World Terrorism: News, History and Research Of A Changing World #6 Disinformation, Inc.

[Is this why we have so much hate of the U.S. in South America???]

http://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-263-cia-records/rg-263-report.html

April, 2001
Historical Analysis of 20 Name Files from CIA Records

By Dr. Richard Breitman, Professor of History,
American University, IWG Director of Historical Research

The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998 initiated a search for information in classified American government records about the Holocaust and other war crimes committed by Nazi Germany or its allies. A second target of this law was information about any individuals with Nazi pasts who may have been used as intelligence sources and protected against prosecution after World War II. The Central Intelligence Agency has now located and declassified files on a substantial number of individuals suspected of involvement in criminal activity for the Nazi regime or its allies and satellites. In other cases a CIA file on an individual contains evidence about criminal activity by others. Nineteen CIA "name files" being opened today represent the first significant products of this search within CIA records. One additional CIA file discussed here (the Hitler file) was opened in December 2000.

The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG) ultimately expects to receive several hundred Nazi-related files from the CIA. The CIA's release of these records is welcome and newsworthy. Absent the Disclosure Act, it is highly unlikely that many of these records would have been declassified and opened for many years. Some still sensitive information has been redacted in accordance with the exemptions in the Act. The CIA has permitted cleared members of the IWG staff and staff historians to review these redactions. These redactions are generally very narrow, and in the view of the IWG's historians the resulting documents are clear enough to be used for historical analysis.

What is a CIA name file? Each name file is a collection of diverse information on an individual. Documents in the file may include published materials, declassified documents available elsewhere, interrogations, confidential reports from agents or informants, internal communications about these individuals, and CIA analytical reports. In some cases CIA records contain documents originating with other American agencies, but the CIA file is not a complete collection of all American records (or even all CIA records) on the individual. Although the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a predecessor of the CIA, CIA name files often do not contain relevant OSS records, many of which are among the holdings of the National Archives.

Whose Files Are Now Declassified? The CIA and the IWG have tackled the most prominent individuals first: Adolf Hitler, Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Mueller, and Kurt Waldheim. Another fourteen CIA name files involve individuals who served Nazi Germany, survived the war, were suspected of involvement in criminal Nazi or Nazi intelligence activities or had evidence of such activity by others, and came to the attention of American intelligence agencies after May 1945. Nine of the fourteen persons in this second tier had some contact with the West German intelligence organization established by General Reinhard Gehlen, which was initially under the control of the U. S. Army and was taken over in 1949 by the CIA. Later Gehlen's organization became the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), West Germany's foreign intelligence agency.

Some of the fourteen individuals (in the second tier) tried to use their intelligence expertise, acquired in Nazi Germany and often directed against the Soviet Union, to ingratiate themselves with the Western powers. But they had different backgrounds, they pursued different strategies, and they were not all acceptable to, or accepted by, Western government authorities. Analysis of these CIA records inevitably involves study of individual cases. Some of the better additions to the historical record come from the files of little known individuals, who are discussed later in this report.

Adolf Hitler: The CIA's file on Hitler contains only one significant new document: an assessment of Hitler's personality by Dr. Ferdinand Sauerbruch, a famous German surgeon, who spoke candidly with a man named Hans Bie about Hitler's growing megalomania during 1937. According to Bie (who gave this information to the OSS in 1944), Sauerbruch predicted in 1937 that Hitler would end up as the craziest criminal the world had ever seen.

Klaus Barbie: The CIA's name file on Klaus Barbie, the Gestapo official widely known as the "Butcher of Lyon," includes copies of already known wartime German documents, substantial numbers of U. S. Army and State Department documents, copies of press stories, congressional inquiries, material about a Justice Department study of Barbie, and internal investigations by the Army and the CIA itself over alleged ties to Barbie. The basic picture emerging from these documents is widely known: the Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. Army protected Barbie after the war against French prosecution and helped him reach South America.

As Barbie's escape gained notoriety in the 1980s, the CIA undertook a detailed examination of whether it might somehow be indirectly linked to Barbie. There were some concerns. Bolivian intelligence had used Barbie as a source, and some Bolivian officials may have passed on some of his information to local CIA officials. Also, a CIC unit was connected with, or served as a front for, the Office of Policy Coordination, which became part of the CIA in 1950. Someone looking back at events before 1950 might mistakenly think that Barbie had a connection with a CIA unit. Finally, Barbie (like Mengele), had some contact in South America with Friedrich (Federico) Schwend. Schwend had specialized during World War II in distributing forged British pounds to help finance intelligence operations of the Reich Security Main Office. Inmates at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp had been forced to produce such notes-a now well-known Nazi enterprise codenamed Operation Bernhard. But Schwend also claimed that he had worked for the Office of Strategic Services in 1945. (Barbie and Schwend, according to one CIA source, were involved in a plot to assassinate Victor Paz Estenssoro, leftist president of Bolivia who was ousted and forced into exile in Peru.) Despite such issues, the CIA continued to express confidence publicly and privately that the agency had no direct connection with Barbie.

Adolf Eichmann: Adolf Eichmann's file divulges little about the man and his career during the Third Reich. Documents in this file illustrate how the CIA and its predecessor agencies (the Strategic Services Unit and the Central Intelligence Group), as well as the Army's CIC, went about investigating rumors about Eichmann's whereabouts, mainly from hearsay and unsubstantiated assertions. The CIA did not seriously enter the chase for Eichmann until late 1959, but Israeli agents located him in Argentina first and spirited him out to Israel for trial. The file contains a vituperative diatribe by an unnamed CIA agent or source against former Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor, termed a "comsymp" or dupe because he publicly advocated that Eichmann be tried by an international tribunal, rather than an Israeli court.
See Detailed Report.

Josef Mengele: The CIA's file on Auschwitz doctor Josef Mengele consists of published articles about Mengele and his various hideouts in South America, mistaken sightings of him, information of unknown reliability about his associates in Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil, and much information about events in 1984-85, when his tracks finally emerged.

Mengele had escaped from Europe to Paraguay, lived there and elsewhere in South America from 1951 on, obtaining Paraguayan citizenship in 1959 under his own name. After some rumors of his existence in Paraguay emerged, he left the country and lived mostly in Brazil under the name of Wolfgang Gearhart. He suffered a stroke while swimming at a Sao Paolo beach in 1979. When it was discovered in 1985 that a Brazilian German couple named Bossert had befriended Mengele, the Bosserts revealed how Mengele had died in 1979 and where he was buried-at a town named Embu outside Sao Paolo. The Sao Paolo police launched a forensic investigation of Mengele's remains, which turned out to be severely flawed. First the West Germans and then the U. S. and Israeli governments sent teams of investigators to Sao Paolo to provide expert assistance. All the teams of government experts concluded that Mengele had died in Sao Paolo in 1979.

The most significant document in the Mengele file is a CIA response, dated 18 July 1965, to a Justice Department request for a trace on Dr. Theodor Binder for relevant material about Mengele. Binder headed the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Pucallpa, Peru. The CIA's file on Binder contained a document from the State Department to the U. S. Secret Service regarding the circulation of counterfeit U. S. currency in Peru. A number of former Nazi officials were allegedly involved, including some who worked for an organization of former SS officers (ODESSA) in South America. Schwend (see discussion of him in the Barbie listing) was sighted with Mengele in Uruguay in 1962. Another undated document indicates that some of Mengele's contacts in South America may have been involved in narcotics traffic.

Nothing in the file indicates any CIA relationship with Mengele at any time. Nothing in the file suggests that the CIA had exact knowledge of Mengele's various hideouts. The CIA did start a search in 1972, concluding that Mengele had been in Paraguay, where he had enjoyed the protection of the Paraguayan government, and had vanished in 1960-he was rumored to have gone to Brazil. A major U. S. investigation of Mengele's whereabouts began only in 1985-six years after his death.

Heinrich Mueller: The CIA name file on Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, mostly contains results of an internal investigation in 1970-71 to determine whether Mueller had died in Berlin at the end of World War II or had survived, with key German police files, in Soviet hands. Initially, the CIA assumed that Mueller had died in 1945, but the Israeli capture of Adolf Eichmann in hiding in 1960 fanned speculation that Mueller might also be alive. A defector from Polish intelligence who had specialized in the whereabouts of Nazi war criminals mentioned in 1960 hearsay evidence that the Soviets had recruited Mueller in 1945. This defector (unnamed in the file, but, in the opinion of the historians, almost certainly Michal Goleniewski) recalled that the Soviets had revealed to Polish intelligence their success in recruiting Gestapo Mueller. West Germany's BND thought it unlikely that Mueller was in the USSR, but possible that he was alive elsewhere. In 1961 German police placed Mueller's surviving family members in Munich under close surveillance. This surveillance, in which the United States cooperated, produced nothing, nor did the attempt to locate Mueller's body by following a variety of stories from those who claimed to have buried Mueller's dead body in 1945.

Following another defection by an East European intelligence officer in 1970, the CIA focused on Soviet disinformation activities and turned to the Mueller case in that connection. The CIA's counterintelligence staff (CI), headed by James Angleton, believed that the Soviets, through disinformation, had tried in the mid 1960s to mislead world public opinion and divide the West. After a year of study the CI Staff came up with two possibilities: "There are strong indications but no proof that Mueller collaborated with [the KGB]. There are also strong indications but no proof that Mueller died in the Berlin holocaust, or some time thereafter, perhaps after collaborating with the Soviets." The CI Staff requested a deeper CIA investigation to help choose between these two hypotheses, but it appears that this requested was denied. The file ends in December 1971 with the circulation of this 40-page CI report. Angleton and his deputies left the CIA in December 1974. If Heinrich Mueller had survived and worked for, or was used by, American intelligence after the war, surely the CIA would have known of it or could have learned of it, and the agency would not have expended so much effort investigating the fate of Gestapo Mueller.
See Detailed Report.

Kurt Waldheim: The CIA name file on Kurt Waldheim, former secretary general of the United Nations, summarizes a number of accusations that Waldheim had made false statements about his military career during World War II, and it furnishes statements from individuals who had served with Waldheim in the Balkans or Greece. It also contains information about Waldheim gathered by the CIA during the period 1954-1986, including inquiries to apparent Soviet defectors as to whether the USSR had incriminating information about Waldheim. The thrust of these documents suggests that the CIA itself did not have a great deal of information or knowledge about Waldheim's Nazi past.

A second volume of photocopies contains material from CIA records during the period 1986-1997, when Waldheim's career in Nazi Germany was under great scrutiny from academic researchers and the media. One highlight of this volume is an admission that the CIA did have a document obtained from a foreign government (presumably Britain) in April 1945 indicating Waldheim's status as an intelligence officer within the German army group operating in the Balkans. In a letter to Congressman Stephen Solarz in 1988 the CIA's director of congressional affairs apologized for not providing this information years earlier, when Solarz had requested any such evidence; the CIA had not searched its own files adequately.

