
Inslaw's founder William A. Hamilton says he believes Boston Systematics
was also closely linked with both Maxwell and Rafi Bitan, the former head
of Israel's anti-terrorism effort. Hamilton says Bitan, using a false name,
showed up at Inslaw's Washington, DC office one day in 1983 for a private
demonstration of PROMIS.

Another curious company is Arkansas Systems, founded in 1974 by Systematics
employee and formerly U.S. Army "analyst" John Chamberlain, located just
down the road from Systematics. Arkansas Systems specializes in computer
systems for foreign wire transfer centers and central banks. Among its
clients: Russia and China, according to Arkansas Systems president James K.
Hendren, a physicist formerly involved with the Safeguard anti-missile
system. Arkansas Systems was one of the first com-panies to receive funding
from the Arkansas Development Finance Authority (ADFA), an agency created
by Bill Clinton that is now coming under Congressional scrutiny.

What does Alltel have to say about all of this? "I've never heard anything
so asinine in all my life," steams Joe T. Ford, Alltel's chairman and the
father of Jack Stephen's chief administrative aide.

John Stouri, a former IBM executive who is chief executive of Alltel
Information Services, says he had never heard of Boston Systematics before
this inquiry. He declares that the Arkansas company does almost no work for
the government, scoffs at the idea his company is tied to the NSA and says
Foster has never had any connection to Systematics. As for the fact he sold
half his 700,000 Alltel shares in February at $34, just before it began
skidding to under $24, he says that was merely to pay for the exercise of
options.

Why is it then that Hamilton claims sources in two separate intelligence
agencies say documents relating to Systematics were among those taken from
Foster's office immediately after Foster's death? Indeed, a private
investigator close to the continuing "Whitewater" probe by Independent
Counsel Kenneth W. Starr says he has learned that Hubbell has delivered
those documents - including papers related to Systematics - to Starr.
Hubbell pleaded guilty last December to two felony counts related to
over-billing at the Rose Law Firm and has been sentenced to 21 months in
prison.

If Foster knew the U.S. was spying on foreign banks, why would he let
himself be caught red-handed with a Swiss bank account? The answer may be
that the Israeli transactions were, in fact, well concealed, according to
the veteran CIA source. And Foster would have known that, unless a prober
knew exactly what to look for, finding his payoffs in the torrent of
routine wire transfer data would be a hopeless task. Besides that, greed
could explain a lot, if not Foster's then for whomever else he might have
been playing bagman. The CIA source says Foster was not the only one in the
White House under suspicion for peddling state secrets.

All of which helps explain Foster's odd behavior before his death. He was a
tough, smart trial attorney at the peak of power in Washington. Only 48
years old, he was in excellent health. Suddenly, according to the Fiske
report, he couldn't sleep. He complained of heart palpitations and high
blood pressure. His sister arranged for him to see a Washington
psychiatrist, who later told the FBI he had been instructed not to take
notes because Foster's depression was "directly related to highly sensitive
and confidential matters" tied to his "top secret" government work.

Foster never saw a shrink. Instead, about a week before he died, he hired a
lawyer: high-powered DC criminal attorney and political fix-it man James
Hamilton. Foster's wife claims his reason was the White House Travel Office
controversy, which was expected to lead to congressional hearings.

On the weekend of July 17 and 18, Foster drove with his wife to the eastern
shore of Maryland to relax. By "coincidence", according to the Fiske
report, so did Hubbell. They met at the posh estate of Michael Cardozo,
head of Clinton's legal defense fund and son-in-law of prominent Democratic
fund raiser Nathan Landau. Hubbell later claimed the weekend was a
laid-back gathering of tennis and poolside chit-chat.

But according to sources connected to the CIA, Justice Department and
another intelligence agency, the meeting was under surveillance. The
agenda? Heavy duty damage control. Foster was grilled. To whom else could
the Swiss money be traced? How could the scandal be contained?

