By Uriah Kriegel 

Tech Central Station 

" U.N. Procurement Scandal: Ties to Saddam and Al Qaeda

 

|  By Claudia Rosett and George Russell 

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department (search) now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (search), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June.

New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam Hussein’s old sanctions-busting networks, and to a Liechtenstein-based businessman, Engelbert Schreiber, Jr., known among other things for his ties to a figure designated by the U.N. itself as a financier of Al Qaeda (search).

Registered in New York State, with offices in New York City and Milan, IHC has been involved in possibly hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of business with the U.N. since the mid-1990s, serving both as a direct supplier and as a go-between for a wide variety of other contractors. This work has included IHC’s signing or helping to broker contracts for supplies ranging from portable generators to rations for U.N. peacekeeping troops in such trouble spots as West Africa and the Middle East.

IHC came under public scrutiny this summer, after FOX News broke the story on June 20 that IHC had maintained especially close ties with Alexander Yakovlev (search), a Russian official in the U.N. procurement department, who while handling an IHC contract with the U.N. had obtained a job for his son with the company, and had also been channeling funds to a secret offshore bank account.

Yakovlev resigned two days after the story broke. On August 8, he was accused by Paul Volcker’s U.N.-authorized probe into the Oil-for-Food scandal of taking more than $950,000 in bribes on $79 million worth of U.N. contracts. Yakovlev pleaded guilty in Manhattan Federal Court to charges of corruption, and he became a cooperating witness in the continuing federal investigation that last month led to the indictment of Vladimir Kuznetsov, head of the U.N. budget oversight committee. Kuznetsov says he is innocent.

Amid all this, one of the big mysteries has been: Who were the people who owned IHC? The answer still lies hidden behind a maze of front companies and affiliations that zig-zag from New York to Milan to the financial havens of Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. But from documents finalizing the sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, some further details can be gleaned.

Corporate board minutes of IHC, obtained by FOX News, had mentioned a “sole shareholder” of IHC. The sole shareholder, according to the June sales documents on IHC, turns out to have been an even more mysterious company called Torno S.A.H. (search), based in the financial haven of Luxembourg. And Torno, in turn, had two major shareholders who approved the sale of Torno’s 100% interest in IHC. One of these shareholders was a Milan-based businessman, Dario Fischer (search), a director of IHC since at least 1996, who at the time of the sale was chairman of the board.

The other shareholder in Torno S.A.H., who gave his proxy to Fischer to approve the sale, was a man named Engelbert Schreiber, Jr. (search) He has been linked, either directly or through father-son family business, to a number of Liechtenstein enterprises affiliated at various times from the 1970s through at least the year 2000 with Ahmed Idris Nasreddin (search), a man designated as a terrorist financier by the U.S. and U.N. shortly after Sept. 11, 2001.

A naturalized Italian citizen, Nasreddin operated for decades out of Milan and Lugano, Switzerland, both as a businessman and a member of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, some elements of which morphed into Al Qaeda. In 2002, Nasreddin, along with a number of his enterprises, landed on the U.N.’s list of individuals or entities “belonging to or affiliated with Al Qaeda.” He is now believed to be in Morocco.

The Schreiber father-son connections with Nasreddin are labyrinthine, but they are a subject familiar to trackers of terrorist money. Engelbert Schreiber, Sr. (search), served from the 1970s through the 1990s in a variety of legal capacities on a number of Nasreddin-related enterprises registered in Liechtenstein. The name of Schreiber Jr., -- who cast his proxy this June in the sale of IHC -- appeared in the year 2000 on Liechtenstein registry documents of the Wahda Charitable Foundation, which had Nasreddin on its board of directors, and in 1993 on the Liechtenstein registry documents of the Nasreddin Charitable Foundation. In both cases, Schreiber Jr. was named as liquidator, which in Liechtenstein tends to entail significant discretionary powers.

Both Schreibers, father and son, have been named among the defendants in a 9/11 lawsuit brought in 2003 by the estate of former FBI counter-terrorism expert John O’Neill, who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. The lawsuit alleges that, according to Liechstenstein official documents, one of Schreiber’s businesses, Schreiber and Zindel, was “a legal entity involved in money laundering activities on behalf of Al Qaeda.” That suit is now pending a motion to dismiss.

In a sworn declaration pertaining to this lawsuit, signed May 20, 2005, Schreiber Jr. attested that while he visited the U.S. on a number of occasions between 1988 and 1998, he has never done business either directly or through an agent in the U.S. IHC sales documents show that two days earlier, on May 18, he had given his proxy to Fischer, in Milan, to approve Torno’s sale of New York-registered IHC.

Schreiber also had a link to the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, as a legal representative of a Liechtenstein-based company called Napex, which was among those approved by the U.N. to buy oil from Saddam’s regime under the 1996-2003 relief program. A report released last year by CIA chief weapons inspector Charles Duelfer alleged that Saddam’s regime allocated oil to be sold to Napex in 2002, shortly before Saddam's government fell. There is no public evidence that this oil was actually shipped.

IHC itself turns out to have a connection with Saddam’s former networks by way of a shipping company based in Jordan, Petra Navigation Group (search), which advertises itself on its Web site as IHC’s agent in the Middle East, and has also been a registered vendor to the U.N. since mid-2003. That’s a big change from Petra Navigation’s earlier history; from 1991 to 1994, the U.S. Treasury placed Petra Navigation on the blacklist of firms blocked from doing business with the U.S. on grounds of sanctions-busting activities related to Iraq.

In 1994, Treasury lifted the block on Petra Navigation’s offices in Egypt and Jordan, but Petra Navigation’s office in Baghdad is still on Treasury’s blacklist “on account of claims involving Iraq,” according to the Treasury order maintaining the designation. Asked repeatedly by FOX News to explain these connections and circumstances, Petra Navigation did not respond.

