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Anti-ISIS coalition knowingly sponsored violent extremists to ‘isolate’ Assad, rollback ‘Shia expansion’

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A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”

According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

Hypocrisy

The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as “secret,” dated 12th August 2012.

The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community’s internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:

“Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it’s unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

The West’s Islamists

The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.

Noting that “the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the document states that “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition,” while Russia, China and Iran “support the [Assad] regime.”

The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,’ (ISI) which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,’ “supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media.”

The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the “rise of the insurgency in Syria” has increasingly taken a “sectarian direction,” attracting diverse support from Sunni “religious and tribal powers” across the region.

In a section titled ‘The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,’ the DIA report predicts that while Assad’s regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate “into proxy war.”

The document also recommends the creation of “safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government.”

In Libya, anti-Gaddafi rebels, most of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO ‘safe havens’ (aka ‘no fly zones’).

‘Supporting powers want’ ISIS entity

In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of “an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

Nevertheless, “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts” by Syrian “opposition forces” fighting to “control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)”:

“… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”
The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this “Shia expansion.”

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, it says, would create “the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.

Such a quasi-state entity will provide:

“… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory.”
The 2012 DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), not a “finally evaluated intelligence” assessment, but its contents are vetted before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.

In response to my questions about the strategy, the British government simply denied the Pentagon report’s startling revelations of deliberate Western sponsorship of violent extremists in Syria. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said:

“AQ and ISIL are proscribed terrorist organisations. The UK opposes all forms of terrorism. AQ, ISIL, and their affiliates pose a direct threat to the UK’s national security. We are part of a military and political coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and are working with international partners to counter the threat from AQ and other terrorist groups in that region. In Syria we have always supported those moderate opposition groups who oppose the tyranny of Assad and the brutality of the extremists.”
The DIA did not respond to request for comment.

Strategic asset for regime-change

Security analyst Shoebridge, however, who has tracked Western support for Islamist terrorists in Syria since the beginning of the war, pointed out that the secret Pentagon intelligence report exposes fatal contradictions at the heart of official pronunciations:

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”
According to Brad Hoff, a former US Marine who served during the early years of the Iraq War and as a 9/11 first responder at the Marine Corps Headquarters Battalion in Quantico from 2000 to 2004, the just released Pentagon report for the first time provides stunning affirmation that:

“US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”
Hoff, who is managing editor of Levant Report — an online publication run by Texas-based educators who have direct experience of the Middle East — points out that the DIA document “matter-of-factly” states that the rise of such an extremist Salafist political entity in the region offers a “tool for regime change in Syria.”

The DIA intelligence report shows, he said, that the rise of ISIS only became possible in the context of the Syrian insurgency — “there is no mention of US troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits.” The report demonstrates that:

“The establishment of a ‘Salafist Principality’ in Eastern Syria is ‘exactly’ what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as ‘the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey’) in order to weaken the Assad government.”
The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

Complicity

Critics of the US-led strategy in the region have repeatedly raised questions about the role of coalition allies in intentionally providing extensive support to Islamist terrorist groups in the drive to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only ‘moderate’ groups were supported.

However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria’s sectarian insurgency.

Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle in the 1990s on MI6 funding of al-Qaeda to assassinate Libya’s former leader Colonel Gaddafi, similarly said of the revelations:

“This is no surprise to me. Within individual countries there are always multiple intelligence agencies with competing agendas.”
She explained that MI6’s Libya operation in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of innocent people, “happened at precisely the time when MI5 was setting up a new section to investigate al-Qaeda.”

This strategy was repeated on a grand scale in the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, said Machon, where the CIA and MI6 were:

“… supporting the very same Libyan groups, resulting in a failed state, mass murder, displacement and anarchy. So the idea that elements of the American military-security complex have enabled the development of ISIS after their failed attempt to get NATO to once again ‘intervene’ is part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

Divide and rule

Several US government officials have conceded that their closest allies in the anti-ISIS coalition were funding violent extremist Islamist groups that became integral to ISIS.

US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS.

But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates — that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.

The strategy appears to fit a policy scenario identified by a recent US Army-commissioned RAND Corp report.

The report, published four years before the DIA document, called for the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”

The US would need to contain “Iranian power and influence” in the Gulf by “shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan.” Simultaneously, the US must maintain “a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government” despite its Iran alliance.

The RAND report confirmed that the “divide and rule” strategy was already being deployed “to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level.”

The report observed that the US was forming “temporary alliances” with al-Qaeda affiliated “nationalist insurgent groups” that have fought the US for four years in the form of “weapons and cash.” Although these nationalists “have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces,” they are now being supported to exploit “the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties.”

The 2012 DIA document, however, further shows that while sponsoring purportedly former al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq to counter al-Qaeda, Western governments were simultaneously arming al-Qaeda insurgents in Syria.

The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting ‘Islamic State’ today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers.

In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian ‘prevent duty’ and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

by Nafeez Ahmed
22 May 2015

Find this story at 22 May 2015

Copyright https://medium.com/

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BEIRUT — The talk now is all about whether Syria and Iraq will end up as divided states. The impetus for such speculation derives firstly from the latest Saudi, Qatari and Turkish joint resolve to mount huge numbers of jihadists on Syria’s borders. According to two senior political figures I spoke to, up to 10,000+ Wahhabist/Salafists (predominantly An-Nusra/Al Qaeda) have been gathered by the intelligence services of these latter states, mostly non-Arabs from Chechnya, Turkmenistan, etc. Plainly, Washington is aware of this (massively expensive) Saudi maneuver and equally plainly it is turning a blind eye to it.

Secondly, the speculation about a coming fractured Iraq has gained big momentum from ISIS’s virtually unopposed walk-in to Ramadi. The images of long columns of ISIS Toyota Land Cruisers, black pennants waving in the wind, making their way from Syria all the way — along empty desert main roads — to Ramadi with not an American aircraft in evidence, certainly needs some explaining. There cannot be an easier target imagined than an identified column of vehicles, driving an arterial road, in the middle of a desert.

Do these two cases of a Nelsonian “blind eye” have something to do with persuading the GCC at Camp David to sign up to the statement that they accepted that an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program was in their “security interests”? After all, Obama desperately needs it to paint Netanyahu as the isolated outlier on the Iran deal issue and thus undercut his ability to influence Congress.

Coincidentally, a highly redacted U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency assessment from August 2012 has been released through a federal lawsuit. It states that “If the situation unravels [in Syria], there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” The assessment says that the creation of such a Salafist principality would have “dire consequences” for Iraq and would possibly lead to the creation of an Islamic State and would “create the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.”

A few days after the release of the DIA assessment report, John Bolton lent weight to its claims: “I think the Sunni Arabs are never going to agree to be in a state [Iraq] where the Shia outnumber them 3-1. That’s what ISIS has been able to take advantage of. I think our objective should be a new Sunni state out of the western part of Iraq, the eastern part of Syria run by moderates or at least authoritarians who are not radical Islamists.”

Well, this is exactly what has happened. Should we be surprised? The idea of breaking up the large Arab states into ethnic or sectarian enclaves is an old Ben Gurion “canard,” and splitting Iraq along sectarian lines has been Vice President Biden’s recipe since the Iraq war. But the idea of driving a Sunni “wedge” into the landline linking Iran to Syria and to Hezbollah in Lebanon became established Western group think in the wake of the 2006 war, in which Israel failed to de-fang Hezbollah. The response to 2006, it seemed to Western powers, was to cut off Hezbollah from its sources of weapons supply from Iran.

In short, the DIA assessment indicates that the “wedge” concept was being given new life by the desire to pressure Assad in the wake of the 2011 insurgency launched against the Syrian state. “Supporting powers” effectively wanted to inject hydraulic fracturing fluid into eastern Syria (radical Salafists) in order to fracture the bridge between Iran and its Arab allies, even at the cost of this “fracking” opening fissures right down inside Iraq to Ramadi. (Intelligence assessments purpose is to provide “a view” — not to describe or prescribe policy. But it is clear that the DIA reports’ “warnings” were widely circulated and would have been meshed into the policy consideration.)

But this “view” has exactly come about. It is fact. One might conclude then that in the policy debate, the notion of isolating Hezbollah from Iran, and of weakening and pressurizing President Assad, simply trumped the common sense judgement that when you pump highly toxic and dangerous fracturing substances into geological formations, you can never entirely know or control the consequences. And once you go down this road, it is not easy to “walk it back,” as it were: the toxicity is already suffused through the rocks. So, when the GCC demanded a “price” for any Iran deal (i.e. massing “fracking” forces close to Aleppo), the pass had been already partially been sold by the U.S. by 2012, when it did not object to what the “supporting powers” wanted.

Will then the region fragment into a hardcore Wahhabist/Salafist corridor stretching across Syria and Iraq, while the non-Wahhabist other states (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen — and Hezbollah) stand in armed opposition to this entity? Perhaps. We do not know. But statements by Hezbollah’s Deputy Leader, Shiekh Naim Qassem and Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, suggest that neither Iran nor Hezbollah will accept a “fracked” Syria. (It is less clear however whether this applies to Iraq too, though we suspect that for Iran, it does.)

Similar comments have been made by a senior Hashad leader in Iraq: “It is impossible to eliminate ISIS in Iraq without following it into Syria. We will put our differences with Syria on one side and will join efforts to fight and eliminate ISIS … The U.S. knew that ISIS would expand in Syria and was planning to divide Iraq. This plan is over…” These comments may presage a more proactive response by Iran (and it is hard to see that Russia and China will not be more proactive too, given the composition of the forces now being groomed by Saudi and Turkish intelligence).

But there is another point to this speculation: It leaves out Lebanon. If Syria and Iraq are to be “fracked” — and hard-core Sunni fundamentalism return “to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” in the words of the DIA assessment, why should Tripoli (capital of Libya) and the north of Lebanon prove immune from this “fracturing”? Lebanon’s Tripoli was in fact the first ISIS-style “emirate.”

