| Home Front: WoT |
| Frustrated Special Forces: Finding Bin Ladin |
| 2008-07-10 |
| H/T Drudge Policy dispute by Bill Gertz Defense officials are criticizing what they say is the failure to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders because of timidity on the part of policy officials in the Pentagon, diplomats at the State Department and risk-averse bureaucrats within the intelligence community. Military special operations forces (SOF) commandos are frustrated by the lack of aggressiveness on the part of several policy and intelligence leaders in pursuing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his top henchmen, who are thought to have hidden inside the tribal areas of Pakistan for the past 6œ years. The focus of the commandos' ire, the officials say, is the failure to set up bases inside Pakistan's tribal region, where al Qaeda has regrouped in recent months, setting up training camps where among those being trained are Western-looking terrorists who can pass more easily through security systems. The lawless border region inside Pakistan along the Afghan border remains off-limits to U.S. troops. The officials say that was not always the case. For a short time, U.S. special operations forces went into the area in 2002 and 2003, when secret Army Delta Force and Navy SEALs worked with Pakistani security forces. That effort was halted under Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, who recently blamed Pakistan for opposing the joint operations. Mr. Armitage just keeps popping up like a bad penny, and McCain has him onboard. Mr. Armitage, however, also disclosed his diplomatic opposition to the commando operations. Mr. Armitage, an adviser to Republican presidential contender Sen. John McCain, told the New York Times last month that the United States feared pressuring Pakistani leaders for commando access and that the Delta Force and SEALs in the tribal region were "pushing them almost to the breaking point." However, the officials said that without the training and expertise of the U.S. commandos, Pakistani forces took heavy casualties in the region, with about 1,000 troops killed by terrorists and their supporters. Another major setback for aggressive special operations activities occurred recently with a decision to downgrade the U.S. Special Operations Command. Under Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the command in 2004 began to shift its focus from support and training to becoming a front-line command in the covert war to capture and kill terrorists. In May, SOCOM, as the command is called, reverted to its previous coordination and training role, a change that also frustrated many SOF commandos. Critics in the Pentagon of the failure to more aggressively use the 50,000-strong SOF force say it also is the result of a bias by intelligence officials against special forces, including Pentagon policy-makers such as former CIA officer Michael Vickers, currently assistant defense secretary for special operations; former CIA officer Mary Beth Long, assistant defense secretary for international security affairs; and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former CIA director. The officials said the bias among intelligence officials against aggressive military special operations is long-standing. As evidence, they note that one of the very few recommendations of the 9/11 commission ignored by President Bush was the panel's call for giving the Pentagon the lead role in paramilitary operations. The commission report stated that "lead responsibility for directing and executing paramilitary operations, whether clandestine or covert, should shift to the Defense Department." That has not occurred, and the officials said one result is that bin Laden and his deputies remain at large. Said one Pentagon official: "The reason some Pentagon leaders appear to be so indecisive about President Bush's order to catch Osama bin Laden dead or alive is that they have not unleashed the dogs of war. Too many bureaucrats have blocked ideas from the aggressive U.S. commandos in Afghanistan and at SOCOM headquarters who just want to carry out the president's orders to stop al Qaeda from rebuilding." Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell declined to address any specifics of special operations policies but said he thinks senior commanders do not share the critics' views. On the hunt for bin Laden, Mr. Morrell said: "No one should question our commitment to bringing Osama bin Laden and the rest of his cowardly lieutenants to justice, one way or another. It will happen. it's just a question of when." |
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| -Lurid Crime Tales- |
| Heh -- Judge Dismisses Plame Lawsuit |
| 2007-07-19 |
| A federal judge today dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband against Vice President Cheney and top administration officials over the disclosure of Plame's name and covert status to the media. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates said that Cheney and White House aides cannot be held liable for the disclosure of information about Plame in the summer of 2003 while they were trying to rebut criticism of the administration's war efforts levied by her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. The judge said such efforts were certainly part of the officials' scope of normal duties. The perjury trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff calls up high-profile witnesses. "The alleged tortious conduct, namely the disclosure of Mrs. Wilson's status as a covert operative, was incidental to the kind of conduct that defendants were employed to perform," Bates wrote in an opinion released this afternoon. Bates also ruled that the court lacked the power to award damages for public disclosure of private information about Plame. The judge said that was because Plame and Wilson had failed to exhaust other remedies in seeking compensation from appropriate federal agencies for the alleged privacy violations. The Wilsons' lawsuit claimed that Cheney, his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, senior White House adviser Karl Rove and former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage violated the couple's privacy and constitutional rights by participating in discussions that led to Plame's identity being publicly revealed. They claimed the leaks to reporters were an effort to retaliate against Wilson. |
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| Home Front: Politix |
| WaPo Crows: Armitage's Election Hopes |
| 2006-11-07 |
