Generation Kill on HBO

HBO will have a seven hour miniseries this July based on Evan Wright’s 2004 Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New Face of American War. Wright was embedded with 1^st Reconnaissance Battalion in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It appears Sgt. Rudy Reyes; one of the more memorable Marines from the book will be playing himself in the series….hopefully with his J.Lo goggles.

Q & A: Robert Baer

Bob Baer, a B&L favorite was recently interviewed in Men's Journal:

mj: Can we ever come to an understanding with the Iranians?

rb: Their interests are very clear-cut. They are not like the Takfiris who want to chop our heads off. The most popular TV program in Iran is about an Iranian diplomat who saves Jews during WWII. If we were Machiavellian, we'd quickly pull out of Iraq and draw the Iranians into a nasty civil war. Make them be the ones shooting people. Right now they look like the good guys, talking about the American imperialists. But if they had to impose order, they'd sing a different tune. Give Iran a taste of empire in Iraq and Afghanistan, and send them a Christmas card every year asking, "How are things going?" But if we stay, spend a couple trillion dollars every five years...that's your retirement. That's rebuilding our bridges. Is it really worth it?

mj: You were in Tehran recently. How was it?

rb: It's a big party town. Opium is cheaper there than anywhere. The Iranians are fun, smart people, ironic and forthcoming. Except when it comes to instruments of the police state. They don't really joke about that.

Letters Home From The Garden Of Stone

Everlast's latest song "Letters Home From The Garden Of Stone" is incredibly powerful, it almost chokes me up some.



I think it goes beyond the simple antiwar/prowar dichotomy.

Who you think i should be fighting
Mom are you proud are you ashamed
I really am trying to do the right thing
I hope my government can say the same

cause I won't know the man that kills me
and I don't know these man that I kill
We all wind up on the same side
cause not one of us doing God's will

Similarly, Serj Tankian's song "Empty Walls" is stirring. Falling more on the antiwar side, the power of Empty Walls comes in its video. The use of children to simulate the "global war on terrorism" is incredibly provocative and powerful. The scene with the Marines at the end of the video, while necessary, could have been done in better taste. But then again that was the point of it....the tasteless reality.

CSIS Smart Power Lecture: Hank Crumpton

Henry “Hank” Crumpton is probably Bourbon and Lawndarts's idol. Crumpton ran the CIA's Afghan program in the wake of September 11, this same program brought the friggin' heat to the Taliban and AQ within weeks of the attacks. Bin Laden's head would be impaled on a fencepost at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if President Bush had listen to Crumpton when we were angling for the kill at Tora Bora.

Needless to say, when Hank Crumpton speaks, I listen.

He gave a speech at CSIS last week. Check out the transcript, video, or mp3.

Globalization we understand; we read about it all of the time – lots of great examples, but it’s not only globalization; it’s not only at a regional level, in Southeast Asia or Central Asia, or NATO – it’s not only the national level, but importantly it’s at a local level. Late Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil, he said all politics is local. Well, I promise you, all counterterrorism is local. In the future of war, it will increasingly be the case.

Preach brotha...

I met with Ahmed Shah Massoud. He was the late leader of the northern alliance. He was assassinated just a couple of days before 9/11. Al Qaeda knew hew as an important ally with the United States and they wanted to take him out of the picture. But this was a couple of years before that; I had a discussion with him. It was in the
hinterlands of Central Asia – had a long talk about a variety of different things that we were working on together.

At the end of the conversation he asked me a question that I will never forget. He
said, your country – I have great respect for the United States, but I wonder, your country – you care more about al Qaeda and bin Laden, or do you care more about the people of Afghanistan. That was a pretty good question. And I gave him the best answer I could, which was, well, I’m from the CIA and my mission is a singular focus, and you’re talking to no one else in the U.S. government, so we care less about the people of Afghanistan.

