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FTR #384 Between Iraq and a Hard Place, Part 4

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Pre­sent­ing new infor­ma­tion about the Iraq sit­u­a­tion, as well as review­ing mate­r­i­al on that sub­ject from the For The Record archives, this pro­gram high­lights aspects of the Iraqi con­fronta­tion that may have escaped gen­er­al notice. Cen­tral to the analy­sis of this pro­gram is Mr. Emory’s fear that a Machi­avel­lian, “let’s-you-and-him-fight” sce­nario may be in the off­ing-cour­tesy of the Under­ground Reich. (It is rec­om­mend­ed that those who would view these rumi­na­tions as “beyond the pale” read The Prince by Machi­avel­li, The Art of War by Sun-Tzu, and On War by Karl von Clause­witz-three works that are required read­ing for any gen­er­al staff offi­cer-can­di­date at any mil­i­tary acad­e­my in the world, authored by three of the pre­em­i­nent “con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists” of all time. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that the US may be walk­ing into a trap (laid by the Under­ground Reich) is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­card­ed. It is sig­nif­i­cant that the CIA has advanced the view that the Bush sce­nario of Sad­dam Hus­sein equip­ping ter­ror­ist groups with weapons of mass destruc­tion is more prob­a­ble if the Unit­ed States attacks and threat­ens his regime with extinc­tion.

1. Most of the pro­grams enu­mer­at­ed above dis­cuss the pro­found Ger­man involve­ment with the arm­ing of Iraq, and/or con­nec­tions of the Third Reich to the polit­i­cal gen­e­sis of Sad­dam Hus­sein and so-called neo-Nazi sup­port for his regime. This broad­cast begins by under­scor­ing the Ger­man link to the arm­ing of Sad­dam with the capac­i­ty to devel­op nuclear weapons. “A new inves­tiga­tive film traces the roots of Iraq’s nuclear capac­i­ty to links between Ger­man indus­try and Bagh­dad’s bomb builders, and ques­tions the lenient sen­tence hand­ed a Ger­man engi­neer for trea­son in aid­ing the project. The doc­u­men­tary, ‘Steal­ing the Fire,’ offers a rare close-up look at a ‘pro­lif­er­a­tor,’ the engi­neer Karl-Heinz Schaab, who emerges on film as a bland, gray, fas­tid­i­ous 68-year-old tech­ni­cian who protests he’s ‘too small to be turned into a scape­goat for the oth­ers.’ ” (“Sad­dam’s Nuclear Link” by Charles J. Han­ley [AP]; San Fran­cis­co Exam­in­er; 10/14/200; p. 13A.)

“Blue­prints and oth­er doc­u­ments Schaab and asso­ciates brought to Iraq in the 1980’s, along with Schaab’s own hands-on skills, were a vital boost to Bagh­dad’s devel­op­ment of gas cen­trifuges, machines whose ultra-fast spin­ning ‘enrich­es’ ura­ni­um by sep­a­rat­ing U‑235, the stuff of nuclear bombs, from non-fis­sion­able U‑238. In an inter­view Schaab says that on his last Bagh­dad vis­it, in April 1990, he per­son­al­ly helped install Iraq’s first test-cen­trifuge.” (Idem.)

It is worth not­ing the unusu­al­ly lenient sen­tence afford­ed Schaab by the Ger­man courts. “In 1999, a Ger­man court con­vict­ed Schaab of trea­son and sen­tenced him to five years’ impris­on­ment and a $32,000 fine, but sus­pend­ed the term because he pre­vi­ous­ly served 15 months in a Brazil­ian jail. The light sen­tence raised ques­tions. David Albright who was on the U.N. inspec­tion team, said ‘I think they want­ed the Schaab sto­ry to dis­ap­pear. It was intense­ly embar­rass­ing.’ ” (Idem.)

