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FROM DEBKA INTELLIGENCE FILES Digital moles in White House? Terrorists had top-secret presidential codes Editor's note: DEBKAfile's electronic news publication is a news-cum-analysis live wire, online round the clock seven days a week. A weekly edition,DEBKA-Net-Weekly, is now available through WorldNetDaily.com. Drawing on DEBKAfile's unique sources, analytical talents and forward-looking insights, it is presented as a compact, intelligence-angled weekly package. It is available as a direct e-mail feed or via the Internet. © 2001 WorldNetDaily.com "Air Force One is next," read the message received by the U.S. Secret Service at 9 a.m. Sept. 11, after two hijacked planes struck ...

DEKAfile's military sources provide details of the Iraqi troop movements. The force Iraq started massing some weeks ago contains 3-4 of its 7 crack Republican Guard Divisions, which are stationed in the center of the country opposite the Jordanian frontier. They are fanned out across a 300 sq.km stretch of land, bounded by four bases:H-3 Main, H-3 Southwest, and H-3 Northwest-350 km. west of Baghdad-and the big al Baghdadi ground and air base west of town of Rutbah.The Iraqi high command reckons the first American strike, carried out under the cover of bombing and missile barrage, will try and capture...

In the past few weeks, Hezbollah at the behest of Iran and Syria has commandeered the 7,800-foot Mt. Sannine, a strategic asset capable of determining the outcome of the next war, as DEBKA-Net Weekly 356 revealed. Radar-guided missile positions and an early warning station have since been deployed on its summit, which are capable of monitoring and threatening US Sixth Fleet movements in the eastern Mediterranean and Israel Air Force flights. This development was serious enough for Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak to repeat three times in as many days that the IDF is keeping a close watch on events...

IDF intelligence chief: Saudis are asking Pakistan to deploy nuclear warheads on the Arabian peninsula

Pakistan makes two nuclear weapons available to Saudi Arabia DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 30, 2010, 9:41 AM (GMT+02:00) With an eye on the nuclear arms race led by its neighbor Iran, Saudi Arabia has arranged to have available for its use two Pakistani nuclear bombs or guided missile warheads, debkafile's military and intelligence sources reveal. They are most probably held in Pakistan's nuclear air base at Kamra in the northern district of Attock. Pakistan has already sent the desert kingdom its latest version of the Ghauri-II missile after extending its range to 2,300 kilometers. Those missiles are tucked away in...

US Navy, Air Force, ground, intelligence and special forces units based at home, in Europe and the Middle East, took part this week in a special exercise ordered by President Barack Obama to simulate reactions to a potential US-Israel strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, debkafile’s exclusive military and Washington sources report. Sunday, April 22, the US also transferred a number of advanced stealth F-22 fighter bombers, believed to be from the 302nd Fighter Squadron 302, from the joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska to the Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. According to our sources, the F-22 jets...

The conclusion reached by DEBKAfile’s counterterrorism and intelligence sources is that the brothers were double agents, hired by US and Saudi intelligence to penetrate the Wahhabi jihadist networks which, helped by Saudi financial institutions, had spread across the restive Russian Caucasian. Instead, the two former Chechens betrayed their mission and went secretly over to the radical Islamist networks.

Although it is not known yet who is responsible for Monday’s heinous bombings at the Boston Marathon that killed three and injured more than 100 people, a source within Iranian intelligence services told WND the Islamic regime was behind them and to look for trails through Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The source said the bombs were planted near the end of the race so that the horrific images of the blasts would be captured by all the media there and be replayed over and over throughout the world. A senior commander of the Islamic regime had warned less than two...

FBI Special Agent Richard Deslauriers told reporters Tuesday, April 16, that the probe had no leads 18 hours after two explosions blew up at the annual Boston Marathon’s finishing line, killing three people and injuring 176 – 17 critically. debkafile’s counterterrorism sources can disclose however that the investigation has in fact homed in on a suspected terror cell of three Saudi nationals, very possibly tied to Al Qaeda. The flat they share in the Revere, Massachusetts, near Boston, was searched after the questioning of one of the suspects, a Saudi student, who was hospitalized with badly burned hands. One of...

As the Syrian civil way went into its third year this week, signs abounded of increasing readiness for the use of chemical weapons on both sides of the conflict. Since February, the US, Israel, Ankara and Amman have been aware of Bashar Assad’s resolve to override their threats and resort to deadly poison gas if the rebels closed in on the heart of Damascus. On April 3, an unnamed Syrian army officer made the warning clear. By continuing to advancie on Damascus, he said, “the rebels and their leaders” were assured of “certain death.” At about the same time, debkafile...

