Posted on 11/11/2007 11:57:59 PM PST by HAL9000
Excerpt -
Washington - A Pakistani businessman suspected of playing a role in the 2002 brutal killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl died earlier this year, shortly after being interrogated by US and Pakistani intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.Pearl, a Karachi-based correspondent for the Journal, was kidnapped on January 23 2002, and killed execution-style shortly after.
The newspaper said Karachi businessman Saud Memon became a key suspect in the case because he owned a nursery where Pearl had been held captive.
Citing an unnamed senior US law enforcement official, the report said Memon was interrogated by both US and Pakistani intelligence services.
The interrogation produced information that Memon was helping al-Qaeda develop anthrax strains, the newspaper said.
~ snip ~
(Excerpt) Read more at news24.com ...
We live in the twenty-first century. The savages' choices are clear ................... FRegards
My handle was PokerBuddy. I asked the Admin for all my posts to be deleted. He obliged after being annoyed by several requests. That was in the days of the erudite Great Satan when anthrax threads were robust and entertaining. He argued the Administration was concealing that Saddam was responsible for the anthrax and that the Hatfill litigation was an elaborate intelligence disinformation campaign involving the cooperation of the federal judge, etc. Now all we get are pictures of silica particles.
I’ve also recently asked that all my ZacandPook posts be deleted. More than once. Never got any response. If anyone could help, if any of you have any pull with Admin — on the grounds that I’m a consumer advocate who has said he’d never let his daughter marry a Freeper —it would be much appreciated. Accuse me of “boll weevil” approach in defeating advocacy of an Iraq anthrax theory. You folks should be allowed to trumpet an Atta-meeting-in-Prague theory or a KSM-was-not-KSM theory or a Bin-Laden-is-dead theory without being nagged that US-based infrastructure of supporters of blind sheik Abdel-Rahman kicked your ass again with the anthrax mailings just like they did with 1998 embassy bombings, Cole, 9/11.
I’ve never even sat at a Thanksgiving dinner table in over a quarter century with a Freeper. Do you folks call it Thanksgiving or do you call it “Wiping out an indigenous people day”?
The only thing LM’s Iraq theory had going for it was a really interesting candidate for processor — an assistant professor who was expert with the anthrax simulant BT from whose dorm room a reporting room was made about WTC by one of the convicted plotters to a charity in Pakistan.
But she made the familiar mistake of assuming that because someone was Iraqi he was a supporter of Saddam rather than a Salafist.
Heck, I’ve even argued that the US sold a couple hundred combat configured helicopters to Iraq during the height of the Iraq-Iran war that were equipped with quick release pesticide release mechanisms and that the cover story that they were for aerial spraying missions by the Agriculture Ministry.
Now that comes pretty close to suggesting that the US armed Iraq and that it is pretty galling that Freeper types then use Saddam’s chemical weapons as reason to invade a sovereign people (after it was the US that armed Iraq). Even sold them the anthrax from ATCC.
Given that PokerBuddy was deleted and I’m PokerBuddy, that is reason enough under the very fair rules for zotting out ZacandPook. I mean this is your club and you should be able to enforce the very reasonable protocols lest Zawahiri think that it will be easy to destroy Western Civilization.
errata
“who was expert with the anthrax simulant BT from whose dorm room a reporting room was made about WTC by one of the convicted plotters to a charity in Pakistan.” -—> should read that a “reporting call” was made.
See LM’s book “1000 Years For Revenge.”
” cover story that they were for aerial spraying missions by the Agriculture Ministry.” -—> should read “ cover story that they were for aerial spraying missions by the Agriculture Ministry was crock.”
Heck, I’m in favor of peaceful resolution of disputes and that has got to be against the Freeper Credo. How are you folks going to have us invade Iran if you have these pesky peace-loving types in your midst?
The more important reason for zotting all posts is “loose lips sink ships.” I’ve told who was responsible for the anthrax mailings in great detail over the years which only serves to undermine national security potentially (just as does, by the way, discussing methods of weaponizing anthrax as is commonly done on this forum). Very bad idea and it should absolutely not be allowed by Admin.
Oh, and did I mention that the Al Qaeda infiltrator Al-Timimi had a high security clearance for government work, a letter commendation from the White House and worked briefly for Andrew Card while he was at DOT?
And you wonder why Gonzales never briefed my favorite Senator Leahy?
A Soviet spy who was honored posthumously for infiltrating the top-secret Manhattan Project reportedly worked for a time in Oak Ridge during the war years and his co-workers are still doubting he was a spy.