| Former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage, who was an influential adviser to Colin L. Powell when Powell was secretary of state, has weighed in on today's midterm elections, saying they offer the United States a chance to win back lost allies around the world. "The message I think from the electorate is that fear doesn't work. You've got to go back to what is traditionally ours, and we've got to go back to those things that made us important in the eyes of the world," Armitage said yesterday in a speech in Canberra, Australia, according to Reuters. Armitage was the No. 2 man to Powell from the beginning of the Bush administration until their resignations in 2005. A former Navy officer, Armitage was seen as part of the wing of the Bush administration more cautious about invading Iraq. He recently acknowledged that in 2003 he was a source to the news media of the identity of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. |
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| Home Front: Politix |
| First Source of C.I.A. Leak Admits Role, (Armitage) Lawyer Says |
| 2006-08-30 |
| Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, has acknowledged that he was the person whose conversation with a columnist in 2003 prompted a long, politically laden criminal investigation in what became known as the C.I.A. leak case, a lawyer involved in the case said on Tuesday. Mr. Armitage did not return calls for comment. But the lawyer and other associates of Mr. Armitage have said he has confirmed that he was the initial and primary source for the columnist, Robert D. Novak, whose column of July 14, 2003, identified Valerie Wilson as a Central Intelligence Agency officer. The identification of Mr. Armitage as the original leaker to Mr. Novak ends what has been a tantalizing mystery. In recent months, however, Mr. Armitages role had become clear to many, and it was recently reported by Newsweek magazine and The Washington Post. In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman. Rest at link. |
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| Richard L. Armitage Called Likely Leak Source | |
| 2006-03-15 | |
| WASHINGTON, March 14 A former executive editor of The Washington Post was quoted in a magazine article published Tuesday as saying that Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, likely was the official who revealed the identity of the intelligence officer at the center of the C.I.A. leak case to Bob Woodward, an editor and reporter for The Post. Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post editor who guided Mr. Woodward's Watergate reporting, is quoted in the article about the leak investigation in the April issue of Vanity Fair as saying, "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption." The assertion attributed to Mr. Bradlee added the weight of one of the country's best-known editors to months of speculation that Mr. Armitage could be Mr. Woodward's source. Mr. Armitage has not commented on the matter. On Tuesday, he did not return a reporter's phone call. In an interview, Mr. Bradlee said that he had been told about Mr. Woodward's source although he did not recall saying the exact words attributed to him by the Vanity Fair reporter. Mr. Bradlee said his information about Mr. Armitage was imprecise, although he said Mr. Armitage's identification as Mr. Woodward's source was "an inference that could be drawn." A spokesman for Vanity Fair defended the accuracy of the quotes, saying that the author of the article, Marie Brenner, said that she had tape recorded Mr. Bradlee's comments. Mr. Bradlee said Mr. Woodward had not told him the identity of the source. "Woodward is not my source for any knowledge I have about the case," Mr. Bradlee said. The question of who told Mr. Woodward about the intelligence officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, is one of the lingering mysteries of the C.I.A. leak inquiry. In an article last November, Mr. Woodward said he would not name his source, but he has written that the person who told him about Ms. Wilson was a former or current government official and longtime source who told him about her in an offhand manner at the end of a lengthy interview.
Mr. Novak has also been silent about his source, although he has written that the person was a government official who was not a "partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak named Ms. Wilson in a column on July 14, 2003, after Ms. Wilson's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly criticized the Bush administration as twisting intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs in months preceding the war. The disclosure of Ms. Wilson's name led to a grand jury investigation by Mr. Fitzgerald, who in October brought obstruction and perjury charges against I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. The indictment accused Mr. Libby of falsely testifying that he learned of Ms. Wilson's identity from reporters, when, the prosecutor charged, he had been given information about her from Mr. Cheney and others in the government. | |
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| "Administration Critics Chafe at State Dept. Shuffle" Condi at work |
| 2006-02-26 |
| I briefly heard one report on Fox about this -- it then disappeared. Finally found this article.. there is some shakin' up goin' on at the State Department.. trying to convince these folks, they work for the United States of America Tuesday, February 21, 2006; A04 A State Department reorganization of analysts involved in preventing the spread of deadly weapons has spawned internal turmoil, with more than half a dozen career employees alleging in interviews that political appointees sought to punish long-term employees whose views they considered suspect. Senior State Department officials deny that and say an investigation has found that the proper personnel practices were followed. But three officials involved in the reorganization, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, acknowledge that a merger of two bureaus reduced the influence of employees who were viewed by some political appointees as disloyal to the administration's policies. "There are a number of disgruntled employees who feel they have been shoved aside for political purposes. That's true," said one of these officials. "But there was rank insubordination on the part of these officers." About a dozen top experts on nonproliferation have left the department in recent months, with many citing the reorganization as a reason. The dispute has thrown a spotlight on the tensions that often exist between longtime career employees and the political appointees who come and go with successive administrations. It is also being closely watched within the State Department as another sign that, under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's leadership, the department will no longer be at war with