...This week, a (self-declared) important section of the ‘intelligence community’ will be meeting in St. Petersburg, Florida for its second “International Intelligence Summit,” where they will be discussing how best to fight their Global War on Terror. Among them will be a motley crew of Iranian exiles, Israeli intelligence officials, repentent Islamists, neocon warriors and scions of the British secret service...
Much of the intelligence that led us all to war with Iraq came from a tiny nucleus of emigres, think tank hacks and well placed officials. They in turn can be traced back to public relations agents that they hold in common. Benador Associates, for example, handles the public schedules of Michael Ledeen (the U.S.’ number one Iran hawk), Richard Perle (the U.S.’ number one Iraq hawk), Kenneth Timmerman (Mr “it’ll be a cakewalk”), Charles Krauthammer, Iraqi emigre Kanan Makiya, Israeli neocon Natan Sharansky and ex CIA chief turned uber-hawk James Woolsey.
Benador Associates is part of a wider cluster of institutions that has expanded since 2001 and exerts a key influence in pushing the U.S. media and political system towards war. The Orwellian-named Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, for example which was founded in 2002 under the wing of those who around the same time resurrected the Cold War-era Committee on the Present Danger, which then gathered together extremist hawks to confront Soviet Russia. The FDD has found no trouble attracting funds to wage war against today’s ‘terror’ – attracting $250,000 from healthcare magnate Leonard Abramson and a staggering $1.5 million from Ameriquest capital, a firm widely reviled as a predatory mortgage lender. With that small fortune, the FDD has thrust itself into the media spotlight (averaging seven media appearances by its staff per day in the international media in 2007) and onto American university campuses “at a time when college campuses are under the sway of apologists for terrorism” according to its non-profit tax return.
A number of workhorses have emerged from this stable, not least of them is the Intelligence Summit – a meeting point for likeminded hawks, gadflies and corporate representatives with a common passion for war...
...[An] attendee at 2006’s Intelligence Summit was Iranian exile Alireza Jafarzadeh, who has made the extraordinary transition from refugee to being “a FOX News Channel Foreign Affairs Analyst,” while for twelve years he served as “the chief congressional liaison and media spokesperson for the US representative office of Iran’s parliament in exile, the National Council of Resistance of Iran.” In 2003, it was information supplied by Jafarzadeh and his associates which fuelled the drive by the Bush administration to seek stringent sanctions on the Iranian government and, eventually, to a UN security council referral. Information supplied by Jafarzadeh – that Iran was running a secret nuclear weapons programme parallel to its nuclear energy activities – generated sufficient anxiety on the council to make the demand for the cessation of uranium enrichment a shoo-in.
However, as the Guardian reported on 22 February, much of this information has proved incorrect. Julian Borger reported that “most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.”
Along with distributing alarmist (and plain wrong) assertions about the nuclear intentions of the Islamic Republic, Jafarzadeh’s group has made many more accusations that haven’t led anywhere but have increased international attention on Iran. In 2003, for example, the National Council of Resistance in Iran released information claiming that Iran was producing a massive variety of bioweapons ranging from smallpox microbial bombs to anthrax spores and typhoid fever. More recently, he has claimed that the Iranian government has taken 32,000 mercenaries onto its payroll to cause havoc in Iran (an assertion he made on Lou Dobbs’ CNN slot). Whenever these assertions are made, and proved either overblown or plain wrong, Jafarzadeh’s credibility seems to have survived intact...
The ranks of its speakers are full of connections to neoconservative think-tanks and the more shadowy arms of the military industrial complex. Pauline Neville-Jones, for example, who serves as Chairman of QinetiQ – a growing contractor of government intelligence functions as well as a high-tech weapons manufacturer – sits on the advisory board alongside Wayne Simmons, an ex U.S. Navy Special operative in a unit “That was not only prepared to die for America, but they were prepared to go anywhere and do virtually anything when ordered.” Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch (a virulently Islamophobic website), sits alongside General Tom McInerny – who runs an advocacy group for the defense industry called Government Reform Through Technology and lobbies to “introduce advanced technology into the public sector.”
But it’s not just industry shills and talking heads who are involved in the Summit. As its website describes, “The Summit recruits active serving members of the government like Harold Rhode, from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, to serve as neutral moderators.” That would be the same Harold Rhode who cut a swathe of destruction through the Department of Defense after his appointment as deputy to arch-neocon Douglas Feith in 2002. According to Sourcewatch, working at the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, “Rhode helped Feith lay down the law about the department’s new anti-Iraq, and broadly anti-Arab, orientation” while he also “worked with Feith to purge career Defense officials who weren’t sufficiently enthusiastic about the muscular anti-Iraq crusade that Paul D. Wolfowitz and Feith wanted.” Second rate analysts were pulled from “nooks and crannies of the Defense Intelligence Agency and other places” according to a former Pentagon analyst, as Rhode reshaped the strategic wing of the Pentagon ready for war with Iraq.
It would be certainly interesting to know what aspects of the summit were taken on board by members of the U.S. government and intelligence services.
I wonder what Harold Rhode and any other “neutral moderators” made of the contribution of private security consultant Ali Koknar who suggested that governments deploy “pseudo-terrorists” to flush out the bad guys. As Koknar began his speech in 2006, “Deployment of ‘Pseudo Terrorists’ (PTs) is recommended as a ‘quick and dirty’ solution to the lingering absence of actionable human intelligence, which the US counterterrorism effort suffers from” before adding that “In places such as Central Iraq, Eastern Afghanistan, and Northwest Pakistan, where traditional intelligence sources are scarce due to local support for the terrorist cause, PTs may prove to be a vital factor in providing the actionable intelligence necessary for the United States to successfully counter terrorists.”
This year’s Intelligence Summit, which will be taking place in St Petersburg, Florida from 5-7 March, promises to be paranoid feast. With Dr Jill Dekker expounding upon the “Syrian Biological Weapons Threat and Regional Security,” Alireza Jafarzadeh speaking about “Iranian Nuclear Facilities” and the bloodthirsty Wayne Simmons explaining “Joint Agency Operations” there should be something for everybody. Jafarzadeh and ex-CIA analyst Clare Lopez will be double teaming on the “Iranian threat” – Lopez in her role as the head of the estimable Iran Policy Committee, the primary lobby group pushing for the U.S. to ‘unleash’ the mystical terrorists in the Mujaheddin e-Khalq upon the Iranian people.
It also promises to be a laboratory for new foreign interventions. As the website of the summit notes, “Particular emphasis is placed on inviting émigré groups from soon to be emerging democracies.” That’s a quaint way of describing plans for regime change.
So it’s no surprise that if you name a hawk from the push towards Baghdad – Perle, Rhode, Kenneth Timmermann – they’re on board and networking. It would be interesting to know which Bush administration officials will be the “neutral moderators” this time around, but alas that’s “not for distribution” and who knows, which plucky Democrats will be wandering the exhibition hall? As the attendee brochure promises, there is the chance to “mingle with congressional leaders” and “top CEOs.” Who could resist?
You can scoff at the colorful, absurd, and disturbing imagery I've sprinkled throughout this post, but far more disturbing is the system that selects for people who regard such imagery and action as heroic and desirable sincerely believing they can use their Rings of Power to accomplish good.
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