Mideast Roundup

January 31, 2003

On Station

US Vanguard Units Airlifted to Staging Posts

For Saddam Hussein, there's nothing more relaxing than enjoying a good cigar with good company.

That's the picture the Iraqi leader wanted to paint this week when he staged a get-together with senior Iraqi officers in his bunker hideout in Tikrit.

But it was all a smokescreen, obscuring the fact that Iraq's colonels and generals - many of them out-of-shape codgers who have not conducted the business of war for years - are no match for the pile of trouble US military commanders will soon heap on their heads.

In an unprecedented move, Iraq distributed video footage to Western correspondents in Baghdad showing Saddam, between blowing smoke rings from the cigar in his hand, turning to his officers and saying: "It's stuffy in here - full of smoke. Maybe someone can get up and open a window?"

The not-so-clever Iraqis were trying to hint that a carefree Saddam had no qualms about meeting his top commanders in a building above-ground instead of in one of his fortified bunker-palaces.

What the Iraqis missed - and what US intelligence analysts caught - was that no one actually got up to open a window. That would have been quite a feat in the windowless bunker where the meeting took place.

The Americans retaliated with their own psychological war strike the next day. Wednesday, January 29, US military press officers in Qatar invited a crew from the pan-Arab al-Jazeera satellite television station to fly out to the US aircraft carrier Nimitz, just arrived in the Gulf. Such visits are usually limited to grandstanding takeoffs and landings on deck, with photographers admonished to remove their souvenir ball caps before the hats are sucked into the jet engines' intakes.

This time, history was made: the crew was taken to areas on the giant ship where nuclear weapons - on active status - are stored.

Simply put, the US war command wanted to show Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world that the United States was serious about going nuclear against Iraq if Iraq or its proxy terrorist groups wielded weapons of mass destruction against American soldiers or allied forces.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence sources report that war preparations on both sides have gone into high gear.

Following are the latest key military developments, as reported by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources:

A.
In a series of concentrated bombardments, the US air force has destroyed the Chinese-built fiber optic communications networks that linked the Iraqi general command with surface-to-surface and anti-aircraft missile batteries across Iraq. Those units can now be reached only by vulnerable conventional communications systems or telephones.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report this series of strikes will be recorded by military historians for its astonishing precision and seamless implementation. Until it was executed, an operation of this kind had been considered impossible. The fiber optics fan out in spaghetti junctions through hard-to-locate hubs called routers. The US Air Force managed to locate the switching centers and destroy all of them. US warplanes then began round the clock patrols to ensure the networks were not repaired. They dropped hundreds of thousands of leaflets warning Iraqi soldiers and civilians not to approach the destroyed communications hubs.

With communications down, Saddam had no choice but to order all the missile batteries to abandon their positions and move to Baghdad, where couriers can deliver messages from headquarters.

B.
The Yanks are coming: vanguard units of the 101st Airborne Division in Connecticut and the 82nd Airborne in Germany are being transferred to secret locations in the Gulf to prepare for the arrival of the main divisional forces. It is likely that the main elements of the two divisions will be flown straight to the battlefield once the war begins. Elements of the 101st will parachute into the Shaat al-Arab area, at the entrance to the Faw Peninsula, inside Iranian territory. They will board amphibious craft now being prepared by the vanguard units to cross the waterway, at a point where it is no more than 100 meters wide, and mount an assault on the Iraqi city of Basra and nearby oil fields.
Troops from the 82nd Airborne will also fly directly from bases in Germany and parachute into western Iraq.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report a growing tendency on the part of General Tommy Franks, commander of the US campaign against Iraq, to try to shorten the war by dropping large numbers of airborne troops.

Earlier this week, Cyprus agreed to allow British bases on the eastern Mediterranean island to be used as a staging post for the attack on Iraq. Preparations are in train to parachute British forces gathering in Cyprus into western Iraq, aboard flights crossing Israeli and Jordanian air space. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources in Cyprus, the entire coast between Limassol and the western resort of Paphos has effectively become a closed military area under the control of British forces preparing for the airborne assault.

In addition, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the US air base on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia is fully prepared for the offensive.

In northern Iraq, work on building or extending six air bases has been wrapped up. Three of the biggest bases will be able to handle C-130 Hercules cargo planes or CA-130 gun-ships. They are: Beni Harir, north of Irbil, in an area controlled by the Kurds and where US special forces have been deployed, Bayrajo, along the main Suleimaniyeh-Kirkuk highway, and Bamerni outside the Kurdish city of Dahouk.

Bamerni is the only base in the area where the US military intends to land fighter planes and bombers. US forces assembling at Bamerni will eventually be flown south by helicopter to capture the second biggest oil city in northern Iraq, Mosul. Three smaller airfields in the area will be used by US light reconnaissance planes and helicopters.

Work on the six bases was carried out by the Seabees of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 74 based in Gulfport, Mississippi.