The reason why a Salafi-jihadist movement should have originated in Tripoli needs a little background. A city of half a million people, Tripoli is, in a nutshell, the seat of Sunni strength in Lebanon. Traditionally, Tripoli had been the center of militant pan-Arabist nationalist and Nasserist sentiment, and until the Lebanese civil war, it lay in the mainstream of Levant Sunnism. Militant Arabism in Tripoli had Arabist nationalist and Nasserist sentiment, and until the Lebanese civil war, it lay in the mainstream of Levant Sunnism. Militant Arabism in Tripoli had been so pronounced in the 1920s and 1930s that its inhabitants had fiercely opposed inclusion of Tripoli into a “Greater Lebanon.” In the 1930s, Sunnis from Tripoli took part in an armed revolt against the prospect of a “Greater Lebanon,” demanding Tripoli’s inclusion with the Syrian cities of Homs, Hama and Aleppo into a separate Sunni Arab-nationalist autonomy.

While the birth of jihadism in Tripoli can be ascribed to the outset of the civil war in 1975, the beginning of the substantive shift in the character of Sunni Islam in Tripoli may be dated to 1947, when the Salafist Sheikh Salim al-Shahal returned from Saudi Arabia to Tripoli to find the first Wahhabi-orientated Salafist movement. During Lebanon’s civil war, Al-Jama’a — the Lebanese equivalent of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) — fragmented and splintered under the stress. With Syria’s intervention in Lebanon in 1976, a host of radical Al-Jama’a offshoots inspired by the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran sprang up. In 1982, these Al-Jama’a breakaway factions formed Harakat al-Tawhid al-Islami (the Islamic Unification Movement). The hardline MB offshoots, now united as “Tawhid,” then seized control of Tripoli from the Syrian-backed militia forces.

Strengthened by arms and training from the PLO and an influx of trained Syrian MB operatives after President Assad’s ferocious crushing of the MB revolt in Hama in February 1982, Tawhid forces imposed Islamic law at gunpoint in neighborhoods which they controlled. The “Islamic Republic” of Tripoli lasted for a period of two years (e.g. banning alcohol, forcing women to wear the veil, etc.). Dozens and dozens of secular political opponents (mostly Communists) were executed, sparking an exodus of Christians from the city. In subsequent years, Saudi influence in Tripoli predominated, and Tripoli spawned diverse Salafist groups — absorbing many MB members who survived the Syrian crackdown — and witnessed a progressive migration towards radical jihadism.

In short, were Aleppo and other parts of Syria and large swathes of Iraq to be “fracked,” then expect the same for Tripoli and north Lebanon too.

Posted: 06/01/2015 12:38 pm EDT Updated: 06/01/2015 12:59 pm EDT
RAMADI

Find this story at 1 June 2015

Copyright ©2015 TheHuffingtonPost.com

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Here, I wrote that these documents “may” say the US/West wanted/want a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria, because the declassified docs 1) say “Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria”; 2) in the next sentence, the doc defines the “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” as the countries that “support the opposition”; 3) they later say the “opposition forces are trying to control the Eastern areas”, where Syria borders Iraq, and, specifically of this control of Eastern areas, say the “Western Countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey are supporting these efforts”. 4) In a section about “effects on Iraq” the docs say that “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then say “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

However, while the document begins by stating that “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, the document, as noted, also defines other groups, which could be considered “powers”, as either components of or supporters of the opposition: Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI. The report states: “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…”

While the FSA is defined as “opposition”, Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI are initially described as “the major forces driving the insurgency”, not as “the opposition”. It could be that the document means that the FSA is “the opposition” and the West, its allies, and the Islamic groups are simply all supporting them, but with different individual goals. However, AQI is also directly described as “opposition” to Assad: “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

In the section that says “there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria…”, then that “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want”, this section of the doc defines the opposition forces controlling the Iraq/Syria border as “Syrian Free Army”, the FSA, and says the FSA will try to take “advantage of the sympathy of the Iraqi border population”.

It then says that “If the situation [likely meaning FSA control of the border] unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” (The US obviously opposes Iranian expansion and sides with the Sunnis, but the last part of this sentence, as it is framed in terms of Shia expansion, may suggest that here the “supporting powers to the opposition” may be referring not the sentence stating “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey support the opposition”, but to earlier sentences stating “AQI supported the opposition from the beginning…” and “AQI declared its opposition of Assad’s government because it considered it a sectarian regime targeting Sunnis.”

Thus, perhaps this is simply unclear writing, or too much is censored, and what this really means is that while both AQI and “The West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey” support the “opposition” (and AQI also comprises the opposition), only the AQI part of that support for the opposition would want a “Salafist Principality” to be established. This is clearly stated regarding the effect on Iraq. However, the US/West do strongly support existing Salafist Principalities, as noted above, including the most ideologically expansionist one, Saudi Arabia. Thus, supporting a Salafist Principality, and annexation of territory (Israel, Cuba, Diego Garcia, etc.), is something the US already does currently. International relations scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed notes that a RAND corp report previously advised the US “to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world.”)

The doc says the above-noted “deterioration”, likely referring to the ‘unravels’ term above, “has dire consequences on the Iraq situation.” It continues that this “deterioration” would give more momentum to terrorist groups and could allow them to declare an “Islamic state”, “which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.” (A study out of British universities noted that US government/media did not report on ISIS publicly until it began to seize oil fields. Then, the study shows, the US sent drones to try to stop ISIS.)

The last uncensored sentence of the doc says that the third consequence of the “deterioration of the situation” (‘the situation’ likely meaning the FSA control of the border region) would be terrorist elements from all over the Arab world “entering into Iraqi arena.”

The rest of the document is censored, as are some sections before this.

Overall, what we can see in the document clearly states that a Salafist Principality is not desired by the West in terms of the Iraqi situation, but may or may not suggest that this principality is desired in terms of isolating Assad, which is a stated goal of the West and its allies (not just isolating, but removing). However, it is also a goal of AQI and its allies, which are defined both as supporting “the opposition” and having “declared its opposition of Assad’s government”. While this group and its affiliates could be viewed as a strategic asset for isolating Assad, they could also be viewed as a third party outside the wider global contest between West and East, which is opposed to either. However, a group in Syria opposed to both sides could be seen as preferable to having a group allied with the East and opposed to the West.

International security scholar Dr. Nafeez Ahmed analyzes these documents and concludes the US practices a policy of “sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.”

“According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the ‘Islamic State’ as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the “Syrian opposition” — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an ‘Islamic State’ in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated “Salafist Principality” as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.”

“The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist “Salafist Principality” in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran.”

“The establishment of such a “Salafist Principality” in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is “exactly” what the “supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want.” Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those “supporting powers” as “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey.”

Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said (noted by Ahmed) that the documents “raise vitally important questions of the West’s governments and media in their support of Syria’s rebellion.”

“Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West’s mainstream media, promoted Syria’s rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West’s support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it’s significant that the West’s media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them.”

Ahmed quotes a former US Marine: ““US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset.”

Ahmed concludes:

“The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West’s commitment to “isolating Syria.”

What the docs establish beyond doubt is that, in 2012, when they were written, the US saw the likelihood of a “Salafist Principality” or “Islamic State” being established, and was fully aware the insurgency in Syria was mainly driven by Islamic groups, who were fighting Assad and also supporting the FSA, which itself has been shown to have Islamic tendencies. For example, an FSA commander is on video saying he would want to implement Sharia law. But the West and its allies continued their support, as FSA members openly shared their US supplies with the ISIS-related groups, and even converted to ISIS.

As Ahmed puts it, “the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

This “entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.”

“As Shoebridge told me, “The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria’s rebellion” — namely, the emergence of ISIS — “but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West’s public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria’s rebellion was overwhelmingly ‘moderate.’”

Ahmed quotes a former MI5 officer explaining that after Libya and other such projects by the West, we see in this behavior towards Syria “part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing.”

What we already knew before these docs is that the US and West strongly support extremist Salafist states as part of their strategy of eating away at the parts of the world not under the US thumb, the “East”: Syria, Iran, Russia, and China. The US and West themselves are built on and continue to support and commit theft and annexation of territory, and support, commit, or ignore (if they are not politically helpful) all kinds of mass killings, including by groups worse than ISIS; these have included the Khmer Rouge, the Suharto Regime, and the US itself: the establishment of the USA and the building of it into a superpower was a process that involved crimes worse than anything ISIS will ever accomplish.

Further, ISIS, as pointed out by Kofi Annan and many others, arose as a consequence of the illegal US invasion of Iraq, motivated largely by Bush Jr.’s religious fanaticism, an invasion the international community tried and failed to prevent, which, the most recent and comprehensive report finds, has killed about 1 to 2 million or more people, another feat ISIS will never accomplish.

While studies and many official statements make clear, and it is obvious to any minimally non-US-brainwashed individual, that the invasion was largely about oil, even if we disregard that, ignore the rest of US history, and declare the US had/has “good intentions” regarding Iraq, that puts us at the level of of Japanese fascists, who believed in their “good intentions” regarding their invasions of China and elsewhere.

People with too much power always declare good intentions, and are often sincere, as they get god-complexes and view themselves as humanity’s benevolent saviors. But the reason war (including supporting warring proxies) is outlawed as an instrument of policy is that it has disastrous consequences, as we are seeing, even for the sincerely well-intentioned.

5/25/15 Update

It should be stressed that clearly admitting the West would “want” a Salafist principality in Eastern Syria is not generally the kind of statement people in governments would make of themselves, even in private, hence makes it less likely here that the West is being referred to specifically by that statement, as does the inclusion of the phrase “if the situation unravels” (meaning FSA control of the East) an Islamic state could result. However, it is noteworthy that the West and the Islamists are so easily conflated in this document (this conflation may well be intentional as a way of discussing benefits without clearly stating that they might be desired), as they are clearly delineated as both being opposed to the Assad government, and for similar reasons – opposing Iran and the Shia, backed by Russia and China, the latter part being of greater import to the West. The doc also makes very clear that the FSA was/is being supported by AQI and its Islamist affiliates, and that those Islamists were known to be “the major forces driving the insurgency”. It has long been known that FSA shares its US/Western/Gulf/Turkish supplies with and converts to Islamist groups, and AQI, the ISIS precursor, has always been known as particularly aggressive. And as Dr. Ahmed points out, the document nowhere suggests ending aid to the opposition due to its being driven by AQI and affiliates, and only frames the potential creation of the “Islamic state” as a bad thing in relation to Iraq. In relation to Syria/Assad, it is not framed as a bad thing, but as something that would be seen to “isolate” Assad, a goal shared by the West and the Islamist groups. So, these documents may well be an example of discussing a strategy while attempting to maintain some degree of “plausible deniability”.

