Category Archives: Military

Iran Deal: Thomas Pickering Got Big Bucks

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Thomas Pickering is PRO IRAN, let that sink in…

Ex-Clinton official got Boeing bucks while pushing Iran nuke pact – before $25B jet deal

FNC: A former top Clinton administration diplomat who used his political sway to garner support for the Iran nuclear deal apparently was being bankrolled the entire time by Boeing — which is set to make billions off a jet deal with Tehran now that sanctions have been lifted.

 

Thomas Pickering, who also served as co-chairman of the board examining the Benghazi attack response, publicly pushed for the nuclear deal before its approval last year. He did so by penning op-eds, writing to high-level officials and even testifying before Congress.

With the deal in place, Boeing has since moved forward on a $25 billion deal with Iran Air made possible by the nuclear agreement.

While Pickering never denied being on Boeing’s payroll during the talks, he didn’t regularly disclose it either, according to a new report in The Daily Beast. And that’s the problem, transparency advocates say.

“In Pickering’s case, he has a direct connection to Boeing, which I think should be disclosed,” Neil Gordon, an investigator for the Project on Government Oversight, told The Daily Beast. “I think it’s necessary for the public debate. It’s necessary for the public to fully realize the participants’ financial interests. Some of them might have a direct financial stake in a particular outcome.”

Pickering was a former top State Department official in the Bill Clinton administration, and before that ambassador to Russia. He also served as ambassador to the United Nations, Israel and elsewhere in prior administrations.

When Pickering testified before the House Armed Services Committee on June 16, 2014, the biography provided to committee members touted his military and government services but did not list his business ties.

Pickering also sent a July 7, 2015 letter to lawmakers urging them to back the nuclear deal but reportedly did not make his association with Boeing known. The letter was cited by the media, lawmakers and the White House in the push to sell the nuclear deal to the public.

In op-eds for The Washington Post and Tablet, he also made the case for the deal but again did not disclose his ties.

He confirmed to The Daily Beast that he was a Boeing employee from 2001 to 2006 (which was more widely known) and later worked as a “direct consultant” from 2006 to 2015.

Earlier this month, Boeing reached a tentative agreement to sell passenger planes to Iran’s state-run carrier, Iran Air. The deal is the first major business venture after sanctions were eased against Tehran last year and is seen by many as a groundbreaking test for other American companies looking to profit from Iran’s untapped economy.

The deal is still in its early stage and will likely face scrutiny from U.S. trade regulators and lawmakers.

“It’s tragic to watch such an iconic American company make such a terribly short-sighted decision,” Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., told FoxNews.com in a statement. “If Boeing goes through with this deal, the company will forever be associated with Iran’s chief export: radical Islamic terrorism. The U.S. Congress will have much to say about this agreement in the coming days.”

Roskam and Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, sent a letter to Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg last week raising concerns about Tehran’s history of using commercial planes to support “hostile actors.”

“We strongly oppose the potential sale of military-fungible products to terrorism’s central supplier. American companies should not be complicit in weaponizing the Iranian Regime,” the lawmakers wrote.

Boeing wrote back saying it would follow the lead of the U.S. government with regards to working with Iran Air and that “any and all contracts with them will be contingent upon continued approval.”

“And as we have stated repeatedly, should the U.S. Government reinstate sanctions against the sale of commercial passenger airplanes to Iranian airlines, we will cease all sales and delivery activities as required by U.S. law,” Tim Keating, Boeing senior vice president, wrote.

Five years ago, the Obama administration slapped sanctions on Iran Air, claiming the company used passenger and cargo planes to transport rockets and missiles to places such as Syria, sometimes disguised as medicine or spare parts. In other cases, members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps took control of flights carrying sensitive cargo.

Although U.S. officials never said such conduct ended, the administration used a technicality to drop those sanctions as part of last year’s seven-nation nuclear deal. The agreement also allowed the Treasury Department to license American firms to do business in Iran’s civilian aviation sector. The changes enable Boeing to sell up to 100 aircraft to Iran Air, by far the most lucrative business transaction between the U.S. and Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and U.S. Embassy hostage crisis.

State Department spokesman John Kirby said the sale and any possible future deals depend on Iran’s good behavior.

The U.S. could revoke the license for the deal if planes, parts or services are “used for purposes other than exclusively civil aviation end-use” or if aircraft are transferred to individuals or companies on a U.S. terrorism blacklist, Kirby said.

Any suggestion “that we would or will turn a blind eye to Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism or their terrorist-supporting activities is completely without merit,” Kirby said.

The details of the arrangement between Boeing and Iran Air aren’t entirely clear. Iran’s Transportation Minister Abbas Akhoundi said it could match the $25 billion package between the Islamic Republic and Boeing’s European rival, Airbus. Iran Air has stated its interest in purchasing new Boeing 737s — single aisle jets that typically fly up to five hours. It also wants 777s — larger planes that can carry passengers for 12 hours or more.

But if Iran Air continues supporting Iranian military or Revolutionary Guard operations, it would put the Obama administration or any successor in a bind.

Revoking the license and suspending future plane transfers risks angering the Iranians, who’ve already complained about not receiving sufficient benefit for their nuclear concessions. It also could mean billions in lost revenue for a large American company with more than 130,000 employees in the United States.

**** Hold on, it gets worse, much worse.

Lawmakers Seek to Re-Open ‘Flawed’ Iran Nuclear Weapons Investigation

Revelations Obama admin knew of possible weapons work, stayed silent

FreeBeacon: U.S. lawmakers and foreign policy insiders are calling on the international community to re-open its “flawed” investigation into Iran’s past nuclear weapons research, according to conversations with multiple sources who say the extent of Iran’s past nuclear work is likely much larger than previously believed.

The calls to reinvestigate Iran’s nuclear work come on the heels of revelations by anonymous U.S. officials who said the Obama administration held onto evidence showing the Islamic Republic performed extensive nuclear weapons research—a finding that contradicts findings by international monitors and longstanding claims by Iranian officials.

Administration officials made no mention of the finding when International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors first discovered it in December, but now say the evidence is proof Iran worked to build nuclear weapons as recently as 2003.

The discovery has prompted lawmakers to demand that the IAEA re-open its currently closed investigation into Iran’s past nuclear weapons work.

“The Obama administration’s contradiction of both Iran and the IAEA on this uranium issue calls for a re-examination of the flawed potential military dimensions report,” Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kansas), a member of the House’s intelligence committee, told the Washington Free Beacon. “The IAEA cannot claim to have an accurate accounting of the situation while nuclear particles are unaccounted for.”

U.S. officials promised Congress during negotiations with Iran that no deal would be implemented until the issue of Iran’s past nuclear weapons work was settled.

“Even Obama administration officials disagree with the report’s conclusions, now six months later,” Pompeo said. “It is common sense that when you uncover a problem, you investigate until you find a solution. Now all agree we have a new fact—and a problem. Failing to investigate what happened with Iran’s nuclear weapons program sets a dangerous precedent.”

Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.), another vocal critic of the administration’s diplomacy with Iran, told the Free Beacon that international inspectors with the IAEA were not thorough enough in their investigations due to “political pressure” from pro-Iran forces.

“It’s deeply troubling that the world’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, appears to have lost its independence due to the Iran nuclear deal,” Kirk said. “Nuclear inspectors should have intensified their investigation into Iran’s nuclear weapons program after uranium particles were found at Iran’s military base at Parchin, but instead they stood down due to political pressure.”

Senior congressional officials apprised of the situation told the Free Beacon that the administration ignored these new nuclear findings at a critical point in its diplomacy with Iran.

“The IAEA’s PMD [Possible Military Dimensions] report came out in December, and Obama administration officials are only just now speaking—anonymously—on why they disagree with the report and why these nuclear materials are a huge problem,” the source said. “They cannot so easily assuage their consciences and undo the damage they caused by closing the PMD case. The Obama administration’s decision to ignore Iran’s covert nuclear weapons development, and attempt to sweep it under the rug, will no doubt haunt us for decades.”

Pompeo and other House lawmakers introduced a bill in January that would require the Obama administration to provide a full accounting of Iran’s past nuclear weapons work before any sanctions on the Islamic Republic were lifted.

Another source who works closely with Congress on the Iran issue told the Free Beacon that the new nuclear disclosures cast doubt on past international reports claiming that Iran has stopped all nuclear work.

“It’s time to reopen the so-called PMD file, to figure out what weapons work Iran was doing,” the source said. “The IAEA is supposed to make sure that Iran has stopped all of the nuclear weapons work it was doing, but here is a place where there is broad confusion over what nuclear weapons work was happening. So there’s no way for the IAEA to confirm it stopped. The first step to fixing that is to have the IAEA go back into Parchin and figure out exactly what was happening.”

One last item:

UANI Sparks Debate in India on Risks and Propriety of Doing Business in Iran

UANI Leadership Pens Op-ed and Conducts Interview in Indian Media

New York, NY – United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), the non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to heightening awareness of the danger the Iranian regime poses to the world, has sparked a national debate in India on the risks and propriety of doing business in Iran. UANI is in the midst of a global education and awareness campaign focused on the corporate risks of doing business with Iran.

In a June 19 op-ed in The New Indian Express, UANI Chairman Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman warned that doing business with “Iran can create more problems for India than it can solve“:

In Iran, business is routinely intertwined with terrorism. Therefore, if Indian companies sign deals with Tehran, they will be lending support to its belligerent behaviour… Pursuing business in Iran can also lead to losing out on more lucrative opportunities in countries that oppose its hegemonic policies. For instance, India has the choice to invest in the US, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, other GCC countries, and allied countries with a combined GDP of over $32 trillion, or take a gamble on Iran’s economy with a GDP of under $400 billion. There is a real risk that Indian companies investing in Iran will lose market share in some of these other countries. So, while Iran could help alleviate India’s energy problems, there are better ways to solve those. Doing business with the regime can create even more problems for New Delhi-economically, diplomatically, and in terms of security.

In a June 10 interview in India’s Hard News, UANI CEO Amb. Mark D. Wallace said:

UANI is aware of the economic and political links between Iran and India. UANI is also aware of similar ties between India, the US and numerous other countries in the region that feel threatened by Iranian aggression. I doubt it is in India’s national interest to side with a state associated with terrorism, corruption and money laundering over a confederation of responsible state actors opposed to Iranian regional hegemony. Moreover, if India wants to oppose corruption and terrorism, it cannot at the same time embolden and reward a regime that is notoriously corrupt and also the world leading state sponsor of terrorism. Indian leaders should back up their rhetoric with action and use its ties and link to Iran to influence the regime to change its terrorist behaviour and corrupt business environment instead of prematurely rewarding Iran with Indian business.

A statement by Sen. Lieberman and Amb. Wallace regarding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Iran on May 22-23 was featured widely in Indian media, including the Business Standard, India Today, DNA India, CNN-News18, and the Deccan Chronicle. UANI reminded Prime Minister Modi of his previous strong statements about fighting terrorism and corruption.

The Business Standard responded to the statement with an editorial addressing the “unsolicited advice” from the “maverick former Senator” Joe Lieberman.

Top Secret Reason for the Cold War Revealed

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The Top-Secret Cold War Plan to Keep Soviet Hands Off Middle Eastern Oil

Fearing a Russian invasion, the U.S. and Britain were prepared to ravage the region’s oil industry—and even considered going nuclear.

By Steve Everly

 Politico: On a cool summer day in London in 1951, an American CIA officer told three British oil executives about a top-secret U.S. government plan. The goal was to ravage the Middle East oil industry if the region were ever invaded by the Soviet Union. Oil wells would be plugged, equipment and fuel stockpiles destroyed, refineries and pipelines disabled—anything to keep the USSR from getting its hands on valuable oil resources. The CIA called it the “denial policy.”

Such a plan couldn’t work without the cooperation of the British and American companies who controlled the oil industry in the Middle East, which is why the CIA operative, George Prussing, ended up at the Ministry of Fuel and Power in London that day. To the British representatives of Iraq Petroleum, Kuwait Oil and Bahrain Oil, Prussing detailed how their production operations in those countries would in effect be transformed into a paramilitary force, trained and ready to execute the CIA’s plan in the event of a Soviet invasion. He asked for their help, and they agreed to cooperate. He also emphasized the need for security, which included keeping the policy secret from the targeted Middle East countries. “Security now is more important than the success of any operations,” Prussing told them.

The CIA’s oil denial policy is a snippet of a Cold War history that is finally giving up more of its secrets. In 1996, a brief description of the plan emerged after the Truman Presidential Library mistakenly declassified it—a security breach the National Archives deemed the worst in its history—and some additional details have trickled out over the years. But a recently discovered trove of documents stashed in Britain’s National Archives, along with some key American documents, now declassified, provide a more complete and more revelatory account—published here for the first time.

It turns out that the denial policy, long believed to have ended during Eisenhower’s presidency, was in place much longer than that, lingering into the Kennedy administration. And the newly discovered British documents reveal Britain was prepared to use nuclear weapons to keep the Soviet Union from Middle Eastern oil. The documents also show that the CIA played a far larger role than previously thought. The State Department and the National Security Council were always known to have been significantly involved, but in fact, it was the intelligence agency that was the driving force of the operation, organizing American and British companies to execute the denial policy, coming up with plans, providing explosives and spying on some of those companies as part of its oversight.

The history of this top secret U.S. government plot is a tumultuous mix of Arab nationalism, Big Oil and the CIA on the most oil-rich chunk of real estate on earth. Fundamentally, it is a tale of the growing importance of Middle Eastern oil and the West’s early thirst to control it. And decades later, with that thirst still driving U.S. involvement in the volatile region, it’s worth remembering the risky scheme that foreshadowed it all.