2. Appar­ent­ly, Ger­many also equipped Iraq with tech­nol­o­gy that could equip Iraq with a mobile artillery sys­tem capa­ble of fir­ing pro­jec­tiles con­tain­ing nuclear, chem­i­cal or bio­log­i­cal war­fare pay­loads. “Ger­man pros­e­cu­tors say Iraq has acquired tech­nol­o­gy to make a long-range can­non capa­ble of deliv­er­ing atom­ic, bio­log­i­cal and chem­i­cal weapons, and that it came from Ger­many via Jor­dan. The alle­ga­tion is in a report pre­pared by Ger­man mil­i­tary and police agen­cies for pros­e­cu­tors in Mannheim, Ger­many. A court there is prepar­ing to hear a case in Jan­u­ary against two Ger­mans who bought from Ger­man com­pa­nies can­non-bor­ing equip­ment that alleged­ly end­ed up in Iraq . . .” (“Iraq May Have Bought Ger­man Arms Tech­nol­o­gy” by David Craw­ford and Ian John­son; Wall Street Jour­nal; 10/9/2002; p. A16.)

“The inves­ti­ga­tion was ini­ti­at­ed in Jan­u­ary 2001 after state audi­tors con­duct­ing a rou­tine inspec­tion dis­cov­ered irreg­u­lar­i­ties in the books of a Mannheim com­pa­ny, Alri­wo GmbH. The inves­ti­ga­tion soon focused on Bernd Schom­peter, a 59-year-old Alri­wo employ­ee. Alri­wo has shipped var­i­ous prod­ucts legal­ly to Iraq under the Unit­ed Nations oil-for-food pro­gram. Pros­e­cu­tors say Mr. Schom­peter used the com­pa­ny to buy can­non-bor­ing equip­ment in 1999 and 2000 from two Ger­man com­pa­nies.” (Idem.)

“One was Burgsmuller GmbH, based in north­ern Ger­many, which sold Mr. Schom­peter about 189,000 Euros ($186,000) worth of drilling equip­ment. The oth­er is Iftek GmbH, from which he bought 50,000 Euros worth of equip­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors say Mr. Schom­peter also tried to buy four can­non tubes in 1999 from Swiss con­cern Par­com AG, but backed out of the deal when the com­pa­ny asked for an offi­cial Jor­dan­ian doc­u­ment assur­ing it that the tubes would stay in Jor­dan . . .” (Idem.)

“Mr. Schom­peter was arrest­ed last year and charged last month. When the tri­al begins in Jan­u­ary, Ger­man intel­li­gence is expect­ed to show that Jor­dan was only a tran­sit point for the equip­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors say the goods were pur­chased by a man they iden­ti­fy only as Sahib al‑H. They say the man is an Iraqi-born U.S. cit­i­zen, based in Amman, who shipped the goods to Iraq . . .” (Ibid.; p. A17.)

“Although Iraq still has mis­siles capa­ble of deliv­er­ing atom­ic, bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons, mil­i­tary experts say the artillery project has been pri­or­i­ty since the 1980’s, when the first al-Fao pro­to­type was pro­duced. ‘Every­one talks about mis­siles, but mis­siles are very expen­sive,’ says Chris Foss, edi­tor of Jane’s Armor and Artillery. ‘Artillery like this is far cheap­er and can be deployed much more quick­ly.’ ” (Idem.)

3. Much of the first side of the pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt of FTR 155 [4]. Con­sti­tut­ing the last research bequeathed to us by the late Paul Man­ning, this mate­r­i­al was to be includ­ed in his nev­er-to-be-pub­lished The Search for Mar­tin Bor­mann, a com­pan­ion vol­ume to his quin­tes­sen­tial Mar­tin Bor­mann: Nazi in Exile. Paul’s son Ger­ry was mur­dered before the book could be pub­lished. (Accord­ing to Man­ning’s intel­li­gence con­tacts, this was in retal­i­a­tion for his inves­tiga­tive work on Bor­mann and was a warn­ing of more to come should he con­tin­ue his fol­low-up work.) As dis­cussed in FTR 31 [5], the joint Iraqi/Egyptian/Argentine Con­dor mis­sile pro­gram was one of the Under­ground Reich’s attempts at equip­ping Sad­dam with the capa­bil­i­ty of long-range deliv­ery vehi­cles for his weapons of mass destruc­tion. In FTR 384 [6], the dis­cus­sion repris­es the role of the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion in the Con­dor project, as well as a project to equip the Argen­tines (and appar­ent­ly Iraq as well) with nuclear weapons.

