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World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online
By Nick Meo, Michael Evans and Daniel McGrory
Freed hostage will arrive home today amid growing concern, report our correspondents
NORMAN KEMBER, the freed peace activist, will arrive back in Britain today amid growing controversy over his failure publicly to thank the military forces who rescued him.
Neither Professor Kember nor the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) organisation for whom he worked have acknowledged the work of the soldiers who rescued him and two Canadian hostages on Thursday, or of the teams of military and intelligence officials who spent months trying to track them down.
General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British Army, expressed the unhappiness of the military last night when he told Channel 4 News that he was “saddened that there doesn’t seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives”.
Before flying out of Baghdad on an RAF aircraft yesterday, Professor Kember and his two fellow hostages released a brief statement that said nothing about the rescue force. It read simply: “We are deeply grateful for all those who prayed for our release. We don’t have words to describe our feelings, our joy and gratitude. Our heads are swirling; when we are ready, we will speak to the media.”
It was the third set of comments Professor Kember had relayed to the media that failed to mention his rescuers. A lengthy statement released by CPT after the hostages’ rescue on Thursday not only failed to thank their rescuers, but called on coalition forces to withdraw from Iraq.
The only oblique acknowledgement came from Professor Kember’s wife, Pat. In a statement released through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office last night, she thanked “all those who have helped secure his release”. But she, too, made no mention of the British-led unit that freed her husband in western Baghdad. She praised “government agencies and my family liaison officers”, but did not directly refer to the soldiers who stormed the kidnappers’ hideout in darkness.
CPT has always made it clear that its members did not want force to be used to rescue them if they were kidnapped or held hostage.
But, in the event, the coalition devoted huge resources to securing their release. The SAS, special forces from the US and Canada and military intelligence officers spent months trying to locate them.
A force consisting of SAS troopers backed up by about 50 paratroops and Marines spearheaded the task force that rescued them. US and Iraqi troops were also involved in the mission. Relaxed and rested after his 36-hour stay at the fortified British Embassy in Baghdad, Professor Kember was flown out of the green zone by military helicopter yesterday to begin his journey home. He then boarded an RAF military transport at Baghdad airport for the short flight to neighbouring Kuwait. From there he was being flown home.
Maxine Nash, of CPT in Baghdad, said that the organisation had not paid for his flight back to Britain. She said: “He elected to go through the Embassy, they arranged it. We did offer to pay for commercial flights for everyone but that can be difficult because it means driving through dangerous areas.”
She admitted that the pacifist hostages had mixed feelings about being rescued by the military. She said: “Our mandate is violence reduction so this was a tough call. Before they were kidnapped both Tom and Jim had said they didn’t want to be rescued.” Ms Nash said that the group was now considering leaving Baghdad. “After what has happened we’re going to spend some time thinking about what to do.”
Last night British diplomats in Iraq tried to sidestep the row over the apparently ungracious behaviour of the peace activists. Diplomatic sources let it be known that the three men did agree to face further questioning yesterday from intelligence agents trying to hunt down the group who held them for 118 days.
An intelligence source said: “They gave what help they could. They recognise that there are other hostages, including Westerners, still in captivity who we believe were taken by the same group.”
The source added that Professor Kember had “privately expressed his thanks to his rescuers” though he did not meet them. The activists explained that they could not be of much help with descriptions of their captors as the group kept their faces covered.
The three men revealed how, shortly before the SAS burst their way into their prison before dawn on Wednesday, their captors suddenly moved them to a downstairs room.
They were tied up and bound together. The hostages heard their captives leaving the property. British officials insisted that there had been no deal to free the trio.
They said that interrogators told the gang member they arrested this week that he must reveal the location of the hostages or face 30 years in jail.
RESCUE FIGURES
The hunt for Norman Kember and his fellow hostages involved
250 men from the Task Force Black US/British/Australian counter-kidnap unit
100 men from Task Force Maroon, the Paras and Royal Marines backing special forces
15 men in helicopter crews
AND tens of thousands of pounds spent on helicopter and transport aircraft flights
March 24, 2006 at 07:13 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
World news from The Times and the Sunday Times - Times Online
By Nick Meo in Baghdad, Michael Evans, Daniel McGrory and Tom Baldwin
Iraqi suspect gave the multinational rescue force a crucial tip-off that led to house where Norman Kember was held
FOR a man in his seventies who had been held hostage for 118 days, never knowing if his captors were going to kill him, Norman Kember was in playful mood after his rescue by British forces from a house in west Baghdad yesterday.
Embracing fellow peace activists at the British Embassy, Mr Kember exclaimed: “I’ve just found out I’ve been released. It must be true — it’s on the news.” He and the two Canadians who had been held hostage with him, Jim Loney, 41, and Harmeet Sooden, 32, spent an emotional hour with fellow members of the Christian Peacemakers Team.
Most of the time was spent “hugging and sharing vanilla and chocolate ice-cream”, Anita David, one of the activists, said. “There were tears, smiles and laughter.”
The only painful moment was when the activists had to tell the three hostages that their American colleague Tom Fox, who had been separated from them 40 days ago, had been murdered. “They didn’t know what had happened to him and it has come as a horrible shock,” Ms David said.
Mr Fox’s handcuffed, bullet-riddled body was found on March 9, dumped in a street not far from where the peace activists were rescued in yesterday’s dawn raid.
The long-awaited breakthrough that ensured Professor Kember and the two Canadians were spared a similiar fate came late on Wednesday night when one of two Iraqi men picked up by US troops during a raid in the capital revealed where the three were being held. Officials in Baghdad and London were saying little about the genesis of the operation, but it is thought that the young Iraqi had been under surveillance for several days and his capture was more than mere good fortune.
For months a secret unit known as Task Force Black, commanded by a senior SAS officer, has been quietly hunting Iraqi war criminals and searching for hostages.
Task Force Black is a combined team of about 250 US, British and Australian special forces backed up by intelligence personnel. After the hostages were snatched while leaving a mosque in western Baghdad last November, Scotland Yard also sent in trained negotiators, the Canadians flew in their kidnap experts, and FBI agents and MI6 officers were in Baghdad trying to make contact with intermediaries who could put them in direct touch with the kidnappers.
British undercover troops, bearded and dressed as Iraqis, met religious leaders and tribal elders to piece together scraps of information about the hostage-takers, who called themselves the Swords of Righteousness Brigade. Satellite photographs, telephone intercepts and reams of other information were examined in minute detail. Intelligence officers followed up dozens of tip-offs from paid informants, community leaders and Iraqi police, but all leads had proved false until the detainee betrayed his crucial secret.
The SAS had narrowed down the likely location of the kidnappers’ base to the scruffy suburbs of western Baghdad around al-Hurriyah, a stronghold of mainly Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs responsible for dozens of abductions of Iraqis. The detainee disclosed the precise address, describing the location and making sketches of the house and the nearby roads.
For weeks the special forces had practised strategies for taking kidnappers by surprise. They used mock-ups of various types of properties, unsure if the hostages were held in a basement or in a house where children lived. Now they had to act fast. Their concern, according to one source, was that the hostage-takers might realise that one of their gang had been captured and kill the three Westerners before escaping.
At about 3am yesterday the SAS squadron commander in charge of the rescue force summoned his team at their base inside the heavily fortified green zone. The force consisted mainly of SAS troopers, backed by about 50 soldiers from the 1st Battalion The Parachute Regiment and Royal Marines — all members of the Special Forces Support Group codenamed Task Force Maroon.
Defence sources told The Times that helicopters with reconnaissance cameras and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, which can monitor movements on the ground from 20,000ft, were deployed. The men who spearheaded the rescue arrived in a convoy of cars disguised as local taxis and pick-up trucks.
Half the team set up a cordon several streets away from the target so that innocent civilians did not blunder into an operation that might end in a shoot-out. The 25 men who burst into the two-storey building used classic hostage-rescue techniques, storming every room simultaneously to ensure no one escaped.
They found the three hostages sitting bound on the floor of a ground-floor room. Their captors had fled. No shots were fired. In case the kidnappers were lurking nearby the hostages were cut free, taken out of the building and bundled into the back of an army Land Rover. Less than two minutes after the rescue force had entered the building, the three Westerners were on their way to freedom.