Friday, April 12, the US raised its nuclear alert status to DEFCON 3, Condition Yellow (out of 5 levels), stating “There are currently no imminent nuclear threats against the United States at this time, however the situation is considered fluid and can change rapidly.” Many believe that North Korea will launch their test missile on or about April 15. Japan has instructed its armed forces to shoot down any North Korean missile that heads toward its territory. Contrary to comments from the White House Thursday, the Pentagon reported that “North Korea probably has nuclear weapons that can be mounted on...

The Russian emergency ministry said Monday, Jan. 21 that it is sending two planes to Beirut to evacuate 100 Russians from Syria - the first such effort since the uprising against Bashar Assad began in March 2011. Moscow also announced contingency plans to lift 30,000 Russian nationals from the embattled country. This evacuation of Russian nationals starting Tuesday was decided after the Syrian high command received orders from President Assad to organize mobile armored strike groups with massive fire power for a big push to run the rebel forces out of the towns, villages and areas they have captured, mostly...

Israeli officials have been holding talks in Jordan with Syrian opposition officials “in advance of a possible Israeli-U.S. operation in Syria to protect the Golan Heights,” Western intelligence sources reported Tuesday, Jan. 1. There was no further information about this operation or how rebel commanders were involved in military plans “to protect the Golan Heights.” Altogether, the goings-on on the Israeli and Jordanian borders with Syria are in deep hush. But European intelligence sources, some of them French and Russian, reveal nightly clashes taking place between US, Jordanian, Israeli special forces and Syrian rebels, on the one hand, and Syrian...

The Syrian crisis unbelievably took another turn for the worse Saturday, Dec. 29: After making no headway with Bashar Assad in Damascus, the UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was told in no uncertain terms by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow: “There is no possibility of persuading Syrian ruler Bashar Assad to leave Syria.” As they spoke, a record 400 people died in hostilities in the country. The burnt remains of hundreds of people slaughtered by the army were discovered in a Homs district. And Syrian opposition leaders have repeatedly preconditioned their acceptance of the Russian invitation to talks...

Sources close to French Defense Ministry reported Friday, Dec. 7, that a Western-Arab military intervention against the Assad regime is due to begin shortly with the participation of the US, France, Britain, Turkey, Jordan and other anti-Assad Arab nations. (reference is to Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar’s special forces) Our military sources add that the French aircraft carrier Charles De Gaulle carrying a complement of marines is deployed in the Mediterranean, having joined the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group and at least five British warships which are also carrying a large marine force. In the second and third weeks...

Western intelligence officers were seeing new signs of activity at Syrian chemical weapons sites, they told the New York Times Sunday, Dec. 2. “It’s in some ways similar to what they’ve done before,” a senior U.S. intelligence official said. “But they’re doing some things that suggest they intend to use the weapons. It’s not just moving stuff around. These are different kind of activities.” DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources add rumors were flying around the region Saturday night and Sunday morning that President Bashar Assad had been killed or fled Syria. Neither is confirmed. However, the rebels have in recent days...

Tuesday, the Middle East military spotlight swung around from Gaza to the Syrian war with steps for the start of US and NATO intervention in that conflict. Without spelling this out, a game changer began unfolding when a joint Turkish-NATO team began making a site survey for the deployment of Patriot Air and Missile Defense Systems, manned by American military teams. The team, said the statement from Ankara, will assess where to station the missiles and how many would be needed. It reiterated that the system is “for defensive purposes” and not for a “no-fly zone or offensive operations,” but...

SIGNS OF AN APPROACHING FULL-SCALE WAR INCREASED FRIDAY AFTERNOON, NOV. 16. THE IDF OBTAINED GOVERNMENT APPROVAL TO CALL UP RESERVES IN ADDITION TO THE 30,000 ALREADY APPROVED. HOSPITALS ACROSS THE COUNTRY WERE PLACED ON EMERGENCY FOOTING AND PATIENTS NOT NEEDING URGENT TREATMENT WERE SENT HOME. THE SECURITY CABINET MEETS URGENTLY AFTER 550 PALESTINIAN ROCKETS FIRED IN THREE DAYS. JERUSALEM AND TEL AVIV WERE TARGETED FRIDAY BY HAMAS WHICH REPORTED FIRING TWO “HOMEMADE M-75” MISSILES EACH AT ISRAEL’S CAPITAL AND COMMERCIAL HUB. THERE WERE NO CASUALTIES IN EITHER TOWN. THE JERUSALEM SIREN WAS HEARD IN OUTLYING TOWNS MEVASERET ZION, MOTZA ILIT,...

