MP3 (One 30-minute segment)
NB: This Flash Audio stream contains both FTRs 686 and 687 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute segment.
Introduction: The program begins with with the Obama Justice Department’s endorsement of the dismissal of a lawsuit against members of the Saudi Royal Family. The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Despite evidence to the contrary, litigation against members of the House of Saud and other Saudi luminaries has been neutralized. The massive Saudi investment in U.S. corporations, U.S. T‑bills; as well as the large number of former U.S. officials in the pay of that benighted nation’s service have made it politically and economically impossible for the U.S. to properly pursue the Saudi links to 9/11.
One of the Saudi luminaries targeted by 9/11 lawsuits recently passed away. Khalid bin Mahfouz wielded consummate influence in the world of covert operations, having been deeply involved with the BCCI milieu and has been substantively linked to al-Qaeda financing by credible sources. (Bin Mahfouz is pictured at right).
The California legislature has passed a bill that will make the “libel tourism” utilized by Khalid bin Mahfouz impossible to enforce in that state. Libel tourism has usually involved filing a lawsuit in the United Kingdom, where libel laws are much more favorable to the plaintiff than they are in the United States. Bin Mahfouz has used the tactic to defend himself from investigation from his demonstrable role in terror financing.
Next, the program updates Operation Green Quest. The March 20, 2002 Operation Green Quest raids targeted a number of institutions and individuals alleged to have financed al-Qaeda, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A recent appellate court decision has upheld the legality of those raids. These raids grew out of the investigation into Sami al-Arian, one of the founders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (pictured at right in a 2005 political rally). In addition to being a close political ally of George W. Bush, al-Arian has been lionized by the so-called “progressive” political sector, Pacifica Radio’s Amy Goodman in particular. (Bush and al-Arian are shown above, at left, at a 2000 campaign rally.)
The program then highlights the AMIA bombing in Argentina. The target of a warrant posted by Interpol, the newly appointed Iranian defense minister is wanted for complicity in that attack. Among the elements figuring in the conspiratorial milieu that executed the AMIA bombing are: Argentine fascists (many with Syrian links); mainstream Argentine politicians (many of them also having Syrian links); weapons dealer, terrorist supporter and drug-dealer Monzer al-Kassar; Iranian and Hezbollah operatives and (by extension) White Aryan Resistance (an American white-supremacist organization headed by Tom Metzger).
The broadcast then highlights the unfolding story of a Syrian facility alleged to be a nuclear installation continues to unfold. It appears that Syria is stonewalling any type of serious investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency into the increasingly likely possibility that the facility–bombed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007–was a nuclear reactor.
Concluding on a terrifying and infuriating note, the program sets forth some portentous remarks by Michael Scheuer, pictured at right. Endorsing the possibility of a nuclear terror attack on the United States, the former head of the CIA’s unit charged with hunting bin Laden may well be setting the stage for such an incident.
Program Highlights Include: Scheuer’s comment that the Obama administration favors another terrorist incident; review of the evidentiary tributaries connecting many of the supposedly unrelated terrorist incidents of the late 1980’s, 1990’s and the first decade of the 21st century; review of the “badjacketing” of Barack Obama; review of the links between the GOP, the Bush administration, the Muslim Brotherhood and the institutions and individuals targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002.
1. The program begins with with the Obama Justice Department’s endorsement of the dismissal of a lawsuit against members of the Saudi Royal Family. The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Despite evidence to the contrary, litigation against members of the House of Saud and other Saudi luminaries has been neutralized. The massive Saudi investment in U.S. corporations, U.S. T‑bills; as well as the large number of former U.S. officials in the pay of that benighted nation’s service have made it politically and economically impossible for the U.S. to properly pursue the Saudi links to 9/11.
The law firm of former Bush (I) Secretary of State James Baker has represented many of the defendants in these lawsuits.