The oil denial policy was hatched in 1948 during the Berlin Blockade, when the Soviet Union tried to block the West’s access to the German city. The blockade stoked fears that further communist aggression would include a sweep through Iran and Iraq to the Persian Gulf—an invasion, the Truman administration worried, that U.S. troops and their allies wouldn’t be able to stop. But American and British companies controlled Middle Eastern oil, and the U.S. government decided a stop-gap measure could stymie the Soviet military by ensuring its taste for fuel wasn’t slaked with petroleum.

The National Security Council’s plan, officially known as NSC 26/2 (and which was approved by President Harry Truman in 1949), was for those American and British companies to destroy or sideline Middle East oil resources and facilities at the start of a Soviet offensive. According to the NSC 26/2 planning documents, the State Department would provide oversight; the CIA would handle operational details for each country.

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Based on National Security Council documents, the intelligence agency immediately approached Terry Duce, Aramco’s vice president of government relations, for advice about implementing a covert denial plan in Saudi Arabia. Aramco owned the rights to produce Saudi Arabian oil and had a working relationship with the country’s government. Duce, who liked to wear a black beret and loved the spy game, had served a stint at the federal government’s Petroleum Administration during World War II and was well known in Washington. Allen Dulles, who later became the CIA’s director, was a frequent guest at Duce’s home.

Aramco, jointly owned at the time by predecessor companies of Exxon Corp., Mobil Inc., Chevron Corp. and Texaco Inc., threw itself into the effort by providing the CIA with crucial advice, including how to plug oil wells and disable refineries. Through Duce, Aramco also volunteered its employees to execute the plan and was even willing to consider their induction into the military if the plan were triggered. (Aramco and U.S. officials hoped military status would protect employees from execution for sabotage if they were captured.)

In the meantime, according to British Foreign Office documents, the British government was notified about NSC 26/2 and threw its support behind the measure, agreeing to prepare denial plans for its oil companies in Iran and Iraq. Britain’s approach differed from the outset: While the CIA’s strategy for Saudi Arabia relied entirely on Aramco employees and not at all on the U.S. military, the British plan used airborne troops to protect and assist the hundreds of oil company employees who would participate in destroying the facilities.

All appeared to be going well for the CIA’s ambitious plot. But it wasn’t long until this promising start began to degenerate. British oil companies turned out to be way more reluctant to cooperate than their government had been. In late 1950, Sir Thomas Fraser, chairman of Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., a jewel in the fading British Empire, learned for the first time his company was expected to provide hundreds of employees for the denial scheme. He feared economic blackmail, even expulsion, if the Iranian government learned about his company’s involvement—and, according to British documents, Fraser pulled Anglo-Iranian Oil out of the plan in late 1950.

George McGhee, an undersecretary at the State Department, was furious. In February 1951, he summoned a British official to Foggy Bottom and told him it was time for his government to make up its mind regardless of what Anglo-Iranian Oil—later to be renamed British Petroleum—thought. “It was quite unjustifiable that the oil denial arrangements should not be completed to the last detail,” McGhee said, according to a British memo about the meeting. In response a few weeks later, the British offered a denial blueprint for Iran that depended entirely on military troops and suggested a similar approach for Iraq. According to British documents that reveal communication with the State Department, this proposal stunned U.S. officials, who believed the plan would fail without the expertise and manpower provided by the oil companies.

What the United States didn’t know, however, was that the British were in fact willing to tap their oil companies for assistance, and that the oil companies were willing to provide it. London just didn’t want the United States to be aware of this, for fear that U.S. knowledge would jeopardize the secret. “We are bound not to let them know how much British oil companies are cooperating,” said D.P. Reilly of Britain’s Foreign Office to a senior British military official, a few weeks after the McGhee meeting.

***

When George Prussing, the CIA operative assigned to work with Middle Eastern oil companies on denial plans, stepped into the State Department on May 1, 1951, he hoped to convince the two British diplomatic and military officials there to meet him that they needed the CIA’s help to salvage their strategies. He gave them for the first time a detailed briefing of the Aramco plan he had helped develop, hoping that it would serve as a model for the rest of the region.

The Aramco denial plan, according to British notes of Prussing’s briefing, was organized around the company’s three administrative districts in Saudi Arabia. Forty-five senior Aramco employees were “fully in the picture.” Altogether 645 employees were earmarked to participate, but most knew only of their individual roles to prevent disclosure of the overall plan.

In addition, five CIA undercover agents were embedded in Aramco in jobs such as storekeeper and general manager’s assistant. They were charged with keeping the intelligence agency informed of the company’s work on the denial plan and any developments that might affect it. Outside the CIA, only one Aramco executive and one State Department official were aware of the agents’ real jobs, according to the British notes.

The CIA had already imported military-grade explosives into Saudi Arabia, specially shaped to fit specific parts, to store in bunkers on Aramco property.

The goal was to keep the Soviets from tapping Saudi Arabia’s oil and refined fuels for up to a year in the event of an invasion. The plan would unfold in phases, starting with destruction of fuel stockpiles and disabling Aramco’s refinery. Selective demolitions would destroy key refinery components difficult for the Russians to replace. This would leave much of the refinery intact, making it easier for Aramco to resume production after the Soviets were ousted.

According to British notes of this meeting, the CIA had already imported military-grade explosives into Saudi Arabia, specially shaped to fit specific parts, to store in bunkers on Aramco property. Flamethrowers were to be widely used to melt small equipment parts. Other weapons included special grenades tested for destroying fuel stockpiles. Cement trucks were ordered for plugging oil wells.

Trucks, railway cars, generators and drilling rigs were also slated for destruction. Aramco employees, besides receiving military commissions, would be evacuated to safety once the denial operation was completed, Prussing said.

The briefing impressed J.A. Beckett, petroleum attaché at the British Embassy in Washington, who fired off a telegram to London advising that Aramco and the CIA had “developed a satisfactory modus operandi for this type of covert planning and are most anxious to extend their activities to cover the remaining [oil] fields.”

Prussing sought approval to install Aramco-style plans in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, where a mix of American and British oil companies were then operating, according to British documents. Britain, the governing authority in those countries, accepted Prussing’s proposal as long as Britain could remain responsible for triggering the execution of the denial plans in Kuwait and Qatar. (A decision about which country would order the plan to begin in Bahrain was deferred although Britain was inclined to give it to the United States.)

Britain remained responsible for developing the denial plans for Iran and Iraq, but Prussing offered the CIA’s assistance. To this end, British officials arranged a meeting in London for the next month, which is how Prussing ended up briefing executives from oil companies in Kuwait, Bahrain and Iraq in June 1951. There, according to British notes of of the meeting, Prussing reviewed the Aramco plan with the businessnmen and said he was ready to advise and assist their own denial plans. They agreed to the assistance.

Yet, there was one key oil empire conspicuously missing from the meeting: Iran. Arranging plans for that country was proving to be far more difficult than for the others.

