4 More American Drug Planes Seized

February 7, 2008 by Daniel Hopsicker

Four more American-registered drug planes have been seized from the 50-plane fleet of drug running aircraft amassed by Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. Figures of interest in the transactions, the MadCowMorningNews has learned, include financial backers of two of this year’s Republican candidates for President, as well as, unsurprisingly, an aviation company in St. Petersburg, FL. which can justifiably be called “one of the usual suspects.” Coincidentally or not, the American owners of the four planes (like the two busted earlier) were largely people and companies with ’special relationships’ with U.S. political movers and shakers, including the CIA and the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security. Yet, despite this inconvenient fact, the FBI persists in referring to the aircraft’s American owners as “legitimate aircraft brokers” and “unwitting sellers” “This is Your GOP. This is your GOP… on drugs.” The Republican connection begins with the statement in court filings that the money to purchase the planes was laundered through a bank which is almost invariably described as “fast-growing” in admiring business news articles. The drug money was wired, usually from Mexico, to an account at Commerce Bank in Miami, whose Chairman, Dennis Nixon, is the South Texas Co-chair of John McCain’s campaign. Nixon was also a Bush Pioneer and Ranger in George W. Bush’s two Presidential campaigns, raising $300,000 in one night for Bush’s re-election bid in Texas border town Laredo. High-profile Texas businessman Dennis Nixon’s bank is even— in one of the sales—involved on both ends. Money was wired from Mexico, first to an account at Commerce Bank in Miami, then on to International Bank of Commerce (IBC) in Oklahoma to complete the sale. Dennis Nixon’s International Bancshares of San Antonio owns both banks. “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.” The second transaction with apparent Republican ‘ramifications” involves a Grumman Albatross (N7027Z) seaplane apparently sold to the Sinaloa Cartel. N7274Z, reported El Nuevo Herald, had been “purchased, with several twists between August to September 2006, from the HSBC bank in Mexico by Jorge Barraza, a resident of Tamil Nadu, Jorge Medina and Daniel Medina on behalf of Insured Aircraft Title Service in Oklahoma.” El Nuevo Herald identifies the plane with the “N” number N7027Z as a Beech King Air. However, the grand jury indictment identifies the plane only by its N number, N7027Z. A check of FAA records revealed that that “N” number was assigned to a Grumman Albatross seaplane. An FAA spokesman told us, when we inquired, that that N number has been used exclusively by the Grumman Albatross for the past 15 years. Moreover a reliable source in Fort Lauderdale stated to us recently that seaplanes have recently become all the rage in drug trafficking circles. A seaplane would seem an excellent idea The seaplane, or “warbird,” as aircraft broker sites call planes decommissioned from the military, was owned by Jay Koven, whose construction company built Rudy Giuliani’s Emergency Command Center in Building 7 of the World Trade Center. According to “The Real Rudy,” a Giuliani expose in American Prospect magazine in September 2006, Koven and his partner gave $4,000 to Giuliani at a party given in 1998 at the behest of WTC lessor Larry Silverstein, at the Fifth Avenue home of his public relations guru. Silverstein had signed the lease for the command center just two weeks earlier, not nearly enough time to avoid charges of a quid pro quo. And sure enough… “Attendance was obligatory,” recalled Jay Koven’s partner in Ambassador Construction. “The invitation meant we were expected to give a contribution.” Concluded the magazine, “The timing couldn’t have been queasier.” The decision to locate New York City’s Command Center high above the one site in NYC which had already been attacked by foreign terrorists was controversial… even before it had to be abandoned on September 11. We were somewhat surprised when Koven returned a phone call made to his home in Larchmont. “The plane was not seized,” he told us. “I still own the airplane. I can’t really tell you anything, and I’m not at liberty to say more about what little I do know. But I can tell you… I’m just a normal guy with an airplane I’m trying to sell.” He gave the phone number for an aircraft broker who’s currently advertising the Albatross for sale, and the broker confirmed that the plane has not been seized, and is for sale. There are many who feel, and Mr. Koven may be one, and with some justification, that we are adrift on a vast sea, in a tiny boat, in a world we never made. But what of the owner’s of the other planes on the list? “Round up the usual suspects… again.” At least one company involved in the sale of the four seized American planes can by now be justifiably called one of the “usual suspects.” Amazingly, SkyWay Aircraft is once again among the drug running airplane’s sellers. Skyway Aircraft, located at the small Alfred Whitted Municipal Airport in downtown St. Petersburg, is not to be confused with the notorious and now-defunct other SkyWay Aircraft, which owned the DC9 whose bust with 5.5 tons of cocaine aboard kicked off the scandal. SkyWay’s owner, Larry W. Peters, has vociferously denied any involvement between his company and the other Skyway, Brent and Glen Kovar’s, which was located 15 minutes away at St-Pete Clearwater Int’l. And no wonder. The Kovar’s SkyWay increasingly looks like nothing more than an elaborate front for drug smuggling. But being (undeservingly?) tarred with the same name, if not the same brush, may not be Peter’s biggest problem. His SkyWay sold a Cessna