The timing of Petra Navigation’s arrival on the U.N. Procurement Department vendor list raises questions about whether IHC might have been involved in Petra’s approach to the U.N. Petra Navigation was registered on the U.N.’s list of approved vendors on June 27, 2003. Less than a month later, on July 10, 2003, Petra signed an agreement to act as IHC’s “exclusive” agent in the Middle East, according to a notice posted as recently as this week on Petra Navigation’s English-language web site.

Both IHC and another of its business partners, Eurest Support Services (search), both now the subject of various probes, have recently disappeared from the U.N. registered vendor list. Petra Navigation is still on it.

What exactly these connections amount to, or how IHC came to occupy its special niche with the U.N. procurement department, is not clear. But it seems IHC changed character following an earlier change of ownership in the late 1980s. The company was founded in the U.S. in 1944 under the name of International Manufacturing and Equipment Company (search), or IMECO, as a small business dealing mainly in spare parts for construction and mining. In 1988, IMECO, merged with another U.S. company, Hofortech (search), to become IHC.

According to the then-owner, Ernest Ulrich, interviewed by phone recently in New York, IHC soon after the 1988 merger was bought out by a big construction company that Ulrich remembers as based in Milan. Ulrich says that under his ownership, IHC had done no business with the U.N. He says he continued working for the company for a few years after he sold it, then left in the early 1990s and has had nothing to do with it since. Ulrich does not recall any entity such as the Torno SAH in Luxembourg that had evidently acquired control by the time of this year’s sale of IHC.

There is a large international construction firm in Milan with a strikingly similar name to that of Torno S.A.H. – the Milanese company being Torno S.P.A (search). FOX News has not found any direct connection between the Torno SPA in Milan and the Torno SAH in Luxembourg. Torno S.P.A. in Milan did not respond to repeated queries, nor did IHC’s current chief executive officer, Ezio Testa, who has worked in IHC’s New York office for years.

FOX News has, however, come across one indirect link between Torno S.P.A. in Milan and IHC – via the name Angelo Simontacchi (search), a man who served in 1996 on IHC’s board of directors, according to IHC board minutes. According to another set of documents obtained by FOX News, there was an Angelo Simontacchi who, on behalf of Torno S.P.A. in Milan, signed a contract in 1984 enlisting the consulting services of another firm, Dumyntha Co. Inc, based in Lugano, Switzerland, to help bid on work for Saddam Hussein’s Ministry of Trade, related to a Baghdad trade fair in pre-sanctions Iraq. Queries to Torno SPA about Simontacchi also went unanswered.

By 1997, Simontacchi had left the IHC board, but another man with ties to Iraq had signed on as an IHC director. He was Giandomenico “Gianni” Picco (search), a veteran of many years on the U.N. staff, but at that time working in the private sector. Picco, who hails from Milan, had worked for the U.N. from 1973-1992, helping in the late 1980s to negotiate an end to the Iran-Iraq war. In 1992, just before leaving the U.N., Picco had also led a round of the early negotiations with Saddam’s regime over setting up the U.N. Oil-for-Food program in Iraq.

Later that same year, Picco left the U.N. and founded his own private consulting business, New York-based GDP Associates. According to a report by U.S. Senate investigators, Picco on a number of occasions from 1997-2003 was consulted by an American oilman doing business under Oil-for-Food, David Chalmers — who was indicted in April for allegedly paying kickbacks to Saddam’s regime. Chalmers has pleaded not guilty.

Picco’s arrival on IHC’s board came at roughly the same time that IHC appears to have first established ties to the U.N. On Dec. 22, 1996, according to the U.N., the company was registered on the U.N. Procurement Department’s list of approved vendors. That was the same month that the U.N. Oil-for-Food program began operation in Iraq.

From 1998 until at least February, 2000, Picco went on to serve as chairman of the board of IHC Services. During that time, in August 1999, he accepted an overlapping appointment by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to serve as a U.N. undersecretary-general and personal representative for Annan, starting in August, 1999, working on a project called the Dialogue of Civilizations. That project has ended, but Picco is currently a special adviser to Annan, with a contract in force until 2006.

In June of this year, as the procurement scandal broke, and shortly after IHC was sold, the U.N. quietly suspended IHC from its list of approved vendors. But that has only drawn another curtain of secrecy over the issue.

Behind this maze the question still looms: Who during IHC’s seven years doing business with the U.N. was the real beneficial owner of this mysterious company? Liechtenstein figures such as Engelbert Schreiber, Jr. make most of their living by serving as stand-ins for others in one of the world’s most important centers of false-front corporate affairs. In an attempt to discover the real owner, FOX News has queried, among others, various former and current officers of IHC, including Picco, as well as Schreiber and Petra Navigation. None of these has responded.

At the U.N. itself, a spokesman says, “Current practice is that the names of beneficial owners of companies are not requested.” That practice, adds the spokesman, “is now under review.”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173039,00.html

By Cliff Kincaid
Oct 21, 2005 

The media version of the CIA leak case is that the White House illegally revealed a CIA employee’s identity because her husband, Joseph Wilson, was an administration critic.

But former prosecutor Joseph E. diGenova says the real story is that the CIA “launched a covert operation” against the President when it sent Wilson on the mission to Africa to investigate the Iraq-uranium link. DiGenova, a former Independent Counsel who prosecuted several high-profile cases and has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, including as counsel to several Senate committees, is optimistic that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will figure it all out.

DiGenova tells this columnist, “It seems to me somewhat strange, in terms of CIA tradecraft, that if you were really attempting to protect the identity of a covert officer, why would you send her husband overseas on a mission, without a confidentiality agreement, and then allow him when he came back to the United States to write an op-ed piece in the New York Times about it.”

That mission, he explained, leads naturally to the questions: Who is this guy? And how did he get this assignment? “That’s not the way you protect the identity of a covert officer,” he said. “If it is, then [CIA director] Porter Goss is doing the right thing in cleaning house” at the agency.