And he smiled and nodded a very sad smile, but he knew the answer. He was
going to determine if I had the gumption to tell him the truth. But he was also I think teaching me a lesson, that you got to do both; you’ve got to find the enemy; you have to engage; and you have to engage in some cases without mercy, without hesitation. But if you don’t understand that environment and if you don’t care about the people, the job is not finished. And when we think of conflict in the future, it’s going to be exceedingly complex. It’s going to require that hard power, that critical 10 percent. But all that does is buy us space and time for that 90 percent that has to come in, that whole array of instruments. But how do we think about it? How do we organize ourselves? How do we fund ourselves?

Pearls of wisdom from the Lion of the Panjshir himself!

Your second question regarding the name, the war on – the global war on terrorism. I don’t like that name too much.

Economic Indicators

Think America's economy is in the can? Try buying a round of beers in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia to our Boer readership)! Thanks to Jess for the pic.

Found in Translation

"There is one evil I dread, and that is, their spies.”
- George Washington, March 24, 1776.

Found in Translation: FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds spills her secrets, by Philip Giraldi. The American Conservative, January 28, 2008.

Her allegations are not insignificant. Edmonds claims that Marc Grossman—ambassador to Turkey from 1994-97 and undersecretary of state for political affairs from 2001-05—was a person of interest to the FBI and had his phone tapped by the Bureau in 2001 and 2002. In the third-highest position at State, Grossman wielded considerable power personally and within the Washington bureaucracy. He had access to classified information of the highest sensitivity from the CIA, NSA, and Pentagon, in addition to his own State Department. On one occasion, Grossman was reportedly recorded making arrangements to pick up a cash bribe of $15,000 from an ATC contact. The FBI also intercepted related phone conversations between the Turkish Embassy and the Pakistani Embassy that revealed sensitive U.S. government information was being sold to the highest bidder. Grossman, who emphatically denies Edmonds’s charges, is currently vice chairman of the Cohen Group, founded by Clinton defense secretary William Cohen, where he reportedly earns a seven-figure salary, much of it coming from representing Turkey.

After 9/11, Grossman reportedly intervened with the FBI to halt the interrogation of four Turkish and Pakistani operatives. According to Edmonds, Grossman was called by a Turkish contact who told him that the men had to be released before they told what they knew. Grossman said that he would take care of it and, per Edmonds, the men were released and allowed to leave the country.

Edmonds states that FBI phone taps from late 2001 reveal that Grossman tipped off his Turkish contact regarding the CIA weapons proliferation cover unit Brewster Jennings, which was being used by Valerie Plame, and that the Turk then informed the Pakistani intelligence service representative in Washington. It is to be assumed that the information was then passed on to the A.Q. Khan nuclear proliferation network.

FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft

Follow up to the Sunday Times article from two weeks ago that I posted on:
FBI denies file exposing nuclear secrets theft. The Sunday Times, January 20, 2008.

Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She says the FBI was investigating a Turkish and Israeli-run network that paid high-ranking American officials to steal nuclear weapons secrets. These were then sold on the international black market to countries such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

One of the documents relating to the case was marked 203A-WF-210023. Last week, however, the FBI responded to a freedom of information request for a file of exactly the same number by claiming that it did not exist. But The Sunday Times has obtained a document signed by an FBI official showing the existence of the file.

And then it gets really spicy:

The anonymous letter names a high-level government official who was allegedly secretly recorded speaking to an official at the Turkish embassy between August and December 2001.

It claims the government official warned a Turkish member of the network that they should not deal with a company called Brewster Jennings because it was a CIA front company investigating the nuclear black market. The official’s warning came two years before Brewster Jennings was publicly outed when one of its staff, Valerie Plame, was revealed to be a CIA agent in a case that became a cause célèbre in the US.

The letter also makes reference to wiretaps of Turkish “targets” talking to ISI intelligence agents at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and recordings of “operatives” at the ATC.

Note that Marc Grossman was central in the Libby trial. BTW, guess where Valerie Plame first met her husband Ambassador Joesph Wilson? Big high five if you guessed at an American Turkish Council party.