Also in northern Iraq, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources report that a large-scale Kurdish call-up has been completed. With the help of US special forces, US-made weapons were distributed to the Kurdish legion under the joint command of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan leader, Jalal Talabani, and the Kurdish Democratic Party chief, Massoud Barzani.

The Kurds have managed to raise an army of 90,000, larger than expected and well-equipped with US weapons and off-road vehicles and artillery.

It is roughly double the size of the Northern Alliance that backed the US war effort in Afghanistan in 2001. DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military sources say the US war command is on track to complete by February 25 all its preparations for an offensive which, as we reported in our previous issue, can begin any time between the last week of February or early March.


Iran

Tehran Stirs up Iraqi Pot against Washington

Iran's two-timing tactics are becoming the biggest headache of American war planners, who have heavily underpinned their Iraqi war strategy on understandings with Tehran and Iran's pledges to cooperate in the offensive against Iraq.

Those understandings appear to be making way for arrant double-dealing. While some parts of the Bush team still cling to the belief in Iran's adherence to its commitments, even they are getting worried.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's exclusive sources in Iran substantiate these concerns. On the ground, as our sources discovered, the Iranians are betraying their understandings with Washington right and left. They are threatening pro-American Kurdish chiefs with one hand, attempting to buy them off with the other, and keeping them in a state of fearful suspense.

Last week, our sources report, Iran transferred large quantities of light and medium weapons to Ansar al-Islam, an Islamic terrorist group associated with the Taliban and al Qaeda, which has set up a pro-Saddam enclave in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. Several thousand Ansar fighters are believed to have overrun neighboring villages and fortified them with land mines.

As an object lesson and warning to Tehran, US forces launched a punishing offensive against Afghan renegade pro-Iran Gulbuddin Hekmatyar on Thursday, January 30, at the end of three days of fierce fighting in the mountains of Spin Boldak near the Afghan-Pakistani border.

In the meantime, fearful of Ansar inroads on their territory, Kurdistan's two main leaders -- Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and Masoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, both of whom have signed pacts with the United States - turned to Tehran for help in ridding their region of the Ansar threat.

Iran made its help conditional on the two Kurdish leaders making good on their promises of a substantial cut for pro-Tehran Shiite candidates in future power-sharing in Baghdad. But behind their backs, Iran let Saddam Hussein's weapons supplies for Ansar take the short cut through its territory. The Iranians even topped up the Iraqi supply train with contributions of mortars, communications devices, night vision equipment and large quantities of ammunition.

Some of those Iranian mortars were discovered by Barzani's men this week in the possession of captured Ansar fighters. They also contend that the killer of USAID officer Laurence Foley in Amman last October has found refuge in the Ansar enclave. They named the assassin as Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, but the report is still unverified.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Iranian experts note that supporting Ansar is part and parcel of Tehran's Iraq strategy. The extremist Kurdish group is funded by Saddam Hussein and fanatical enough to become a thorn in the sides of the Americans and the government they hope to install in Baghdad. The landing strips US forces are building and extending for the use of transports, warplanes and helicopters may prove to be prime targets for Ansar zealots.

By arming Ansar, Iran keeps the heat up on the two main Kurdish groups and increases their dependency on Tehran. At the same time, the ayatollahs pose as the best friends of Barzani and Talabani. This week, they promised each $1 million - a sum with enormous purchasing power inside Iraq - in the hope of weaning them away from their reliance on the United States. Yet, to keep the Kurdistani chiefs on the hop, the Iranians are playing on their age-hold fear of Turkey. They are whispering in the ears of Talabani and Barzani that Turkish troops will advance into northern Iraq and seize the oil regions of Mosul and Kirkuk.

On the political front, mediation efforts have been under way in Iran between Ayatollah Mohammad Baqer Hakim, head of the opposition Iraqi Supreme Revolutionary Council, and the leaders of the less religious Ad-Dawa party, a group that enjoys a measure of US support and could play a key role in a future Iraqi government. Initial reports suggest the talks helped smooth over differences between the two factions.

In another dramatic move, Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, visited Teheran for talks with the other opposition groups, including Hakim's faction. Iran initially denied Chalabi's visit, but later said he was just passing through on his way to another destination.

But DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources report that Chalabi, who arrived in Teheran early in the week, is still there. The contest over the post-war Iraqi administration is heating up. Chalabi found himself an object of pursuit while engaging in intense lobbying in his own interest.

Iranian officials are leaning hard on him to accept their power-sharing format, while Chalabi took the opportunity to sell his views of power division to Hojat-el-Islam Abdel-Aziz Hakim, head of the military arm of the Iraqi Supreme Revolutionary Council. Hakim, for his part, tried to win Brigadier Najib al-Salehi, a former Iraqi general now living in the United States, to Tehran's side.

Iran is also working hard to pre-empt any deals on an Iraqi government line-up that might be forged in a meeting of Iraqi opposition groups at the State Department in Washington on January 31. The Iranians hope to have bought broad support by separate transactions with the faction leaders invited to Tehran in the last ten days.