They were driven to the green zone to waiting British officials. Professor Kember, who had always said that he did not want to be rescued by military force, had been saved by exactly that. Behind them the rest of Task Force Maroon searched the hideout, looking for clues as to the identity of the kidnappers and evidence indicating where other western hostages might be held.
Major-General Rick Lynch, a spokesman for the coalition forces, revealed they suspected that the peace activists were taken by “a kidnapping cell” who were behind other abductions in Baghdad.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, said he hoped that their rescue might help to secure the release of Jill Carroll, an American freelance journalist kidnapped in Baghdad on January 7.
Although the three hostages had been through a terrifying ordeal, British intelligence officers were waiting to speak to them. “They needed to know anything the three might be able to tell them about their abductors, or whether they had seen or heard any other Westerners while they were in captivity,” the security source said.
Only after this initial questioning were the men examined by a doctor. Although he was the oldest by some years, Mr Kember seemed the most robust. The two Canadians needed some minor treatment, but, while they were being seen to, all the men were allowed to telephone home.
Back in London, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told the Cabinet about the successful end to the operation. “For once we had good news from Iraq,” one Downing Street source said. “Tony Blair is delighted and sends his thanks to the forces who carried out this mission so professionally”.
Later, when they were reunited with their fellow activists, the hostages were even able to laugh about their ordeal. They said they had been treated well, although food was in short supply. They told how they were sometimes allowed to watch television but were out of touch with what had been happening in the past few months. “They were very curious about some of the things they had seen on TV and wanted us to explain what had been going on,” said Ms David.
“They didn't express any regrets about coming to Iraq for their mission, although I think it's too early to say whether they will return.”
March 24, 2006 at 07:02 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Telegraph | News | SAS to review its role in Iraq after trooper's revelations
By Sean Rayment
(Filed: 19/03/2006)
The Special Air Service is to question its own role and tactics in Iraq following allegations by a former member that the elite regiment was taking part in an illegal war.
The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that senior officers will hold an informal "debriefing session" this week when soldiers of all ranks will be invited to give their views and opinions on how the SAS conducts operations in Iraq.
The regimental debriefing follows the revelation that Ben Griffin, 28, told his commanders that he was no longer prepared to fight alongside American forces.
The soldier, who had served with the regiment for two years, had expected to face a court martial but was allowed to leave the Army with a glowing testimonial in June last year.
The SAS routinely holds informal briefing sessions when members of all ranks are urged to voice their opinions on operations.
Mr Griffin's decision to sacrifice his career in the SAS because of his beliefs have received a great deal of support from serving soldiers of all ranks across the Army and members of the public.
A soldier who was attached to the SAS and served alongside Mr Griffin in Iraq wrote to the Sunday Telegraph last week saying he "fully concurred" with Mr Griffin's view that the war was illegal.
The serviceman, who asked not to be named, wrote: "I am able to concur fully with his assessment of the ground situation as he saw it.
"I was engaged for five months on Operation Telic 1, the original invasion of Iraq. The overwhelming feeling experienced by many of us, after the initial doubts as to the reason for the invasion, was the sense that there was no "phase four" - the actions that were to follow after the fall of the regime. We were in a vacuum of direction, filled by political indecision."
He confirmed that he had also witnessed occasions when American troops punched and kicked Iraqi civilians during house searches. He added: "Once I saw an American soldier verbally abusing an Iraqi so badly I was forced to intervene.
"I don't know why the SAS are in Baghdad. They don't seem to be doing anything of any consequence. The intelligence they are acting on is not good and they seem to be spending their time arresting criminals rather than terrorists."
Patrick Mercer, a former infantry officer and the shadow homeland security minister, said: "The Ministry of Defence has got to treat its people consistently. You can't court martial one man and honourably discharge another for crises of conscience.
"The Defence Secretary has got to play with a straight bat."
March 23, 2006 at 07:08 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Norman Kember freed - World - Times Online
By Philippe Naughton
Norman Kember, the 74-year-old peace campaigner, is expected to be flown home to Britain tomorrow night after being released from 118 days in captivity in Baghdad.
British and US special forces released Mr Kember and two Canadian activists without firing a shot today, ending a four-month ordeal during which hopes for his freedom rose, and then faded when a fellow hostage, American Tom Fox, was murdered.
The three Christian campaigners were freed in an SAS-led raid on a house in western Baghdad early this morning. Their captors had already fled.
Mr Kember, a retired professor, is in good health and is reported to have told staff at the British Embassy in Baghdad: "It's great to be free. I'm looking forward to getting back to the UK."
A life-long pacifist, Mr Kember was kidnapped with Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32, and Mr Fox, a 54-year-old American, in a lawless district of west Baghdad on November 26. All four were volunteers with the Chicago-based Christian Peacemaker Teams.
In the weeks that followed, friends and family of the hostages held vigils, but diplomatic attempts to win their release came to nothing. Videos made by their captors were broadcast, but were followed by ominous silences.
On March 9, the stalemate was broken when Mr Fox's body was found handcuffed on a rubbish dump in the Iraqi capital and fears grew that the kidnappers, a group unknown before the hostages were seized, might be preparing to kill the other three.
Today's rescue operation was led by British forces and came after weeks of planning, according to British sources. But a US military spokesman, Major-General Rick Lynch, said the information that led to the assault came from one of two men detained by American forces late last night.
At 8am (0500GMT) the raid was launched and all three hostages were found tied up in the same room of the house, he said. Operations continue to track down the kidnappers.
"They were bound, they were together. There were no kidnappers in the areas," Major-General Lynch told a press conference in Baghdad. "The key point is that it was intelligence-led and it was information gathered from a detainee."
The Iraqi Interior Minstry said that the three had been rescued from a house in the town of Mishahda, 20 miles north of Baghdad, but it appeared that the house was actually in Baghdad's western outskirts.
Reports of the operation were confirmed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, who delivered a statement in Downing Street this morning.
"The three hostages, Norman Kember, a British hostage and two Canadian hostages, have been released as a result of a multi-national force operation which took place earlier today. British forces were involved in this operation," Mr Straw said.
"It follows weeks and weeks of very careful work by our military personnel in Iraq and many civilians as well. I am delighted that now we have a happy ending to this terrible ordeal for Norman Kember, for his family, and for the Canadian hostages and their families as well."
The Foreign Secretary praised Mr Kember's "Christian fortitude" and said that he had spoken to Mr Kember's wife, Pat. "It goes without saying that she is absolutely delighted, elated, at this news," he added.
Mr Kember's brother, Ian, said he had not time to digest the news. "I haven’t got my thoughts together yet," he said from his home in Taunton, Somerset. "It’s a wonderful thing, and it’s obviously a great relief, but beyond that I haven’t come to terms with it yet."
The Reverend Alan Betteridge, a friend of Mr Kember for more than 40 years, said: "We are immensely relieved and thankful, especially after the death of Tom Fox, which made us very fearful. We were praying for his release this morning. We have been praying for them every day."
Terry Waite, who was held hostage in Beirut for 1,760 days before being released in 1991, told Ruth Gledhill, religion correspondent for The Times: "This could not have been done without someone from the inside giving good intelligence."
Relief at the rare, happy resolution of an Iraqi kidnapping spread across the Atlantic. Stephen Harper, the recently-elected Prime Minister of Canada, said he had spoken to the two Canadian hostages by telephone.
"The safe return of these men is what we all sought," he said. "I want to thank all those in Canada and around the world who worked so tirelessly to secure their safe release."
In Washington, the White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, said: "It’s good news that the hostages have been rescued. They are safe and free now."
Doug Pritchard, co-director of the Christian Peacemaker Teams, which sent the team to Baghdad, also welcomed the news, but he said that Mr Fox's murder meant that their colleagues' joy was "bitter-sweet".
The ordeal of the four men, and the peaceful purpose of their mission in Iraq, attracted enormous sympathy across the world. British Muslim groups lobbied for their release, although it is unclear what contact, if any, was made with their kidnappers.
Mr Kember's wife also released a televised message appealing for his release via the al-Jazeera television network, and further appeals for mercy were made by Moazzam Begg, the former British detainee in Guantanamo Bay, and by Abu Qatada, a terror suspect held at Full Sutton jail near York.
The release comes two weeks after the broadcast of a video showing Professor Kember and his fellow captives.