Conquest II (N5113S), suspected of being used to fly drugs from South America to Africa, according to a report in the Tampa Tribune, making this the third plane “sold” by Larry Peters’ hapless SkyWay Aircraft to “buyers” later determined to be drug traffickers. No three strikes law, apparently, applies. Bible Institute: Good book provides good ‘cover’ The very first plane seized was an older Beech King Air (N1100M) exported to Venezuela on October 23, 2006. The plane was supposedly owned by a company in Doral, located northwest of Miami, close to Miami International Airport, called Plans and Parts Enterprises LLC, but the State of Florida’s Division of Corporations has no company doing business in the state listed by that name. Another of the three Beech King Airs (N50AJ), may have been flown by controversial Moody Bible Institute’s Summer Institute of Linguistics, widely accused in the Latin American press of being funded by American intelligence, and suspected of involvement in the 2003 CIA-backed coup in Haiti. The plane also made numerous flights to Albert Whitted (KSPG) Airport, the small St. Petersburg airport where SkyWay Aircraft is located. It is apparently owned by Communications International Inc, a telecom company in Vero Beach, FL. But as recently as 2004 it may have been flown in South America by the Moody Bible Institute. It is pictured on the website of Robert Peterson, one of Moody’s pilots, but it is unclear whether he was flying it for Moody. Nasty Venezuelans keep pulling Uncle Sam’s chain. News of four new planes seized—three Beech King Air twin-engine turbojets and a Grumman Albatross seaplane decommissioned by the U.S. military—was first revealed in a story last Friday in Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald. Under a headline loosely translated as “US dismantles flotilla of drug trafficking planes,” the paper unearthed documents filed in Federal Court in Miami last October revealing new details of what apparently is an ongoing U.S. multi-agency operation to dismantle the huge fleet of American-registered aircraft amassed by the Sinaloa Cartel during the past several years. The main actor, at least in the court filings and criminal complaint, appears to be Venezuelan businessman Pedro Benavides Jose Natera, who ran a system used to purchase American planes for use by Mexican drug cartels which the FBI characterizes as “a complex international money laundering scheme.” The 51-year old Benavides, who goes on trial in Miami next month, is charged with laundering drug profits to buy U.S. aircraft to smuggle cocaine, using accounts at Commerce Bank in Miami to acquire aircraft for the drug trafficking organization (DOT.) Mexican newspapers reported over the weekend that Judicial Police in Mexico City may have become aware of the scheme as early as 1998, when they arrested “Cambio de Change Puebla” owner Pedro Alatorre after one of the “customers” at his money exchange overnight went from financial transactions totaling $100,000 per month to over $800,000 per week. Alatorre, who began rubbing elbows with Mexico City’s elite as a tennis pro at a racquet club there, spent five months in jail at the time before being released. Maybe its the red beret. Raspberry might be better. The ringleader of the operation was… you guessed it. A Venezuelan… Drug kingpin Carlos Ayala Lara, according to the FBI, was responsible for funneling money from drug traffickers in Venezuela installed to indicted Sinaloa cartel money man Pedro Alatorre Damy’s chain of money exchanges at major airports in Mexico, Cambio de Change de Puebla. Reported El Nuevo Herald, “The traffickers are operating in Venezuela and Mexico. Several planes have already been confiscated, others are under observation, and there have been numerous arrests of suspects in Mexico and the United States.” In the court documents, FBI agent Michael Hoenigman cites “a confederation of individuals” whose job was to scout out U.S. aircraft desired by Venezuela-based drug traffickers, and then buy them for use in ferrying cocaine shipments around the globe. The operation—or at least the publicity surrounding it—seems aimed directly at Venezuela. Authorities from both the United States and Colombia allege Venezuela has become a sanctuary for Colombian drug traffickers, which Venezuela denies. Its a war on some drugs. Not theirs. But evidence in the case of one of the two planes already caught, the Gulfstream business jet which went down in Mexico in September carrying four tons of cocaine, indicated that the plane never touched down in Venezuela. Instead, it took off from the Medellin International Airport in Rio Negro, Colombia, currently the strong-hold of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. The four seized planes join two CIA-and Dept. of Homeland Security-linked planes already linked to the Sinaloa drug fleet. A DC-9 (N900SA) registered to former SkyWay partner Frederic Geffon’s Royal Sons Inc from St. Petersburg FL was busted in Mexico carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine, and a Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA) crash-landed carrying 4 tons in September in the Yucatan after failing to land at airports in Cancun and Merida. Finally, another bank cited in the court filings for moving Sinaloa cartel drug money is HBSC Bank in Mexico City. Curiously, this is also the bank used by Chinese drug trafficker Zhenli Ye Gon, whose Mexico City home was discovered to be stuffed with over $200 million in cash. Ye Gon claimed he was merely “holding” the money, which literally filled his home in Mexico City, for Mexican politicians, who threatened him with death if he demurred. What U.S. and Mexican officials are hoping to avoid is the question… Who can say ‘no’ to a deal like that?