***

In early 1951, Iran was a steaming stew of resentment toward Anglo-Iranian Oil. The British company’s shabby treatment of its Iranian employees and its mercenary grip on the country’s oil riches had long soured relations between the company and the country.

Whispers about the denial plan were making things even worse. In December 1950, a Tehran newspaper published a story that reported rumors of high-level British government discussions to destroy Iran’s oil industry in the event of war—arousing astonishment and anxiety in Iranian political circles. The story also set off alarms bells in London and at Anglo-Iranian Oil, where efforts were redoubled to keep its cooperation a secret. Based on British Foreign Office documents detailing a conversation with an Anglo-Iranian executive, the company’s general manager was told—whether by his company or the government, it’s not clear—to disavow any knowledge of the denial plan. “The article was far too near the truth,” A.T. Chisholm, a company executive, said while dropping off a translated copy of the story at the British Foreign Office in London.

At the time, the British government owned 51 percent of Anglo-Iranian Oil, but an unusual clause in the ownership agreement prevented the government from being involved in the company’s commercial matters. According to Foreign Office documents discussing Anglo-Iranian’s participation in the plan, Fraser, the company’s chairman, shrewdly used this provision to push his view that the denial plan would be a financial disaster for the company. He warned that an American competitor might intentionally leak his company’s participation to Iran’s government to gain an advantage in the country—and he said he would not participate.

“He was convinced that no security measure would be effective once the American oil companies were brought into the picture,” said R. Kelf-Cohen, an official with Britain’s Ministry of Fuel and Power, during a meeting in London to discuss the denial policy.

But Fraser, under pressure after the McGhee meeting with British government officials in February 1951, eventually grudgingly agreed to allow a denial plan to use his company’s employees. He had conditions, though. His approval would be required, for instance, to execute the denial plan until he was sure the company could recover any financial losses incurred. The British government decided that his cooperation would be kept secret from the Americans so that U.S. oil companies didn’t try to undercut Ango-Iranian oil.

But then, Iranian politics put a wrench in the plan. On March 7, 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Ali Razmara was assassinated by a nationalist and was replaced in April by Mohammad Mosaddeq, who promptly nationalized the company.

Seizure of Anglo-Iranian Oil’s assets by the Iranian government nixed the denial plan with consequences that threatened the entire NSC 26/2 policy. The company produced half the oil in the Middle East and more than half the gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Its Abadan refinery was the largest in the world and by itself could probably satisfy a Soviet invasion’s thirst for fuel.

The nationalization triggered a scramble for options. According to British documents, the United States asked Britain if the plan’s mission to counter a Soviet invasion could be salvaged with airborne strikes aiding British troops on the ground. Britain rejected this idea, claiming spare troops were not available and the ground demolitions called for by the plan would be too dangerous without the expert assistance of refinery workers.

According British military documents, Britain’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, responsible for the country’s denial planning, decided instead that “oil denial [in Iran] can only be carried out by air attack.” Still, they were skeptical about having enough aircraft to successfully attack the massive Abadan refinery. Because of this fear, the plan that emerged was highly targeted: If the Soviets invaded Iran, the British Royal Air Force based in Iraq would attack fuel stockpiles at the Abadan facility, which was then idled by a British embargo of Iranian oil, leaving the refinery intact. British aircraft would snip production at the Abadan refinery, if reactivated, by bombing a railway that delivered crude oil to the facility. Airstrikes would also hit two small refineries in Iran, at Kermanshah and Naft-I-Shah, along with their fuel stockpiles.

***

By late 1951, as the denial plan for Iran reorganized, the plan for Saudi Arabia was settling in. Prussing was even treating a handful of Aramco employees to a picnic in the desert where they discussed the gritty details of oil denial over sandwiches.

“Refinery explosions would work like Chinese firecrackers; when one exploded it would set off another,” Bill Otto, an Aramco employee and a manager of the company’s denial plan who was at the picnic, told me in an interview.

The CIA wanted a speedy timetable to ensure the plan could be completed before the Soviets arrived. The agency had already arranged a communications channel that would allow the U.S. secretary of state to send the order triggering the denial plan to a boat sitting off the shore of Saudi Arabia. Aramco did its part by filling binders with photos, diagrams and instructions needed to execute the plan. A handful of the company’s American employees stored the 20,000 pounds of dynamite and plastic explosives needed for the demolitions—a job done without arising suspicion since Aramco used explosives in its normal operations.

“The program didn’t have any meat to it until we started putting [demolition details] down,” said Otto, a former Army bomb disposal expert. “[The CIA was] happy to have someone else doing it.”

Refinery explosions would work like Chinese firecrackers; when one exploded it would set off another.”

There were other signs of progress in the region, with Bahrain Petroleum Co. and Kuwait Oil wrapping up their Aramco-style denial plans while the British oil company in Qatar agreed to cooperate with the CIA, according to a National Security Council document tracking the denial plan’s progress. A U.S. delegation visiting the Middle East in late 1951 gushed that “pre-war plans for denial of oil facilities have never before been so perfected.”

But this confidence was premature as Aramco, Kuwait Oil and Bahrain Petroleum executives signaled second thoughts, according to a later NSC progress report. They told U.S. officials in 1952 that they had made no final decisions about their companies’ role in executing the denial plan. “I think they saw the difficulties,” said Parker Hart, the State Department consul general in Saudi Arabia at the time.

These difficulties included using employees to execute the policy. Though the companies had initially embraced the idea, they later had doubts about their authority to force workers to participate in the dangerous operation. That problem could be fixed by using volunteers, but the companies wanted military protection for them, something not part of the CIA’s plans. But the biggest issue for these companies, just like for Anglo-Iranian Oil, centered on the economic consequences if the denial plans leaked to the host governments: Aramco, for example, was producing more than twice the amount of oil it had been when it agreed to help the CIA in 1948—and bigger revenues meant the company was less prepared to risk Saudi Arabia’s wrath.

Looking for some insurance, Kuwait Oil and Bahrain Petroleum requested letters from the British and American governments stating their companies had been commandeered for the denial plan. They could show the letters to local government officials if the plan leaked, which they hoped would save their companies. But the State Department refused to provide the letters, saying they were unnecessary: There was ample evidence in its files to show it pressured the companies to cooperate. British officials summarily rejected the request fearing the “demand for such a letter appeared to be a lever which might be used in any subsequent discussions on compensation.”

Aramco and Kuwait Oil, by then the largest oil producers in the Middle East after production plummeted in Iran following the nationalization of Anglo-Iranian, tried another route and pushed for disclosure of the denial plans to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The United States again refused, since it was about to ask some Middle Eastern countries to join a military alliance (which became the Baghdad Pact of 1955). U.S. officials believed disclosure of the denial policy could derail the fledgling alliance.

With that, Aramco decided the economic risk for the company was too great and demanded removal of denial plans and explosives from its property. The company believed the surge in denial training and the growing number of Saudi employees at Aramco made a security leak inevitable, and American diplomats in the country agreed. “You’d never get away with it,” said U.S. Consul General Hart to the State Department.