Nothing in either volume suggests that Waldheim was a CIA informant or agent. Nothing suggests that the USSR was blackmailing Waldheim because of Soviet knowledge of Waldheim's activities during World War II.

Second Tier

continued...........

http://www.archives.gov/research/holocaust/articles-and-papers/symposium-papers/an-art-historians-perspective.html

Classified Records, Nazi Collecting, and Looted Art: An Art Historian's Perspective

Louis Marchesano, Collections Curator of Visual Resources
The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities
1200 Getty Center Dr., Suite 1100, Los Angeles, CA., 90049

e-mail: Lmarchesano@getty.edu

This is a slightly altered version of a paper delivered to the Nazi War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Los Angeles, 24 June 1999.

I've been asked to speak today not as an expert on looted art, but as an art historian who is devoted to picture research and archival research. And as the relatively new curator of a large photo archive that documents the visual arts, I have some experience with the variety of problems you might encounter with art-historical research.

So today, as an art historian, with a very recent interest in your topic, I say rather humbly that we are faced with an enormous task; and this despite the efforts dozens of researchers have already made to uncover the story of Nazi plunder. In the continuing attempts to uncover this story, the Working Group's task of locating still-classified records that bare upon Nazi war crimes will be vital.

Nazis plundered hundreds of thousands of art works. By some accounts, about one-third of all art works were "acquired" by the Nazis in one way or another. And we are very aware that tens of thousands of looted objects were never properly repatriated or returned to their lawful owners.

From our perspective at the close of this troubled century, looting, and repatriation, and restitution all constitute parts of an enormous historical picture. Although some parts are more finished than others, this picture is incomplete. Our goal is to strengthen the picture's outlines and fill in the historical details. We can get a sense of how to accomplish this by looking at problems raised by the invaluable scholarship of Michael Kurtz (Nazi Contraband...1985) and John Petropoulos (Art as Politics...1996), and the essential investigations of Hector Feliciano (The Lost Museum...1997) and Lynn Nicholas (The Rape of Europa...1994). While these and dozens of other investigators guide us through the maze of archival resources, which are already accessible, they also help us to see the problems we face in painting a full picture of Nazi plundering, allied repatriating, and the current attempts to identify objects and their previous owners. We know -- in order to complete the picture, we must have access to every available document because we don't know what every available document might reveal.

I want to mention four basic themes that the war criminal records should help us continue dealing with.

1.How did the Nazi's acquire objects? A number of authors, notably John Petropoulos and Lynn Nicholas, have illuminated Nazi means and methods. The Nazis created a number of bureaucratic agencies charged with "collecting" art in a variety of ways. Sometimes they purchased objects and sometimes they simply and brutally plundered. Their methods were often smeared with a veneer of bureaucratic legitimacy, which means, of course, they often kept very good records; but those records are not complete. Moreover, we now know that these agencies often competed with each other. They were controlled by a variety of Nazi personalities and their minions, all of whom had their own collecting agendas, some specifically directed toward Jewish properties. The complexity of that situation was exacerbated by the art market. The trade in art thrived in the 1930s and 1940s. It thrived in part because the Nazi's coerced people to sell objects, and in part because many people (let's call them collaborators) took advantage of the competition between Nazi collectors who desperately wanted to enrich themselves with artifacts of high culture. Of course, much of the plundering and collaboration was not adequately documented. It seems to me that the war criminal records are essential to disentangling the threads of this complex story.

2.How were objects repatriated? Michael Kurtz has brilliantly outlined the politics of repatriation amongst the different Allied agencies. The Allies failed to create, let alone maintain the fiction of, a truly unified repatriation policy. We obviously need more documents to compare to the enormous amount of records generated by the various Allied agencies, all of whom had different definitions of repatriation and therefore dealt with objects in a variety of ways.

3.What was taken or acquired? from whom? and when? Here I am thinking of Hector Feliciano's book The Lost Museum. He focuses on well-known collectors and dealers in a major European city -- Paris; despite the prominence of those people and their objects, Feliciano still had great trouble constructing that story. So what of all the lesser-known names? not the Rothschilds. What of people who disappeared in the camps or escaped with memories? memories that in many cases are recalled only by the heirs of those victims? I'm aware that Jewish organizations are helping survivors and their families reconstruct collections and to this end the Nazi war criminal records might prove to be one of their most important resources.

4.Where are the objects now? This question not only raises problems regarding the provenance of art works and their movements in the post-war art trade; it also raises questions about the current attributions of those objects and Nazi art-historical practices. For example, a painting that today is attributed to artist "X" may have been attributed to artist "Y" before the war. I think you can see the problem. Of course museums reattribute works almost as a matter of course (forgive the exaggeration), but they usually document those changes. I want to know if Nazi art historians were in the business of reattributing stolen works of art? In a more general sense if I were searching for looted art, I would need to know if declassified war criminal records in anyway illuminate the motives and methods behind Nazi art-historical scholarship. This kind of knowledge would help investigators decipher the sometimes meticulous inventories gathered by Nazi "collectors".

Aside from giving us new information about people, objects, and the methods of Nazi collecting, newly declassified records may also have some baring on documents we've already examined. For example, it will be very interesting to see if such records inform Hector Feliciano's historical representation of the collaborationist art market in occupied Paris. I am implying here that the unencumbered accessibility of documents facilitates one of the most important elements of archival research: serendipity. Chance encounters with names of objects, people, and places in one particular set of documents may lead us back to documents we already know (or at least we thought we knew). We may generate new lines of questions, make connections between data, and continue to construct a vivid historical picture.

At the beginning of the his book the Lost Museum, Feliciano says about his research "(a) piece of the puzzle would suddenly materialize while I was conducting an interview in Paris, but only in fragmented form, and the missing element...would not appear until months or even years later through documents in an archive or an art catalogue in a different part of the world." (Hector Feliciano, The Lost Museum, p. 7) A bit later he adds that "a recently declassified wartime document...would bring up information that would question the reliability of the source I happened to be interviewing. This soon made me extremely cautious..." (p. 9)

At the risk of sounding trite, I would say "the more information the better". But that's not all I'm saying here. The general release of documents should accomplish a couple of things:

1. by allowing scholars to engage with new resources, which may allow them to follow old leads, or inspire them to generate new lines of inquiry, scholars will be in a position to paint a comprehensively detailed historical picture

and
2. introducing new documents into the research equation will probably allow (and maybe inspire) scholars to make better use of the mass of documents which are already available.

Both these points should facilitate the search for very specific data, the kind of data you need to trace, for example, not only the names of victims and perpetrators, but also the names of objects.

I also think that the Working Group has an important psychological role to play. I believe that the publicized release of documents can encourage a greater number of scholars to engage with the records, thereby increasing our collective pool of knowledge. For example, many of the themes discussed today, fit quite readily into a major sub-field of Art History, that is the "history of collecting". Art historians already have well-developed tools for tracing provenance, standardizing and sharing information about art, understanding the nature of attributions, and identifying images. The potential for greater participation is there...

And finally I believe that the release of documents, and the publicity this receives, has an important effect on the people whose job it is to facilitate research. It encourages people such as myself and my colleagues at the Getty Research Institute, and other collecting institutions, to disseminate other kinds of documents that might help investigators and scholars pursue various research agendas. I am thinking now of the massive photo archives at the Getty Research Institute here in Los Angeles and at the Frick Art Library in New York. Both archives contain tens of thousands of photographs of art taken before WWII. These documentary photographs might be helpful. Many institutions also hold the papers of important art historians, some of whom would have generated research notes about paintings in private and public collections during the first half of this century. A case in point: the Getty Research Institute houses the notebooks of Ellis K. Waterhouse, an art historian who described in great detail the paintings he saw in many collections from the 1920s through the 1970s. Those kinds of documents could potentially prove invaluable, especially if linked in some way to the growing number of records which frequently reveal the names of major and minor collectors, as well as descriptions of objects.

In short, our ability to pinpoint information about people and objects, that is victims and art, depends on the variety of resources at our disposal. Only with unencumbered access to a full range of documents and records can we continue to construct the complex historical picture of looting and repatriation and fully address the matter of restitution.

Regarding the Working Group's brief to locate classified documents that bare upon Nazi war crimes, I would want to know if all interrogation transcripts (and other supporting documents?) that were used to generate the Consolidated Interrogation Reports** by the Art Looting Investigation unit of the OSS have been declassified. I would also wish to see a comprehensive list of names that appear in these documents shared with all the government agencies who have been asked to cooperate with the Working Group. Such a list should include the names of victims, dealers, art historians and other art experts, personal and bureaucratic agents of the various Nazi leaders, as well as the agencies charged with art acquisitions and looting.

**See Records of the Army Staff (RG319), Records of the Collecting and Dissemination Division, (G-2), #2011.

http://www.google.com/search?q=See+Records+of+the+Army+Staff+%28RG319%29&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Records+of+the+Collecting+and+Dissemination+Division%2C+%28G-2%29%2C+%232011&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi+Collecting%2C+and+Looted+Art&client=netscape-pp&rls=com.netscape:en-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi+Collecting%2C+Gold+and+Looted+Art&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi++Gold++trains&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi++Black+Eagle+Gold&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi+++Gold+shipped+to&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=Nazi+++Gold+shipped+to+the+U.S.&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=the+search+for+nazi+gold+in+America&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=nazi+cache+in+the+U.S.&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.google.com/search?q=where+is+the+stolen+nazi+gold+and+art&btnG=Search&hl=en&lr=&rls=com.netscape%3Aen-US

http://www.startribune.com/535/story/949839.html

Last update: January 20, 2007 – 10:53 PM
Flight from Twin Cities undergoes security check at JFK
Sun Country Airlines passengers who flew from the Twin Cities to New York on Saturday morning underwent special security screening after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Sun Country Airlines passengers who flew from the Twin Cities to New York on Saturday morning underwent special security screening after landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Crew members noticed "irregularities" with a security seal covering a smoke detector in one of the lavatories, said Sun Country CEO Shaun Nugent.

Smoke detectors on the airline's Boeing 737 airplanes have tape seals, so it can be readily detected when someone tries to remove a smoke detector cover.

Flight 245, which had 43 passengers and six crew members on board, landed in New York without incident, but the plane was routed to an undisclosed location at the airfield for security reasons, Nugent said.

Passengers were taken off the plane, screened and released. "One passenger was temporarily detained by local authorities and the FBI and then released," Nugent said.

After airport and federal authorities searched the aircraft, it was released back to Sun Country.

The Mendota Heights-based carrier flies to New York and other major U.S. destinations. Those flights originate from the Humphrey terminal at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

LIZ FEDOR

©2007 Star Tribune. All rights reserved.

Third letter bomb sent to company
Police investigating two letter bombs sent to firms in Oxfordshire have said a third package has been found.

A company in Chelmsley Wood, Birmingham, reported receiving an A5 jiffy bag containing a firework-type explosive on Thursday afternoon.

