Mideast Roundup
The Big Three's Undeclared Woe
Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army
Several disturbing discoveries emerged quickly from a joint defense department-CIA inquiry ordered by U.S. President George W. Bush to trace the operational evolution of terrorism over the past decade. He specifically asked the team:
A. For an in-depth catalogue of Al Qaeda’s terrorist operations and the associations Osama bin Laden’s organization has formed with national terrorist groups in various countries and fellow terrorist groups from the time the Islamic group first attempted to blow up New York’s World Trade Center in 1993.
B. Any ties formed between Saddam Hussein’s regime and terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda.
The joint team’s initial findings did not bear out the boast by the president and top security officials like FBI Robert Mueller that two-thirds of al Qaeda’s leadership had been put out of action by American and allied moves in the global war on terror. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources in Washington, the group’s backbone and that of its partner, Egypt’s Islamic Jihad led by Osama bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is intact and fully operational. The Egyptian half of al Qaeda in particular has led a charmed existence. Since the US 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, only two senior Jihad operatives have been killed and not a single active member captured.
So alarmed were the investigating team by this discovery that they rushed to Bush without delay. “We have a gap in our intelligence the size of a big black hole,” they noted in their first interim report to the president.
From cells to full-blown army
Another disquieting discovery was the spanking pace of al Qaeda’s recruitment in Europe since the September 11 attacks in the United States.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources reveal that Osama bin Laden in person is behind the latest push into Europe after gaining the upper hand in a debate within his organization’s top leadership over its next focal arena. Bin Laden urged fostering the war on the “far enemy” (Europe), against the argument in favor of concentrating on the “near enemy” (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, South Asia).
The panel appointed by Bush claimed al Qaeda’s drive into Europe has been mostly ignored by American counter-terrorism agencies. It cited a few statistics readily produced on request by domestic security agencies in key European countries. Put together for a very preliminary assessment, they demonstrate that al Qaeda is in the process of evolving from terrorist networks and cells to building a professional fighting force with military features.
According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them in military-style units. They meet regularly for training in the use of weapons and explosives, combat tactics and indoctrination and are controlled from local and district command centers under the organization’s national French command.
In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British domestic intelligence agency MI5 estimates 10,000 faithful have joined up in Britain.
Al Qaeda is a lot less active in Italy where counter-terrorist agencies hunt its cells to earth relentlessly. Moreover, al Qaeda does not need an important foothold in Italy because it already maintains a thriving presence next door in the Balkan countries of Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia, from which weapons, money and false documents are easily secreted to its European bases.
But unknown numbers are enlisting also in Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden and Norway.
Recruitment across Europe continues apace and in greater secrecy than ever as a result of a switch to new recruiting techniques and appeal to fresh target-populations for building the Euro army. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terrorism sources, the authors of the interim report found that al Qaeda, intent on beating surveillance and penetration by intelligence services, no longer selects combatants at its usual hunting grounds in mosques, Islamic culture centers and Muslim immigrant neighborhoods. Instead, recruiters are now seeking out native Europeans freshly converted to Islam.
Living double lives
They call their new campaign their “white recruitment drive” or “coffee shop conscription”. Operational cells and recruiting agents have taken to meeting in ordinary cafes on the high streets of Europe’s major cities where they blend into the crowds.
European intelligence is baffled in its efforts to identify the new al Qaeda operatives. Their names, addresses and home and cellular telephone numbers are unavailable. A rough profile of a recent “white” European recruit to al Qaeda would show a possible social misfit or disgruntled youngish boy or man — aged 16 to 30 — who is gainfully employed, member of the lower middle class and not primarily motivated by financial gain or vocational ambition. He will have converted to belief in the Islamic ethic and developed a burning urge to spread it worldwide. These leanings are reinforced in regular meetings.
He may be a family man but, most important, al Qaeda only recruits law-abiding citizens who have never attracted police interest and are therefore anonymous.
These conscripts live their Islamic lives completely underground. Unit level meetings for instance, requiring 30 or 40 men to gather for training sessions, may take place under cover of social activity such as a holiday camp in a remote part of Europe.
The experts say tracking down members of bin Laden’s new Euro army is becoming a tall order as its numbers expand to tens of thousands, and the hard to identify “white” recruits may already form some 25 percent of the total.
Links Missed in Iraq
The joint team had little to show the president on Saddam’s ties with terrorists — not because the links did not exist but because they were ignored for too long. Even preliminary conclusions are therefore held off. What has begun to emerge is that the US administration and intelligence agencies, including the CIA, dismissed without enough forethought the possibility of operational cooperation between the secular Iraqi Baath regime and the rabidly fundamentalist al Qaeda as a hare that would not run. As a result of Washington’s blind spot, which was soon detected and exploited, the Saddam regime and Al Qaeda were able to work together without interference and almost invisibly.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources have learned that the inquiry group has collected enough evidence to finally establish that the disputed rendezvous in Prague did indeed take place in April 2002 between Al Qaeda’s lead 9/11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi intelligence official.