Sibel Edmonds, For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

Well sir, treason season started early this year....
- Kent Brockman, The Simpsons

I have posted before about the case of Sibel Edmonds, the former FBI Turkish translator subject to a gag order under the State Secrets Privilege. It now appears she has broken that gag, revealing some of her story to The Sunday Times of London:

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

Edmonds described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

I know a lot about this case. This story could end up a political scandal on scale with Watergate, or it could not get any legs in the US media and die-off. Needless to say if these revelations are proven true, it marks a sad day for our nation. The following are my comments are parts of the article:

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

The name of this official is also known to Bourbon and Lawndarts, who unlike The Sunday Times of London is not subject to the UK's notorious libel laws. The official in question is Marc Grossman, who was the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2001 to 2005, a former ambassador to Turkey, and is currently the Vice President of The Cohen Group.

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

The Sunday Times again does not name names, and again B&L has names. Starting with the household names Richard Perle and Douglas J. Feith come right off the bat.

The Pakistani operation was led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attach's in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

More specifically Mahmoud gave the $100k to Omar Saeed Sheikh a British born militant who once attended the London School of Economics. Omar Sheikh sent the money to Atta to finance the rest of the operation, then right before 9/11 Atta sent the remainder back to Omar. Sheikh worked with AQ, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Those last two groups are Kashmir related organizations that wage terrorist attacks against India. Sheikh is known to have contacts with the ISI, and was involved in the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

By the way, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad was is Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001, he had met with Marc Grossman a few day before.

In summer 2000, Edmonds says the FBI monitored one of the agents as he met two Saudi Arabian businessmen in Detroit to sell nuclear information that had been stolen from an air force base in Alabama. She overheard the agent saying: “We have a package and we’re going to sell it for $250,000.”

It's Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, AL. Air Force Major Douglas Dickerson is likely the source of the stolen information. To bring this full circle, Malek Can Dickerson - the Major's wife - was also an FBI Turkish linguist with Sibel. The Dickerson's tried to recruit Sibel and her husband into the network on December 2, 2001.

Ebooks

I have uploaded some ebooks on international relations and terrorism studies. This page lists them and will be updated.

Recently added:

Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World, by Peter Bergen

Psychology.of.Terrorism-0195172493.pdf, by Bruce Bongar (Editor)

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy, by Zbigniew Brzezinski

Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor, by Daniel Byman

The Rise and Decline of the State, by Martin van Creveld

Hezbollah-Changing-Face-of-Terrorism.pdf, by Judith Palmer Harik

Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing, by Michael Scheuer

The Term Islamofascism

AntoniusBlock at Strategy and National Security Policy blog has a great post on the term Islamofascism:

30 December 2007

On the Word "Islamofascism"

As I've pointed out here, I cringe when policymakers, pundits, and political candidates use the word "Islamofascism." It's inaccurate (fascism was a political and economic theory defined by hyper nationalism, militarism, corporatism, and a concentration of political power in a single person. The ideology of bin Laden, et. al has none of these characteristics.) More importantly, it sends the message to Muslims, who we hypothetically are trying to influence in a "war of ideas," that we are clueless. Rather than understand bin Laden's ideology (which is difficult for Westerners), we insist on stuffing it into a familiar box (a political ideology).

But I saw what I thought was a most excellent way of making this point on the smallwarsjournal.com discussion board. A poster asked how it would be taken in the United States if Muslims started analyzing the threat they faced from "Christofascism" or (and this is my addition, not the discussion board poster's), "Jewofascism"? I thought that really put it in perspective.

I know AntoniusBlock's real name, believe me - his insight is world class. And I am looking forward to the release of his new book.

"The choice is simple: Make painful but necessary changes to reduce our addiction to oil, or sink deeper into our moral sludge."

In an opinion piece in the Times Magazine the great Peter Maass discusses oil and corruption. I blogged about this matter last week.