Secret government promises big changes

By Benjamin Fulford

The secret government of the US and EU has promised a major overhaul in the wake of the warning it got from the Chinese secret society, according to a senior Japanese public security police officer and Freemason who has been acting as an intermediary with the Chinese secret society. “Expect big changes this autumn,” he said in comments confirmed by a member of the Japanese royal family. “What you will be seeing is the unwinding of George Bush senior’s 50-year campaign to turn the U.S. into a fascist regime,” the secret police agent says. “George Bush senior is now a broken man showing signs of senile dementia,” he adds.

If the sources are to be believed, U.S. President George Bush’s government will resign, before his term expires, and will be replaced by an interim regime headed by Al Gore. This will start a 2-3 year transition period during which suppressed technology, such as free energy, will be released and a new system for running the planet will be implemented, according to these two sources. “They [The illuminati] know their rule is ending but they do not want it to end in an ugly way,” the security police source says.

The recent market turmoil, including the Chinese threat to sell dollars, was part of the bargaining towards major changes in the secret balance of power, we are told.

Certainly there are some encouraging signs. The tearful resignation of U.S. presidential “brain” Karl Rove removes a central lynchpin of Bush’s regime. Since it follows six other resignations; it does look like rats abandoning a sinking ship.

In Japan, meanwhile, the victory of the opposition Democratic Party in the recent upper house elections could lead to the end of the Iraq and Afghan wars. Japan Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa has promised to block renewal of an “anti-terrorist” bill that allows Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to provide considerable logistical support to the U.S. sponsored wars in the region. Without that support, it is unlikely the U.S. will have enough money or military might to continue the wars.

Since this follows UK Prime Minister Brown’s vow to remove British troops with or without U.S. approval, it will mean the Bush regime has lost its last big war allies. Brown also publicly rebuked Bush during a recent visit by doing such things as pointedly refusing to take home a souvenir he was given.

There are also signs the Japanese election was manipulated behind the scenes to promote a Democratic Party victory in Japan. Just before the election, the Japanese mainstream media suddenly began reporting heavily about a pension scandal the JDP has been talking -unreported- about for at least 5 years. This was crucial for their victory. We may see a general election as early as this fall, followed by the birth of a JDP government and an end to the post-war Japanese regime. It could be a sign of diminished Rockefeller influence in Japan. However, it is not a sign of diminished illuminati control of Japan since Ozawa is himself a Freemason.

Despite the positive developments, the biggest worry is all the public hints about a new “terrorist attack” on the U.S. to be used as an excuse to trigger martial law. However, such an attack at this time “would fool nobody,” the sources said. Many U.S. citizens might be fooled but no other government in the world would believe it. “The secret government knows they cannot use their old tricks anymore,” the sources said.

The Chinese secret societies meanwhile, are watching carefully for any sign of new attempts to spread disease or otherwise carry out genocidal attacks. They only give one warning and have now initiated a news blackout. I am not in the loop about what they would do if a new breach was found but, they did say whatever action they took would be “unpredictable and worse than expected.”

At the same time, an anti-Rothschild alliance has been formed in Tokyo. They warn that the entire Bush regime was probably set up as a “bad cop” to scare people in the arms of the EU “good cop.” They say there may be other surprises, possibly including a fake UFO invasion that Henry Kissinger hinted at during the 1991 Bilderberg meeting. “We will have to look at least four or five steps ahead in order to keep on top of these people,” the alliance says.

So far, the EU only consists of governments that are controlled in secret by the Rothschilds etc. (Turkey is also a Rothschild fief). Their secret parliament, the Bilderbergers, have already shown they are racist by refusing to allow any Japanese to join. As a result, any effort to turn the EU into the base of a world government is doomed to fail.

The anti-Rothschild alliance, (with the discreet backing of the Chinese secret societies), will be contacting leaders of Russia, China, India, the Muslim countries, South America, Africa etc. to create a global alliance that will demand a new way of running the planet.

The UN Security Council will have to be replaced with a new grouping that more accurately represents the people of this planet. As it stands, 4 out of the 5 permanent Security Council members are representatives of Caucasian nations even though only 17% of the world’s people are Caucasian. This global apartheid will have to end.

The world’s financial system will also have to be replaced with a more transparent and equitable system that relies on more than simple human selfish greed as the main incentive for transactions.

Once this is done, a three-year campaign against the five curses of humanity: war, poverty, environmental destruction, ignorance and disease could be carried out. This could be a test case for replacing the Hegelian system of pitting opposite forces against each other in war with a system for people to compete towards agreed upon peaceful goals.

The industries and lobbies that have depended on war and turmoil will have to be given new goals and direction. One possibility would be a long-term campaign to terraform Mars.

People will have to be patient, however. These changes will happen over a period of years, not months. In the meantime, let us see if the autumn surprise appears as promised.

 http://benjaminfulford.com/secretgoverment.html

Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, Nato told

Ian Traynor in Brussels
Tuesday January 22, 2008
The Guardian

A British Trident missile. Photograph: AP

The west must be ready to resort to a pre-emptive nuclear attack to try to halt the “imminent” spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, according to a radical manifesto for a new Nato by five of the west’s most senior military officers and strategists.Calling for root-and-branch reform of Nato and a new pact drawing the US, Nato and the European Union together in a “grand strategy” to tackle the challenges of an increasingly brutal world, the former armed forces chiefs from the US, Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands insist that a “first strike” nuclear option remains an “indispensable instrument” since there is “simply no realistic prospect of a nuclear-free world”.

The manifesto has been written following discussions with active commanders and policymakers, many of whom are unable or unwilling to publicly air their views. It has been presented to the Pentagon in Washington and to Nato’s secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, over the past 10 days. The proposals are likely to be discussed at a Nato summit in Bucharest in April.

“The risk of further [nuclear] proliferation is imminent and, with it, the danger that nuclear war fighting, albeit limited in scope, might become possible,” the authors argued in the 150-page blueprint for urgent reform of western military strategy and structures. “The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction.”

The authors – General John Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff and Nato’s ex-supreme commander in Europe, General Klaus Naumann, Germany’s former top soldier and ex-chairman of Nato’s military committee, General Henk van den Breemen, a former Dutch chief of staff, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, a former French chief of staff, and Lord Inge, field marshal and ex-chief of the general staff and the defence staff in the UK – paint an alarming picture of the threats and challenges confronting the west in the post-9/11 world and deliver a withering verdict on the ability to cope.