It must also be remembered that the US and West not only support extremist Salafi/Wahhabi/Sharia established states, but have on numerous occasions worked with, backed, aided and/or paralleled some of the goals of non-state groups such as the Mujahedin and al Qaeda (in Afghanistan – see Brzezinski, Bob Gates; Bosnia, Kosovo – on these see Fulton in scholarly journal Global Security Studies), including under Obama in relation to Libya. In US support for the Mujahedin in Afghanistan and then the Taliban, the support was not even seen as a means to an end, but a completely acceptable end in itself: the US was fine with the Taliban taking power and staying in power, as long as it cooperated with the US. That is the bottom line. As soon as it proved uncooperative, the US “discovered” the Taliban human rights violations that non-governmental US monitors had been decrying for years, while the US was supporting the Taliban (here). And, as noted, abhorrent behavior is not a deterrent to US support. The US has committed far worse crimes than ISIS and supported groups far worse than ISIS. Only those unfamiliar with history and glued to US TV can think ISIS is some new level of evil in the world, or at least one not seen for a long time. The only qualifier for US support is whether the group in question is willing to cater to US business and strategic interests.

6/6/15 Update:

Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, in another detailed and important report in Middle East Eye, critiqued points from my above analysis and added crucial background information (bold added by me):
Similarly, Robert Barsocchini speculates that “supporting powers” might refer to al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, the US intelligence community does not classify AQI or any other non-state terrorist network as a “power”.
The use of the plural, “supporting powers,” clarifies that the reference is to a group of powers supporting the rebels, not just one entity like AQI.
Barsocchini, like Cole, also suggests that Western governments would not admit to wanting a “Salafist Principality,” even privately. This is incorrect. Declassified files since World War II prove that Western governments frequently and privately admit to cultivating Islamist extremism for geopolitical reasons.
In summary, the Pentagon report is absolutely clear that the West, the Gulf states and Turkey were supporting the Syrian opposition to attain a common goal: the emergence of a “Salafist” political entity in eastern Syria that would help “isolate” Assad.
– See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/pentagon-confirms-west-gulf-states-and-turkey-created-islamic-state-608321312#sthash.fhgZ94ZJ.jjp4g9bW.dpuf Similarly, Robert Barsocchini speculates that “supporting powers” might refer to al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, the US intelligence community does not classify AQI or any other non-state terrorist network as a “power”. – See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/pentagon-confirms-west-gulf-states-and-turkey-created-islamic-state-608321312#sthash.fhgZ94ZJ.jjp4g9bW.dpuf

Similarly [to Prof. Juan Cole], Robert Barsocchini speculates that “supporting powers” might refer to al-Qaeda in Iraq. However, the US intelligence community does not classify AQI or any other non-state terrorist network as a “power”.

The use of the plural, “supporting powers,” clarifies that the reference is to a group of powers supporting the rebels, not just one entity like AQI.

Barsocchini, like Cole, also suggests that Western governments would not admit to wanting a “Salafist Principality,” even privately. This is incorrect. Declassified files since World War II prove that Western governments frequently and privately admit to cultivating Islamist extremism for geopolitical reasons.

In summary, the Pentagon report is absolutely clear that the West, the Gulf states and Turkey were supporting the Syrian opposition to attain a common goal: the emergence of a “Salafist” political entity in eastern Syria that would help “isolate” Assad.

Find this story at 24 May 2015

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Newly-declassified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents from 2012:

In Syria:

THE SALAFIST [sic], THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.

AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq, which became ISIS: “ISIS, once called AQI”] SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA…

…OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS.

IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…

Now for some definitions:

Salafi Movement:

The Salafist movement, also known as the Salafi movement, is a movement within Sunni Islam that references the doctrine known as Salafism.

The Salafi movement is often described as being synonymous with Wahhabism, but Salafists consider the term “Wahhabi” derogatory.[1] At other times, Salafism has been described as a hybrid of Wahhabism and other post-1960s movements.[2] Salafism has become associated with literalist, strict and puritanical approaches to Islam – and, particularly in the West, with the Salafi Jihadis who espouse offensive jihad against those they deem to be enemies of Islam as a legitimate expression of Islam.

In recent years, Salafi methodology has come to be associated with the jihad of extremist groups that advocate the killing of innocent civilians [though not all Salafists can be stereotyped under this umbrella].

Principality:

A principality (or princedom) can either be a monarchical feudatory or a sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or by a monarch with another title within the generic use of the term prince.

Thus, what the documents say the Western powers and their collaborators want, a “Salafist Principality” in Easter Syria, is an Islamic monarchical state. It should be no surprise that the US/West want this, as they are allied with so many Islamic dictatorships (ie the Gulf States and Turkey, as noted above).

The strictest sect of Salafism:

Wahhabism (Saudi Arabia)

Wahhabism is a more strict, Saudi form of Salafism, according to Mark Durie, who states Saudi leaders “are active and diligent” using their considerable financial resources “in funding and promoting Salafism all around the world.” Ahmad Moussalli tends to agree with the view that Wahhabism is a subset of Salafism, saying “As a rule, all Wahhabis are salafists, but not all salafists are Wahhabis”.

Saudi Government is funding to increase the Salafi Islam throughout the world. Estimates of Saudi spending on religious causes abroad include “upward of $100 billion”, between $2 and 3 billion per year since 1975 (compared to the annual Soviet propaganda budget of $1 billion/year [and US government/corporate propaganda budgets of many billions per year]),[92] and “at least $87 billion” from 1987–2007.

Its largesse funded an estimated “90% of the expenses of the entire faith“, throughout the Muslim World…

“Books, scholarships, fellowships, mosques” (for example, “more than 1,500 mosques were built from Saudi public funds over the last 50 years”) were paid for.[96] It rewarded journalists and academics, who followed it and built satellite campuses around Egypt for Al Azhar, the oldest and most influential Islamic university.[97] Yahya Birt counts spending on “1,500 mosques, 210 Islamic centres and dozens of Muslim academies and schools”.

This financial aid has done much to overwhelm less strict local interpretations of Islam, according to observers like Dawood al-Shirian and Lee Kuan Yew, and has caused the Saudi interpretation (sometimes called “petro-Islam”) to be perceived as the correct interpretation – or the “gold standard” of Islam – in many Muslims’ minds.

While the Western powers and their collaborators may want a Salafist Principality in Eastern Syria, they, mainly the US, are openly supporting the most extreme Salafist, missionary state in the world: Saudi Arabia.

The US has been supporting Saudi Arabia since oil was discovered there around the 1930s.

The US is the world’s biggest arms trafficker. The biggest arms sale of the world’s biggest arms trafficker was to the Saudi dictatorship, approved by Obama in 2010:

The Guardian:

Barack Obama to authorise record $60bn Saudi arms sale

Biggest arms deal in US history…

The US is the world’s largest arms supplier…

Amnesty reported that, contrary to US gov and media propaganda, the Saudi regime got worse under the last dictator (who recently died), and is getting even worse now under new US-backed dictator Abdulaziz, with Saudi Arabia committing dozens and dozens of beheading/crucifixions, taking the lead in confirmed state executions worldwide.

2009 US documents leaked by Wikileaks revealed Hillary Clinton stating that Saudi Arabia is the world’s biggest source of funding for Sunni terrorist groups.

Abdulaziz himself, the top of the Saudi dictatorship, is said by al Qaeda to be one of their sources of funding and support.

Unlike Iran, which has parliamentary representatives and voting, Saudi Arabia is a straight despotism which maintains itself through terror, such as by lashing innocent civilians in public.

Unlike Iran, Saudi Arabia not only does not renounce nuclear weapons (US intelligence does not even say Iran is pursuing them; in fact far from it), but Saudi officials promise never to renounce nuclear weapons, or even negotiate about nuclear weapons, which Iran has agreed to do numerous times, with the US always cancelling the negotiations, as Obama has done before, and did again this week: “US Kills Nuclear Free Mid-East Conference“.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia just announced its intentions to go nuclear, a prospect that has long been known to all.

None of this prevents the US from making its biggest ever lethal arms sale to the dictatorship, or selling them almost a billion dollars worth of banned cluster bombs in 2013, which HRW reports are now being used in the US-coordinated/assisted Saudi aggressive war against Yemen, from which the US refuses to rescue its own civilian nationals, unlike eight other countries including Russia, China, and India, which have performed rescue missions.

To be fair, the US has performed rescue missions in Yemen… for Saudi bombers.

5/24/15 Update:

For those interested, here is a four page, point by point analysis of the declassified DIA docs.

@_DirtyTruths

Author’s research focuses on global force dynamics. He also writes professionally for the film industry. His articles have been noted by professors, scholars, student-groups, and other independent researchers.