If the CIA is the real villain in the case, then almost everything we have been told about the scandal by the media is wrong. What’s more, it means that the CIA, perhaps the most powerful intelligence agency in the U.S. Government, was deliberately trying to undermine the Bush Administration’s Iraq War policy. The liberals who are anxious for indictments of Bush Administration officials in this case should start paying attention to this aspect of the scandal. They may be opposed to the Iraq War, but since when is the CIA allowed to run covert operations against an elected president of the U.S.?
           
DiGenova first made his astounding comments about the Wilson affair being a covert operation against the President on the Imus in the Morning Show, carried nationally on radio and MSNBC-TV. I wondered whether these serious charges would be refuted or probed by the media. Imus, a shock jock who has spent several days grieving and joking about the death of his cat, didn’t grasp their significance. But the mainstream press didn’t seem interested, either.
           
DiGenova told me he believes there has been a “war between the White House and the CIA over intelligence” and that the agency, in the Wilson affair, “was using the sort of tactics it uses in covert actions overseas.” One has to consider the implications of this statement. It means that the CIA was using Wilson for the purpose of undermining the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy.
           
If this is the case, then one has to conclude that the CIA’s covert operation against the President was successful to a point. It generated an investigation of the White House after officials began trying to set the record straight to the press about the Wilson mission. At this point, it’s still not clear what if anything Fitzgerald has on these officials. If they’re indicted for making inconsistent statements about their discussions with one another or the press, that would seem to be a pathetically weak case. And it would not get to the heart of the issue—the CIA’s war against Bush. 
           
One of those apparently threatened with indictment, as Times reporter Judith Miller’s account of her grand jury testimony revealed, is an agency critic named Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Miller said that Libby was frustrated and angry about “selective leaking” by the CIA and other agencies to “distance themselves from what he recalled as their unequivocal prewar intelligence assessments.” Miller said Libby believed the “selective leaks” from the CIA were an attempt to “shift blame to the White House” and were part of a “perverted war” over the war in Iraq.
           
Wilson was clearly part of that war. He came back from Niger in Africa and wrote the New York Times column insisting there was no Iraqi deal to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program. In fact, however, Wlson had misrepresented his own findings, and the Senate Intelligence Committee found there was additional evidence of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium.
           
DiGenova raises serious questions about the CIA role not only in the Wilson mission but in the referral to the Justice Department that culminated in the appointment of a special prosecutor. At this point in the media feeding frenzy over the story, the issue of how the investigation started has almost been completely lost. The answer is that it came from the CIA. Acting independently and with great secrecy, the CIA contacted the Justice Department with “concern” about articles in the press that included the “disclosure” of “the identity of an employee operating under cover.” The CIA informed the Justice Department that the disclosure was “a possible violation of criminal law.” This started the chain of events that is the subject of speculative news articles almost every day.
           
The CIA’s version of its contacts with the Justice Department was contained in a 4-paragraph letter to Rep. John Conyers, ranking Democratic Member of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers and other liberal Democrats had been clamoring for the probe.
           
DiGenova doubts that the CIA had a case to begin with. He says he would like to see what sworn information was provided to the Justice Department about the status of Wilson’s CIA wife, Valerie Plame, and what “active measures” the CIA was taking to protect her identity. The implication is that her status was not classified or protected and that the agency simply used the stories about her identity to create the scandal that seems to occupy so much attention these days.
           
But if the purpose was not only to undermine the Iraq War policy but to stop the administration from reforming the agency, it hasn’t completely worked. Indeed, the Washington Post ran a long story by Dafna Linzer on October 19 about the “turmoil” in the agency as personnel either quit or are forced out by CIA Director Goss. Like so many stories about the CIA leak case, this story reflected the views of CIA bureaucrats who despise what Goss is doing and resist supervision or reform of their operations.

Members of the press do not want to be seen as too close to the Bush Administration, but acting as scribblers for the CIA bureaucracy, which failed America on 9/11, is perfectly acceptable. 

DiGenova’s comments might be dismissed as just the view of an administration defender. But his comments reflect the facts about the case that emerged when the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted an independent investigation. Wilson, who became an adviser to the Kerry for President campaign, had claimed his CIA wife had no role in recommending him for the trip, but the committee determined that was not true. Why would Wilson misrepresent the truth about her if the purpose were not to conceal the curious nature of the CIA role and its hidden agenda in his controversial mission? And who in the CIA besides his wife was behind it? 
           
In this regard, Miller’s account of her testimony to the grand jury disclosed that Fitzgerald had asked whether Libby had complained about nepotism behind the Wilson trip, a reference to the role played by Plame. This is the line of inquiry that could lead, if Fitzgerald pursues it, to unraveling the CIA “covert operation” behind the Wilson affair. There may be rogue elements at the agency who are conducting their own foreign policy, in contravention of the official foreign policy of the U.S. Government elected by the American people. Like it or not, Bush is the President and he is supposed to run the CIA, not the other way around. 
           
Fitzgerald has the opportunity to break this case wide open. Or else he can take the politically correct approach, which is popular with the press, and go after administration officials.

One irony of the case is that Miller is under strong attack by the left as an administration lackey when she didn’t even write an article at the time noting Libby’s criticisms of the CIA and the Wilson trip. Did her “other sources,” perhaps in the CIA, persuade her to drop the story? We may never know because she claims that she got Fitzgerald to agree not to question her about them. But what she did eventually report, after spending 85 days in jail, amounts to an exoneration of the Bush Administration. Libby, Karl Rove and others obviously believed they could not take on the CIA directly but had to get their story out indirectly through the press. They got burned by Miller and other journalists.             

Goss’s CIA house-cleaning, of course, has come too late to save the administration from being victimized in the Wilson/Plame affair. Some officials could get indicted because of faulty or inconsistent memories. It is also obvious that liberal journalists are so excited over possible indictments of Bush officials that they are willing to overlook the agency’s manipulation of public policy and the press. But if the CIA has been out-of-control, subverting the democratic process and undermining the president, the American people have a right to know. If Fitzgerald doesn’t blow the whistle on this, the Congress should hold public hearings and do so.