As the US tenses for more al Qaeda terror in Africa in the wake of the murders of Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, our researchers have turned up information indicating that the ambassador was running members of the group which murdered him as penetration agents against al Qaeda...

US President Barack Obama has ordered the US Navy and Air Force to accelerate preparations for a limited air offensive against the Assad regime and the imposition of no-fly zones over Syria, DEBKAfile reports. Their mission will be to knock out Assad's central regime and military command centers so as to shake regime stability and restrict Syrian army and air force activity for subduing rebel action and wreaking violence on civilian populations.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days. In this regard, debkafile’s military sources disclose that Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert) -...

When International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Yukiya Amano declared Friday, May 4, that “Parchin (the suspected site of nuclear-related explosion tests) is the priority and we start with that,” he may have missed the boat. As he spoke, Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak said it was possible that Iran was already putting in place the infrastructure for building a nuclear bomb in 60 days. In this regard, debkafile’s military sources disclose that Iran had by the end of 2009 early 2012 completed the construction of a new chain of underground facilities deep inside the Dasht e-Kavir (Great Salt Desert)...

While President Obama's supporters hailed his withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq as the end of the war in the middle east, behind the scenes the Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran. In addition to some 50,000 U.S. troops currently in the region waiting for orders (apparently they won't be home by this past Christmas as was originally promised), Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama is deploying an additional 50,000 soldiers to be ready for 'any contingency' by March:...

Thousands of US troops began descending on Israel this week. Senior US military sources told debkafile Friday, Jan. 6 that many would be staying up to the end of the year as part of the US-IDF deployment in readiness for a military engagement with Iran and its possible escalation into a regional conflict. They will be joined by a US aircraft carrier. The warplanes on its decks will fly missions with Israeli Air Force jets. The 9,000 US servicemen gathering in Israel in the coming weeks are mostly airmen, missile interceptor teams, marines, seamen, technicians and intelligence officers. The incoming...

Germany has put its Air Force Tornado warplanes in intensive training for a possible attack on targets in Iran, after taking part last week in a joint drill with the Israeli Air Force and other NATO members at the Italian Decimomannu air base on Sardinia. Iran, for its part, is gearing up for a gloves-off reprisal against its attackers...

Our Washington sources report that Saturday night, May 7, President Barack Obama gave the Pakistani government, army and intelligence an ultimatum: Cooperate in the capture of the three wanted men or else we shall pump more American soldiers into Pakistan to take up the pursuit with or without your permission. US intelligence is convinced that Omer, Zawahiri and al-Adal have joined forces and are plotting a revenge attack on America dramatic enough to outdo the psychological impact of the bin Laden killing.

Senior Libyan rebel “officers” sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report. Word of the capture touched off a scramble in Tehran and among the terrorist groups it sponsors to get hold of their first unconventional weapons. According to our sources, the rebels offloaded at least 2,000 artillery shells carrying mustard gas and 1,200 nerve gas shells for cash payment amounting to several million dollars. US and Israeli intelligence...

Senior Libyan rebel “officers” sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi, debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report. Tehran threw its support behind the anti-Qaddafi rebels because of this unique opportunity to get hold of the Libyan ruler’s stock of poison gas after it fell into opposition hands and arm Hizballah and Hamas with unconventional weapons without Iran being implicated in the transaction. The first authoritative American source to refer to a Hizballah presence in...

The repeated delays and contradictory statements about the two Iranian warships' transit of the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean is accounted for by a standoff between the Iranian flotilla and five US warships deployed in recent days at the waterway's southern entrance and along its course, debkafile's sources disclose. Thursday night, Feb. 17, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise, escorted by missile cruiser USS Leyte Gulf and the fast supply ship USNS Arctic, headed south through the canal. By Friday morning, they were through and taking up position opposite the Kharg cruiser and Alvand missile destroyer of the Iranian Navy's 12th...

Headline only.

Sarkozy: North Korea to supply Iran with nuclear bomb components DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 2, 2010 In quiet contacts, French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns that North Korea is using its crisis with the South to cover up its planned transfer to Iran of nuclear weapons systems parts and extra-fast centrifuges for uranium enrichment that could help Tehran go into bomb production in the first half of 2011, debkafile's intelligence sources report. The French president has asked pro-Western Persian Gulf leaders to try and persuade President Barack Obama to take strong military action against North Korea – not just because of...