Posted on May 23, 2015 by Robert Barsocchini

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Monday, May 18, the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch published a selection of formerly classified documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department through a federal lawsuit.
While initial mainstream media reporting is focused on the White House’s handling of the Benghazi consulate attack, a much “bigger picture” admission and confirmation is contained in one of the Defense Intelligence Agency documents circulated in 2012: that an ‘Islamic State’ is desired in Eastern Syria to effect the West’s policies in the region.
Astoundingly, the newly declassified report states that for “THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY [WHO] SUPPORT THE [SYRIAN] OPPOSITION… THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME…”.
The DIA report, formerly classified “SECRET//NOFORN” and dated August 12, 2012, was circulated widely among various government agencies, including CENTCOM, the CIA, FBI, DHS, NGA, State Dept., and many others.
The document shows that as early as 2012, U.S. intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a U.S. strategic asset.
While a number of analysts and journalists have documented long ago the role of western intelligence agencies in the formation and training of the armed opposition in Syria, this is the highest level internal U.S. intelligence confirmation of the theory that western governments fundamentally see ISIS as their own tool for regime change in Syria. The document matter-of-factly states just that scenario.
Forensic evidence, video evidence, as well as recent admissions of high-level officials involved (see former Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford’s admissions here and here), have since proven the State Department and CIA’s material support of ISIS terrorists on the Syrian battlefield going back to at least 2012 and 2013 (for a clear example of “forensic evidence”: see UK-based Conflict Armament Research’s report which traced the origins of Croatian anti-tank rockets recovered from ISIS fighters back to a Saudi/CIA joint program via identifiable serial numbers).
The newly released DIA report makes the following summary points concerning “ISI” (in 2012 “Islamic State in Iraq,”) and the soon to emerge ISIS:
Al-Qaeda drives the opposition in Syria
The West identifies with the opposition
The establishment of a nascent Islamic State became a reality only with the rise of the Syrian insurgency (there is no mention of U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State’s rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits; see section 4.D. below)
The establishment of a “Salafist Principality” in Eastern Syria is “exactly” what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as “the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey”) in order to weaken the Assad government
“Safe havens” are suggested in areas conquered by Islamic insurgents along the lines of the Libyan model (which translates to so-called no-fly zones as a first act of ‘humanitarian war’; see 7.B.)
Iraq is identified with “Shia expansion” (8.C)
A Sunni “Islamic State” could be devastating to “unifying Iraq” and could lead to “the renewing facilitation of terrorist elements from all over the Arab world entering into Iraqi Arena.” (see last non-redacted line in full PDF view.)
_____________________________________________
The following is excerpted from the seven page DIA declassified report (bold-facing is my own):
R 050839Z AUG 12
…
THE GENERAL SITUATION:
A. INTERNALLY, EVENTS ARE TAKING A CLEAR SECTARIAN DIRECTION.
B. THE SALAFIST [sic], THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD, AND AQI ARE THE MAJOR FORCES DRIVING THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA.
C. THE WEST, GULF COUNTRIES, AND TURKEY SUPPORT THE OPPOSITION; WHILE RUSSIA, CHINA AND IRAN SUPPORT THE REGIME.
…
3. (C) Al QAEDA – IRAQ (AQI):… B. AQI SUPPORTED THE SYRIAN OPPOSITION FROM THE BEGINNING, BOTH IDEOLOGICALLY AND THROUGH THE MEDIA…
…
4.D. THERE WAS A REGRESSION OF AQI IN THE WESTERN PROVINCES OF IRAQ DURING THE YEARS OF 2009 AND 2010; HOWEVER, AFTER THE RISE OF THE INSURGENCY IN SYRIA, THE RELIGIOUS AND TRIBAL POWERS IN THE REGIONS BEGAN TO SYMPATHIZE WITH THE SECTARIAN UPRISING. THIS (SYMPATHY) APPEARED IN FRIDAY PRAYER SERMONS, WHICH CALLED FOR VOLUNTEERS TO SUPPORT THE SUNNI’S [sic] IN SYRIA.
…
7. (C) THE FUTURE ASSUMPTIONS OF THE CRISIS:
A. THE REGIME WILL SURVIVE AND HAVE CONTROL OVER SYRIAN TERRITORY.
B. DEVELOPMENT OF THE CURRENT EVENTS INTO PROXY WAR: …OPPOSITION FORCES ARE TRYING TO CONTROL THE EASTERN AREAS (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), ADJACENT TO THE WESTERN IRAQI PROVINCES (MOSUL AND ANBAR), IN ADDITION TO NEIGHBORING TURKISH BORDERS. WESTERN COUNTRIES, THE GULF STATES AND TURKEY ARE SUPPORTING THESE EFFORTS. THIS HYPOTHESIS IS MOST LIKELY IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DATA FROM RECENT EVENTS, WHICH WILL HELP PREPARE SAFE HAVENS UNDER INTERNATIONAL SHELTERING, SIMILAR TO WHAT TRANSPIRED IN LIBYA WHEN BENGHAZI WAS CHOSEN AS THE COMMAND CENTER OF THE TEMPORARY GOVERNMENT.
…
8.C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE SYRIAN REGIME, WHICH IS CONSIDERED THE STRATEGIC DEPTH OF THE SHIA EXPANSION (IRAQ AND IRAN)
8.D.1. …ISI COULD ALSO DECLARE AN ISLAMIC STATE THROUGH ITS UNION WITH OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS IN IRAQ AND SYRIA, WHICH WILL CREATE GRAVE DANGER IN REGARDS TO UNIFYING IRAQ AND THE PROTECTION OF ITS TERRITORY.

May 19, 2015 by Brad Hoff 43 Comments

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On Aug. 1, 2008, a small team of Israeli commandos entered the waters near Tartus, Syria, and shot and killed a Syrian general as he was holding a dinner party at his seaside weekend home. Muhammad Suleiman, a top aide to the Syrian president, was shot in the head and neck, and the Israeli military team escaped by sea.

While Israel has never spoken about its involvement, secret U.S. intelligence files confirm that Israeli special operations forces assassinated the general while he vacationed at his luxury villa on the Syrian coast.

The internal National Security Agency document, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is the first official confirmation that the assassination of Suleiman was an Israeli military operation, and ends speculation that an internal dispute within the Syrian government led to his death.

A top-secret entry in the NSA’s internal version of Wikipedia, called Intellipedia, described the assassination by “Israeli naval commandos” near the port town of Tartus as the “first known instance of Israel targeting a legitimate government official.” The details of the assassination were included in a “Manhunting Timeline” within the NSA’s intelligence repository.

According to three former U.S. intelligence officers with extensive experience in the Middle East, the document’s classification markings indicate that the NSA learned of the assassination through surveillance. The officials asked that they not be identified, because they were discussing classified information.

The information in the document is labeled “SI,” which means that the intelligence was collected by monitoring communications signals. “We’ve had access to Israeli military communications for some time,” said one of the former U.S. intelligence officers.

The former officer said knowledge within the NSA about surveillance of Israeli military units is especially sensitive because the NSA has Israeli intelligence officers working jointly with its officers at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Brig. Gen. Suleiman was a top military and intelligence adviser to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, and was suspected of being behind the Syrian government’s efforts to facilitate Iran’s provision of arms and military training to Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon. Suleiman was also reported to have been in charge of the security and construction of Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear facility, which Israel destroyed in a 2007 air attack. The NSA document described part of Suleiman’s responsibilities as “sensitive military issues.”

Israel’s involvement in Suleiman’s assassination raises questions about both the purpose of the killing, as well as whether Israel violated international law in conducting the operation.

“The Israelis may have had many good reasons to kill [Suleiman],” said Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of international law at Notre Dame. “But under international law it’s absolutely clear that in Syria in 2008, they had no rights under the laws of war because at the time there was no armed conflict. They had no right to kill General Suleiman.”

The Assad government withheld news of the assassination for four days before announcing Suleiman’s death. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

According to a classified State Department cable published online by WikiLeaks, the Syrian government’s investigation into the killing turned up $80 million in cash in Suleiman’s home. “[Assad] was said to be devastated by the discovery, and, fearing [Suleiman] had betrayed him, redirected the investigation from solving his murder to finding out how the general had acquired so much money,” the cable noted.

Last year, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told journalists that the Israeli government killed Suleiman, and that the assassination was “linked” to Suleiman’s role in the July 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah.

“For them it’s not only payback, but mitigates future operations,” said one of the retired intelligence officers, who has worked with the Israelis but does not have direct knowledge of the Suleiman assassination. “They will take a target of opportunity if it presents itself.”

The Israeli assassination of Suleiman came less than six months after a joint Mossad-CIA team assassinated a top Hezbollah operative in the heart of Damascus, according to several current and former U.S. military and intelligence officials. U.S. and Israeli involvement in that attack, which targeted Hezbollah operative Imad Mughniyeh, was first reported in detail by the Washington Post. The CIA had long sought Mughniyeh for his role in several terrorist attacks against Americans, including the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, Lebanon, which left 241 American service members dead.

The NSA declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Israeli Prime Minister did not respond to several requests for comment.

Matthew Cole
July 15 2015, 1:23 p.m.

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Officials say chances of life-termer going free ‘better than ever’ as US seeks to sooth Israel over Iran; Justice Department denies report

The Obama administration is preparing to release Jonathan Pollard, who was convicted in 1987 of spying for Israel, in hopes of alleviating tensions over the Iranian nuclear deal, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

According to US officials cited in the report, some are pushing for Pollard’s release in a matter of weeks, while others say it could take months. Still other US officials mentioned in the report denied any link between the Iranian nuclear deal and Pollard’s potential release.

ABC News’ managing editor tweeted Friday night that US officials had confirmed to ABC that the former Navy analyst was set to be released in November, when he is eligible for parole.

But the Justice Department said it expected Pollard to serve out his entire sentence.

“The Department of Justice has always and continues to maintain that Jonathan Pollard should serve his full sentence for the serious crimes he committed, which in this case is a 30-year sentence as mandated by statute,” said spokesman Marc Raimondi.

“Mr. Pollard’s status will be determined by the United States Parole Commission according to standard procedures,” added National Security Council spokesman Alistair Baskey. “There is absolutely zero linkage between Mr. Pollard’s status and foreign policy considerations.”

Israeli government officials — including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself — activists, and even members of Congress have for decades lobbied successive US administrations for Pollard’s release.

There have been several reports in US media in recent months alleging that Pollard may be released later this year.

Last week, one of Pollar’s attorneys, Eliot Lauer, told the Times of Israel that he has received no indication of this.

“We have not received any word, and I would expect that either I or my client would be the ones who would be notified,” he said. Lauer is a member of Pollard’s pro bono legal team, and has represented him for over two decades.

The 61-year-old Pollard is serving a life sentence in a US federal prison for passing classified information to Israel; he was granted citizenship by Israel 20 years ago. The flurry of reports reflect a US government website that lists Pollard’s release date (under ID number 09185-016) as November 21, 2015 – a date that would coincide with the 30th anniversary of his arrest.

Lauer noted that November 21, 2015, has been listed as a release date for Pollard for decades.

US government site showing Jonathan Pollard’s scheduled release date
US government site showing Jonathan Pollard’s scheduled release date

In order for Pollard to be released, a Notice of Action must first be issued – and presumably, it is Pollard’s legal team which would receive it first. According to Lauer, no such Notice of Action has been received.

Lauer said the authorities could issue such a notice shortly before Pollard’s release date.