the rest of the administration. Rice and her top aides have sought to heal the damaging rifts that existed with the Pentagon and other agencies. Some State Department officials privately acknowledge that they used to be thrilled by the department's reputation as a renegade in President Bush's first term, but they say the message has become clear in the past year that such attitudes are no longer acceptable. Few people would speak about the controversy for the record, either because they fear retaliation or because they must continue to work with State Department officials in their new jobs. "The suspicion is we would undermine the policy," said one of the officials who have felt sidelined. "That is what all of us find most offensive. We are here to serve any administration." Robert Joseph, the undersecretary of state for arms control, who oversaw the reorganization, and Henrietta H. Fore, the undersecretary for management, said in interviews that political motives were not a factor, adding that any change is going to cause distress. Fore said she has listened to employee concerns, reviewed the implementation and determined that "all steps were taken according to the law." "None of these allegations stand up," Joseph said. "You have got a small group of individuals who are resisting the changes. I am not surprised by that. Change is difficult, but change is absolutely necessary." The employees who say that they have been targeted once had a back channel to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, who they said would on occasion ask them to bypass their superior, John R. Bolton, now the ambassador to the United Nations. Bolton, with backing from allies in the Pentagon and the vice president's office, frequently battled the rest of the State Department on policy issues. But Joseph, who worked for Rice at the White House, is an ideological soul mate of Bolton's and retained much of Bolton's staff -- and now officials say the policy disputes that characterized Powell's State Department have largely faded under Rice's tenure. The back channel that these employees used to alert senior management to their problems with Bolton no longer exists, the career officials said. By many accounts, the decision to merge two key bureaus focusing on nonproliferation and arms control was necessary. The merger was originally approved by Powell, in his waning days as secretary, after the department's inspector general recommended combining the bureaus on the grounds of efficiency and workload. The IG said the nonproliferation bureau -- which seeks to deter the spread of weapons of mass destruction -- was overworked, and the arms-control bureau -- which negotiates and implements arms-control agreements -- was underworked. The IG also recommended that a third bureau, verification and compliance, be downsized. But once a panel of Joseph's top aides began implementing the plan, some of the IG's recommendations were set aside -- the verification bureau was expanded, not downsized, while officials in the arms-control bureau appeared to attain more authority. Both bureaus had appeared more in sync with the administration's views, officials said. The merger was accomplished with unusual speed this fall because, officials said, they did not want it to become mired in excessive bureaucracy. "We wanted to pull the Band-Aid quickly as opposed to slowly, hair by hair," one official said. But other officials said the process was opaque, and even supporters say it could have been better managed because it hurt morale throughout the bureaus and energized intense opposition. "We shouldn't have given the other side ammunition," an advocate of the changes said. Mark Fitzpatrick, who was deputy assistant secretary for nonproliferation before leaving the department in October after 26 years, said, "I've heard about low morale and a number of people seeking to leave because they don't find the atmosphere as rewarding as it had been when it was not so politicized." One particular office in the nonproliferation bureau, dealing mainly with the International Atomic Energy Agency, was especially targeted, numerous officials on both sides of the dispute said. Several top officials in the office were close to IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei and had privately objected to the administration's public campaign to deny him a third term. A former office director who had been on loan to the IAEA asked for his job back -- but was given a non-managerial position in another bureau; the acting office director also did not get the job. Instead, a relatively junior Foreign Service officer, who is outranked by several officials in the bureau but who is considered skeptical of the IAEA, was named acting head of the office. Last year, two months before ElBaradei and the IAEA were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the official sent an e-mail to his colleagues ridiculing the idea. The subject line read: "A Nobel for the IAEA? Please." Three officials familiar with the reorganization said the actions were necessary because this office -- and others -- had been openly opposed to administration policies and thus was perceived as incompetent. "You can't expect everyone to agree with you. But you do expect results," one official said. "The office became a black hole and was very ineffective." Supporters of these officials acknowledge that they were sometimes appalled by administration positions, with several saying they had at times been embarrassed for the United States. But they also noted that the IG report had praised the office as being effective, well-run and having high morale -- in contrast to the assessment of its counterpart in the arms-control bureau. |
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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syria outside of Iraq but still deep in the fight |
| 2005-06-08 |