The convention of 75 senior Iraqi opposition activities slated for mid-January at the Kurdish city of Irbil has been postponed again until mid-February with no firm date.

The Iranians are not neglecting their terrorist option, counting on this threat to back up their claims for seats and jobs in the next Iraqi government. While continuing to play host to Iraq's radical Shiite leaders, they are stepping up training for their military arm, Sephah Badr, which has conducted a series of guerrilla warfare exercises. These fighters are expert in the use of shoulder-held missiles against low-flying aircraft. Radical factions in Iran are getting ready to carry out attacks on American targets should the coming regime changes in Baghdad not be to the liking of the ayatollahs. They argue that Shiites comprise at least 60 percent of the Iraqi population and deserve key positions in a future government.

Hossein Shariat-Madari, editor in chief of Iran's daily Kayhan newspaper, spoke on Tuesday, January 28, of a possible Shiite revolt against the United States and worldwide terrorist attacks should Washington attempt to disenfranchise Iraq's Shiite leadership.

"If a (US) attack (on Iraq) takes place, not only will the US army run into extreme popular resistance, including terrorist attacks and growing anger among Muslim nations, but no American, anywhere in the world, will be safe," he wrote.

Shariat-Madari called this week on Islamic nations to launch guerrilla attacks against Americans all over the world.


Intelligence

1. Bush Dare Not Fly Blind This Time

The most vital and scarce commodity sought by the supreme commander of US armed forces, President George W. Bush, in the weeks leading up to the war against Iraq is credible intelligence - just like in October 2001, when America went to war in Afghanistan.

This time the need is even more pressing. The Bush administration needs this precious commodity not only to ensure that 160,000 American troops do not go into battle blind, but also to provide evidence for justifying military action against Saddam Hussein's regime to public and political opinion at home and abroad.

Yet, however hard they hunt, Bush's top brains - Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice - cannot be sure of coming up with the necessary smoking gun.

The same uncertainty marks the work of the UN arms inspection teams and was reflected in the reports Chief UN Inspector Hans Blix and Chief Atomic Inspector Mohamed ElBaradei delivered to the Security Council on Monday, January 27. The two encumbrances they cited in uncovering Saddam's forbidden weapons were Iraq's lack of cooperation and the lack of intelligence. With precise intelligence data on locations - and more time - they might have turned up more.

Naturally, Messrs. Blix and ElBaradei would be glad of more time for a spot of bureaucratic empire building, which a war would rudely interrupt. However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources do not believe that the extra months the inspectors want to exhaust their search for incriminating evidence of Saddam's unconventional weapons will make much difference.

In the closed session held by Security Council members Wednesday, January 29, two days after the inspection reports were presented to the Security Council, Blix had to admit that one of the 16 empty chemical weapons warheads discovered at an ammunition dump south of Baghdad had come back from the laboratory tests as clean as a whistle. None of the delegations were bowled over. As we reported at the time, most Western intelligence agencies believed the warheads were new and unused and planted by Iraqi intelligence for the inspectors to find.

Immediately after the council session, Russian representatives challenged the United States to produce "undeniable proof" of banned weapons in Iraqi hands, implying that Moscow and Russian intelligence were skeptical of the Bush team's ability to deliver. The Russians know better than anyone that there is no such thing as "undeniable proof" in the intelligence game and are playing this predicament to the hilt to embarrass the administration.

The predicament first bit, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts explain, when anti-war dissidents in Washington started calling for "a smoking gun" before going to war - presenting the Bush administration with the impossible task of producing a life-size Iraqi warhead stuffed with poisonous chemicals or germs, or an Iraqi plane fitted with spray canisters filled with anthrax.

Little hope of "undeniable proof"

Intelligence services are not built to produce smoking guns for public consumption. The US war command, military intelligence and the CIA are most certainly running teams on the ground to observe Iraqi undercover units under the direct command of Saddam or his sons, which are strongly suspected of being armed with WMD. Those teams would be placed in harm's way if their markings or locations were exposed or printouts handed round that would identify their electronic surveillance instruments.

Furthermore, some of the locations and units under covert US observation for months may turn out to be innocent of forbidden weapons. This discovery would cause untold harm to American credibility.

For all these reasons, there is very little likelihood of the Bush administration producing a smoking gun or "undeniable proof" to support its case against Iraq.

One senior intelligence officer put it this way to DEBKA-Net-Weekly: "Just imagine that in mid-2001, the American government decided to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq after receiving advance intelligence of the 9/11 attacks against New York and Washington. Could it have produced a smoking gun? That sort of unshakable evidence takes years and enormous funds to get hold of and even then it may not be usable."

To break out of its dilemma, the White House this week chose to go forward on two tracks.

On Powell's advice, US public statements began easing the focus of the war debate away from Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and over to his links with terrorist groups, such as al Qaeda. Iraqi intelligence's connections to almost any Middle East terror group, including al Qaeda, are much easier to publicize and prove than Saddam's unconventional armory.

Secondly, on Wednesday, January 29, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers, verified an earlier DEBKA-Net-Weekly report that US special forces are operating in northern Iraq.