Cliff Kincaid is Editor of the AIM Report."

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27261263.shtml

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Ryan Mauro, the 19-year-old author of Death to America: The Unreported Battle of Iraq and the youngest hired geopolitical analyst in the country. He is an  analyst for Tactical Defense Concepts and Northeast Intelligence Network and is the owner of WorldThreats.com. He will be speaking at the 2006 Intelligence Summit on his work in open-source intelligence.

FP: Ryan Mauro, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

 

Mauro: Thank you for having me.

 

FP: You are quite a young fellow. It is quite exceptional for a 19-year-old to be an expert in geopolitical affairs. What got you involved in your work?

 

Mauro: Due to a visual disability of mine, I couldn't play sports as a kid. So with my time I read a lot and then around age 11 or 12, I got my first computer, which was around the time of the bombing of Iraq in December 1998. It started my interest in geopolitical affairs, even though my parents were not political. I can remember in 2000 not knowing the candidates involved in the race, but knowing the locations of all the Middle Eastern countries.

 

FP: I want to talk to you today about what your sources reveal about the Saddam-Al Qaeda connection, WMDs in Iraq under Saddam, and the Syrian-Iranian connection to the terrorism in Iraq. But first, let’s talk about the referendum in Iraq the other day and the high-voter turnout. This is quite a devastating blow to the terrorists isn’t it?

 

Mauro: This is a disaster for the terrorists. Lots of critics in the mainstream media pointed to the delays in writing the constitution and bickering, but no where else in the Arab world can such bickering occur. And you can bet that the Iraqis and the region as a whole noticed that.

 

Despite the mainstream media trying to make it seem like the Sunnis voted en bloc to oppose the referendum, that simply isn't the case. The constitution almost certainly passed by a fair margin in at least two Sunni-dominated provinces.

 

The mainstream media is overly negative and pessimistic, but even they can't hide the fact that the Sunnis are now greatly divided -- with a large portion recognizing they need to trade in their weapons for a voting ballot. In my book, I show how the mainstream media's reports immediately after World War Two, during the reconstruction of Germany, mirrors today's reporting about Iraq. Unstoppable guerrilla war, the Germans are turning towards anti-American ideologies, widespread looting, the Germans and Europeans as a whole have turned on us, etc. I think the similarities are incredible.

 

FP: OK, tell us what your intelligence sources are saying about the terrorist activity in Iraq.

 

Mauro: From open-source information and my own sources, it's clear that the survival of the insurgency depends on Syrian and Iranian support. The commanders for the Baathists, particularly Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, operate from Syria and train operatives in Aleppo. The insurgents, even if most are Iraqis, rely upon these state sponsors.
 
However, headway is being made. Iraqi TV is broadcasting statements from Iraqi officials, and even the testimony of captured insurgents proving Syria is behind all sorts of terrorist attacks--from beheadings, to car bombings, to roadside bombs. Al-Qaeda is even operating in Syria. Although I don't think the insurgency will be destroyed until the state sponsorship ends, they are losing ground. Iran doesn't have the influence over the Shiites they thought they did, and any such influence is quickly waning because the Shiites have an interest in participating in democracy.

 

While pro-Iran elements like Moqtada al-Sadr take headlines, most Shiites do not want a theocratic state. Even Iranian-backed elements like the Badr Brigades (although some members may participate in the insurgency) and the Dawa Party, which Ibrahim Jafaari is part of, do not seem to be stifling democracy. At least, if that is their intent, they aren't doing a very good job as the referendum on the constitution has just shown.
 
The Sunnis are deeply divided now. There have been clashes along the western border near al-Qaim between Baathists and Iraqis belonging to some Sunni tribes against foreign fighters filtering in from Syria. There's division between the foreign fighters and Baathists; divisions among the Baathists between those who want to participate in democracy and those that don't; and division among those that want to participate in democracy only to stifle progress (by consistently voting "no" and being uncompromising).
 
That being said, American troops and Iraqis are dying because of the inability to stop Syria and Iran, but at least some strategy seems to be developing towards Syria.

 

FP: What do you know about Saddam’s pre-war ties to Al-Qaeda?

 

Mauro: My book compiles all the evidence available that demonstrates Iraq worked with Al-Qaeda on all levels.

 

In the 1980s, Saddam regularly sponsored Palestinian groups and Iraqi intelligence even poisoned Israeli oranges that they exported to Europe, an obvious economic assault. After the Gulf War, Hasan al-Turabi, the spiritual leader of Sudan, helped bring all sorts of Islamic groups together--this included the Iraqis and Osama Bin Laden. It was a time of great reconciliation. Iraq and Iran began burying the hatchet, and Sudan became a base for cooperation.

 

The Iraqi Intelligence Service deputy director Farouq Hijazi met with Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Egyptian Islamic Jihad who would eventually become the second-in-command and "brains" of Al-Qaeda. According to Iraqi intelligence documents, Bin Laden "also requested joint operations against foreign forces." It should also be mentioned that a group now closely tied to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi began cooperation with the Iraqis at this time.
 
Iraqi intelligence documents seem to identify the Somalia ambush as the first incident of cooperation between Sudan, Iraq, and Osama Bin Laden. An Iraqi document signed by Saddam's secretary shows that the regime demanded that action was made to "hunt the Americans" in Somalia using "Arabian elements, or Asian (Muslims) or friends." The Iraqi documents list a range of groups available for participation in the operation. Muhammad Farrah Aidid, who led the ambush, even met with Iraqi intelligence in Khartoum.
 
From then on, there are periodic meetings between the Iraqis and Al-Qaeda officials. Training of Al-Qaeda operatives began in 1995 as a result of meetings between the Iraqis and Abu Hajer al-Iraqi, known as Osama Bin Laden's "best friend."  From then on, there would be a great number of meetings, participated in by many different leaders and officials of the Iraqi regime and Al-Qaeda. A stream of defectors would report cooperation between the two, as would many intelligence services.