Foster's wife admitted he returned to Washington even more depressed. On
Monday night, he turned down an invitation by the President to drop by the
White House to supposedly watch a movie. On Tuesday, Foster left his office
at the White House about 1 p.m. and said he'd be back later. At 5:45 p.m.,
his body was found neatly laid out at Fort Marcy Park, a bullet wound in
his mouth. Suicide, the Fiske report promptly declared, echoed by a cursory
(Democrat-run) Senate inquiry.
Still, nagging questions remain: Why was there no blood on the ground, no
bone fragments or brain tissue? Why were there rug fibers all over the
clothes? Why no dust on his shoes despite the long dirt path from his car
to his body?

The answer seems painfully clear; a cover-up of immense proportions for
reasons of "national security". And don't expect Whitewater prober Kenneth
Starr to spill any beans. He was in-house counsel to Reagan Attorney
General William French Smith at the time the Inslaw PROMIS software was
expropriated for intelligence use. Later, as Solicitor General, he recused
himself from an Inslaw-related matter without explanation. It seems likely
Starr would have been personally involved in launching the covert bank spy
effort, which Washington is still so nervous to keep secret.

All in the family, you might say.




1979 CIA Briefing Memo - Israel's Foreign Intelligence Security Services


"The Israeli intelligence service depends heavily on the various Jewish communities and organizations abroad for recruiting agents and eliciting general information. The aggressively ideological nature of Zionism, which emphasizes that all Jews belong to Israel and must return to Israel, has had its drawbacks in enlisting support for intelligence operations, however, since there is considerable opposition to Zionism among Jews throughout the world."


This 47-page study of the Israeli intelligence was part of an ongoing effort by the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff to prepare surveys of foreign intelligence communities of interest. It covers the functions, organizations, administrative practices, and methods of operation of the Mossad, Shin Bet, and AMAN (Military Intelligence) as well as discussing the Foreign Ministry's intelligence unit and the national police. Notably absent from the study is any mention of LAKAM, the unit which was responsible for running Jonathan Pollard. 











 Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 9  Num. 95
======================================
("Quid coniuratio est?")


-----------------------------------------------------------------

NOTES OF MEETINGS/CONVERSATIONS ON INSLAW & FOSTERGATE (10/21/95)
=================================================================
By "Mr. Mercedes" (Pseudonym)
-----------------------------

When James Norman  wrote  the  Forbes  1/31/95 cover story, "Oil,
Guns & Greed" where he had worked for five years and was a Senior
Editor at a $100,000 year salary.  The focus of this cover  story
was  Carlos Cardoen, a Chilean arms merchant who sold hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of  cluster  bombs and other weapons to
Iraq, while using Chase Manhattan Bank to finance  his  operation
through  "set  up"  oil  trades and with the full cooperation and
knowledge of DCI [Director  of  Central Intelligence] Bill Gates.
He probably had no idea where it would lead  and  that  6  months
later  he  would  be  abruptly fired on 8/16 and less than a week
after I told him  in  person  that  he  should expect to be fired
quite soon because of what he had written outside of  Forbes  and
because of what he was continuing to investigate.

The  Cardoen  story led Norman to Harry Wechsler, Pres. of Boston
Systematics and, purportedly,  a  former  CIA and/or Mossad agent
who has also been selling Inslaw's bootlegged and bugged enhanced
PROMIS software around the world.  Wechsler was also a key person
involved in pulling off the October Surprise  for  the  Israelis,
according  to  Lt.  Commander  Alexander  Martin  (Ret.), who was
involved in many 1980s covert  ops  as an aide to General Richard
Secord (Ret.), and is now assisting with  the  investigations  of
the  House  Whitewater Committee.  Wechsler's daughter, Dana, has
been a senior editor  at  Forbes  for  6-7  years, a CIA contract
employee, and both have been sources for James Norman.   The  big
question  is,  did  they feed Norman disinformation to direct him
away from Wechsler's key role in  the illegal sale of PROMIS from
his subsidiary company, Israeli Systematics.