Iraqi military defections snowball

Gen. Myers's admission had two purposes:

1.
Most countries upon hearing a public admission that a foreign government had sent troops to invade their soil would normally react - either by declaring war on the aggressor or sending an army to resist the invasion. In either case, the Myers statement may be expected to touch off fighting between US and Iraqi military forces. The flaring up of war would put a stop to the interminable argument between Washington and opponents of US military action, spearheaded by France, Germany and Russia. Open combat would also provide British premier Tony Blair with ammunition for shooting down the anti-war faction in his party and stilling the rising disaffection in the UK against Britain's participation in the war on Iraq.

2.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that Iraqi intelligence officers who defected in recent weeks to US special forces operating inside Iraq are willing to publicly attest to the collaboration between Saddam's covert forces and al Qaeda terrorists. The defectors are now in the hands of US military intelligence and the CIA.

This prospect worried Saddam Hussein enough to prompt the intensive round of interviews he has begun conducting in Baghdad and Tikrit with one group of Iraqi commanders after another. He is asking them all to be on the lookout for treasonable officers of their acquaintance, while making a show of unconcern. Traitors are part of every war, he tells them.

However the interviews began after he was warned by Iraqi intelligence chiefs that the Americans intend next week making public the substance of their debriefing sessions with Iraqi defectors. Some of the officers might even talk directly to the media before or after February 5, when the secretary of state will present the Security Council with evidence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, the ways in which they are hidden and Iraq's links with terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.

According to our sources, the early trickle of Iraqi defections to the American side has snowballed into a substantial movement and become a keystone of the edifice the US military and intelligence are erecting for the offensive. Groups of 10 to 12 army and intelligence officers and men willing to collaborate with the Americans are arriving at US special forces forward positions and bases in northern Iraq and CIA posts in Kurdistan. Altogether about 700 Iraqi military men have come over thus far.

Alternative public administration is ready to go

Sorting them into groups for debriefing is given top priority by US intelligence, in the hope that the defectors will yield important data for fueling the administration's domestic and international war campaigns.

The Myers disclosure is expected to stimulate the Iraq military defection movement, building it up into thousands. At best, it could turn into a stampede that will bring Saddam's defenses crashing down before the American invasion begins

The US government, the CIA, the Pentagon are also planning to compare and cross-check the information obtained from Iraq defectors with the vast body of information accumulating in the files of the FBI from its comprehensive background checks on hundreds of thousands of people of Iraqi descent across the American continent - the most all-encompassing survey ever carried out among any &Mac218;migr&Mac218; community.

The FBI inquiry aims to uncover the place of birth of every former Iraqi citizen and his or her ties at home with Iraqi military, scientific and government personnel and leaders of the business community, including oil industry executives.

American war and post-war planners hope to draw on this data bank in a variety of ways:

1.
To identify and locate citizens of Iraqi origin who have relatives in Iraq's military and intelligence services to set up conduits for information of potential value for the war effort, such as the places where non-belligerence or desertion deals can be struck with unit commanders or men.

2.
To locate Iraqi intelligence terror and spy cells on the American continent, the Middle East and Europe.

3.
To seek out Iraqis associated with the thousands of straw companies Baghdad has established in the West to defy international sanctions and purchase weapons, arms parts and the components for weapons of mass destruction systems.

4.
Recruiting ex-Iraqis with backgrounds in the oil industry, both production and marketing, to man the administration that will run Iraqi oil under American control.

5.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report the FBI has so far enlisted between 2000 and 3000 ex-Iraqi professionals, most with training in running large electricity, water, gas and water systems as well as flour mills, bakeries and public medicine facilities. They have been taken to US bases in America and Europe for advanced instruction in operating these systems in Iraq and assigned the districts of their future employment.

This group will constitute the nucleus of the post-Saddam civil and public services administering the country under Zalmay Khalil-Zad, the American civilian governor designated to officiate in Baghdad in the early post-war months.

2. Cold War Shadow over Iraq

US President George W. Bush has good reason to proceed with caution before launching a military campaign to oust Saddam Hussein and install a new government in Iraq. History has shown that intelligence operations mounted by friend and foe can inject a frightening element of the unknown into the best laid plans.

Take the case of North Korea, and US intelligence efforts to monitor its development of nuclear weapons and uranium enrichment back in the early 1990s.

In a January 21 item headlined "CIA got Russia to spy on North Korea", James Risen recounted in The New York Times how the CIA asked the Russian intelligence service SVR to install US monitoring equipment in the Russian embassy in Pyongyang.

"The joint operation represented a major test of efforts by the CIA and SVR to forge a new relationship in the post Cold War period," Risen wrote.

"Even though the CIA had asked for help, it did not completely trust the Russians to tell the truth about what the nuclear monitoring equipment detected. As the clandestine American-Russian operation was getting under way, the North Korean nuclear program was quickly becoming one of Washington's biggest concerns. North Korea had pledged not to develop nuclear weapons·but by the early 1990s, there was growing evidence that North Korea was secretly flouting its agreements."

