Posted on 12/17/2006 4:03:30 PM PST by DAVEY CROCKETT
VEVAK learned its methodology from the Soviet KGB and many of the Islamist revolutionaries who supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini actually studied at Moscow's Patrice Lumumba Friendship University, the Oxford of terrorism. Documented Iranian alumni include the current Supreme Leader (the faqih) Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, under whose Velayat-e Faqih (Rule of the Islamic Jurisprudent) apparatus it has traditionally operated. Its current head is Cabinet Minister Hojatoleslam Gholam-Hussein Mohseni-Ezhei, a graduate of Qom's Haqqani School, noted for its extremist position advocating violence against enemies and strict clerical control of society and government. The Ministry is very well funded and its charge, like that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (the Pasdaran) is to guard the revolutionary Islamic Iranian regime at all costs and under all contingencies.
From the KGB playbook, VEVAK learned the art of disinformation. It's not so difficult to learn: tell the truth 80% of the time and lie 20%. Depending on how well a VEVAK agent wants to cover his/her tracks, the ratio may go up to 90/10, but it never drops below the 80/20 mark as such would risk suspicion and possible detection. The regime in Teheran has gone to great lengths to place its agents in locations around the world. Many of these operatives have been educated in the West, including the U.K. and the United States. Iranian government agencies such as embassies, consulates, Islamic cultural centers, and airline offices regularly provide cover for the work of VEVAK agents who dress well and are clean shaven, and move comfortably within our society. In this country, because of the severance of diplomatic relations, the principal site of VEVAK activities begins at the offices of Iran's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.
Teheran has worked diligently to place its operatives in important think tanks and government agencies in the West. Some of its personnel have been recruited while in prison through torture or more often through bribery, or a combination of both. Others are Islamist revolutionaries that have been set up to look like dissidents - often having been arrested and imprisoned, but released for “medical reasons”. The clue to detecting the fake “dissident” is to read carefully what he/she writes, and to ask why this vocal “dissident” was released from prison when other real dissidents have not been released, indeed have been grievously tortured and executed. Other agents have been placed in this country for over twenty-five years to slowly go through the system and rise to positions of academic prominence due to their knowledge of Farsi and Shia Islam or Islamist fundamentalism.
One of the usual tactics of VEVAK is to co-opt academia to its purposes. Using various forms of bribery, academics are bought to defend the Islamic Republic or slander its enemies. Another method is to assign bright students to train for academic posts as specialists in Iranian or Middle East affairs. Once established, such individuals are often consulted by our government as it tries to get a better idea of how it should deal with Iran. These academics then are in a position to skew the information, suggesting the utility of extended dialogue and negotiation, or the danger and futility of confronting a strong Iran or its proxies such as Hizballah (Hezbollah). These academics serve to shield the regime from an aggressive American or Western policy, and thereby buy more time for the regime to attain its goals, especially in regards to its nuclear weaponry and missile programs.
MOIS likes to use the media, especially electronic media, to its advantage. One of VEVAK's favorite tricks is setting up web sites that look like they are opposition sites but which are actually controlled by the regime. These sites often will be multilingual, including Farsi, German, Arabic French, and English. Some are crafted carefully and are very subtle in how they skew their information (e.g., Iran-Interlink, set up and run by Massoud Khodabandeh and his wife Ann Singleton from Leeds, England); others are less subtle, simply providing the regime's point of view on facts and events in the news (e.g., www.mujahedeen.com or www.mojahedin.ws). This latter group is aimed at the more gullible in our open society and unfortunately such a market exists. However, if one begins to do one's homework, asking careful questions, the material on these fake sites generally does not add up.
Let's examine a few examples of VEVAK's work in the United States. In late October, 2005, VEVAK sent three of its agents to Washington to stage a press event in which the principal Iranian resistance movement, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK), was to be slandered. Veteran VEVAK agent Karim Haqi flew from Amsterdam to Canada where he was joined by VEVAK's Ottawa agents Amir-Hossein Kord Rostami and Mahin (Parvin-Mahrokh) Haji, and the three flew from Toronto to Washington. Fortunately the resistance had been tracking these three, informed the FBI of their presence in Washington, and when the three tried to hold a press conference, the resistance had people assigned to ask pointed questions of them so that they ended the interview prematurely and fled back to Canada.