The five commanders argue that the west’s values and way of life are under threat, but the west is struggling to summon the will to defend them. The key threats are:

· Political fanaticism and religious fundamentalism.

· The “dark side” of globalisation, meaning international terrorism, organised crime and the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

· Climate change and energy security, entailing a contest for resources and potential “environmental” migration on a mass scale.

· The weakening of the nation state as well as of organisations such as the UN, Nato and the EU.

To prevail, the generals call for an overhaul of Nato decision-taking methods, a new “directorate” of US, European and Nato leaders to respond rapidly to crises, and an end to EU “obstruction” of and rivalry with Nato. Among the most radical changes demanded are:

· A shift from consensus decision-taking in Nato bodies to majority voting, meaning faster action through an end to national vetoes.

· The abolition of national caveats in Nato operations of the kind that plague the Afghan campaign.

· No role in decision-taking on Nato operations for alliance members who are not taking part in the operations.

· The use of force without UN security council authorisation when “immediate action is needed to protect large numbers of human beings”.

In the wake of the latest row over military performance in Afghanistan, touched off when the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said some allies could not conduct counter-insurgency, the five senior figures at the heart of the western military establishment also declare that Nato’s future is on the line in Helmand province.

“Nato’s credibility is at stake in Afghanistan,” said Van den Breemen.

“Nato is at a juncture and runs the risk of failure,” according to the blueprint.

Naumann delivered a blistering attack on his own country’s performance in Afghanistan. “The time has come for Germany to decide if it wants to be a reliable partner.” By insisting on “special rules” for its forces in Afghanistan, the Merkel government in Berlin was contributing to “the dissolution of Nato”.

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund thinktank in Brussels and a former senior US state department official, described the manifesto as “a wake-up call”. “This report means that the core of the Nato establishment is saying we’re in trouble, that the west is adrift and not facing up to the challenges.”

Naumann conceded that the plan’s retention of the nuclear first strike option was “controversial” even among the five authors. Inge argued that “to tie our hands on first use or no first use removes a huge plank of deterrence”.

Reserving the right to initiate nuclear attack was a central element of the west’s cold war strategy in defeating the Soviet Union. Critics argue that what was a productive instrument to face down a nuclear superpower is no longer appropriate.

Robert Cooper, an influential shaper of European foreign and security policy in Brussels, said he was “puzzled”.

“Maybe we are going to use nuclear weapons before anyone else, but I’d be wary of saying it out loud.”

Another senior EU official said Nato needed to “rethink its nuclear posture because the nuclear non-proliferation regime is under enormous pressure”.

Naumann suggested the threat of nuclear attack was a counsel of desperation. “Proliferation is spreading and we have not too many options to stop it. We don’t know how to deal with this.”

Nato needed to show “there is a big stick that we might have to use if there is no other option”, he said.

The Authors:

John Shalikashvili

The US’s top soldier under Bill Clinton and former Nato commander in Europe, Shalikashvili was born in Warsaw of Georgian parents and emigrated to the US at the height of Stalinism in 1952. He became the first immigrant to the US to rise to become a four-star general. He commanded Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq at the end of the first Gulf war, then became Saceur, Nato’s supreme allied commander in Europe, before Clinton appointed him chairman of the joint chiefs in 1993, a position he held until his retirement in 1997.

Klaus Naumann

Viewed as one of Germany’s and Nato’s top military strategists in the 90s, Naumann served as his country’s armed forces commander from 1991 to 1996 when he became chairman of Nato’s military committee. On his watch, Germany overcame its post-WWII taboo about combat operations, with the Luftwaffe taking to the skies for the first time since 1945 in the Nato air campaign against Serbia.

Lord Inge

Field Marshal Peter Inge is one of Britain’s top officers, serving as chief of the general staff in 1992-94, then chief of the defence staff in 1994-97. He also served on the Butler inquiry into Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and British intelligence.

Henk van den Breemen

An accomplished organist who has played at Westminster Abbey, Van den Breemen is the former Dutch chief of staff.

Jacques Lanxade

A French admiral and former navy chief who was also chief of the French defence staff.

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UN transformation proposed to create ‘new world order’

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/article3356210.ece

By Andrew Grice in Delhi

Published: 21 January 2008

Gordon Brown has begun secret talks with other world leaders on far-reaching reform of the United Nations Security Council as part of a drive to create a “new world order” and “global society”.

The Prime Minister is drawing up plans to expand the number of permanent members in a move that will provoke fears that the veto enjoyed by Britain could be diluted eventually. The United States, France, Russia and China also have a veto but the number of members could be doubled to include India, Germany, Japan, Brazil and one or two African nations.

Mr Brown has discussed a shake-up of a structure created in 1945 to reflect the world’s new challenges and power bases during his four-day trip to China and India. Last night, British sources revealed “intense discussions” on UN reform were under way and Mr Brown raised it whenever he met another world leader.

The Prime Minister believes the UN is punching below its weight. In 2003, it failed to agree on a fresh resolution giving explicit approval for military action in Iraq. George Bush then acted unilaterally, winning the support of Tony Blair.

UN reform is highly sensitive and Britain will not yet publish formal proposals for fear of uniting opponents against them. Mr Brown is trying to build a consensus for change first.