In 1994, the Clinton administration reached an accord with North Korea, under which Pyongyang agreed to freeze its nuclear program, especially the enrichment of uranium at the Yongbyon facility. But a short time later, it became clear the North Koreans were pressing ahead with uranium enrichment.

Now, nine years later, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that North Korea has at least two nuclear bombs and is now busy building four to six additional devices. Negotiations are in various stages of progress with several countries in the Middle East - Libya, Egypt, Iraq and Syria - on the sale of two or three bombs.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources note that counter-espionage has played a key role in the US-Russian-North Korean nuclear triangle. Back when the CIA nuclear monitoring devices were whirring away in the Russian embassy in Pyongyang - signaling burgeoning cooperation with the SVR - Washington's most sensitive political, military and technological secrets were regularly being passed to the Russian intelligence service's headquarters in Yasenevo, near Moscow.

The material made its way to Moscow via encrypted Toshiba laptop computers that were specially modified by the 8th Chief Directorate-Communication and Cryptography of the SVR's First Chief Directorate, an organization still in existence. The SVR would dispatch the computers in diplomatic pouches to the then-Soviet Union's embassy in Washington and to the delegations of Russia or other friendly countries at UN headquarters in New York. From there, the laptops would make their way to FBI or CIA turncoats who spied for Russian intelligence: Aldrich Ames, Robert Philip Hanssen, Earl Pitts and Harold Nicholson.

Once their hard drives could hold no more secrets, the spies would leave the computers at pre-arranged "drops" and pick up fresh laptops at other hiding places. The computer swap system was used for years. Ames, the CIA's chief of counter-intelligence for Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, was a spy for at least 14 years, from 1980 to 1994. Hanssen, who spent much of his 25-year career with the FBI in counter-intelligence, swapped computers from the late 1970s to late 2000.

It is highly likely that from 1991 until the nuclear freeze deal was signed with North Korea in 1994, the Russian laptops conveyed to Moscow not only data collected by the US equipment in the Russian embassy in Pyongyang but also what the United States believed the Russians had learned by tapping into those monitoring devices.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence experts and sources, the handful of historians researching counter-espionage in the 20th century have no doubt the head of the First Chief Directorate in Yasenevo would not have been satisfied with merely possessing Washington's most closely-held secrets. The spymaster, they believe, would have insisted on reselling them to the highest bidder.

How Moscow sold North Korean nuclear secrets to Iraq

Iraq's military intelligence and atomic energy commission were two of Yasenevo's top clients for the freshest possible information on North Korea's nuclear program and uranium enrichment efforts.

Once the price was set, the material was sent in its entirety to Baghdad, without the deletions usually made before intelligence services transfer sensitive information. The First Chief Directorate was always proud of the quality and quantity of the material it provided.

After paying out several million dollars to obtain the requisite data, Saddam Hussein was in a position in the 1990s to weigh the advantages of forging nuclear ties with North Korea and its potential contribution towards accelerating Iraq's nuclear program and the building of an Iraqi atomic bomb.

More disturbingly, Osama bin Laden or his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had acquired direct links with Moscow and indirect contacts with European, Arab and Moslem intelligence operatives. They had the choice of buying encrypted computer programs directly from the First Chief Directorate or indirectly in a way that would enable them to bypass or tap into the United States' most secret intelligence systems. This capability turned them into shadows, able to travel around the world invisibly, infiltrate the United States itself and run sleeper cells without interference.

A Washington Post article published on September 14, 1997 sheds some more light on the labyrinth of international counter-espionage. It told of a small town north of Moscow called Sergiyev Posad, where under the terms of the START-1 arms control treaty with the United States, a Russian military plant dismantled ballistic missiles deployed on Russian submarines. According to the report, the Russian ballistic missiles arrived at the gates of the facility, called the Scientific Testing Institute of Chemical Machine Building, after their warheads had been removed. But the missiles still contained highly sophisticated electronic guidance systems, including gyroscopes that keep the weapons on course to their targets.

Independent investigators discovered that 30 gyroscopes from disassembled missiles in Sergiyev Posad made their way to Iraq at about the same time that Iraq expelled the UN arms inspectors in 1998.

In a more recent development, William H. Hamilton, president of Inslaw Inc, appealed this month to Thomas H. Kean, former governor of New Jersey and chairman of the National Commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks, to look into information he received that "Promis" databank software produced by his company in the 1980s - and which Inslaw has accused the US Justice Department of stealing - was transferred to bin Laden.

Hamilton wrote to the commission that "Bin Laden reportedly bought the US intelligence community's version of the Promis database software on the Russian black market after former FBI agent Robert P. Hanssen had stolen it for the Russians and used Promis in computer-based espionage against the United States."

But DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources report that Hamilton was mistaken: Bin Laden did not buy Promis, having decided he had no practical use for such a program in the mountains of Afghanistan, the valleys of Pakistan or the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, where he is now hiding out.

