journalismus - nachrichten von heute (journalismus - nachrichten von heute, hintergrundinformationen und berichte) : Rubrik:spionage

Ecuador: CIA controls part of intelligence

sfux — 2008-05-16T19:45:00Z

Alonso Soto - Ecuador's leftist president on Saturday accused the CIA of controlling many of his country's spy agencies and said it had shared Ecuadorean intelligence with U.S. ally Colombia during last month's regional crisis.

"Many of our intelligence agencies have been taken over by the CIA," Rafael Correa said during his weekly radio show. "Through the CIA, information found here was passed to Colombia to improve their position" in the dispute.

Ecuador broke off diplomatic ties with Bogota after Colombian forces attacked a rebel camp inside Ecuadorean territory, killing a top guerrilla leader and more than 20 other people.

The bombing raid raised the specter of war after Ecuador and Venezuela briefly sent troops to their borders with Colombia. Nerves quickly calmed during a regional meeting.

But the recent confirmation that an Ecuadorean died in the March 1 raid has renewed tensions between the neighbors. Correa charged the United States with financing some officers in the Ecuadorean spy agencies and said reforms to the Andean country's intelligence were needed.

A close ally of U.S. foe Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Correa said he hoped the diplomatic spat would be over soon, but warned of legal actions against Colombia for the killing of the Ecuadorean citizen who was in the rebel camp.

Correa added that Ecuador's decision on to sue Colombia in international court over Colombia's anti-drug spraying along its border was in retaliation for the raid. The suit filed on Monday has again strained relations between the neighbors who share a 400-mile border often crossed by rebels fighting a four-decade war against the Colombian government. Correa, whose popularity has rebounded for his handling of the dispute, is a critic of U.S. foreign policy in Latin America.

He has said President George W. Bush was worse than Satan and once vowed to cut off his arm before renewing a lease that allows U.S. troops to use a key anti-drug air base.

Ausgestiegen: Die Sekte Scientology verliert einen ihrer größten Geldgeber

sfux — 2008-05-13T06:00:00Z

World Content NewsDer australische Medienzar und Kasinobesitzer James Packer (40) ist laut eigenen Angaben aus Scientology ausgestiegen und will die Sekte finanziell nicht mehr unterstützen. Grund ist offenbar die Furcht vor Angriffen durch die Protestbewegung "Anonymous", die sich mittlerweile weltweit manifestiert und sich vorgenommen hat, die Organisation restlos zu zerschlagen. Aber auch der Jetset scheint ihn inzwischen zu meiden: Angesichts der großen Konkurrenz brummt sein Spielkasinogeschäft längst nicht mehr so wie früher. Und mit einem Gefangenenflieger der CIA durch die Gegend zu düsen, kratzt möglicherweise auch an seinem Ruf.

Milliardär James Packer: Der "Mr. Moneybags" von Scientology hat offenbar die Nase voll

Mit Videobotschaften und Hackerangriffen auf die Website von Scientology erregte das Bündnis unter dem Namen Projekt Chanology Anfang Februar erstmals Aufsehen. Mittlerweile hat sich der Protest vom Netz auf die Straße verlagert: Mehrere tausend Menschen weltweit treffen sich regelmäßig zu friedlichen Demonstrationen. Sie wollen die Menschen vor den Scientologen warnen und auf ihre kriminellen Machenschaften aufmerksam machen. In zahlreichen Internetforen und Chats organisieren die Scientology-Gegner ihren Protest. Alle Teilnehmer bleiben anonym, eine Führungsspitze gibt es nicht.

Hello, Scientology. We are Anonymous. You cannot hide - we are everywhere.

Laut eigener Verlautbarung "braucht" der Erbmilliardär Packer, der schwer übergewichtig und depressiv ist, die Sekte plötzlich nicht mehr länger, die enge Freundschaft mit dem größenwahnsinnigen Scientology-Jünger Tom Cruise soll aber dadurch nicht in die Brüche gehen.

Seit Dezember 2006 ist James Packer der reichste (andere Quellen: der zweitreichste) Mann Australiens. Auf der Weltrangliste liegt er laut Forbes auf Platz 173. Sein Vater Kerry Packer vererbte ihm unter anderem 9 TV-Sender und 60 Magazine, sein Vermögen wird zwischen 5 und 7 Milliarden Dollar geschätzt. Er gilt als einer der größten Geldgeber der Sekte, vor kurzem erst soll er den Neubau des australischen Hauptquartiers von Scientology in Melbourne mit 7,5 Millionen Dollar finanziert haben.