Abolghasem Bayyenet is a member of the Iranian government. He serves as a trade expert for the Ministry of Commerce. But his background of study and service in the Foreign Ministry indicates that Bayyenet is more than just an economist or a suave and savvy businessman. In an article published in Global Politician on April 23, 2006, entitled “Is Regime Change Possible in Iran?”, Bayyenet leads his audience to think that he is a neutral observer, concerned lest the United States make an error in its assessment of Iran similar to the errors of intelligence and judgment that led to our 2003 invasion of Iraq, with its less than successful outcome. However, his carefully crafted bottom line is that the people of Iran are not going to support regime change and that hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad actually has achieved greater popularity than his predecessors because of his concern for the problems of the poor and his fight for economic and social justice. To the naive, Bayyenet makes Ahmadinejad sound positively saintly. Conveniently overlooked is the occurrence of over four thousand acts of protest, strikes, anti-regime rallies, riots, and even political assassinations by the people of Iran against the government in the year since Ahmadinejad assumed office. So too, the following facts are ignored: the sizeable flight of capital, the increase in unemployment, and the rising two-figure rate of inflation, all within this last year. Bayyenet is a regime apologist, and when one is familiar with the facts, his arguments ring very hollow. However, his English skills are excellent, and so the naОve might be beguiled by his commentary.
Mohsen Sazegara is VEVAK's “reformed revolutionary”. A student supporter of Khomeini before the 1979 revolution, Sazegara joined the “imam” on his return from exile and served in the government for a decade before supposedly growing disillusioned.
He formed several reformist newspapers but ran afoul of the hardliners in 2003 and was arrested and imprisoned by VEVAK. Following “hunger strikes”, Sazegara was released for health reasons and permitted to seek treatment abroad. Although critical of the government and particularly of Ahmadinejad and KhameneМ, Sazegara is yet more critical of opposition groups, leaving the impression that he favors internal regime change but sees no one to lead such a movement for the foreseeable future. His bottom line: no one is capable of doing what needs to be done, so we must bide our time. Very slick, but his shadow shows his likely remaining ties to the MOIS.
http://www.ocnus.net/artman/publish/article_27144.shtml
n remote Russia, 'Murziki' bring cheer to orphans
A self-organized band of about 700 middle-class volunteers devote their
time and resources to bring hope to children. By Fred Weir
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1226/p01s03-woeu.html?s=hns
Israeli Arabs seek autonomy and veto on government decisions
Last update - 09:25 06/12/2006
Israeli Arabs seek autonomy and veto on government decisions
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/797699.html
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Israeli Arabs are demanding cultural, religious and educational autonomy, and the right to veto government decisions on national issues that affect them.
The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee Tuesday released a document entitled "The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel." It stipulates that Israeli Arabs will demand that during the next two decades Israel become a binational state alongside an independent Palestinian state.
Monitoring Committee officials say the document is a cornerstone in the history of the Israeli Arabs, as it was produced by the Monitoring Committee and sponsored by the local authorities committee, two bodies representing all the political factions of the Arabs in Israel.
"Our main objective is to ignite the spark of the political debate on the future of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel," said Shawki Hatib, chair of the Monitoring Committee.
The document demands that Israel recognize the Arab community as a national minority with the right to be represented in international forums. Jewish Israelis need not see it as a threat, Hatib said.
The document has eight chapters, each outlining the vision regarding land policy, economic development, education, etc. The chapter about relations with the state does not say that Israeli Arabs recognize Israel's Jewishness, but that they are willing to see it as a "joint homeland" for the two nations.
"This means we recognize the Jewish nation's rights in Israel as individuals and a group. But not at the Arabs' expense. We will respect each other if they respect our rights," said Dr. Asad Ghanem, a political scientist, who wrote the chapter.