The money he might have spent on Promis was used instead to buy the top-secret encryption codes that enabled him during the 9/11 attacks to penetrate the communications and monitoring networks of US civil and military aviation and the US Coast Guard.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's military and intelligence experts, all these developments have persuaded Bush to be especially cautious before launching a war against Iraq. The big unknown - the secret intelligence bag of tricks at the disposal of the Iraqi ruler, his military intelligence agency and Osama bin Laden - is the clue to the CIA's resistance to US military action against Iraq. It is also at the bottom of British, Russian and French apprehensions over what a military offensive might trigger.


Terrorism

Saudi Money Continues to Feed al Qaeda

The al Qaeda gangs rounded up this month across Europe, in Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Germany - some in advanced stages of preparation for chemical poison attacks - have been traced by DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources to two points of origin: Chechnya and Algeria.

Interrogations of the men in custody revealed that Saudi Arabia continues to be the leading purveyor of manpower and funds for the Islamic terror network, while branches of the Albanian mafia scattered over Europe serve as al Qaeda's primary logistical arm - supplier of weapons, travel documents, forged passports, vehicles and hideouts from which to launch their strikes.

<http://debka.com/pictures/Europe1.jpg> Our counter-terror experts have prepared a detailed map illustrating the routes that the terrorist cells follow to target. (The complete map can be seen by clicking on the picture.)

They start out in Chechnya and Algeria and cut across Europe through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Bosnia.

But the most shocking discovery is that 17 months after the 9/ll atrocities in which 15 Saudi suicide bombers took part, the Saudis are still providing al Qaeda with funding for terrorist operations against the West.

Saudi officials have worked hard to show Washington that the kingdom has cleansed itself of the taint of funding and fueling al Qaeda terror. On September 13 last year, the Saudi interior minister Prince Naif set up a committee to oversee the flow of capital to charity organizations. Saudi labor minister, Dr. Ali Ibrahim Namleh, demanded greater transparency from all Islamic charities in the kingdom. At the same time, the princes launched an impressive PR campaign in America to show they were adamantly opposed to terrorism.

However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly's counter-terror sources have discovered from a senior Western source that the river of Saudi cash continues to reach al Qaeda through the circuitous channels the organization has devised to obtain the money for its activities. Two men are at the hub of this funding chain: Wael Hamza Jalidan, chairman of the Ribata Trust charity, and Mahmoud Jamal Khalifa, one of Osama bin Laden's brothers-in-law.

Jalidan is a director of the Islamic International Relief Organization (IIRO) and a subsidiary of Ribata Trust. In recent years, he has spent much time in the Balkans, helping to dispense Saudi charity funds in Albania and Kosovo through the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo, which until recently maintained an office in Pristina. He was also involved in the Mouafak charity in Bosnia, whose senior director is Adel Sadeq.

Jalidan and Khalifa are linked to another member of the bin Laden support team, Khaled bin Mahfuz, former head of the Saudi National Trade Bank and for long years an economic adviser to the royal house. Mahfuz has been arrested in the past for ties with al Qaeda but was always released quickly.

This trio shows no sign of heeding the directives issued by their interior and labor ministers. Under the patronage of King Fahd's brother, the governor of Riyadh Prince Salman, they continue to pump funds to terrorist organizations in Lebanon and Yemen. Salman is one of the men who decide to which Islamic organizations around the world Saudi largesse will be assigned. He heads such important Saudi charity bodies as the Supreme Committee for Fund-raising for Muslims and the Popular Committee for Aiding Mujehadeen in Palestine.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly's senior Western source reports that Jalidan's financial operation in the Balkans is sanctioned by Salman. Most of the money he hands out, though designated for stricken Muslim regions, ends up with Islamic organizations in Lebanon, Yemen and groups affiliated to al Qaeda.

A key figure in the Balkan funding enterprise is a Palestinian called Kamal Abu Foda, nominally coordinator of the Combined Saudi Fund for Kosovo, whose real job is to direct the incoming funds from Kosovo to banks in Lebanon and Yemen to finance the activities of al Qaeda affiliates. One of its recipients is the Arm of Ansar, based in Sidon and controlled by al Qaeda. In Yemen, the funds are funneled to the Aden Alabayan Army.


HOT POINTS
(that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock)
A Digest of the Week's Exclusives

27 January: More time for the inspections is now the prime issue before the Security Council members. However, this is the last commodity the Bush administration can afford to offer after so many declarations and delays.

The British government found an unconventional means of announcing the disclosure on March 1 of a new dossier revealing the locations of Saddam Hussein's hidden VX and Sarin stocks on the basis of "human intelligence". The disclosure came in the middle of a Sky TV News panel program on Monday, January 27, just a few hours before the Blix-ElBaradei performance at the Security Council. It was made by Robert Fox, the British network's senior political editor "on behalf of our government".

According to DEBKAfile's Washington and London correspondents, the British disclosure was the opening shot of the joint US-UK strategy of letting the Security Council and inspection team go their own way, while proceeding with military action against Iraq, without waiting for authorization from the world body.