The name of an animal rights campaigner and convicted fire-bomber, who died in 2001, was written on the envelope.

Police believe the incident is linked to two others in Oxfordshire, in which a woman, aged 40, was injured.

The worker at Cellmark in Blacklands Way, Abingdon, suffered a minor injury to her hand when she opened the package on Thursday morning.

Another letter was sent to a firm in Culham, near Abingdon, but failed to explode.

Acting Deputy Chief Constable Alex Marshall, of Thames Valley Police, said: "Three companies, all of whom provide forensic services to the criminal justice system and police, have been targeted in this series of incidents.

"Although we await full forensic examination, these all appear to have been viable devices and it is fortunate that no one was more seriously hurt."
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/oxfordshire/6279897.stm

Published: 2007/01/19 16:58:09 GMT

© BBC MMVII

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2007/01_18-26/TOP

Bomb scare forces evacuation
Fake device found at Central Water Facility

By SCOTT DAUGHERTY, Staff Writer

A fake bomb prompted the evacuation of the county's Central Water Facility this morning, county fire officials said.

About 60 people were forced out into the frosty morning air about 9 a.m. when an employee spotted what he thought was a pipe bomb behind 435 Maxwell Frye Road in Millersville.

Employees weren't allowed back in the building for about 50 minutes. And by then, most had already driven off after bosses told them they could take a two-hour break.

"You don't take any chances," said Richard Dixon, the county's utility administrator for technical support. He said staffers were allowed to leave because fire officials were initially telling him the bomb threat could take all morning.

The "bomb" was actually nothing more than three road flares taped together with a fuse coming out of one end.

"It was just laying out there on the concrete," said Mr. Dixon, who initially thought it was three copper pipe bombs taped together.

"I didn't get any closer than 20 feet. It looked real enough," he said.

County officials initially called the state's bomb squad to respond to the device. Division Chief Stuart McNicol, a county fire spokesman, said before that team could arrive though, the Annapolis City bomb squad showed up and - wearing full protective gear - examined the bomb and determined it to be harmless.

Chief McNicol said the county fire marshal is investigating what happened and who masterminded the hoax.

He said he could not remember seeing any similar fake bombs in the county, but added this is not the first time he's heard of one.

"Road flares are pretty common," he said, noting they do look like dynamite.

Mr. Dixon didn't know why someone would put a fake bomb behind his building.

"Who knows, practical joke probably," he said.

Now, he said, he is just focusing on getting his office back in order.

"We're getting back to work," he said.

- No Jumps-

Published January 18, 2007, The Capital, Annapolis, Md.
Copyright © 2007 The Capital, Annapolis, Md.

http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n103726

Subway Bomb Threat in St. Petersburg Fake
20 January 2007 | 17:30 | FOCUS News Agency
St. Petersburg. No bomb has been found after a check in Elizarovskaya subway station in St. Petersburg, RIA Novosti reported citing the press office of Russia’s Ministry for Emergency Situations. “The check ended a few minutes ago. No bomb was found. The source of the false signal is being searched”, the ministry said.
The subway station resumed work after being closed for about an hour.
About 3 p.m. local time an anonymous caller warned of a bomb in Elizarovskaya subway station.

Subway Station Closed in St. Petersburg over Bomb Threat
20 January 2007 | 16:28 | FOCUS News Agency
St. Petersburg. A subway station has been closed in St. Petersburg after an anonymous phone call was received warning of a bomb, the online edition of Gazeta ru reported. The anonymous caller said the Elizarovskaya station would be bombed. No further details were immediately available

Handy hints on being a detective, nice small forum:

http://detectiveforums.com/forums/forum-1.html

http://detectiveforums.com/forums/about564.html

http://www.globalincidentmap.com/eventdetail.php?ID=1404

KUNA] IRAN - Russian admiral: Numerous US nuclear subs signals imminent strike on Iran

'Admiral Edward Baltin was quoted by news agencies as saying he believed the presence of so many US nuclear submarines in the Persian Gulf meant a strike was likely"

http://www.jnewswire.com/article/1555

[Interesting view of a valley, could it be where Iran has the nuclear?]

Essay: This Holocaust will be different

Essay: This Holocaust will be different

Benny Morris, THE JERUSALEM POST Jan. 18, 2007

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467762531&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The second holocaust will not be like the first. The Nazis, of course,
industrialized mass murder. But still, the perpetrators had one-on-one
contact with the victims. They may have dehumanized them over months
and
years of appalling debasement and in their minds, before the actual
killing.
But, still, they were in eye and ear contact, sometimes in tactile
contact,
with their victims.

The Germans, along with their non-German helpers, had to round up the
men,
women and children from their houses and drag and beat them through the
streets and mow them down in nearby woods or push and pack them into
cattle
cars and transport them to the camps, where "Work makes free," separate
the
able-bodied from the completely useless and lure them into "shower"
halls
and pour in the gas and then take out, or oversee the extraction of,
the
bodies and prepare the "showers" for the next batch.

The second holocaust will be quite different. One bright morning, in
five or
10 years, perhaps during a regional crisis, perhaps out of the blue, a
day
or a year or five years after Iran's acquisition of the Bomb, the
mullahs in
Qom will convene in secret session, under a portrait of the steely-eyed
Ayatollah Khomeini, and give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, by then in
his
second or third term, the go-ahead.

The orders will go out and the Shihab III and IV missiles will take off
for
Tel Aviv, Beersheba, Haifa and Jerusalem, and probably some military
sites,
including Israel's half dozen air and (reported) nuclear missile bases.
Some
of the Shihabs will be nuclear-tipped, perhaps even with multiple
warheads.
Others will be dupes, packed merely with biological or chemical agents,
or
old newspapers, to draw off or confuse Israel's anti-missile batteries
and
Home Front Command units.

With a country the size and shape of Israel (an elongated 20,000 square
kilometers), probably four or five hits will suffice: No more Israel. A
million or more Israelis in the greater Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem
areas
will die immediately. Millions will be seriously irradiated. Israel has
about seven million inhabitants. No Iranian will see or touch an
Israeli. It
will be quite impersonal.

Some of the dead will inevitably be Arab - 1.3 million of Israel's
citizens
are Arab and another 3.5 million Arabs live in the semi-occupied West Bank
and Gaza Strip. Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Haifa have substantial
Arab
minorities. And there are large Arab concentrations immediately around
Jerusalem (in Ramallah-Al Bireh, Bir Zeit, Bethlehem) and outside
Haifa.
Here, too, many will die, immediately or by and by.

It is doubtful whether such a mass killing of fellow Muslims will
trouble
Ahmadinejad and the mullahs. The Iranians don't especially like Arabs,
especially Sunni Arabs, with whom they have intermittently warred for
centuries. And they have a special contempt for the (Sunni)
Palestinians
who, after all, though initially outnumbering the Jews by more than 10
to 1,
failed during the long conflict to prevent them from establishing their
state or taking over all of Palestine.

Besides, the Iranian leadership sees the destruction of Israel as a
supreme
divine command, as a herald of the second coming, and the Muslims
dispatched
collaterally as so many martyrs in the noble cause. Anyway, the
Palestinians, many of them dispersed around the globe, will survive as
a
people, as will the greater Arab nation of which they are part. And
surely,
to be rid of the Jewish state, the Arabs should be willing to make some
sacrifices. In the cosmic balance sheet, it will be worth the candle.

A QUESTION may nevertheless arise in the Iranian councils: What about
Jerusalem? After all, the city contains Islam's third holiest shrines
(after
Mecca and Medina), Al Aksa Mosque and the Mosque of Omar. But Ali
Khamenei,
the supreme spiritual leader, and Ahmadinejad most likely would reply
much
as they would to the wider question regarding the destruction and
radioactive pollution of Palestine as a whole: The city, like the land,
by
God's grace, in 20 or 50 years' time, will recover. And it will be
restored
to Islam (and the Arabs). And the deeper pollution will have been
eradicated.

To judge from Ahmadinejad's continuous reference to Palestine and the
need
to destroy Israel, and his denial of the first Holocaust, he is a man
obsessed. He shares this with the mullahs: All were brought up on the
teachings of Khomeini, a prolific anti-Semite who often fulminated
against
"the Little Satan." To judge from Ahmadinejad's organization of the
Holocaust cartoon competition and the Holocaust denial conference, the
Iranian president's hatreds are deep (and, of course,
shameless).

He is willing to gamble the future of Iran or even of the whole Muslim
Middle East in exchange for Israel's destruction. No doubt he believes
that
Allah, somehow, will protect Iran from an Israeli nuclear response or
an
American counterstrike. Allah aside, he may well believe that his
missiles
will so pulverize the Jewish state, knock out its leadership and its
land-based nuclear bases, and demoralize or confuse its nuclear-armed
submarine commanders that it will be unable to respond. And, with his
deep
contempt for the weak-kneed West, he is unlikely to take seriously the
threat of American nuclear retaliation.
Or he may well take into account a counterstrike and simply,
irrationally
(to our way of thinking), be willing to pay the price. As his mentor,
Khomeini, put it in a speech in Qom in 1980: "We do not worship Iran,
we
worship Allah... I say, let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land
go up
in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant..."

For these worshipers at the cult of death, even the sacrifice of the
homeland is acceptable if the outcome is the demise of Israel.

DEPUTY DEFENSE Minister Ephraim Sneh has suggested that Iran doesn't
even
have to use the Bomb to destroy Israel. Simply, the nuclearization of
Iran
will so overawe and depress Israelis that they will lose hope and
gradually
emigrate, and potential foreign investors and immigrants will shy away
from
the mortally threatened Jewish state. These, together, will bring about
its
demise.

But my feeling is that Ahmadinejad and his allies lack the patience for
such
a drawn-out denouement; they seek Israel's annihilation in the here and
now,
in the immediate future, in their lifetime. They won't want to leave
anything up to the vagaries of history.

As with the first, the second holocaust will have been preceded by
decades
of preparation of hearts and minds, by Iranian and Arab leaders,
Western
intellectuals and media outlets. Different messages have gone out to
different audiences, but all have (objectively) served the same goal,
the
demonization of Israel. Muslims the world over have been taught: "The
Zionists/Jews are the embodiment of evil" and "Israel must be
destroyed."

And Westeners, more subtly, were instructed: "Israel is a racist
oppressor
state" and "Israel, in this age of multiculturalism, is an anachronism
and
superfluous." Generations of Muslims and at least a generation of
Westerners
have been brought up on these catechisms.

THE BUILD-UP to the second holocaust (which, incidentally, in the end,
will
probably claim roughly the same number of lives as the first) has seen
an
international community fragmented and driven by separate, selfish
appetites - Russia and China obsessed with Muslim markets; France with
Arab
oil - and the United States driven by the debacle in Iraq into a deep
isolationism. Iran has been left free to pursue its nuclear destiny and
Israel and Iran to face off alone.