His aides are adamant that the British veto will not be negotiated away. One option is for the nations who join not to have a veto, at least initially. In a speech in Delhi today, the Prime Minister will say: “I support India’s bid for a permanent place – with others – on an expanded UN Security Council.” However, he is not backing Pakistan’s demand for a seat if India wins one.

Mr Brown will unveil a proposal for the UN to spend £100m a year on setting up a “rapid reaction force” to stop “failed states” sliding back into chaos after a peace deal has been reached. Civilians such as police, administrators, judges and lawyers would work alongside military peace-keepers. “There is limited value in military action to end fighting if law and order does not follow,” he will say. “So we must do more to ensure rapid reconstruction on the ground once conflicts are over – and combine traditional humanitarian aid and peace-keeping with stabilisation, recovery and development.”

He will call for the World Bank to lead the fight against climate change as well as poverty in the developing world, and argue that the International Monetary Fund should prevent crises like the credit crunch rather than just resolve them.

Arriving in Delhi yesterday, Mr Brown said he wanted a “partnership of equals” between Britain and India as he called for closer trade links and co-operation against terrorism. He announced £825m of aid over the next three years – £500m of which will be spent on health and education.

Mr Brown is to bring back honorary knighthoods and other awards for cricketers from Commonwealth countries. He said: “Cricket is one of the great things that bind the Commonwealth together. It used to be that great cricketers from the Commonwealth would be recognised by the British nation I would like to see some of the great players in the modern era honoured.”

Read Andrew Grice atindependent.co.uk/todayinpolitics

Security Council membership

The UN Security Council’s membership has remained virtually unchanged since it first met in 1946.

Great Britain, the United States, the then Soviet Union, China and France were designated permanent members of the UN’s most powerful body.

Initially, six other countries were elected to serve two-year spells on the council – in 1946 they were Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Mexico, the Netherlands and Poland.

The number of elected members, who are chosen to cover all parts of the globe, was increased to 10 in 1965. They are currently Belgium, Burkina Faso, Costa Rica, Croatia, Indonesia, Italy, Libya, Panama, South Africa and Vietnam.

Decisions made by the council require nine “yes” votes out of 15. Each permanent member has a veto over resolutions.

The issue of UN reform has long been on the agenda. One suggestion is that permanent membership could be expanded to 10 with India, Japan, Germany, Brazil and South Africa taking places. Any reform requires 128 nations, two-thirds, to support it in the assembly.

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

The FBI has been accused of covering up a file detailing government dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets

THE FBI has been accused of covering up a key case file detailing evidence against corrupt government officials and their dealings with a network stealing nuclear secrets.

The assertion follows allegations made in The Sunday Times two weeks ago by Sibel Edmonds, an FBI whistleblower, who worked on the agency’s investigation of the network.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

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• For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

Edmonds believes the crucial file is being deliberately covered up by the FBI because its contents are explosive. She accuses the agency of an “outright lie”.

“I can tell you that that file and the operations it refers to did exist from 1996 to February 2002. The file refers to the counterintelligence programme that the Department of Justice has declared to be a state secret to protect sensitive diplomatic relations,” she said.

The freedom of information request had not been initiated by Edmonds. It was made quite separately by an American human rights group called the Liberty Coalition, acting on a tip-off it received from an anonymous correspondent.

The letter says: “You may wish to request pertinent audio tapes and documents under FOIA from the Department of Justice, FBI-HQ and the FBI Washington field office.”

It then makes a series of allegations about the contents of the file – many of which corroborate the information that Edmonds later made public.

Edmonds had told this newspaper that members of the Turkish political and diplomatic community in the US had been actively acquiring nuclear secrets. They often acted as a conduit, she said, for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s spy agency, because they attracted less suspicion.

She claimed corrupt government officials helped the network, and venues such as the American-Turkish Council (ATC) in Washington were used as drop-off points.

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Edmonds is the subject of a number of state secret gags preventing her from talking further about the investigation she witnessed.

“I cannot discuss the details considering the gag orders,” she said, “but I reported all these activities to the US Congress, the inspector general of the justice department and the 9/11 commission. I told them all about what was contained in this case file number, which the FBI is now denying exists.

“This gag was invoked not to protect sensitive diplomatic relations but criminal activities involving US officials who were endangering US national security.”

Insight: Chris Gourlay, Jonathan Calvert and Joe Lauria

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3216737.ece

Did CIA give Iran the Bomb?

George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb?

In an extract from his explosive new book, New York Times reporter James Risen reveals the bungles and miscalculations that led to a spectacular intelligence fiasco

• James Risen
• The Guardian,
• Thursday January 5 2006

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This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday January 05 2006 on p10 of the G2 comment & features section. It was last updated at 09:52 on January 05 2006.

State of War, by James Risen

She had probably done this a dozen times before. Modern digital technology had made clandestine communications with overseas agents seem routine. Back in the cold war, contacting a secret agent in Moscow or Beijing was a dangerous, labour-intensive process that could take days or even weeks. But by 2004, it was possible to send high-speed, encrypted messages directly and instantaneously from CIA headquarters to agents in the field who were equipped with small, covert personal communications devices. So the officer at CIA headquarters assigned to handle communications with the agency’s spies in Iran probably didn’t think twice when she began her latest download. With a few simple commands, she sent a secret data flow to one of the Iranian agents in the CIA’s spy network. Just as she had done so many times before.

But this time, the ease and speed of the technology betrayed her. The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.

Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to “roll up” the CIA’s network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US – whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

In fact, just as President Bush and his aides were making the case in 2004 and 2005 that Iran was moving rapidly to develop nuclear weapons, the American intelligence community found itself unable to provide the evidence to back up the administration’s public arguments. On the heels of the CIA’s failure to provide accurate pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the agency was once again clueless in the Middle East. In the spring of 2005, in the wake of the CIA’s Iranian disaster, Porter Goss, its new director, told President Bush in a White House briefing that the CIA really didn’t know how close Iran was to becoming a nuclear power.

But it’s worse than that. Deep in the bowels of the CIA, someone must be nervously, but very privately, wondering: “Whatever happened to those nuclear blueprints we gave to the Iranians?”

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna’s winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb.

To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a “firing set”, for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon. He held in his hands the knowledge needed to create a perfect implosion that could trigger a nuclear chain reaction inside a small spherical core. It was one of the greatest engineering secrets in the world, providing the solution to one of a handful of problems that separated nuclear powers such as the United States and Russia from rogue countries such as Iran that were desperate to join the nuclear club but had so far fallen short.

The Russian, who had defected to the US years earlier, still couldn’t believe the orders he had received from CIA headquarters. The CIA had given him the nuclear blueprints and then sent him to Vienna to sell them – or simply give them – to the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). With the Russian doing its bidding, the CIA appeared to be about to help Iran leapfrog one of the last remaining engineering hurdles blocking its path to a nuclear weapon. The dangerous irony was not lost on the Russian – the IAEA was an international organisation created to restrict the spread of nuclear technology.

The Russian was a nuclear engineer in the pay of the CIA, which had arranged for him to become an American citizen and funded him to the tune of $5,000 a month. It seemed like easy money, with few strings attached.

Until now. The CIA was placing him on the front line of a plan that seemed to be completely at odds with the interests of the US, and it had taken a lot of persuading by his CIA case officer to convince him to go through with what appeared to be a rogue operation.

The case officer worked hard to convince him – even though he had doubts about the plan as well. As he was sweet-talking the Russian into flying to Vienna, the case officer wondered whether he was involved in an illegal covert action. Should he expect to be hauled before a congressional committee and grilled because he was the officer who helped give nuclear blueprints to Iran? The code name for this operation was Merlin; to the officer, that seemed like a wry tip-off that nothing about this programme was what it appeared to be. He did his best to hide his concerns from his Russian agent.

The Russian’s assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul – and the secrets of the atomic bomb – to the highest bidder. By hook or by crook, the CIA told him, he was to get the nuclear blueprints to the Iranians. They would quickly recognise their value and rush them back to their superiors in Tehran.

The plan had been laid out for the defector during a CIA-financed trip to San Francisco, where he had meetings with CIA officers and nuclear experts mixed in with leisurely wine-tasting trips to Sonoma County. In a luxurious San Francisco hotel room, a senior CIA official involved in the operation talked the Russian through the details of the plan. He brought in experts from one of the national laboratories to go over the blueprints that he was supposed to give the Iranians.

The senior CIA officer could see that the Russian was nervous, and so he tried to downplay the significance of what they were asking him to do. He said the CIA was mounting the operation simply to find out where the Iranians were with their nuclear programme. This was just an intelligence-gathering effort, the CIA officer said, not an illegal attempt to give Iran the bomb. He suggested that the Iranians already had the technology he was going to hand over to them. It was all a game. Nothing too serious.

On paper, Merlin was supposed to stunt the development of Tehran’s nuclear programme by sending Iran’s weapons experts down the wrong technical path. The CIA believed that once the Iranians had the blueprints and studied them, they would believe the designs were usable and so would start to build an atom bomb based on the flawed designs. But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle. The Iranian nuclear programme would suffer a humiliating setback, and Tehran’s goal of becoming a nuclear power would have been delayed by several years. In the meantime, the CIA, by watching Iran’s reaction to the blueprints, would have gained a wealth of information about the status of Iran’s weapons programme, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. “This isn’t right,” he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. “There is something wrong.” His comments prompted stony looks, but no straight answers from the CIA men. No one in the meeting seemed surprised by the Russian’s assertion that the blueprints didn’t look quite right, but no one wanted to enlighten him further on the matter, either.

In fact, the CIA case officer who was the Russian’s personal handler had been stunned by his statement. During a break, he took the senior CIA officer aside. “He wasn’t supposed to know that,” the CIA case officer told his superior. “He wasn’t supposed to find a flaw.”

“Don’t worry,” the senior CIA officer calmly replied. “It doesn’t matter.”

The CIA case officer couldn’t believe the senior CIA officer’s answer, but he managed to keep his fears from the Russian, and continued to train him for his mission.

After their trip to San Francisco, the case officer handed the Russian a sealed envelope with the nuclear blueprints inside. He was told not to open the envelope under any circumstances. He was to follow the CIA’s instructions to find the Iranians and give them the envelope with the documents inside. Keep it simple, and get out of Vienna safe and alive, the Russian was told. But the defector had his own ideas about how he might play that game.

The CIA had discovered that a high-ranking Iranian official would be travelling to Vienna and visiting the Iranian mission to the IAEA, and so the agency decided to send the Russian to Vienna at the same time. It was hoped that he could make contact with either the Iranian representative to the IAEA or the visitor from Tehran.

In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints – so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn’t tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.