The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.The Justice Department, in a brief filed Friday before the Supreme Court, said it did not believe the Saudis could be sued in American court over accusations brought by families of the Sept. 11 victims that the royal family had helped finance Al Qaeda. The department said it saw no need for the court to review lower court rulings that found in the Saudis’ favor in throwing out the lawsuit.
The government’s position comes less than a week before President Obama is scheduled to meet in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah as part of a trip to the Middle East and Europe intended to reach out to the Muslim world.
Lawyers for the Saudi family said that they were heartened by the department’s brief and that it served to strengthen their hand before the court, which has not decided whether to hear the case.
But family members of several Sept. 11 victims said they were deeply disappointed and questioned whether the decision was made to appease an important ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have aggressively lobbied both the Bush and Obama administrations to have the lawsuit dismissed, government officials say.
“I find this reprehensible,” said Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world.”
Bill Doyle, another leader of the Sept. 11 families whose son was killed in the attacks, said, “All we want is our day in court.”
The lawsuit, brought by a number of insurance companies for the victims and their families, accuses members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia of providing financial backing to Al Qaeda — either directly to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, or indirectly through donations to charitable organizations that they knew were in turn diverting money to Al Qaeda.
A district court threw out the lawsuit, finding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act provided legal protection from liability for Saudi Arabia and the members of the royal family for their official acts.
Solicitor General Elena Kagan said in the brief to the Supreme Court that her office agreed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims,” although she pointed to somewhat different legal rationales in reaching that conclusion.
Ms. Kagan noted that the Supreme Court had historically looked to the executive branch to take the lead on such international matters because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”
The government said in its brief that the victims’ families never alleged that the Saudi government or members of the royal family “personally committed” the acts of terrorism against the United States “or directed others to do so.” And it said the claims that were made — that the Saudis helped to finance the plots — fell “outside the scope” of the legal parameters for suing foreign governments or leaders.
Justice Department officials declined to address the issue of whether the timing of the brief was related to Mr. Obama’s trip to Riyadh, but other lawyers involved in the case said the timing appeared to be coincidental. They said as a practical matter the department, which was invited to state its views in the case in February, needed to do so by this week if it hoped to influence the court’s decision on whether to accept the case before it leaves for summer recess in June.
William H. Jeffress, a Washington lawyer who is representing Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States who is one of the princes named in the lawsuit, said the Justice Department came down on the right side of the law in supporting immunity.
Any suggestion that the timing of the brief was influenced by Mr. Obama’s upcoming visit was “baseless,” Mr. Jeffress said, as were the accusations in the lawsuit itself about the Saudi ties to Al Qaeda. “Osama bin Laden is a sworn enemy of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, and the idea that they would be providing financial support to Bin Laden is a little absurd,” Mr. Jeffress said.
2. One of the Saudi luminaries targeted by 9/11 lawsuits recently passed away. Khalid bin Mahfouz wielded consummate influence in the world of covert operations, having been deeply involved with the BCCI milieu and has been substantively linked to al-Qaeda financing by credible sources.
Khalid bin Mahfouz, a billionaire Saudi banker who paid $225 million to settle charges of bank fraud in 1993 and later won a string of lawsuits in Britain against writers who had accused him of supporting terrorism, died Sunday at his home in Jidda. He was 60.
The cause was a heart attack, according to reports in the Arab news media.
In many ways, Sheik Mahfouz typified Saudi Arabia’s super-wealthy. He maintained opulent homes around the world and traveled in his own Boeing 767 with gold-plated bathroom fixtures. Last year, the magazine Arabian Business ranked him 24th in its list of the 50 richest Arabs, with a fortune estimated at $3.35 billion.
He rose to prominence through his 30 percent ownership in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, which was shut down in 1991 after charges of financial chicanery and money laundering. Sheik Mahfouz paid $225 million to settle fraud charges by the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the Federal Reserve.
District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said $37 million of the settlement was a fine. But Sheik Mahfouz denied that any of the settlement was a fine, pointing out that he had not acknowledged any wrongdoing. He said he had agreed to the settlement “purely as a business decision.”