 

Cooperation from the mid-1990s up until the war steadily increased, eventually culminating in Iraqi training of Al-Qaeda members in document forgery, bomb production, WMD development, and other activity. On more than one occasion, the Iraqis would go on alert and then an Al-Qaeda terrorist attack would be attempted. Iraq would also actively work with Al-Qaeda (and Syrian intelligence) to prepare the guerrilla war we're facing today.

 

I'm aware of new evidence that Iran played a direct role in 9/11 and sponsoring Al-Qaeda and this is not contradictory. In fact, documents brought to light by Ken Timmerman show that Imad Mughniyah of Hezbollah, high-level Iranian officials, high-level Iraqi intelligence officials and high-level Al-Qaeda operatives met in Iran in October 2001. So Bin Laden relied on several avenues of support, which made sense, as this meant he couldn't be held down by one state's interests.

 

FP: Your book also shows how Saddam moved his WMDs into other countries. Can you give us a summary of the evidence?

 

Mauro: Saddam passed his WMDs into other countries long before Operation Iraqi Freedom began. Iraq's WMDs have long been, all the way back to the 1990s, connected to other state's WMD programs. By the late 1990s, a great part of Iraq's nuclear program was based in Libya as a joint project. Iraqi WMD would be routinely moved in and out of Syria to avoid inspections.

 

So the fact that Syrian defectors, Iraqi scientists and foreign intelligence sources indicate the WMD was moved to Syria, Lebanon, Libya and Iran is not surprising at all. American satellites saw traffic moving from Iraq into Syria between January 2003 and the war's beginning, and at this time the Iraqi border guards were replaced with Iraqi intelligence. Iran has even taken in some Iraqi chemical and biological weapons equipment, just like they took in Iraqi aircraft in 1991.
 
I detail in my book how this was not some change in policy by Iraq, it was simply an expansion of previous cooperation. UN inspectors even confirmed in the 1990s this was going on. Iraqi WMD expertise has been confirmed to be in other countries as well (and Duelfer confirmed that Qusay Hussein prepared for such expertise to go to Syria). This is not at odds with Duelfer or Kay, who both confirmed there were reports of WMD going to Syria and that trucks full of "Iraqi equipment" went to Syria but we don't know the contents. Duelfer even said there was evidence Syria offered to harbor Iraqi WMD, but he couldn't confirm that they did in fact do that because the insurgency stopped his team from completing the investigation.

 

FP: How would you rate the intelligence community's performance before and during the War on Terror?

 

Mauro: I will be speaking at the 2006 Intelligence Summit on open-source intelligence. I believe that open-source intelligence has been ignored and that intelligence analysts tend to live in a bubble of classified information, ignoring media reports. There seems to be some hostility to civilian input. I am a volunteer for the Northeast Intelligence Network and in one incident, we were passing some great information along to a CIA contact that we gathered from some online communication by self-proclaimed jihadists. The CIA contact refused to pass the information along, saying that he'd then be expected from then on to provide such high-quality information.

 

We haven't been attacked in a major way on our soil for four years. To that end, we need to give our intelligence community some credit. However, at the same time, there is one other issue that bothers me. Ever since the fall of the Soviet Union, the intelligence community abandoned the idea that terrorism was state-sponsored. And they also adopted this notion that terrorists of different types won't cooperate. Common sense shows this isn't true--in Iraq we see Zarqawi working with Baathists, Shiite Iran is harboring Wahhabist Al-Qaeda, Shiite Hezbollah works with Sunni Hamas, Athiest North Korea works with radical Islamic Iran. It's basically like saying that, and I'm not trying to put them on the same level as terrorists, that Catholics and Protestants won't unite to fight gay marriage or abortion.
 
It makes no sense, and that's why I feel a lot of the different tidbits of information indicating there's state sponsors behind Al-Qaeda and terrorism in general are not tied together. I also feel that the State Department and some in the intelligence community try to rationalize our enemy too much--they can't understand why Iran would harbor Al-Qaeda, so they dismiss it. They can't understand why Syria would back the insurgency instead of receiving the benefits of cooperation with the United States, so they keep on talking.

 

FP: How about the cleavages between the terrorists? How can we help drive a deeper wedge between them and fragment their cause? The Zawahiri letter told us a lot in this department, what is your angle on it?

 

Mauro: The Zawahiri letter is just another pessimistic letter in the latest stream. Even back in February 2004, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was sending desperate letters that were blatantly pessimistic and the situation for us in Iraq was enormously worse back then.

 

I don't think we need to do anything to fragment their cause, their doing a fine job themselves. By attacking other Muslims, Zarqawi is angering Zawahiri, who points to the fact that Iran is holding many Al-Qaeda members and he must consider that before launching some attacks. By focusing attacks on Iraqis, the terrorists are making the Iraqis more and more hateful of them. Al-Qaeda is making us more and more friends, and I'm not even sure if they realize it. When the insurgents don't have an alternate platform, they're exposed for what they really are---illogical mass murderers that will never stop.

 

Yes, the Iraqis have animosity towards Coalition forces because a) we're occupying their country which never can feel good and b) we're unable to stop the insurgency. I've had several Iraqis tell me this exact question: "You've put a man on the moon, but why can't you get my electricity working? You're a superpower but how come you won't crush these insurgents?"

 

FP: You have done some impressive scholarship on Russia's "hidden hand" in Iraq. Can you give us a glimpse into this reality?

 

Mauro: Look, on the one hand, it is clear that we can cooperate with the Russians on some levels, but we need to be very wary. Don’t fool yourself, they are the ones arming Syria, Iran, and China.  In my book, I chronicle how deeply involved Russia was in helping Saddam Hussein on many levels. The Russians, as part of their geopolitical strategy and because of the oil they got from Iraq, helped him at every end.
 