The Russian was thus warning the Iranians as carefully as he could that there was a flaw somewhere in the nuclear blueprints, and he could help them find it. At the same time, he was still going through with the CIA’s operation in the only way he thought would work.

The Russian soon found 19 Heinstrasse, a five-storey office and apartment building with a flat, pale green and beige facade in a quiet, slightly down-at-heel neighbourhood in Vienna’s north end. Amid the list of Austrian tenants, there was one simple line: “PM/Iran.” The Iranians clearly didn’t want publicity. An Austrian postman helped him. As the Russian stood by, the postman opened the building door and dropped off the mail. The Russian followed suit; he realised that he could leave his package without actually having to talk to anyone. He slipped through the front door, and hurriedly shoved his envelope through the inner-door slot at the Iranian office.

The Russian fled the mission without being seen. He was deeply relieved that he had made the hand-off without having to come face to face with a real live Iranian. He flew back to the US without being detected by either Austrian security or, more importantly, Iranian intelligence.

Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.

The Russian scientist’s fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the “axis of evil”.

Operation Merlin has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in the Clinton and Bush administrations. It’s not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan was first approved by Clinton. After the Russian scientist’s fateful trip to Vienna, however, the Merlin operation was endorsed by the Bush administration, possibly with an eye toward repeating it against North Korea or other dangerous states.

Several former CIA officials say that the theory behind Merlin – handing over tainted weapon designs to confound one of America’s adversaries – is a trick that has been used many times in past operations, stretching back to the cold war. But in previous cases, such Trojan horse operations involved conventional weapons; none of the former officials had ever heard of the CIA attempting to conduct this kind of high-risk operation with designs for a nuclear bomb. The former officials also said these kind of programmes must be closely monitored by senior CIA managers in order to control the flow of information to the adversary. If mishandled, they could easily help an enemy accelerate its weapons development. That may be what happened with Merlin.

Iran has spent nearly 20 years trying to develop nuclear weapons, and in the process has created a strong base of sophisticated scientists knowledgeable enough to spot flaws in nuclear blueprints. Tehran also obtained nuclear blueprints from the network of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, and so already had workable blueprints against which to compare the designs obtained from the CIA. Nuclear experts say that they would thus be able to extract valuable information from the blueprints while ignoring the flaws.

“If [the flaw] is bad enough,” warned a nuclear weapons expert with the IAEA, “they will find it quite quickly. That would be my fear”

© James Risen 2006

US threatens retaliation against EU over GM Food

Posted: 2008/01/15 From: Mathaba

Two days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would join other EU countries in banning Monsanto’s GM maize, the U.S. retaliated with a threat to impose trade sanctions unless EU nations reverse bans on planting genetically modified crops. by Trevor Wells Farmers Legal Action Group-South Africa Two days after French President Nicolas Sarkozy said he would join other EU countries in banning Monsanto’s MON 810, genetically modified (GM) maize, the U.S. announced it will retaliate with trade sanctions unless European Union countries reverse bans on planting genetically modified crops. (Wall Street Journal, Tuesday 15th January 2008). On 17th December 2007 Monsanto was found guilty of contempt of the South African Advertising Authority (ASA) for publishing false claims about the safety of GM foods. In January, 2007, Monsanto was fined 15,000 Euros (US$19,000 ) in a French court for misleading the public about the environmental impact of herbicide Roundup. A former chairman of Monsanto Agriculture France was found guilty of false advertising for presenting Roundup as biodegradable and claiming that it left the soil clean after use. Monsanto’s French distributor Scotts France was also fined 15,000 euros. In 2005, Monsanto was caught smuggling South African produced GM Bollgard cotton seed into Indonesia disguised as rice. Monsanto was fined for bribing Indonesian officials. In 2006, Monsanto suppressed evidence of serious damage to the liver and kidneys of rats in their MON 863 GM maize trials until ordered to release this evidence by a German Court. In June, 2007, a second peer-reviewed case involving another variation of Monsanto’s GM maize, namely, NK 603, has been shown by studies to be potentially toxic to humans. NK 603 has been approved for food, feed, processing, and propagation in Europe and the Philippines The new research, carried out by the French scientific research institute  CRIGEN, involves biotech firm Monsanto’s NK 603 GMO corn (marketed commercially under the name Round-up Ready). Rats that were fed GM maize showed significant differences in measurements, as well as significant weight differences compared to those fed with normal maize. Almost 70 statistically significant differences were observed and reported – 12 for hematology parameters, 18 for clinical chemistry parameters, nine for urine chemistry parameters, six for the organ weights (brain, heart, liver), 14 for body weights and body weight changes, and eight for food consumption. toxicity, The most alarming was the diminished brain size. Scientists warned that diminished brain size sent out a urgent danger warning for growing children fed `GM food.

FBI cut off for unpaid phone bills

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=83544&in_page_id=34

Friday, January 11, 2008

An FBI surveillance operation was shut down after telephone companies cut its lines for the agency failing to pay its bills.

Wiretaps used to listen on suspected criminals were cut off as the FBI owed companies tens of thousands of dollars.

One company was owed $66,000 (£33,000) and more than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance operations were not paid on time the report said.

 

In at least one case, an FBI wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act operation ‘was halted due to untimely payment’.

‘We also found that payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, reuslting in lost evidence,’ said Inspector General Glenn A Fine in the report.

The report blames the failure on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover operations, and included another instance when an employee stole £25,000 (£12,000).