Although Pollard is serving a life sentence under a Federal law that allows the possibility of parole, he is the only American citizen who has been sentenced to life in prison for passing classified information to a US ally.

The US has at times considered releasing Pollard, but has been met with fierce opposition by some in the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department. This could again be the case if indeed the Obama administration is considering it, but “[Pollard’s] chances at winning freedom are better now than they have ever been,” according to the WSJ report that attributes the belief to unnamed US officials.

There have been multiple false starts and reports over the years indicating that Pollard’s release was imminent. During his farewell visit as president of Israel to Washington DC last year, Shimon Peres pressed President Barack Obama for Pollard’s release.

In August 2014, a request by Pollard for parole was denied, with the officials arguing that releasing Pollard would “constitute contempt for the severity of the offense and promote a lack of respect for the law.”

AP contributed to this report.

BY REBECCA SHIMONI STOIL AND TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF July 24, 2015, 11:29 pm 43

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De Amerikaanse voormalig spion Jonathan Pollard zit een levenslange gevangenisstraf uit. Als werknemer bij de VS Marine Inlichtingendienst stal hij honderdduizenden geheime documenten en verkocht die aan Israël. De man die hem ontmaskerde, schreef er een boek over.

Bradley Manning wordt verdacht van het lekken van geheime documenten van de Amerikaanse overheid. Deze documenten werden openbaar gemaakt voor Wikileaks. Nog voordat Manning een eerlijk proces heeft gekregen, zit hij al een ruim een jaar in eenzame opsluiting.

De omvang en gevoeligheid van de Wikileaks-documenten vallen echter in het niet in vergelijking met het aantal geheime stukken dat Jonathan Pollard begin jaren ’80 aan de Israëliërs heeft overhandigd. Pollard werkte voor de Naval Intelligence Service. Van juni 1984 tot zijn aanhouding in november 1985 wandelde hij bijna dagelijks het gebouw van de Naval Intelligence Command uit met een tas vol top secret documenten.

De Amerikaanse overheid schat dat hij ruim een miljoen stukken aan de Israëliërs heeft overhandigd. Een van de stukken was het tiendelige boekwerk Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN), een gedetailleerde beschrijving van het netwerk van de wereldwijde elektronische observatie door de Amerikanen.

Pollard onderzocht

Capturing Jonathan Pollard werd in 2006 door de Naval Institue Press gepubliceerd. Het boek is van de hand van Ronald Olive, destijds werkzaam voor de Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS). Als medewerker van de NCIS kreeg Olive in 1985 de taak om te onderzoeken of Pollard geheime stukken lekte.

Het onderzoek volgde op een tip van een medewerker van de Anti-Terrorism Alert Center (ATAC) van de NIS, de afdeling waar Pollard werkte. Deze man zag Pollard het gebouw uitlopen met een stapel papier. De stapel was verpakt in bruin inpakpapier en tape met de code TS/SCI, Top Secret/Sentive Compartmented Information. TS/SCI is een nog zwaardere kwalificatie als top secret.

Pollard stapte met de stukken bij zijn vrouw Ann in de auto. Nog even dacht zijn collega dat Pollard naar een andere inlichtingendienst, zoals de DIA (Defense Intelligence Service) zou rijden om daar de documenten af te geven. Dit leek onwaarschijnlijk omdat Pollard eerder tegen hem had gezegd dat hij verkeerde documenten had besteld bij het ‘archief’ en dat hij deze nu moest terugbrengen en vernietigen. Pollard en Ann reden echter een geheel andere kant op.

Olive beschrijft vervolgens de ontmaskering van Jonathan en Ann. In Pollards werkruimte wordt een camera opgehangen die registreert hoe de spion een aktetas vol TS/SCI documenten propt en het gebouw verlaat. Pollard en zijn vrouw ruiken onraad en proberen de sporen van spionage te wissen. Ann moet een koffer vol super geheime documenten, die in hun huis liggen, vernietigen. Zij raakt in paniek en de koffer belandt bij de buren.

Gevoelige snaar

Het boek van Ronald Olive is nog even actueel als het eerste boek dat over deze spionagezaak is verschenen in 1989, Territory of Lies: The American Who Spied on His Country for Israel and How He Was Betrayed.

Begin dit jaar wordt een petitie, ondertekend door meer dan 10.000 Israëliërs, aan de Israëlische president Shimon Peres gezonden. Hierin roepen politici, kunstenaars en andere bekende en onbekende Israëliërs de president op om Pollard vrij te krijgen. Op 1 september 2010 berichtte de LA Times zelfs dat de vrijlating van Pollard de bevriezing van de bouw van Israëlische nederzettingen in de bezette gebieden zou verlengen.

Pollard raakt kennelijk een gevoelige snaar, zowel in Israël als in de Verenigde Staten. Schrijver Olive op zijn beurt bevindt zich in een gezelschap van allerlei mensen die er voor ijveren om de spion zijn gehele leven achter slot en grendel te houden, hoewel levenslang in de Verenigde Staten niet echt levenslang hoeft te zijn. Bij goed gedrag kunnen gevangenen na dertig jaar vrijkomen.

In 1987 werd Pollard veroordeeld tot levenslang na een schuldbekentenis en toezegging dat hij de Amerikaanse overheid zou helpen bij het in kaart brengen van de schade die hij door zijn spionage-activiteiten had veroorzaakt. Die schade werd door de toenmalige minister van Defensie Casper Weinberger vastgelegd in een memorandum van 46 pagina’s, welke nog steeds niet openbaar is gemaakt. Pollard’s vrouw kreeg vijf jaar gevangenisstraf voor het in bezit hebben van staatsgeheime documenten.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard is geen spannend fictie / non-fictie boek met een twist, zoals Spywars van Bagley. Olive beschrijft droog het leven van de spion vanaf het moment dat hij bij de CIA solliciteert, tot aan de dag van zijn veroordeling. Natuurlijk is de schrijver begaan met de geheimhouding van Amerikaanse strategische informatie en verbaast het niet dat hij bij het verschijnen van het boek in 2006 een pleidooi hield om Pollard niet vrij te laten.

Niet kieskeurig

Hoewel de volle omvang van het lekken van Pollard niet duidelijk wordt beschreven, blijkt dat Pollard niet bepaald kieskeurig was. De Israëliërs hadden hem lijsten meegegeven van wat zij graag wilden hebben, vooral informatie over het Midden-Oosten, maar ook over de Russen en operaties van de Amerikanen in het Middellandse Zee gebied.

Zodra Pollard echter stukken langs ziet komen die ook voor andere landen interessant zouden kunnen zijn, probeert hij ook daar te winkelen. Zo poogt hij geheime documenten aan de Chinezen, Australiërs, Pakistani en de Zuid-Afrikanen, maar ook aan buitenlandse correspondenten te slijten.

Het gegeven dat landen elkaars strategische informatie en geheimen proberen te stelen, is niet nieuw. Het bestaan van contra-spionage afdelingen toont aan dat geheime diensten daar zelf ook rekening mee houden. De Australiërs dachten dan ook dat Pollard onderdeel uitmaakte van een CIA-operatie. Hoewel ze dat eigenlijk niet konden geloven, vermeed hun medewerker Pollard en werd de zaak niet gemeld bij Amerikaanse instanties.

Als onderdeel van thrillers en spannende lectuur zijn de spionage praktijken van Pollard, zoals Olive die beschrijft, niet bijster interessant, want het leidt af van waar het werkelijk om draait. Daarentegen is het boek van grote waarde waar het gaat om de beschrijving van de persoon Pollard, de wijze waarop hij kon spioneren, zijn werkomgeving, de blunders die worden gemaakt – niet alleen het aannemen en overplaatsen van Pollard, maar ook de wijze waarop geheimen zo eenvoudig kunnen worden gelekt – eigenlijk de totale bureaucratie die de wereld van inlichtingendiensten in zijn greep heeft.

Hoewel deze persoonlijke en bureaucratische gegevens niet breed worden uitgemeten – Olive is zelf een voormalig inlichtingenman – verschaft het boek een veelheid aan informatie daarover. De schrijver lijkt die persoonlijke details specifiek aan Pollard te koppelen, alsof het niet voor andere medewerkers zou gelden.

Opschepper

Dit gaat ook op ook voor de gemaakte fouten van de bureaucratie rond de carrière van de spion. Zo lijkt Pollard van jongs af aan een voorliefde te hebben gehad om spion te worden, of in ieder geval iets geheims te willen doen in zijn leven. Tijdens zijn studie schept hij erover op dat hij voor de Mossad zou werken en had gediend in het Israëlische leger. Zijn vader zou ook voor de CIA werkzaam zijn.

Aan deze opschepperij verbindt Olive een psychologisch element. Het zou een soort compensatie zijn voor de slechte jeugd van Pollard die vaak zou zijn gepest. Ook zijn vrouw zou niet bij hem passen omdat die te aantrekkelijk is. Pollard moet dat compenseren door stoer te doen. Later, toen hij voor een inlichtingendienst werkte, voelde hij zich opnieuw het buitenbeentje. Zijn carrière verliep alles behalve vlekkeloos, regelmatig werd hij op een zijspoor gezet.

Olive schetst een beeld van een verwend kind, dat niet op juiste waarde werd ingeschat en stoer wilde doen. Was Pollard echter zoveel anders dan zijn voormalige collega analisten of medewerkers van de inlichtingendienst? Werken voor een inlichtingendienst vereist een zekere mate van voyeurisme, een gespleten persoonlijkheid. Buiten je werk om kun je niet vrijelijk praten over datgene waar je mee bezig bent.

Dat doet wat met je psyche, maar trekt ook een bepaald soort mensen aan. Het werk betreft namelijk niet het oplossen van misdrijven, maar het kijken in het hoofd van mogelijke verdachten. Het BVD-dossier van oud-provo Roel van Duin laat zien dat een dienst totaal kan ontsporen door zijn eigen manier van denken. Dat komt echter niet voort uit de dienst als abstracte bureaucratie, maar door toedoen van de mensen die er werken.