Packer ist der Eigentümer des größten Spielkasinos in Australien, das Crown Casino in Melbourne. Nachdem er sich 2007 von einem Teil seines Medienimperiums kurzerhand trennte, weil die australische Regierung ein Gesetz erließ, das die Monopolstellung im Medienmarkt deutlich einschränkte, steckte er den milliardenschweren Erlös fast ausschließlich ins weltweite Gambling-Geschäft. In Macau eröffnete er zusammen mit Lawrence Ho das wohl modernste Casino aller Zeiten, daneben ist eine unter Wasser gelegene Hotelanlage ("City of Dreams", Einkaufen und Spielen inklusive) für 2,1 Milliarden Dollar geplant. In Las Vegas hatte er die Cannery Casino Resorts dagegen für schlappe 1,75 Milliarden Dollar erworben.

Neben seinem Scientology-Faible und dem Gambling-Geschäft, das bekanntlich auch Anziehungspunkt für die internationalen Geldwäscher ist, hat James Packer noch ein anderes kleines schmutziges Geheimnis: In seinem "Flugpark" findet man seit Mai 2007 einen Folterflieger des US-Geheimdienstes, der unter der Registrierung N379P dafür bekannt wurde, mit Spezialkommandos der CIA an Bord insgesamt mindestens 49 Terrorverdächtige gekidnappt zu haben.
Folterjet von Packer: einmal CIA, immer CIA
Die Gulfstream V, jetzt in Australien registriert unter VH-CCC mit der Seriennummer 581, benutzt er aber keineswegs nur für Geschäfts- oder Vergnügungsreisen, sie ist auch weiterhin für die CIA unterwegs, wie aufgefangene Funksignale beweisen: Am 01.08.2007 flog die Maschine unter der Flugnummer AHBG1734 (Operator: Air Algérie) nach Tokio, Auftrag war der erstmalige Austausch von Geheimdokumenten zwischen der USA und der japanischen Regierung. Mit dabei: die Gulf V mit der Reg.Nr. N500GV, geflogen von der CIA Front-Firma Presidential Aviation (PRD500), die erst vor zwei Wochen auch auf dem Flughafen von Baden-Baden zu Gast war (Vermutlich ohne Jetons - schlaf gut, BND !) Wenige Tage später kam in Japan auch noch die N720CH dazu, ein Flugzeug des vorherigen Besitzers der ex-N379P namens Bruce Menin. Na sowas.

Jetzt bitte bloß keine Verschwörungstheorien: Was ist eigentlich aus der zweiten prominenten Entführungsmaschine N313P geworden (die auch Khaled el Masri entführte)? Die fliegt jetzt, ganz zufällig - wieder gemakelt von Bruce Menin - für einen weiteren Spielkasino-Giganten namens Kirk Kerkorian (Firma MGM Mirage).

Milliardär Kerkorian: Dem Krümelmonster um Nasenlängen voraus

Der Multimilliardär, der in Kürze seinen 90. Geburtstag feiert und dem sozusagen halb Las Vegas gehört, lässt die Boeing unter der neuen Registriernummer N720MM für gewöhnlich zwischen Las Vegas und Los Angeles pendeln. Nur einmal, da hat er seine prunkvolle MGM-Niederlassung in Macau (50-prozentige Teilhaberin: Pansy Ho) besucht. Und wahrscheinlich auch seinen etwa gleichaltrigen Mentor, Stanley Ho, der wiederum der Erzeuger von Lawrence und Pansy ist. Sowohl Kerry Packer, der Papa von unserem aufgeweckten Scientology-Krümelmonster als auch Kirk Kerkorian sollen in den 60er Jahren von Ho mit dem nötigen Kleingeld ausgestattet worden sein, um ihr Zocker-Imperium aufzubauen. Die Therorie des Geldkreislaufs lernt man im BWL-Studium kennen, die Praxis offenbar hier: Geld fließt immer bergauf.

Ach ja - als Kerkorian aus Macau zurückkam, verlautbarte er der Presse gegenüber, die Finanz- und Immobilienkrise wäre jetzt vorbei. Die Bankenchefs haben es sofort munter nachgeplappert. Noch Fragen?

Gestern hat er übrigens noch offiziell ein Gebot für den Kauf von bis zu 20 Mio. Ford-Aktien zu 8,50 Dollar pro Stück abgegeben. Die kämen dann noch zu den 100 Mio. Aktien dazu, die er im April gekauft hat. Willkommener Mäusespeck für die arme Autoindustrie.

Fazit: Milliardäre retten die Welt, so oder so. Also fit bleiben und nicht wieder das Gleichgewicht verlieren, James. James??? Jaaaames ! (frei nach "Dinner for all")

Dieser Artikel erschien erstmalig bei World Content News

Special investigator raps Berlin's probe of CIA flights

sfux — 2008-05-10T08:55:00Z

onlineredaktion - An independent investigator criticized the German government for its woeful probe of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) flights, the online site of the weekly stern news magazine reported Tuesday.