But an ultimately isolated Israel will prove unequal to the task, like
a
rabbit caught in the headlights of an onrushing car. Last summer, led
by a
party hack of a prime minister and a small-time trade unionist as
defense
minister, and deploying an army trained for quelling incompetent and
poorly
armed Palestinian gangs in the occupied territories and overly
concerned
about both sustaining and inflicting casualties, Israel failed in a
34-day
mini-war against a small Iran-backed guerrilla army of Lebanese
fundamentalists (albeit highly motivated, well-trained and well-armed).
That
mini-war thoroughly demoralized the Israeli political and military
leaderships.

Since then, the ministers and generals, like their counterparts in the
West,
have looked on glumly as Hizbullah's patrons have been arming with
doomsday
weapons. Perversely, the Israeli leaders may even have been happy with
Western pressures urging restraint. Most likely they deeply wished to
believe Western assurances that somebody, somehow - the UN, G-8 - would
pull
the radioactive chestnuts out of the fire. There are even those who
fell
for
the outlandish idea that a regime change in Teheran, driven by a
reputedly
secular middle class, would ultimately stymie the mad mullahs.

But even more to the point, the Iranian program presented an infinitely
complex challenge for a country with limited conventional military
resources. Taking their cue from the successful IAF destruction of
Iraq's
Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981, the Iranians duplicated and dispersed
their
facilities and buried them deep underground (and the Iranian targets
are
about twice as far from Israel as was Baghdad). Taking out the known
Iranian
facilities with conventional weapons would take an American-size air
force
working round-the-clock for more than a month.

At best, Israel's air force, commandos and navy could hope to hit only
some
of the components of the Iranian project. But, in the end, it would
remain
substantially intact - and the Iranians even more determined (if that
were
possible) to attain the Bomb as soon as possible. It would also,
without
doubt, immediately result in a world-embracing Islamist terrorist
campaign
against Israel (and possibly its Western allies) and, of course,
near-universal vilification. Orchestrated by Ahmadinejad, all would
clamor
that the Iranian program had been geared to peaceful purposes. At best,
an
Israeli conventional strike could delay the Iranians by a year or two.

IN SHORT order, therefore, the incompetent leadership in Jerusalem
would
soon confront a doomsday scenario, either after launching their
marginally
effective conventional offensive or in its stead, of launching a
preemptive
nuclear strike against the Iranian nuclear program, some of whose
components
are in or near major cities. Would they have the stomach for this?
Would
their determination to save Israel extend to preemptively killing
millions
of Iranians and, in effect, destroying Iran?
This dilemma had long ago been accurately defined by a wise general:
Israel's nuclear armory is unusable. It can only be used too early or
too
late. There will never be a "right" time. Use it "too early," meaning
before
Iran acquires similar weapons, and Israel will be cast in the role of
international pariah, a target of universal Muslim assault, without a
friend
in the world; "too late" means after the Iranians have struck. What
purpose
would that serve?

So Israel's leaders will grit their teeth and hope that somehow things
will
turn out for the best. Perhaps, after acquiring the Bomb, the Iranians
will
behave "rationally"?

BUT THE Iranians are driven by a higher logic. And they will launch
their
rockets. And, as with the first Holocaust, the international community
will
do nothing. It will all be over, for Israel, in a few minutes - not
like in
the 1940s, when the world had five long years in which to wring its
hands
and do nothing. After the Shihabs fall, the world will send rescue
ships
and
medical aid for the lightly charred. It will not nuke Iran. For what
purpose
and at what cost? An American nuclear response would lastingly alienate
the
whole Muslim world, deepening and universalizing the ongoing clash of
civilizations. And, of course, it would not bring Israel back. (Would
hanging a serial murderer bring back his victims?)

So what would be the point?

Still, the second holocaust will be different in the sense that
Ahmadinejad
will not actually see and touch those he so wishes dead (and, one may
speculate, this might cause him disappointment as, in his years of
service
in Iranian death squads in Europe, he may have acquired a taste for
actual
blood). And, indeed, there will be no scenes like the following, quoted
in
Daniel Mendelsohn's recent The Lost, A Search for Six of Six Million,
in
which is described the second Nazi action in Bolechow, Poland, in
September
1942:

A terrible episode happened with Mrs. Grynberg. The Ukrainians and
Germans,
who had broken into her house, found her giving birth. The weeping and
entreaties of bystanders didn't help and she was taken from her home in
a
nightshirt and dragged into the square in front of the town hall.

There... she was dragged onto a dumpster in the yard of the town hall
with a
crowd of Ukrainians present, who cracked jokes and jeered and watched
the
pain of childbirth and she gave birth to a child. The child was
immediately
torn from her arms along with its umbilical cord and thrown - It was
trampled by the crowd and she was stood on her feet as blood poured out
of
her with bleeding bits hanging and she stood that way for a few hours
by
the
wall of the town hall, afterwards she went with all the others to the
train
station where they loaded her into a carriage in a train to Belzec.

In the next holocaust there will be no such heart-rending scenes, of
perpetrators and victims mired in blood (though, to judge from pictures
of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the physical effects of nuclear explosions can
be
fairly unpleasant).

But it will be a holocaust nonetheless.

The writer is a professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben-Gurion
University.

This google alert, pulled the below article link, in the past I have noticed, that when this happens, I will be glad if I saved it, so lets see, who/why this one has been pulled enough, that it is on top for the spider to pick up and send out..granny.....

Google Alert - american mujahideen cells or sleeping cells

SITE Publications
Audio Speech from Abu Musab al-Suri Addressing London 7/7 Bombings, Calling upon Sleeper Cells to Awaken and Attack Western Countries, Especially France, and Suggesting Civil Disobedience in Britain
By SITE Institute

August 23, 2006

In November 2005, Abdul al-Tawab al-Shami, the spokesman for Abu Musab al-Suri, issued a statement confirming the arrest of the al-Qaeda operative, in addition to materials authored by al-Suri. Includes in the files provided by Abdul al-Tawad were several photographs of Abu Musab al-Suri during a video lecture, a sixty-nine minute audio message and its 17-page Arabic transcript. On December 1, 2005, the SITE Institute provided select translations of the document, which concerned al-Suri alleging innocence of the 7/7/05 London metro bombings, in addition to those in Madrid in 2005 and Paris in 1995, though he supported the attacks. He also castigated those governments who maintain a military presence in Muslim lands and urged the Mujahideen residing within Europe to “move fast” to attack Britain, Italy, Holland, Denmark, Germany and France, as well as Russia, Australian, and Japan.

The entire speech justifies attacks on Western countries based on their refusal to heed the warnings of al-Qaeda and its Emir, Usama bin Laden, and cease their continued abuse and encroachment upon the sovereignty and resources in Muslim lands. Abu Musab al-Suri calls for immediate jihad by the Mujahideen from Syria and Lebanon against France; a state which he condemns for its aggression in Syria, Lebanon, Bosnia, Algeria and Afghanistan, active role in NATO, and forbidding Muslims women from wearing jihad. Concerning Spain, he urges its government to ask the European Union to accept the truce for non-aggression as laid out by Usama bin Laden. However, for those states he condemns, al-Suri states: “Let our sleeping cells wake up, the war is at its apex. The enemy is about to collapse. This is obvious now. Those who sleep now maybe will not participate when they wake up.”

Al-Suri directs much discussion to the accusation made by international and British press of his complicity in the 7/7 London attack, which he denies. He does, however, support any attack against the West, unconditionally, and believes that any Muslim who condemns the explosions in the London metro or the attacks of September 11, 2001, is a “apostate” and an infidel, “illiterate in the religion, world policy and the requirements of war”. This belief is postulated on reciprocity, and that the attacks were based on actions not just in Iraq, but over a large span of time. He states:

“So if you confess to the killing of about 100,000 Iraqi civilians in three years; 10,000 in Afghanistan, beside the execution of 20,000 prisoners of Taliban and Arabs under your supervision while you were laughing and taking pictures, in addition to the millions of victims of colonialism after the first world war, let it be known that our Qur’an tells us to treat you with the same. Our Mujahideen have only collected a small amount of the bill, if we suppose that 4000 civilians were killed since September 11, most of whom were guilty Americans”.

The surge in popularity of U.S. President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in Abu Musab al-Suri’s view, is evidence of the citizens of American and Britain, respectively, support for their acts in Muslim countries. Al-Suri states that according to Islamic law and the “code of jihad,” there exists no distinction between civilian and soldier, and mass burning and destruction of infrastructure and civilian life is acceptable, even if Muslims who live among the “infidels” are harmed. On the latter subject, he believes that Muslims must not live in countries that oppress other Muslims unless it is absolutely necessary; else, they should leave immediately.

To avert continued attacks against Britain, al-Suri appeals to the British “fair-minded,” such as MP two named British politicians, all of the British and Western demonstrators and peace heralds in the West. Al-Suri wishes to cease Tony Blair and Labour’s popularity and majority in Parliament, calling upon the aforementioned figures to organize a general strike in protest of the war in Iraq, and incite civil disobedience as such “will overthrow the strongest governments within a few days”. He states: “We warn Britain: respect Muslim scholars in general or jihad people in particular. We warn you from doing anything to harm them or your country will pay a high price. We regret doing so”.

Abu Musab al-Suri concludes the speech with an invitation for the people and the governments of the West to convert to Islam, advising that they have thousands of books, research and centers of study that will familiarize them with the religion. He urges: “There are hundreds of thousands of Muslims from your people, so get rid of the spirit of war and hostility, and review matters with the spirit of peace, love and search for the truth. We are all the children of Adam and Eve”.

Media reports indicate that a suspect believed to be Abu Musab al-Suri was captured in Quetta, Pakistan during the beginning of November 2005. Abu Musab al-Suri, AKA Mustafa Setmarian Nassar, or Umar Abd al-Hakim, is an al-Qaeda operative who ran terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and instructs in poison and chemical warfare. On November 18, 2004, the U.S. State Department offered a $5 million for information leading to his arrest. Al-Suri, meaning “The Syrian,” was indicted in Spain in 2003 for allegedly training al-Qaeda sleeper cells for deployment in Spain, Italy, and France and is believed to have masterminded the Madrid train bombings in March 2004.

http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications205106&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=news240607&Category=news&Subcategory=0

Legacy of a terrorist
Published in: The Statesman

January 19, 2007

The US justice system has finally established a trial system for captives suspected of international terrorism. Among the first to be confronted will be the Indonesian Hambali, who was seized in 2003. As operations chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist organisation, Hambali plotted attacks that killed hundreds. More than that, he effectively linked Al- Qaida with diverse Islamic militant groups in Southeast Asia, thereby turning local Muslim fighters into global jihadists. And he did this globalising task so well that, even should justice demand his death, the evil he created will live long after him.
Hambali shares telltale characteristics with many young Muslim men who turn toward violence in Southeast Asia. His education was religious rather than secular, focusing on Arabic, the Koran and the chanting of holy verses, instead of skills that might lead toward a career in government or industry.
Raised in West Java as Riduan Isamuddin, he eagerly attached himself to prominent emirs such as the co-founders of JI, Abdullah Sungkar and Abu Bakar Bashir, and Al-Qaida’s Osama bin Laden. And he was willing to travel to acquire the religious instruction and the military training he sought, from his home in small-town West Java to most countries in Southeast Asia, as far afield as Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But Hambali also has three traits rare among Southeast Asian militants: First, he is impressively persuasive. As a young man, he was a successful peddler, and the skills of a top salesman have served him well as a terrorist leader, readily attracting new people to his cause.
He convinced his emirs that he knew their will and could implement their designs. He gained the trust and cooperation of hardened fighters with much greater experience in jihad than his.