Tokyo presses for military response to North Korean attack DEBKAfile Exclusive Report Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan called President Barak Obama urgently in the wake of the North Korean artillery attack on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island near the Yellow Sea border early Tuesday, Nov. 23 and demanded a US-South Korean-Japanese military reprisal. Two South Korean marines were killed and 17 injured in the attack. He also demanded that the UN Security Council be convened immediately on the crisis. He put the same demands to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in another call. Naoto Kan then ordered his ministers to prepare...

debkafile's intelligence sources report from Iran that dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program. Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus. One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning...

Intelligence sources report from Iran that dozens of Russian nuclear engineers, technicians and contractors are hurriedly departing Iran for home since local intelligence authorities began rounding up their compatriots as suspects of planting the Stuxnet malworm into their nuclear program. Among them are the Russian personnel who built Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr which Tehran admits has been damaged by the virus. One of the Russian nuclear staffers, questioned in Moscow Sunday, Oct. 3 by Western sources, confirmed that many of his Russian colleagues had decided to leave with their families after team members were detained for questioning at...

Tehran this week secretly appealed to a number of computer security experts in West and East Europe with offers of handsome fees for consultations on ways to exorcize the Stuxnet worm spreading havoc through the computer networks and administrative software of its most important industrial complexes and military command centers. debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report Iran turned for outside help after local computer experts failed to remove the destructive virus. None of the foreign experts has so far come forward because Tehran refuses to provide precise information on the sensitive centers and systems under attack and give the visiting...

On Aug. 6, the US Defense Security Cooperation Agency, DSCA, informed Congress of the sale to Israel of 60 million gallons of unleaded gasoline, 284 million gallons of JP-8 aviation jet fuel and 100 million gallons of diesel fuel at an estimated cost of two billion dollars. The date is significant, intelligence sources find. Ten days earlier, the Japanese tanker M.Star was attacked in Omani waters of the Strait of Hormuz with 200,000 tons of oil. Although American experts who examined the vessel, they never attributed the damage to sabotage by Iran or al Qaeda, despite the latter's claim of...

debkafile's military sources report that Washington has posted a third carrier opposite Iran's shores. It is supported by amphibious assault ships and up to 4,000 Navy and Marine Corps personnel, bringing the total US strength in these waters to three carriers and 10,000 combat personnel. The USS Nassau (LHA-4) Amphibious Ready Group 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, tasked with supporting the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet area of operations, is cruising around the Bab al-Mandeb Straits where the Gulf of Aden flows into the Red Sea. Its presence there accounts for Tehran announcing Sunday, June 27 that its "aid ship for Gaza" had...

This warning, along with an announcement that Iran would join the world's nuclear club within a month, raised the pitch of Iranian anti-US rhetoric to a new high Tuesday, April 13, as 47 world leaders gathered in Washington for President Barack Obama's Nuclear Security Summit. The statement published by Kayhan said: "If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America's main cities." For the first time, DEBKAfile's military sources report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States.

"Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile's Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it. However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary...

Evidence has reached debkafile's counter-terror sources that the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 which crashed after takeoff from Beirut on January 25, killing all 92 aboard, was blown up in mid-air. This was an al-Qaeda operation timed for one month to the day after its failed attempt to destroy an American Northwest airliner bound for Detroit. It is becoming clear that either a bomb was planted on the Ethiopian flight with a timer or a passenger acted as suicide bomber. Western security agencies in the Middle East involved in combating al Qaeda believe that its planners picked on the Ethiopian flight...

Arab voices were fanning Middle East war fever Wednesday night, Feb. 3. DEBKAfile's military sources report that not only are Syrian leaders beating war drums - Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem said in Damascus: "Israelis, do not test the power of Syria since you know the war will move into your cities" - but Egyptian military sources have put out information purporting to outline Israel's preparations to strike Iran.

Like the Nigerian bomber Umar Abdulmutallab, the Saudi minister's would-be assassin, Abdullah Hassan Tali' al-Asiri (al Qaeda-styled Abu Khair), who did not survive the attack, used explosives hidden in his underwear to fool the prince's bodyguards. He won an audience with the prince by posing as an informant, the same trick used by the Taliban suicide bomber to penetrate a US base and kill 7 CIA agents and a US soldier last month. This emerging prototype was missed by US intelligence experts. Obama, who has called a meeting of US security agency chiefs for Tuesday, Jan. 5, cannot expect serious...