***

The setback in Saudi Arabia threatened to kill the denial policy as it limped into the Eisenhower administration in 1953. But just a few weeks after the new president’s inauguration, a report on NSC 26/2 landed at the National Security Council, and ignited efforts to save it. The author of the report was Walter Bedell Smith, a former chief of staff and trusted aide for Ike during World War II who was settling into a State Department job. He told colleagues he was “vexed” by the denial policy, and his report, seasoned by his recent three-year stint as CIA director, reflected it. He sketched out the plan’s problems, which went beyond Aramco’s reluctance to participate. The use of volunteers was under review, but they might not be as effective as hand-picked employees. The program to plug oil wells was also in trouble because of the time it took to complete the job. The report noted high-level discussions taking place about giving the U.S. military more responsibility for the denial policy, which would diminish the CIA’s control.

The report led with a bullet-point list of the changes in oil demand and supply since the approval of NSC 26/2 four years before. The United States had become a net importer of 600,000 barrels of oil per day, double what it was in 1949, and the United Kingdom’s demand for imported oil climbed had to 161 million barrels in 1952, up from 126 million barrels just three years earlier. During the same period, Middle East oil production had soared to meet the needs of the West.

A follow-up review found that while denial plans were still needed to counter the Soviets, it was increasingly important that Middle East oil be preserved for later use by the West. The denial policy’s use of selective demolitions promised a quick production rebound once the Soviets were ousted. The problem was with plugging the oil wells, which could take a week or more to do—not fast enough in the face of a rapid Soviet assault. Unplugged wells could allow the Soviets to cause permanent damage to the oil fields, by setting the wells on fire or letting them flow freely.

In 1954, Eisenhower approved NSC 5401, which straddled these disparate goals. The new policy called for “conservation” of Middle East oil, with more emphasis on plugging oil wells in a timely way, while also maintaining ground demolitions. At the same time, a last resort plan was added: If the companies were unable to execute ground demolitions, the U.S. military would destroy the oil facilities with airstrikes.

The State Department also eyed the military to fill the vacuum left by Aramco’s refusal to execute the ground demolitions—that meant sending in troops to do the job. But the Defense Department pushed back. Smith told the National Security Council, as it mulled approval of NSC 5401, that he understood the military’s reluctance but it was inevitable that oil denial in Saudi Arabia was primarily a military job. Allen Dulles, by then director of CIA, agreed that for Saudi Arabia if “anything at all were to be done on D-Day, it would be done by the military.”

But the Defense Department, anticipating a shortage of troops in the region, refused to commit to ground demolitions. Airstrikes were still available as a last resort, but they were not ideal since disabling rather than destroying the fields was the preferred outcome. “The most therefore that could be hoped for was the [ground demolition] job could be done by experts from Aramco and the CIA with some degree of protection by the military,” said Robert Cutler, Eisenhower’s special assistant for national security, according to a National Security Council document in December 1953.

Had Aramco changed its mind? Cutler left it an open question, but William Chandler, vice president at the time of Aramco-owned Tapline, said in an interview before his death in 2009 that the company did resume cooperation, at least to some extent. He received a call in early 1954 from an Aramco executive to expect a briefing about a “special program” involving Tapline, which operated an oil pipeline across Saudi Arabia. The plan was to disable the pipeline if the Soviets invaded by destroying key valves in its pumps. Company supervisors were trained to use plastic explosives, which they stored in footlockers under their beds. “It was something we were ordered to do,” said Chandler.

***

Meanwhile, Britain was also rethinking its denial plans for Iran and Iraq. In 1953, a coup in Iran, backed by the United States and Britain, installed a friendlier government. An oil consortium, majority owned by British Petroleum and the four American oil companies that owned Aramco, was created to manage the bulk of the country’s oil industry. But Iranian government owned facilities were emerging despite the consortium, according to British documents.

The same thing was happening in Iraq, where hundreds of Iraq Petroleum employees were prepared to disable the company’s massive Kirkuk petroleum complex. The British company’s grip on the Iraqi oil industry had loosened, and the country’s government controlled refineries in Baghdad, Basra and Alwand.

For the denial plans to succeed in these countries, these government-controlled facilities had to be sidelined as well as all the others. But asking Iran and Iraq’s governments to develop denial plans would confirm existence of the policy and likely cause the two countries to lose confidence in their Western allies. That left Britain with the option to use airstrikes, but the military was wary of that option: German refineries during World War II had proven difficult to knock out using conventional bombs.

The “most complete method of destroying oil installations would be by nuclear bombardment,” read a 1955 report endorsed by Britain’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In 1955, when Britain was just starting to stockpile nuclear weapons, Britain’s Joint Chiefs of Staff showed interest in using nuclear weapons to destroy oil facilities in Iran and Iraq. The “most complete method of destroying oil installations would be by nuclear bombardment,” read a 1955 report endorsed by Britain’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. It’s not clear if U.S. officials were involved in these discussions at this stage. But according to British military documents reviewing denial plan options, the Joint Chiefs, had minister-level approval to ask the United States to help by using some of its nuclear arsenal on Iran if the denial plan were triggered, according to British Ministry of Defence documents. The request was discussed in a meeting with U.S. officials in London in early 1956. Meeting records don’t mention any American reaction to the proposal. But a decision was deferred until Prussing could review the denial plan for Iran and inspect its oil fields and facilities. A British memorandum to Britain’s Joint Chiefs of Staff after the meeting said in the “near future, the only feasible means [in Iran] of oil denial would be American nuclear action.”

After returning from Iran, Prussing concluded that oil denial using ground demolitions was still workable for the country. In British military documents dated after Prussing’s review, British officials noted the growing number of U.S. nationals working in Iran made it increasingly likely that ground demolitions would be successful, and that nuclear destruction wouldn’t be necessary. Otto, Aramco’s expert on ground demolitions, was dispatched to help the British restructure its denial plan for Iran.

Elsewhere, Britain and the United States agreed to extend the reach of the denial policy. A refinery in Lebanon owned by predecessor companies of Chevron and Texaco, and a British refinery in Egypt for the first time were covered by denial plans. A proposed refinery in Syria was slated for one as soon as it was completed. The United States agreed to be responsible for denial planning in the Kuwait Neutral Zone, a patch of land between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The British identified refineries and pipelines in Israel and Turkey to eventually target.

The progress was encouraging enough for the State and Defense Departments and the CIA in 1956 to propose continuing the denial policy essentially unchanged. But a junior staffer at the National Security Council had a different idea. He believed changing politics in the Middle East meant that “the whole operation” should be killed.

***

George Weber, 31, was no stranger to the denial policy, having assisted the government committee whose recommendations led to NSC 5401. But by 1956 the University of Cincinnati graduate and NSC staffer believed it should be shelved, in part because it only dealt with a war involving the Soviet Union. By that year, the Soviets weren’t the only problem for Western nations in the Middle East; burgeoning Arab nationalism movements were also a threat to the West’s hold on regional oil. President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal was a prime example.

