WHITE HOUSE IGNORED FLEECING OF AMERICA

If, and it is a big if, the tens of billions of dollars in US aid wasted in Iraq are ever accounted for it may turn out to be the biggest fleecing of American taxpayers in history.
And average Americans will not have been the only victims. So too will have been the millions of ordinary, law abiding Iraqis who had hoped their nation’s oil wealth would be used to rebuild the country and not to line the pockets of tribal leaders, insurgents, militias, crooked US contractors, some US soldiers and an unspecified number of very powerful figures in the Iraqi government.
At present, the sheer scale of the missing billions is unclear but consider this. Imagine for a moment that you wanted to transport 360 tons of $100 bills from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to Baghdad. First you would need it assembled into what are called “bricks”, each one containing $100,000. Then 20 of those “bricks,” amounting to $2 million, would be sealed in a wooden box and so on. Eventually the whole 360 tons, of bills totaling $16 billion would need to be placed on three massive, US military C130 transport planes for the trip to Baghdad.
That is what the White House signed off to do in 2003 when Paul Bremer was running the CPA – Coalition Provisional Authority. It was a shadow government established by Washington after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Bremer, a former ambassador to Iraq, regarded as a security guru, was like a pro-consul of ancient Roman times but a lot less efficient. And if you think sending such a vast amount of cash into a war zone was the worst that could have happened, that was only part of an absurd and unbelievable story.
When the crisp, clean dollar bills reached Baghdad, it was like the “Wild West,” according to Frank Willis, the second-in-command in the CPA’s Transportation Ministry. Bricks containing $2 million were removed from their wooden cases and stuffed into foot lockers and filing cabinets. Rooms were piled with stacks of bills and wooden cases full of cash were placed in poorly secured vaults because the looting in Baghdad had reduced the capital to a place where nothing was safe, not even national museum artifacts.
Sometimes, members of the CPA referred to the $2 million bricks as “footballs” because they were passed from hand to hand. When money was needed for something, a few soldiers or members of the CPA staff were told to take a wheelbarrow or a sack and pick up anything from $1 million to $5 million. At CPA HQ within the Green Zone in Baghdad, there was one pile of $600 millions set aside. Of that, $200 million kept in a room to which one soldier had the key. He was reported to have kept the key in his pocket any time he went for a meal.
The CPA’s job was to use the $16 billion for reconstruction but there were no proper accounting practices in place, and before long that provided the criminally minded with a wonderful opportunity to steal what they wanted. Approximately $8 billion was channeled through Iraqi ministries that kept no records or two sets of records, one of them bogus. Large sums of money were siphoned off by billing for twice and sometimes ten times the number of actual staff they were employing. One of the most blatant examples of that kind of scam involved an Iraqi ministry that billed the CPA for over 8,000 security guards when it only employed around 600.
For Iraqi sheikhs, politicians and officials linked to the insurgency and the militias it was as though Christmas had arrived. Cash in amounts of tens of millions that were transferred to the Iraqi Central Bank and disappeared without trace. CPA money was even used in a weapons buy back program, a purpose for which it was not intended. Many of the weapons found their way back to the streets. In fact, large shipments of weapons the US transported to Iraq to arm the Iraqi army vanished and it is now believed some of them were sold by corrupt officials to militias and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
A sizeable slice of the 360 tons of cash ended up in the hands of contractors often without any competitive bids or proper contracts. It is now estimated that millions of dollars were awarded for phantom construction projects such as schools, hospitals and pipeline repair work. For example, over $3 million was paid in salaries for a non-existent pipeline repair. pipeline. CPA contract payments were understated by as much as $108 million and of 198 contract files that were later examined, 154 lacked evidence that any goods or services were ever rendered. Fourteen contracts did not even show evidence of any payment. One department within the CPA, without oversight from superiors, “signed off” on contracts worth $430 without providing paperwork. And all of that was happening when the families of soldiers were buying body armor for their sons and daughters in the field. A subsequent report on the handling of cash beyond Baghdad showed that, in one instance, over $96 million in “cash and receipts” could not be traced. That money was handed to Americans recruited by the CPA as short term “field agents.” Those agents dealt with US contractors and it was found that some agents overstated their needs by millions. They often only provided information about how much they had spend days before they flew home to the US or Europe. The CPA gave one agent a $25 million cash budget to hire contractors but only received records to cover 25% of that amount. Where the rest went remains a mystery as does the disappearance of $12 billion of the 360 tons of cash flown into Baghdad in 2003.
One of the crazy examples of how cash was handed over by the CPA related to a contract with a US security company to handle security at Baghdad airport. The company billed for the use of “bomb-sniffer” dogs at a checkpoint outside the airport. It turned out there was only one dog and it was not trained to detect bombs. It fell asleep each time it arrived at the checkpoint.