A rapporteur for the German BND secret service commission of enquiry into German collusion into the American extraordinary renditions program, Joachim Jacob lashed out at the Berlin government in a secret report, accusing German officials of being responsible for major mishaps, sloppiness and false testimony in probing the CIA scandal.

Jacob who released a 130-page secret report on the case on March 31, also slammed the government for adhering to a legally doubtful position which allows the CIA to illegally transit prisoners through German airspace. According to Jacobs, CIA prisoner flights should be dealt with like police or military flights and hence also needed to have a permit.

The German Government had reportedly a list of at least 437 flights operated by the US Central Intelligence Agency in German airspace, according to the news magazine Der Spiegel. The number includes both movements by planes of the CIA spy agency in German airspace and landings at German airports, it claimed.

"Such planes could be used to transfer presumed terrorists and place them in secret locations," Der Spiegel said. Berlin has maintained it only knew about any CIA flights from the end of 2004 or the start of 2005, and that it found out through media reports. Germany has the largest number of US military bases in Europe.

More Pentagon Propaganda, Online

sfux — 2008-05-08T07:22:00Z

onlineredaktion - The news outlets that featured former military personnel that were part of the Pentagon military analyst program are hoping the story will just go away. Since the New York Times exposed the program almost two weeks ago, only NPR has provided an explanation while NBC's Brian Williams defended using the analysts in his blog. New York Times reporter David Barstow has revealed that Clarke oversaw a Pentagon propaganda scheme that signed up more than 75 retired military officers, who appeared on television and radio news shows as military analysts, and/or penned newspaper op/ed columns.

As part of its plan to expand online "information operations," the Pentagon is launching "a global network of foreign-language news websites ... and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests," reports Peter Eisler.

The Pentagon launched Matawani.com last year, an Arabic-language site with Iraq news; other sites are being developed for Asian and Latin American audiences. Like the Pentagon's older "news" sites, aimed at North Africa and Southeast Europe, the new sites only disclose U.S. Defense Department involvement on a single page reached via a small "about" link at the bottom of the site.

The goal of the Pentagon's "Trans Regional Web Initiative" is to launch "a minimum of six" websites run by regional U.S. military commands. Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers said, "Our adversaries use the Internet to great advantage," so the Pentagon must counter their messages with "truthful information, and these websites are a good vehicle." Harvard University's Marvin Kalb called the websites "deliberate deception" that "weakens the image of journalism as an objective bystander."

Gladio: Deep State meeting in Istanbul

sfux — 2008-05-08T06:47:00Z

TurkishPress - An Italian senator will participate in a meeting on "law, state and deep state (on alleged activities of secret state agencies)", in the Turkish city of Istanbul. "Deep state" is believed to be an influential and informal anti-democratic coalition within the political system of countries, composed of high-level elements within the military, security and intelligence services, the judiciary, and important figures of organized crime.

Italian senator Felice Casson will attend the conference organized by "Young Civilians" at the Bilgi University on April 26th.

Casson was the person who revealed the existence of a secret organization named "Gladio" when he was a first instance judge.
"There cannot be secret or underground organizations in democracies, similar to the Gladio in Italy," Casson told AA correspondent in his office at the Italian Senate in Rome.

The Italian senator said that the Gladio had tried to steer the internal policy of Italy, and told the AA that it was totally abolished on October 24th, 1990.

Casson said some of those involved in the Gladio were acquitted due to lapse of time, whereas some others were punished on charges of certain incidents.

On the "operation Ergenekon" in Turkey, Casson said the judiciary undertook great responsibilities and underlined importance of illuminating this incident. "Ergenekon" terrorist organization was brought to daylight after police seized hand grenades, TNT explosives and fuses in a house in Istanbul on June 12th, 2007.
The Italian branch of Gladio was the first one to be discovered. It was set up under Minister of Defense (from 1953 to 1958) Paolo Taviani`s supervision.

On May 31st, 1972, judge Felice Casson found out that explosives used in an attack that killed three gendarmery officers in Pateano were provided from an arms depot that belonged to a secret organization.

The "Gladio" organization was officially revealed in 1980s at the end of a deep investigation. In 1990, the organization was dissolved. Those days, many circles thought and claimed that there were "Gladio-like organizations" in all NATO member states during the Cold War era.

A dismal joke or an act of grace?

sfux — 2008-05-06T06:00:00Z

David Dastych - In his book Memory and Identity, Pope John Paul II said of his visit after Christmas 1983 to Rebibbia Prison to see Mehmet Ali Agca:

"We talked for a long time. Ali Agca is, as everyone says, a professional assassin, which means that the assassination was not his initiative that someone else thought of it, someone else gave the order. I had a feeling that I would survive. I was in pain, I had reason to be afraid, but I had this strange feeling of confidence...Oh, my Lord! This was a difficult experience."
When the Pope arrived in his cell, Agca was dressed in a blue crewneck sweater, jeans and blue-and-white running shoes from which the laces had been removed. He was unshaved. Agca kissed John Paul's hand.