At best, clandestine data might be shared with UN inspectors in dribs and drabs. As DEBKAfile has reported before, the Americans suspect the inspection teams are penetrated by Iraqi double agents who make regular reports to Baghdad. This was as much as admitted by Hans Blix in his report to the Security Council. Last week, when the inspectors set out for an unannounced visit to a site suspected of containing engines for the prohibited long-range al-Hussein missiles, they met with unaccountable holdups. An American spy satellite discovered why when it photographed Iraqi military crews hurriedly loading engines from the site aboard giant trucks.

The most telling aspect of the British disclosure is the date: March 1.

The promised British revelation of Saddam's secret chemical weapons cache is timed precisely to coincide with the still tentative timetable for launching war on Iraq, whether by a cruise missile blitz, heavy air bombardment, or paratroop landings at the concealed WMD sites and their destruction.

Because of the tight time factor, a competition has sprung up between the two opposing camps: the United States, Britain and their covert allies, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt, versus the anti-war faction led by Russia, France, Germany, China and the United Nations. Members of the second camp may well switch sides once the offensive is in progress, but first they must show their own peoples and the Muslim world that they were ready to put up a fight to prevent it - even at the risk of an open breach with Washington.

The American-led camp is also taking a grave risk, that of mortally wounding the United Nations. Many observers wonder how long the world body will survive if the United States goes to war against Iraq in flat defiance of its institutions and majority will.

However, Security Council members opposed to the war likewise drove the world body into a no-exit situation by their unanimous endorsement of Resolution 1441. Their failure to back the Bush administration now could put the world body's survival in jeopardy. The United Nations itself, and not just Saddam Hussein, face existential danger over the whole unconventional weapons issue.

The inspectors have been awarded one more month to wind up their investigations in Iraq, no real concession when the war dateline is one month hence anyway, the time needed for American war planners to complete their military buildup and meet the President's conditions.

At the same time, the Bush administration has been making Herculean diplomatic efforts to bring the war opponents round; it was Colin Powell's main mission at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week. An Israeli emissary, Efraim Halevy, head of Sharon's National Security Council, was asked to pay a visit to Moscow over the weekend. According to DEBKAfile's sources, Halevy presented the Kremlin with documents and data exposing joint Iraqi-al Qaeda planning for mega-terror attacks in Europe and the Middle East, as well as Russia. The hope was that this would melt Vladimir Putin's resistance to the US offensive and prepare the way for the telephone call British prime minister Tony Blair put through to President Putin Monday, January 27.

However, Putin stuck to his guns - notwithstanding Israeli intelligence evidence of a major terror threat to Moscow involving Iraq and Blair's persuasiveness.

27 January: Israel's election campaign was an exercise in fading credibility.

Two days before the poll, Labor's eminence grise, dovish Shimon Peres - former prime minister and foreign minister, echoed by ex-party leader Binyamin Ben-Eliezer - faithfully repeated Amram Mitzna's vow never to join a government led by Ariel Sharon.

Friends of Labor and top pundits then declared the prime minister would be forced to be satisfied with a narrow-based, ultra-nationalist government bloc, commanding roughly half the Knesset and be prone to the internal manipulation and instability that plagued the last two governments and forced three elections in three years.

All the polls empower (Change) as scale turner despite its fuzzy positions on most key issues. The only clear statement coming from Lapid is a vow never to sit in the same government as Shas.

DEBKAfile's political analysts assert that none of these three pledges and premises will survive the vote-counting.

Some, though not all, Labor politicians will take their seats at Sharon's cabinet table after being convinced that the prime minister has taken steps towards advancing the peace process with the Palestinians.

Sharon will lead a national unity government with one of the strongest majorities of any Israeli administration - without the National Union, which advocates voluntary transfer for the Palestinians.

Lapid and his followers will not resist the lure of a couple of portfolios at least, when confronted with the national emergency of a looming US war with Iraq and threat of mega-terror.

According to DEBKAfile's sources in Jerusalem, at least two of these post-election realities are already accomplished facts. The prime minister's chef de bureau and confidant, Dov Weissglass and former minister Dan Meridor are engaged in advanced dialogue with Peres on the Israeli version of the "road map" for President George W. Bush's two-state Middle East vision. Approval of the Middle East Quartet's version was postponed until after the Israeli election. Accord on the Sharon government's version will open the way for Peres to rejoin the new government. He officiated in the outgoing government as foreign minister until Labor walked out last October.

As a senior architect of the 1993 Oslo peace framework accord with the Palestinians, Peres, who is pushing 80, is unlikely to put his name to a new "road map" document, or join the Sharon government, without prior consultation with his partner in Oslo, Yasser Arafat.

But after being marooned so many times by Arafat's broken promises, Peres is making sure that the Palestinian leader's close advisers, his financial guru Mohammed Rashid and national security adviser Mohammed Dahlan, are fully committed to the Peres-Weissglass blueprint and make sure it is signed by Arafat. He hopes that even if Arafat behaves in character and goes back on this accord, Rashid, Dahlan and their factions will abide by the "road map" formulated by and on behalf of· Ariel Sharon.