The chapter presents Israel as a state created by colonialism, which grew strong due to the increased Jewish migration to Palestine in the wake of World War II's consequences and the Holocaust. It says Israel imposed a colonial policy on its Arab citizens, including confiscation of their land and redefining the culture as Jewish.
The document demands changing the state's symbols. "After 60 years we must grow up and speak the truth. This state must contain both groups on all levels. Let the Jews have Zionist symbols in their space. I support that. But why impose those symbols on me?" asked Ghanem.
The chapters presented Tuesday will be part of a book to be published by the Monitoring Committee. It was initiated by Hatib, prepared by the local authority heads' committee and financed by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).
"The Or Committee also ruled that the Israeli Arabs' weakness is the lack of group rights. That was written by a Jew, and nobody felt threatened, but when the Arabs say it, it's threatening," he said.
The chapter about the Palestinian state says the Israeli Arabs support the establishment of a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel. It would belong to the Palestinian people, while Israel would be a binational state, as it has a Jewish majority and a large Arab minority. It calls for setting up a democracy constituting a coalition of Jews and Arabs in Israel. Each side would run its own affairs and each would have a right to veto the other's decisions.
The document says the Arab public does not see Israel's present government system as a democracy, and says Israel is an ethnocracy, like Turkey, Sri Lanka, Latvia and others.
From Yahoo earthquake posts:
Hello, I am Elizabeth from Ohio. Very interested in trying to
predict earthquakes and volcanoes. I have paid close attention to
animal behavior before disasters. They either leave the area or
domestics run away while wild animals seek human company. I can
back this up with a wild deer story in Cleveland breaks in a woman's
home 4 hours before a 4.0 in June of 2006. All the Elk in
Washington have disappeared, this may be predicitave of volcanic
activity as well as earrthquakes which the two are realational. In
the tsunami, the animals left before disaster hit.
In Japan if worms come out of the ground in winter it is a sign of
earthquake.
I also notice people on the East coast complaining of methance gas
pockets in the ocean and the smell of gas being overwhelming all
over the coast. Fish are beaching themselves five months early for
no real reason. Oxygen is fluctuating in the ocean like crazy on
this end. People in New York are reporting cracks in their
driveways that werent there before and Ohio has had 3, 4.0 quakes
over the summer.
I have read an article where armadillos are leaving the south
(texas) and coming as far north as Tennesee. In Ohio we now have
rare warm weather birds flocking to the area and it has not been
very cold the last 5 winters.
I suspect oil drilling is one of the major, major factors here.
When your car engine runs out of oil, it heats up real fast, then
freezes and locks up. When you remove oil from protecting the core,
what will the result be?
I am sure when the big one hits it will break the fault from
tennessee to cali. We also have alot, I mean alot of underground
natural gas seekers drilling in the ground around here from texas to
tennesee. Water levels are heightened is also a sign, like the
water levels at yellowstone shows activity there.
I am just a college student interested in journalism so my
information is just basic research. I don't know when but I can say
it won't be long now.
I wanted to hook up here and talk to regular folks to keep people
aware of what is happening as our news in untrustworthy these days.
Thanks and hope to learn and teach and be of any assistance.
Thanks
Pakistan arrests nationalist leader
http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-235/0612247326185255.htm
Sunday December 24, 2006
Pakistan arrests nationalist leader
Islamabad, Dec 24, IRNA
Pakistan-Arrest
A senior nationalist leader has been arrested on charges of torturing
personnel of military intelligence, police said on Sunday.
Sardar Akhtar Mengal, president Baluchistan National Party was shifted
to Karachi from his home town of Hub in southwestern Baluchistan
province Sunday morning.
Police said Mengal was wanted in the intelligence personnel torture
case.
Party activists said the government has banned meeting of relatives
with Mengal.
Security guards of Mengal had caught two motor cyclists who were
following the car of his children in the Defense locality of Karachi a
few months ago.
Mengal said the suspects then disclosed that they were members of
intelligence agency.
The intelligence agent had filed cases of torture and kidnapping
against Mengal and his four guards.
An anti-terrorism court in awarded life imprisonment to four guards of
Mengal earlier this month and had declared Mengal as absconder.