Roekeloos

Pollard gedroeg zich arrogant en opschepperig, misschien wel om zijn eigen onzekerheid te maskeren. Dergelijk gedrag wordt door de schrijver verbonden aan zijn spionage-activiteiten voor de Israëliërs. Pollard was echter niet getraind in het lekken van documenten en ging verre van zorgvuldig te werk. Hij deed het zo openlijk dat het verbazingwekkend is dat het zo lang duurde voordat hij tegen de lamp liep. Hij zei bijvoorbeeld tegen de Israëliërs dat zij alleen de TS/SCI documenten moesten kopiëren en dat ze de rest mochten houden.

In de loop van de anderhalf jaar dat hij documenten naar buiten smokkelde, werd hij steeds roekelozer. Dat hij gespot werd met een pak papier onder zijn arm terwijl hij bij zijn vrouw in de auto stapte, was eerder toeval dan dat het het resultaat was van grondig speurwerk van de NCIS.

Eenmaal binnenin het inlichtingenbedrijf zijn de mogelijkheden om te lekken onuitputtelijk. Als Pollard wel getraind was geweest en zorgvuldiger te werk was gegaan, dan had hij zijn praktijk eindeloos kunnen voorzetten. Welke andere ‘agenten’ doen dat wellicht nog steeds? Of welke andere medewerkers waren minder roekeloos en tevreden geweest met het lekken van enkele documenten?

Die medewerkers vormen gezamenlijk het systeem van de dienst. Pollard schepte graag op, maar de schrijver van Spy Wars, Bagley, klopte zich ook graag op de borst en, hoewel in mindere mate, Ronald Olive ook. Iets dat eigenlijk vreemd is, als het aantal blunders in ogenschouw wordt genomen nadat Pollard ontdekt was. Alleen omdat de Israëliërs Pollard de toegang tot de diplomatieke vestiging ontzegden, zorgde ervoor dat hij alsnog gearresteerd en levenslang kreeg in de VS. Hij was echter bijna ontsnapt.

Blunders

Het is daarom niet gek dat inlichtingendiensten een gebrek aan bescheidenheid vertonen. Vele aanslagen zijn voorkomen, wordt vaak beweerd, maar helaas kunnen de diensten geen details geven. Het klinkt als Pollard, op bezoek bij Olive, die breed uitmeet dat hij die en die kent op de Zuid-Afrikaanse ambassade en of hij die moet werven als spion. Olive was werkzaam voor de NCIS. Pollard bezocht hem voordat hij werd ontmaskerd. Zijn eigen gebrek aan actie in relatie tot de twijfels over Pollard toont aan dat geen enkel bureaucratisch systeem perfect is, ook niet dat van inlichtingendiensten.

Het is niet verbazingwekkend dat de carrière van Pollard bezaaid is met blunders. Hij werd dan wel afgewezen door de CIA, maar waagde vervolgens een gokje bij een andere dienst en had geluk. Hij werd bij de NIS aangenomen en kroop zo langzaamaan in de organisatie. De fouten die bij het aannamebeleid en bij de evaluaties van Pollard zijn gemaakt, worden door Olive gepresenteerd als op zichzelf staand, maar de hoeveelheid blunders en gebrekkige administratie lijken zo talrijk dat het geen toevalstreffers zijn.

Bij elke promotie of overplaatsing lijkt slechts een deel van zijn persoonsdossier hem te volgen. De NIS wist vanaf het begin niet dat Pollard eerder door de CIA werd afgewezen. Als zijn toegang tot geheime documenten wordt ingetrokken, wacht Pollard net zo lang tot bepaalde medewerkers zijn overgeplaatst of vertrokken. Hij wordt dan wel afgeschilderd als een verwend kind dat met geheimen speelt, regelmatig moet Olive echter toegeven dat Pollard een briljant analist is. Pas in de laatste maanden van zijn spionage-activiteiten, lijdt zijn werk onder de operatie om zoveel mogelijk documenten naar buiten te smokkelen.

Waarom Pollard de Amerikaanse overheid schade toebracht, wijdt Olive vooral aan zijn joodse afkomst. Niet dat de schrijver alle joodse Amerikanen verdenkt, maar een belangrijke reden voor het fanatiek lekken wordt verklaard aan de hand van Pollard’s wens om naar Israël te emigreren. Olive gaat echter voorbij aan het geld dat de spion aan zijn activiteiten verdiende. Aanvankelijk 1.500 dollar per maand, na een paar maanden 2.500 en twee volledig verzorgde reizen met zijn vrouw naar Europa en Israël en tot slot een Zwitserse bankrekening met jaarlijks een bonus van 30.000 dollar.

Los van de Zwitserse rekening schat de Amerikaanse overheid dat Pollard rond de 50.000 dollar aan zijn spionagewerk heeft overgehouden. Eigenlijk niet eens veel in vergelijking met de één miljoen documenten die hij leverde. De onderhandelingen over het geld maken echter duidelijk dat Pollard wel degelijk geïnteresseerd was om zoveel mogelijk te verdienen. De prijs werd gedrukt omdat de Israëliërs niet erg toeschietelijk waren en Pollard ze sowieso wilde helpen.

Afkomst

Zijn joodse afkomst zat hem in de weg, want waarschijnlijk had hij alleen al voor het tiendelige boekwerk Radio-Signal Notations (RASIN) 50.000 dollar kunnen krijgen. Uiteindelijk blijkt Pollard een gewoon mens die de verlokking van het geld niet kon weerstaan. Andere agenten zijn hem voorgegaan en hebben zijn voorbeeld gevolgd.

Het nadeel van zijn afkomst blijkt ook uit het feit dat hij zijn Israëlische runner een ‘cadeautje’ gaf. Aviem Sella had mee gevochten in de zesdaagse Yom Kippur oorlog en was een van de piloten die de Iraakse kernreactor in Osirak bombardeerde. Pollard gaf hem destijds satellietbeelden van die aanval. Sella wordt nog steeds gezocht voor Verenigde Staten voor spionage.

De operatie werd door een andere veteraan, Rafi of Rafael Eitan, geleid. Onder diens leiding spoorde de Mossad Adolf Eichmann op. Eitan en Sella werden rijkelijk beloond voor hun werk met Pollard, maar moesten hun promoties inleveren omdat de Amerikanen eind jaren ’80 furieus reageerden. Na de arrestatie van Pollard beweerden de Israëliërs dat ze helemaal niet zoveel documenten hadden gekregen van de spion en de onderhandelingen over teruggave uiterst stroef waren verlopen.

Uiteindelijk werd maar een fractie van de documenten teruggegeven aan de Amerikanen. De Israëliërs waren vooral bezig om na zijn veroordeling Pollard vrij te krijgen. Premier Nethanyahu sprak vorig jaar de Knesset toe over het lot van Pollard, terwijl de Israëlische ambassadeur in de VS hem juli 2011 bezocht in de gevangenis.

Tot nu toe lijken de Amerikanen niet van zins om hem vrij te laten. Na de veroordeling van Pollard kwam de campagne Free Pollard op gang. Zijn vrouw verdween uit beeld. Niet alleen Israëliërs nemen deel aan de campagne, maar ook Alan Dershowitz, professor aan de Harvard Law School en andere academici. In het laatste hoofdstuk More sinned against than sinning beschrijft Olive enkele andere spionnen die documenten verkochten aan buitenlandse mogendheden.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard was nog niet gepubliceerd toen de stroom Wikileaks-documenten op gang kwam. Die documenten laten echter zien dat een waterdicht systeem niet bestaat en dat mensen voor geld of om andere redenen geheime stukken lekken. De Wikileaks-documenten onderstrepen dat er sinds de jaren ’80 weinig is veranderd. Met als enige verschil de hardvochtige wijze waarop verdachte Manning in deze zaak wordt behandeld en de gebrekkige aandacht die hij krijgt van professoren en andere betrokkenen bij de Wikileaks-documenten.

Capturing Jonathan Pollard: How One of the Most Notorious Spies in American History Was Brought to Justice. Auteur Ronald J. Olive. Uitgeverij US Naval Institute Press (2006).

Find this story at 19 June 2012

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Earlier this year, during a security sweep, Kaspersky Lab detected a cyber-intrusion affecting several of our internal systems.

Following this finding, we launched a large scale investigation, which led to the discovery of a new malware platform from one of the most skilled, mysterious and powerful groups in the APT world – Duqu. The Duqu threat actor went dark in 2012 and was believed to have stopped working on this project – until now. Our technical analysis indicates the new round of attacks include an updated version of the infamous 2011 Duqu malware, sometimes referred to as the stepbrother of Stuxnet. We named this new malware and its associated platform “Duqu 2.0”.

Some of the new 2014-2015 Duqu infections are linked to the P5+1 events and venues related to the negotiations with Iran about a nuclear deal. The threat actor behind Duqu appears to have launched attacks at the venues for some of these high level talks. In addition to the P5+1 events, the Duqu 2.0 group has launched a similar attack in relation to the 70th anniversary event of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In the case of Kaspersky Lab, the attack took advantage of a zero-day in the Windows Kernel, and possibly up to two other, currently patched vulnerabilities, which were zero-day at that time. The analysis of the attack revealed that the main goal of the attackers was to spy on Kaspersky Lab technologies, ongoing research and internal processes. No interference with processes or systems was detected. More details can be found in our technical paper.

From a threat actor point of view, the decision to target a world-class security company must be quite difficult. On one hand, it almost surely means the attack will be exposed – it’s very unlikely that the attack will go unnoticed. So the targeting of security companies indicates that either they are very confident they won’t get caught, or perhaps they don’t care much if they are discovered and exposed. By targeting Kaspersky Lab, the Duqu attackers probably took a huge bet hoping they’d remain undiscovered; and lost.

At Kaspersky Lab, we strongly believe in transparency, which is why we are going public with this information. Kaspersky Lab is confident that its clients and partners are safe and that there is no impact on the company’s products, technologies and services.

By GReAT on June 10, 2015. 12:00 pm

Find this story at 10 June 2015

© 2015 AO Kaspersky Lab.

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

If more evidence was needed to show that the relationship between Benjamin Netanyahu and Barack Obama has morphed from tragedy to farce, it came late Monday with the revelation that Israel had spied on the nuclear talks between the United States and Iran.

“The White House discovered the operation,” according to the blockbuster account by Adam Entous in The Wall Street Journal, “when U.S. intelligence agencies spying on Israel intercepted communications among Israeli officials that carried details the U.S. believed could have come only from access to the confidential talks, officials briefed on the matter said.”