Even after Bin Laden and Mullar Omar award Al-Timimi the Ibn-Tamiyah Medal of Honor some Freepers and Woolsey will be arguing Saddam is behind the anthrax.
Soviet spy reportedly worked in Oak Ridge
By Frank Munger (Contact)
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/nov/13/soviet-spy-reportedly-worked-in-oak-ridge/
I wonder if Mr. Woolsey recalls the example of Aldrich Ames?
I appreciate you have taken all this time to respond, but...you really sound like being in front of a computer engaging in this type of discourse is not the most healthy use of your time.
Nothing personal...but you sound a little bit on the obsessive side, and not completely coherent. Are you surprised that people might ask to have you banned? Besides the obvious trespass of registering under a new name after being banned, you have the sound of someone who might drive halfway across the country to find someone who offended you in a post.
I really don’t think these forums are well suited to you. Not saying it to be mean, just my opinion.
No. You’re mistaken.
That’s Ed’s theory, which is stupid as his theory that it is a FACT that a 1st Grader wrote the letters.
I’m just doggedly trying to expose Al-Timimi’s infiltration of US biodefense.
Pakistan scientist Rauf Ahmad, who the WP reports I first identified publicly, was a dead end in his helping infiltrating UK biodefense for Zawahiri. But Ali Al-Timimi’s infiltration was not.
If you don’t think it a worthwhile goal, then we just disagree.
Suspect and A Setback In Al-Qaeda Anthrax Case - washingtonpost.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2006/10/30/AR2006103001250_pf.html
I have been trying to get Admin to delete the posts for a variety of reasons to include copyright, and he hasn’t obliged. Book publishers don’t kindly to knowing that the material has been posted already and so I’m willing to get creative in having the ZacandPooks posts zotted. And, separately, if you don’t appreciate that the posts by Ed and TrebleRebel about weaponizing anthrax are unsound policy, then we disagree on that also.
Perhaps you could weigh in to Admin with the very point you make as I only want the material removed which seems a reasonable request given the myriad of reasons.
It had to do with your comments about not letting your daughter date Freepers, and "...I’ve never even sat at a Thanksgiving dinner table in over a quarter century with a Freeper. Do you folks call it Thanksgiving or do you call it “Wiping out an indigenous people day"?..."
Given that FR has only been around since the mid-nineties, I can see why you haven't been able to reach the quarter century Freepless Thanksgiving milestone.
But the comment about wiping out indigenious people was just bizzare. Perhaps that is your personality and the way you jump from topic to topic, but I think most people read that and think that, in some way, you might not be firing on all cylinders.
That, and your constant stated desire to have your posts pulled...to me it presents the mental image of someone speaking in a seemingly irrational fashion, then clamping their hands over their mouth as if they didn't want it to escape. Personally, I try not to write anything online that I wouldn't want posted on the wall outside my office.
Again, nothing personal (since I don't know you personally) but your online persona comes across as odd, to be polite.
Here is an example of a jailer sneaking the prisoner a treat and obtaining information by showing kindness from today’s Fox News.
WASHINGTON - After confessing to slaughtering 180,000 Kurds and plotting to build a doomsday nuke, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was so upset when his FBI interrogator left for home that he cried like a baby.
FBI Special Agent George Piro whipped out two Cuban Cohibas - Saddam’s favorite cigar - and they smoked on the patio behind his cell at Baghdad’s airport.
“When we were saying bye, he started to tear up,” Piro recalled in the new book “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race to Stop the Next Attack.”
The self-effacing G-man was hardly surprised - he had spent nearly a year carefully becoming Saddam’s best friend in a successful ploy to extract confessions from the notorious brute.
Piro’s inside account of spending up to seven hours a day, every day, for eight months with Saddam is revealed in the new book by journalist Ronald Kessler.
Piro, then 36, began grilling Saddam in early 2004.
Instead of bright lights, loud music or waterboarding, the Beirut-born Arabic speaker - who immigrated to the U.S. as a teen - built a rapport with the dictator nabbed in a spider hole. He treated him with respect and took care of his every need.
On his birthday, Piro showed Saddam news clippings showing that Iraqis no longer celebrated the date. But then the agent gave him baklava Piro’s Lebanese mother sent him in Baghdad.
According to your article he was extracting confessions so Saddam could be convicted and hung. Anyway, it looks like your attempt to insult Freepers and get banned again has failed.