This article led Norman into [investigating] government  software
theft  and  espionage,  covert  activities  of computerized money
laundering and drugs  and  arms  dealing,  interweaving a cast of
characters, government  agencies  and  companies  which  include:
Inslaw,  the  CIA,  NSA,  Mossad,  Vince Foster, Webster Hubbell,
Robert   Maxwell,   Arkansas    billionaire   Jackson   Stephens,
Systematics (Jackson Stephens-owned company and now  merged  into
Alltel  with Stephen's 8 percent interest), numerous secret Swiss
bank accounts, which  lead  right  up  to  and  included Bill and
Hillary Clinton, and former Presidents Reagan and Bush, all  sown
together  with  a  thread  called PROMIS (Prosecutor's Management
Information Systems) software.

The intent of  this  report  is  to  present  evidence and leads,
without pre-conceived notions or hidden agendas, which should  be
objectively  investigated and reported by unbiased journalists in
order to  honestly  verify  or  refute  the  information of James
Norman and others.  This document doesn't presume to be the final
word, but it is an attempt  to  lay  out  possible  evidence  and
people within the Clinton administration, Park Police, Department
of Justice, [which] Kenneth Starr's investigations and the Senate
and House Whitewater/Foster hearings should be investigating.

One  of the most invisible and invincible central figures in this
cast is Jackson Stephens.   He  has  been  a major contributor to
Bush, loaned the Clinton Election Committee a critical $2 million
from  his  family's  Worthen  Bank  (Stephens  recently  had   it
purchased by the larger Boatsman Bank of St. Louis, thus ending a
Federal  Reserve  investigation),  and is now, of all things, the
Finance Chairman for Bob  Dole.   Stephens  is  an investor in or
owner of numerous companies such as Beverly Enterprises (a  major
national  nursing  home  chain  and  one of Earl Brian's numerous
companies; Earl Brian, another central figure, will be  described
later), and two Arkansas newspapers, the Northwest Arkansas Times
and  the  Morning  News  of  Northwest Arkansas.  He was also the
original front man for BCCI  in  the  late 1970s when he tried to
get them (M. Potts, N. Kochan &  R.  Whittington,  "Dirty  Money:
The  Inside  Story  of BCCI" and John Beaty "Outlaw Bank:  BCCI")
into the U.S. through the purchase of First American (Wall Street
Journal  article,  8/7/95,  "Who  is  Dan  Lasater,"  Wall Street
Journal 2-page profile article, ?/?/93, and Monetary  &  Economic
Review  6/92  article,  "Clinton Selected to be Next President"),
prior to Clark Clifford and Roger Altman getting involved through
First American Bank.

Despite Mike  Wallace's  "60  Minutes"  10/18  shoddy and slanted
hatch-job  report  on  journalist  Christopher  Ruddy  and   Lisa
Foster's  New Yorker 9/11/95 "conspiracy rebuttal" article, a big
mystery still remains as to whether  or  not all or some of these
elements and inter-related people  came  together  to  cause  the
death of Vince Foster.  As Chicago investigative reporter Sherman
Skolnick   states,  Lisa  Foster's  "cover-up"  story  should  be
seriously questioned.  In his  9/11/95 "The Money Trail" release,
Skolnick reports that Lisa Foster received $285,000 just  4  days
prior  to  Vince  Foster's  death  from  bank heir Richard Mellon
Scaife,  who  passed  it  through  Sheila  Foster  Anthony (Vince
Foster's sister and former  Congressman  Beryl  Anthony's  wife).
Furthermore,  it just so happens that Sheila Foster Anthony is in
a very important Department of  Justice section which is involved
in appointments of  Federal  Judges,  U.S.  Attorneys,  and  U.S.
Marshalls.   Also,  Richard  Mellon  Scaife  is  facing  possible
prosecution  on  alleged  federal  banking regulations violations
(Sarah McClendon's Washington Report, 9/5/95).