In 2004, the international accounting firm, KPMG was asked to conduct an audit of the CPA but quickly found that the CPA was not happy with the scrutiny. Also, meeting with senior Iraqi figures were cancelled without notice and KPMG could not get the information it required. The White House and the CPA had good reason not to want the American public to know about the massive fraud taking place because the CPA was about to be disbanded. Yet before Bremer left Iraq in July that same year, he signed off on over $3 billion in contracts. Even when KPMG made its report, it was unable to show the scale of the fleecing of American taxpayers and their Iraqi counterparts.
That is yet another part of the story this complex tale. The waste in respect of the 360 tons of cash is often dismissed on the basis that it was Iraqi money and its loss cost the US taxpayer nothing. Yes, it is true that most of the cash flown to Baghdad in 2003 was Iraqi cash, held over from the UN’s oil for food program during the Saddam era and from assets seized by the US. But that was not the only money sent to Iraq. To date the US has spent vastly more than that. And considering how $9 billion cannot be traced from that 2003 shipment, there is every reason to believe the fleecing of Americans and ordinary Iraqis is on an historic scale. And it is continuing. Christian Aid says that in 2004 alone Iraqi officials claimed they sold $10 billion in Iraq oil overseas, but the figure was probably closer to $14. Since oil was meant to pay for the US occupation, when there is a shortfall the financial burden for the occupation falls entirely on US taxpayers.
Bremer accepts the CPA records provide no evidence of the vanishing billions. He complains that the Iraqi banking system was in chaos and he did not have the required number of trained staff to handle such a massive amount of money. One only wonders what the Bush administration will say when we learn that the disappearance of $12 billion was a drop in the ocean compared to what was actually wasted in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.
To understand how little we know about wasteful spending, it emerged recently that there are conflicting figures for how much the Pentagon spends for having approximately 35,000 contractor personnel on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan to boost the US military presence. The generally accepted costs for putting a US soldier in the field is around $600 a day, compared to approximately $1,300 for a military contractor. That means approximately $40 million is spent per day hiring “mercenaries.” The figure may of course be much higher. Until the Pentagon provides proper records for this aspect f the war the whole matter will remain yet another financial mystery of this presidency.

ISRAEL LINK TO SUDDEN DEATH OF IRAN NUKE SCIENTIST

The Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, is being linked to the sudden death by gas poisoning of one of Iran’s top nuclear scientists, Professor Adashir Hosseinpour, 44.
His death on January 18 was a state secret in Iran for almost a week. He is believed to have worked as a physicist at the Isfahan facility which the Israelis say produces a gas used for enriching uranium in the nuclear plant at Natanz. Iranian authorities only admitted to news agencies that he had died of gas poisoning and refused say exactly how or where he met his end. The lack of information about his passing, coupled with official silence for almost a week, raised suspicions in the intelligence world. Prof. Hosseinpour was no ordinary scientist, having been awarded major prizes for his work, including one military research in 2004.
The Mossad link was first made by Stratfor, a US global security company with close links to the CIA, and was quickly reported in leading Israeli newspapers, including the Jerusalem Post. Stratfor claimed its sources within Israeli intelligence confirmed that Prof. Hosseinpour had been on as Mossad assassination list for some time and the Israelis finally got their man. A Mossad connection was also contained in claims on an Iranian expatriates’ website that not one scientist but several who worked on Iran’s nuclear energy programs were recently assassinated by Mossad agents.
While Mossad will make no comment, it is known that it likes its dirty work to be known to its enemies in order to induce fear in them. It would therefore not be outside the realms of possibility that it leaked its role in this death to instill dread in the minds of Iranian scientists and others, possibly from the former Soviet Union, who might be tempted by large sums of money to work in Iran’s nuclear industry.
If Mossad killed Hosseinpour, his death fits a pattern of similar assassinations of scientists carried out by the Israelis over several decades. During Saddam’s efforts to develop a nuclear industry in the late 1970s-80s, every effort was made by Mossad to kill off scientists essential to the construction of a nuclear reactor. On June 14, 1980, Yahia El Meshad, an Egyptian physicist in charge of Iraq’s Atomic Energy Agency was beaten to death in a room at the Meridien Hotel in Paris. He was on loan to Iraq, as a result of an agreement with the Soviet Union and was the link between the French and the Iraqis. At that time, the French were providing parts and expertise for the construction of an Osiris nuclear reactor 17 miles south west of Baghdad. El Meshad was in Paris for a brief visit to study nuclear safety. The only eyewitness to his murder was a female who died mysteriously less than two months later. She was observed getting into a dispute with an unknown man on a major Paris thoroughfare. He struck her and when she fell to the ground a car ran over her, killing her instantly. No one was found responsible for either death but the French told Saddam they believed Mossad had murdered El Meshad. The Osiris reactor, which the French donated to Saddam and which Al Meshad was working on, was destroyed in an Israeli bombing raid a year later in 1981.