National Interest (published by the Nixon Center)
Torture Is Not A Republican Value
http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=16118
“But I do not know a single working-level intelligence or law enforcement officer who approves of torture as an interrogation tool. Torture produces bad information. As every intelligence officer or police officer who has had access to information believed to be produced through harsh interrogation knows, the information that comes from physical abuse is unreliable and frequently false. Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was rendered to the Egyptians, who tortured him. He told interrogators that Al-Qaeda had sent operatives to Iraq for training in biological and chemical weapons, false information which was included in Colin Powell’s unfortunate address to the UN Security Council in February 2003.
...
Even the Israelis no longer use torture—they have learned that they can obtain much more from their prisoners by treating them well and using normal police-style questioning. Ironically, using coercive interrogation methods can make stopping terrorists more problematic, as many foreign intelligence services and police forces are reluctant to share information with any agency that is known to torture.
Finally, if the United States accepts that torture is a permissible practice it opens the door to the same or worse treatment for U.S. soldiers and diplomats who fall into the hands of terrorists. That is a door that should not be opened.
Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism expert and presently serves as the Francis Walsingham Fellow for the American Conservative Defense Alliance.”
Ron Kessler’s new TERROR WATCH: INSIDE THE DESPERATE RACE TO STOP THE NEXT ATTACK (2007) book (see New York Post article today) says this about anthrax:
“in the initial questioning, KSM provided vital information on al Qaeda’s efforts to secure biological weapons. He admitted having met three individuals involved in the organization’s efforts to produce anthrax, a deadly biological agent. One of the individuals he identified as a terrorist named Yazid Sufaat.
Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, the two hijackers who slipped into the United States in July 2001, were known by the intelligence community to have attended an Al Qaeda summit in January 2000 at Sufaat’s apartment at Kuala Lumpur.
KSM apparently believed that the United States already knew about Sufaat, because Sufaat had been captured and taken into foreign custody before KSM’s arrest. [Sufaat was captured in December 2001].
If fact, U.S. intelligence did not now about Sufaat’s role in al Qaeda’s anthrax program.”
Information from Sufaat then helped lead to the capture of his two principal assistants in the anthrax program, preventing al Qaeda from developing anthrax for attacks against the United States.” (p. 59).
His assistants were Barq and Wahdan. One was Egyptian and one was Sudanese.
The passage refers to KSM’s capture. He was arrested, I believe, on March 1, 2003. I believe the subject of the article posted in this thread was arrested on March 7, 2003. It seems that KSM’s capture may have led to Memon’s capture, perhaps through a traced call.
Sufaat was captured in December 2001, news of the arrest was public in March 2002, the FBI first briefly interviewed him in November 2002, focusing their questions on how he knew Zacarias Moussaoui.
You are kidding, right? Do you have any idea what these people have done to our soldiers that they HAVE captured?
I am talking about the ones we have found DEAD after the fact? Do you know what these beasts do to people? Do you have any IDEA what our troops found in Fallujah when they took down the city? People chained to walls and left to STARVE to death. People WITH THEIR LEGS cut off in a way so they wouldn't die right away, left to die in a slow, excruciating fashion.
Our Marines found execution buildings that had written SCHEDULES...what time to bring the victim in...how long it would take to film...how long to cut off their heads...how long to assemble the video and what time to leave the premises to get the tape out for the next news cycle.
You think that ANY forbearance shown to these subhuman scumbags is going to result in BETTER or MORE HUMANE treatment of any captive they manage to obtain? What kind of absolute IDIOCY is that? Do you think that perhaps they might saw off the heads of their captives faster or something to make it hurt less?
Do you, or any of these supposedly erudite boneheads think that if we play nice games of patty-cake, make them our buddies and feed them orange glazed chicken with rice pilaf, that they are going to change their ways?
What planet do you and those people live on?
On effective interrogation technique, I recommend Kessler’s book to you at page 96-97. Forgiving certain excesses, such as his mention of Mayfield’s fingerprint being an “identical match” (as opposed to, as I recall, a 6-point match), it is very compelling how the media unfairly belittles what are actually CIA and FBI successes. For example, summarizing familiar issues from the media, he argues that the media does not appreciate the changes over the 6 years and how the FBI focuses on intelligence gathering instead of arrests. That is, they view the suspect as an intelligence gathering platform. For example, I found persuasive his discussion of NSA intercepts (versus FISA).
An ardent defender of the FBI, he adopts the FBI approach of interrogation and argues that the torture is counterproductive and leads to bad intel. He explains the FBI agent’s approach to interrogating Saddam at some length.
So I take the FBI’s view of interrogation and you disagree. Okay.