Weber also questioned the usefulness of selective demolitions to disable facilities since the Soviets would probably completely destroy them when forced to retreat. Meanwhile, increased selective-demolitions training by the oil companies was raising chances of a security leak, “I think the Council should review very carefully the wisdom of such a program,” he said in a memorandum to Cutler, Eisenhower’s national security adviser.

The denial policy was not killed, but Weber triggered a transformation, and in a few months Eisenhower approved its replacement: NSC 5714. The destruction of oil facilities in the event of a Soviet invasion remained part of the plan as a last resort, but only with “direct military action” as opposed to employee involvement directed by the CIA. The CIA partnership with the oil companies was abandoned. “Covert denial by civilian agencies had become impracticable,” said William Rountree, a State Department official, in a memo.

In 1963, the Kennedy White House asked the State Department whether NSC 5714 should be rescinded, replaced by something else, or if it still represented U.S. policy. A response is not in the file.

The new policy also became more preemptive, swinging toward protection of oil facilities in the face of new threats in addition to Soviet invasion, like sabotage and regional war. In this, Middle Eastern countries were to be asked to play an unprecedented role. Oil companies and local governments were to work together to boost security, including hardening oil facilities for protection against attack. Local governments would also be asked to cooperate in plugging oil wells if they were threatened to save the oil for later use by the West.

“Thus the evolution of this policy has taken another step,” Weber said.

The shift did not put an end to other American and British plans involving Middle East oil. A broader U.S initiative in 1958—unrelated to NSC 5714—called for the possible use of military force as a last resort against Arab nationalists, to keep the oil flowing at reasonable prices. The British in 1957, deeming a Soviet invasion unlikely, refined plans to use its military to protect oil installations in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar if threatened by “Egyptian subversion.”

How NSC 5714 fit in to this new Middle Eastern security landscape is unclear. It was put in place, but the handful of declassified documents reveals little about its fate, including whether or not any local governments agreed to cooperate. In 1963, the Kennedy White House asked the State Department whether NSC 5714 should be rescinded, replaced by something else, or if it still represented U.S. policy. That is the last document I was able to find about the denial plan in America or Britain. A response is not in the file, and it’s unclear when the policy ended.

Those in the field did notice the shift brought on by NSC 5714. Otto was instructed to destroy the 10 tons of explosives stashed at Aramco, which rattled windows miles away. He was also was dispatched in the late 1950s to Tapline to remove the explosives still tucked under the beds of supervisors. Chandler, who became president of Tapline, was relieved to see them gone. The Saudis believed they owned the pipeline and would have been furious about the denial plan.

So why take the risk from the start? Patriotism was high in the years after World War II, Chandler later recalled, and so was the willingness to help the United States in its fight against communism.

“We had a good crowd and we didn’t have complaints and that was the amazing thing,” he said. “It was just we had to do this and everyone went along with it.”

 

 

 

Pentagon Releases bin Ladin’s Bodyguard to Montenegro

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Pentagon transfer Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab Al Rahabi ( 1979) from Guantanamo Bay to .

The transfer of Abdel Malik Ahmed Abdel Wahab al-Rahabi leaves 79 detainees remaining at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo. Al-Rahabi, 37, who was brought to Guantanamo in January 2002, had been accused of being a bodyguard for the late al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, according to Pentagon documents. More from Reuters.

Related reading: al Qaeda, The Baltics, includes Montenegro

Related reading: Baltics, Montenegro and NATO

In part from LWJ: US officials repeatedly warned that Rahabi was a threat. Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force, and a Periodic Review Board (PRB) all deemed Rahabi too dangerous to transfer. Curiously, another PRB approved Rahabi’s transfer in late 2014, just months after the same body said his continued detention remained necessary to mitigate the threat he posed.

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According to a leaked threat assessment, dated Apr. 28, 2008, Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) concluded Rahabi was a “high” risk who is “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies.”

JTF-GTMO found that Rahabi was a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden and was also related to the al Qaeda founder by marriage.

Rahabi “swore bayat (oath of allegiance)” to Bin Laden and “received specialized close combat training for his role as a suicide operative in an aborted component” of the 9/11 hijackings, according to JTF-GTMO’s threat assessment.

US officials concluded that Rahabi was one of several al Qaeda members “designated as suicide operatives in a plot to hijack US air carriers traveling across Southeast Asia and destroy them in midair.” The hijackings were initially intended to coincide with al Qaeda’s attacks on the East Coast of the US, but bin Laden reportedly canceled them because he feared the two parts of the operation would be too difficult to synchronize.

JTF-GTMO’s analysts concluded that Rahabi “participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces and was captured with a group referred to as the ‘Dirty 30,’ which included [bin Laden] bodyguards and “a jihadist “assessed” to be the would-be 20th hijacker on 9/11. The latter individual is Mohammed al Qahtani, who is still detained at Guantanamo. Qahtani was denied entry into the US in August 2001 and eventually returned to South Asia. Qahtani was captured by Pakistani forces in December 2001 as he and more than two dozen others, including Rahabi, attempted to flee the Battle of Tora Bora.

For these reasons and more, JTF-GTMO recommended that Rahabi be retained in US custody.

President Obama’s Guantanamo Review Task Force also determined that Rahabi was too dangerous to transfer.

The task force, which concluded its work in January 2010, recommended that Rahabi be held in “[c]ontinued detention pursuant to the [2001] Authorization for Use of Military Force.”

A Periodic Review Board (PRB) established by the Obama administration reevaluated Rahabi’s case in early 2014. The PRB determined on Mar. 5, 2014 that “continued law of war detention of” Rahabi remained “necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the security of the United States.”

That is, the PRB concluded that Rahabi was too much of a risk to transfer as well, just as JTF-GTMO and President Obama’s task force had before hand. [See LWJ report, Review board rules against Guantanamo detainee.]

N. Korea: Missiles ‘intensifying’ threat to Japan

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So, the White House does a website post, it is an emergency:

   

Notice — Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to North Korea

NOTICE
– – – – – – –
CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT TO NORTH KOREA

On June 26, 2008, by Executive Order 13466, the President declared a national emergency with respect to North Korea pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706) to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States constituted by the existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula. The President also found that it was necessary to maintain certain restrictions with respect to North Korea that would otherwise have been lifted pursuant to Proclamation 8271 of June 26, 2008, which terminated the exercise of authorities under the Trading With the Enemy Act (50 U.S.C. App. 1-44) with respect to North Korea.

On August 30, 2010, I signed Executive Order 13551, which expanded the scope of the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13466 to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States posed by the continued actions and policies of the Government of North Korea, manifested by its unprovoked attack that resulted in the sinking of the Republic of Korea Navy ship Cheonan and the deaths of 46 sailors in March 2010; its announced test of a nuclear device and its missile launches in 2009; its actions in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874, including the procurement of luxury goods; and its illicit and deceptive activities in international markets through which it obtains financial and other support, including money laundering, the counterfeiting of goods and currency, bulk cash smuggling, and narcotics trafficking, which destabilize the Korean Peninsula and imperil U.S. Armed Forces, allies, and trading partners in the region.