Additionally, when  Lisa  Foster  was  questioned  by  the FBI on
5/1/94, she raised doubts about Vince Foster's so-called "suicide
note."  She stated that Vince Foster had written it on  or  about
7/11/93  and they were his talking points for a scheduled meeting
on 7/22/93  with  the  President  and  an  upcoming Congressional
hearing, neither of which Vince Foster kept since he was  already
conveniently  dead  on  7/20.   Additionally  that so-called last
"relaxation weekend" at  major  Clinton and Democratic fundraiser
Nathan Landau's shore estate with Webster Hubbell and others  was
a  "damage control" session, bugged by the CIA, for the impending
scandal  described  below  in   which   Vince  Foster  was  under
investigation for espionage.

Besides all the forensic and crime scene  discrepancies  and  the
apparent  "cover-up" by the White House personnel's inappropriate
actions after Foster's death, there was a significant discrepancy
with the gun Vince  Foster  supposedly  shot himself with and the
"silver colored gun" which Lisa Foster also  told  the  FBI  that
Vince  had brought with him from Arkansas.  (Mike Blair's "Foster
Gun, Note Questions"  Spotlight  8/21/95).   If  Vince Foster was
shot with the "silver colored gun" which was found  in  the  park
near  his body, why did Lisa Foster find another gun in its place
on the very night after  his  death?  And finally, in addition to
all the other mysterious evidence found on or  around  his  body,
why  did  ballistics and forensics experts find that Vince Foster
was shot by a turn-of-the-century Colt .38 caliber Army revolver?

James Norman completed his Vince Foster story for Forbes in April
of 1995 and it was ready  for publication in the May issue, after
being thoroughly checked and edited, but [it]  was  pulled  after
receiving   an  April  25  letter  from  the  White  House  Press
Secretary, Michael McCurry.  Norman  was then given permission to
have his article published  by  another  magazine  (Media  Bypass
Magazine,   8/95,   "Fostergate")   if  he  withheld  his  Forbes
affiliation.  He  has  just  come  out  with  a followup article,
"Fostergate II" in the 10/95 [Media Bypass] issue.  Norman claims
he was fired for  continuing  to  investigate  the  Vince  Foster
story,  which  led  back  to Forbes' Chairman Emeritus and former
Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger.  Forbes' media relations
person, Ray Healy, claimed  that  "James Norman resigned and that
he was a good journalist and they would miss him," but because of
their editorial policy he would not comment on  anything  written
outside of Forbes.

In  the  process  of investigating the Vince Foster story, Norman
came into  contact  with  Charles  "Chuck"  Hayes,  purportedly a
former CIA  agent  with  S1  clearance  (highest  level)  with  a
codename  of  "Running Fox."  In my interview with him, he claims
to have been involved in the CIA's Cuba covert ops to run weapons
into Castro to overthrow  Pres.   Batista.   Hayes stated that he
knew George Bush as the CIA's paymaster as far back as 1958,  all
of  which  he  [Bush]  denies  (see [J. Edgar] Hoover 1963 letter
which refers to Bush of CIA).  On one occasion, he [Hayes] claims
to have put a gun into  Bush's  mouth  in order to get him to pay
up.  [CN:  Bush reportedly leaked in his pants  at  that  point.]
While  serving  in  Vietnam in covert ops, Hayes disobeyed orders
and flew his jet fighter  into  Hanoi  and took out a SAM missile
storage depot.  On a Mena, Arkansas arms flight to  the  Contras,
he discovered coke [cocaine] stored in the belly of his plane and
dumped  it  on  the  awaiting  covert  team  at the airport while
avoiding being shot down by them.

                  [...to be continued...]

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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 












Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee, Director of Central Intelligence, 



A: Released by CIA in 2006 in response to a Mandatory Declassification Review request.