Former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, a long personal friend of Saddam Hussein, went to Iraq before the war with two former Soviet generals that some suspect advised Iraq on how to fight the coming war. The highest ranking intelligence officer ever to defect from the Soviet Bloc, Ion Mihai Pacepa, has come out and said that the Soviets long had a plan entitled "Sarindar" or "Emergency Exit" for its third-world allies, originally Libya but later Iraq, to abandon evidence of their WMD activity if an invasion by Western forces was expected. Pacepa says he was personally consulted on the plan by Yuri Andropov, Yevgeny Primakov, Leonid Brezhnev, and other leaders. The aim was to rid the targeted country of Russian involvement in their WMD programs, as well as to "frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with." They aimed to discredit the West.
 
Now, John Shaw, the former head of the Pentagon's International Armament and Technology Trade Directorate has confirmed that he knew of the exact names of Russian units were used by Iraq to move conventional weapons and WMD into Syria. He said there was an agreement made in 2001 agreeing that Russia could strip Iraq of evidence of Russian involvement in illegal activity.
 
Despite the Russian cleansing operation, which I describe in much more detail in my book, documents have been found (and published by David Harrison in the Telegraph) showing that Russia passed intelligence on the activity of Western leaders to Iraq and according to one document, an agent named "Sab" even provided the Iraqis with a list of assassins for hire.

 

FP: Overall, how would you characterize this terror war? What is it really about?

 

Mauro: I disagree with the notion that this is simple an ideological war or an unwinnable war against an immoral tactic of terrorism. I see countries as being responsible for allowing the terrorist threat to live, and these countries need to be dealt with, which can be done with various methods. Terrorists can't operate if their ideology isn't bankrolled by Saudi Arabia or other host countries. They can't operate if they aren't given safe haven. They can't operate without training. The best way to win the ideological part of the war is by having democracy win in Iraq and Afghanistan. The only way to win the more military end of the war is by cutting off support from the remaining state sponsors and there's several ways to do that, short of war, that we aren't doing.

 

FP: So what must the U.S. do to win this terror war?

 
Mauro: If we are going to win this terror war, we have to look at the facts:

 

Iraqi WMD expertise and hundreds of officials are in Syria, and even some are in Iran.

 

The head of Saddam's long-range ballistic missile program is believed to be in Iran and Syrian defectors and opposition sources have identified sites where Iraqi scientists are at work inside Syria. They not only imported Iraqi regime elements but actively use them to fight against Middle Eastern democracy.

 

Iran is even cooperating with Sunnis and Baathists. I describe in my book several examples where Iranian intelligence worked alongside Baathist insurgents or even recruited Baathists to conduct attacks. Hezbollah militants have been arrested for participating in attacks not only on Americans but on Spanish soldiers as well. Iranian intelligence is even involved in attacks on Shiites. The insurgency though, is led by Baathists and they operate from Syria. Few people seem to recall when in spring 2003, the Bush Administration publicly condemned Syria for harboring these figures. After intense pressure, suddenly Coalition forces began capturing dozens of Iraqi officials on their way out of Syria. Even Qusay and Uday, and quite possibly Saddam, all stayed in Syria for a period of time after the war began.
 
A strategy against Syria seems to be forming. It seems like the Iraqis and Coalition forces are willing to sustain casualties while we wait to see the outcome of the investigation into the assassination of Rafiq Hariri. Virtually everyone following this case thinks it will result in the finger being pointed towards senior Syrian officials, including Bashar Assad. This could lead to sanctions, and it is doubtful the regime can survive if they are enforced. The question is, will elements of the Syrian Baath Party launch a coup to replace Assad? Or will there be a popular uprising? I feel a popular uprising is inevitable and the United States needs to do what it can to encourage such a development.
 
In Iran, we need to keep exposing their role in the insurgency in order to undermine their PR campaign in Iraq. And most of all, we need to support the people of Iran. Documents from Iran's Revolutionary Guards indicate that if a demonstration or revolt increased over a six-hour period in Tehran, the security forces would lose control.

 

Our allies in this War on Terror may not always have capitols or have borders. Our allies are going to be the people oppressed by the supporters of terrorism and there's no people more ready for change than the Iranians. The Bush Administration seems to be backing sanctions on Iran. There's two school of thoughts here. Either this will cause enough pain in Iran to disable the regime and provoke a popular uprising or the mullahs will have a tight enough hold to stay in power and leave their people suffering (and possibly angry at the West for implementing the sanctions instead of helping them directly).

 

It is not uncommon to hear Iraqis ask why we won't stop Syria and Iran. Because we just sit by, many question our intentions. Just like in 1991 when we let the Iraqis get massacred after encouraging them to revolt, we're standing by when they accurately feel we could do more.
 
They hate that the Coalition forces aren't crushing the terrorists, but they do hate the terrorists much, much more.

 

FP: Ryan Mauro, it was a pleasure speaking with you today. Thank you for all the wisdom you have bestowed here today.

 

Mauro: Thank you Jamie, my pleasure.

 

 

 "We Won... Again!

 By Stephen Schwartz

"We won again! For a second time, the Iraqi people proved the Western mainstream media, Islamist radicals , self-righteous and nihilistic war protestors, disaffected Democrats, and neo-isolationists wrong: the referendum on the new constitution was successful. The Sunni minority participated in the polling and those among them voting "no" were swamped by the positive outcome.

 

Given that the US has suffered under the effects of 9-11 (Clinton turned down extraditing bin Laden - see previous posts) , major business bankruptcies (due to Clinton signing law in 1994 which allowed businesses to overstate assets), three devastating hurricanes, a global war on terror that's been brewing 30 years (which Clinton did NOTHING because it wasn't popular) .... the US has done amazingly well economically under the Bush economic policies. 

BTW Clinton didn't balance the budget or create a budget surplus  .... the debt ceiling was raised so he perpetuated yet another lie. 

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"U.S. deficit falls to $319 billion

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Citing a surge in tax revenues, the federal government on Friday posted a deficit of $319 billion in fiscal 2005, down $94 billion from the previous year's record.

Administration officials said the new Treasury figures vindicated President Bush's economic policies.

