[wvns] THE SPOOKS OF ST. PETERSBURG
Private intelligence companies gathered in Florida to plan their
global operations with neocon officials in close attendance, as more
interventions are planned.
THE SPOOKS OF ST. PETERSBURG
Sam Urquhart
Guerilla News Network
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2949/The_Spooks_of_St_Petersburg
It's a new age of the privateer.
A gathering of today's buccaneers and freelance adventurers will be
took place last February on the Florida coast. This week, a
(self-declared) important section of the `intelligence community' met
in St. Petersburg, Florida for its second "International Intelligence
Summit," where they will be discussing how best to fight their Global
War on Terror. Among them will be a motley crew of Iranian exiles,
Israeli intelligence officials, repentent Islamists, neocon warriors
and scions of the British secret service.
It's certainly a crowd of buccaneers which repays further investigation.
More and more operations traditionally carried out by arms of the U.S.
government are now being outsourced to private companies. From
peacekeeping to intelligence gathering, security details to country
studies – there has been a trend since the mid 1990s to shift work
away from public employees to better paid, less heavily scrutinized
private contractors. Officials routinely slip from highly paid
positions at government contractors, to positions within government
itself. The lines are becoming ever more blurred.
But outside of that process, private military and intelligence
companies are thriving in the shadow of the Global War on Terror. In
fact, they are not just thriving in its shadow, they have been
constantly lobbying to make that war bigger, more bloody, more
high-tech and most crucially of all, more expensive. It is hard to
separate neocon officials from neocon private military contractors, or
from radical think-tanks which provide them with an intellectual veneer.
Much of the intelligence that led us all to war with Iraq came from a
tiny nucleus of emigres, think tank hacks and well placed officials.
They in turn can be traced back to public relations agents that they
hold in common. Benador Associates, for example, handles the public
schedules of Michael Ledeen (the U.S.' number one Iran hawk), Richard
Perle (the U.S.' number one Iraq hawk), Kenneth Timmerman (Mr "it'll
be a cakewalk"), Charles Krauthammer, Iraqi emigre Kanan Makiya,
Israeli neocon Natan Sharansky and ex CIA chief turned uber-hawk James
Woolsey.
Benador Associates is part of a wider cluster of institutions that has
expanded since 2001 and exerts a key influence in pushing the U.S.
media and political system towards war. The Orwellian-named Foundation
for the Defense of Democracies, for example which was founded in 2002
under the wing of those who around the same time resurrected the Cold
War-era Committee on the Present Danger, which then gathered together
extremist hawks to confront Soviet Russia. The FDD has found no
trouble attracting funds to wage war against today's `terror' –
attracting $250,000 from healthcare magnate Leonard Abramson and a
staggering $1.5 million from Ameriquest capital, a firm widely reviled
as a predatory mortgage lender. With that small fortune, the FDD has
thrust itself into the media spotlight (averaging seven media
appearances by its staff per day in the international media in 2007)
and onto American university campuses "at a time when college campuses
are under the sway of apologists for terrorism" according to its
non-profit tax return.
A number of workhorses have emerged from this stable, not least of
them is the Intelligence Summit – a meeting point for likeminded
hawks, gadflies and corporate representatives with a common passion
for war.
How not to frame Saddam
One of the keynote speakers at 2006's Intelligence Summit was Michael
Shrimpton, a British lawyer whose bio boasts that he "negotiated the
national security aspects of the Pinochet case with the late
Lt-General Vernon Walters, formerly Deputy Director of the CIA." That
would be when Augusto Pinochet sojourned in London while he received
medical treatment for "dementia" and Spanish prosecutors sought his
extradition on murder charges, before the ex-Chilean dictator
miraculously recovered on returning to his native land. Apparently,
Shrimpton also uncovered evidence linking Saddam to 9-11 (although the
rest of the world doesn't seem to know about these revelations).
According to his bio, Shrimpton "also played a major role in
uncovering the Iraqi Air Force's acquisition of a Boeing 767
simulator, stolen from Kuwait Airways at Kuwait Airport in August
1990" while "He was of course fully aware of the significance of this
discovery, given the cockpit commonality between the Boeing 757 and
767, and Al Qaeda's restriction to these two types on 9-11."