Security experts who analysed the 25-second clip said they were encouraged by the absence of terrorist paraphernalia such as guns, flags and orange jumpsuits, and by the lack of a new deadline. They thought that the three had escaped the clutches of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda terrorist leader thought to have personally executed Ken Bigley, a British engineer, and other Western hostages.
The most high-profile Western hostage still missing in Iraq is Jill Carroll, a freelance journalist working for The Christian Science Monitor, who was kidnapped in Baghdad on January 7. She has appeared in three videotapes delivered by her kidnappers to Arab satellite television stations.
The US Ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, said he hoped today's operation would improve her chances of freedom. "My expectation and hope is that the released hostages and the associated activities, in terms of information gathered, could help us bring about her release as well," he told Fox News.
March 23, 2006 at 07:04 PM in SAS | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online
By Times Online
John Sawers, a leading British diplomat, outlined his strategy for winning Russian and Chinese support for tougher action against Iran in a confidential letter dated March 16. It was addressed to his counterparts in France, Germany and the US:
"Stanislas de Laboulaye, Michael Schaefer, Nick Burns, Robert Cooper.
Nick, Michael and I had a word yesterday about how to handle the E3+3 meeting in New York on Monday. We agreed that we would need to have a shared concept of what would happen in the Security Council after the period specified by the proposed Presidential Statement. I agreed to circulate a short paper which we might use as a sort of speaking note with the Russians and Chinese. This is attached.
Implicit in the paper is a recognition that we are not going to bring the Russians and Chinese to accept significant sanctions over the coming months, certainly not without further efforts to bring the Iranians around.
Kislyak might argue that those diplomatic efforts should start straightaway after a Presidential Statement is adopted. Our own assessment here is that the Iranians will not feel under much pressure from PRST on its own, and they will need to know that more serious measures are likely. This means putting the Iran dossier onto a Chapter VII basis. We may also need to remove one of the Iranian arguments that the suspension called for is ‘voluntary’. We could do both by making the voluntary suspension a mandatory requirement to the Security Council, in a Resolution we would aim to adopt I, say, early May.
In return for the Russians and Chinese agreeing to this, we would then want to put together a package that could be presented to the Iranians as a new proposal. Ideally this would have the explicit backing of Russia, China and the United States as well as the E3, though Nick will want to consider the scope of presenting this in that way. Our thought is that we would need to finalise this during June, and the obvious occasion to do so would be in the margins of the G8 Foreign Ministers’ meeting. The period running up to the G8 Summit will be when our influence on Russia will be at its maximum, and we need to plan accordingly.
In parallel with agreeing a new proposal, we will also want to bind Russia and China into agreeing to further measures that will be taken by the Security Council should the Iranians fail to engage positively. That would be reflected in Step Four. We would not, at this stage, want to be explicit about what would be involved then – there will need to be extensive negotiations on that in May/June.
I am not sure how far we will get on Monday. The prospect of an E3+3 Ministerial in Berlin on 30 March would give Kislyak the opportunity to push this down the road by ten days. But I suspect we will need a meeting at Ministerial level anyway to get agreement to this sort of approach, including an early Chapter VII Resolution.
We have earmarked a conference call between the five of us on Friday afternoon. Can I suggest that we do this at 1530 GMT. We will need to be circumspect on an open line, but as we are not planning to hand a paper over to the Russians and Chinese, I don’t think we need to go into detailed drafting. What we need is agreement on the concepts.
Looking forward to seeing you all in New York on Monday."
March 22, 2006 at 08:31 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Saddam's Philippines
Terror Connection
by Stephen F. Hayes
03/27/2006, Volume 011, Issue 26
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SADDAM HUSSEIN'S REGIME PROVIDED FINANCIAL support to Abu Sayyaf, the al Qaeda-linked jihadist group founded by Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law in the Philippines in the late 1990s, according to documents captured in postwar Iraq. An eight-page fax dated June 6, 2001, and sent from the Iraqi ambassador in Manila to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Baghdad, provides an update on Abu Sayyaf kidnappings and indicates that the Iraqi regime was providing the group with money to purchase weapons. The Iraqi regime suspended its support--temporarily, it seems--after high-profile kidnappings, including of Americans, focused international attention on the terrorist group.
The fax comes from the vast collection of documents recovered in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Up to this point, those materials have been kept from the American public. Now the proverbial dam has broken. On March 16, the U.S. government posted on the web 9 documents captured in Iraq, as well as 28 al Qaeda documents that had been released in February. Earlier last week, Foreign Affairs magazine published a lengthy article based on a review of 700 Iraqi documents by analysts with the Institute for Defense Analysis and the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Plans for the release of many more documents have been announced. And if the contents of the recently released materials and other documents obtained by The Weekly Standard are any indication, the discussion of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq is about to get more interesting.
Several months ago, The Weekly Standard received a set of English-language
documents from a senior U.S. government official. The official represented this material as U.S. government translations of three captured Iraqi documents. According to this source, the documents had been examined by the U.S. intelligence community and judged "consistent with authentic documents"--the professionals' way of saying that these items cannot definitively be certified but seem to be the real thing.
The Weekly Standard checked its English-language documents with officials serving elsewhere in the federal government to make sure they were consistent with the versions these officials had seen. With what one person characterized as "minor discrepancies," they are. One of the three documents has been posted in the original Arabic on the website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. A subsequent translation of that document is nearly identical to the English-language text that we were given.
These documents add to the growing body of evidence confirming the Iraqi regime's longtime support for terrorism abroad. The first of them, a series of memos from the spring of 2001, shows that the Iraqi Intelligence Service funded Abu Sayyaf, despite the reservations of some IIS officials. The second, an internal Iraqi Intelligence memo on the relationships between the IIS and Saudi opposition groups, records that Osama bin Laden requested Iraqi cooperation on terrorism and propaganda and that in January 1997 the Iraqi regime was eager to continue its relationship with bin Laden. The third, a September 15, 2001, report from an Iraqi Intelligence source in Afghanistan, contains speculation about the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda and the likely U.S. response to it.
ON JUNE 6, 2001, the Iraqi ambassador to the Philippines sent an eight-page fax to Baghdad. Ambassador Salah Samarmad's dispatch to the Secondary Policy Directorate of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry concerned an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping a week earlier that had garnered international attention. Twenty civilians--including three Americans--had been taken from Dos Palmas Resort on Palawan Island in the southern Philippines. There had been fighting between the kidnappers and the Filipino military, Samarmad reported. Several hostages had escaped, and others were released.
"After the release of nine of the hostages, an announcement from the FBI appeared in newspapers announcing their desire to interview the escaped Filipinos in order to make a decision on the status of the three American hostages," the Iraqi ambassador wrote to his superiors in Baghdad. "The embassy stated what was mentioned above. The three American hostages were a missionary husband and wife who had lived in the Philippines for a while, Martin and Gracia Burnham, from Kansas City, and Guillermo Sobrero, from California. They are still in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers from a total of 20 people who were kidnapped from (Dos Palmas) resort on Palawan Island." (Except where noted, parentheses, brackets, and ellipses appear in the documents quoted.)
The report notes that the Iraqis were now trying to be seen as helpful and keep a safe distance from Abu Sayyaf. "We have all cooperated in the field of intelligence information with some of our friends to encourage the tourists and the investors in the Philippines." But Samarmad's
report seems to confirm that this is a change. "The kidnappers were formerly (from the previous year) receiving money and purchasing combat weapons. From now on we (IIS) are not giving them this opportunity and are not on speaking terms with them."
Samarmad's dispatch appears to be the final installment in a series of internal Iraqi regime memos from March through June 2001. (The U.S. government translated some of these documents in full and summarized others.) The memos contain a lengthy discussion among Iraqi officials--from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Iraqi Intelligence Service--about the wisdom of using a Libyan intelligence front as a way to channel Iraqi support for Abu Sayyaf without the risks of dealing directly with the group. (The Libyan regime had intervened in an Abu Sayyaf kidnapping in 2000, securing the release of several hostages by paying several million dollars in ransom. Some observers saw this as an effort by Muammar Qaddafi to improve his image; others saw it as an effort to provide support to Abu Sayyaf by paying the ransom demanded by the group. Both were probably right.)
One Iraqi memo, from the "Republican Presidency, Intelligence Apparatus" to someone identified only as D4/4, makes the case for supporting the work of the Qaddafi Charity Establishment to help Abu Sayyaf. The memo is dated March 18, 2001.
