....In his latest New Yorker piece [March 5, 2007], Hersh maintains he has unearthed more dirt on the Bush administration...
...Let's start with Lebanon, where the American and Saudi effort to counter Iran and its allies is in full swing. Today, the U.S. and the United Kingdom, but also much of the international community and the Muslim world, are shoring up the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which has for the past three months been facing a serious challenge to its authority from the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah. We learn from Hersh that, in the context of this struggle against Hezbollah, "representatives of the Lebanese government" have supplied weapons and money to a Palestinian Sunni extremist group called Fatah al-Islam, which allegedly broke off from its pro-Syrian parent group, Fatah al-Intifada, before moving to North Lebanon. Fatah al-Intifada was created by the Syrian regime in the early 1980s to oppose Yasser Arafat. Hersh also points out that "the largest" of the Sunni groups, Esbat al-Ansar, located in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon, in South Lebanon, "has received arms and supplies from Lebanese internal-security forces and militias associated with the Siniora government."What is Hersh's evidence for these extraordinary statements? Which "militias" is he referring to? In the ongoing Lebanese standoff, Hezbollah has used the term to describe pro-government supporters, without ever substantiating that such militias exist. The Fatah al-Islam story is based entirely on a quote by one Alistair Crooke, a former MI6 agent, who, we learn, "was told" that weapons were offered to the group, "presumably to take on Hezbollah." The passage on Esbat al-Ansar is not even sourced.
The Fatah al-Islam story is instructive, because it shows a recurring flaw in Hersh's reporting, namely his investigative paralysis when it comes to Syria. In articles past, Hersh has acted as a conduit for those defending the post-9/11 intelligence collaboration between the U.S. and Syria, and lamenting the Bush administration's subsequent isolation of Damascus in the run-up to and aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Most Lebanese analysts believe that Fatah al-Islam, far from being aided by the Lebanese government, is in fact a Syrian plant, deployed to Lebanon to be used by the Assad regime to destabilize the country and prevent formal endorsement by the Siniora government of a court to try suspects in the February 2005 assassination of the former prime minister, Rafiq Hariri. Syria is the main suspect in the crime.
Nowhere does Hersh mention two items that were all over the Beirut media: that the Lebanese authorities have arrested several of the group's members, and that the Lebanese and Palestinian security services have collaborated in opposing Fatah al-Islam in the northern Palestinian refugee camps of Nahr al-Bared and Baddawi. As Tony Badran observes in his Across the Bay blog, the mainstream Palestinian leadership in Lebanon has criticized the entry of such groups into the country, fearing this will provoke tension between Palestinians and the Lebanese state. Fatah al-Islam's leader, Abu Khaled al-Amleh, is said to be under house arrest in Damascus, but for a number of Lebanese analysts who closely follow Palestinian affairs the story is bogus, designed only to provide Syria with plausible deniability.... --------------- "A Muckraker on the Wane? Does the New Yorker actually edit Seymour Hersh?," by Michael Young, March 1, 2007, Reason Online, http://www.reason.com/news/show/118922.html
Speaking of Alistair Crooke:
JUNE 2002 : (GAZA : EU SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE MIDEAST ALISTAIR CROOKE MEETS WITH HAMAS DELEGATION -- See SPAIN, MIGUEL MORATINOS) In June 2002, Alistair Crooke, then security adviser of Miguel Moratinos, then EU special envoy to the Middle East (and currently foreign minister of Spain), met secretly in Gaza with a Hamas delegation headed by the organization’s then-leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. ------------- "Alistair Crooke's Meeting with Sheikh Yassin," By P. David Hornik, FrontPageMagazine.com , April 15, 2005NOVEMBER 2002 : (IDF CAPTURES TRANSCRIPT OF JUNE 2002 ALISTAIR CROOKE MEETING WITH HAMAS DELEGATION IN GAZA) The veil of secrecy was broken, however, when the Israel Defense Forces seized a transcript of the meeting in November 2002 at the compound of the Palestinian Authority's Preventive Security Service in Gaza. The transcript has now been made available by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, based near Tel Aviv.
The meeting sheds light on why Europe finds it so hard to label the likes of Hamas or Hizbullah as terror organizations. Crooke’s groveling behavior makes clearer than ever why Israel seeks to limit European involvement in its conflict or diplomacy with the Arabs; while the terrorists express their animosity toward Israel and America and belief that Europe is their ally.