Mengal was earlier detained at his residence in the town of Hub but
was shifted to Karachi on Sundya.
Strike was observed in Hub against his arrest and supporters of his
group blocked main highway between Karachi and Quetta, the provincial
capital of Baluchistan.
The police dispersed the mob and opened the road for traffic.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1758208/posts
U.S. IS DETAINING IRANIANS CAUGHT IN RAIDS IN IRAQ... DEVELOPING...
Drudge Report ^ | 12/24/06
Posted on 12/24/2006 7:53:14 PM PST by bnelson44
U.S. IS DETAINING IRANIANS CAUGHT IN RAIDS IN IRAQ... DEVELOPING... American military holding at least 4 Iranians in Iraq, including men Bush administration called senior military officials, who were seized in pair of raids late last week, NY TIMES reporting Monday... MORE...
(Excerpt) Read more at drudgereport.com ...
Saudi women taught to work in new fields
http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/December/middleeast_December404.xml§ion=middleeast&col=
Saudi women taught to work in new fields
From Habib Shaikh (Our correspondent)
24 December 2006
JEDDAH --- In order to increase areas of employment opportunities or
women, they are now being trained as cashiers and receptionists,
besides
other areas covered by the General Organisation for Technical Education
and Vocational Training (Gotevot).
These training programmes are being carried out in Jeddah, Dammam, the
holy city of Madinah, Ahsa, Buraidah, Oniza, Rass and Bekaryia.
The focus is mainly on cashiering, retail sales and reception,
according
to Sharif Jassem Al Abdulwahab, director-general of the joint training
administration, who added that the women's training programmes covering
these jobs, were being carried in the Kingdom for the first time in
accordance with the Labour Ministry's decision to employ women in all
jobs in accessory stores.
He said that the programme has attracted thousands of Saudi female job
seekers. He added that the number of the trainees had exceeded 10,000
and scores others were awaiting their turn.
Al Abdulwahab denied the rumours that the trainees will attend
practical
training in shopping centres and malls. He said that the programme has
been designed in a way to give essential training and not practical
training. "Another factor to be remembered is that the programme is not
linked to the programmes dealing with employment as is the case of the
management programmes for males."
Umm Khaled, one of the training supervisors for the programme in
Dammam,
said that about 6,971 trainees have enrolled in the programme. Of the
total, 1,242 are in Riyadh, and 2,580 in Jeddah, while there are 615 in
Qassim, 1,340 in Dammam, 640 in Madinah and 500 in Ahsa.
She said that the management is holding training sessions in the
morning
and evening to accommodate the largest possible number of candidates.
She stressed that the training programme serves as a practical step to
break the barrier of women's employment.
"The labour market will require thousands of trained women in these
three jobs especially if you take into account a city like Dammam,
which
has lots of investment projects that will generate thousands of job
opportunities," Umm Khaled said.
Eritrean copter lands in Saudi, crew seek asylum
http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article19425
Eritrean copter lands in Saudi, crew seek asylum
Sunday 24 December 2006 00:47.
Dec 22, 2006 (RIYADH) --- A helicopter from Eritrea landed in Saudi Arabia
on Friday where the pilot and his assistant sought political asylum,
Saudi state-run agency reported.
A Saudi Defence Ministry official said the Russian-built helicopter (17
A) entered Saudi air space and made emergency contact with a Saudi
airport of before landing safely in Jizan at the southwest of the
kingdom, the official SPA said.
"The pilot and his aide sought political asylum," the official said,
adding that an investigation had been launched.
Nor further details were given by the Saudi agency regarding the
identity and the motivation of the Eritrean crew.
(Reuters/ST)
Lawyer takes on Saudi Sharia police
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/15593.html
Lawyer takes on Saudi Sharia police
Posted on : Sat, 23 Dec 2006 15:54:01 GMT | Author : World News Editor
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, Dec. 23 A Saudi human rights lawyer says the
morals police oppress people in the name of religion and act as if the
law does not apply to them.