If Israel Leaves Gaza Strip, Who Takes over?
It’s either Dahlan or the Hamas-Hizballah-al Qaeda Coalition
For the first time since he launched his Intifada confrontation with Israel in September 2000, Yasser Arafat will pay the price for the anarchy he deliberately engineered in Palestinian ruling institutions. He stands to be frozen out of a controlling role in the lives of the Gaza Strip’s 1.3 million Palestinians. He has not set foot there for two years, from the time Israel’s massive April 2002 military operations on the West Bank sequestered him in his Ramallah headquarters. Now, hearing Ariel Sharon proposing to clear all but two or three Jewish settlements out of the Gaza Strip, he is worrying how to buy a seat at the new table.
The Americans have not decided if they want to go along with the Sharon scheme. If they do, they will want a controlling influence over the transfer and have chosen their preferred kingpin. He is Mohammad Dahlan, former head of Gaza Strip’s Preventive Security and interior minister in the first short-lived Palestinian government headed by Mahmud Abbas.
The alternative is letting the territory fall into the hands of the Hamas-Jihad Islami-Hizballah-al Qaeda league currently on a rampage in the territory.
After looking into his crystal ball, Arafat decided to make peace with Dahlan. He sent prime minister Ahmed Qureia with an invitation to join the Palestinian government as future governor of the Gaza Strip.
Dahlan, even if he responds to Arafat’s feelers, is far from eager to pick up the hot Gaza potato. As one-time Gaza strongman, he knows none better that the mayhem in the territory is such that an iron fist will be needed to restore a semblance of order and control. He will have to break up and disarm the wild men of the fundamentalist Islamic coalition and the crime gangs running riot in large sections of the Gaza Strip. The situation has deteriorated much too far for political cures.
In any case, Dahlan relishes his cushy life as business partner of Arafat’s former financial adviser Mohammed Rashid. Dividing his time between Cairo and London, he retains a small militia in the Gaza Strip and a select group of West Bank Fatah and Tanzim militiamen on his payroll. He may not be in a hurry to shed his Armani suits and armor-plated Mercedes in order to roll up his sleeves and battle the Islamist hard men in the dirty alleys of the Strip’s refugee camps over a period that could stretch into months.
This one-time senior mastermind of Arafat’s terror machine also holds a grudge against George W. Bush.
At the Sharm el-Sheikh and Aqaba summits called by the US president last summer to win Arab support for the Middle East road map to peace, Bush and his advisers described Dahlan as a Palestinian to be trusted. Dahlan was then encouraged to present the American party with his plan for a new unified Palestinian security force that would “swallow up” Arafat’s terrorists by winning them over with a $12,000 bonus and the promise of regular employment for five years in the new units.
Asked by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to estimate of the cost of his venture, he named the sum of half a billion dollars.
That was the last he heard from the Americans.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s counter-terror sources, Bush’s advisers did not really trust this former terrorist, aware that he had kept up his connections in violent circles. They also suspected him of planning to pocket large amounts of the estimated budget himself.
A year after this episode it might be difficult to establish relations of reciprocal trust between Washington and Dahlan.
However, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources have just learned of a new development which is likely to change Dahlan’s mind. He has been approached by US and European officials with the offer of a high-powered appointment — the post of coordinator among Americans, Europeans, Palestinians and Israelis for Israel’s full withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. This appointment entails the authority to determine the disposition of the areas evacuated by Israel and frees him from working under Arafat.
Armed with this offer, Dahlan agreed to call on his old boss in Ramallah for a reconciliation meeting Thursday night.
The geography of mayhem
The Gaza Strip today is too volatile to draw exact lines of control. DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s experts on terror attempt a rough sketch:
1. Hamas controls Gaza City except for its center where Palestinian Authority forces retain an enclave. Despite their receding position, the Hamas would have no chance against a determined, crushing assault by PA forces - if they were told to launch one, which they haven't.
2. Hamas is top dog in northern Gaza Strip towns and villages abutting on Israel's Western Negev.
3. In the south — the Khan Younes and Rafah districts and coastal dunes and marshes - the Popular Resistance Committees rule the roost, coalitions of local warlords loyal to Arafat and the Sema Dana clan's gangs. In return for protection against Palestinian and Arab threats, Arafat gets a slice of Sema Dana's rackets - arms, drugs, women and cheap Asian labor smuggled through the Rafah tunnels from Egyptian Sinai. The Sema Dana gangs used to be a local criminal element; now their reach extends over the Middle East and Persian Gulf. They have recently developed a dangerous connection with Hizballah networks.