Source: http://www.thestatesman.net/page.news.php?clid=4&theme=&usrsess=1&id=144061

[seeing the name of this one, raises my blood pressure, just who are we fighting??? what country???]

http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=publications245407&Category=publications&Subcategory=0

The Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party Branches in Palestine and Jordan Eulogizes Executed Hussein Aides, Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar
By SITE Institute

January 18, 2007

The Sunni resistance website, albasrah.net, published two statements yesterday, Wednesday, January 17, 2007, from the leadership of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party branches in Palestine and Jordan, regarding the recent executions of Barzan al-Tikriti and Awad al-Bandar. The Palestinian organization eulogizes the aides of Saddam Hussein as “two more falling stars” and lauds the mission of the Ba’ath party and the character of its members. At the same time, the group condemns the “Arab traitors who blessed and brought the American Zionist occupation to the Arab front which is Baghdad,” allegedly using Islam as a guise for their actions to eliminate Arabism.

The Jordanian branch of the Ba’ath Party goes beyond eulogizing Tikriti and al-Bandar and castigates American encroachment physically and politically in Iraq. In the statement, the group explicitly calls for action against the enemy in Iraq, stating “Let death be to American and its followers” and “revenge, then revenge, then revenge, until Bush’s wars and armies get destroyed on the walls of Baghdad and on the walls of all of the Arab lands and cities.” Further, the branch raises the Ba’ath party as understanding of the Muslims’ concerns and realizes the size of the “required sacrifices” in the battle.

A translation of both statements is provided to our Intel Service members.

Azerbaijan court jails 11 cops for life

http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=32404

Azerbaijan court jails 11 cops for life

AFP 19/01/2007 23:52

A court in Azerbaijan handed life sentences to 11 policemen Friday for
carrying out a string of murders and kidnappings, in a case that sent
shock waves through this Caspian Sea state.

The Court for Especially Serious Crimes handed jail terms totalling
297 years to former criminal investigator Gadzhi Mamedov, leader of a
26-man gang that included fellow policemen and four Russian citizens of
Chechen origin.

The court, which began hearings last July, concluded that the
defendants
had killed 11 people, including a counter-narcotics officer, a
prosecutor and the vice-president of the Association of Football
Federations of Azerbaijan.

Mamedov also admitted to the 2005 killing of the editor of the Monitor
journal, Elmar Guseinov, which he said had been ordered by a former
economic development minister, Farkhad Aliyev. Aliyev was arrested on
October 2005 for involvement in an alleged coup attempt.

In total the gang carried out 30 kidnappings, making millions of euros
(dollars) in ransom payments, the court heard.

But their reign of terror ended in March 2005 when forces from the
national security ministry freed the kidnapped wife of the country's
largest bank, the International Bank of Azerbaijan, and arrested about
20 people.

The captors in that case demanded a six-million-euro ransom.

The court on Friday also handed 15 other members of the gang lesser
sentences of up to 13 years.

Critics say corruption is rife in this strategically located state that
broke from Soviet rule in 1991 and has since developed major oil
resources in the Caspian Sea.

Last year Azerbaijan was rated joint 130th in an index published by
corruption watchdog Transparency International that ranked countries
according to how corrupt they were perceived to be.

Russia and the Middle East

http://www.meforum.org/article/1632
Russia and the Middle East
by Igor Khrestin and John Elliott
Middle East Quarterly
Winter 2007

Where does Moscow stand in the fight against Islamism and the global
war against terror? Facing the Chechen threat at home, the Russian
government might be sympathetic to U.S. and even Israeli concerns. Not
so. Despite U.S. declarations that Washington and Moscow were
"increasingly united by common values" and that Russia was "a partner
in the war on terror,"[1] examination of Russian president Vladimir
Putin's policy toward the Middle East suggests that Moscow has become
an impediment both to the fight against Islamist terror and
Washington's desire to promote democracy in the Middle East. The 2006
U.S. National Security Strategy reinforces that U.S. policymakers
should not only "encourage Russia to respect the values of freedom and
democracy at home" but also cease "imped[ing] the cause of freedom and
democracy" in regions vital to the war on terror.[2] While Russian
officials denounce U.S. criticism, the Kremlin's coddling of Iranian
hard-liners, its reaction to the "cart!
oon jihad," its invitation to Hamas to Moscow, and its flawed Chechen
policy all cast doubt on Moscow's motivations.

While President Bill Clinton had focused his Middle East policy on
Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, his strategy toward the broader
Middle East was more detached.[3] He was content to pursue dual
containment toward Iraq and Iran and follow a status quo policy toward
North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The 9-11 terrorist attacks
focused U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. President George W.
Bush asserted that the region "must be a focus of American policy for
decades to come" and declared a "forward strategy of freedom in the
Middle East."[4] Putin, too, made the Middle East an area of
increasing focus. But in contrast to his rhetoric of cooperation—he
was the first foreign leader to call Bush on 9-11—he has pursued a
contradictory strategy to bolster Russian influence at U.S. expense.

The Chechen Lens

Nothing shapes Putin's thinking about terrorism and the Middle East
more than Chechnya. While Islamist terrorism threatens U.S. security,
the Chechen conflict threatens both Russian security and its
territorial integrity. The conflict in Russia's Chechnya province has
claimed over one hundred thousand lives since President Boris Yeltsin
ordered the Russian military into Chechnya in 1994.[5] After the 1996
cease-fire, Chechnya dissolved into anarchy, becoming the "Somalia of
the Caucasus."[6] Foreign jihadists infiltrated the Chechen
leadership.[7] In 1999, Vladimir Putin, newly-appointed prime
minister, ordered Russian troops to reassert order. His tough stance
catapulted him into political prominence and, eventually, the
presidency.

Putin and Bush initially cooperated in the war against the Taliban.
The Russian leader complied with U.S. requests to build bases in
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan for use in the war against the Afghan
Islamists. In April 2002, U.S. and Russian militaries cooperated to
dislodge terror groups from Georgia's Pankisi Gorge.[8] The following
month, the two leaders declared, "We are partners, and we will
cooperate to advance stability, security, and economic integration,
and to jointly counter global challenges and to help resolve regional
conflicts."[9]

Putin's domestic war on terrorism enjoyed only limited success.
Russian security forces did impose some order in Chechnya, but the
Kremlin was unable to stem Chechen and Islamist terrorism on Russian
soil. In 2002, 120 died in a rescue attempt after Chechen rebels took
800 people hostage in a Moscow theater. Two years later, several
hundred children died after terrorists seized a school in Beslan. Even
after the subsequent crackdown, Russian forces have not been able to
stop Chechen Islamist raids into neighboring provinces as they seek to
build an "Islamic Republic of the North Caucasus."[10] Terrorists
continue to take advantage of endemic Russian corruption.[11] An
independent Russian daily observed that "a police officer or soldier
is killed in the Caucasus practically every day"; a senior military
official admitted that the situation in Chechnya is "far from
ideal."[12]

Faced with only marginal gains at home, Putin changed tack. Rather
than continue cooperation with Washington on the broader war on
terror, he sought to cut a deal. In 2003, he asked to join the
Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), even though with only 20
million Muslims—about 15 percent of the population—Russia lacked
the
required 50 percent minimum Muslim population.[13] While the OIC did
not grant Russia full membership, it did grant Moscow observer
status.[14] The relationship was symbiotic: the OIC saw Moscow as a
patron that could offset U.S. pressure while Moscow received de facto
immunity from criticism of Russian policy in Chechnya as a result of
OIC reluctance to interfere in the internal affairs of member-states,
even honorary ones.[15] Putin further outlined his vision of alliance
with the Islamic world when, addressing the newly-elected Chechen
parliament in December 2005, Putin called Russia "a faithful,
reliable, and dedicated promoter ... of the interest!
s of the Islamic world" and "its best and most reliable partner and
friend."[16]

Arming Iran

The desire both to cut a deal and stymie Washington also explains
Moscow's policy toward Tehran. Russian and Iranian interests are
historically divergent. The two countries fought intermittently
throughout the nineteenth century, and Soviet leaders supported
separatist movements in Iran in the twentieth century.[17] Their
perceived spheres of influence overlap in the Caucasus and the
Caspian. The 1979 Islamic Revolution may have torn Iran away from
alliance with the United States, but it did not bring Tehran and
Moscow any closer. Revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini
considered the Soviet Union to be "godless" and purged leftists from
the revolutionary coalition.[18]

But a February 1989 visit by Soviet foreign minister Eduard
Shevardnadze and a reciprocal visit to Moscow by then-Majlis speaker
Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani four months later cemented a détente.
Relations expanded with Moscow after the Soviet Union's collapse. On
August 25, 1992, Tehran and Moscow signed an US$800 million deal for
Russian companies to build two nuclear reactors at Bushehr.[19] While
this contract predates Putin's presidency, the Russian leader turned a
blind eye to signs that the Iranian program was not entirely civilian.
Five years after Rafsanjani threatened to use nuclear weapons against
Israel,[20] and despite an International Atomic Energy Agency finding
that Iran was in noncompliance with the nuclear nonproliferation
treaty's safeguards agreement,[21] Russian foreign minister Sergei
Lavrov insists that the Iranian program "is conducted fully in
accordance with international norms."[22]

So what explains Russian behavior? Maintaining nuclear trade with
Tehran enabled Putin to cement a tacit agreement in which Iran
declines to interfere in Chechnya and other Islamist causes which
threaten Russia. Winning Iranian acquiescence is especially important
given its proximity to Russia's troubled south. In exchange, the
Kremlin shields the Iranian government from Western pressure. Russian
unwillingness to accept sanctions against Iran for its nuclear
noncompliance has vexed Washington,[23] as has Moscow's refusal to
force an Iranian reaction to the May 2006 European Union and U.S.
package of incentives.[24]

Any Middle Eastern government which seeks Moscow's support understands
it must either side with the Russian struggle against Chechen
separatists or, at a minimum, agree not to meddle. With the end of the
Cold War, the Israeli government has sought to better its relations
with Moscow. Since 1999, Israeli intelligence has shared information
with their Russian counterparts and has assisted Russian forces in
training and border security. Israeli officials have likened the
Chechen separatists to Palestinian terrorists.[25] Damascus, too, has
assisted Russia diplomatically. In September 2005, Syrian president
Bashar al-Assad welcomed the pro-Moscow president of Chechnya, Alu
Alkhanov, to Damascus, granting the embattled Chechen leader some
international legitimacy.[26]

The commercial factor is also a bonus. The Russian government has
secured lucrative contracts with several states that Washington
considers pariahs. In December 2005, the Iranian government signed a
billion dollar arms deal that included twenty-nine Tor M1 missile
defense systems to protect the Bushehr nuclear facility.[27] The
Russian government has also sold Strelets missiles to Syria.[28] Putin
halted sales of even more sophisticated weaponry only after vigorous
U.S. and Israeli protest.[29] That Iran is also oil-rich is added
incentive; Russia has $750 million invested in energy projects
there.[30] The Russian oil firm Lukoil seeks to move 23 percent of
production to the Middle East by 2015.[31]

Russia's Cartoon Jihad

Bush characterizes the U.S. fight as a "war with Islamic
fascists."[32] Putin, too, has cracked down on Islamist terror in
Russia. But what works at home is not necessarily what Putin embraces
for those outside Russia. On February 4, 2006, protests erupted in
many Muslim countries against cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad,
which had been published months before in the Danish daily
Jyllands-Posten. In Lebanon and Syria, mobs sacked the Danish embassy
and, in Libya, they attacked an Italian consulate. But rather than
stand up for free speech—as did many outside the Middle East—the
Russian government sided with the Islamists.

Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Duma's (parliament) International
Affairs Committee, chided the Danish government for allowing such
cartoons to be published. "The [Danish] prime minister washed his
hands of the whole matter, with the usual comments, chapter and verse,
about freedom of speech," Kosachev said, before chiding the Danes for
citing the right of free speech as reason not to crack down on
"anti-Russian hysteria over Chechnya in Denmark"[33] a few years
earlier. Then, three days after the mass protests erupted, Putin said,
"One should reflect 100 times before publishing or drawing something
…
If a state cannot prevent such publications, it should at least ask
for forgiveness."[34]

To drive home the point, on February 17, Andrei Dorinin, acting mayor
of the southern Russian city of Volgograd, shut down the local paper
Gorodskie Vesti, after it printed a cartoon depicting the Prophet
Muhammad along with Jesus, Moses, and Buddha.[35] The government also
charged Anna Smirnova, editor of Nash Region in Vologda, with
"inciting racial hatred"—an offense punishable by up to five years in
prison, according to article 282 of the Russian criminal code—after
her paper republished the original Jyllands-Posten cartoons. She was
fined 100,000 rubles (about US$3,700). The paper's owners, citing
concerns over the "safety of the journalists," shut down the
newspaper.[36]

What makes the Russian government's actions curious is that they
initiated the crackdown absent any significant public outcry, let
alone riots, against the cartoons. According to a nationwide poll
conducted by the Levada Center, only 14 percent of respondents were
"outraged" by the Prophet Muhammad cartoons; the plurality simply did
not care.[37] The reactions of Russia's religious leaders were
likewise muted. Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin, head of the Central Muslim
Spiritual Directorate, noted that "in a cultured society, it is
necessary that there be cultured people."[38]

While local politics played a part in the crackdowns,[39] the general
Kremlin reaction showed that the fight against Islamism was relative.
While Putin will neither tolerate terrorism nor the ideology behind it
at home, he will at times justify that same extremism abroad if it
wins Moscow points in the Islamic world, prolongs the tacit agreement
against Islamic countries' interference in Chechnya, and undercuts the
general U.S. and European diplomatic position in the Middle East.
Andrei Serenko, an expert at the Fund for Development for Information
Policy, explained, "To prove Vladimir Putin's thesis that `a strong
Russia is a defender of Muslims,' [the Kremlin] can sacrifice a
regional newspaper."[40]

Hamas Tours Moscow

Perhaps nothing underlined the relativity of Moscow's fight against
terror as much as the Kremlin's 2006 invitation to Moscow of a Hamas
delegation. In February 2006, Putin announced, ``We are willing in the
near future to invite the authorities of Hamas to Moscow to carry out
talks."[41] The State Department reacted cautiously. Spokesman Sean
McCormack warned that "as a member of the Quartet, we would certainly
expect that Russia would deliver that same message" to Hamas, namely
to renounce violence, recognize Israel, and respect previous
Palestinian and international agreements.[42]

While Moscow had long supported the Palestine Liberation Organization
and lobbied for the creation of the Palestinian state, Putin's
outreach to Hamas broke with tradition. Mikhail Margelov, the chairman
of the international relations committee of the Federation Council,
Russia's upper house, had praised the Israeli assassination of Hamas
spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmad Yasin.[43] When a Hamas suicide bomber
killed seventeen people in Beersheba in August 2004, the Russian
Foreign Ministry issued a statement condemning "the new barbarous
foray by the extremists," and declaring, "We are convinced that no
political or other purposes can be reached by means of violence and
terror."[44]

Hamas leaders seized the opportunity proffered by Putin. Hamas
spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, "We salute the Russian position and …
accept it with the aim of strengthening our relations with the West
and particularly with the Russian government."[45] The Hamas
delegation met with Lavrov, toured the capital with the leaders of
Russia's Muslim community, and had an audience with the patriarch of
the Russian Orthodox Church.[46] The Russian government's engagement
with Hamas did not lead the group to abandon terrorism.[47] One
Russian journalist concluded, "Moscow invited the Palestinians just to
invite them, and Hamas came just to come."[48]

The Russian press was less forgiving than the Kremlin. In the press
conference, an Izvestiya reporter asked Hamas delegation leader Khalid
Mashaal to comment on his June 2000 pronouncement that children should
be trained as suicide bombers. The Hamas leader defended his comment.
"We have our own symbols, our own examples to imitate. And we are
proud of this,"[49] he told the assembled press. So what did Putin's
outreach achieve? Again, Chechnya played front and center in his
strategy: Hamas promised not to meddle in the North Caucasus.[50]

What does the Hamas visit signal for Russian-Israeli relations? Under
Putin, ties between Moscow and Jerusalem initially blossomed. The
Russian president appreciated Jerusalem's no-nonsense approach to
terrorism, as well as its technical assistance with regard to
Chechnya. That one million Israelis speak Russian facilitates
business. Economic relations between Moscow and Jerusalem thrived;
hundreds of Israeli businesses operate in Russia.[51] Russian business
leaders look to fill Israel's growing energy needs.[52] Today, direct
trade between the two states is valued at approximately $1.5
billion.[53] In April 2006, the Russian government launched an Israeli
satellite capable of spying on the Iranian nuclear program.[54] But
while some writers once celebrated Putin's new approach,[55] the
enabling of Iran's nuclear program and the invitation to Hamas suggest
that optimism regarding Russia's president is premature. While the
Russian government is willing to criticize its Irani!
an and Arab clients to placate the West, it seldom translates harsh
words into action. The Russian Foreign Ministry's contradictory
statements[56] following the July 12, 2006 Israeli incursion into
southern Lebanon seemed designed to obfuscate rather than stake out a
clear position against terror. The Russian government may appreciate
the fruits of economic relations with Israel, but when it comes to
standing on principle against terror, Putin draws a line. Russia does
not consider Hamas or Hezbollah to be terrorist groups; to stand too
much with Israel against terror might mean undercutting Putin's
Faustian bargain with Islamists over Chechnya.

Conclusions

The post-9-11 U.S.-Russian honeymoon did not last. While some tension
resulted from Putin's growing authoritarianism,[57] more responsible
was Putin's decision to place Russia squarely in opposition to
Washington's desire to contain Iranian nuclear ambitions, delegitimize
terrorism, and promote democracy.

That Washington and Moscow diverge on the Middle East should not
surprise. A June 2000 foreign policy concept paper approved by Putin
defines Moscow's priorities in the Middle East "to restore and
strengthen its position, particularly economic ones."[58] Putin has
pursued this strategic pragmatism even when it puts Moscow in the
position of arming Iran and Syria while strengthening economic
relations with Israel.

How wise is Putin's policy? Not all Russian analysts are convinced it
will further Moscow's interests. Dmitri Suslov, an expert with
Moscow's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, explained, "[T]here is
a big risk here, that by providing greater legitimacy for Islamists,
Russia could invite greater instability in the Middle East and at
home."[59] Prominent Russian columnist Yulia Latynina argued that "by
holding talks with rogue states, Russia comes perilously close to
being perceived as a rogue state in its own right."[60]

Nor is success assured for Putin's gamble that he can appease external
Islamists to win space for Russian actions in Chechnya. In June 2006,
Islamists in Iraq kidnapped and murdered four Russian
diplomats—including one Muslim. They issued a tape declaring, "God's
verdict has been carried out on the Russian diplomats … in revenge
for
the torture, killing, and expulsion of our brothers and sisters by the
infidel Russian government." [61] Simply put, Putin may subscribe to
Realpolitik, but Islamic extremists are not well-versed in its
intricacies.

Igor Khrestin is a research assistant at the American Enterprise
Institute. John Elliott is a research associate at the Council on
Foreign Relations.