Along with Yassin, present at the encounter, which was arranged via the Preventive Security Service, were Abd al-Aziz al-Rantisi, then a senior Hamas member in Gaza (assassinated by Israel in March 2004 a few weeks after Yassin’s assassination); Sheikh Isma‘il Abu Shanab, then a Hamas political leader in the Palestinian Authority (assassinated in August 2003); and Mahmoud al-Zahar, also a senior Hamas member in Gaza (who survived an assassination attempt a few weeks after Abu Shanab was killed)
Crooke began by explaining: “We are currently in an extremely grave situation. Europe doesn’t know what President Bush is going to say in his speech to the Middle East. . . . There are people in the American administration like [Secretary of State] Powell, Armitage [Powell’s deputy], and George Tenet [then director of the CIA], who believe that progress is impossible without a political horizon, and there are people in the Pentagon opposed to any serious American involvement. . . . I would like to hear your opinion and position [because] Hamas is close to people on the ground [and] is an important political factor [, and] we are . . . currently entering a difficult time . . . in the entire region. The main problem is the Israeli occupation.” ...--------- "Alistair Crooke's Meeting with Sheikh Yassin," By P. David Hornik, FrontPageMagazine.com , April 15, 2005
Crook was recalled:
2003 : (ALISTAIR CROOKE IS RECALLED FROM JERUSALEM BY THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE) The first time Alistair Crooke burst upon public consciousness was in 2003. Crooke, who had been an MI6 agent for 30 years and was then assigned as a security adviser to the EU's special envoy to the Middle East, Miguel Moratinos, was recalled from Jerusalem by the British Foreign Office against his will. He had been involved in repeated attempts to draw Hamas, Islamic jihad and other terrorist groups into negotiations.-------- April 19, 2005 The crooked response to terror http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001143.html as retrieved on Jan 21, 2007 10:30:50 GMT.What's this? Some sort of rogue diplomacy?
MARCH 2005 : (ALISTAIR CROOKE ORGANIZES ANOTHER SECRET MEETING WITH HAMAS, HEZBOLLAH, EMB, JAMAAT AL ISLAMY AND "SOME AMERICANS") the Sunday Times [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1543330,00.html] reported that Mr Crooke had organised another secret meeting, this time between Hamas, Hezbollah, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Pakistan’s Jamiat-i-Islami and -- wait for it -- the Americans. ------------- April 19, 2005 The crooked response to terror http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001143.html as retrieved on Jan 21, 2007 10:30:50 GMT.
Americans? Who would participate in this?
IN an underground car park in the centre of Beirut, a bald man emerged from his Mercedes, surrounded by a phalanx of armed bodyguards.Hmm . Frederic Hof & Bobby Muller... who are they?
As deputy leader of Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, Musa Abu Marzouk is a potential target for assassination by Israel. Yet there to greet him last week was Alistair Crooke, a veteran of nearly 30 years with MI6 and until recently a European Union negotiator with the Palestinians.
As they made their way upstairs, they were joined by several Americans, some of them former members of the CIA and others with links to the US administration. They had gathered in the Lebanese capital for an initiative launched by Crooke: the first talks for more than 10 years between senior Americans and radical groups denounced as terrorists by Washington.
....Among the US delegates was Frederic Hof, staff director of a 2001 commission on the Palestinian intifada led by George Mitchell, a former senator. They also included Bobby Muller, a Vietnam veteran and joint winner of the 1997 Nobel peace prize for his campaign against landmines.
Israel was not slow to condemn the meeting, accusing the American delegates of “extreme naivety” in imagining that they could draw groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah on to a peaceful path. “It does no good to appease or negotiate with such terrorists,” a government spokesman said.
Crooke said the Americans were there to listen and not to give advice, and emphasised that they did not represent “anyone but themselves”. The results of the two-day meeting would be passed to the Bush administration, he said. ...------------- "Ex-MI6 man starts US-Hamas talks," by Stephen Grey in Beirut, From The Sunday Times [UK] March 27, 2005 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article438334.ece
* Frederic Hof, a partner in Armitage Associates L.C., left government in 1993 as a member of the Senior Executive Service of the United States. ... www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/67line.htmland
* Bobby Muller is the President of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. ... Raised in a New York City suburb, Bobby Muller's commission with the US ... www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/AuthorBiography.aspx?AuthorId=426 - 61k -
Bobby Mueller has more than a few screws loose.