There is no evidence that this claim was taken seriously, but that
hasn't dented Shrimpton's media reputation. The BBC has been the most
recent media outlet to use him as a source, regarding renewed interest
in the death of David Kelly, who Shrimpton alleges fell victim to an
assasination by intelligence services.
Shrimpton is a committed "friend of Israel" – being a contributor to
the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and a participant
in the 2003 "Lawyers Mission to Israel" which set out to "allow
participants to explore the military and strategic dangers to the
Jewish state from Arab terrorism in an intensive schedule of
briefings, tours and exhibitions." After receiving "briefings from
senior commanders of Israel's intelligence and security services, as
well as the other strategic decision-makers who shape and lead
Israel's multifaceted war on terrorism..including the senior
commanders of the security services and Mossad" Shrimpton returned to
the UK where he immediately penned a passionate attack on the BBC
(generously archived here). Attacking the BBC's perceived willingness
to explain Palestinian actions in Raffah [sic] using Palestinian
voices, Shrimpton wrote that "It will come as small comfort, but the
BBC hates Britain almost as much as it hates Israel" before
continuing, "For over 30 years it has rammed the European Union down
our throats – the same blood-stained EU that sponsors Palestinian
terror and deserves to be treated as a fully paid-up member of the
Axis of Evil." The Israeli Lawyers Mission must have been some operation.
Despite this passion in the face of reason, according to his bio on
the Israel speakers bureau Let My People Know, "Michael Shrimpton is a
member of the respected Royal Institute of International Affairs
(Chatham House), International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS)
and Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London." Perhaps
revealingly, Shrimpton was also "the only Brit to be invited from the
UK to attend the swearing-in of America's respected Ambassador to the
United Nations John Bolton, as Under-Secretary of State for
International Security Affairs" in 2001 while he joined the faculty at
the American Military University in 2006 in the "Department of
National Security, Space and Intelligence Studies."
Shrimpton fits a pattern amongst attendees of the Intelligence Summit
of people who have a record of releasing information which seeks to
shift the political terrain towards confrontation against the enemies
of Israel. Whether the information is authentic or not does not seem
to matter, nor that the bio of Shrimpton, for example, boasts only
that he "is believed to have close connections to a number of Western
intelligence services."
Their man not in Tehran, yet
Shrimpton may be something of a gadfly but perhaps more troublingly,
another attendee at 2006's Intelligence Summit was Iranian exile
Alireza Jafarzadeh, who has made the extraordinary transition from
refugee to being "a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs Analyst," while
for twelve years he served as "the chief congressional liaison and
media spokesperson for the US representative office of Iran's
parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran." In
2003, it was information supplied by Jafarzadeh and his associates
which fuelled the drive by the Bush administration to seek stringent
sanctions on the Iranian government and, eventually, to a UN security
council referral. Information supplied by Jafarzadeh – that Iran was
running a secret nuclear weapons programme parallel to its nuclear
energy activities – generated sufficient anxiety on the council to
make the demand for the cessation of uranium enrichment a shoo-in.
However, as the Guardian reported on 22 February, much of this
information has proved incorrect. Julian Borger reported that "most of
the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA
and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when
investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna."
Along with distributing alarmist (and plain wrong) assertions about
the nuclear intentions of the Islamic Republic, Jafarzadeh's group has
made many more accusations that haven't led anywhere but have
increased international attention on Iran. In 2003, for example, the
National Council of Resistance in Iran released information claiming
that Iran was producing a massive variety of bioweapons ranging from
smallpox microbial bombs to anthrax spores and typhoid fever. More
recently, he has claimed that the Iranian government has taken 32,000
mercenaries onto its payroll to cause havoc in Iran (an assertion he
made on Lou Dobbs' CNN slot). Whenever these assertions are made, and
proved either overblown or plain wrong, Jafarzadeh's credibility seems
to have survived intact.
You get by with a little help from your friends I guess.
Amateur terrorist hunting in Florida
One man who certainly hasn't got enough friends is Professor Sami al-
Arian. The parent organization of the Intelligence Summit is the
Intelligence and Homeland Security Education Center (IHEC) – which in
turn was once the International Holocaust Education Center (see what
they did there?). IHEC boasts that its "educational research has aided
in the exposure and subsequent indictment of Professor Sami al-Arian"
as well as "other sensitive investigations, which are still ongoing."