The annual World Economic Forum gathering at Davos this week was selected as the perfect venue to demonstrate to the Americans and Europeans that the Israel-Palestinian dialogue is back on track on the eve of the Iraq war. Both Peres and Rashid chose to attend and be seen together.

The Israeli voter should therefore be prepared for at least two surprises when the 55th Knesset convenes in Jerusalem.

One, if Labor is dumped to third place for the first time in its history, at least four ex-ministers will find their way back into the Sharon government, as a result of which Binyamin Netanyahu may lose his job in the foreign ministry to Shimon Peres. Mitzna and faction may split off and join the dwindling left wing Meretz.

Two, Sharon will be seen to have laid the foundations for the creation of a Palestinian state, albeit on depleted land with limited sovereignty

29 January: The Israeli electorate greeted the January 28 general election apathetically, only 68.5 percent bothering to vote for the 120 men and women who will sit in the 16th Knesset. Ariel Sharon's Likud was generally tipped as the big winner, although its 38 seats went beyond expectation.

Nonetheless there were a couple of surprises. Left-wing, dovish Meretz was severely battered, falling from 10 to 7 seats. Its leader, Yossi Sarid, resigned on the spot. The Labor leader, Amram Mitzna, received the party's worst electoral defeat in its history - from 25 in the outgoing Knesset to 19 - in the ringing tones of a victor: "For me this is a marathon and we've only covered a few kilometers. Our intention is not to join Sharon but to replace him as an alternative government party."

The second new face thrown to the top by the election was that of the former journalist Tommy Lapid who gathered up a strong protest vote by campaigning against government subsidies and military exemption for the ultra-religious communities, singling out the Sephardi Shas. He declared he felt the heavy weight of responsibility for the future of the country, called on Sharon to form a "national secular" administration without Shas, and proceeded to dictate the next government's program: Every able-bodied Israel must serve in the armed forces, no religious coercion and a sensible peace and war policy. Labor must act responsibly and join this government.

In any case, Sharon and Likud perceive a national unity administration as more than a partnership between the political left and right, but rather a popular crosscut representation, such as secular versus religious, Ashkenazi versus Sephardi. Shas, despite losing one-third of its list - 17 down to 10 - will be invited to join an administration led by Sharon - not despite but because of his wish to co-opt Labor and Shinui, since both the latter are predominantly Ashkenazi parties. Therefore, Lapid's "secular" government is totally unrealistic as long as it is up to the Likud leader to form the next government.

So too is his demand to conscript every able-bodied Israeli Jew.

The Israeli Defense Forces has no need of universal conscription, although circumstances in the Middle East may alter this. In fact, more than one group is granted exemption. New immigrants over 25, tens of thousands of them, are not obliged to serve in the military either.

As for the Labor leader, Mitzna may find his do-or-die oath to keep "Labor under my leadership" out of any government headed by Ariel Sharon untenable. The grim faces of ex-ministers Shimon Peres, Binyamin Ben Eliezer and Matan Vilnai when he repeated this Tuesday night should warn Mitzna that his 60-day old leadership might not suffice to keep the party whole and united against joining the next government.

These old hands might make a dash for the Sharon line-up - and not only because of the way Labor crashed under the new star. They know the party is shrinking in the sense that it has no reserves or social strata to draw on to rejuvenate its ranks. In the last seven years, Labor has aged, lacking appeal to the rising generation or newcomers to the country.

Compared with this stagnancy, other Knesset factions have moved on. The new House will be more secular, right-leaning, youthful and feminine than the outgoing one. Seventeen members of the Likud's thirty-plus parliamentary party are new to politics and seven are women. Shinui provides a fresh and vigorous, albeit unformed, pull for disenchanted Laborites and youngsters.

The election also belied the pundits and pollsters who predicted that the electorate would grant the prime minister barely enough votes to form a narrow-based new administration dependent on right-wing extremist factions and unlikely to survive full term. As it turns out, Sharon is sitting pretty. He has the option of assembling a centrist government based on a narrow majority without right wing factions. Or he could delay coalition negotiations until the third or fourth week of February, meanwhile leading a caretaker administration, in the expectation of the US launching its offensive against Iraq. The concomitant peril to Israel would ease the path of Mitzna and Lapid into the new government, divesting them of their ifs and buts. They will find it difficult to gainsay Sharon's election-enhanced authority or challenge his program in this time of emergency when, as he stressed in his victory speech Tuesday night, January 28, he shares the same principles as the President of the United States.

Indeed, Sharon is the first Israeli prime minister since 1996 to survive Yasser Arafat's campaign of terror and machinations, which successfully unseated Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak. The Likud leader has in fact doubled his parliamentary strength and is preparing a peace offer that will amount to the dictation of capitulation terms to the Palestinian leader.

http://www.debka.com