1. There are connections between the Qaddafi Charity Establishment and the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines; meanwhile, this establishment is providing material support to them.
2. This establishment is one of the Libyan Intelligence fronts.
3. The Tripoli post has indicated that there is a possibility to form what connections are available with this establishment as it can offer the premise of providing food supplies to [Ed: word missing] in the scope of the agreement statement.
Please review . . . it appears of intelligence value to proceed into connections with this establishment and its intelligence investments in the Abu Sayyaf group.
The short response, two days later:
Mr. Dept. 3:
Study this idea, the pros and the cons, the relative reactions, and any other remarks regarding this.
That exchange above was fully translated by U.S. government translators. The two pages of correspondence that follow it in the Iraqi files were not, but a summary of those pages informs readers that the Iraqi response "discourages the supporting of connections with the Abu Sayyaf group, as the group works against the Philippine government and relies on several methods for material gain, such as kidnapping foreigners, demanding ransoms, as well as being accused by the Philippine government of terrorist acts and drug smuggling."
These accusations were, of course, well founded. On June 12, 2001, six days after Samarmad's dispatch, authorities found the beheaded body of Guillermo Sobrero near the Abu Sayyaf camp. Martin Burnham was killed a year later during the rescue attempt that freed his wife.
A thorough understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Abu Sayyaf (the name, honoring Afghan jihadi Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, means "Father of the Sword") will not come from an analysis of three months' correspondence between Manila and Baghdad in 2001. While it is certainly significant to read in internal Iraqi documents that the regime was at one time funding Abu Sayyaf, we do not now have a complete picture of that relationship. Why did the Iraqis begin funding Abu Sayyaf, which had long been considered a regional terrorist group concerned mainly with making money? Why did they suspend their support in 2001? And why did the Iraqis resume this relationship and, according to the congressional testimony of one State Department regional specialist, intensify it?
ON MARCH 26, 2003, as war raged in Iraq, the State Department's Matthew Daley testified before Congress. Daley, the deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, told a subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee that he was worried about Abu Sayyaf.
"We're concerned that they have what I would call operational links to Iraqi intelligence services. And they're a danger, they're an enemy of the Philippines, they're an enemy of the United States, and we want very much to help the government in Manila deal with this challenge," Daley told the panel. Responding to a question, Daley elaborated. "There is good reason to believe that a member of the Abu Sayyaf Group who has been involved in terrorist activities was in direct contact with an IIS officer in the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. This individual was subsequently expelled from the Philippines for engaging in activities that were incompatible with his diplomatic status."
This individual was Hisham Hussein, the second secretary of the Iraqi Embassy in Manila. And Daley was right to be concerned.
Eighteen months before his testimony, a young Filipino man rode his Honda motorcycle up a dusty road to a shanty strip mall just outside Camp Enrile Malagutay in Zamboanga City, Philippines. The camp was host to American troops stationed in the south of the country to train with Filipino soldiers fighting terrorists. The man parked his bike and began to examine its gas tank. Seconds later, the tank exploded, sending nails in all directions and killing the rider almost instantly.
The blast damaged six nearby stores and ripped the front off of a café that doubled as a karaoke bar. The café was popular with American soldiers. And on this day, October 2, 2002, SFC Mark Wayne Jackson was killed there and a fellow soldier was severely wounded. Eyewitnesses almost immediately identified the bomber as an Abu Sayyaf terrorist.
One week before the attack, Abu Sayyaf leaders had promised a campaign of terror directed at the "enemies of Islam"--Westerners and the non-Muslim Filipino majority. And one week after the attack, Abu Sayyaf attempted to strike again, this time with a bomb placed on the playground of the San Roque Elementary School. It did not detonate. Authorities recovered the cell phone that was to have set it off and analyzed incoming and outgoing calls.
As they might have expected, they discovered several calls to and from Abu Sayyaf leaders. But another call got their attention. Seventeen hours after the attack that took the life of SFC Jackson, the cell phone was used to place a call to the second secretary of the Iraqi embassy in Manila, Hisham Hussein. It was not Hussein's only contact with Abu Sayyaf.
"He was surveilled, and we found out he was in contact with Abu Sayyaf and also pro-Iraqi demonstrators," says a Philippine government source, who continued, "[Philippine intelligence] was able to monitor their cell phone calls. [Abu Sayyaf leaders] called him right after the bombing. They were always talking."
An analysis of Iraqi embassy phone records by Philippine authorities showed that Hussein had been in regular contact with Abu Sayyaf leaders both before and after the attack that killed SFC Jackson. Andrea Domingo, immigration commissioner for the Philippines, said Hussein ran an "established network" of terrorists in the country. Hussein had also met with members of the New People's Army, a Communist opposition group on the State Department's list of foreign terrorist groups, in his office at the embassy. According to a Philippine government official, the Philippine National Police uncovered documents in a New People's Army compound that indicate the Iraqi embassy had provided funding for the group. Hisham Hussein and two other Iraqi embassy employees were ordered out of the Philippines on February 14, 2003.
Interestingly, an Abu Sayyaf leader named Hamsiraji Sali at least twice publicly boasted that his group received funding from Iraq. For instance, on March 2, 2003, he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer that the Iraqi regime had provided the terrorist group with 1million pesos--about $20,000--each year since 2000.
ANOTHER ITEM from the Iraq-Philippines files is a "security report" prepared by the Iraqi embassy's third secretary, Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib, and sent to Baghdad by Ambassador Samarmad. The report provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the Iraqi Intelligence operation in the Philippines. A cover memo from the ambassador, dated April 12, 2001, gives an overview: "The report contain[s] a variety of issues including intelligence issues and how the Philippines, American and Zionist intelligence operate in the Philippines, especially the movements of the American intelligence in their efforts to fight terrorism and recruiting a variety of nationalities, particularly Arabs."
Ghalib's report is a rambling account of a phone conversation he had with an Iraqi intelligence informer named Muhammad al-Zanki, an Iraqi citizen living in the Philippines, who is referred to throughout the document as Abu Ahmad. The embassy official is looking for information on a third person, an informer named Omar Ghazal, and believes that Abu Ahmad might have some. (To review: Salah Samarmad is the Iraqi ambassador; Ahmad Mahmud Ghalib is the embassy's third secretary, most likely an Iraqi intelligence officer and author of the "security report"; Abu Ahmad is an Iraqi intelligence informer; and Omar Ghazal is another Iraqi intelligence informer.)
As the conversation begins, Abu Ahmad tells his embassy contact that he doesn't know where Omar Ghazal is and would have told the embassy if he did. He then tells the embassy contact that when he called Omar Ghazal's aunt to check on his whereabouts, she used a word in Tagalog--walana--which means "not here." But Abu Ahmad says its connotations are not good. "That word is used when you target one of the personnel who are assigned to complete everything (full mission). Then they announce that he is traveling and so on, and that's what I'm afraid of." The Iraqi embassy contact asks him to elaborate. "I have been exposed to that same phrase before, when I asked about an individual, and later on I found out that he was physically eliminated and no one knows anything about him."
The embassy official assures Abu Ahmad that Iraqi intelligence has also lost track of Ghazal, and became alarmed when he abruptly stopped attending soccer practice at a local college. Abu Ahmad fears the worst. "I'm afraid they might have killed him and I'm very worried about him," he says, according to the report. "The method that those people use is terrible and that's why I refuse to work with them."
The Iraqi embassy official interrupts Abu Ahmad. "Who are they? I would like to know who they are."
"Didn't I tell you before who they are?"
"No."
"The office group," says Abu Ahmad.
"Which office?" asks his Iraqi embassy handler.
"A long time ago the American FBI opened up an office in the Philippines, under American supervision and that there are Philippine Intelligence groups that work there. The goal of the office is to fight international terrorism (in the Philippines of course) and they have employees from various nationalities that speak of peace and international terrorism and how important it is to put an end to terrorism. The office also has other espionage affairs involving Arab citizens to work with them in order to provide them with information on the Arabs who are living in the Philippines and also for other spying purposes."
Abu Ahmad continues: "They also monitor diplomacy, and after I tried to lessen my amount of office work, I became aware that the office group was trying to get in contact with the person who is in charge of temporary work, Malik al-Athir, when he was alone."