Abdul-Rahman al-Lahem, 35, will take on the Sharia police, charged with
enforcing Islamic laws, in court next week. He accuses them of
kidnapping a woman and her daughter as they left someone's home on the
outskirts of Riyadh, The Washington Post reported Saturday.
The police assumed the women had been visiting male friends and accused
them of illegal promiscuity. But the two had been at the home of female
relatives.
Unlike thousands of women who are intimidated into dropping their
grievances, the women insisted on taking their kidnappers to court.
If we win this case, it will have more of an impact than a dozen
lectures or newspaper articles, Lahem told the Post. It will send a
powerful message to them, and to the public, who view men of the cloth
as untouchable. It will prove that nobody is above the rule of law.
Copyright 2006 by UPI
You ARE up late. I saw the story. Two were diplomats and all were caught a few minutes away from the Embassy.
I hope we are saying "enough is enough".
We are definitely telling Shiite Al-Maliki that he cannot go on dragging his feet.
Laura that story was amazing to read. My thoughts now are that it is too bad we can't have that relationship between Cristians and Muslims. [it will never happen now]. Thank you for writing that down for others to read. Is there more?
Merry Christmas
Come to think of it, none of us know who you are either.
A Lethal Web of Spooks, Oligarchs and Spin
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/12/22/003.html
Tuesday, December 26, 2006 / Updated Moscow Time
A Lethal Web of Spooks, Oligarchs and Spin
By Catherine Belton
Staff Writer
Vasily Djachkov / Reuters
Lugovoi, left, and Berezovsky posing for a picture in the North Caucasus winter holiday resort of Dombay in 1998.
Editor's note: This is the second of two articles.
When former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko agreed to give two little-known British academics an interview this year, they couldn't quite believe their luck.
But the tales told by the emigre, who had once worked in the heart of the Federal Security Service's organized crime division, were often as wild as they were detailed.
"We thought a lot of it was too extreme," said one of the interviewers, James Heartfield, a researcher at London's University of Westminster. "He was always offering us inside information on things that were bizarre. His frame of reference was all based on characters out of the Cold War."
Now, however, the agent who worked for tycoon Boris Berezovsky will be remembered as the victim of one of the most bizarre Cold War-style conspiracies of modern history. Litvinenko's poisoning last month in London by polonium-210, the rare radioactive isotope that ravaged his body and left a trail of radioactivity across London, Hamburg and Moscow, could signal a major new chapter in a battle for power between rival factions of the Russian elite.
As the drama has unfolded, players long thought to be retired from Cold War-style spy games have re-entered a fray that is severely shaking President Vladimir Putin's standing in the West and could end up changing the course of his presidency. Together with the former KGB agents coming out of the woodwork is a tangled netherworld of information peddlers, spin doctors, organized crime networks and oligarchs that emerged in the chaos of the Soviet Union's collapse.
Blanket coverage in the Western media of Litvinenko's deathbed accusation that Putin was responsible for his murder has stoked anti-Russian sentiment in the West. Tension was already flaring up this year over Western concerns that Putin was stamping out democracy and using the country's energy might to blackmail neighbors.
For many in Moscow, Litvinenko's death looks like an elaborately orchestrated rebellion by those out-of-favor Western-oriented oligarchs who made vast fortunes out of the Soviet collapse, but are now either in exile or in jail, their Russian assets seized by Putin's government. For some, that group is led by Boris Berezovsky, who has styled himself as Putin's nemesis, publicly vowing to bring down his regime by force.
Berezovsky has denied any involvement in Litvinenko's death.
Others in the West, however, say Litvinenko's death is revenge against an ally of Berezovsky's. "The people who carried this out this are seeking revenge from those who helped cause the collapse of the Soviet Union," said Oleg Kalugin, a former head of KGB foreign counterintelligence whose defection to the United States in the early 1990s led Putin to brand him a traitor.
A third theory is that Litvinenko, working recently as a freelance information peddler and slightly lost in London since his Moscow heyday, had stumbled into a tangle of conflicting criminal interests, crossing other powerful oligarchs as he traded information that could have harmed enormous business interests.
John Stillwell / APP
A man walking past the Itsu sushi restaurant in Piccadilly, London, where Litvinenko met with Scaramella on Nov. 1.