4. Once again, dis­cus­sion cen­ters on the con­nec­tions of the Bush fam­i­ly to the Thyssen heavy indus­tri­al group and, through the Thyssen firm, to the Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion and the Third Reich, in its above-ground and under­ground phas­es. The sec­ond side of his broad­cast excerpts FTR 87 [7], and reviews the alleged par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Thyssen indus­tri­al com­plex in the arm­ing of Sad­dam Hus­sein.

5. With the grow­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty of war with Iraq, it is worth remem­ber­ing some of the aspects of the con­se­quences of the last Gulf War. For many GI’s and their fam­i­lies, as well as many cit­i­zens of the Mid­dle East, Gulf War Syn­drome is part of the lega­cy of the last con­flict. One of the most insight­ful and valu­able pieces of research into the caus­es of Gulf War Syn­drome has been hand­ed down to us by Dr. Garth Nichol­son and his wife, Dr. Nan­cy Nichol­son. The fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion must be ana­lyzed in light of the fact that there are, in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, mul­ti­ple caus­es for the afflic­tion. These include the accel­er­at­ed vac­cine sched­ules giv­en the GI’s who served, the ter­ri­ble pol­lu­tion that rained down on them from the oil well fires, the high-explo­sive muni­tions used on nuclear and CBW sites and result­ing scat­ter­ing of these dead­ly agents, and a “weaponized” micro-organ­ism called a mycoplas­ma. Excerpt­ing FTR 16 [8], the inter­view with Dr. Garth Nichol­son focus­es on the mycoplas­ma, its nature and appar­ent his­to­ry, and some of the oth­er vari­ables con­cern­ing this aspect of GWS. Dis­cus­sion high­lights include: the inser­tion of the “enve­lope” gene from the HIV‑1 (AIDS) virus to make the mycoplas­ma more path­o­gen­ic; evi­dence that the Reagan/Bush admin­is­tra­tions gave the “weaponized” organ­ism to Sad­dam Hus­sein to use against the Ira­ni­ans dur­ing the Iran/Iraq war of 1980–88; evi­dence that “air-burst” Scud mis­siles may have been used to attack U.S. troops well behind the front lines dur­ing the Gulf War; indi­ca­tions that the mycoplas­ma-induced GWS can be com­mu­ni­cat­ed to fam­i­ly mem­bers and med­ical per­son­nel attend­ing strick­en vet­er­ans; and the hap­py news that the mycoplas­ma infec­tion can be suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed with a cycle of antibi­otics.

6. For the con­ve­nience and enlight­en­ment of the listener/reader, text describ­ing the Rea­gan and Bush admin­is­tra­tions’ role in equip­ping Sad­dam Hus­sein with his weapon­ry is includ­ed in the descrip­tion. This is to be con­sid­ered in the con­text of Gulf War Syn­drome, as well as the pos­si­ble upcom­ing ven­ture against Iraq. Exec­u­tive direc­tives issued by the Rea­gan admin­is­tra­tion set up a series of inter-agency net­works under the stew­ard­ship of the elder George Bush (then Vice-Pres­i­dent and for­mer­ly direc­tor of the CIA). These net­works were con­struct­ed for the pur­pose of “fight­ing ter­ror­ism,” but became the elder Bush’s own pri­vate intel­li­gence ser­vice or “White House-with­in-a-White House.” This “Bush Intel­li­gence Agency” was used to arm Iran‑a ter­ror-sup­port­ing nation and part of the “Axis of Evil” tagged by the younger George Bush in his state of the union speech in Jan­u­ary of 2002. “One top-secret Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Deci­sion Direc­tive, NSDD#3, estab­lished a new intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion for Vice Pres­i­dent George Bush. The for­mer CIA direc­tor now had become the head of his own sep­a­rate spy agency in the White House: ‘. . . the Spe­cial Sit­u­a­tion Group (SSG) chaired by the Vice Pres­i­dent . . . is charged, inter alia, with for­mu­lat­ing plans in antic­i­pa­tion of crises. . . .In order to facil­i­tate this cri­sis pre-plan­ning respon­si­bil­i­ty, a Stand­ing Cri­sis Pre-Plan­ning (CPPG) is here­by estab­lished . . . and will: . . . For each poten­tial cri­sis, insure that an inter­a­gency group is estab­lished and devel­op­ing con­tin­gency plans. Pro­vide guid­ance to the group and task it with the prepa­ra­tion of pre­emp­tive pol­i­cy options to pre­vent a cri­sis if pos­si­ble as well as the prepa­ra­tion of politi­co-mil­i­tary options for deal­ing with the even­tu­al crisis.’[Emphasis added.] It is clear from this top-secret doc­u­ment that Bush asked for, and received, autho­riza­tion to pre­pare ‘pre­emp­tive pol­i­cy options . . .’ ” (The Secret War Against the Jews: How West­ern Espi­onage Betrayed the Jew­ish Peo­ple; by John Lof­tus and Mark Aarons; Copy­right 1994 [HC]; St. Mar­t­in’s Press; ISBN 0–312-11057‑X; p. 407.)