4. Arafat's arrangements with the Hamas in Gaza operate through Hizballah agents who now swarm in their hundreds all over the territory. This arrangement has resulted partly from the fragmentation of the Hamas command. Until eight months ago, the Gaza branch was under the orders of the Damascus-based military command. Today, communications between the two Hamas elements have dropped off ever since the Damascus-based officers began spending more time in Cairo and Qatar than in the Syrian capital. This weakened central command has generated a split between Hamas-Gaza and Hamas-West Bank, the latter deferring to Damascus. Arafat deals with Hamas through the Hizballah, which is the only party in communication with all three disparate sections of Hamas. He keeps his finger in the Gaza pie through three surrogates, the Hamas-Hizballah connection, the Popular Resistance Committees and the Sema Dana clan.
5. This odd checkerboard creates strange anomalies: Take the typical Palestinian Authority security officer or policeman. To earn his PA wage, he will spend 2-3 hours in the morning with his feet up at the local station. He has nothing to do as organized law and order has broken down. Afternoons, he works for a second salary at the local Popular Resistance Committee, say in Beit Lahiya or Deir el Balah. Nights, he will join a Hamas cell out on a terrorist operation for his third pay check. Around 35-40,000 Palestinian PA security officers belong to this "system". The rest of the population is starving.
Al Qaeda’s finger is there too
The al Qaeda factor crept into the Gazan power equation in recent months. Some were Saudi and Egyptian terrorists in flight from pursuit in Saudi Arabia and Yemen by local authorities and American units. Others hoped the lawless state of the territory would provide them with a useful new base of operations. In both cases, Osama bin Laden’s men have been buying their way across frontiers by paying Saudi and Jordanian smugglers to lead them through the Red Sea or Jordan to the Sinai Peninsula and then through Sema Dana’s smuggling tunnels in to the Gaza Strip.
Knowledgeable intelligence sources tell DEBKA-Net-Weekly that between 100 and 150 Saudi al Qaeda operatives have found their way into the Gaza Strip.
Libya and OPEC
Oil Politics and US Elections
US petroleum companies are buzzing with excitement over the prospect of sinking their wells into the vast sands of Libya as soon as Muammar Gaddafi finishes scrapping his nuclear program and welcomes President George W. Bush to Tripoli, moves that could lead to a lifting of US government sanctions on the oil-rich desert nation.
But this is no sudden bolt from the blue.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources in the oil industry have learned that Big Oil and the US government began holding clandestine meetings with Libyans two years ago to prepare for the opening of country. Recent media reports have quoted US administration officials as saying the White House could ease the 18-year-old ban on US oil investment in Libya as early as spring.
Once restrictions are loosened, US oil companies could bid on new contracts without any immediate payment. Those companies that have held on to stakes in Libya’s oil fields since 1986 could be allowed to begin test pumping and repairs, or ship in equipment.
Four US oil companies retained their stakes. ConocoPhillips and Marathon Oil both have 16.33 per cent holdings in the Waha field. They are in partnership with Amerada Hess, which has an 8.16 percent stake in a joint venture operating as the Oasis Group. Oasis is the minority partner of the Libyan National Oil Co., which has a 59.16 per cent stake in the field. Separately, Occidental Petroleum owns rights to fields in eastern Libya.
The US oil firms are playing catch-up with European oil companies, such as Italy's giant ENI, which owns Agip Petroleum, and France's Total, which are already doing business in Libya. The Turks also have a presence there but not a commanding one.
This week, Eni, which is responsible for 14 percent of Libya's annual oil output, said production at the Al Fiil, or Elephant, oilfield had started with an initial flow rate of 10,000 barrels per day (bpd), increasing to 150,000 bpd by the end of 2006.
Oil industry sources told DEBKA-Net-Weekly that US companies could be back in action in a big way in Libya much quicker than expected, despite some final hurdles within the US government and Congress. Preliminary deals could be struck this year, with Bush pointing the American voter to progress in Libya as a dividend of the US invasion of Iraq.
A telltale sign that contracts are imminent will be the deployment of modern 3D seismic surveys and equipment in Libya, by companies such as Western Geco, to fill in the gaps from an absence of up-to-date analyzable data on the country's geology. Oil companies will then be able to assess properly the economic potential of the licensing blocks once Libya officially opens.
The Libyans are itching to develop their untapped oil reserves, but much will depend on the pace at which their nuclear and chemical weapons programs are scrapped.