In an undergrad ethics 101 course I was auditing, I was aghast that many people around me were cheating. I certainly wasn’t about to cheat because others did. And the fact that these others were not influenced by my not cheating didn’t even enter into the equation. Under the logic of your argument, your cheating would have been justified by your classmate’s cheating.
The maltreatment of American soldiers in Iraq, top American generals would argue, is precisely why it is so important not to lose the high moral ground. A top FBI official in the Kessler book makes the point that much of the war against terror is a battle for hearts and minds. Posts such as those that began this thread or the post that began a duplicate thread “I hope he died in pain” are the reason O’Reilly dismisses FreeRepublic as [whatever he said]. Those conservatives who understand and take to heart the points made in Kessler’s book should be heard about immoderate bloodthirsty remarks on FreeRepublic which only undermines respect for the US. As the fellow from the Nixon Center points out, Ronald Reagan would never have favored torture. Bush doesn’t favor torture. Gonzales didn’t favor torture. I have no idea why you favor torture.
As for waterboarding, which some define as “torture” and some do not, perhaps you can explain why pharmaceuticals are not effective. As I don’t know enough about the subject to know. Why doesn’t amytal or brevital work better than any coercive technique?
As the FBI interrogator of Saddam explains in his book, the key to effective interrogation is preparation — by mastery of the subject (knowing the person’s life) you are able to better able to detect deception and inconsistencies. Of course, the scotch whiskey helped too.
Two agents, one taking notes, with a secret recording being made, is the norm. And it is the preparation that makes for a good or bad interrogation.
The interrogation of anthrax lab technician Sufaat in November 2002 by the two FBI agents, in my opinion, and based on the defense counsel’s description, was not effective interrogation. Appropriate intelligence analysis would have led to the conclusion by early 2002 that he was involved in Ayman’s anthrax weaponization program.
I agree with the head of the FBI’s international counterterrorism who says on this issue of treatment of prisoners:
“While the FBI likes to think it takes the moral high ground, ‘That’s not really the driving reason,’ Cummings [who heads the FBI’s international counterterrorism operations] says. ‘The driving reason’s, frankly, because we think we are much more effective as an organization working that way.” Kessler, “The Terrorist Watch: Inside the Desperate Race To Stop The Next Attack” (2007)
And I agree with Michael Morrell, associate deputy director of the CIA, who says “a big factor is ‘winning hearts and minds.’”
Kessler explains: “the CIA believed that actual torture involving infliction of pain produced bad information.” Kessler quotes David Manners, former station chief in Jordan: “Beating a guy up doesn’t work. He will tell you anything to stop the pain. We never used such tactics.” (p. 91)
You can be darn sure, although I do not have a quote handy, that both Judge Mukasey and FBI Director Mueller think torture is both morally repugnant and ineffective.
The electrical shocks used by the Egyptians on hundreds of fundamentalists after Sadat’s assassination has hardened many fundamentalists into jihadis on a quarter-century quest for revenge.
I note that half your posts are to yourself.
I now understand why.
Special Agent Piro (at the time, a G-14) who interrogated Saddam — who had his mom send Saddam pastries upon Saddam’s birthday — upon his return to Washington was put in charge of protecting the nation’s capital from an Al Qaeda attack.” (p. 158)
“When Piro had asked his mother to send him her Lebanese cookies and pastries, he had not told her why. After he returned home, he told her in August 2004 that the goodies were for Saddam for his birthday.”
“Playfully, she gave her son the FBI agent a hard smack on the back of his head.” (p.159)
You disagree on this issue of torture, rlmorel, with Agent Piro. You are entitled to your opinion as are other posters. And I’m entitled to agree with Agent Piro and commend his work.
Kessler quotes Robert Mueller on the issue of infiltration (which is my interest in that it relates to anthrax weaponization):
“Al Qaeda is tremendously patient and thinks nothing about taking years to infiltrate persons in and finding the right personnel and opportunity to undertake an attack. And we cannot become complacent, because you look around the world, and whether it’s London or Madrid or Bali or recently Casablanca or Algiers, attacks are taking place.” (p. 222)
Although Kessler makes a strong argument about the unfair treatment the FBI has received in the press, his argument would be sounder if he didn’t try to dismiss the $170 computer debacle in a single sentence as a mere “toe stub.”
It’s not at all Director Mueller’s style not to take responsibility for mistakes.
errata -
that should be “$170 million computer debacle,” leaving the FBI without that envisioned improvement in its computer capability.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.