"Lower taxes and pro-growth economic policies have created millions of jobs and a growing economy has swelled tax revenues over the last year," said Treasury Secretary John Snow, in a printed statement. "While deficits are never welcome, the fact that we finished [fiscal] 2005 with a much lower-than-expected deficit is encouraging news."

Fiscal 2005 ended on Sept. 30.

Critics noted that deficits are expected to persist for years to come and that spending related to Hurricane Katrina is likely to drive up red ink significantly in the current fiscal year.

The deficit was the third-highest on record in dollar terms. As a proportion of the economy, which most economists say is the most relevant measure, the Treasury Department noted that the gap was equal to 2.6% of gross domestic product, slightly above the 40-year average of 2.3%. The 2004 deficit was equal to 3.6% of GDP in fiscal 2004, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The data showed that receipts in fiscal 2005 totaled $2.154 trillion, up from $1.880 trillion the previous year. Spending also rose, with outlays totaling $2.473 trillion in fiscal 2005. Spending totaled $2.293 trillion in 2004. Read the Treasury report.

A Treasury official said the fiscal 2005 budget figures included around $4 billion in hurricane-related spending, a small chunk of the more than $60 billion approved by Congress in the immediate wake of Hurricane Katrina. Most of that spending is expected to take place in fiscal 2006.

The White House's Office of Management and Budget early this year projected the fiscal 2005 deficit would total $427 billion, which would have been a new record in dollar terms. In its last estimate, in July, OMB projected a deficit of $333 billion.

Total 2005 revenues came in $15 billion higher than the OMB's mid-session update in July, with almost $13 billion attributed to higher-than-estimated corporate income tax receipts, the Treasury Department said.

Individual income taxes were $927 billion, around $2 billion less than estimated in the mid-session report.

The size of the federal tab for the post-hurricane cleanup and rebuilding effort is yet to be determined. Some lawmakers have estimated the total bill could top $200 billion, while others have argued it's unlikely to be that high.

Regardless, analysts say the deficit is already likely to climb in fiscal 2006.

Analysts at Credit Suisse First Boston on Friday upped their estimate of the fiscal 2006 deficit by $30 billion, to $395 billion. They now see fiscal 2007 posting a deficit of $477 billion.

Lawmakers return Monday from a weeklong recess. The Senate and House are both scheduled this month to push legislation designed to wring around $35 billion in cuts in mandatory spending programs over the next five years.

The White House repeated it would seek additional cuts.

"We must also redouble our efforts to reduce unnecessary spending elsewhere in the budget to help offset recovery costs and keep us on track of meeting the president's gal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009," said Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten, in a written statement.

Top Republicans have also said they will press ahead with measures designed to extend some of Bush's first-term tax cuts, which would reduce revenues by around $70 billion over the same period.

Economist Kathleen Stephansen of Credit Suisse First Boston argued in a research note that any savings wrung out of mandatory spending programs may be outstripped by larger-than-expected costs of measures already in the pipeline, such as the Medicare prescription-drug benefit that will be fully implemented in 2006.

The Bush administration the deficit will be reduced to $260 billion by fiscal 2009, fulfilling Bush's pledge to halve the gap from the White House's preliminary estimate of a $521 billion deficit in fiscal 2004. The White House's long-term projections, however, don't account for the ongoing costs of military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan and don't estimate total hurricane-related spending.

In September, the government ran a monthly budget surplus of $35.76 billion, up 45% from the same month in 2005 and in line with the forecast from the Congressional Budget Office of $36 billion."

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  PARIS — A former French U.N. ambassador who also served as a special adviser to Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) appeared before a French judge Wednesday on charges of influence peddling and corruption of foreign officials. 

The charges against Jean-Bernard Merimee (search) are part of France's investigation into the U.N.'s Oil-for-Food investigation. Merimee, who was taken into custody on Monday, is suspected of having received kickbacks in the form of oil allocations from the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein (search), judicial officials said.

Click in the video box to the right for a report by FOX News' Eric Shawn.

Merimee is now the second senior former French diplomat under investigation. A former secretary-general for the French Foreign Ministry, Serge Boidevaix (search), was placed under investigation last month for suspected influence trafficking and corruption in connection with the case.

The United Nations is backing the French investigation.

"We have made it clear that we support the efforts of national authorities who wish to pursue the activies of their own nationals who may or may not have been in involved in the Oil-for-Food program," said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

Click here for a FOX News story on the Merimee investigation.

Magistrate Philippe Courroye, who is leading the French probe, began his work in 2002. In all, 10 French officials and business leaders are suspected of having received oil allocations as kickbacks from Saddam's regime.

Merimee spent Tuesday night in custody, officials said.

Merimee, 68, served as a special adviser to Annan from 1999 to 2002, as ambassador to Italy from 1995-98, and as France's permanent representative to the U.N. from 1991-95.

France's Foreign Ministry distanced itself Wednesday from the former diplomats.

Spokesman Jean-Baptiste Mattei said the probe has "to do with their private activities, begun after their retirement."

He said the ministry reminded them in September 2001 that as former diplomats, they bore "particular responsibilities." The letters also asked them "to make sure that their private activities concerned themselves — and in no case the government."

Merimee and Boidevaix expressed their "full agreement," Mattei said, declining to comment further on the judicial investigation.

The spokesman said he saw "no link" between French diplomats' alleged contacts with Saddam's regime and France's decision not to support the U.S.-led war in 2003 that topped the Iraqi dictator.

"The reasons for which France decided not to participate in the Iraq war were based on our conception of international law, and were amply explained by French political authorities at the time," Mattei said.

French media said alleged French links to the Oil-for-Food (search) affair could harm the country's international reputation.

"France, and its diplomacy, and thus its image, are in the firing line in the great hunt for crooks in the Oil-for-Food scandal," said the left-leaning daily Liberation in an editorial.