Libya has proven oil reserves of some 30 billion barrels, but only a third of its potential fields has been explored. Libyan crude has low levels of sulfur and can be easily converted into gasoline and diesel fuel, experts say.
Saudis spring surprise cut at OPEC
Oil analysts, scratching their collective heads over the cartel's surprise announcement last week of a production cut from April 1, shared some of their theories with DEBKA-Net-Weekly. OPEC, which controls half the world's oil exports, announced the lowering of its supply ceiling by one million barrels a day to 23.5 million bpd to compensate for what it described as the second quarter drop in fuel demand after winter ends in the northern hemisphere.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's oil industry sources reveal that the Saudi oil minister Ali Naimi received his orders to initiate the cut from the top, not as a cartel consensus, and that it was as much politically motivated as influenced by any fuel demand curve. The Saudi royal family which calls the shots in OPEC is deeply disturbed by the progress of the war in Iraq and what it regards as the al Qaeda backlash rocking the kingdom. The princes of Riyadh may have been using their clout in the oil cartel to buy leverage in Washington, their way of conveying this message to President George W. Bush: Oil is our only weapon and we may be forced in our own interest to hang a production cut over your election campaign as a threat, implementation of which could send prices surging to $40 a barrel at the peak motoring period between America’s Memorial and Labor Days. That would slam the brakes on the US economic recovery you have choreographed so carefully to pick up speed as the November poll approaches. You must understand that a Democratic administration would rescue us from your neo-conservatives whose constant moralizing on democracy in the Middle East is making our radicals restive and determined to send both the Americans and the Saudi princes packing out of the Arabian Peninsula.
That is one explanation. Other oil analysts postulate an opposite motive for the production cut, one that makes the Bush administration the beneficiary. Their argument is that Washington needs high energy prices — provided pre-election economic recovery is not stalled — in order to finance the shortfall of volumes in Iraq’s output due to the coalition’s inability to reopen northern export routes to Turkey, as well as a quid pro quo for Big Oil backers and the Saudis and Russians for their cooperation in the Bush agenda for disseminating democracy across the Middle East.
But when in doubt, energy analysts return to their trusty charts — which most probably hold the most rational explanation for OPEC’s decision to slash production.
The Saudis could simply have chosen to heed the warnings of supply-demand math generated by the US department of energy, the international energy agency and slews of analysts which showed a huge growth in global oil inventories driven by steady oversupply and a lower demand for heating oil as the weather warms up. Under that scenario, the cut was justified and OPEC was simply trying to keep prices at the high end of its target range of $22 to $28 a barrel — which it has exceeded for most of the past five months.
Syria & Iran Sidestep US Ultimatums
1. Assad Offers New Dialogue through CIA
Since early December, 2003, Washington has consistently brushed aside Syrian president Bashar Assad’s many attempts to engage the United States in one form or another of diplomatic dialogue, demanding that he must first meet the terms of the ultimatum secretary of state Colin Powell slapped down during his visit to Damascus on April 13, 2003.
As we reported at the time, Assad was put on notice to surrender Iraqi regime members given sanctuary in Syria. According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources, a large group of Iraqi fugitives still enjoy asylum in the country, most living in the northern town of Haleb.
Powell further tendered a long list of demands to be met before Washington entered into normal dialogue with Damascus.
He demanded the handover of Saddam’s arsenal, including his weapons of mass destruction, which were transported out of Iraq into Syria between January and March 2003; the surrender of Iraqi funds deposited in Syrian and Lebanese banks; the halting of the flow of fighters, arms and money into Iraq and the Syrian-Iraqi frontier sealed to smuggling. Assad was required to withdraw his sponsorship from Palestinian terrorist groups like Hamas, Jihad Islami, the Popular Front and the Popular Front-General Command and shut down their command centers in Damascus.
He was also informed that he must sever his connections with the Hizballah, pull the Syrian army out of Lebanon and stop manufacturing his own weapons of mass destruction including long-range and medium-range missiles.
The secretary of state, who gave Assad two weeks to meet these demands, drew a mixed and evasive response. On some items, partial Syrian cooperation was forthcoming. For instance he pushed across the border into Iraq some of the Iraqi regime members, but not the most important ones. To deflect US pressure, he repeatedly invited Israel to peace negotiations, hoping Washington would forget that Damascus continued to play host to terrorist organizations and ignored its other demands.
But Washington did not forget and kept on reminding Syria that its ultimatum must be met in full. Of late, US officials added a tough accusation: “In the course of the war and since you have put many American lives in jeopardy. That is not something that can be lightly dismissed.”