After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, considerable suspicion fell on Saudi financiers and charities as sources of financing for terrorism. Partly because so much money passed through his bank and a charity he helped establish, Sheik Mahfouz faced a barrage of accusations in books, newspapers and magazines that he and his family had funneled money to Al Qaeda.
He vehemently denied that and repeatedly and often successfully pressed publications for corrections. He also took advantage of Britain’s pro-plaintiff libel laws to sue publishers, almost all of whom settled before trial.
One writer who fought back was Rachel Ehrenfeld, author of “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed — and How to Stop It” (2003). Sheik Mahfouz won a default judgment in 2005 ordering her to apologize, destroy all copies of the book and pay him roughly $230,000 in damages. Ms. Ehrenfeld has called his legal actions “financial jihad.”
But Sheik Mahfouz’s criticisms were sometimes irrefutable. He was widely referred to as the brother-in-law of Osama bin Laden, which he was not. Sheik Mahfouz did acknowledge contributing $270,000 to Mr. bin Laden’s forces when they were fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. At the time, the United States also supported the insurgents there.
Sheik Mahfouz’s father was Salem bin Mahfouz, who was 6 when he and his brothers arrived in Mecca in 1912. Salem bin Mahfouz was employed for many years exchanging currency for pilgrims to Mecca. In 1949, he became a partner in a lucrative currency business and quickly decided that the enterprise would be much more successful if it were constituted as a bank.
Banks, however, were illegal because the Koran condemned the charging of interest as usury. So the elder Sheik Mahfouz, who was illiterate, went to the Saudi royal family and argued that Saudi Arabia should be self-sufficient in banking; at the time, the only two banks in the kingdom were foreign. He proved persuasive: the National Commercial Bank was established in 1953, and it became the bank of the royal family at a time when oil revenues soared. The bank laid the foundation for Saudi Arabia to join the global financial community.
Khalid bin Mahfouz took over the bank after his father died, while his 11 siblings and his mother consolidated their inheritance into a large holding company. Sheik Mahfouz is survived by his wife, Na’elah Kaaki; his sons Abdulrahman and Sultan, and his daughter, Eman.
Sheik Mahfouz was born in 1949 and received his primary and secondary education in Jidda. When he joined National Commercial Bank, he first worked as a cashier. Later, as an executive, he developed securities trading, investment funds and corporate banking.
In 1977, he joined John Connally, a Washington insider, and others to buy the Main Bank of Houston. Mr. Connally introduced him to William Herbert Hunt and Nelson Bunker Hunt, Texas billionaires who recruited him to join an ultimately unsuccessful scheme to corner the silver market. Various reports say that Sheik Mahfouz and other Saudis lost money in the effort.
During these years, Sheik Mahfouz lived in Houston. The Washington Post reported in 1981 that his neighbors seldom saw him, knowing him only as “the Saudi.” From their swimming pools, they would watch his helicopter fly over the neighborhood.
3. The California legislature has passed a bill that will make the “libel tourism” utilized by Khalid bin Mahfouz impossible to enforce in that state. Libel tourism has usually involved filing a lawsuit in the United Kingdom, where libel laws are much more favorable to the plaintiff than they are in the United States.
Legislation designed to thwart ‘libel tourism’–the practice of trying to silence one’s critics by suing them in England, where defamation is easier to prove than in the United States–cleared the state Senate without a dissenting vote Thursday. The bill, prompted by the case of a Saudi businessman who sued a U.S. author in a British court for accusing him of financing terrorists, would prohibit enforcement of most foreign libel verdicts in California. The Senate’s 38–0 vote moved the legislation by Sen. Ellen Corbett, D‑San Leandro, to the Assembly.
“Britain has become a mecca for mostly rich folks who can litigate there to obtain judgments for bad things people say about them in California or anywhere else,” said Thomas Newton, lawyer for the California Newspaper Publishers Association, which is sponsoring the bill.