| When the Americans led the invasion of Iraq, the men of Abu Ibrahim's family gathered in the courtyard of their shared home in the far north of Syria. Ten slips of paper were folded into a plastic bag, and they drew lots. The five who opened a paper marked with ink would go to Iraq and fight. The other five would stay behind. Abu Ibrahim drew a blank. But remaining in Syria did not mean staying clear of the war. For more than two years, by his own detailed account, the slightly built, shabbily dressed 32-year-old father of four has worked diligently to shuttle other young Arab men into Iraq, stocking the insurgency that has killed hundreds of U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis. The stream of fighters -- most of them Syrians, but lately many of them Saudis, favored for the cash they bring -- has sustained and replenished the hardest core of the Iraq insurgency, and supplied many of its suicide bombers. Drawn from a number of Arab countries and nurtured by a militant interpretation of Islam, they insist they are fighting for their vision of their faith. This may put them beyond the reach of political efforts to make Iraq's Sunni Arabs stakeholders in the country's nascent government. Abu Ibrahim recalled: "Our brothers in Iraq worked in small groups. In each area, men would come together, organized by religious leaders or tribal sheiks, and would attack the Americans. It was often us who brought them all together, when we met them in Syria or Iraq. We would tell them, 'But there is another brother who is doing the same thing. Why don't you coordinate together?' Syria became the hub." Syria's role in sustaining and organizing the insurgency has shifted over time. In the first days of the war, fighters swarmed into Iraq aboard buses that Syrian border guards waved through open gates, witnesses recalled. But late in 2004, after intense pressure on Damascus from the Bush administration, Syrian domestic intelligence services swept up scores of insurgent facilitators. Many, including Abu Ibrahim, were quietly released a few days later. In the months since, the smugglers have worked in the shadows. In a series of interviews carried out in alleyways, a courtyard, a public square and a mosque, Abu Ibrahim was being visibly followed by plainclothes agents of the security service, Amn Dawla. In December, the service confiscated his passport and national identity card. His new ID was a bit of cardboard he presented each month to his minders; the entries for April and May were checked. Few other details of Abu Ibrahim's account could be verified independently. But the structure of the human smuggling organization he described was consistent with the assessments of U.S. and Iraqi officials who closely study Syria's role in the insurgency. Other specifics jibed with personal histories provided by foreign fighters interviewed in the Iraqi city of Fallujah on the eve of a U.S. offensive in November. Those interviews also echoed earlier accounts of Iraqi insurgents, including descriptions of the role of a Syrian cleric known as Abu Qaqaa in promoting a holy war, or jihad, against the West. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, the notion of jihad has "had a galvanizing impact on the imagination and reflexes" of many young Muslim men, especially those with the means and resources to travel, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group, based in Brussels. "They think jihad will stop if they kill hundreds of us in Iraq," Abu Ibrahim said with a note of defiance. "They don't know what they are facing. Every day, more and more young men from around the Muslim world are awaking and coming to the jihad principle. "Now the Americans are facing thousands, but one day soon they will have to face whole nations." His father was a Sufi Muslim, devoted to a tolerant, mystical tradition of Islam. But Abu Ibrahim said he was born a rebel, gravitating early in life to the other end of the spectrum of Islamic belief. Salafism, or "following the pious forefathers," is a fundamentalist, sometimes militant strain of the faith grounded in turning back the clock to the time of the prophet Muhammad. In the Syrian countryside north of Aleppo where Abu Ibrahim grew up and married, his fundamentalist impulses took their present shape when he met "a group of young men through my wife's family who spoke to me the true words of Islam. They told me Sufism was forbidden and the Shiites are infidels." A year later, he went to Saudi Arabia, a kingdom founded on Wahhabism, a puritanical form of Islam in the Salafi wing. For seven years he worked in Riyadh, the capital, trading textiles. In his spare time, he studied the Koran and gathered at people's homes with young men so militant in their beliefs they were barred from preaching in public. At a private Saudi production company that specialized in radical Islamic propaganda, he said, he learned video editing and digital photography. The work channeled the rage of young Arab men incensed by the situation in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, angered by U.S. foreign policy and chafing under the repression of secular Arab rulers. Their goal, he said, is restoration of the Islamic caliphate, the system that governed Muslims before the rise of nation states. Abu Ibrahim said he regarded Afghanistan during the Taliban rule as one of the few true Islamic governments since the time of Muhammad. "The Koran is a constitution, a law to govern the world," he said. Such views were unwelcome back in Syria, governed by the Baathist Party as a secular nation. But in 1999, after Abu Ibrahim returned to Aleppo, he heard a sermon delivered by a Syrian cleric who was widely known in the region. Abu Qaqaa, a lanky, charismatic sheik born Mahmoud Quul Aghassi, preached the same radical message that Abu Ibrahim had taken to heart in Riyadh. "Abu Qaqaa was preaching what we believed in. He was saying these things: 'People with beards come together.' I was so impressed." Abu Ibrahim said he became Abu Qaqaa's right-hand man. He helped tape his sermons, transfer them to CDs and distribute them clandestinely. They traveled together to Damascus, the Syrian capital, and Saudi Arabia. By 2001, Abu Qaqaa had attracted a determined following of about 1,000 young men. "No one knew about us," Abu Ibrahim said. "But September 11 gave us the media coverage. It was a great day. America was defeated. We knew they would target either Syria or Iraq, and we took a vow that if something happened to either country, we would fight." Two weeks after the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon, the group felt bold enough to celebrate in public in Aleppo with a "festival," as it was called, featuring video of hand-to-hand combat and training montages of guerrillas leaping from high walls. Afterward, Abu Qaqaa was arrested by the Syrian authorities, but he was released within hours. By 2002 the anti-American festivals were running twice weekly, often wrapped around weddings or other social gatherings. Organizers called themselves The Strangers of Sham, using the ancient name for the eastern Mediterranean region known as the Levant, and began freely distributing the CDs of the cleric's sermons. Jihad was being allowed into the open. Abu Ibrahim said Syrian security officials and presidential advisers attended festivals, one of which was called "The People of Sham Will Now Defeat the Jews and Kill Them All." Money poured in from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries. "We even had a Web site," Abu Ibrahim said. The young men around the cleric found themselves