Perhaps the most striking example of Mossad’s willingness to assassinate scientists was the clinical execution on March 20, 1990 of Gerard Bull, the brilliant Canadian-born scientist. Bull was a renowned expert in designing artillery pieces and had dreams of building a super gun capable of sending satellites into orbits or firing missiles into the outer atmosphere to reach targets at a distance of 1,000 miles. His research caught the attention of the Canadian and US governments and both employed him. The US even awarded him citizenship.
But by the 1970s he had cut his links to the Pentagon and set up his own company, The Space Research Foundation to sell his artillery designs to foreign powers. In 1980 he served a year in prison in the US for violating an arms embargo on S. Africa. Afterwards, he told friends he was angry with America. He renounced his US citizenship and moved his business operations to Belgium and Austria. According to him, the CIA had given him the go-ahead to supply the apartheid regime in S. Africa with weapons and expertise and had then abandoned him when his operations were made public.
At the start of the Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein send a private jet to Belgium to pick up Bull and that was the beginning of a business partnership. At the outset, Bull designed two types of artillery pieces that could deliver shells, many of them filled with deadly chemicals, further than any western-designed howitzers. He also created self-propelled artillery delivery systems which were, like his other creations, used against Iranian mass formations of infantry. His work for Iraq did not worry the US or Britain because they were on the same side. They supported Iraq against the Islamist Iranian regime of Ayatollah Khomeini. There is now evidence that the US and Britain not only provided Iraq with chemicals for its chemical weapons but also with hard intelligence on its enemy. In fact, a US AWACs surveillance plane operating out of Saudi Arabia constantly offered up-to-the minute intelligence to the Saudis on the movements of troops on the Iranian front lines. The Saudis with approval from the US passed that on to Iraqi commanders, many of whom were using Bull’s artillery pieces.
While Gerald Bull felt safe in working with the Iraqis, he was unaware he was constantly under scrutiny by the Israelis. Unlike the US, they supported all sides in the Iran-Iran conflict, including arming Iraqi Kurds to attack Saddam’s forces in the north of the country. The Israelis were especially keen to see that Iran did not lose the war. To that end, they armed the Iranians and eventually persuaded the Reagan administration to supply the Islamists in Iran with weapons in return for American hostages held by Hezbollah in Beirut. That deal collapsed and the only beneficiaries were Iran and its ally, Israel.
When the war ended in a stalemate, Bull advised Saddam that if Iraq was to be a big player on the international stage, it had to update its Scud missiles, so they could be fired greater distances. It also had to be able to launch rockets into space. Saddam commissioned him to update his Scuds and to build an artillery piece with the codename, Project Babylon. It was to be Bull’s dream of a super gun – the PC2. It was 150 meters long, with a bore of 39 inches wide. It weighed 2,100 tons and was capable of firing a 2,000 kilogram rocket into orbit.
The moment Bull produced a test version of the gun and fired it, Mossad began planning to assassinate him. In March 1990, a year before the final version of the gun was ready to go into service, a Mossad team shadowed him in Brussels. On the evening of March 22, 1990 Bull was returning to his Brussels apartment when an assassin walked behind him and with a silenced pistol fired three bullets into him. As Bull, lay dying the killer bent over him and shot him twice in the back of the head. At the time of his death, he had $20,000 in his possession but it was left on the body. However, a pendant Bull wore was removed as a trophy. Belgian investigators later confirmed a well known Mossad hit man was subsequently seen wearing the pendant. Reports soon surfaced that Bull had been in contact with the CIA during his work for Iraq and that the agency turned a blind eye when it learned about Mossad’s plan to kill him. Not long after his death, the British authorities confiscated parts intended for the manufacture of the big gun and the project was abandoned.
The mystery surrounding Bull’s murder was publicly resolved less than a decade later when a Mossad chief admitted his agency killed the scientist. In making the admission, the Mossad figure offered a justification for the killing which may well have relevance to the resent death of Prof. Hosseinpour. He said:
“Whoever volunteers to destroy us, or to serve those who have sworn to destroy us, should know in advance that we will be after him wherever he goes, wherever he runs to. I hope the message had an echo, and the echo got far enough to warn others.”
In light of that statement, one could reasonably conclude that Mossad deliberately leaked the news that it assassinated Prof. Hosseinpour in order to send a message to others working for Iraq’s nuclear program that they too would be murdered if they did not abandon their work.