One difference between British and U.S. libel law is that U.S. plaintiff mst prove that the defamatory statement was false. In Britain, once the plaintiff shows that a statement would harm his or her reputation, the defendant must prove it was true.
The U.S. Supreme Court has also ruled that a public official or prominent person suing for libel must prove that a falsehood was knowing or reckless, a requirement not imposed in Britian or any other nation.
Corbett’s bill SB320, would allow a California court to enforce a foreign award of damages from libel only if it came from a nation that provided the same protections to defendants that U.S. and California courts have recognized. A similar law was signed last year in New York. Although there has been no organized opposition to Corbett’s bill, a lawyer for the Saudi entrepreneur whose suit gave rise to the measures in both California and New York said Thursday that the legislation ‘addresses a problem that actually doesn’t exist.”
“in fact, no foreign libel judgment has ever been enforced in the United States,” said the attorney, Timothy Finn. Without such laws, he said, U.S. courts refuse to enforce libel verdicts from nations that don’t protect the freedom to speak critically.
But even the threat of being sued for libel overseas has a chilling effect on free speech, said Rachel Ehrenfeld, the New York writer who was sued by Finn’s client.
“I am an American citizen. I felt I had very good protection from the First Amendment,” Ehrenfeld said. She learned otherwise after publishing her 2003 book Funding Evil, which documented the alleged role of Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz in financing terrorism [Italics are Mr. Emory’s.]
Bin Mahfouz, who has filed numerous suits disputing similar allegations, sued Ehrenfeld in England, where he owns property and where 23 copies of her book were sold online. Unwilling to hire a British lawyer and defend herself, she defaulted. Bin Mahfouz was awarded $15,000 in damages plus $210,000 in legal fees and court costs.
Although Ehrenfeld hasn’t had to pay any damages, she said the verdict has made her reluctant to travel overseas and has hurt her research.
4. Next, the program updates Operation Green Quest. The March 20, 2002 Operation Green Quest raids targeted a number of institutions and individuals alleged to have financed al-Qaeda, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In addition, the targeted individuals and institutions were deeply involved with both the Muslim Brotherhood, the Bush administration and the GOP. (FTR #‘s 454, 462, 464, 468, 515 and 538 are particularly important for an understanding of the GOP, Muslim Brotherhood, terrorist links.)
A recent appellate court decision has upheld the legality of those raids.
An appeals court yesterday upheld the legality of federal raids on a Herndon-based network of Muslim charities, businesses and think tanks, a case that caused a firestorm in the Muslim community.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said the March 2002 raids on homes and business in Herndon and elsewhere in Northern Virginia were “a harrowing experience” for the targets but did not violate their constitutional rights. The court said agents exercised “lawful force” in drawing their guns and handcuffing a family whose home was searched.
Federal agents carted away hundreds of boxes of documents during the searches from some of the most established Islamic organizations in the United States. They were looking for evidence of an international network to finance terrorism, part of what federal officials have called the nation’s largest terrorism-financing investigation.
Muslim leaders denounced the raids as violations of their civil rights and have strongly denied terrorist ties. A Herndon family sued federal agents involved in the raids, asserting that the agents had fabricated evidence to obtain a search warrant, falsely imprisoned family members by restraining them in their home and violated their civil rights.
A federal judge in Alexandria dismissed the lawsuit in 2007, and a three-judge 4th Circuit panel upheld that dismissal yesterday.
Peter Carr, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, said prosecutors are pleased with the ruling. An attorney for Iqbal and Aysha Unus, who filed the lawsuit along with their teenage daughter, declined to comment.
The raids have led to several indictments and the conviction of prominent Muslim activist Abdurahman Alamoudi, who admitted that he plotted with Libya to assassinate the ruler of Saudi Arabia. No charges have been filed against the Herndon-based cluster of companies and charities that are at the center of the investigation, and their attorneys and some Muslims have long labeled the raids a fishing expedition.