This week, a fresh message landed in the White House from the presidential palace in Damascus The gist is disclosed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Washington sources:
We understand that prime minister Ariel Sharon is not disposed in the near future to enter into negotiations with us and we understand that the administration has no interest in this. Therefore, to save us further embarrassment, we are asking you to state publicly that negotiations on the Palestinian track should be accompanied by negotiations on the Syrian track. That statement will commit you to nothing.
Syria is an organized state and no welfare organization. Everything has its price and worth. Halting Syrian assistance to groups described by you as terrorist movements cannot be effected overnight without a reason. If you want to discuss this seriously, tell us in advance what our action is worth to you.
Our Syrian experts note that this is the first Syrian indication of willingness to open a discussion on its support for terrorists.
Assad’s message goes on to suggest that, to avoid getting caught up in various official echelons in Washington and Damascus, future exchanges between Damascus and Washington be channeled through an intelligence route that will be conducted at the American end by the CIA and by Syrian military intelligence at the opposite end.
The message is under serious scrutiny in Washington.
2. Tehran, Confident of Winning Election, Offers Package
With the arrogance of the victor, the head of Iran’s national security council, H.E. Hassan Rouhani, did not wait for the results of the February 20 parliamentary elections before dashing off a note to Washington offering an all-round deal. From his presumed position of strength, he practically crowed: “Now that it is clear that we (the hard-liners) will remain in power and gain a majority in the Majlis, and that neither revolution nor riots were able to unseat us, the time has come for us to reach an understanding.”
These are the terms on offer:
1. Iran will pull back from the brink of building a nuclear bomb.
2. Its nuclear production machinery will remain intact, including the centrifuges for uranium enrichment.
3. Iran will be taken off the list of nations subject to US sanctions laws, ISLA-1996.
4. In return, Iran offers the United States regional diplomatic, security, counter-terror and counter-insurgency cooperation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel.
This is the first time, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian experts, that the Islamic republic has mentioned Israel in a communication to Washington. They interpret the reference as an offer by Tehran to join the Americans in a project to convert the Hizballah from a quasi-military terrorist group to a political party. Any such move would affect the Syrian president’s plans for keeping his army in Lebanon.
The Spy Who Faded with His Secrets
Polish Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski
On Wednesday, February 11 at 8:13 AM, EDT, Reuters, quoting the Polish news agency PAP in Warsaw, reported that Polish-born colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, one of the United States' top Cold War spies, died in a Washington hospital at the age of 74. The PAP report, like so much other information over the years about this enigmatic character, was inaccurate. Kuklinski was 73, and he died in a hospital in Tampa, Florida, brought there on February 5 after a heart attack. Several reports, including one in The New York Times, said he was survived by his wife, Joanna, and a grandson. Others mentioned that the couple had had two sons, both of whom were killed in mysterious circumstances — one in a road crash and the other in the Atlantic Ocean after falling off, or being pushed off, the deck of a yacht.
Kuklinski always held they were murdered by the First Directorate of the KGB to warn off would-be defectors who contemplated following in his footsteps. But even the few individuals who managed to reach Kuklinsky did not know that, until his dying day he not only lived under the close protection of the CIA, but rarely spoke the truth. For he had a third son from a secret mistress, who also helped him build and maintain his double, and even triple, identities.
CIA director George Tenet eulogized Kuklinski as "a true hero of the cold war to whom we all owe an everlasting debt of gratitude", but the Polish ex-colonel took his secrets to the grave. No one knows for sure what role he really played in the murky world of international espionage or to whom he ultimately deferred as his true master.
It may be safely postulated, however, that had Kuklinski still been in the game between 1998 to 2000, the United States might well have been put on guard against al Qaeda’s 9/11 attacks and might even have found Saddam Hussein’s missing weapons of mass destruction. Not only was the Polish-born turncoat a super spy of unparalleled brilliance, but he possessed a deep, first-hand acquaintance with the leading spooks of the day. He would have caught wind of the al Qaeda attack in time and known where to go looking for the "smoking gun" to inculpate Saddam Hussein.
The date he was “turned” is carefully shadowed
According to the official accounts, Kuklinski started his undercover career with the CIA in 1972. He was then deputy head of Polish military intelligence, WSW. On a visit to West Germany, he was said to have sent a letter to the US embassy in Bonn offering his services.
But DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence experts are sure his first contact with Western intelligence services took place many years earlier - in 1961 or 1962, when a member of one of the British turncoat Kim Philby’s networks approached Kuklinski at Kolobrzeg, the giant Polish naval base on the Baltic Sea. Kuklinski was the commanding officer of the marine battalion of the 7th sea assault division. The ambitious Polish officer had by then made up his mind that joining the shadowy world of counterintelligence was the only sure way to put his military career on the fast track. Kuklinski had no moral qualms about his decision.