Abu Ahmad tells his Iraqi embassy contact, Ghalib, that "the office" was trying to recruit an Arab to monitor Arab citizens in the Philippines. The Iraqi embassy contact suggests that Abu Ahmad volunteer for the job. Abu Ahmad says he had other plans. "I am leaving after I finish selling my house and properties and will move to Peshawar [Pakistan]. There I will be supplied with materials, weapons, explosives, and get married and then move to America. Do you know that there are more than one thousand Iraqi extremists who perform heroism jobs?" The speaker presumably means martyrdom operations.
The Iraqi embassy contact asks Abu Ahmad how he knows that those people are not "Saudis, Kuwaitis, Iranians."
Abu Ahmad replies: "They are bin Laden's people and all of them are extremists and they are heroes. Do you want me to give you their names?"
"Why not? Yes, I want them," says the Iraqi embassy contact.
"I will supply you with the names very soon. I will write some for you because I am in touch with them," says Abu Ahmad.
This report raises more questions than it answers. Who is Omar Ghazal and why did he disappear? What is the "office group" and how is it connected to Americans? What happened to Abu Ahmad? Were his stated plans--moving to Peshawar to obtain weapons and explosives and then moving to the United States--just bluster to impress his Iraqi embassy handler? A way to discontinue his work for the Iraqi regime? Or was he serious? Is he here now?
A SECOND internal Iraqi file obtained by The Weekly Standard concerns relations between Iraqi Intelligence and Saudi opposition groups. The document was apparently compiled at some point after January 1997, judging by the most recent date in the text, and discusses four Saudi opposition groups: the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights, the Reform and Advice Committee (Osama bin Laden), People of al Jazeera Union Organization, and the Saudi Hezbollah.
The New York Times first reported on the existence of this file on June 25, 2004. "American officials described the document as an internal report by the Iraqi intelligence service detailing efforts to seek cooperation with several Saudi opposition groups, including Mr. bin Laden's organization, before al Qaeda had become a full-fledged terrorist organization." According to the Times, a Pentagon task force "concluded that the document 'appeared authentic,' and that it 'corroborates and expands on previous reporting' about contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mr. bin Laden in Sudan, according to the task force's analysis."
The most provocative aspect of the document is the discussion of efforts to seek cooperation between Iraqi Intelligence and the Saudi opposition group run by bin Laden, known to the Iraqis as the "Reform and Advice Committee." The translation of that section appears below.
We moved towards the committee by doing the following:
A. During the visit of the Sudanese Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi to Iraq and his meeting with Mr. Uday Saddam Hussein, on December 13, 1994, in the presence of the respectable, Mr. Director of the Intelligence Service, he [Dr. al-Sanusi] pointed out that the opposing Osama bin Laden, residing in Sudan, is reserved and afraid to be depicted by his enemies as an agent of Iraq. We prepared to meet him in Sudan (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the results of the meeting in our letter 782 on December 17, 1994).
B. An approval to meet with opposer Osama bin Laden by the Intelligence Services was given by the Honorable Presidency in its letter 138, dated January 11, 1995 (attachment 6). He [bin Laden] was met by the previous general director of M4 in Sudan and in the presence of the Sudanese, Ibrahim al-Sanusi, on February 19, 1995. We discussed with him his organization. He requested the broadcast of the speeches of Sheikh Sulayman al-Uda (who has influence within Saudi Arabia and outside due to being a well known religious and influential personality) and to designate a program for them through the broadcast directed inside Iraq, and to perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz. (The Honorable Presidency was informed of the details of the meeting in our letter 370 on March 4, 1995, attachment 7.)
C. The approval was received from the Leader, Mr. President, may God keep him, to designate a program for them through the directed broadcast. We were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up. The Sudanese side was informed of the Honorable Presidency's agreement above, through the representative of the Respectable Director of Intelligence Services, our Ambassador in Khartoum.
D. Due to the recent situation of Sudan and being accused of supporting and embracing of terrorism, an agreement with the opposing Saudi Osama bin Laden was reached. The agreement required him to leave Sudan to another area. He left Khartoum in July 1996. The information we have indicates that he is currently in Afghanistan. The relationship with him is ongoing through the Sudanese side. Currently we are working to invigorate this relationship through a new channel in light of his present location.
(It should be noted that the documents given to The Weekly Standard did not include the attachments, letters to and from Saddam Hussein about the status of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship. And the last sentence differs slightly from the version provided to the New York Times. In the Weekly Standard document, Iraq is seeking to "invigorate" its relationship with al Qaeda; in the Times translation, Iraq is seeking to "continue" that relationship.)
Another passage of the Iraq-Saudi opposition memo details the relationship between the Iraqi regime and the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR), founded by Dr. Muhammad Abdallah al-Massari. Once again, Dr. Ibrahim al-Sanusi, the senior Sudanese government official, was a key liaison between the two sides. Al-Massari is widely regarded as an ideological mouthpiece for al Qaeda, a designation he does little to dispute. His radio station broadcasts al Qaeda propaganda, and his website features the rantings of prominent jihadists. He has lived in London for more than a decade. The Iraqi Intelligence memo recounts two meetings involving Dr. al-Sanusi and CDLR representatives in 1994 and reports that al-Massari requested assistance from the Iraqi regime for a trip to Iraq.
In 1995, the Iraqis turned to another Saudi to facilitate their relationship with al-Massari. According to the Iraqi memo, Ahmid Khudir al-Zahrani was a diplomat at the Saudi embassy in Washington who applied for political asylum in the United States. His application was denied, and al-Zahrani contacted the Iraqi embassy in London, seeking asylum in Iraq. His timing was good. Al-Zahrani's request came just as Iraqis were stepping up efforts to establish better relations with the Saudi opposition. According to the Iraqi Intelligence memo:
A complete plan was put in place to bring the aforementioned [al-Zahrani] to Iraq in coordination with the Foreign Ministry and our [intelligence] station in Khartoum [Sudan]. He and his family were issued Iraqi passports with pseudonyms by our embassy in Khartoum. He arrived to Iraq on April 21, 1995, and multiple meetings were held with him to obtain information about the Saudi opposition.
These contacts were not, contrary to the speculation of some Middle East experts, simply an effort to keep tabs on an enemy. The memo continues, summarizing Iraqi Intelligence activities:
We are in the process of following up on the subject, to try and establish a nucleus of Saudi opposition in Iraq, and use our relationship with [al-Massari] to serve our intelligence goals.
The final document provided to The Weekly Standard is a translation of a memo from the "Republican Command, Intelligence Division," dated September 15, 2001. It is addressed to "Mr. M.A.M.5."
Our Afghani source number 11002 (his biographic information in attachment #1) has provided us information that the Afghani consul Ahmed Dahestani (his biographic information attachment #2) has talked in front of him about the following:
1. That Osama bin Laden and the Taliban group in Afghanistan are in communication with Iraq and that previously a group of Taliban and Osama bin Laden have visited Iraq.
2. That America has evidence that the Iraqi government and the group of Osama bin Laden have cooperated to attack targets inside America.
3. In the event that it has been proven that the group of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban planning such operations, it is possible that America will attack Iraq and Afghanistan.
4. That the Afghani consul heard of the relation between Iraq and the group of Osama bin Laden while he was in Iran.
5. In the light of what has been presented, we suggest to write to the committee of information.
This document is speculative in parts, and the information it contains is third-hand at best. Its value depends on the credibility of "source number 11002" and of Ahmed Dahestani and of the sources Dahestani relied on, all of which are unknown.
We are left, then, with three small pieces to add to a large and elaborate puzzle. We will never have a complete picture of the Iraqi regime's support for global terrorism, but the coming release of a flood of captured documents should get us closer.
A new and highly illuminating article in Foreign Affairs draws on hundreds of Iraqi documents to provide a look at the Iraq war from the Iraqi perspective. The picture that emerges is that of an Iraqi regime built on a foundation of paranoia and lies and eager to attack its perceived enemies, internal and external. This paragraph is notable:
The Saddam Fedayeen also took part in the regime's domestic terrorism operations and planned for attacks throughout Europe and the Middle East. In a document dated May 1999, Saddam's older son, Uday, ordered preparations for "special operations, assassinations, and bombings, for the centers and traitor symbols in London, Iran and the self-ruled areas [Kurdistan]." Preparations for "Blessed July," a regime-directed wave of "martyrdom" operations against targets in the West, were well under way at the time of the coalition invasion.
Think about that last sentence.