[1] Introduction, "The National Security Strategy of the United
States," Sept. 2002.
[2] "The National Security Strategy of the United States," Mar. 2006,
p. 39.
[3] Robert O. Freedman, "U.S. Policy toward the Middle East in
Clinton's Second Term," Middle East Review of International Affairs,
Mar. 1999.
[4] George W. Bush, remarks, National Endowment for Democracy, United
States Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C., Nov. 6, 2003.
[5] "Russia: Annotated Timeline of the Chechen Conflict," Radio Free
Europe /Radio Liberty, Feb. 7, 2006.
[6] Leon Aron, "Chechnya: New Dimensions of the Old Crisis," AEI
Russian Outlook, Feb. 1, 2003.
[7] Lorenzo Vidino, "How Chechnya Became a Breeding Ground for
Terror," Middle East Quarterly, Summer 2005, pp. 57-66.
[8] The New York Times, Apr. 30, 2002.
[9] Joint declaration, President George W. Bush and President Vladimir
V. Putin, Moscow, May 24, 2002.
[10] "Timeline of the Chechen Conflict," Feb. 7, 2006.
[11] The Washington Post, Sept. 18, 2004.
[12] Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Moscow), Aug. 22, 2006.
[13] Kommersant (Moscow), June 29, 2005.
[14] Sergei Lavrov, foreign minister, remarks, Moscow State Institute
of International Relations, Sept. 1, 2005.
[15] Shahram Akbarzadeh and Kylie Connor, "The Organization of the
Islamic Conference: Sharing an Illusion," Middle East Policy, June 22,
2005.
[16] Izvestiya (Moscow), Dec. 13, 2005.
[17] Patrick Clawson and Michael Rubin, Eternal Iran: Continuity and
Chaos (New York: Palgrave, 2005), p. 60.
[18] Baqer Moin, Khomeini: Life of the Ayatollah (New York: St.
Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 125, 217-8.
[19] Vladimir Orlov and Alexander Vinnikov, "The Great Guessing Game:
Russia and the Iranian Nuclear Issue," The Washington Quarterly,
Spring 2005.
[20] Kayhan (Tehran), Dec. 15, 2001.
[21] "IAEA Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the
Islamic Republic of Iran," GOV/2005/77, Sept. 24, 2005.
[22] RIA Novosti (Moscow), July 13, 2006.
[23] The Washington Post, Mar. 25, 2006.
[24] Associated Press, July 21, 2006.
[25] Ilya Bourtman, "Putin and Russia's Middle Eastern Policy," Middle
East Review of International Affairs, June 2006; The Washington Times,
Sept. 7, 2004.
[26] Mark Katz, "Putin's Foreign Policy toward Syria," Middle East
Review of International Affairs, Mar. 2006.
[27] RIA Novosti, July 13, 2006.
[28] Lee Kass, "Syria after Lebanon: The Growing Syrian Missile
Threat," Middle East Quarterly, Fall 2005, pp. 25-34.
[29] Kommersant, Jan. 14, 2006.
[30] Radio Free Europe /Radio Liberty, Feb. 10, 2006.
[31] Alexandr Zaslavsky, "Russian Production in the Middle East," Pro
et Contra, Mar.-June 2006, pp. 45-53.
[32] Remarks at Austin Straubel International Airport, Green Bay,
Wis., White House press release, Aug. 10, 2006.
[33] Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Dec. 22, 2005.
[34] Agence France-Presse, Feb. 8, 2006.
[35] Novye Izvestiya (Moscow), Feb. 20, 2006.
[36] Lenta.ru (on-line), Apr. 14, 2006.
[37] "Rossiyane o Karikaturnom Skandale," Levada Center, Moscow, Feb.
27, 2006.
[38] United Press International, Feb. 7, 2006.
[39] Novye Izvestiya, Feb. 20, 2006.
[40] Novye Izvestiya, Feb. 20, 2006.
[41] The New York Times, Feb. 10, 2006.
[42] Associated Press, Feb. 10, 2006.
[43] Kommersant, Mar. 4, 2006.
[44] Kommersant, Mar. 4, 2006.
[45] Agence France-Presse, Feb. 9, 2006.
[46] Izvestiya, Mar. 6, 2006.
[47] Izvestiya, Mar. 6, 2006.
[48] Novoye Vremya (Moscow), Mar. 12, 2006.
[49] Izvestiya, Mar. 6, 2006.
[50] Novoye Vremya, Mar. 12, 2006.
[51] Itar-Tass news agency (Moscow), Apr. 30, 2006.
[52] FK Novosti (Moscow), July 21, 2006.
[53] Bourtman, "Putin and Russia's Middle Eastern Policy."
[54] Associated Press, Apr. 25, 2006.
[55] See, for example, Mark N. Katz, "Putin's Pro-Israel Policy,"
Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2005, pp. 51-9.
[56] Associated Press, July 20, 2006; "Nachalo Vstrechi s Ministrom
Innostrannih Del Saudovskoi Aravii Princem Saudom al'-Feisalom,"
official website of the president of Russia, July 25, 2006.
[57] Dick Cheney, 2006 Vilnius Conference, Vilnius, Lithuania, White
House press release, May 4, 2006.
[58] "Kontseptsia Vneshnei Politiki Rossiyskoy Federatsii," Ministry
of Foreign Affairs of Russia, June 28, 2000.
[59] The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 21, 2006.
[60] The Moscow Times, Mar. 15, 2006.
[61] Associated Press, June 26, 2006.

Middle East Quarterly

(Somalia) Presidential palace in Mogadishu attacked and Attack on
Somalia's Presidential Palace Spreads Fear
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/19/somalia.reut/
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245023,00.html

Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Promises 'Very Big' Action to Bring
Down Lebanon's Government
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,245063,00.html

Iran reportedly set for talks with U.S.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_iran_us_1

(UK) CNN's Amanpour: Britain's radical Muslims shock me
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01/17/warwithin.amanpour/index.html

U.K. Alleged Bomb Makers Pay $500 for Lethal Materials
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/uk_alleged_bomb.html

(Morocco) Ex-Gitmo prisoners acquitted back home in Morocco
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/africa/01/19/Morocco.Gitmo.ap/index.html
http://www.adnki.com/index_2Level.php?cat=Terrorism&loid=8.0.378192165&par=0

(Turkey) Prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist shot dead in Istanbul
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070119/wl_afp/turkeyarmeniamedia_070119210925

In Turkey, a year of attacks and trials
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/turkey_free_expression_glance_1

(Iraq) Six British soldiers hurt after Basra camp comes under attack
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=100782007

Tajikistan Says NATO Will Stay Until Afghanistan Is Stable
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2007/01/19/tajiknato.shtml

An Anti-Terror Mutual Fund
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16707537/

Three Letter Bombs in England Prompt U.S. Alert - Links to animal
rights groups possible
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/three_letter_bo.html

Canada separatist terror group threatens attacks
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/20/content_5628413.htm

(Sri Lanka) Lankan forces capture key rebel-held town - Vakarai, LTTE
city in east, captured after weeks of fighting with over 370 dead
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/World/Rest_of_World/Lankan_forces_capture_key_rebel-held_town/articleshow/1321811.cms

Related News:

(UK) British Airways Does U-Turn On Crosses
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-1248133,00.html

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=iwmp&ID=SP142807

Special Dispatch Series - No. 1428
January 17, 2007 No.1428

Islamist Websites Monitor Project No. 49

Information for Mujahideen Seeking to Join the Jihad in Somalia

On January 15, 2007, an Islamist website posted information for mujahideen who wish to travel to Somalia in order to join the jihad there. The message included maps and satellite images showing various possible travel routes. One of the suggested routes goes from the port of Aden in Yemen to the port of Berbera in Somaliland, continues to Burao, capital of Togdheer region in Somalia, and ends in Lasanod, capital of Sool district, where a unit of the Islamic Courts Union is claimed to be stationed.

Below are the satellites images provided with the message:

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD143107

Special Dispatch Series - No. 1431
January 19, 2007 No.1431

Former Hizbullah Sec-Gen: Hizbullah is an Integral Part of Iranian Intelligence; The Abduction of the Israeli Soldiers Was an 'Unsuccessful Adventure'

In an interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, former Hizbullah secretary-general Sheikh Subhi Al-Tufeili saidthat Hizbullah was part of Iranian intelligence, and called the July 12, 2006 abduction of two Israeli soldiers, which sparked the July-August 2006 war with Israel, an "unsuccessful adventure."

The following are excerpts from the interview. [1]
Hizbullah is an Integral Part of the Iranian Intelligence Apparatus

Question: "You were formerly Hizbullah secretary-general. Is the [situation in Lebanon] within the strategic framework of Hizbullah? Does Hizbullah have an outlined and prepared plan that is being implemented today? Why do you think Hizbullah has become a source of anxiety for the Lebanese? "

Al-Tufeili: "It wasn't like this in the beginning. Hizbullah's activity was limited to resistance [operations]... But, unfortunately, the problem has developed today to the point where they have succeeded in changing Hizbullah from a resistance force into a tool to be used in [whatever] direction they want."

Question: "Does this mean that Hizbullah does not make its own decisions, and that its orders come from outside [Lebanon]?"

Al-Tufeili: "Yes, Hizbullah is a tool, and it is an integral part of the Iranian intelligence apparatus. Unfortunately, all the elements in the [Lebanese] arena have become tools, and take orders from outside [Lebanon]..."
Abducting the Soldiers Was "An Unsuccessful Adventure"

Question: "Can you see any justification for the July [2006] war after southern Lebanon was liberated in 2000?"

Al-Tufeili: "Following the abduction of the Israeli soldier [Gilad Shalit] in Gaza, and the enemy's response to that operation, [i.e.] the shelling, and the abduction of Palestinian ministers and MPs... I was amazed when Hizbullah announced that it had abducted two Israeli soldiers...

"[Israel is] an enemy we know. It has plundered our land, murdered our people, and slaughtered our children. [Was it reasonable] for us to carry out an operation like this after we have seen the response to it in Gaza and in occupied Palestine? [Was it reasonable for us to carry out such an operation] when we know that Israel attacks us, murders our children, and destroys our country [even] without us giving it excuses to do so...? I think that any sensible person could have assessed the enemy's possible response to the abduction operation... On the one hand, they [Hizbullah] are saying, 'Had we known what the reaction would be, we would not have abducted the soldiers.' On the other hand, they are giving the Israeli enemy a pretext to launch aggression against us...

"When we look at the causes of the war, there is no choice but to [admit] this. If [the war] had gotten worse, it could have led to the loss of the [entire] country... Are we allowed to destroy our country [just] so we can say that we abducted two soldiers - when we all knew what the magnitude of the Israeli response [would be]? What happened was an unsuccessful adventure, and there is no escaping the fact that those who carried it out will bear the responsibility for it..."

Iran Must Stop Using Hizbullah for Its Own Aims in Its Struggle with the West

Al-Tufeili: "[Furthermore], why was... the South [Lebanese] front the only one left burning, and why was Lebanon the only arena of bloodshed? Why weren't all fronts opened?... Why has Hizbullah become a tool [serving] individual interests that have nothing to do with the resistance? In my opinion, the issue is broader than the local [context], and is connected to the regional struggle - but it is being carried out by a local tool [i.e. Hizbullah]...

"After all that has happened, I hope that Iran will change from an element seeking its political interests in the region [into an element acting for the] liberation of Jerusalem - if Iran indeed wants to liberate Jerusalem as it claims. [It must stop] using the resistance [i.e. Hizbullah] for its own aims in its struggle with the West..."

Hizbullah is Leading the Country to Civil War

Al-Tufeili continued: "Until not long ago, the March 8 Group [a term for the Lebanese opposition] was a partner in the government, and participated in parliamentary elections.

"The March 14 [Forces] did not mislead [the Lebanese opposition]... They are openly allied with of the U.S. and France; they say openly 'We do not agree to weapons in Lebanon, except for those of the military.' They are demanding that Hizbullah hand over its arms, but in the framework of [internal Lebanese] dialogue, not by force. [They are also saying] that they want an [international] court [for the Al-Hariri assassination]. All this they said prior to the elections as well as after the elections, before they became ministers and after they became ministers.

"So where is their treason? Whom have they betrayed? Their position is clear; this is their plan, and [Hizbullah] entered into [an alliance] with them [just] for the election campaign... Yesterday, [Hizbullah] had an alliance with them, and gave the March 14 Forces a majority in parliament and in the government, and had no dispute or problems with them. [Hizbullah considered this alliance] to be for the good of the homeland.