In 1967 -- some five years before the date given out in the official version of his life as a double spy — Kuklinski communicated with the CIA for the first time. He was on a visit to Vietnam as a member of the Polish delegation to the ICC, the international group that monitored compliance with the Geneva Conventions, when he met William E. Colby, then chief of the Far East division of the CIA’s directorate of plans, and later the agency’s director.
It was Colby who planned Operation Phoenix, aimed at evacuating Vietnamese from parts of their country to prevent them cooperating with the communists. Kuklinski also ran into Phan Xauan An, who was regarded as most important American intelligence asset in North Vietnam.
It was only after Xauan An’s family and the spy himself failed to show up for the 1975 American evacuation of its most trusted South Vietnamese operatives during the fall of Saigon that the other shoe dropped: While pretending to spy for the Americans, An had consistently betrayed them to the North Vietnamese army of which he was a general.
Kuklinsky likewise posed as Colby’s man at the same time as he served the communist side.
Much later, General Wladyslaw Podoga, former head of Poland’s counter-intelligence services, led a three-year investigation into Kuklinski’s defection to the United States. In the report issued by his panel, Podoga wrote: “The Americans acquired compromising materials on K. during his ICC service in Vietnam from 1967 to 1988, when they recruited him to work for the CIA.” Podoga went on to suggest that in 1972, Kuklinski, a “dormant agent was reactivated by the CIA and fabricated the sequence of events to disguise the real story”.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s intelligence sources, this account appears to be accurate. What is still unclear, however, is why go to all that bother?
Member of Turncoats’ Who’s Who
The answer is simple: If Kuklinski really began working for the CIA in 1970 or 1971, it would have been impossible for him to have known Phan Xauan An back in 1966 or 1967.
And it goes without saying that his career would not have coincided with that of another notorious double spy who betrayed America, Larry Wu-tai Chin, the Chinese CIA operative who was one of Xanuan An’s handlers.
“Larry”, as his American friends called him, passed CIA secrets to his real masters, China’s MSS intelligence service. He also carried out missions on behalf of the KGB. Larry began spying for the Chinese back in the Korean War in the 1950’s, when he served as a translator in US military headquarter in Seoul. It was there that Larry met MI6’s man in South Korea, George Blake, another double agent who played an important role in the Philby network and still lives in Moscow.
After the Korean War, Larry made his way to Washington and also traveled on CIA business to Asia. He became friendly with Carleton and Rachel Ames, the parents of Aldrich Ames, the CIA double agent who was caught in 1994 betraying to Moscow secrets of the shared CIA-FBI counterintelligence branch in which he served as a top officer.
Had he joined the CIA as late as the 1970s, as claimed in the official records, Kuklinsky would never have run into Ames or cooperated with him.
But, as other information has suggested, Kuklinski was hard at work for the CIA back in the mid-1960s and was reactivated, as Podoga confirmed, in 1972 when Ames was carrying out his first intelligence missions in Istanbul. Both men knew Xanuan An and Larry Wu-tai and almost certainly knew each other. In fact, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s experts, Kuklinski and Ames established a “virtual” intelligence corridor that served as a central clearing house for information and disinformation, as well as the movement of double and even triple agents, between Washington and Moscow. This was a secret Cold War device like the hot line between Washington and Moscow to prevent animosities from blowing up out of control and threatening the outbreak of a nuclear war through mischance.
The corridor also connected Warsaw and London, where MI6 agents who were in contact with Kuklinski and Ames operated. The workings of this intelligence corridor could fill chapters in a history of counter-intelligence. But one “side door” into the corridor is of particular relevance to the subsequent 9/11 attacks, the global war against terrorism and the US campaign in Iraq.
From the mid-1970s, shortly after Kuklinski and Ames first got together, Egyptian intelligence agents, many of whom were secret members of banned fundamentalist Islamic movements that spawned Egyptian Islamic Jihad, used the clandestine corridor to relocate from the Middle East to the United States.
These agents were hand-picked by the Moscow-based Philby and Blake networks after the two British traitors had defected. The fundamentalists were instructed to blend in with the Middle Eastern communities that sprang up in central US cities. Some penetrated US intelligence agencies and the armed services. These sleeper cells were responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and also provided the intelligence and operational infrastructure for Al Qaeda networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Today, we find them preparing more terrorist attacks in the United States and contributing resources to the guerrilla war that Al Qaeda and Arab fighters are waging against American troops in Iraq.
The reference to “a black hole in US intelligence” on the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, cited in the lead article of this issue, underscores the growing acknowledgement among American politicians and top brass that the global war against terror has been far less successful than official spokesman have claimed it to be. The same black hole dogs its operations from then until the present day.