December 23, 2007
Phenomenon
The Fuel Fixers
By PETER MAASS

James Giffen likes to share the wealth. His generosity to friends is said to have included $180,000 for jewelry, $30,000 for fur coats, a luxury speedboat, two snowmobiles and lots of cash. Overall, according to prosecutors in New York, Giffen gave more than $78 million to senior officials in Kazakhstan, for which he was indicted on federal bribery charges in 2003. What makes his case most remarkable, however, is not the startling amount of supposed corruption. Nor is it Giffen’s unindicted co-conspirator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president of Kazakhstan.

What truly sets Giffen apart is that he has claimed in his defense that he was an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency. As a close adviser to President Nazarbayev, who in the 1990s agreed to a series of large oil contracts with American firms, Giffen says he was moonlighting for the American government as, basically, our man in Astana. Giffen’s lawyers have called him a patriot who helped ensure that Kazakhstan’s reserves of oil and natural gas would be controlled by American rather than Chinese or Russian companies. And they have noted an oddity — after their client was indicted on charges that could land him in jail for the rest of his life, his supposed partner in bribery, President Nazarbayev, was welcomed not only at the White House but also at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport.

The case raises a number of questions, including this one: in an era of scarce oil, can America afford to punish anyone who cuts corners to win deals for American firms? In 2003, when oil sold for less than $30 a barrel, it was possible to believe we could have our anticorruption statutes and our cheap gasoline. Four years later, with oil going for $95 a barrel, it’s not so clear. The British government, citing-national security concerns, has called off an investigation into bribery of influential Saudis. Delays in Giffen’s case suggest that some federal agencies may be more concerned with protecting secrets than with seeing the prosecution go forward. Much of the pretrial evidence has been sealed, but what is known is that Giffen’s lawyers have asked for sensitive documents that they contend will show official approval of their client’s activities.

As an instrument of resource control, bribery has been the recourse of corporate executives and government officials the world over. In the 1970s, after American firms admitted to spending hundreds of millions of dollars bribing foreign officials, Congress passed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to put an end to these antics. For many years, the F.C.P.A. was not aggressively enforced and many companies outsourced bribery to middlemen or joint-venture partners. But as the corporate social-responsibility movement grew its baby teeth, the Justice Department began to show more interest in corporate bribery overseas. About 60 F.C.P.A. cases are now being investigated or prosecuted. Belatedly, American oil firms are being asked to, well, refine themselves.

Is it too late? The F.C.P.A. was passed when these firms were colossi in the energy world. Today, Congress and Exxon Mobil cannot set global norms on their own. They have to deal with a range of masters, competitors and rogues including Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hu Jintao, Gazprom, Lukoil, Sinopec and Eni. Desperate buyers — and this category now includes the United States — must compete against one another as they try to fulfill the wishes and needs of the autocratic sellers of petroleum.

I saw this firsthand when President Chávez signed an accord in Caracas with a Chinese company that would launch a satellite for Venezuela. Chávez delivered a lengthy and rambling speech, during which he flapped his arms in the air like a loon and raved about the beauty of Chinese women, the greatness of Chairman Mao and the evils of free enterprise, warning that “capitalists are generating death.” The Chinese on the stage, who seemed unlikely to share all of their host’s notions, slightly nodded their heads in the quiet approval that was required.

By lending support to the particularly dubious regime in Sudan, China clearly puts its energy needs above moral concerns. But the American government cannot avoid the contradictions of needing oil but wanting to get it, or at least be seen to get it, in moral ways. This predicament has been evident for a long time in our dealings with dictatorships in, for instance, Saudi Arabia and Angola. The Giffen case is a timely iteration as we fret on the threshold of $100-a-barrel petroleum. The choice is simple: Make painful but necessary changes to reduce our addiction to oil, or sink deeper into our moral sludge.

Peter Maass, a contributing writer, is working on a book about oil.