On April 18, 2011, I signed Executive Order 13570 to take additional steps to address the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13466 and expanded in Executive Order 13551 that will ensure the implementation of the import restrictions contained in United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718 and 1874 and complement the import restrictions provided for in the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2751 et seq.).

On January 2, 2015, I signed Executive Order 13687 to take further steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13466, as expanded in Executive Order 13551, and addressed further in Executive Order 13570, to address the threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the provocative, destabilizing, and repressive actions and policies of the Government of North Korea, including its destructive, coercive cyber-related actions during November and December 2014, actions in violation of United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1718, 1874, 2087, and 2094, and commission of serious human rights abuses.

On March 15, 2016, I signed Executive Order 13722 to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13466, as modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps in subsequent Executive Orders, to address the Government of North Korea’s continuing pursuit of its nuclear and missile programs, as evidenced by its February 7, 2016, launch using ballistic missile technology and its January 6, 2016, nuclear test in violation of its obligations pursuant to numerous United Nations Security Council Resolutions and in contravention of its commitments under the September 19, 2005, Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks, that increasingly imperils the United States and its allies. Executive Order 13722 also implements certain multilateral sanctions imposed under United Nations Security Council Resolution 2270.

The existence and risk of proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula and the actions and policies of the Government of North Korea continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For this reason, the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13466, expanded in scope in Executive Order 13551, addressed further in Executive Order 13570, further expanded in scope in Executive Order 13687, and under which additional steps were taken in Executive Order 13722 of March 15, 2016, and the measures taken to deal with that national emergency, must continue in effect beyond June 26, 2016. Therefore, in accordance with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency with respect to North Korea declared in Executive Order 13466.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,
June 21, 2016.

 

North Korea missile reaches new heights, ‘intensifying’ threat to Japan

Reuters: North Korea launched what appeared to be an intermediate-range missile on Wednesday to a high altitude in the direction of Japan before it plunged into the sea, military officials said, a technological advance for the isolated state after several test failures.

The launch came about two hours after a similar test failed, South Korea’s military said, and covered 400 km (250 miles), more than halfway towards the southwest coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu.

The launches and earlier nuclear tests show continued defiance of international warnings and a series of U.N. Security Council resolutions and sanctions, which North Korea rejects as an infringement of its sovereignty.

Japanese Defence Minister Gen Nakatani said the second missile reached an altitude of 1,000 km (620 miles), indicating North Korea had made progress.

“We don’t know whether it counts as a success, but North Korea has shown some capability with IRBMs (intermediate range ballistic missiles),” he told reporters in Tokyo.

“The threat to Japan is intensifying.”

Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The North regularly threatens to destroy the Japan, South Korea and the South’s main ally, the United States.

South Korean President Park Geun-hye denounced the test.

“The North Korean regime must realize that complete isolation and self-destruction await at the end of reckless provocation,” she said.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also decried North Korea’s “provocative actions”.

“I strongly condemn the launch by North Korea of two ballistic missiles,” Stoltenberg said in a statement.

“These repeated provocative actions … undermine international security and dialogue,” he said, calling for North Korea to “fully comply with its obligations under international law, not to threaten with or conduct any launches using ballistic missile technology and to refrain from any further provocative actions”.

The first missile was launched from the east coast city of Wonsan, a South Korean official said, the same area where previous tests of intermediate-range missiles were conducted, possibly using mobile launchers.

FIFTH STRAIGHT FAILURE

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting a government official, said the first missile disintegrated mid-air after a flight of about 150 km (95 miles).

Wednesday’s first launch was the fifth straight unsuccessful attempt in the past two months to launch a missile that is designed to fly more than 3,000 km (1,800 miles) and could theoretically reach any part of Japan and the U.S. territory of Guam.

Jeffrey Lewis, of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, said missiles were usually fired at a certain angle to maximize range, so the high altitude of the second launch may have been chosen to avoid Japanese airspace.

“That suggests the missile worked perfectly,” Lewis said. “Had it been fired at its normal angle, it would have flown to its full range.”

Lewis said failures were a normal part of testing and that North Korea would fix problems with the Musudan intermediate-range missile sooner or later.

“If North Korea continues testing, eventually its missileers will use the same technology in a missile that can threaten the United States,” Lewis told Reuters.

Nakatani said North Korea’s repeated missile launches were a “serious provocation” and could not be tolerated.

Japan indicated after the first launch that it would protest strongly because it violated U.N. resolutions, even though the launches posed no immediate threat to Japanese security.

In Seoul, South Korea’s presidential office said a national security meeting was convened to discuss the latest missile launches.

LONGER-RANGE ROCKETS

The U.S. military detected the two missiles, most likely Musudan, from North Korea, the U.S. military’s Pacific Command said. A Pentagon spokesman said both missiles fell into the Sea of Japan. North Korea is believed to have up to 30 Musudan missiles, according to South Korean media, which officials said were first deployed around 2007, although the North had never attempted to test-fire them until April.

While North Korea has developed potential longer-range rockets, such as its 30-metre (98 ft) Unha-3, a home-grown three-stage rocket based on 1950s Soviet Scud missile technology, it needs to be fueled from a fixed launch pad making it easy to detect and impractical as a weapon.

A smaller, powerful intermediate missile that is easier to deploy on a mobile launcher poses a harder threat to counter.

The U.N. Security Council, backed by the North’s main diplomatic ally, China, imposed tough new sanctions in March after North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test in January and launched a long-range rocket that put an object into space orbit.

“At present, the situation on the peninsula remains very complex and severe. We think that the relevant party should avoid doing anything to further worsen tensions,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters at a regular press briefing on Wednesday.

North Korea has conducted a series of tests since then that it claimed showed progress in nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile capabilities, including new rocket engines and simulated atmospheric re-entry.

Loretta Lynch Fully Opposes Obama on Gitmo

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Say it isn’t so…pigs flying? Video calls between soccer or basketball games?

The Obama White House has a habit of altering assessments and reports especially noted by the CENTCOM scandal. The Obama regime also did the same with the assessment profiles of those forcibly released to other countries in an effort to close Gitmo. One such country that was betrayed by the Obama administration was Ghana. 

What is mind boggling is whether we should trust our President or the external people who are proving him wrong. According to US pundits, the said description as given by our leaders isn’t true for either of the men. Bin Atef in particular is a cause of concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo assessed him as a ‘high risk’ and ‘likely to pose a threat to the US, its interest and allies’. Atef is actually a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and an admitted member of the Taliban.

This is in sharp contrast to the claim by Mahama, who portrays the deal as an act of humanitarian assistance, likening the Yemeni men to non-threatening refugees who have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities. More here.