Talk about spy vs. spy, the old Mad magazine trope featuring two pointy-nosed, masked cartoon creatures. The National Security Agency, eavesdropping on Israeli officials (as usual, according to the revelations of Edward Snowden), overheard them discussing intelligence their own spies had gathered by spying on U.S. officials talking about the Iran negotiations.

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This was a whole new level of gamesmanship between the two bickering allies.

“It’s one thing for the U.S. and Israel to spy on each other. It is another thing for Israel to steal secrets and play them back to U.S. legislators to undermine U.S. diplomacy,” an unnamed “senior U.S. official” told the Journal.

Officials in Jerusalem issued emphatic denials, as they did last year when Newsweek reported on Israeli espionage against the U.S., saying that “Israel does not spy on the United States, period, exclamation mark,’’ as Yuval Steinitz, minister for intelligence and strategic affairs, told Israel Radio on Tuesday.

Of course, Israel does spy on the U.S., and vice versa. In the age of cyberwar, electronic spying runs on autopilot, with state-of-the-art Pac-Mans zooming around the Internet gobbling up anything with the right keyword. Anybody with an antenna (or a keyboard) spies on whoever is seen as the remotest threat, including friends. Or as the Journal put it, “While U.S. officials may not be direct targets…Israeli intelligence agencies sweep up communications between U.S. officials and parties targeted by the Israelis, including Iran.”

And how did the Israelis intercept conversations between officials in Tehran and Washington? In another comedic dimension to this latest spy flap, it turns out that “U.S. intelligence agencies helped the Israelis build a system to listen in on high-level Iranian communications,” the Journal reported.

In part, it’s an old story. Israel’s clandestine operations to steal U.S. scientific, technical, industrial and financial secrets are so commonplace here that officials in the Pentagon and FBI periodically verge into open revolt.

Last year, U.S. intelligence officials trooped up to Capitol Hill to tell U.S. lawmakers considering visa waivers for Israelis that Jerusalem’s spying here had “crossed red lines.” One congressional staffer who attended the behind-closed-doors briefings called the information “very sobering…alarming…even terrifying.” Another staffer called it “damaging.”

“We used to call the Israelis on the carpet once a year to tell them to cut it out, when a particular stunt was just too outrageous ” says a former top FBI counterintelligence official. “They’d make all the right noises and then go right back at it through another door.” But since Israel is such an important strategic ally of the U.S., it was a sin that could not be named. The standing order has always been to just suck it up.

Until this week. The accusations by the unnamed Obama administration officials marked a new frontier in calling out the Israelis—or at least Netanyahu’s right-wing administration.

Netanyahu had crossed some sort of red line again when, according to the Journal, his man in Washington began quietly sharing Israeli intelligence about the U.S. negotiating position with members of Congress, hoping to shore up support for its rejection of any deal with the Iranians short of a total nuclear capitulation on their part. But what seems to have pushed Obama officials over the edge was that Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican operative who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, was wildly exaggerating what the U.S. position was, according to the Journal, making it sound like the White House had given away the store to the Iranians in a desperate effort to ink a deal.

Republican Representative Devin Nunes of California, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, indicated he had indeed gotten a different view on Iran from sources outside the administration.

“As good as our intelligence community is, a lot of times we don’t even know what the Iranians are up to,” he told CNN. “So we were shocked at the disclosures that have come forward of the size and scope of the Iranian program even in the most recent years.”

One former U.S. intelligence operative with long, firsthand familiarity with Israeli operations called the revelation “appalling but not surprising,” especially under Netanyahu, whose governing coalition depends on the support of far-right Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox parties with a stake in the West Bank settlements.

“The fact that there is such manipulation of our institutions by a so-called ally must be exposed, and the ‘useful idiots’ in [the U.S.] government who toe the Likud line will someday be looked back upon as men and women who sacrificed the U.S. national interest for a foreign ideology—Likud right-wing Zionism,” the operative said, on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“We know publicly that the administration is seething,” he added, “but I can assure you that behind closed doors the gloves are coming off. Bibi is in the administration’s crosshairs. If this is what is being allowed to leak publicly, you can bet that, behind the scenes, folks both in the White House and the foreign policy-intel community [are prepared to] act on that anger.”

This is not the end of it, he predicted. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which critics say has morphed from a powerful “pro-Israel” lobby to a powerful pro-Likud lobby over the years, will be Obama officials’ next target.

“I’m betting there are going to be some willing leakers now about stories such as AIPAC’s operations against Congress,” the former operative said.

Bob Corker of Tennessee, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has no doubt that Obama administration officials made a calculated decision to call out Netanyahu, who has long been at odds with the White House on the Middle East peace process, Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Iranian nuclear talks.

“I think y’all all understand what’s happening here,” he told reporters. “I mean, you understand who’s pushing this out.”

But if Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, is any barometer, the Israelis have little to worry about.

“I just don’t look at that as spying,” Kaine said of the Journal’s allegations. “Their deep existential interest in such a deal, that they would try to figure out anything that they could, that they would have an opinion on it…I don’t find any of that that controversial.”

Jeff Stein writes SpyTalk from Washington, D.C. He can be reached more or less confidentially via spytalker@hushmail.com.

BY JEFF STEIN 3/25/15 AT 12:23 PM

Find this story at 25 March 2015

© 2015 NEWSWEEK LLC

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday vehemently denied a Wall Street Journal report, leaked by the Obama White House, that Israel spied on U.S. negotiations with Iran and then fed the intelligence to Congressional Republicans. His office’s denial was categorical and absolute, extending beyond this specific story to U.S.-targeted spying generally, claiming: “The state of Israel does not conduct espionage against the United States or Israel’s other allies.”

Israel’s claim is not only incredible on its face. It is also squarely contradicted by top-secret NSA documents, which state that Israel targets the U.S. government for invasive electronic surveillance, and does so more aggressively and threateningly than almost any other country in the world. Indeed, so concerted and aggressive are Israeli efforts against the U.S. that some key U.S. government documents — including the top secret 2013 intelligence budget — list Israel among the U.S.’s most threatening cyber-adversaries and as a “hostile” foreign intelligence service.

One top-secret 2008 document features an interview with the NSA’s Global Capabilities Manager for Countering Foreign Intelligence, entitled “Which Foreign Intelligence Service Is the Biggest Threat to the US?” He repeatedly names Israel as one of the key threats.

While noting that Russia and China do the most effective spying on U.S., he says that “Israel also targets us.” He explains that “A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked [Israel] as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US.” While praising the surveillance relationship with Israel as highly valuable, he added: “One of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.” Specifically, the Israelis “target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems.”

Other NSA documents voice the grievance that Israel gets far more out of the intelligence-sharing relationship than the U.S. does. One top-secret 2007 document, entitled “History of the US – Israel SIGINT Relationship, post 1992,” describes the cooperation that takes place as highly productive and valuable, and, indeed, top-secret documents previously reported by The Intercept and the Guardian leave no doubt about the very active intelligence-sharing relationship that takes place between the two countries. Yet that same document complains that the relationship even after 9/11 was almost entirely one-sided in favor of serving Israeli rather than U.S. interests:

The U.S. perception of Israel as a threat as much as an ally is also evidenced by the so-called “black budget” of 2013, previously referenced by The Washington Post, which lists Israel in multiple places as a key intelligence “target” and even a “hostile foreign intelligence service” among several other countries typically thought of as the U.S.’s most entrenched adversaries:

The same budget document reveals that the CIA regards Israel — along with Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan and Cuba — as a “priority threat country,” one against which it “conduct[s] offensive [counter-intelligence] operations in collaboration with DoD”:

One particular source of concern for U.S. intelligence are the means used by Israel to “influence anti-regime elements in Iran,” including its use of “propaganda and other active measures”:

What is most striking about all of this is the massive gap between (a) how American national security officials talk privately about the Israelis and (b) how they have talked for decades about the Israelis for public consumption — at least until the recent change in public rhetoric from Obama officials about Israel, which merely brings publicly expressed American views more in line with how U.S. government officials have long privately regarded their “ally.” The NSA refused to comment for this article.

Previously reported stories on Israeli spying, by themselves, leave no doubt how false Netanyahu’s statement is. A Der Spiegel article from last fall revealed that “Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations.” A Le Monde article described how NSA documents strongly suggest that a massive computer hack of the French presidential palace in 2012 was likely carried about by the Israelis. A 2014 article from Newsweek’s Jeff Stein revealed that when it comes to surveillance, “the Jewish state’s primary target” is “America’s industrial and technical secrets” and that “Israel’s espionage activities in America are unrivaled and unseemly.”

All of these stories, along with these new documents, leave no doubt that, at least as the NSA and other parts of the U.S. National Security State see it, Netanyahu’s denials are entirely false: The Israelis engage in active and aggressive espionage against the U.S., even as the U.S. feeds the Israelis billions of dollars every year in U.S. taxpayer funds and protects every Israeli action at the U.N. Because of the U.S. perception of Israel as a “threat” and even a “hostile” foreign intelligence service — facts they discuss only privately, never publicly — the U.S. targets Israel for all sorts of espionage as well.

Glenn Greenwald, Andrew Fishman
Mar. 25 2015, 8:06 p.m.

Find this story at 25 March 2015

Copyright https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Report: Obama Administration Has Stopped Sharing Intelligence With Israel on Iran’s Nuclear Program

The Obama administration has “unilaterally” and “completely” stopped sharing intelligence with Israel over Iran’s nuclear development program due to its anger over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Tuesday address to Congress, Israel’s Channel 10 reported, a charge the White House flatly denied.

“The U.S. unilaterally stopped all of its joint activity with Israel regarding the nuclearization of Iran,” the news show reported Monday night. This freeze in intelligence sharing was attributed to the “American anger” at Netanyahu.

White House national security spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan told TheBlaze in an email, “the report is completely false.”

In this Oct. 26, 2010 file photo, a worker rides a bicycle in front of the reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran. (AP Photo/Mehr News Agency, Majid Asgaripour, File)

On Sunday, one day before the Channel 10 report, Secretary of State John Kerry touted the close security relationship with Israel in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

“We have a closer relationship with Israel right now, in terms of security, than at anytime in history,” Kerry said.