Conversations with History - Trita Parsi

Sy Hersh on the Iran NIE

Snoopy's Christmas

Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel was one of my favorite books growing up. Enjoy, and Happy Holidays from Bourbon and Lawndarts.

My dog ate it!

I love Jonathan Papelbon for two reasons. First is because he's the best closer in baseball and second is because he is just like some of my dumbass drinking buddies. But like all dumbassery, it comes with a price, witness this headline:

Papelbon says dog destroyed ball from final out of Series

Papelbon, his pink shirt, and his bulldog Boss

Homo erectus extinctus

Homo erectus extinctus, by Lois Rogers. The Sunday Times, December 16, 2007.

Is nature determined to make men extinct? Senior scientists believe that women may evolve as humanity’s sole representatives — and social and political trends are lending weight to their theories. Lois Rogers reports

Roger Dodger (2002)

Still amped over winning the World Series!

...But the Division championship was the most fun!

"Papelbon's taken the beer case off his head, so that's progress." - Dennis Eckersley

"Papelbon needs to put some pants on." - Dennis Eckersley

Chili Guy

The Chili Guy is quickly becoming a Boston legend. For those not in the know, The Chili Guy lives around Fenway Park....literally around Fenway Park, because I think he sleeps on the streets. He's a ticket scalper and frequent contributor on WBCN's Toucher and Rich show. Anyway, he's probably one of the funniest people I have ever heard. Toucher and Rich are counting down the Top 5 Chili guy moments of the year. Enjoy!

#5 mp3 Download

Chili Guy's Myspace Page

#4 mp3 Download

#3 mp3 Download

Updates to come

Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets.

Steve LeVine on his excellent blog The Oil and the Glory has a post titled “Prosecuting Foreign Bribery Under the Bush Administration”. Relating events in the ongoing James Giffin “Kazakhgate” case to our current administrations penchant for secrecy.

When they unveiled the indictment in April 2003, U.S. prosecutors portrayed their case against James Giffen as open and shut -- the largest foreign bribery case in U.S. history. And by the looks of the detail, they had reason for confidence. There they were -- six individual examples of U.S. oil company payments totalling some $80 million being coursed through European bank accounts linked to the president of Kazakhstan or his associates.

As regular readers of this blog recall, Giffen once controlled the biggest oil deals in the world as oil adviser to Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev. He's the principal character in The Oil and the Glory.

Yet in a New York court hearing today, the case seemed a lot more complex. Judge William Pauley, who two years ago issued fiery warnings to both sides to accelerate the pace, was reduced to a mild rebuke of the prosecution, and scheduling the next hearing for April 18th. And jury selection? Not a hint.

What's the holdup? The defense, brilliantly led by former U.S. prosecutor William Schwartz, wants documents from a handful of U.S. intelligence agencies to prove Giffen's contention that the whole time he was negotiating those oil deals for a fee, he was doubling as an effective agent for the American government.

This being probably the most secretive administration in U.S. history, dislodging such documentation takes time. Perhaps a friend of mine is right -- we may not see a trial until this administration is out of office.

Once again I will evoke this scene from Syriana, oft cited on this blog:

Some trust fund prosecutor, got off-message at Yale, thinks he's gonna run this up the flagpole, make a name for himself, maybe get elected some two-bit, congressman from nowhere, with the result that Russia or China can suddenly start having, at our expense, all the advantages we enjoy here. No, I tell you. No, sir. Corruption charges! Corruption? Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulations. That's Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption is why we win.

P.S. - Steve's The Oil and Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea, is excellent.

Global Legal Monitor

Good source:

The Global Legal Monitor, an electronic publication of the Law Library of Congress, is intended for those who have an interest in legal developments from around the world.

This online publication will be updated frequently, drawing upon information selected from the Global Legal Network, official national legal publications, and reliable press sources. Occasionally, a special section may be added to include lectures, conferences, symposia, and exhibits on timely legal topics sponsored by the Law Library of Congress.