wielding a surprising amount of power. They were allowed to enforce their strict vision of sharia , or Islamic law, entering houses in the middle of the night to confront people accused of bad behavior. Abu Ibrahim said their authority rivaled that of the Amn Dawla, or state security. "Everyone knew us," he said. "We all had big beards. We became thugs." In a dictatorship infamous for its intolerance of political Islam, such freedom made some of the cleric's lieutenants suspicious. "We asked the sheik why we weren't being arrested," said Abu Ibrahim. "He would tell us it was because we weren't saying anything against the government, that we were focusing on the common enemy, America and Israel, that beards and epaulets were in one trench together." The answer seemed inadequate, Abu Ibrahim said. But then the United States led troops into Iraq, and everything went up a notch. Worried that it would be Washington's next target, Syria opposed the military coalition invading its neighbor. State media issued impassioned calls for "resistance." The nation's senior Sunni cleric, Grand Mufti Ahmad Kaftaro, undid his reputation for moderation by issuing a fatwa endorsing suicide attacks. In Aleppo, Abu Ibrahim went door to door encouraging young men to cross the border. Volunteers boarded buses that Syrian border guards waved through wide-open gates, witnesses recalled. Saddam Hussein's government embraced the volunteers, handing them weapons and calling them Arab Saddam Fedayeen. But ordinary Iraqis were often less welcoming, pleading with them to go home; some Syrians were shot or handed over to the invading Americans. At the request of his Iraqi counterparts, Abu Ibrahim stopped ferrying fighters for a time. "They said there were Shiites everywhere, Americans, and they couldn't do anything." By the summer of 2003, however, the insurgency began to organize itself, and the call went out for volunteers. Safe houses were established. Weapons were positioned. In the vast desert that forms the border with Iraq, passages through the dunes long used to smuggle goods now were employed to funnel fighters. "We had specific meeting places for Iraqi smugglers," Abu Ibrahim said. "They wouldn't do the trip if we had fewer than 15 fighters. We would drive across the border and then into villages on the Iraqi side. And from there the Iraqi contacts would take the mujaheddin to training camps." Because Syrian men already had served two years of compulsory military service, most of them skipped the training. "It's mostly the Saudis who need the training," Abu Ibrahim said. Afterward, the fighters were sent to join small cells usually led by Iraqis. They planted booby traps for U.S. convoys and laid ambushes. "Once the Americans bombed a bus crossing to Syria. We made a big fuss and said it was full of merchants," Abu Ibrahim said. "But actually, they were fighters." In the summer of 2004, Abu Ibrahim got to go to Iraq. He crossed the dunes with 50 other volunteers, dodging U.S. patrols on the Iraqi side. In Iraqi society he moved without drawing attention. He would not discuss much of what transpired during the subsequent months. But when he returned to Syria after the massive U.S. offensive in Fallujah, only three people were alive from the original 50, he said. One was a suicide bomber. "Young men are fighting with zeal and passion," Abu Ibrahim said. "There are Saudi officers, Syrians, Iraqis. But not those who fought for Saddam. The man who is leading it for the most part is Zarqawi." Abu Ibrahim was interviewed before reports surfaced that Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads an organization called al Qaeda in Iraq, had been seriously wounded -- a report later disputed in an Internet message purportedly recorded by Zarqawi. Abu Ibrahim credited Zarqawi with revitalizing the insurgency, especially since October, when he pledged fealty to Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader. Abu Ibrahim said that union helped cement an alliance among several resistance groups in Iraq that formed a joint treasury. "Six months ago, Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden were different," he said. "Osama did not consider the killing of Shiites as legitimate. Zarqawi did that. Anyone -- Christian, Jew, Sunni, Shiites -- whoever cooperates with the Americans can be killed. It's a holy war." In January, shortly after Abu Ibrahim returned to Syria, he was summoned to Amn Dawla headquarters along with scores of fellow jihadi cell leaders. The security agents said the smuggling of fighters had to stop. The jihadis' passports were taken. Some were jailed for a few days. Abu Ibrahim's jailers shaved his beard. Also in January, Richard L. Armitage, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, visited Damascus. After long lambasting Syria for supporting the insurgency, Armitage brought praise. "We have seen a lot of improvement regarding foreign fighters who were using Syria to enter Iraq," he said. "And this is a good thing." The timing was fortuitous, Abu Ibrahim said. Recently, he said, his contacts in Iraq have said they were not in need of fighters, but money. He said he personally carried cash, provided by sympathetic Saudis, between Saudi Arabia and Syria. But lately, a more efficient system has emerged. "Our brothers in Iraq are asking for Saudis," he said last month. "The Saudis go with enough money to support themselves and their Iraqi brothers. A week ago, we sent a Saudi to the jihad. He went with 100,000 Saudi riyals," or about $27,000. "There was celebration amongst his brothers there!" At the same time, Abu Qaqaa reemerged as the public face of jihad. Abu Ibrahim said he now views the cleric with suspicion, suggesting that he is helping Syrian authorities track jihadi "rat lines," as U.S. commanders refer to the smuggling chains. The same suspicion was voiced last autumn by a Yemeni fighter interviewed in Fallujah. "The Syrians are in an awkward position," Abu Ibrahim said. "On one side they want to do whatever the Americans want them to. And on the other side they want to fight the Americans." |
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| Pentagon Seeking Leeway Overseas | ||
| 2005-02-24 | ||
The Pentagon is promoting a global counterterrorism plan that would allow Special Operations forces to enter a foreign country to conduct military operations without explicit concurrence from the U.S. ambassador there, administration officials familiar with the plan said. The plan would weaken the long-standing "chief of mission" authority under which the U.S. ambassador, as the president's top representative in a foreign country, decides whether to grant entry to U.S. government personnel based on political and diplomatic considerations.