Washington, DC, December 14, 2012 – When Naval Investigative Service analyst Jonathan Pollard spied for Israel in 1984 and 1985, his Israeli handlers asked primarily for nuclear, military and technical information on the Arab states, Pakistan, and the Soviet Union – not on the United States – according to the newly-declassified CIA 1987 damage assessment of the Pollard case, published today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (www.nsarchive.org).







The damage assessment includes new details on the specific subjects and documents sought by Pollard's Israeli handlers (pages 36-43), such as Syrian drones and central communications, Egyptian missile programs, and Soviet air defenses. The Israelis specifically asked for a signals intelligence manual that they needed to listen in on Soviet advisers in Syria. The document describes how Pollard's handler, Joseph Yagur, told him to ignore a request, from Yagur's boss, for U.S. "dirt" on senior Israeli officials and told Pollard that gathering such information would terminate the operation (page 38).



Under the heading "What the Israelis Did Not Ask For," the assessment remarks (page 43) that they "never expressed interest in US military activities, plans, capabilities, or equipment."



The assessment also notes that Pollard volunteered delivery of three daily intelligence summaries that had not been requested by his handlers, but which proved useful to them, and ultimately handed over roughly 1,500 such messages from the Middle East and North Africa Summary (MENAS), the Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summary (MELOS), and the Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summary, in addition to the more than 800 compromised documents on other subjects that Pollard delivered to the Israelis in suitcases.



The damage assessment also features a detailed 21-page chronology of Pollard's personal life and professional career, including his work for the Israelis, highlighting more than a dozen examples of unusual behavior by Pollard that the CIA suggests should have, in retrospect, alerted his supervisors that he was a security risk. Prominent on the list were false statements by Pollard during a 1980 assignment with Task Force 168, the naval intelligence element responsible for HUMINT collection. Pollard is now serving a life sentence in prison for espionage.



The CIA denied release of most of the Pollard damage assessment in 2006, claiming for example that pages 18 through 165 were classified in their entirety and not a line of those pages could be released. The Archive appealed the CIA's decision to the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel, established by President Clinton in 1995 and continued by Presidents Bush and Obama. The ISCAP showed its value yet again as a check on systemic overclassification by ordering release of scores of pages from the Pollard damage assessment that were previously withheld by CIA, and published today for the first time.



Today's posting, edited by Archive senior fellow Jeffrey T. Richelson, includes more than a dozen other declassified documents on the Pollard case, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency biographic sketch of Pollard's initial Israeli handler, Col. Aviam Sella. Among many other books and articles, Richelson is the author of The U.S. Intelligence Community (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2011, 6th edition), which the Washington Post called "the authoritative survey of the American cloak-and-dagger establishment."



 This assessment was one of two prepared in the aftermath of Pollard's arrest (the other was prepared for the Department of Defense by several naval intelligence and security organizations). Two versions of the CIA document are included here to show the amount of material the agency excised in 2006, compared with what ISCAP released in 2012.


The main body of the study examines Pollard's personal history and espionage career, Israeli intelligence priorities and requests, material provided by Pollard, as well as losses and vulnerabilities. Supplemental tabs provide a detailed chronology and a summary of security and counterintelligence lessons learned. Portions that were redacted in 2006 are enclosed in rectangles.


"When the Pollard case broke, the general media and public perception was that this was the first time this had ever happen," said John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department’s internal security section. 

"No, that’s not true at all. The Israeli intelligence service, when I was in the Justice Department, [1950-1980] was the second most active in the United States, to the Soviets."

In one instance Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tried to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl. They rigged a fake abortion case against the employee in an unsuccessful effort to recruit him. Before this attempt at blackmail, they had tried to get the Israeli girl to elicit information from her boyfriend.

Two other important targets in Israel are the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) with headquarters in Jerusalem. There have been two or three crude efforts to recruit Marine guards for monetary reward. In the cases involving UNTSO personnel, the operations involved intimidation and blackmail.

In 1954, a hidden microphone planted by the Israelis was discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv. In 1956, telephone taps were found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attache.