“In short, George Bush’s job was to coor­di­nate the State Depart­ment, CIA, mil­i­tary, and any oth­er gov­ern­ment agency in prepa­ra­tion for anoth­er ter­ror­ist attack or hostage cri­sis. No one but Bush was respon­si­ble for the dis­as­ters to come . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 407–408.)

“When it came to ter­ror­ism or the Con­tras, Bush’s Spe­cial sit­u­a­tions Group had the final say. To put it blunt­ly, Bush was run­ning a White House with­in the white House Its mem­bers could co-opt, or cir­cum­vent, any gov­ern­ment agency they wished. There would be no leaks, but, unfor­tu­nate­ly, no inde­pen­dent crit­i­cism of their plans either. The vice pres­i­den­t’s SSG was the per­fect hid­ing place for some of the bizarre oper­a­tions dreamed up by Bush, Casey, Robert ‘Bud’ McFar­lane, Dewey Clar­ridge, and North. Our intel­li­gence sources say that these five men are the ‘morons’ who bun­gled their way into the Iran-Con­tra affair and then tried to shit the blame to the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, or to Israel, even to ‘Ollie North-any­where but back to the Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent.” (Ibid.; p.409.)

7. These same net­works were used to arm Sad­dam under the BNL/Iraqgate scan­dal. “In 1982, Casey flew to Bagh­dad to open a high­ly secret link to Sad­dam Hus­sein. Accord­ing to Alan Fried­man’s book, Spi­der’s Web, Vice Pres­i­dent Bush played a covert role in Casey’s Iraq ini­tia­tive. Like Per­ry’s dis­cus­sion of Cam­bo­dia, Fried­man makes a pow­er­ful case that Bush inex­tri­ca­bly inter­twined with Casey’s bizarre ini­tia­tive to buy Iraqi Oil, and Hus­sein’s alle­giance with guns. There is no doubt that trans­fer­ring Amer­i­can weapon­ry to Iraq was high­ly ille­gal, but was approved from both the sec­re­tary of state and Con­gress.” (Ibid.; 429.)

8. The arm­ing of Iraq and the Iran/Contra scan­dal were two sides of the same, unfor­tu­nate coin. “Both times Casey and Bush teamed up, the oper­a­tion involved gun run­ning. It is no coin­ci­dence that both secret oper­a­tions begun in1982, the same year that Vice Pres­i­dent Bush estab­lished his spe­cials Sit­u­a­tions group for counter ter­ror­ism. What nei­ther Per­ry nor Fried­man real­ized was that Bush and Casey worked on a third covert oper­a­tion, arms-for hostages deal with Iran. Accord­ing to our source, the sto­ry of Bush’s role as the archi­tect of Iran­gate has nev­er been told before . (It was run just poor­ly as the Cam­bo­di­an gun­run­ning and just as ille­gal as the arm­ing of Iraq but it was much bet­ter hid­den from Con­gress.” (Ibid.; p. 429.)