Sami al-Arian, a former Florida professor who earlier pleaded guilty to aiding a terror organization, is now charged with refusing to testify before a federal grand jury in the Herndon probe. A federal judge has not ruled on a defense motion to dismiss those charges.
5. Next, the program highlights the AMIA bombing in Argentina. The target of a warrant posted by Interpol, the newly appointed Iranian defense minister is wanted for complicity in that attack. Among the elements figuring in the conspiratorial milieu that executed the AMIA bombing are: Argentine fascists (many with Syrian links); mainstream Argentine politicians (many of them also having Syrian links); weapons dealer, terrorist supporter and drug-dealer Monzer al-Kassar; Iranian and Hezbollah operatives and (by extension) White Aryan Resistance (an American white-supremacist organization headed by Tom Metzger).
As noted in, among other programs, FTR #456, there are evidentiary tributaries connecting many of the supposedly separate and unconnected terrorist incidents of the last several decades including: the bombing of Pan Am 103, the first attack on the World Trade Center, the AMIA bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks. investigating these links might well yield the finding that all were authored in part or in whole, by the Underground Reich.
The man nominated to serve as Iran’s defense minister is wanted by Interpol in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires, confronting Iran with yet another challenge to its international reputation after an electoral dispute undermined its legitimacy at home and abroad.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad nominated Ahmad Vahidi on Wednesday to serve as defense minister when he submitted his list of 21 nominees to Parliament. Mr. Vahidi was the head of the secret Quds Force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards that carries out operations overseas.
He was one of five Iranian officials sought by Interpol on Argentine charges of “conceiving, planning, financing and executing” the 1994 attack, which killed 85 people and wounded hundreds, said a statement issued by the Anti-Defamation League condemning the nomination.
The hand of Tehran was suspected early in the investigation. However, some criminal justice experts have raised questions recently about Iran’s having had a direct role in the attack, saying it was more likely the work of an Iranian proxy group, Hezbollah, and others in South America.
It was unclear Friday night how Iranian officials might react to the complaints from abroad about Mr. Vahidi, but the issue of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s cabinet choices was already a problem for the president. Leaders in the conservative-dominated Parliament, which must approve all cabinet appointments, have said they expect to reject as many as five nominees as unqualified — another sign of the conflict set off by the disputed presidential election in June.
Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies have failed to silence the critics or even to present a veneer of political unity since the election, and each week seems to bring a new chapter in the worst political crisis to confront Iran since its revolution in 1979. On Friday, the head of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council called for the arrest of the leaders of the protests that swept the nation after the election.
In a fiery and combative speech at a Friday Prayer ceremony in Tehran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati argued that justice demanded the arrest of the leaders, not only the rank and file. He never explicitly named Mir Hussein Moussavi or Mehdi Karroubi, the two presidential candidates who have led the protests. But it was clear whom he meant.
“Implementing justice is not easy when you have to grab the throats of the bigwigs, and they should be confronted first,” Ayatollah Jannati said from the stage in a stadium-size prayer hall at Tehran University. “Otherwise, it is easy to confront petty thieves and nobodies.”
It was not the first time that a high-ranking official had called for the arrest of the two men, who have refused to back down from the charges that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his allies stole the election through fraud and vote rigging. But by not naming names, it was unclear if Ayatollah Jannati was trying to prepare public opinion for the eventual arrests, or if he was holding back to avoid pushing the country deeper into crisis.
“What is true is the unprecedented degree of internal divisions,” said a Western diplomat who worked in Iran for years but asked not to be identified, in accordance with diplomatic protocol. “Yet, because the regime itself has taken stock of the danger, all the different players are refraining from pushing things toward a real crisis.”
In his speech, Ayatollah Jannati, a close ally of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, asked judicial officials why so many people had been arrested but not those who led them. Since the election, thousands of protesters and opposition figures have been taken into custody. While most have been released, the state has begun three mass trials in which former high-ranking officials, journalists and intellectuals have been paraded into courtrooms in pajamas and accused of helping to promote the overthrow of the government through a velvet revolution.