One associate of Litvinenko's, Yury Shvets, a former KGB Washington station chief who defected to the United States in the early 1990s, claims he knows the name of the man who ordered the killing. He said Litvinenko had made a key mistake when he shared the contents of an incriminating dossier on a senior Kremlin official as he rushed to earn more cash. "He was trying to sell information to everyone," Shvets said by telephone this week.
A business partner of Shvets', Karon von Gerhke-Thompson, believes Litvinenko got caught up in a web of double agents and crime that cost him his life. Investigators working on the case say they have "never seen so much money" being transferred in the intelligence business, she said.
No matter who was behind it -- rogue oligarchs, either seeking to tarnish Putin's image or silence Litvinenko, or resurgent secret services now operating with or without Putin's blessing -- the end result is that Putin is facing one of the biggest challenges of his presidency.
For now, the Western media seems to be pinning the blame on him.
"Putin today is at a crossroads," said Alexei Kondaurov, a Communist State Duma deputy and former KGB general who worked as an adviser to now-jailed Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
"The day Putin vowed he would waste Chechen rebels in the outhouse, the course was set for people to be dealt with through arbitrary reprisals, to neutralize and kill opponents," Kondaurov said, referring to Putin's vow in 1999. "He can step back from this course and find the killers, wherever they are -- abroad, here or in the secret services of a third country. If he doesn't, then this stain will remain with him. He will run the serious risk of persecution wherever he goes. He will become an international pariah.
"Such a president could bring so much harm to his country because he will either take his country on a path of confrontation or will make too many compromises and become weak."
The stakes are even higher, he said, because of the way Litvinenko was killed. "This poisoning is very serious. It looks like the world's first example of nuclear terrorism.
"If you need just one-billionth of a gram to poison one person, then it does not take very much more to poison an entire country," he said. "A very dangerous precedent has been set."
The attention of British detectives visiting Moscow this month has focused on two private security agents, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, who met with Litvinenko for tea at the Millennium Hotel in central London on Nov. 1, the day he fell ill.
Shvets said Britain and the United States were bound to call Putin to account over the attack. "I don't exclude that the British and U.S. governments will decide to go directly to Putin and ask him to do something about his closest entourage," said Shvets, who says he worked with Litvinenko on due diligence reports for British firms considering investing in Russia. Shvets said British and U.S. detectives questioned him earlier this month about his knowledge of the poisoning.
A British police spokesman declined to comment.
The Dossier
Shvets said by telephone this week that a dossier he had helped Litvinenko prepare on "a very highly placed member of Putin's administration" had likely prompted the poisoning.
"It was about [the member's] connections to organized crime, to international organized crime," he said. Litvinenko, Shvets said, had won the assignment for an unidentified British company seeking to vet a Russian counterpart for what he said was a deal that could run into hundreds of millions of dollars.
Litvinenko had handed over some of the intelligence work to Shvets and said he had used a network of agents to compile the eight-page dossier. Shvets said it was after he handed it back to Litvinenko, however, that Litvinenko made a fatal mistake.
Litvinenko gave the file to Lugovoi, who had been his associate in the 1990s as head of security for Berezovsky-controlled ORT television. He had intended to show the file to Lugovoi as an example of how such reports should be written for Western companies.
"It was a bad mistake for Sasha," Shvets said. "He'd said he was showing it to a longtime friend. ... He was trying to develop his own network of sources in Russia through Lugovoi."
Berezovsky, his ally Alex Goldfarb and Shvets have said they suspect that Lugovoi became a Kremlin agent sometime after he worked as Berezovsky's security chief. Lugovoi was briefly jailed in 2001 on charges of helping another Berezovsky ally, former Aeroflot deputy general director Nikolai Glushkov, escape from police custody.
Berezovsky has said his suspicions were raised when Lugovoi boasted to him of how well his business was doing in Moscow, despite his jailing and his previous association with Berezovsky. Berezovsky refused to comment further for this article.
Shvets said Lugovoi took Litvinenko's dossier to Moscow "and this is where the attack started." The people involved must have seen the report, triggering the poisoning, Shvets said.