Goodfellow’s Bedfellows: Who’s in Bed with the Washington Post
Alongside such groups, the Winter/Spring 1977 issue of the Coalition’s Action Alert publication listed the IRC [Indochina Resource Center, an antiwar lobbying group that worked with VVAW and Tom Hayden and Jane Fonda's Indochina Peace Campaign] as a member of the CNFMP. Later in 1977 the IRC changed its name to the Southeast Asia Resource Center and moved its headquarters from Washington, DC to Berkeley, California. After David Truong’s arrest for espionage in January 1978 it also spawned a spinoff called the Indochina Project, directed by Gary Porter and Washington Post Cambodia correspondent Elizabeth Becker, which lasted from 1978 until 1980.
The Southeast Asia Resource Center and Indochina Project continued to work with the CNFMP coalition, which included a project called the Indochina Working Group. Don Luce remained associated with the Southeast Asia Resource Center as its director. Gary Porter, who had been in Washington, DC testifying to Congress on behalf of the IRC, stayed there to join IPS when the IRC moved. Meanwhile William Goodfellow had already cofounded a new IPS spinoff linked to the CNFMP and Indochina Project: the Center for International Policy.
The War Called Peace: The Soviet Peace Offensive
Center for International Policy (CIP)-based at 120 Maryland Avenue, NE, Washington, D. C. 20002 [202/ 544-4666] is one of the projects spun-off from the Institute for Policy Studies in the mid-1970s and operating under the tax-exempt aegis of the Fund for Peace (FFP). . .At present, one-half of CIP's 1982 $220,000 budget is derived from a $100,000 grant from the Reynolds Foundation and targeted to its Indochina Project, a successor to the former Indochina Resource Center which dissolved at the time Vietnamese spy David Truong was arrested. The project is completing a study of "yellow rain"-Soviet nerve gas supplied to Vietnamese forces and used in Cambodia. But CIP's goal, according to the Zill report, is "to heal the wounds of war and to develop greater understanding between the U.S. and Southeast Asia; to promote an end to the economic embargo; and to work toward diplomatic recognition." CIP argues that a lack of U.S. recognition and aid to Vietnam, Laos and Vietnam-occupied Cambodia is "pushing these countries into the arms of the Soviet Union."
From Robert O. Muller, "U.S. Blocks Solution to Vietnam Refugee Crisis", New York Times, Oct 23, 1991. pg. A.22:
ROBERT O. MULLER Washington, Oct. 11, 1991 The writer is executive director of the Indochina Project, a Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation program.
From Barbara Crossette, "Veterans To Help Mine-Field Victims", The New York Times, Apr 19, 1992. pg. A.22
While the United States Government considers how much it can afford to contribute to the rebuilding of Cambodia, a Vietnam veterans' organization is already moving into the devastated country with a people-to-people aid project that is designed to restore mobility and productivity to some of the most tragic victims of war, the amputees.
The organization, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, hopes to raise the money by selling T-shirts and greeting cards decorated with reproductions of paintings and graphics by Indochinese artists whose work has not been seen in the United States. The foundation calls the effort the Indochina Project. SNIP
"There just isn't a whole lot of concern for Indochina out there," said Robert O. Muller, executive director of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation. After several visits to the Cambodian capital, Mr. Muller decided that helping people handicapped by war might be something disabled American veterans could do best. He himself must use a wheelchair after being wounded in Vietnam in 1969.
Last year the foundation, created 12 years ago as a money-raising organization for the Vietnam Veterans of America, took over a struggling Cambodian rehabilitation clinic at Kien Khleang. Mr. Muller brought in three specialists from India who could teach Cambodians to make an aluminum and rubber prosthesis that costs only $35 to $50.
In Washington, the group brought in Dan Walsh, whose Liberation Graphics company, based in Alexandria, Va., has generated United States markets for Nicaraguan and Palestinian art and political posters from the former Soviet Union.
In February, the veterans' group received a license from the Treasury Department to import paintings and graphics from Vietnam although the United States maintains a near-total embargo on Vietnamese products. SNIP
The veterans' foundation will sell the T-shirts for $16 and the cards for $12 a dozen by mail order or through galleries. A brochure can be obtained from the Indochina Project, 2001 S Street N.W., Suite 470, Washington D.C. 20009.
meeting with terrorists...check this out