To make up for the gap, Israel is cooperating with other countries, not the U.S., to collect intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Past joint efforts by American and Israeli intelligence have helped the International Atomic Energy Agency monitor Iran’s nuclear progress, which is suspected of ultimately being aimed at the development of weapons.

Those IAEA reports raising suspicions about the objectives of Iran’s nuclear program have been the cornerstone of the case to convince the international community to impose sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Netanyahu was in Washington to warn lawmakers of the dangers of the emerging deal currently being negotiated between Iran and six world powers, including the U.S. Media reports have said the framework being worked out would monitor Iranian nuclear progress for only 10 years.

An unnamed senior aide to Netanyahu told reporters traveling on Netanyahu’s plane Sunday that the Obama administration was not fully sharing details with Congress about the negotiations.

The State Department on Monday warned Netanyahu against disclosing those details to Congress.

“We’ve continuously provided detailed classified briefings to Israeli officials to keep them updated and to provide context for how we are approaching getting to a good deal, because we’ve been very clear we will not accept a bad deal,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said. “So any release of any kind of information like that would, of course, betray that trust.”

Channel 10 also reported that in addition to refusing to meet the Israeli leader, Obama had no plans to phone him while he’s in town either.

The Jerusalem Post reported that the prime minister’s office would not comment on the Channel 10 report.

Sharona Schwartz
The Blaze
March 3, 2015

Find this story at 3 March 2015

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Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

A sensitive leak investigation of a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has stalled amid concerns that a prosecution in federal court could force the government to confirm a joint U.S.-Israeli covert operation targeting Iran, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Federal investigators suspect that retired Marine Gen. James E. “Hoss” Cartwright leaked to a New York Times reporter details about a highly classified operation to hobble Iran’s nuclear enrichment capability through cyber-sabotage — an effort not acknowledged by Israel or the United States.

Prosecutors will have to overcome significant national security and diplomatic concerns if they want to move forward, including pitting the Obama administration against Israel if that ally were opposed to any information about the cyber-operation being revealed in court.

The United States could move forward with the case against Israel’s ­wishes, but such a move might further harm relations between two countries, which are already frayed because of a disagreement over how best to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Administration officials also fear that any revelations could complicate the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.

“There are always legitimate national security reasons for not proceeding in one of these ­cases,” said John L. Martin, who handled many sensitive espionage investigations as a former Justice Department prosecutor.

The case captures the tension between national security concerns and the desire of prosecutors to hold high-ranking officials to account for leaking classified secrets. The Obama administration has been the most aggressive in U.S. history in pursuing those suspected of leaking classified information.

The Justice Department has offered no clues to whether it intends to proceed with a case against Cartwright, who helped design the cyber-campaign against Iran under President George W. Bush and was involved in its escalation under President Obama.

Spokesmen for the Justice Department, the White House and the FBI declined to comment for this article.

Gregory B. Craig, Cartwright’s attorney and a former White House counsel in the Obama administration, said he has had no contact with prosecutors for more than a year.

“General Cartwright has done nothing wrong,” Craig said. “He has devoted his entire life to defending the United States. He would never do anything to weaken our national defense or undermine our national security. Hoss Cartwright is a national treasure, a genuine hero and a great patriot.”

In discussions with the office of the White House counsel, then led by Kathryn Ruemmler, prosecutors sought to determine whether the White House would be willing to declassify material important to the case. Ruemmler was unwilling to provide the documentation, citing security concerns, including those relating to sources­ and methods, said a person familiar with the matter.

Ruemmler, who left the post in June, declined to comment.

“There’s a fundamental tension in cases­­ like this between the needs of a criminal prosecution and the needs of national security,” said Jason Weinstein, a former deputy assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, who was not briefed on the investigation. “Where that comes to a head is when prosecutors want to use evidence in a courtroom that is highly classified and very sensitive.”

It is often the case that the needs of a particular criminal prosecution yield to national security interests. “At the end of the day,” Weinstein said, “if you can’t use the evidence you need in court, you can’t bring the case.”

Details of the joint program, including its code name, Olympic Games, were revealed by Times reporter David E. Sanger in a book and article in June 2012. The sabotage of Iranian nuclear centrifuges by the computer worm dubbed Stuxnet had emerged two years earlier, and security experts speculated that it was the work of the United States and Israel.

Confirmation of the joint authorship set off a political controversy, with congressional Republicans charging that the White House had deliberately leaked information to enhance Obama’s national security credentials as he sought reelection.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. assigned Rod J. Rosenstein, the U.S. attorney for Maryland, to investigate the leak. His office declined to comment.

FBI investigators focused on Cartwright in the fall of 2012, officials said. They interviewed him at least twice, according to people who are familiar with the case and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation. During the first interview, Cartwright had to go to the hospital.

Part of the challenge of preparing a case like this is determining to what extent authorities who control the declassification of information, in this case the White House and the intelligence community, are willing to divulge information.

In the case of a CIA officer who was recently convicted of espionage, the government disclosed sensitive details during the leak trial about a separate operation to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program that occurred more than a decade ago. The CIA even allowed a Russian scientist who had defected and taken part in the highly classified operation to testify.

“The government’s got to make a choice: Is it more important to prosecute a national security leak or more important to preserve relationships with allies and shield sources­ and methods that protect the country?” said one individual familiar with the matter.

The case also poses opportunities for “graymail” — a situation in which defense attorneys exercise leverage that lawyers in ordinary criminal cases­ lack by forcing prosecutors to make tough judgment calls about divulging sensitive or classified information.

Craig might, for instance, push for broad discovery of information aimed at demonstrating that other officials could have been sources­ of the leak. Experts say he also could press to establish the factual basis for the information leaked, which could expose sensitive material.

Cartwright, who retired in 2011, had White House authorization to speak with reporters, according to people familiar with the matter. Craig might try to put the White House’s relationship with reporters and the use of authorized leaks on display, creating a potentially embarrassing distraction for the administration.

The case could remain open beyond the point at which national security and foreign policy concerns are an issue. Under the Espionage Act, one of the statutes that the government probably would use, prosecutors have 10 years from the date of the alleged crime to file charges.

Sari Horwitz contributed to this report.
By Ellen Nakashima and Adam Goldman March 10

Find this story at 10 March 2015

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WASHINGTON — IN Moscow this summer, while reporting a story for Wired magazine, I had the rare opportunity to hang out for three days with Edward J. Snowden. It gave me a chance to get a deeper understanding of who he is and why, as a National Security Agency contractor, he took the momentous step of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.

Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.

Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.”

It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses. In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” In testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society.

The veterans of Unit 8200 declared that they had a “moral duty” to no longer “take part in the state’s actions against Palestinians.” An Israeli military spokesman disputed the letter’s overall drift but said the charges would be examined.

It should trouble the American public that some or much of the information in question — intended not for national security purposes but simply to pursue political agendas — may have come directly from the N.S.A.’s domestic dragnet. According to documents leaked by Mr. Snowden and reported by the British newspaper The Guardian, the N.S.A. has been sending intelligence to Israel since at least March 2009.

The memorandum of agreement between the N.S.A. and its Israeli counterpart covers virtually all forms of communication, including but not limited to “unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content.” The memo also indicates that the N.S.A. does not filter out American communications before delivery to Israel; indeed, the agency “routinely sends” unminimized data.

Although the memo emphasizes that Israel should make use of the intercepts in accordance with United States law, it also notes that the agreement is legally unenforceable. “This agreement,” it reads, “is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law.”

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pak September 17, 2014
What type of information could be used against a palestinian to force him/her to collaborate? Homosexuality? Adultery? Premarital sex?…
kagni September 17, 2014
Very romantic to ignore that ugly breeds ugly, especially from a journalist of Mr Bamford’s age and experience. If anything, only…
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Clearly, there are thousands of ways to abuse private information collected on people. This is one of many, and this is why folks like…
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It should also trouble Americans that the N.S.A. could head down a similar path in this country. Indeed, there is some indication, from a top-secret 2012 document from Mr. Snowden’s leaked files that I saw last year, that it already is. The document, from Gen. Keith B. Alexander, then the director of the N.S.A., notes that the agency had been compiling records of visits to pornographic websites and proposes using that information to damage the reputations of people whom the agency considers “radicalizers” — not necessarily terrorists, but those attempting, through the use of incendiary speech, to radicalize others. (The Huffington Post has published a redacted version of the document.)

In Moscow, Mr. Snowden told me that the document reminded him of the F.B.I.’s overreach during the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when the bureau abused its powers to monitor and harass political activists. “It’s much like how the F.B.I. tried to use Martin Luther King’s infidelity to talk him into killing himself,” he said. “We said those kinds of things were inappropriate back in the ’60s. Why are we doing that now? Why are we getting involved in this again?”

It’s a question that American and Israeli citizens should be asking themselves.

James Bamford is the author of three books on the National Security Agency, including “The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret N.S.A. from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.”

By JAMES BAMFORDSEPT. 16, 2014

Find this story at 16 September 2014

© 2015 The New York Times Company

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New information indicates that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on telephone conversations by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Sources told SPIEGEL the government then used the information obtained from the calls during negotiations in the Mideast conflict.

SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel.

During the peak stage of peace talks last year, Kerry spoke regularly with high-ranking negotiating partners in the Middle East. At the time, some of these calls were not made on encrypted equipment, but instead on normal telephones, with the conversations transmitted by satellite. Intelligence agencies intercepted some of those calls. The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East.

In the current Gaza conflict, the Israelis have massively criticized Kerry, with a few ministers indirectly calling on him to withdraw from peace talks. Both the US State Department and the Israeli authorities declined to comment.

Only one week ago, Kerry flew to Israel to mediate between the conflict parties, but the Israelis brusquely rejected a draft proposal for a cease-fire. The plan reportedly didn’t include any language demanding that Hamas abandon its rocket arsenal and destroy its tunnel system. Last year, Kerry undertook intensive diplomatic efforts to seek a solution in the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but they ultimately failed. Since those talks, relations between Kerry and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been tense.

Still, there are no doubts about fundamental support for Israel on the part of the United States. On Friday, the US Congress voted to help fund Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system to the tune of $225 million (around €168 million).

Find this story at 3 August 2014

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2014