The only person alive who knows all about the genesis and methods of operation of these Islamic fundamentalist terrorist networks is Aldrich Ames, the ex-CIA double agent serving a life sentence without parole, and he isn’t talking. The other true insider, Kuklinski, has just died.
In any case, their officially “adjusted” personal histories mean that they had no such knowledge to provide.
The US president and the Director of Central Intelligence are not about to call witnesses to untangle the labyrinth that predated both their tenures for the benefit of any inquiry commissions. It would mean first debunking the artificial historic timeline that counterintelligence agencies have worked so hard and for so long to preserve.
HOT POINTS (that you may have missed in DEBKAfile Round-the-Clock) A Digest of the Week’s Exclusives
11 February: Yasser Arafat’s enraged call for an all-round escalation of Palestinian violence distinguished the Palestinian response to the latest Israeli counter-terror operation in the Gaza Strip from former episodes, according to DEBKAfile’s Palestinian experts.
Shijaia, the Hamas stronghold planted in densely populated Gaza City, was the target of a broad Israeli military strike mounted in response to an upsurge in recent weeks of intense Hamas mortar and missile attacks from Shijaia against southern Israeli locations just beyond the Gaza Strip border. It quickly drew the fire of masked Palestinian gunmen using assault rifles, mortars, bombs and anti-tank rockets. In the raging battle, 12 Palestinians were killed. One of the Hamas gunmen killed was Ashraf Hasnin, bodyguard to Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. The Israeli commander, Col. Yoel Strick, said he was 100 percent sure nobody who was not armed was hit.
According to DEBKAfile’s Palestinian sources, Arafat forthwith convened an emergency conference in Ramallah and gave an unusually direct order to each and every Palestinian group, faction and organization to launch instant large-scale terrorist attacks against Israeli targets on the scale of the March 2002 massacres which precipitated Israel’s comprehensive West Bank Operation Defensive Shield campaign. His overriding strategic goal is to thwart Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s unilateral disengagement initiative.
The Palestinian leader is distraught mainly because he is convinced his foes are moving in for the kill, taking the petition signed by 400 Fatah members as a revolt against his authority.
Moreover, French, European and International Monetary Fund investigators are suddenly interested in the bank accounts held by his wife Suha Arafat who lives in Paris. The investigators are making good use of the documents Israeli forces seized from Palestinian head offices in Ramallah during Operation Defensive Shield.
Feeling more beleaguered than ever, Arafat cant wait to strike back.
14 February: The audacious Iraqi guerrilla assaults Saturday, February 14, on Iraqi civil defense corps and mayoral compounds in Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, were a disastrous setback for US plans to smoothly transfer sovereignty into Iraq hands by June 30, according to DEBKAfile’s military analysts. President George W. Bush, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, US administrator Paul Bremer and chief of central command Gen. John Abizaid, may have to rethink their plans, after some 70 guerrillas - Iraqis, al Qaeda, Hizballah and Lebanese Palestinians - carried out a textbook military raid, leaving some 23 dead, most of them Iraqi ICDC officers and releasing some 100 detainees.
The general, who barely escaped a guerrilla ambush in Fallujah two days earlier, had been inspecting new US military deployments in Baghdad and Balad. In the capital, the US troop presence is being reduced inside the city and responsibility for security handed over to the newly-created Iraqi security forces, the model for other cities. American troops will remain in charge of city environs and the intercity road network.
Because security was delegated to local Iraqi security, air cover for the Abizaid convoy was absent last Thursday. Abizaid had stressed the importance of weaning the Iraqis from American assistance, indicating that the White House has resolved the debate going on in Washington since mid-November over whether the American army should pull back from Iraqi towns or maintain a steadying presence in their streets. By opting for the former, Washington triggered the Fallujah riposte.
The assault was also a predictably violent rejoinder to the discovery in Baghdad of a letter purportedly written by senior al Qaeda operations aide, Musab Zarqawi, who recommended stirring up sectarian strife between Shiite and Sunnis to drive the Americans out of Iraq. Some of the assailants came from the new medressas in the city which have been filling up with al Qaeda and Saudi combatants since late last year. The Iraqi security officers put up only the most cursory resistance and took heavy casualties before most of them turned tail. Not a single American soldier was to be seen and the US planes overhead did not bring reinforcements or otherwise assist the embattled Iraq force.
General Abizaid himself commented last Thursday, “Obviously they are not fully trained, They’re not ready.”
16 February: Washington’s announcement that a trio of administration officials were on their way to Jerusalem to study Ariel Sharon’s unilateral evacuations plans signaled that a spark of interest had replaced the cold US disapproval of those plans.