Maybe their site needs a bit of updating. It could certainly do with a
little qualification. Professor al-Arian was arrested in 2003 and was
charged with aiding Islamic Jihad in the commission of terrorist acts.
After a ten year investigation into al-Arian's work to channel aid to
Palestinian causes, the FBI claimed to have evidence that he had
assumed the role of Islamic Jihad's "chief of operations" in North
America. Despite an internal investigation into al-Arian's activities
which was carried out by a former president of the American Bar
Association and found him innocent of any offenses which could justify
his removal from tenure, the FBI pressed on. After his arrest in
February 2003, his trial date was set for April 2005, over two years
in the future. Meanwhile, then Attorney General John Ashcroft weighed
in with a public statement identifying al Arian as the North American
head of Islamic Jihad.
As it turned out, when his case came to trial in December 2005, Sami
al-Arian was found innocent on eight out of the seventeen charges held
against him. In the other charges, the jury remained deadlocked 10-2,
also in favor of aquittal – a huge preponderance of opinion which
leans towards his innocence. Yet al-Arian remained in custody, and in
January 2006 submitted a plea bargain. After almost three years in
jail, he agreed to plead guilty on one count of conspiring "to make or
receive contributions of funds, goods or services to or for the
benefit of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad" while the eight other
charges against him were dropped.
So after three years of detention, according to the St Petersburg
Times "most of it in solitary confinement," Sami al-Arian received
three more years and "expedited deportation." Whatever the truth of
his role in supporting Islamic Jihad, he was no terrorist kingpin, as
the initial charges (and media frenzy) suggested. IHEC and its
"educational research" must be credited with stealing at least six
years of his life.
If that is the greatest success in `terrorist hunting' that IHEC and
Intelligence Summit can produce to sell their services, then it's a
wonder why anybody in the real intelligence services bothers to listen
to them. But competence is not the issue. More than anything else,
IHEC is an ideologically driven money making machine. The ideology of
the War on Terror drives the money making machine, while the money
earned in the process goes straight into funding the intellectual
apparatus for more and bigger wars.
Leading a private War on Terror
The ranks of its speakers are full of connections to neoconservative
think-tanks and the more shadowy arms of the military industrial
complex. Pauline Neville-Jones, for example, who serves as Chairman of
QinetiQ – a growing contractor of government intelligence functions as
well as a high-tech weapons manufacturer – sits on the advisory board
alongside Wayne Simmons, an ex U.S. Navy Special operative in a unit
"That was not only prepared to die for America, but they were prepared
to go anywhere and do virtually anything when ordered." Robert
Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch (a virulently Islamophobic
website), sits alongside General Tom McInerny – who runs an advocacy
group for the defense industry called Government Reform Through
Technology and lobbies to "introduce advanced technology into the
public sector."
But it's not just industry shills and talking heads who are involved
in the Summit. As its website describes, "The Summit recruits active
serving members of the government like Harold Rhode, from the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, to serve as neutral moderators." That
would be the same Harold Rhode who cut a swathe of destruction through
the Department of Defense after his appointment as deputy to
arch-neocon Douglas Feith in 2002. According to Sourcewatch, working
at the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, "Rhode helped Feith lay
down the law about the department's new anti-Iraq, and broadly
anti-Arab, orientation" while he also "worked with Feith to purge
career Defense officials who weren't sufficiently enthusiastic about
the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Paul D. Wolfowitz and Feith
wanted." Second rate analysts were pulled from "nooks and crannies of
the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places" according to a
former Pentagon analyst, as Rhode reshaped the strategic wing of the
Pentagon ready for war with Iraq.
It would be certainly interesting to know what aspects of the summit
were taken on board by members of the U.S. government and intelligence
services.
I wonder what Harold Rhode and any other "neutral moderators" made of
the contribution of private security consultant Ali Koknar who
suggested that governments deploy "pseudo-terrorists" to flush out the
bad guys. As Koknar began his speech in 2006, "Deployment of `Pseudo
Terrorists' (PTs) is recommended as a `quick and dirty' solution to
the lingering absence of actionable human intelligence, which the US
counterterrorism effort suffers from" before adding that "In places
such as Central Iraq, Eastern Afghanistan, and Northwest Pakistan,
where traditional intelligence sources are scarce due to local support
for the terrorist cause, PTs may prove to be a vital factor in
providing the actionable intelligence necessary for the United States
to successfully counter terrorists."