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.
March 19, 2006 at 01:31 AM in Iraq | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Kommersant: Slobodan Milosevic Leaves the Court
// The last president of Yugoslavia dies in The Hague
Death
Former president of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic died on Saturday in the prison of The Hague Tribunal. He was the main defendant in the bloody Yugoslavian drama at the end of the last century. After he left politics, and even now, after his death, two great myths that accompanied him through his political life continue to live. The first is that he fought to preserve Yugoslavia and the unity of the Serbian people. The second is that he was a great friend of Russia. In reality, Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Russia – they were all just small change in Milosevic's big game, the grand prize in which was absolute power.
The End of Milosevic
The last time Slobodan Milosevic was seen alive was at 4:30 p.m. on Friday. A day earlier, Kommersant has learned, he spoke with his brother Borislav, who lives in Moscow. Borislav Milosevic said that his brother was feeling fine at that time. At 9:30 a.m. on Saturday, guards making their rounds at The Hague Tribunal Prison found Slobodan Milosevic in his cell apparently dead. They called for the prison doctor, who confirmed his death. Later in the day, the death of the former Yugoslavian president was announced officially. It was reported that the most likely cause of death was high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, which he is known to have suffered from.
His close associates began to claim that he was poisoned, however. Milosevic's lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic suddenly recalled that his client had expressed concern in recent days that someone was trying to poison him. Tomanovic said that Milosevic sent a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday saying that they were giving him the wrong medicine and asking him for help. The lawyer did not reveal any other contents of the letter but said that Milosevic was being treated with medicines used “only for leprosy and tuberculosis.” Mikhail Kamynin, an official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said immediately that no letters had been received from Milosevic.
In circles connected with the tribunal, it is thought that the claims of poisoning are conjecture, or fabrications intended to prepare the public for the news traces may be found in his blood of substances that were not prescribed to him by Hague doctors. On the tribunal, they suspect that Milosevic was taking his own medications of some sort. In January, the prosecution said, a confidential report on an analysis of Milosevic's blood was given to the judges on the tribunal. In the report, it said that the defendant “is manipulating medicinal substances” by not taking the ones prescribed to him by doctors, but taking massive amounts of other substances that he was receiving from unknown sources, which was leading to a deterioration of his health. The court doctors' facts were confirmed by authoritative independent experts. The prosecutor concluded that the defendant was intentionally affecting his medical condition with the goal of being sent to Moscow for treatment.
In December, Milosevic asked the judges' permission to travel to Moscow to Bakulev Cardiovascular Surgery Center for examination. In January, the Russian government presented guarantees to The Hague Tribunal for “the personal safety of Milosevic during his stay in Russia and his return to The Hague within the time limit set by the tribunal.”
On February 24, however, the judges refused Milosevic's request. They stated that the defendant had not shown that Bakulev Center was the only place where he could be examined. But the main impediment was that the judges simply did not believe that he would return.
An autopsy was performed on Milosevic's body yesterday at the Dutch Forensics Institute. Relatives of the former president insisted that the autopsy and toxicological analysis be performed in Moscow, but the tribunal refused that request, instead allowing pathologists from Belgrade and Moscow to be present at the autopsy in The Netherlands.
The majority of the former president's supporters reject the possibility of suicide. “Milosevic would never do harm to himself,” his legal adviser Stephen Kaye said,” even though both of his parents committed suicide. The administration of Scheveningen Prison, where Milosevic was being held, made it clear that he was under special observation. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, did not rule out the possibility of suicide, however, saying that the tribunal's main defendant could thus challenge the tribunal a last time.
Relatives and supporters of Milosevic are accusing The Hague in his death. “All responsibility for Slobodan's death lies with The Hague Tribunal,” his bother Borislav said. Milosevic's widow Mira Markovic went even further, telling CNN that “the tribunal killed my husband.” The Socialist Party of Serbia, which Milosevic was honorary chairman of, made similar statements.
That theme was taken up by many present and former Russian politicians. The thought behind their statements was that Milosevic was not being tried in The Hague but taking revenge for his fight to preserve Yugoslavia, the unity of the Serbian people and that he was a great friend of Russia. Those are all myths, however. In reality, Milosevic practically dug the grave for Yugoslavia and caused his own people, the Serbs, much of the suffering in loss that it experiences a decade a go. Russia was simply used by him, as he tried to cause conflict between it and the West for his own benefit.
The Milosevic Formula
Milosevic lived by a formula of gaining and retaining power at any price. A biographer of the former Yugoslav president from the 1980s onward wrote, “I cannot imagine him an average citizen walking down the street.”
Milosevic came to power through a putsch. In 1987, as first secretary of the Serbian communists, he called an extraordinary plenary meeting of the central committee that dismissed head of the republic Ivan Stambolic. Stambolic was not simply Milosevic's patron, he had made him the second-ranking person in Serbia from a simple banking bureaucrat. Thus Milosevic thanked his benefactor in 1987. Thirteen years later, when Stambolic intended to return to politics a the head of the opposition, Milosevic ordered his extermination, as the participants in his kidnapping and murder themselves recounted recently.
In 1991, when Milosevic was hanging onto power by a hair and the opposition was demonstrating in Belgrade and had begun a civil-disobedience campaign, Milosevic started a war with Croatia, calling on his countrymen to unite in the face of a common external enemy. Having been incited to fight for their independence, Croatian Serbs created Srpska Kraina, an independent state within the territory of Croatia. International intermediaries, including Russia, proposed that it have a special status as a state within a state. That proposal was ideal for Serbian national interests, but Milosevic nonetheless rejected it. Two years later, the Croatian Serbs lost everything and were made refugees.
In 1995, Milosevic also betrayed the Bosnian Serbs when he signed the Dayton Accord, which was a painful blow to them. The Bosnian Serbs had been offered several settlement plans before that that were much more beneficial to them than the Dayton Accord. But the Bosnian Serbs rejected them all at the instruction of Milosevic. But Milosevic received the status of guarantor from the Dayton Accord. If the West wanted to maintain peace in Bosnia, it had to agree to keep Milosevic in power.
The war in Kosovo and the NATO strikes in Yugoslavia could have been avoided as well. If Milosevic had signed the Rambouille Peace Agreement in 1999, Kosovo would have remained part of Serbia with broad political autonomy. But Milosevic consciously provoked the NATO bombings to crush the opposition under the cover of wartime conditions and increase his power at the expense of Kosovo.
Milosevic and Russia
Milosevic always applied the same formula to Russia. He refused its help any time there was the slightest chance of reaching an agreement with the West independently.
Two days after the beginning of the bombing of Yugoslavia, Russian foreign minister at the time Irog Ivanov told members of the State Duma the sensational news that “When Russia prevented the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1998 by convincing Belgrade to agree to the presence of an OSCE mission in Kosovo, Milosevic signed two separate agreements with NATO. One was on the maximum number of Serbian troops in Kosovo and the other on fly-over rights for NATO aviation on the territory of Kosovo. Russia had no relation to with those agreements. But it is their violation by Belgrade that NATO is using to justify its bombing of Yugoslavia.”
In June 1999, when Viktor Chernomyrdin, acting as the emissary of the Russian president, convinced Milosevic to accept the peace plan and stop the bombardment, a source close to Chernomyrdin told Kommersant that “if it hadn't been for Chernomyrdin, Milosevic most likely would have made a separate peace with NATO.” According to some sources, at the height of the military operation, Milosevic contacted then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright a propsed a deal: Belgrade would capitulate to the United States if Washington would agree to keep Milosevic in power. But the deal never came off and the Balkan leader soon fell.
The recent trip to Moscow for treatment that never took place was also used by Milosevic's inner circle to try to drive a wedge between Russia and the West. That attempt was unsuccessful.
The attitude of the majority of Serbs to their former leader was expressed by one citizen on the website of the independent radio station B-92 in Belgrade: “How terrible that he died unconvicted.” The Hague Tribunal is in fact responsible for being unable to proof his guilt and conclude the trial in four years. But now not the tribunal, but life itself has sentenced Slobodan Milosevic.
by Oleg Zorin
All the Article in Russian as of Mar. 13, 2006
March 13, 2006 at 01:08 PM in Europe | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
MI5 and MI6 discover new market for spies like us - Business - Times Online
By Michael Evans, Defence Editor
HOW vulnerable are Britain’s secret intelligence agencies to the lucrative alternative job offers now being made by private security companies? Spies with foreign travel experience and analysis skills are in big demand in the private sector — and the salaries on offer can be tempting for Crown servants earning relatively low pay.