“The recent riots and disturbances were an injustice against Islam and the revolution and the nation and people’s regime was targeted,” Ayatollah Jannati said. “Some were arrested in these events, but those who were behind this calamity and had led it were not arrested.”
In the days since the contested election and the ensuing government crackdown, Mr. Moussavi has kept a relatively low profile, communicating mostly through his Web site and surrogates. Mr. Karroubi, a cleric who was an early supporter of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, has emerged as the most aggressive critic of the system. He made public charges that men and women arrested during the protests were being raped in prisons — charges the state has noy yet fully addressed or silenced.
At the same time, the leadership, including the political and clerical elite, finds itself increasingly divided into competing camps. Parliament is scheduled to consider the cabinet nominations on Sunday. But that matter may prove to be more easily handled than the charges of prison rape.
Addressing the Islamic Society of Engineers this week, Ali Larijani, the speaker of Parliament, eased off his initial insistence that the rape charges were unfounded.
“I announced that they submit evidence if any relevant documents are available,” Mr. Larijani told the engineers society. “If Mr. Karroubi is willing, we will listen to him.”
“Ahmadinejad Nominee Is Wanted in ’94 Bombing” by Michael Slackman; New York Times; 8/22/2009.
6. The story of a Syrian facility alleged to be a nuclear installation continues to unfold. It appears that Syria is stonewalling any type of serious investigation by the International Atomic Energy Agency into the increasingly likely possibility that the facility–bombed by the Israeli Air Force in 2007–was a nuclear reactor.
U.N. inspectors are analyzing further evidence taken from a nuclear research plant in Syria’s capital Damascus where unexplained uranium traces were found, the U.N.‘s nuclear watchdog said on Friday.
But the International Atomic Energy Agency said Syria was still blocking follow-up access to the desert site of what U.S. intelligence reports said was a nascent, North Korean-designed nuclear reactor meant to yield atomic bomb fuel, before Israel bombed it to pieces in 2007.
In June, the Vienna-based IAEA said particles of processed uranium showed up in swipe samples taken by inspectors at the research reactor in Damascus and that it was checking for a link to traces retrieved from the bombed Dair Alzour site.
The IAEA said on Friday it carried out an inventory verification check at the Damascus Miniature Neutron Source Reactor (MNSR) in July, collecting environmental samples of what Syria said was the source of the uranium particles.
The samples were now being analyzed with the results likely to be ready by November.
U.S. analysts have said the IAEA’s findings raised the question of whether Syria used some natural uranium intended for the alleged reactor at Dair Alzour for experiments applicable to learning how to separate out plutonium from spent nuclear fuel.
Syria’s only declared nuclear site is the Damascus research reactor and, unlike Iran, it has no known nuclear energy-generating capacity.
Syria has said that the uranium traces at Dair Alzour came with Israeli munitions used in the strike and that Israel’s target was a conventional military building.
Damascus denies hiding anything from the IAEA. But the agency says Syria is withholding documentation and blocking access that inspectors need to clarify the case.
Syria, an ally of Iran which is under IAEA investigation over nuclear proliferation suspicions, has denied ever having an atom bomb program and said the intelligence is fabricated.
Damascus has complained that its case is being mishandled and questioned the IAEA’s grasp of physics.
“SIGNIFICANT” URANIUM DISCOVERY
But the IAEA said earlier this year inspectors had found enough traces of uranium in soil samples collected in June 2008 at Dair Alzour to constitute a “significant” find.
They subsequently detected similar “manmade” uranium particles in test swipes at the Damascus research site which the IAEA knew about and checked routinely.
Friday’s report said Syria, citing national security grounds, was still refusing IAEA requests for return visits to Dair Alzour and a look at three military sites, whose appearance was altered by landscaping after the IAEA asked to check them.