Because the Intelligence Summit gathers together figures from the
intelligence services of "emerging democracies," the U.S. and its
allies, the military industrial complex and its `academic' wing, it is
particularly alarming from a public interest perspective that the
summit is organized and run by a shadowy collection of businesses with
no public oversight. As its brochure states, "Attendees and media
agree that, except with the express consent of the speaker, all
discussions at the Intelligence Summit are on a "not for distribution
basis", that is, the speaker's words may be quoted, but his or her
identity or agency affiliation may not be revealed directly or
indirectly."
So the gathered spooks, wannabe spooks, money men, ideologues and
neo-con officials are free to strike whatever bargains, agree
whichever strategies and disseminate whatever curious information they
wish, safely insulated from press attention. It's the perfect place to
renew and organize a parallel intelligence service. And that is
precisely what the Intelligence Summit seeks to do. It's a hub – which
brings together a gaggle of Fox News contributors such as Bill Cowan,
John Loftus, Tawfik Hamid and Alireza Jafarzadeh with ex-agents of
Mossad or the Israeli military such as Moshe Ya'alon or Yoram Hessel
and U.S. government officials such as Harold Rhode.
This year's model
This year's Intelligence Summit, which will be taking place in St
Petersburg, Florida from 5-7 March, promises to be paranoid feast.
With Dr Jill Dekker expounding upon the "Syrian Biological Weapons
Threat and Regional Security," Alireza Jafarzadeh speaking about
"Iranian Nuclear Facilities" and the bloodthirsty Wayne Simmons
explaining "Joint Agency Operations" there should be something for
everybody. Jafarzadeh and ex-CIA analyst Clare Lopez will be double
teaming on the "Iranian threat" – Lopez in her role as the head of the
estimable Iran Policy Committee, the primary lobby group pushing for
the U.S. to `unleash' the mystical terrorists in the Mujaheddin
e-Khalq upon the Iranian people.
It also promises to be a laboratory for new foreign interventions. As
the website of the summit notes, "Particular emphasis is placed on
inviting émigré groups from soon to be emerging democracies." That's a
quaint way of describing plans for regime change.
So it's no surprise that if you name a hawk from the push towards
Baghdad – Perle, Rhode, Kenneth Timmermann – they're on board and
networking. It would be interesting to know which Bush administration
officials will be the "neutral moderators" this time around, but alas
that's "not for distribution" and who knows, which plucky Democrats
will be wandering the exhibition hall? As the attendee brochure
promises, there is the chance to "mingle with congressional leaders"
and "top CEOs." Who could resist?
But should we be concerned about the Intelligence Summit? After all,
on one level, it's just like any other trade exhibition, albeit with
private military contractors displaying their wares, neoconservative
fantastists for hire and a general intention to market paranoia for
business and governmental customers. There is, however, a sinister
side. As mentioned above, the Intelligence Summit is one important
node in an expanding private intelligence and military industry. It
provides a forum for intelligence services to share information or
disinformation outside of any scrutinty. Its organisers are happy to
admit its expanding role. As prospective attendees read, "Because it
is a private charity, IHEC can respond more rapidly and flexibly than
most government agencies and has funded some of the most innovative
programs in the war against terrorism." In other words, because it is
a charity (so to speak) IHEC can run off the books intel operations
such as the tragic case of Sami al-Arian away from conventional
oversight.
Interestingly, with Bill Cowan on the advisory board and both his
company WVC3 and its junior ATS Tactical exhibiting prominently at the
2006 show, the Intelligence Summit might have been a useful location
to secure funding and other support for an intervention in Somalia. As
the Observer newspaper has reported, leaked e-mails from ATS showed
that company seeking arms via the Ugandan government and an end to the
UN arms embargo on the east African country. Similar schemes could be
hatched in the next week on the Florida coast.
So if you are in the Tampa-St Petersburg area, go along and voice your
solidarity with the spooks in their Global War on Terror. Or, if you
aren't that way inclined, give `em hell and stop them from doing the
same again.
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