It is business as usual in relations between the West and the Islamic Republic of Iran. A US official explained this indifference to a US daily by saying that Obama was engaged in a difficult balancing act: "The aim of any sanctions is to force the Tehran government to the negotiating table, rather than to punish it for either its apparent push to develop a nuclear weapon or its treatment of its people." In Tehran, this attitude is taken as a free hand to carry on as before, our Iranian sources report.

The horrendous sight of another Western airline crashing over the US on Christmas Day 2009 was averted by a fluke and the resourcefulness of passengers and cabin crew - not by the anti-terror agencies' high-tech gadgets, vast budgets and airport security measures. Six months ago, Umar Faroul Abdulmuttallab's father warned the US Embassy in Lagos of his 23-year old son's alarming extremist Muslim activities. Yet he was granted a US visa. On Dec. 25, he sailed through Schiphol international airport with 80 grams of PETN (pentaervthritol) high explosive and liquid detonators in his underpants after landing from Lagos and caught...

Two Pakistani officers were taken hostage and a lieutenant general was among the eight soldiers killed in a gunfight with presumed Taliban gunmen following their audacious invasion of the Pakistan’s army headquarters in capital Saturday, Oct. 10. Pakistani paramilitary forces battled a second group of insurgents for control of a road tunnel which connects the towns of Darra Adam Khel and Kohat in the North West Frontier Province. On May 15, DEBKA-Net-Weekly exclusively named Kohat and Kamra as keys to Pakistan’s nuclear and missile arsenals and reported that Kohat’s fall to the Taliban would cut Islamabad and the Pakistani high...

BEIRUT: Western intelligence sources in the Middle East have disclosed to DEBKAfile that a special unit of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), commissioned by Hizbullah's special security apparatus earlier this year, was responsible for the massive discovery of alleged Israel spy rings in Lebanon in recent months with the help of "super-efficient" detection systems. The sources told DEBKAfile last week that the FSB and Hizbullah have "amassed quantities of undisclosed data" on Israel's clandestine operations in Lebanon and "are holding it in reserve in order to leak spectacular discoveries as and when it suits their purpose." "This disclosure, if...

DEBKAfile's military sources reveal that Iran is in the last stages of construction of a nuclear test site in the Kavir Lut desert between Tehran and its eastern border with Afghanistan. The work is managed by the Iranian experts invited to attend North Korea's nuclear test this year. (DEBKAfile reported June 27 that Iran has opened the way for a nuclear test.) Two of the diplomats attached to the UN nuclear watchdog agency in Vienna confirmed to the Associated Press Saturday July 18 that Iran now has the means to test a weapon within six months. One said more specifically:...

DEBKAfile's military sources confirm that the Army of Islam, the Palestinian al Qaeda cell in Gaza tried to assassinate former US president Jimmy Carter by planting a 200-kilo bomb in the path of his exit through the Erez crossing after he held sympathetic talks with its Hamas rulers. The Israeli military watched the huge device from across the border. Carter had a lucky escape; the bomb would have been lethal had it exploded. The UN security guards escorting Carter must have been forewarned and his life saved. Hamas sappers defused the device but later denied it was there. Nevertheless, some...

DEBKAfile's military sources disclose that Sunday night, May 31, Hamas commanders in Damascus and Gaza ordered all West Bank cells to unleash a terrorist assault on the West Bank with bomb cars, roadside bombs, snipers and missiles. They were told to set their sights on all Palestinian Authority officials including Mahmoud Abbas as well as taking aim at Israeli cities north of Tel Aviv. Our sources quote the Hamas directive as saying: "From tonight, you must go into action without delay against every Palestinian/Israel target within reach, using all the resources prepared in recent months." The directive continues: "There are...

Moscow sources disclose that the Russian, Iranian and Damascus governments have cooked up a scheme to get around Vladimir Putin's undertaking as president to refrain from selling Iran and Syria advanced Iskander-M cruise missiles: The transaction will go through Belarus. Sources in Moscow and Minsk confirmed Sunday, May 3, that the Iskander-M sale to Tehran has gone through and negotiations are ongoing for Iran and Syria for another transaction: the sale of Russia's advanced S-300 anti-air anti-missile multi-targeting shield systems as well. Western military sources have reported in the past that Israel cannot afford to allow this high-performance hardware enter...