Shvets said he later handed the dossier to the British detectives who came to question him. The BBC's Radio 4, which interviewed Shvets in the United States and carried his claims in a half-hour program last Saturday, said it had seen extracts from the report, too.
But Lugovoi, reached by telephone this week at the Moscow clinic where he is being tested for possible radioactive contamination, rejected Shvets' claims out of hand. "These statements are fit only for psychiatric research, not for investigation," he said, adding that he had heard of Shvets only once before, when Litvinenko had mentioned him as having "huge authority in the United States."
"Now I understand that this is just the latest traitor who has run from who knows where," Lugovoi said. "This is a person who would sell anything to anyone, including his own life."
Shvets said he now felt sorry for Lugovoi, whom he felt had become a victim of a wider conspiracy and was unlikely to be the actual poisoner. "He was used as a useful idiot. He did not realize the full extent of the operation. Now his life and death are in the hands of the FSB. Whatever he says right now is written by the FSB."
The only thing protecting Lugovoi, Shvets said, was the fact that he, Kovtun and another associate, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, had gone public with their story soon after it emerged that they had met with Litvinenko the day he fell ill. "The only reason that [Lugovoi] is still alive is that when the news appeared in the media, they gave interviews."
But much of Shvets' theory may not add up. Why a Kremlin official would order a hit on a washed-out agent for a report that could easily be refuted -- and that may have only cost the individual millions of dollars in lost revenue from a failed deal -- is not clear. Such sums, after all, are small potatoes compared to the oil-fueled avalanche of cash now thundering down on Moscow.
Von Gerhke-Thompson claimed Shvets had been working for Kremlin-linked firms, too. She shared e-mails she claimed Shvets had written, showing he was busy winning business for a number of Russian companies, including the sale of lucrative oil concessions from state-owned oil major Rosneft, which is chaired by Kremlin deputy chief of staff Igor Sechin, and an oil and gas venture, the Babaykov Foundation, that according to an e-mail has links to former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Shvets denied he had ever had any work with these companies, saying he had worked solely on producing due diligence reports for British and U.S. companies over recent years. Responding to a question about the purported e-mails on the deals, he said: "The deals we are talking about fly in the hundreds over the Internet. None of them has ever materialized." He denied he had ever sought to play both sides of the fence, working as an agent for both the Kremlin and opposition businessmen. "In this industry, reputation is of utmost priority," he said. "If you fail once or run into a conflict of interest, your business is dead."
Berezovsky Connection
The common thread linking all the players in Litvinenko's death is that they have all worked for Berezovsky. Apart from Lugovoi and Shvets, there is Italian security expert Mario Scaramella, who met Litvinenko at a sushi restaurant on Nov. 1, and Yevgeny Limarev, an emigre in hiding in France to whom Goldfarb said he gave a $15,000 grant in 2002 for running an anti-FSB web site. Limarev sent Scaramella an e-mail warning him that he and Litvinenko were on a hit list put together by an elite squad of KGB veterans, Italian media reported. Limarev could not be reached for comment.
Presiding over the information flow coming out of the Berezovsky camp in the weeks since Litvinenko fell ill has been Goldfarb, a longtime Berezovsky ally who began his career as a microbiologist at Columbia University in the 1970s. Goldfarb first came to prominence through his work in the late 1980s helping refuseniks leave the Soviet Union.
Shvets entered the picture when it emerged he had been a business partner of Litvinenko's. He went public with a Dec. 2 interview to The Associated Press in which he declared that he knew the name of the killer.
Until recently, Shvets has kept a relatively low profile, working at the Alexandria, Virginia-based Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies with Kalugin, the former counterintelligence chief, and had earned a living mainly by providing testimony to the U.S. immigration service for Russian emigres seeking to live in the United States. In 2002, he landed a $400,000 contract from Berezovsky to transcribe a set of audiotapes that appeared to implicate then-Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma in the killing of journalist Heorhiy Gongadze and in sanctions-busting arms deals.