"Today, [Hizbullah] is leading the country to civil war, in order to obtain a third [of the government]... If this third is so important, then [Hizbullah] must be punished, because it itself was the one who gave it to the [March 14 Forces in the first place]. If it is not important, then Hizbullah is leading us to civil war, to destruction and to the ruin of the country, for no good reason..."

I Do Not Believe Those Who Say They Are Against Civil War Yet Behave in a Way that Will Lead to Civil War

"I find no [justification] for us having reached such a situation... This is how wars begin. What we are seeing today in Lebanon is the preparation of an emotional, popular, military, media, and security climate [leading] towards a war that might break out at any moment. I don't believe anyone who says he is not interested in [civil] war, [yet] behaves in this manner. This is the behavior of someone who wants war."

"Iran is the Main Nerve in the Activity Today in Lebanon"

Referring to Syria's role in the events in Lebanon, Al-Tufeili said: "Syria is undoubtedly Iran's ally. It has undoubtedly been harmed by the March 14 Forces, and by the establishment of the [international] court. Thus, it is part of this battle; but it is not the most influential factor...

"Iran is the main nerve in the activity today in Lebanon. All Hizbullah activity [is financed] by Iranian funds. Syria has an important role, but Iran is the main and primary support of [the Lebanese opposition]. On the other side, the U.S. is supporting the March 14 Forces."

[1] Al-Siyassa (Kuwait), December 14, 2006.

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=SD142307

THE MIDDLE EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Special Dispatch Series - No. 1423
January 12, 2007 No.1423

Iranian and Syrian Government Papers on Renewed Superpower Role for Russia to Counter U.S. in Middle East

In a December 20, 2006 op-ed in the Syrian government daily Teshreen, columnist Issam Dariwrote that the uni-polar world order that the U.S. has sought to impose upon the world is a thing of the past, and that today Russia is playing a role no less important than that of the U.S. in promoting world peace and security.

In a December 21, 2006 article, the Iranian government daily Tehran Times discussed Russia's attempts to restore its international status throughincreasing involvement in the Middle East. The paper speculated that Russia's close friendship with Syria could help the latter emerge from the isolation imposed upon it, both by the West and by some hostile Arab countries which are trying to implicate it in Al-Hariri's assassination.

The following are excerpts from both articles:

Teshreen:"Russia Has Begun to Restore Its Central and Important Role in the Global Arena, and Especially in the Middle East"

"The global events and changes of the last decade have exposed the frailty of the New World Order that [the U.S.] sought to impose on the world as an alternative to the order that prevailed during the Cold War - the bipolar [world] order and the nuclear balance of power. [The Americans] wished to create a uni-polar, rather than a multi-polar, world [order], disregarding the facts of the world in which we live and disdaining forces and superpowers which play a crucial role with regards to world peace and security.

"The decision-makers in Washington perhaps thought they could neutralize the superpowers that have political, economic and military weight in the international arena. The first and foremost [of these] is Unified Russia, the successor of the Soviet Union, which has major interests in the region and the world, and is the current partner in the peace process which has been buried alive by the American administration and the leaders in Tel Aviv.

"The [failure] of the efforts of the American hawks, who wish to monopolize the decisions and policies on a global level, has left the Americans stunned. They have not yet realized that the [New] World Order is a figment of the past, and that the [U.S. plan] for the New Middle East is going the same way.

"We must acknowledge that the role of Unified Russia was limited for a while following the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Russians were busy reorganizing their domestic affairs after going through some rough times... But now, Russia has begun to rebuild its central and important role in the global arena, especially in the Middle East...

"If the American administration has a central role in today's world, stemming from its political, economic and military power, then Russia's role is no less important in terms of world security, stability and peace. Syria, which has strong, long-lasting ties of friendship with Russia, has long been calling on Russia to play an active role in the problems of this region, and especially in the peace process. Syria is [relying] on Russia to play its role alongside Europe and the U.N., so that the region will not remain hostage to the Americans, who tend to support Israel's aggression and terrorism..." [1]

Tehran Times: "The Main Goal of [Russia's Peace Efforts] is Restoring [Its] International Status, Which was Greatly Diminished After the Collapse of the Soviet Union"

"Amid tensions in the Middle East, Russia is trying to regain its former role in the region and has thus invited senior Lebanese and Syrian officials to Moscow.

"Lebanon is currently experiencing a serious political crisis, as its citizens are continuing their protests, which started on December 1, with the aim of forcing Prime Minister Fuad Al-Siniora to resign so that a national unity government can be established. Al-Siniora was in Moscow on December 14 to discuss regional developments with Kremlin officials. It was Al-Siniora's first visit to Moscow since assuming power. Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad also held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

"In recent years, Moscow has been diplomatically involved in all regional crises, and Kremlin officials have prioritized efforts to establish peace in the Middle East. The main goal of these activities is restoring Russia's international status, which was greatly diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

"Beirut is arranging an international tribunal to investigate the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, which has in effect paved the way for Moscow to play a role in the Middle East.

"Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa's inability to calm down the situation in Lebanon has provided a window of opportunity for Moscow. Although Moscow does not have as much influence over developments in Lebanon as some Western countries, Syria can pave the way for Russia by making use of the strong Syrian-Lebanese ties.

"After the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, Syria became the main target of Western countries, which have accused Damascus of involvement in the Hariri assassination and various other crimes. In addition, Syria's cool relations with some Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, have caused political headaches for Syria in the Middle East since the 1980s. However, Damascus's close relations with Moscow have provided a means for Syria to emerge from this imposed isolation.

"Assad's visit to Moscow was intentionally scheduled a day after the prescheduled date for the submission of a report by the head of the international team investigating Hariri's assassination. Agents of Beirut, Washington, London, and Paris are searching high and low for the least scrap of evidence to implicate Syria in the Hariri assassination." [2]

[1] Teshreen (Syria) December 20, 2006.

[2] Tehran Times (Iran) December 21, 2006.

[photos at site]

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=iwmp&ID=SP143307

Special Dispatch Series - No. 1433
January 19, 2007 No.1433

Islamist Websites Monitor Project Nos. 48-51
1

Islamist Websites Monitor No. 48

*Video Shows UAV Allegedly Downed in Iraq

On January 12, 2007, Islamist websites posted a two-minute video produced by the media department of Jama'at Ansar Al-Sunna (the Group of the Supporters of the Sunna), which shows a UAV, claimed to be an American military device intercepted by Jama'at Ansar Al-Sunna, in Al-Dhulu'iyya, Iraq. The film shows the UAV from various angles, focusing on the damage to its body and wing, and shows also the various parts of the dismantled UAV.

The video can be viewed at: http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ClipMediaID=439927&ak=null.

Below are images from the video:

*The Islamic State in Iraq Comments on Bush's New Strategy

Islamist websites recently posted a message by the Islamic State in Iraq responding to Bush's new strategy in the country. The message stated: "...This nonsense [i.e. Bush's new strategy in Iraq] is nothing but [a step on the way to] admitting defeat and fleeing from the hell that is Iraq… The [piece of] media hype known as the Baghdad Security Plan or Bush's New Strategy will not change the nature of the fighting in any way. The enemy has [merely] started to [try and] save face… The security plans which were [initially] applied to all of Iraq have [now] been restricted to Baghdad, after the courageous mujahideen… forced [the enemy] to taste bitterness."

Islamist Websites Monitor No. 49

*Information for Mujahideen Seeking to Join the Jihad in Somalia

On January 15, 2007, an Islamist website posted information for mujahideen who wish to travel to Somalia in order to join the jihad there. The message included maps and satellite images showing various possible travel routes. One of the suggested routes goes from the port of Aden in Yemen to the port of Berbera in Somaliland, continues to Burao, capital of Togdheer region in Somalia, and ends in Lasanod, capital of Sool district, where a unit of the Islamic Courts Union is claimed to be stationed.

Below are the satellites images provided with the message:

Islamist Websites Monitor No. 50

*Islamists Discuss Best Timing for Attacking U.S. Checkpoints in Iraq

On January 17, 2007, an Islamist website posted a discussion among Islamists regarding the best timing for attacking U.S. checkpoints in Iraq. Of the various possibilities mentioned by forum participants, the suggestion to attack half an hour before the call for dawn prayers seems to be the most widely accepted. As one of the forum participants explained: "This is the time when a person feels most tired and weak... and the air is very cold even during the summer."

Below is a map, attached to the discussion by forum participants.

Islamist Websites Monitor No. 51

*A Message From the Ansar Al-Sunna Commander

On January 17, 2007, Islamist websites posted a message by the commander of Ansar Al-Sunna addressed to the Sunnis in general, and particularly to the mujahideen in Baghdad. The message describes the acts of aggression that are being committed against the Sunnis in Baghdad on a daily basis by Muqtada Al-Sadr's army, and states that the only way to stop this hostility is to counter fire with fire rather than with criticism and warnings.

The message also urges Sunnis in general to join the mujahideen in their battle against Al-Sadr's army, and suggests that every four mujahideen should create a group which will purge its area of collaborators and disloyal individuals.

The message concludes by calling on the mujahideen to avoid harming innocent people "who are not involved in the crimes committed by the Shi'ite militias and by the government," and to avoid oppressing others.

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=iwmp&ID=SP143207

THE MIDDLE EAST MEDIA RESEARCH INSTITUTE
Special Dispatch Series - No. 1432
January 19, 2007 No.1432

Islamist Websites Monitor Project No. 51

A Message From the Ansar Al-Sunna Commander

On January 17, 2007, Islamist websites posted a message by the commander of Ansar Al-Sunna addressed to the Sunnis in general, and particularly to the mujahideen in Baghdad. The message describes the acts of aggression that are being committed against the Sunnis in Baghdad on a daily basis by Muqtada Al-Sadr's army, and states that the only way to stop this hostility is to counter fire with fire rather than with criticism and warnings.

The message also urges Sunnis in general to join the mujahideen in their battle against Al-Sadr's army, and suggests that every four mujahideen should create a group which will purge its area of collaborators and disloyal individuals.

The message concludes by calling on the mujahideen to avoid harming innocent people "who are not involved in the crimes committed by the Shi'ite militias and by the government," and to avoid oppressing others.

http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=iwmp&ID=SP143007

Special Dispatch Series - No. 1430
January 17, 2007 No.1430

Islamist Websites Monitor Project No. 50

Islamists Discuss Best Timing for Attacking U.S. Checkpoints in Iraq

On January 17, 2007, an Islamist website posted a discussion among Islamists regarding the best timing for attacking U.S. checkpoints in Iraq. Of the various possibilities mentioned by forum participants, the suggestion to attack half an hour before the call for dawn prayers seems to be the most widely accepted. As one of the forum participants explained: "This is the time when a person feels most tired and weak... and the air is very cold even during the summer."

Below is a map, attached to the discussion by forum participants.