EUROPE WANTS TO PUT 36 CIA SPIES IN THE DOCK

Germany has become the latest European country determined to charge CIA officers with kidnapping a European citizen, Khaled al-Mari, and flying him abroad to be interrogated under extreme conditions.
The move by prosecutors in Munich began with the issuing of arrest warrants for thirteen CIA agents, listed in indictments only by their code names. The German decision may soon be followed by a court in Milan, Italy, that is considering indicting 23 CIA personnel and three Italians with the abduction of a Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar in 2003. He was snatched off the streets of Milan, as part of what is now known worldwide as the CIA’s rendition policy, and secretly flown to Egypt where the Italians say he was tortured.
While the CIA and the US government will dismiss warrants issued in Europe, and refuse to extradite CIA staff, problems could be waiting round the corner for CIA operatives caught up in any of these proceedings, especially if their true identities and not just codenames become known. They could be placed on international criminal watch lists, and on files at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Should they be spotted in years to come, passing through the airports of countries that are signatories to The Hague Court, or countries that have extradition treaties with Italy or Germany, they could be seized and handed over to the Italian and German authorities, or the court in The Hague.
Some media reports have suggested German prosecutors do not yet know the true identities of the 13 CIA operatives. Those reports may be deliberately bogus to trap the agents, by lulling them into a false sense of security. Part of the scandal surrounding the German case is that the country’s intelligence service colluded in the abduction of Khaled al-Masri while he was traveling through Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He was stripped naked, drugged, shackled in a private CIA plane and flown first to Baghdad. From there he was transferred to a clandestine CIA prison called “the salt pit” outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. A-Masri says he was tortured. When the CIA finally learned he was an innocent man, they released him. German intelligence chief have been forced to hand over information on the role played by German agents in al-Masri’s kidnapping and files on the 13 CIA staff at the center of it.
In contrast to the German case, Milan prosecutors know a lot more about the 23 CIA operatives who abducted the cleric, Abu Omar. They not only have photos of some of them but they have learned a great more about them from the Italian Intelligence agency, SISMI, which was deeply involved in the seizure and rendition of Omar. He has not been seen since he was plucked off the streets of Milan in 2003. All that is known about his whereabouts is that he was flown to Cairo by the CIA and handed over to Egyptian interrogators.
His disappearance has rocked Italian politics and led to another recent scandal, namely the discovery that the editor of the Italian daily paper, Libero, Renato Farina, and one of his reporters, were SISMI spies. One of their major tasks was to find out what Milan prosecutors knew about the Omar rendition. Prosecutors became suspicions of questions Farina was asking them and ordered his arrest. They also sent police to raid his apartment. In it, they found thousands of files he kept on judges, journalists, prosecutors and businessmen the SISMI was targeting. Under police questioning, he admitted receiving approx $45,000 over two years for spying on colleagues and others. He told police he left the money in a church to benefit the poor but police decided that was a fanciful story. It is thought he will plead guilty rather than face a trial. Some observers in Italy have claimed that Farina’s targeting of prosecutors investigating the CIA was not just for the benefit of SISMI chiefs but also the CIA.
The rendition inquiries in Europe led last year to European parliamentarians calling on EU governments to come clean about renditions and also the presence of secret CIA prisons. Another outcome of the controversy swirling around the CIA was the Council of Europe inquiry headed by the Swiss senator, Dick Marty. Much to the dismay of the US State Department and the CIA, his investigations have resulted in the rendition issue being linked with a widespread clamor for the ending of CIA secret prisons in Europe and around the globe.
The Marty probe concluded that the CIA had several private jets that were re-fueled at stop-over airports in European countries, included the Rep. of Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Britain. There were also what he called, “staging Posts,” in Cyprus, Turkey, Spain and Germany. These were centers where CIA jets remained for some time and planning took place to move abducted suspects, and others arrested in conflict zones, to interrogation centers in countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, as well as to “secret” CIA prisons across the globe.
Marty used prisoner interviews, in conjunction with air traffic and satellite data to construct a picture of CIA operations across Europe. The media’s attention was, however, caught by growing evidence that the CIA ran what it called “black sites “- secret prisons. The White House at first denied the existence of such sites, but, eventually said several secret prisons being run abroad were closed down. Three countries suspected of hosting “black sites” were Poland, Rumania and Bulgaria. The overall impact of the CIA’s renditions program and its use of “black sites” have resulted in major damage to the US image throughout European capitals and among European citizens. The prospect that as many 36 warrants will now be issued for CIA operatives will only serve to bring further scrutiny of the CIA’s renditions policy and will shed an embarrassing light on the level of collusion between some European intelligence services and the CIA in the abduction of European citizens.