There is no evidence of a serious exodus of intelligence officers from MI6 and MI5, but in recent years the private security company business has proliferated to such an extent that the secret agencies have lost some of their key staff.
One intelligence official said: “There’s no question that these companies are now providing an attractive alternative for perhaps the more adventurous and entrepreneurial members of the agencies, and they can get double the salary.”
In the same way that the SAS regiment has been looked on as a potential rich source for security company headhunters, MI6 and MI5 have been viewed in the same light. However, to judge by the increasingly successful recruiting campaigns by the two agencies, there are still enough men and women who prefer to serve their country at a lower salary — and a guaranteed pension.
Nevertheless, there is a market for ex-spies. Although television programmes tend to spice up the lives of the average MI6 or MI5 officer, giving the impression of a secret world unaccountable either to the law or to Parliament, the reality is far more mundane, and more bureaucratic. Both these agencies have to account for everything that they do, and that means form-filling. MI6 also works according to requirement guidelines set by Cabinet Office gurus, and any planned operation that might in any way cause political problems for the Government has to be approved by the Foreign Secretary.
So, for the more maverick- inclined spy, the controls and bureaucracy of the agencies might seem unappealing after a period in either Thames House (MI5) or Vauxhall Cross (MI6); and this is where the private security companies can benefit.
Less bureaucracy and more money are potentially attractive options for someone who enjoys the secret world but hankers after a more free- spirited environment.
A number of private security companies now have former MI5 and MI6 officers on their staff. Indeed, some companies have been set up by ex-spies and have retained links to their former government employers.
March 12, 2006 at 11:17 PM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Report: Web Searches Can ID CIA Employees - Yahoo! News
Sat Mar 11, 5:53 PM ET
CHICAGO - The identities of 2,600
CIA employees and the locations of two dozen of the agency's covert workplaces in the United States can be found easily through Internet searches, according to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune.
The newspaper obtained the information from data providers who charge fees for access to public records and reported on its findings in Sunday editions. It did not publish the identities or other details on its searches, citing concern it could endanger the CIA employees.
Not all of the 2,653 people the newspaper said it could identify as CIA employees were supposed to be covert, an issue raised in the Justice Department investigation of whether someone in the Bush administration leaked the identity of CIA operative
Valerie Plame to reporters in 2003.
Some in fact were non-covert analysts or senior executives, such as former CIA Director George Tenet. But the newspaper said it shared some of its findings with the CIA, and that the agency acknowledged the partial list of names included covert employees.
"Cover is an issue we look at all the time, and we are always looking to improve it," CIA spokesman Tom Crispell told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Through the data providers, the newspaper said it identified people by telephone listings, real estate transactions, voting records, property tax records and other financial and legal documents. The investigation also uncovered internal office phone numbers of the agency and covert mailing addresses used by undercover operatives.
"Cover is a complex issue that is more complex in the Internet age," the CIA's chief spokeswoman, Jennifer Dyck, told the Tribune. "There are things that worked previously that no longer work."
The Tribune also located two dozen CIA facilities in Chicago, northern Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington state. Some of the facilities are heavily guarded, while others appear to be private residences with no obvious connection to the CIA.
One of the facilities, a CIA training area dubbed "The Farm" at Camp Peary, Va., was a well-kept secret for decades. The agency refused to publicly acknowledge its existence, even after former CIA personnel confirmed its presence in the 1980s.
But the Tribune said an Internet search for the term "Camp Peary" produced data identifying the names and other details of 26 people who apparently work there.
Additionally, a review of aviation databases for flights at Camp Peary's airstrip revealed 17 aircraft whose ownership and flight histories also could be traced.
March 11, 2006 at 11:00 PM in CIA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Scotsman.com News - Politics - End of an affair that destroyed a government
STEPHEN McGINTY
FORTY five years ago, the brief but cataclysmic fling that John Profumo enjoyed with Christine Keeler resulted in the collapse of a government, ushered out the age of patrician politicians and opened the door to the kind of tawdry political sex scandals that barely raise an eyebrow today.
The death of the 91-year-old Profumo, announced yesterday, also draws to a close a remarkable 32 years spent in private atonement, working among the poor of London's East End. As Sir Bill Deedes, a close personal friend of Profumo, said yesterday: "The fact is what he did, and continued to do until quite recently, was a very long stint of social work for the poor of east London. And if that isn't considered to be sufficient atonement for the mistake he made, then there is no such thing as forgiveness."
And Prime Minister Tony Blair last night described Profumo as "a politician with a glittering career who made a serious mistake, but then underwent a journey of redemption".
Profumo's fatal mistake was to bring sex out from behind the bedroom door and into the living room. As Philip Larkin famously wrote in his poem, Annus Mirabilis: "sexual intercourse began in 1963", the year the Profumo Affair broke and the minister resigned in disgrace. Lord Denning's official inquiry into the affair became a bestseller, as hundreds queued outside bookshops from midnight on the day of its publication, only to be disappointed by its lack of graphic detail.
Today the whole affair is remembered for the iconic image of Christine Keeler, naked astride a wooden chair.
Yet, at the height of the Cold War, the scandal was given extra frisson by the revelation that Profumo had been sharing Keeler with Eugene Ivanov, the naval attaché at the Soviet embassy, a fact which gave the story international interest and persuaded the FBI to compile its own report entitled Operation Bowtie.
Profumo was unique in political life because he twice helped bring down a Conservative government: the first was deliberate, the second was, of course, accidental. The son of Albert Profumo, a Baron in the Kingdom of Sardinia, John Profumo was born in 1915, educated at Harrow and Oxford and became the youngest MP at the time of his election in 1940. Shortly afterwards he voted against Neville Chamberlain, whose collapse led to the election of Winston Churchill and victory in the Second World War.
Handsome, well spoken and well connected, he married Valerie Hobson, a British actress popular in Ealing comedies such as Kind Hearts and Coronets, in 1954. After a number of sub-cabinet roles he was appointed secretary of state for war in 1960, charged with the task of boosting enlistment after the end of National Service.
The fatal object of his desire hailed from a more ordinary background. Christine Keeler was born in 1942 and left her home in the Thames Valley at the age of 16 to work as a "showgirl" at Murray's Cabaret Club in London. There she met Marilyn 'Mandy' Rice-Davies and together they joined the louche set surrounding Stephen Ward, an osteopath and socialite, who provided call girls for upper-class sex parties.
The girls started out entertaining clients at Ward's mews flat in west London, which was equipped with two-way mirrors for the titillation of voyeurs. Later the women were invited with Ward to the country estate of Lord Astor at Cliveden, where Profumo and Keeler first met. Their subsequent affair lasted only a few months and was conducted at Ward's flat, where on a number of occasions Profumo narrowly missed bumping into Ivanov.
The crisis enveloped the government in December 1962 when a jilted boyfriend of Rice-Davies discharged a gun outside Ward's house, which resulted in a police investigation into Ward's activities and a subsequent criminal trial. The newspapers began to report stories of orgies at upper-class homes, including stories of a senior politician who went naked but for a mask and acted as a 'slave' at society dinner parties.
Unlike today, when the news would be splashed on the front pages, the press were forced to be more circumspect. Before Profumo made his statement and the affair became public knowledge, one newspaper skirted the difficulty of reporting a story that was still in the realm of speculation by running a split front page with one side reporting on Keeler while the other ran an entirely unconnected story about Profumo. In this way, the paper made a connection between the two without making any accusation of impropriety.
The Week That Was, the satirical current affairs programme, even broadcast a re-vamped version of the old musical hall number She Was Poor, But She Was Honest with the lyrics:
"See him in the House of Commons/Making laws to put the blame/While the object of his passion/walks the streets to hide her shame."
As a result of the innuendo in March 1963, Profumo stood up in the House of Commons and made a personal statement, he admitted to knowing Christine Keeler but nothing more. When a letter between the pair later emerged he was forced to resign on 4 June, having admitted that he had misled the House. He resigned from office, from the House of Commons, and from the Privy Council, and the scandal sounded the death knell of the Conservative government.