"This is a military order on a global scale, something that hasn't existed since World War II," said a counterterrorism official with lengthy experience in special operations. He and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal is classified. The Pentagon sees the greater leeway as vital to enabling commando forces to launch operations quickly and stealthily against terrorist groups without often time-consuming interagency debate, said administration officials familiar with the plan. In the Pentagon view, the campaign against terrorism is a war and requires similar freedom to prosecute as in Iraq, where the military chain of command coordinates closely with the U.S. Embassy but is not subject to traditional chief-of-mission authority. The State Department and the CIA have fought the proposal, saying it would be dangerous to dilute the authority of the U.S. ambassador and CIA station chief to oversee U.S. military and intelligence activities in other countries. Over the past two years, the State Department has repeatedly blocked Pentagon efforts to send Special Operations forces into countries surreptitiously and without ambassadors' formal approval, current and former administration officials said. The State Department assigned counterterrorism coordinator J. Cofer Black, who also led the CIA's counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11, as its point person to try to thwart the Pentagon's initiative. "I gave Cofer specific instructions to dismount, kill the horses and fight on foot -- this is not going to happen," said Richard L. Armitage, describing how as deputy secretary of state -- a job he held until earlier this month -- he and others stopped six or seven Pentagon attempts to weaken chief-of-mission authority. In one instance, U.S. commanders tried to dispatch Special Forces soldiers into Pakistan without gaining ambassadorial approval but were rebuffed by the State Department, said two sources familiar with the event. The soldiers eventually entered Pakistan with proper clearance but were ordered out again by the ambassador for what was described as reckless behavior. "We had SF [Special Forces] guys in civilian clothes running around a hotel with grenades in their pockets," said one source involved in the incident, who opposes the Pentagon plan. Other officials cited another case to illustrate their concern. In the past year, they said, a group of Delta Force soldiers left a bar at night in a Latin American country and shot an alleged assailant but did not inform the U.S. Embassy for several days. In Pentagon policy circles, questions about chief-of-mission authority are viewed as part of a broad reassessment of how to organize the U.S. government optimally to fight terrorism. In this view, alternative models of U.S. military, diplomatic and intelligence authority -- possibly tailored to specific countries and situations -- should be considered. Pentagon officials familiar with the issue declined to speak on the record out of concern that issues of bureaucratic warfare would overshadow a serious policy question. Debate over the issue reignited last month, as Armitage and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell departed and Condoleezza Rice prepared to replace him, said an administration official familiar with the matter. When the Pentagon refused to change language in the execute order, that put the issue before Rice. In the past week, however, she has made it clear that she intends to protect the existing chief-of-mission authority. "Rice is resolute in holding to chief-of-mission authority over operations the way it exists now, for a very rational reason -- you need someone who can coordinate," said a senior State Department official. Some officials have viewed the debate as an early test of how Rice will defend State Department views on a range of matters in bureaucratic infighting with the Pentagon. The State Department's concerns are twofold, officials said: Conducting military operations would be perilous without the broad purview and oversight of the U.S. ambassador, and it would set a precedent that other U.S. agencies could follow. "The chief-of-mission authority is a pillar of presidential authority overseas," said the administration official familiar with the issue. "When you start eroding that, it can have repercussions that are . . . risky. Particularly, military action is one of the most important decisions a president makes . . . and that is the sort of action that should be taken with deliberation." U.S. ambassadors have full responsibility for supervising all U.S. government employees in that country, and when granting country clearances they are supposed to consider various factors, including ramifications for overall bilateral relations. For example, one reason the U.S. military never conducted aggressive operations against al Qaeda in Pakistan was a fear that such actions would incite the local population to overthrow the fragile, nuclear-capable government of President Pervez Musharraf. The rift between the Pentagon and State Department over chief-of-mission authority parallels broader concerns about the push to empower the Special Operations Command in the war on terrorism. The CIA, for example, has concerns that new intelligence-gathering initiatives by the military could weaken CIA station chiefs and complicate U.S. espionage abroad. Without close coordination with the CIA, former senior intelligence officials said, the military could target someone whom the CIA is secretly surveilling and disrupt a flow of valuable intelligence.
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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Al-Douri's Baathists spearheading Iraqi insurgency |
| 2005-01-11 |
| U.S. military commanders say a new assessment of the Iraqi insurgency has led them to focus on a list of 34 former Baath Party leaders who they believe are financing and directing attacks against U.S. troops and their allies. Army Gen. John P. Abizaid and other senior defense officials interviewed in Iraq said much of the insurgency was being carried out by a network of regional cells that loosely coordinated their operations with former officials of Saddam Hussein's ruling party. Insurgent leaders operate often out of Syria and Saddam's home town of Tikrit, officials said. "There is a level of tactical coordination and direction that still comes from the remnants of the Baath Party, and I believe a certain amount of this tactical coordination effort is orchestrated from Syria," Abizaid, who is directing the war in Iraq, said in an interview. U.S. military officials have conceded that they have limited information on the insurgency, due to a lack of quality intelligence reports. In some cases, unconfirmed tips on the insurgency have come from questionable sources. In other cases, the information is often too dated to allow U.S. officials to track suspected insurgent leaders, officials said. But U.S. military leaders said they had been receiving more tips on the insurgency and higher quality reports in recent weeks. "We have focused the intelligence system on these 34 guys in the belief that if there is an emerging leadership structure for the former regime element movement that these 34 guys will be holding the reins," said another senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The new intelligence has allowed military strategists to better discern the face of the insurgency, the officials said, and has painted a portrait of guerrillas who operate in cells led by former regime leaders who are predominantly Sunni Muslims. U.S. military officials said recent evidence suggested former members of Saddam's most elite military units were involved in attacks on U.S. troops. "We see that a lot of the attacks that are going on right now show evidence that they were planned and executed by those who had a military background," said Air Force Brig. Gen. Erwin F. "Erv" Lessel III, a senior deputy for Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "There are some former Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard that are involved in these attacks." U.S. military officials said the insurgency appeared to lack a central leader, although they believed that Gen. Izzat Ibrahim al Duri, one of Saddam's top generals, had directed many attacks against the U.S.