But Assistant FBI Director John Miller said wiretaps were only dropped a few times, though he insisted ‘financial mismanagement’ would not be tolerated.

‘While in a few instances, late-payment of telephone bills resulted in interruptions of monitoring, these interruptions were temporary, and in our assessment, none of tho9se cases were significantly affected,’ Mr Miller said in a statement.

NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber 9-11, Top Spy Says

By Ryan Singel January 15, 2008 | 12:55:56 PMfrom WIRED.COM

The nation’s top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon! is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens’ Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst.

That’s according to a sprawling 18-page story on the Director of National Intelligence by Lawrence Wright in the January 21 edition of the New Yorker. (The story is not online).

In the piece, McConnell returns, in flamboyant style, to his exaggerating ways, hyping threats and statistics to further his bureaucratic aims. For example, McConnell regurgitates the hoary myth that computer crime costs America $100 billion a year. THREAT LEVEL traced down the source of that fake-factoid in September to a former privacy officer for the state of Colorado.

Presumably using unsupported stats like that, in May 2007 McConnell convinced President Bush that a massive cyber-attack on a singe U.S. bank would be worse for the economy than than the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, the article reports. In response, the NSA developed a mind-boggling, but still incomplete, plan to eavesdrop on the internet in order to protect it.

In order for cyberspace to be policed, Internet activity will have to be closely monitored. Ed Giorgio, who is working with McConnell on the plan, said that would mean giving the government the authority to examine the content of any e-mail, file transfer, or Web search. “Google has records that could help in a cyber-investigation,” he said. Giorgio warned me, “We have a saying in this business: ‘Privacy and security are a zero-sum game.’”

It says something ominous about McConnell’s priorities if he believes a DDOS attack on Bank of America, or even a computer intrusion that wiped out its database (and magically purged its backup tapes), would be worse than an attack that killed 3,000 Americans.

Still, it’s hardly a surprising plan — given that McConnell was one of the main backers of the Clipper Chip, the government’s failed, early 1990’s proposal to put a backdoor in every encryption product.

McConnell also makes an astounding assertion that the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court recently crippled the NSA’s overseas signals intelligence collection with a string of soft-on-terror rulings.

McConnell said that federal judges had recently decided, in a series of secret rulings, that any telephone transmission or e-mail that incidentally flowed into U.S. computer systems was potentially subject to judicial oversight. According to McConnell the capacity of the NSA to monitor foreign-based communications had consequently been reduced by seventy per cent.

In other words, McConnell claims the NSA couldn’t intercept a terrorist’s e-mail by tapping a fiber optic cable in Pakistan, if there was a chance the message would pass through a U.S. router or end up in a Hotmail account.

I’m no rich man, but I’ll bet any reader $1,000 that, when and if those rulings are ever released, we’ll see they say no such thing. Send me an e-mail to take me up this bet. U.S. government officials are welcome to participate.

The FISA law that created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court only applies to intercepts that physically happen within the borders of the United States. The NSA has always been free to intercept foreign communications overseas — the mission for which they were created and funded — even if the call passes through a U.S. switch.

So in the case of the now debunked Iraqi kidnappers anecdote that leads off the New Yorker story, the NSA would only have needed to get a court order if its Iraqi targets initiated communications that flowed through U.S. servers or switches and the NSA decided to tap them physically at a United States internet or telecom facility, by burglarizing it, digging up its cables or getting the company to cooperate. (As for why that happens and how common it is, check my story: NSA’s Lucky Break: How the U.S. Became the Switchboard to the World.)

Simply put, the FISA law is intended to prevent the NSA from operating inside the United States.

In any event, that restriction collapsed this summer with the fear-induced, strong-armed passage of the so-called Protect America Act. That law radically re-architected the nation’s surveillance apparatus.
Now the NSA can turn Gmail’s servers and AT&T’s switches into de facto arms of the surveillance industrial complex without any court oversight.

And though the law ostensibly sunsets in February, any orders in effect at that time will have power for another 12 months. Moreover, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is reportedly planning to discard legislative attempts to rein in these new powers and will instead simply push to extend the current scheme another 12 months.

In short, McConnell’s politically convenient exaggerations have already worked well for him in winning domestic spying powers, despite their flimsiness under any real scrutiny.

That track record bodes ill for anyone concerned about his new plans to push for sweeping and unnecessary powers to put the NSA in the wires of the internet in order to prevent a computer attacks.

The Wall Street Journal’s intelligence guru Siobhan Gorman’s take is here. Gorman wrote a groundbreaking story on the cyberspace initiative last September while at The Baltimore Sun.

UPDATE: Ex-spook Michael Tanji guest-posting over at Danger Room writes:

It’s bad enough that the Director of National Intelligence is trotting out a bogus threat so the government can snoop on all Internet traffic. What’s worse is that this kind of mass surveillance is a pretty lame way to catch the honest-to-God bad guys.

Of more interest to observers of intelligence activities is the issue of quality vs. quantity and the slow creep towards doom that these efforts foretell. The fact that we are essentially attempting to gill-net bad guys is a fairly strong indicator that the intelligence community has yet to come up with an effective strategy against information-age threats.

Its not a question of listening in to you whispering sweet nothings into the ear to your significant other, it is simply a case of – as the late Sam Kinison joked – going where the food is. That our intelligence agencies can intercept adversary communications is largely a given, they just want to do it from the convenience of the homeland, not some remote switch in the darkest hinterlands.

US Army Depleted Uranium Training Video