The Oil-for-Food program was established in 1996 to provide food, medical supplies and other humanitarian goods for millions of Iraqis trying to cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. The program ended with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Saddam manipulated the program by essentially selling oil at a reduced rate to favored buyers, who could then turn around and sell the oil at a hefty profit."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,171982,00.html

This week's announcement that Germany would be ruled by a "Grand Coalition" of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, with the CDU's Angela Merkel as chancellor, was met with relief more than celebration. After all, neither party can claim to have won a mandate to rule, and the prospects for prolonged deadlock over much-needed economic reforms are high. Moreover, the electoral difference between the two main political parties could hardly be slighter.

 

THREE SEPARATE FORCES are attacking Congressman Tom DeLay. Outwardly, these forces seem independent. On closer inspection, however, we find that all three have something in common. All have significant links to leftwing billionaire, Democrat kingmaker and convicted insider trader George Soros. (1)

The first of these attackers is Texas prosecutor Ronald Earle, who has indicted DeLay for alleged violations of state campaign finance laws. The second attacker is Republican Senator John McCain, whose Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is probing certain of DeLay's associates for their dealings with Indian casino interests. (2) The third attacker is a network of bogus "ethics watchdog" groups, activist organizations, fundraising groups and paid media hatchet-men, all working together in tight coordination to fan the flames of anti-DeLay hysteria. DeLay calls this network a "leftwing syndicate", but the term "Soros Noise Machine" may describe it more precisely.(3)

All three of DeLay's leading foes have ties to Soros and to his political machine — ties of sufficient strength as to cast doubt on their motivations.

Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle has a long history of abusing prosecutorial power in the service of political patrons. (4) His best-known patron is former Texas governor Ann Richards. (5) The Richards family is tightly bound to the Soros machine. Governor Richards was an early champion of Soros' campaign finance reform movement. Her daughter, Cecile Richards, heads America Votes, an umbrella group of leftwing get-out-the-vote organizations which the Soros machine launched and funded in 2003.(6)

Senator John McCain is allied even more closely with Soros. In 1994, Soros and a cabal of leftwing foundations undertook a $140-million crusade to pressure Congress into passing what is now known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) or, more popularly, the McCain-Feingold Act.(7)

McCain rode Soros’ coattails to media celebrity. Campaign finance reform made him the darling of Washington’s press corps. Carrying Soros’ water also brought financial benefits. Soros’ Open Society Institute has donated generously to McCain’s Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues. (8)

The Soros Noise Machine

Tom DeLay’s most dangerous and persistent foe is the network of "public interest" non-profit groups and corrupt media hacks which together constitute the Soros Noise Machine. Ronnie Earle and John McCain may or may not succeed in making their charges against DeLay stick. But, as long as Soros and his donor network keep pouring money into the Soros Noise Machine, it will continue pounding DeLay, year after year, with a ceaseless drumbeat of accusations, in the form of books, films, press releases, push polls and TV ad campaigns.

DeLay's most vocal accusers include a cluster of self-styled "ethics watchdog" groups, among which Common Cause, Democracy 21, Public Citizen, Public Campaign and The Campaign Legal Center have special prominence.(9)

All of the above-named groups have received large contributions from Soros' Open Society Institute. Common Cause has received $650,000; Democracy 21, $300,000; Public Citizen, $275,000; and Public Campaign, $1.3 million.(10) The Campaign Legal Center acknowledges on its Web site that it too has received "generous financial support" from the Open Society Institute as well as from other leftwing foundations.

In March of this year, the activist group Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) joined forces with the Public Campaign Action Fund to launch a $75,000 TV ad campaign in targeted Congressional districts, portraying Tom DeLay as corrupt.

Both partners in the anti-DeLay ad campaign have received heavy funding from Soros. CAF — a subsidiary of the Institute for America's Future (IAF) — has received more than $300,000 from Soros’ Open Society Institute. The other partner, the Public Campaign Action Fund, is an affiliate of the afore-mentioned Public Campaign, which has received $1.3 million from Soros.(11)

The propaganda din from Soros-sponsored "watchdog" groups helps feed the ever-hungry media with anti-Delay stories.

The Soros Book Machine

The Soros Noise Machine also struck through an investigative book called The Hammer: God, Money and the Rise of the Republican Congress, written by two Texas journalists named Lou Dubose and Jan Reid.

Co-author Dubose appears as a commentator in the still-unfinished documentary film The Big Buy, in which leftwing filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck chronicle Ronnie Earle’s pursuit of Tom DeLay.(12)

Dubose's and Reid's book The Hammer was published in October 2004 by Public Affairs Books of New York, an imprint of The Perseus Books Group, which in turn is owned by Perseus LLC, a merchant bank and fund management company, with offices in New York and Washington, DC.

The chairman and CEO of Perseus LLC, Frank H. Pearl, also happens to be the founder and chairman of Perseus Books. More to the point, Mr. Pearl and Mr. Soros are business partners, whose collaborations include such ventures as Perseus-Soros Management LLC, Perseus-Soros Partners LLC and Perseus-Soros Biopharmaceutical Fund.

Given the close partnership between these two men, we should hardly be surprised to learn that Mr. Pearl's Public Affairs book imprint — the same imprint which published the anti-DeLay title The Hammer — also happens to have published many books by George Soros, including The Crisis of Global Capitalism, Underwriting Democracy, George Soros on Globalization, The Bubble of American Supremacy and the forthcoming George Soros on Freedom.

Transparency

The money trail strongly suggests that George Soros is implicated in the plot to frame Tom DeLay.

Before we allow a crooked county prosecutor to unseat one of America's valued leaders, it behooves us to investigate further. We must demand of Mr. Soros what he and his hired retainers have long demanded of Tom DeLay — transparency and accountability.

No longer can we allow wealthy puppeteers to manipulate our government from the shadows. It is time to flood those shadows with light.

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http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19783

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The UN which is eyeball deep in the "Oil For Food Scandal" (The U.N.'s Spreading Bribery Scandal: Russian Ties and Global Reach  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,168591,00.html )

As usual live links embedded. 

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