Unlike today, when politicians can re-emerge after admitting all on a television chat show, Profumo vowed never to speak of his wrongdoing and set about atoning for his behaviour with charity. He started working in a soup kitchen, before going on to use his political skills as a fundraiser for Toynbee Hall, a charitable organisation based on the eastern fringe of the City of London. He had confessed all to his wife before making his public statement and she stood by him until her death in 1998.
Although he was shunned by former friends in the immediate wake of the scandal, he was partially accepted back into the establishment in 1975 when he was awarded a CBE, but he had no interest in returning to public life. Even when his personal crisis was turned into a cinema drama in the film Scandal in 1989, he refused to speak out.
Although, following the publication of Keeler's memoirs in which she claimed to have been pregnant with his child, he did write to the journalist Matthew Parris, declining an invitation to contribute to his book, Political Scandals, but writing: "Since 1963, there have been unceasing publications, both written and spoken, relating to what you refer to in your letter as 'the Keeler interlude'. The majority of these have increasingly contained deeply distressing inaccuracies, so I have resolved to refrain from any sort of personal comment."
Last night Luke Geoghegan, the chief executive of Toynbee Hall, paid tribute to the man who had worked so hard in atonement of his sins: "John Profumo was an inspiration to us all. His tireless commitment to the organisation's development, and particularly fundraising, continued to the end. He took an active interest in the work of all, and helped to create a very special form of friendship amongst all the people here. All who came into contact with him will have a very special memory of him."
'He would, wouldn't he?' - the court statement that made history
THE Profumo Affair, which led to political disgrace, a celebrated court case, a suicide and the downfall of a government, began in July 1961 when John Profumo, then 46, first saw Christine Keeler. She was swimming naked in a pool, at a cottage on Lord Astor's Cliveden estate - used by Dr Stephen Ward, a fashionable London osteopath and painter.
Keeler, who was 19, was a model at a time when the term tended to be a euphemism for "call girl". Profumo, who had become Harold Macmillan's secretary of state for war the previous year, and was married to the actress Valerie Hobson, embarked on a brief affair with Keeler. As escalating rumours, press speculation and questions in Parliament came to a head in 1963, it emerged that Keeler had also had sex with Commander Eugene Ivanov, a Russian intelligence officer and an assistant Soviet naval attaché in London.
On 22 March 1963 Profumo made a statement in the Commons, assuring that there was "no impropriety" in his friendship with Keeler. Ten weeks later, however, on 5 June, he resigned from office, admitting, "with deep remorse", that he had lied.
Three days later, Ward, notorious for his high-society sex parties held at his flat, was arrested and charged with living off the immoral earnings of both Keeler and her friend - and fellow prostitute - Mandy Rice-Davies, a charge since denied by Keeler. However, by the time he was found guilty, he was in a coma, having taken an overdose of sleeping pills, and he died on 3 August. The most famous line from the trial belonged not to Ward but to Rice-Davies, who had been accused of selling sexual favours to Lord Astor. Told that Astor had denied ever sleeping with her, she replied: "He would, wouldn't he?"
Keeler served nine months in Holloway Prison for unrelated perjury charges, having failed to appear as a witness in the trial of a man shot at her home. She later claimed that Ward had been spying for the Soviets, and her involvement with Ward, Ivanov and Profumo attracted attention from the FBI. However Lord Denning's report on the affair, published on 26 September, found that national security had not been endangered, but condemned the government for failing to deal promptly with the affair. The ailing Macmillan resigned shortly afterwards, to be replaced by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The following year the Tories were ousted by Labour - though by a narrow margin.
JIM GILCHRIST
This article: http://news.scotsman.com/politics.cfm?id=367432006
Last updated: 11-Mar-06 01:40 GMT
March 11, 2006 at 10:26 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Lateline - 09/03/2006: Israelis consider attack on Iran
Reporter: Matt Brown
TONY JONES: As the diplomatic brinkmanship between Iran and the United States continues, there is mounting concern in Israel about Iran's continued calls for it to be "wiped off the map". Senior Israeli intelligence analysts within and outside the government are weighing the need for a military attack, preferably conducted by others, to bring Iran to heel. Middle East correspondent Matt Brown reports from Jerusalem.
MATT BROWN: Inside this Iranian nuclear enrichment plant, the engineers are involved in a dangerous game of brinkmanship. Iran is developing the technology that will certainly deliver nuclear energy and possibly also a nuclear bomb. Much of the world is warning Iran that this work must stop, but it's not clear what the ultimate sanction would be.
JOHN BOLTON, US AMBASSADOR TO THE UN: The Iranian regime must be made aware that if it continues down the path of international isolation, there will be tangible and painful consequences.
MATT BROWN: Tehran has already proved it's willing to gamble. Iran has a history of building research facilities in secret and underground. And, 1,500 kilometres away, Major General Giora Eiland, the National Security Advisor to Israel's Prime Minister, is weighing the options.
GIORA EILAND, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL CHIEF: It is obvious that if Iran has nuclear weapons, then every other conflict in the Middle East, whether Israel is involved or is not involved, will take place under Iranian nuclear umbrella. The implications are much more than severe.
MATT BROWN: Most Israelis know they live here within range of the best Iranian missiles. They have their own formidable nuclear arsenal, but most believe they can't afford to accept the existence of even one Iranian nuclear weapon. Officially, Israel still puts in faith in diplomacy and sanctions and, to some extent, in the people of Iran.
GIORA EILAND: Most of the people in Iran do want to be part of the international community. They don't want to be isolated.
MATT BROWN: But in 1981, Israel successfully brought Saddam Hussein's nuclear program crashing to the ground with a strike on his nuclear reactor. If diplomacy fails, the former head of research in Israeli military intelligence, Ami Dror, says the same fate must now befall Iran.
AMI DROR, FORMER MILITARY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER: I think that the alternative of nuclear Iran is so dangerous to the world that nothing could be more dangerous than that.
MATT BROWN: Some Israeli analysts even believe that, rather than inflaming the Middle East, a successful military strike could give Israel's other enemies pause for thought.
AMI DROR: The Iranians will lose part of their influence in some of these organisations and countries and I think that that, for itself, is very important.
MATT BROWN: In Iran, the newspapers have been full of defiance, arguing Iran's right to enrich uranium for the peaceful purposes it's declared. Mohammad Mahmoudi, a school teacher in Tehran, says, "Nuclear energy is an absolute right and the Westerners want to make us reliant on them". But if Iran ever does build an atom bomb, some believe Israel will have to respond with the kind of threat only a nuclear arms state could deliver.
AMI DROR: The Iranians understand that if Israel will be hit by any missile, the Iranians will not have enough people to count their dead. It will lead to the destruction and the end of Iran and as a civilisation.
MATT BROWN: Clearly if the diplomats fail to stop the research underway in Iran, a new series of grave dilemmas will unfold. Matt Brown, Lateline.
March 10, 2006 at 08:37 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home
Scotsman.com News - Secret files reveal WW2 problem of Nazi nobles
NICHOLAS CHRISTIAN
NEWLY-RELEASED papers show the scale of suspicion and fear around the British High Command during the Second World War.
It has emerged that intelligence chiefs faced a dilemma over how many aristocrats with Nazi sympathies they should arrest, amid fears that interning too many would inflate their importance.
Documents released today at the National Archives in Kew show MI5 spied on a god-daughter of the late King George V, Dowager Viscountess Dorothy Downe, noting her as a "most fanatical admirer of Hitler" and intercepting her mail.
She was a high-profile British Union of Fascists official, but was not arrested despite concocting a plot to get herself detained which included having a letter written to The Times in 1940 demanding her arrest. However, the security service said there were "indications" she was anxious to become a martyr.
In addition, the intelligence services kept the folk singer Ewan MacColl - father of pop star Kirsty MacColl - under surveillance for years because of his communist sympathies. As a result, MI5 tried to get the BBC to stop using him on their programmes.
Documents also reveal how the sighting of a top German agent led to fears that Britain's "double-cross" strategy to intercept German agents might be compromised.
The sighting prompted a trawl of nightclubs, hotels and bars in a desperate attempt to locate Wilhelm Morz, "one of the cleverest secret agents the Gestapo has". The double-cross system meant MI5 was in a position to monitor and pick up German agents who were then "turned" and began working for Britain. The authorities feared Morz would figure out what was going on.
Unfortunately for MI5, the trail went cold.
March 5, 2006 at 04:40 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home