Those former detainees released to Uruguay were to be managed and controlled by the government under the Memorandum of Understanding and release. Well, at least one has fled, allegedly to Brazil.

Exclusive: Justice Department opposes new Obama proposal on Guantanamo

Reuters: President Barack Obama is again facing dissent from within his administration – this time from Attorney General Loretta Lynch – over his plans to shutter the Guantanamo Bay military prison, according to senior administration officials.

Lynch, a former federal prosecutor whom Obama appointed to head the Justice Department two years ago, is opposing a White House-backed proposal that would allow Guantanamo Bay prisoners to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court by videoconference, the officials said.

Over the past three months, Lynch has twice intervened to block administration proposals on the issue, objecting that they would violate longstanding rules of criminal-justice procedure.

In the first case, her last-minute opposition derailed a White House-initiated legislative proposal to allow video guilty pleas after nearly two months of interagency negotiations and law drafting. In the second case, Lynch blocked the administration from publicly supporting a Senate proposal to legalize video guilty pleas.

“It’s been a fierce interagency tussle,” said a senior Obama administration official, who supports the proposal and asked not to be identified.

White House officials confirmed that President Obama supports the proposal. But the president declined to overrule objections from Lynch, the administration’s top law-enforcement official.

“There were some frustrations,” said a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “The top lawyer in the land has weighed in, and that was the DOJ’s purview to do that.”

If enacted into law, the Obama-backed plan would allow detained terrorism suspects who plead guilty to serve their sentences in a third-country prison, without setting foot on U.S. soil. The plan would thus sidestep a Congressional ban on transferring detainees to the United States, which has left dozens of prisoners in long-term judicial limbo in Guantanamo, the American military enclave in Cuba.

Obama has vowed to close the prison on his watch. But while he has overseen the release of some 160 men from the prison, the facility still holds 80 detainees.

The video plea plan has broad backing within the administration, including from senior State Department and Pentagon officials. A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment.

The most enthusiastic backers of the plan have been defense lawyers representing up to a dozen Guantanamo Bay detainees who are eager to extricate their clients from seemingly indefinite detention.

Republicans in Congress have opposed the president’s plans to empty the prison, on the grounds that many of the detainees are highly dangerous. But there is some bipartisan support for the proposal as well, a rarity in the Guantanamo debate.

Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Senator Lindsey Graham, a leading Republican voice on defense and national security issues, said Graham was “intrigued” by the proposal.

While support from a Republican senator would by no means guarantee the votes needed to pass, it does give the proposal a better chance than schemes that would transfer detainees from the Cuban enclave to the United States.

Obama views the video feed proposal as a meaningful step toward closing the facility and making good on one of his earliest pledges as president, administration officials said.

 

Of the 80 prisoners remaining in Guantanamo, roughly 30 have been approved for transfer to third countries by an interagency review board. Most of those 30 men are expected to be released from Guantanamo in coming weeks, according to administration officials.

The officials said they think that as many as 10 more prisoners could be added to the approved-for-transfer list by the review board. Finally, another 10 detainees are standing trial in military commissions.

That leaves roughly 30 detainees whom the government deems too dangerous to release but unlikely to be successfully prosecuted in court. As a result, those men would likely have to be transferred to detention in the United States if the prison were closed.

Administration officials say that allowing video feeds could reduce that number to somewhere between 10 and 20. The administration believes that with such a small number of prisoners requiring transfer to the United States, it would be easier to win support for closing the facility, which is run by a staff of 2,000 military personnel.

“This is the group that gives the president the most heartburn,” said the senior administration official.

Lynch and her deputies at the Justice Department argued that the laws of criminal procedure do not allow defendants to plead guilty remotely by videoconference.

Even if Congress were to pass the law, Lynch and her aides have told the White House that federal judges may rule that such pleas are in effect involuntary, because Guantanamo detainees would not have the option of standing trial in a U.S. courtroom.

A defendant in federal court usually has the option to plead guilty or face a trial by jury. In the case of Guantanamo detainees, the only option they would likely face is to plead guilty or remain in indefinite detention.

“How would a judge assure himself that the plea is truly voluntary when if the plea is not entered, the alternative is you’re still in Gitmo?” said a person familiar with Lynch’s concerns about the proposal. “That’s the wrinkle.”

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainee Majid Khan, a 36-year-old Pakistani citizen, first proposed allowing Khan to plead guilty by videoconference in a legal memo submitted to the Department of Justice in November. In 2012, Khan confessed in military court to delivering $50,000 to Qaeda operatives who used it to carry out a truck bombing in Indonesia, and to plotting with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, on various planned strikes.

Senate investigators found internal CIA documents confirming that Khan’s CIA interrogators subjected him to forced rectal feedings. Khan’s lawyers say the experience amounted to rape. He was also water-boarded.

That treatment makes it difficult for the Department of Justice to successfully prosecute Khan in federal court, according to administration officials.

When White House officials learned that Khan and other detainees were ready to plead guilty to terrorism charges in federal court, they thought they had found a solution.

Efforts to try detainees, including Mohammed and other Sept. 11 suspects, in military tribunals at Guantanamo have bogged down over legal disputes. Only eight defendants have been fully prosecuted. Three verdicts have been overturned.

“The beauty of a guilty plea is you don’t need a trial,” said the senior administration official who supports the video plea proposal.

In February, senior Obama aides proposed pushing ahead with video guilty pleas at an interagency meeting at the White House on the closure of Guantanamo, according to officials briefed on the meeting.

Justice Department officials said they opposed video guilty pleas. Matthew Axelrod, the chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, said the proposal would violate laws of criminal procedure, according to the officials.

The meeting ended with an agreement to pursue new legislation allowing the guilty pleas, the officials said, which the Department of Justice supported.

One week later, President Obama rolled out his plan to close the prison in a nationally televised announcement from the Roosevelt Room. Obama’s plan included seeking “legislative changes … that might enable detainees who are interested in pleading guilty” in U.S. federal courts.

Administration officials spent much of the next two months drafting the new law. On a Friday afternoon in mid-April, White House staff emailed all the involved agencies with a final draft of the bill, according to the officials. The bill would be submitted to Congress the following Monday, the White House email said.

That weekend, Lynch intervened unexpectedly and said the Justice Department opposed the bill. The eleventh-hour move frustrated White House staff. Deciding again to not overrule Lynch, the White House shelved the bill.

In late May, White House officials found a sympathetic lawmaker who inserted language authorizing video pleas into the annual defense spending bill. The White House drafted a policy memo publicly supporting the proposal, which is known as a Statement of Administration Policy, or SAP.

Lynch opposed the idea, according to administration officials, sparking renewed tensions between the Justice Department and White House.

A SAP is the president’s public declaration on the substance of a bill, according to Samuel Kernell, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego. Without one, it’s often more difficult to get lawmakers on the fence to vote the way the White House wants.

The White House again bowed to Lynch’s objections and declined to issue the SAP.