“However, there is no limitation in comprehensive safeguards agreements (between the IAEA and member states) on agency access to information, activities or locations simply because they may be military related,” the report said.
“The fact that the agency has found particles of nuclear material of a type which is not in the declared inventory of Syria underscores the need to pursue this matter.”
IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei has said the allegations are serious and must be clarified. But he has also rebuked the United States and Israel for failing to alert the U.N. watchdog about the site before it was bombed to rubble, saying this had made the search for truth extremely difficult.
Friday’s report said ElBaradei had urged states including Israel which “may possess information relevant to the agency’s verification, including information which may have led them to conclude that the installation in question had been a nuclear reactor, to make such information available to the Agency.”
Above all, the IAEA wants to examine equipment and rubble removed from Dair Alzour before investigators could get there.
But Syria told the IAEA the debris had already been disposed of so it was impossible to fulfill the agency’s request, originally made over a year after the bombing, the report said.
“IAEA Extends Probe of Alleged Secret Syria Atom Site” by Mark Heinrich; Reuters; 8/29/09.
7. Concluding on a terrifying and infuriating note, the program sets forth some portentous remarks by Michael Scheuer. Endorsing the possibility of a nuclear terror attack on the United States, the former head of the CIA’s unit charged with hunting bin Laden may well be setting the stage for such an incident.
In the context of this comment, as well as his statement that the Obama administration favors another terrorist incident, one should consider several things. Foremost among those is the “badjacketing” of Obama discussed in FTR#‘s 654, 655, 656, 663, 666. Elements associated with the GOP and the milieu targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002 have also grouped themselves around Obama, leaving him vulnerable to charges of being complicit with terrorism.
In addition, the decision by Obama Attorney General Eric Holder to pursue possible indictments of CIA officials for using torture could alienate key intelligence operatives involved with interdicting terrorist attacks. This might make the possibility of a successful attack by al-Qaeda or related elements more likely.
“Hate TV, that is what I am going to call Fox News from this point on. Every single day this ‘news’ outlet sells hate and incites violence. The latest is just unreal. Here is what Glenn Beck guest Michael Scheuer said: ‘The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama Bin Ladin to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States. . . only Osama can, can execute an attack which can force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently and with as much violence as necessary.’ . . ”
“Fox News: A Nuke Attack on US Soil Would Be Great for America . . .”; Atlargely.com; 7/1/2009.
8. Scheuer has had other ripe things to say. Implying that the Obama administration is “pro-terrorist,” Scheuer has stated that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel would favor another attack. In light of the documented and profound links between the GOP and the George W. Bush administration to the terror funding milieu targeted by the Operation Green Quest raids of 3/20/2002, it is grotesque and ironic to contemplate Scheuer’s remarks.
Obama administration was making a mistake by investigating abuses by interrogators. Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade talked with former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer, former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Brooks and former FBI investigator William Daly.
Scheuer, a CIA employee for 22 years, thinks that current CIA director Leon Panetta should quit the agency. “Clearly he should quit. He has no influence at all with the president,” said Scheuer.
A recent ABC News report claimed that Panetta had threatened to resign over potential investigations into detainee abuses. However, a CIA spokesman called the rumor “false, wrong and bogus.”
“He is just a useless fellow,” Scheuer said about Panetta.
The former CIA analyst wasn’t done with his criticism of the Obama administration. “For the CIA now to be answering to a president — for the first time, I think — a sitting president who has given aid and comfort both psychologically and materially, it’s a very distressing thing,” he said.
It’s not the first time Scheuer has made controversial remarks. In July, Scheuer seemed to be wishing Osama bin Laden would unleash new attacks on Americans. “The only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States,” he told Fox News’ Glenn Beck.
Scheuer didn’t mention bin Laden in his Friday comments but told Fox’s Brian Kilmeade that another attack was coming. “Oh sure, we’re going to be attacked, Brian,” Scheuer explained. “You know, Rahm Emanuel wants an attack. He loves crisis.”
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