-led coalition. "There are former regime element organizational meetings. But there is no sort of grand poohbah that sits atop of this thing. There's no Saddam-like figure to whom they have allegiance and who is in overall charge of the insurgency," a senior defense official said. Citing intelligence reports, senior U.S. military officials said Duri and other former Baath Party members met near the Syrian border in November to plan strategy. Also present at that meeting, officials said, were Mahdi Nasr al Ubeidi, who supervises financial dealings; Mohammed Younis, who has acted as Duri's assistant from a base east of Baghdad; Ahmed Hassan Kaka, an insurgent leader in the northern city of Kirkuk; Ramadan Zaidan al Jaburi, Kaka's assistant; Mohammad Rijab al Haddushi al Nasser, the leader of the group's operations in Tikrit and nearby Baiji; and Yassir Sabawi Ibrihim Hassan, a senior courier for the group. The Baathist leaders are believed to be financing the insurgency with billions of dollars Saddam officials allegedly grabbed from government coffers in the final days of the regime, officials said. Abizaid and other military strategists say they believe leaders of these groups also determine specific tactics to be used against coalition and Iraqi forces. U.S. efforts to find insurgent leaders have been hampered by Syria, officials said. "We have been very clear to the Syrians about our unhappiness about Baathist cells operating from Syria. They have access to money, and they have access to smuggling routes," Abizaid said. The insurgency, he added, "is being supported in a very unhelpful way from cellular structures that are operating in Syria." The Bush administration has been sending stern warnings to Syria to stop the movement of anti-U.S. fighters and smugglers across its borders and to crack down on militants who are using its territory as a base for operations. Last week, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage visited Damascus to deliver that message, as well as other U.S. demands, to the Syrian government. Congress has voted to impose sanctions on Syria, but the administration has so far picked the mildest of the possible penalties provided in the law. The president has recently hinted at a tougher stance, but Armitage, in an interview with the U.S.-run Al Hurra television station, said Bush had not yet made a decision. "He's waiting to see the outcome of Syrian behavior over a length of time and then will make a decision on what to do," Armitage said. Syrian officials based in Washington could not be reached for comment, but some have said in response to earlier criticism that they had redoubled efforts to police their borders in response to concerns from the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration. It remains unclear how loosely the Baathist-led groups coordinate with foreign Islamic extremists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who has proclaimed himself the leader of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida organization in Iraq. But the two groups are believed to communicate and work together at least loosely in what officials described as a temporary marriage of convenience. "I think there is a level of coordination between (al-)Zarqawi and some of the Baathist cells," Abizaid said. "There is a certain amount of coordination at a rudimentary level that goes on within Iraq. And there is certainly an organizational network within the (al-)Zarqawi terrorist network that shows an ability to organize terrorist activities across a broad range of targets in Iraq." |
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| Southeast Asia |
| US weighing further sanctions on Syria due to Iraqi Baathists |
| 2005-01-05 |
| The Bush administration is considering imposing new sanctions on Syria to prod it to crack down on Iraqis there who are providing financial and logistical support to insurgents in Iraq, senior American counterterrorism officials said Tuesday. The Syrian government has not taken action against the network of Iraqis, the officials said, despite months of quiet protests from the United States. Among the steps being considered is a Treasury Department action that could essentially isolate the Syrian banking system. The network includes former officials of Saddam Hussein's government, American officials have said, adding that intelligence gathered in recent months from informants, captives and intercepted communications suggested that the network's role in providing support to insurgents in Iraq was more extensive than previously suspected. While the anti-American insurgency would continue to thrive even without help from Syria, the American officials say, Iraqis in Syria are playing a significant role in coordinating the flows of money, weapons and combatants inside Iraq. Syrian officials have sought to rebut the American criticism by saying the United States has yet to provide them with sufficient accurate information to prompt action against the individual Iraqis who the Americans say are in the network. "We have told the Americans to please give us any information you have regarding this subject, but some of the information has not been credible," said Ammar Alarsan, a spokesman for the Syrian Embassy in Washington. Among Iraqis believed to be living at least part time in Syria and playing an active role in the insurgency are several of Mr. Hussein's close relatives. In addition, Izzat Ibrahim, the No. 2 official in Iraq under Mr. Hussein and now the most-wanted Iraqi still sought by the United States, has traveled to and from Syria in the past 18 months, American officials say. In recent weeks the interim Iraqi government and its American backers have become increasingly outspoken in calling attention to what it describes as a regional command in exile in Syria. The American officials would speak about Syria only on condition of anonymity, saying they did not want their comments to overshadow recent public remarks by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, Richard L. Armitage, the deputy secretary of state, and others. The officials interviewed represented several government agencies involved in counterterrorism policy, including those favoring a more patient approach toward Syria and those urging