9. The pro­gram con­cludes with an op-ed col­umn that high­lights the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a “bio-Armaged­don” if the attack on Iraq bears the worst imag­in­able fruit. As empha­sized in the dis­cus­sion of this col­umn, the Ser­pen­t’s Walk sce­nario is one to be care­ful­ly con­sid­ered in this con­text. (For more about that book, see, among oth­er pro­grams), FTR#‘s 90, 212, as well as numer­ous broad­casts deal­ing with the events in, and around, 9/11. “The debate among the nation’s politi­cians and the advice they’re receiv­ing from intel­li­gence experts should not focus exclu­sive­ly on diplo­ma­cy ver­sus pre­emp­tive mil­i­tary action against Sad­dam Hus­sein. Instead, there is one night­mar­ish out­come — the so-called bio-Armaged­don sce­nario — that is of imme­di­ate con­cern.” (“A Virus-Fed Dooms­day” by Scott P. Layne and Michael H. Som­mer; Los Ange­les Times; 10/10/2002; p. A13.) [9]

“It goes like this: We go in to take out Hus­sein, and his obe­di­ent hench­men pull a ‘dooms­day’ switch, releas­ing con­ta­gious bio­log­i­cal agents for which there is no vac­cine and no cure. Not only are hun­dreds of thou­sands of Amer­i­can troops wiped out but, if Hus­sein wish­es to die a mar­tyr’s death, the vir­u­lent agents are released to spread around the world and wipe out half of mankind.” (Idem.)

“Even men­tion­ing this sub­ject may seem like scare­mon­ger­ing, but it’s not. In today’s dicey world, this hor­rif­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty is a bio­log­i­cal, mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal fact of life — or death — that can­not be dis­missed out of hand.” (Idem.)

“How seri­ous­ly has the bio-Armaged­don sce­nario been weighed in coun­cils of war? An Oct. 7 let­ter from CIA Direc­tor George Tenet to Sen. Bob Gra­ham (D‑Fla.), chair­man of the Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, stat­ed that a cor­nered Hus­sein might use ‘his last chance to exact vengeance by tak­ing a large num­ber of vic­tims with him.’ ” (Idem.)

“It costs about $1 mil­lion to kill one per­son with a nuclear weapon, about $1,000 to kill one per­son with a chem­i­cal weapon and about $1 to kill one per­son with a bio­log­i­cal weapon. Low cost alone may dic­tate that cur­rent and future ter­ror­ists will opt for the $1 bio­log­i­cal killers.” (Idem.)

“Last year, a bomb­shell of a sci­en­tif­ic paper, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Virol­o­gy, revealed that a bio­engi­neered form of mouse­pox — a close cousin of small­pox — was vac­cine-resis­tant and 100% lethal. It showed that sim­ply insert­ing one immune-inhibit­ing gene into mouse­pox was all it took.” (Idem.)

“Is it con­ceiv­able that Hus­sein’s well-trained sci­en­tists, who crave to please their boss at any cost, have not read this paper and applied its find­ings to small­pox?” (Idem.)

“This year, anoth­er stun­ning paper in the research jour­nal Sci­ence described the com­plete syn­the­sis of the poliovirus genome in the test tube. This feat of bio­engi­neer­ing point­ed out that dead­ly virus­es, such as small­pox, can be res­ur­rect­ed in the test tube. No seed germs are required, as pre­vi­ous­ly thought, just genet­ic sequences, train­ing in mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gy at the mas­ter’s-in-sci­ence lev­el and a few years of lab­o­ra­to­ry work.” (Idem.)

“It’s hard to under­es­ti­mate or sug­ar­coat these sci­en­tif­ic papers. They offer a blue­print for cre­at­ing vac­cine-resis­tant and high­ly lethal virus­es that could, for exam­ple, ren­der the cur­rent small­pox vac­cine stock­pile and the U.S. gov­ern­men­t’s emer­gency vac­ci­na­tion pro­gram absolute­ly use­less. This bio­log­i­cal genie may pose a far greater threat than 1,000 atom­ic bombs.” (Idem.)

“It’s no longer hypo­thet­i­cal to bio­engi­neer such an agent. And less than $1 mil­lion would be required to cre­ate dead­ly and con­ta­gious agents . . . ” (Idem.)

“In the wrong hands, a bio­engi­neered virus could be bot­tled and used as an insur­ance pol­i­cy against inva­sion and over­throw. And, if unleashed, it could change the very fab­ric of remain­ing mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion. At a min­i­mum, too many peo­ple might be strick­en to con­tin­ue to oper­ate oil refiner­ies, pow­er plants, air­lines and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.” (Idem.)