***

In March 1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, was overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. The F.B.I. found Bryen’s fingerprints on the documents in question, and he admitted to having obtained them the night before the meeting with the Israelis. Bryen was forced to quit his job, but was never indicted. He was later brought on to the Defense Department as a deputy to Reagan Administration Assistant Secretary Richard Pearle. There Bryen was in charge of such matters as overseeing technology transfers in the Mideast. (See "The Armageddon Network" (Amana Books) by Michael Saba, an officer of the National Association of Arab Americans when he overheard Bryen offer the documents to the Israelis.)

As late as 1992, Stephen Bryen was serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant — with security clearance — on exports of sensitive US technology. (Wall Street Journal, 1/22/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers)

***

* "The Lavon Affair": In 1954, Israeli agents attacked Western targets in Egypt in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon was removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

* In 1965, Israel apparently illegally obtained enriched uranium from NUMEC corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")

* In 1967, Israel attacked the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty," by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House).

* In 1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO was indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

* April 24, 1987 Wall Street Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won’t be Explored in Detail by Panels"

* In 1992, the Wall Street Journal reported that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc’s top-secret airborne spy-camera system. (1/17/92, Edward T. Pound and David Rogers).

* In early 1997, an Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, told investigators that he "inadvertently" gave classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

* For detailed analysis of the Israel-US relationship, including covert operations, see "Taking Sides: America’s Secret Relations with a Militant Israel" by Stephen Green (Amana Books). Also see "Dangerous Liaisons" by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn (Harper Collins).

* For information on economic espionage see "War By Other Means: Economic Espionage in America" by Wall Street Journal reporter John Fialka (Norton). Also see "Israel’s Unauthorized Arms Transfers" in Foreign Policy, Summer 1995, by Prof. Duncan Clarke of American University.


Israel is believed to still have a spy very high up within the US administration, sometimes known as "Mega". 

The Washington Post reported in a front-page story on May 7th, 1997 that US intelligence had intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. 

One of the Israelis had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega" - apparently a codename for an Israeli agent within the US government.






According to Seymour M. Hersh, 


"[I]llicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, [Ari] Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts." 
("The Samson Option," Vintage paperback edition, 1992. pg 295)




After Jonathan Pollard was arrested for selling secrets to Israel, the Israeli leadership denied all knowledge. Hersh provides several sources indicating that they did know. Here’s one:


The top leadership, of course, knew what was going on. One former Israeli intelligence official recalled that Peres and Rabin, both very sophisticated in the handling of intelligence, were quick to ask, as the official put it, "Where are we getting this stuff?" They were told, the Israeli added, that Israeli intelligence ‘has a penetration into the U.S. intelligence community.’ Both men let it go. No one said: ‘Stop it here and now.’" 
("The Samson Option," pg 296)

One of the little-known aspects of the Pollard case is that information was passed along by the Israelis to the Soviets:

For Shamir, the Israeli added, the relaying of the Pollard information to the Soviets was his way of demonstrating that Israel could be a much more dependable and important collaborator in the Middle East than the "fickle" Arabs: "What Arab could give you this?" 
("The Samson Option," pg 299)

The Pollard information helped in Israel’s ability to exercise "The Samson Option" - to threaten the Soviet Union, and therefore the US, with nuclear war if they didn’t get their way in developments in the Mideast. Disclosure of information to the Soviets also apparently led the Soviets to track down US agents:


One senior American intelligence official confirmed that there have been distinct losses of human and technical intelligence collection ability inside the Soviet Union that have been attributed, after extensive analysis, to Pollard. "The Israeli objective [in the handling of Pollard] was to gather what they could and let the Soviets know that they have a strategic capability - for their survival [the threat of a nuclear strike against the Soviets] and to get their people out [of the Soviet Union]," one former CIA official said. "Where it hurts us is our agents being rolled up and our ability to collect technical intelligence being shut down. When the Soviets found out what’s being passed" - in the documents supplied by Pollard to the Israelis - "they shut down the source." 
("The Samson Option," pg 300)