Shvets said he no longer does any work for Berezovsky. But the connection did provide him with an introduction to Litvinenko, he said.
Shvets said Litvinenko introduced him last year to Scaramella, who has courted controversy with his claims that the Soviets left nuclear mines in the Bay of Biscay and that Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi had links to the KGB.
In a recent telephone interview, Scaramella said he began his career as a lawyer and then advised U.S. universities on environmental security issues, work that landed him a post as secretary general of a little-known organization called the Environmental Crime Prevention Program, which has a rotating presidency held by countries including Angola and Samoa.
Scaramella said he had been hired as an expert on the KGB for the Mitrokhin Commission, an Italian parliamentary inquiry set up to investigate links between Italian politicians and the KGB.
But instead of coming up with much information on KGB links to Italy, he would often telephone the commission's office with tales of plots by Kremlin agents seeking to kill him, said Paolo Guzzanti, the head of the commission.
"It actually gave me a strong headache," Guzzanti said. "I always took him in a very cautious way. There is not a line coming from Mr. Scaramella in the Mitrokhin Commission report. Nothing was used.
"I have no reason to blame him and I have no mistrust. But I was extremely cautious about him because I was aware of his connections with the Russian circle in England."
Litvinenko did not appear to trust Scaramella, either. He regarded him as the prime suspect in his poisoning for at least three or four days after he was in the hospital, said Shvets, who was in telephone contact with Litvinenko.
"I was saying over and over again, 'Forget about Scaramella,'" Shvets said. When Litvinenko finally recalled the meeting with Lugovoi too, Shvets said he told him: "Sasha, you are crazy. All big security companies in Moscow are controlled by the FSB."
Among the tangled chain of agents, former or otherwise, is another voice: that of Julia Svetlichnaja, the academic who interviewed Litvinenko together with Heartfield.
Svetlichnaja, a postgraduate art and politics student at the University of Westminster, spent hours talking with Litvinenko. She said in an interview that he had said he was going to blackmail, or sell information on, Kremlin officials and oligarchs alike.
London's The Sunday Times said in a recent report earlier this month that Litvinenko had crossed Russian mafia figures. It cited sources in Spain as saying he had provided information that helped lead to the arrest in May of nine suspected members of a mafia gang. RIA-Novosti reported at the time that a lawyer for Yukos, Alexander Gofstein, was among the detained.
LOL, I am retired and sleep, when I need to.
My hope in this, is that the fact we are arresting the Iranians in Iraq, as terrorists, will reach mainstream news.
So many Americans, have bought every word jimmy carter feeds them.
I go into pure shock, when I realize that half of America voted for al gore.
Darn it, have a mental block, can't recall the name of the Marine WMD inspector in Iraq, that now writes for aljeezera?
Scott Ritter? I think that is it....LOL, never could recall names, only facts. He was arrested for picking up teenagers on the internet and got away with it, according to the papers.
I listen to a San Francisco radio station on the weekends, it is KGO.com, it gives me deep insight, as to what we are up against.
A sweet little old lady, phoned the John Rothman talk show.
John was attempting to inform the fools, what was coming from Iraq, he should have never tried to offer facts and truth.
The lady, said she had been on a cruise, recently, and Scott Ritter was seated at ther table, she had been totally brainwashed, on all Iraq and Iran facts.
To listen to her, was to read an article in al jazeera, it is all the evil American's fault.
That is the job for me, traveling on a cruise ship and offering up pure brainwashing.
It is "Wake up America" time.
I have noticed more arab voices calling the radio talk shows and spewing their hate.
They are coming out in the open, just as the communists did when kerry ran for president.
There will always be attempts to brainwash folks, that is what the banned Freeper was doing.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1758399/posts?page=3
Stationing of U.S. missile defenses in Poland a threat to Russia - analyst
Interfax ^ | Dec 25, 2006
Posted on 12/25/2006 5:15:16 PM PST by lizol
No, that isn't what the banned poster was doing. I know him, he hates the mad mullahs and has good reason to. He wasn't trying to make people think the mad mullash were the good guys, he was trying to show that the large majority of the Iranian people don't hate everyone.
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