[Peace-discuss] (no subject)

[patton paul]

This article explores the thesis that an Iran-Contra-like conspiracy is at
work to build tensions with Iran, Syria, and North Korea.  Interesting
reading.
-Paul P.

 Iran-Contra, Amplified
by Jim Lobe


WASHINGTON - As Karl Marx might have said, ''A specter is haunting
Washington -- the specter of Iran-Contra''.

Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the methods --
particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a
covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy --
are definitely the same.

Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small
group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSC) and the
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an ''off-the-books'' operation
to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages.


Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on
the public record suggest the existence of a disciplined network of
zealous, like-minded individuals centered in Feith's office and around
Perle in the DPB and operating with the approval of Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice
President Dick Cheney.

They used the proceeds to sustain the Nicaraguan contras -- U.S.-sponsored
rebels fighting Managua's left-wing government -- in defiance of both a
congressional ban and of official U.S. policy as enunciated by the State
Department and President Ronald Reagan. It was never clear whether Reagan
understood, let alone approved, the operation.

The picture emerging from the latest reports about the manipulation of
intelligence in the drive to war with Iraq, as well as efforts by
administration hawks to deliberately aggravate tensions with Syria, Iran,
and North Korea in defiance of official State Department and U.S. policy,
suggest a similar but much more ambitious scheme at work.

As with Reagan, in this case, too, it is difficult to determine whether
Bush -- or even his NSC director, Condoleezza Rice -- fully understands,
let alone approves, of what the hawks are doing.

There was some hint of a parallel policy apparatus dating back just after
the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001. It was known early on, for
example, that the Pentagon leadership, without notice to the State
Department, the NSC, or the CIA, convened its advisory Defense Policy
Board (DPB), headed by Richard Perle, to discuss attacking Iraq within
days of the attacks.

The three agencies were also kept in the dark about a mission undertaken
immediately afterward by former CIA director and DPB member James Woolsey
to London to gather intelligence about possible links between Iraqi
President Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, as if the CIA or
the Pentagon's own Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) could not be trusted.

While Woolsey's trip recalls the more benign shenanigans of the
Iran-Contra crowd, consider some of the more recent press reports.

Item: Iran-Contra alumnus Michael Ledeen (and close Perle associate) has
renewed ties with his old acquaintance, Manichur Ghorbanifar, an Iranian
arms merchant who became the key link between the NSC's Oliver North, the
operational head of Iran Contra, and the so-called ''moderates'' in the
Islamic Republic.

To what end? It appears that certain elements in the Pentagon leadership,
specifically Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, are
trying to sabotage sensitive talks between Teheran and the State
Department on co-operation over al-Qaeda and other pressing issues
affecting Afghanistan and Iraq.

They think Ledeen's old friend Ghorbanifar can help, according to
'Newsday', which reported Friday that two of Feith's senior aides --
without notice to the other agencies -- have held several meetings with
the Iranian, whom the CIA has long considered ''an intelligence fabricator
and nuisance''.

Item: U.S. aircraft and Special Operations Forces (SOF) intercepted and
destroyed a residential compound and two small convoys that were heading
from Iraq into Syria in mid-June, killing as many as 80 civilians. They
then subdued and arrested five Syrian guards across the border, taking
them back to Iraq, where they were held and interrogated over the strong
objections of the State Department for five days.

For what purpose? The Pentagon says it thought senior Hussein officials
were trying to make a run for it on a smuggling route. But an expose last
month by 'The New Yorker' suggested that the raid and arrests may have
been part of a deliberate effort to inflame tensions with Damascus and
thus put an end to remarkably close co-operation between Syria, the CIA
and the State Department in the campaign against al-Qaeda.

Item: Certain ''high-level circles within the administration'' were
reported by the right-wing 'Washington Times' Friday to be hoping to
persuade Chinese military officers to co-sponsor a coup d'etat with their
North Korean counterparts against leader Kim Jong Il.

While it is not clear the proposals have been acted on concretely, the
Times noted that the Pentagon leadership disagrees strongly with the State
Department's efforts to engage Kim in talks to persuade him to abandon his
nuclear-weapons program in exchange for a non-aggression pledge.

Just before Korea agreed to resume talks last week, Undersecretary of
State John Bolton, widely considered to be much closer to the Pentagon
hawks than his superiors at State, delivered a blistering attack on Kim in
what was seen by analysts here as a deliberate provocation.

Item: Anonymous ''senior administration officials'' informed a prominent
conservative columnist of a covert CIA operative (whose name he then
published) jeopardizing her career and possibly exposing numerous ongoing
covert actions and agents who worked with her.

To what end? The agent is the wife of Joseph Wilson, a retired career
foreign service officer who publicly exposed President George W. Bush's
now-infamous assertion that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake in
Africa as a fabrication.

While some analysts have said the disclosure of his wife's identity, a
felony under U.S. law, was an attempt to discredit him, he charged this
week that the move ''was clearly designed to intimidate others from coming
forward'' to tell what they know about the administration's manipulation
of intelligence.

No one knows yet whether such intimidation will work, but recently retired
intelligence and foreign service officials and military officers, and a
growing number of anonymous active-duty officials, have indeed been coming
forward with consistent stories about the manipulation and exaggeration of
intelligence in order to justify the war against Iraq and, more recently,
efforts to hype evidence about the alleged unconventional threat posed by
Syria.

Taken collectively, what these officials describe and what is already on
the public record suggest the existence of a disciplined network of
zealous, like-minded individuals centered in Feith's office and around
Perle in the DPB and operating with the approval of Deputy Defense
Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, and Vice
President Dick Cheney.

This network includes high-level political appointees, such as Bolton, who
are scattered around several other key bureaucracies, notably in the State
Department, the NSC staff, and, most importantly, in Cheney's office.

Cheney, of course, has a direct link to Bush (and all the heads of
agencies) independent of Rice, while his powerful chief of staff and
national security adviser, I. Lewis Scooter Libby, also enjoys exceptional
access and influence.

Indeed, the two men's frequent visits (as well as those of another DPB
member, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich) to CIA headquarters
before the Iraq war have been cited by retired and anonymous intelligence
officers as having exercised an intimidating influence on analysts who
disagreed with the more sensational assessments about Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda produced bynFeith's office.

Newsday's disclosure that Feith's office has been used for secret contacts
with Ghorbanifar suggests that its work goes well beyond assessing
intelligence and making policy recommendations.

According to one career military officer who worked for eight months in
the Near East/South Asia bureau (NESA) in that office, the political
appointees assigned there and their contacts at State, the NSC, and
Cheney's office tended to work as a ''network'' and often deliberately cut
out, ignored or circumvented normal channels of communication both within
the Pentagon and with other agencies.

''I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to
contact their counterparts at State or the (NSC) because that particular
decision would be processed through a different channel,'' wrote retired
Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowsky last week. ''What I saw was aberrant, pervasive
and contrary to good order and discipline.''

In an interview with IPS, she insisted that her views of Feith's
appointees and operations were widely shared by other professional staff,
and quoted one veteran career officer ''who was in a position to know what
he was talking about'' as telling her before the Iraq war: ''What these
people are doing now makes Iran-Contra look like amateur hour.''

''I think it's time for a serious investigation (of Feith's office),'' she
said. ''I just hope Congress will take it on.''

Copyright  2003 IPS-Inter Press Service