DEBKAfile’s Washington sources report that the American officials will keep their stay brief and intensive. No one in Israel or the United States is clear on the final route of the security fence Israel is building to keep West Bank terrorists out. Construction has slowed down and the Sharon government appears to have straightened out some of the loops into the West Bank. The US officials will want to be assured that all these enclaves are ironed out.
They will also want to make sure the 7,500 Jewish inhabitants to be removed from the Gaza Strip are not relocated on the West Bank. Another big gap relates to the military posts in the Gaza Strip after the civilians are gone. Defense minister Shaul Mofaz has spoken of leaving them in place as long as a war situation exists with the Palestinians. Military withdrawal would abandon the territory to Hamas rule and a jumping off base for continuing suicide attacks against Israel.
The awakening of US interest in the Gaza Strip evacuation happens to coincide with a much larger development in Iraq around Kirkuk, once a Kurdish dominated city, reduced by Saddam Hussein’s population transfers to a mixed town in which 40 pc are Kurds.
Since the fall of Baghdad, some 200,000 displaced Kurds are camping around Kirkuk, most deportees who want their homes back, augmented by the two Kurdish parties the PUK and the PDK in an effort to establish a Kurdish majority in the oil city. Their leaders are now threatening to withhold support from the US presence unless the Kurds are resettled in Kirkuk. The Bush administration is divided on the issue because of its implications for the federal future of the country, but US forces depend heavily on Kurdish undercover work in Iraq, as well as in Turkey and Iran. Some US officials suggest Sharon’s evacuation plan might provide a convenient reply to Arabs critics of the resettlement of Kurds in Kirkuk and wholesale displacement of Sunni Arabs.
18 February: Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) has been engaged in a last ditch attempt to rescue the European aid program from total cutoff after the Palestinian Authority lost US donations (as DEBKAfile reported exclusively last year)
over its failure to hand over the killers of three CIA security men murdered in a roadside explosion in the Gaza Strip on October 15. The European Union continues to pay the salaries of about 100,000 Palestinian Authority officials and security officers, but has posed a key proviso to meet one American demand: donations will no longer reach the PA but will be transferred directly into the individual payees’ bank accounts, assuring compete transparency. However, the Palestinian Authority shorn of its dollar and euro revenues cannot survive. Israel’s regular shekel remittances come nowhere near covering the PA’s budgetary shortfall.
Yasser Arafat and the heads of his Fatah faction and Tanzim militia predictably turned down the European proviso, and no wonder: a) To open an account and draw funds from the bank, Palestinian security men will have to show identification; b) They can no longer be forced by their commanders and Arafat to engage in terrorists activities in order to feed their families. As PA officers, they will receive their paychecks directly from the EU. Arafat retorted furiously:
"They're gunning for me and they're after my money. And if we let them get away with it, they’ll finish me off along with the entire Palestinian resistance movement!" he said referring to the Americans and Palestinian terrorism and their efforts to extinguish his suicide terror campaign.
According to DEBKAfile's Palestinian sources, Arafat is suspicious of a combined effort to finish him off because of four developments:
1. Fatah and PA intelligence bodies did not pick up the slightest whiff of the 400-man protest in the making. Signed by Fatah rank and file activists in total secrecy, the petition caught Arafat’s spies by surprise, which made him sure it was set up by a foreign intelligence service.
2. The signers were sufficiently in the know about Arafat’s affairs to correctly finger one of his most confidential aides, Kharabi Sarsur, 64, who holds the key to his personal cashbox. No ranking official in Palestinian-controlled territory dares mentioned this name aloud. The lowly Fatah operatives who mentioned Sarsur in their petition were hardly likely to know who he is. According to our sources, he is an important intelligence target. Undercover agencies who want to find out what Arafat is up to keep an eye on Sarsur and, in particular, his disbursements of cash. Arafat is certain that only a major intelligence service had the inside knowledge necessary to "out" Sarsur.
3. The French-EU investigation of his wife Suha's money-laundering activities in Paris, where she lives a life Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza can only dream of. Six months ago, no European in authority would have dared touch Mrs. Arafat. Now, she is a liability making him vulnerable as never before. The money trail starting in Paris is bound to lead back to the "rais" and the secret Swiss account to which he smuggled PA funds - thence, for the last ten months, in monthly transfers of $1 million each into Suha Arafat's Paris accounts. Washington knows that Suha is sitting on large sums belonging to her husband and the PA, rated by financiers in West Europe as being in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Arafat believes the Americans expect Suha to open up on his hidden wealth rather than go to jail.
4. Arafat has heard that Palestinian bankers visiting Washington are being invited for "clarification talks" with the FBI about him and his secret accounts. Because of these developments, Arafat believes his final showdown with the United States is on.
http://www.debka.com/