a harder line. General Casey said publicly last month that the United States had "fairly good information" that some senior former officials of the Iraqi Baath Party had established a high command that was "operating out of Syria with impunity and providing direction and financing for the insurgency in Iraq." "That needs to stop," General Casey said in a Dec. 16 briefing at the Pentagon. On a visit to Syria over the weekend, Mr. Armitage delivered what one American official described as a "stern warning" to the Damascus government. Adam Ereli, the department's deputy spokesman, said Monday that Mr. Armitage had emphasized "that there's still a problem with former regime elements using Syria to help the insurgency and that it was very important to have that stopped." American and Syrian officials have held high-level meetings in recent months to address their differences, and Syria has said repeatedly that it is committed to working with the United States toward a peaceful, unified Iraq. In recent days Mr. Armitage and other American officials have gone out of their way to praise Syria for taking steps to secure its border with Iraq and prevent foreign fighters from crossing the border to reinforce the insurgency. But a senior American counterterrorism official said the steps taken by Syria so far were unsatisfactory. "More and more, we're seeing groups funded and supported by former regime elements, and they are operating out of and with the support of the Syrian government," the official said. He said that he was not accusing the Syrian government of providing direct support to the insurgency, but that "we haven't yet seen them take appropriate action to prevent the funding and the transport of weapons." Among the relatives of Mr. Hussein who have spent time in Syria and are believed to have played a leading role in financing the insurgency is Fatiq Suleiman al-Majid, a cousin of Mr. Hussein and a former officer in Iraq's Special Security Organization. Syria has long been subject to limited economic sanctions by the United States because of its designation by the State Department as a sponsor of terrorism. Under pressure from Congress, the Bush administration imposed additional measures last spring that prohibit exports to Syria of most goods, excluding food and medicine, and prohibit commercial flights between the United States and Syria by Syrian-owned aircraft. The main additional tool being weighed by the administration for possible further sanctions, the counterterrorism officials said, is authority wielded by the Treasury Department, which in May labeled the Commercial Bank of Syria a financial institution of "primary money laundering concern." The designation was a response to what the department called the role played by the Syrian bank in laundering money illegally diverted by Mr. Hussein's government from the United Nations-administered oil-for-food program. Further steps by the Treasury are possible, the most severe of which would be to prohibit any American bank, broker or mutual fund from dealing with the Syrian bank, the country's single government-owned financial institution that specializes in foreign exchange transactions. One American counterterrorism official said the threat of further action had already served to focus Syrian attention on the problem. The official said Treasury officials had met several times in recent months with their Syrian counterparts to discuss the issue. A second counterterrorism official said there remained "a wide range of views" within the administration about taking further action against Syria, with the State Department most opposed. The official said the Pentagon in particular was pressing for a more aggressive approach. "This is not the Ho Chi Minh trail that's keeping the insurgency alive," the official said. "But if Syria were to take action, it would have an impact." |
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| Caribbean-Latin America | ||
| US Diplo Security agents receive hero awards from State Dept. | ||
| 2004-12-22 | ||
| Haiti's cities were in flames with murderous mobs rampaging through the streets as three U.S. Diplomatic Security agents rescued U.N. officials, saved a wounded woman and protected the country's new president. This week Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage presented the agents with the State Department Heroism Award for their "extraordinary courage in extreme circumstances." Diplomatic Security Special Agents Christopher R. Belmonti, Richard Kyliavas and Alston Richardson were sent to oversee the evacuation of US and UN staffers. Mr. Armitage recounted their deeds at a ceremony, where he noted that diplomats not only risk their lives in dangerous assignments, but also have to believe that their deeds eventually will lead to a better world. "To be a diplomat these days, I believe you have to be an optimist," he said. "In a sense, our job is to look at the world — a place full of violence and disease and poverty — and see a future of peace, of good health and prosperity." Mr. Armitage reminded the audience gathered for the ceremony of Haiti's condition last Christmas. "Haiti was in flames. Her cities exploding with rage, as President [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide sat in his palace doing little to stop the country's slide into anarchy and much to spur it on," Mr. Armitage said. Mr. Aristide soon was removed from office and sent into exile. He was replaced by Boniface Alexandre, president of an interim government. By February, the United States had decided to evacuate American personnel and help the United Nations rescue its staffers. Mr. Belmonti had been escorting staffers from the ambassador's residence when they spotted an apparently abandoned U.S. Embassy truck full of bullet holes. When he investigated the scene, Mr. Belmonti discovered a woman with her hands bound behind her back and a gunshot wound to the head. "As gunfire erupted on all sides, [he] freed the woman and saved her life at direct risk of his own," Mr. Armitage said. Mr. Kyliavas had been helping evacuate 125 personnel of the United Nations when their convoy ran into a roadblock, where 20 thugs with machetes were threatening an unarmed man they had pulled from his vehicle. Mr. Kyliavas jumped out of his armored car, aimed his rifle at the mob and ordered them to disperse. They fled quickly, leaving the defenseless driver unharmed.
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| Russia |
| Powell warns Putin on terror plan |
| 2004-09-15 |
| Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned Russia yesterday that broad new anti-terrorism moves announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin could harm the country's still-struggling democracy. Mr. Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage criticized Mr. Putin's plan to fight terror by centralizing political power. Mr. Powell said it marked a "pulling back on some of the democratic reforms" in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. "You have to find a balance between fighting terrorism in an aggressive way and also making sure that we don't undercut the institutions of state that are based on the foundation of democracy," Mr. Powell told Reuters news agency. |
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