"Do you speak Italian?" the Pope asked. Agca nodded.

"Do you speak Italian?" the Pope asked. Agca nodded. The two men seated themselves, close together, on molded-plastic chairs in a corner of the cell, out of earshot. At times it looked almost as if the Pope were hearing the confession of Agca, a Turkish Muslim. At those moments, John Paul leaned forward from the waist in a priestly posture, his head bowed and forehead tightly clasped in his hand as the younger man spoke.

Agca laughed briefly a few times, but the smile would then quickly fade from his face. In the first months after the assassination attempt, there had been in Agcas eyes, a zealot's burning glare. But now his face wore a confused, uncertain expression, never hostile. The Pope clasped Agca's hands in his own from time to time, at other times he grasped the man's arm, as if in a gesture of support.

John Paul's words were intended for Agca alone. "What we talked about will have to remain a secret between him and me, the Pope said as he emerged from the cell. I spoke to him as brother whom I have pardoned, and who has my complete trust." As John Paul rose to leave, the two men shook hands. The Pope gave Agca a small gift in a white box, a rosary in silver and mother-of-pearl. Then the Pope walked out.

Seven years later, in 2000, Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, in agreement with Pope John Paul II, pardoned Agca. On hearing the amnesty, Chief Vatican Spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said John Paul was satisfied with Ciampi's action. He said: "As you know, John Paul II immediately pardoned his attacker and for some time now the pope had told Italian authorities that he was in favor of an act of clemency if Italian law permitted it. He has been insisting on this for some time. We are not surprised. We are very happy."

There will be no escape from wars, from hunger, from misery, from racial discrimination, from denial of human rights, and not even from missiles, if our hearts are not change," said the late Italian writer and lifetime Senator Carlo Bo: "The Pope intends to say, 'If we really want peace, we must make the first step, we must forget offenses and offer the bread of love and charity." In February of 2005, when the Polish Pope was hospitalized at Gemelli Polyclinic in Rome with the flu, Mehmet Ali Agca sent a handwritten letter in Italian to Pope John Paul II wishing him "a speedy recovery."

2008: Agcas strange motion
On Thursday, the 1st of May which is a Labor Day in Poland, Mehmet Ali Agca submitted his application for Polish citizenship to the Polish Embassy in Ankara, through his lawyer Mr. Haci Ali Ozhan. The first to report about this was Ms.Susan Frazer, an Associated Press correspondent who filed her story on Friday, May 2, with the support of an AP writer in Warsaw, Ms. Monika Scislowska.

"I am not a stranger to your country because the national hero of Poland, Pope Karol Wojtyla, is my spiritual brother," Agca said, referring to John Paul by his other name.

"I shall be proud of becoming a member of the noble Polish nation, if my request to be granted Polish citizenship is accepted, he declared in his petition to the President of Poland, Lech Kaczynski a devout Roman Catholic, whom he asked to support his application. The unexpected motion of the former gunman, who has spent 19 years in Italian prisons and now is serving a 10 years sentence in Turkey for murder and bank robbery, evokes surprise and mixed feelings not only in Poland.

The Associated Press asked comment from Mr. Piotr Paszkowski, the Foreign Ministry spokesman and a personal friend of Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski. Mr. Paszkowski diplomatically replied that The condition for according Polish citizenship is residence in Poland for at least five years, prior to applying. () This rule, he added, can be waived if the foreigner seeking Polish citizenship has special merits for the country, has done good service to PolandAgca rather has not, he concluded.

A "Grey Wolf": Ali Agca

Mr. Ozhan, Agcas lawyer, said he would complete his clients application this week, due to some missing paperwork. President Lech Kaczynski did not express his opinion so far. For formal reasons, the former assassins application for Polish citizenship could be quickly rejected. But many Poles, writing comments on a popular Internet site www.Onet.pl expressed different opinions:

I wonder, wrote a retired woman, what for he was punished. If he was merely a tool in Gods handsthat means he was not guilty. The Pope himself said that the prophecy [of Fatima] had been fulfilled he [Agca] should be granted the citizenship and an apology.

Since John Paul II pardoned him, we also should leave him in peace. Our Pope surely would like that. He [Agca] could return us by converting to Catholicism and by exposing the true masters of the [assassination] plot from the KGB wrote a young, 23 years old man.

Lets give him a chance! He should have identical chances as every other man applying for Polish citizenship! He has completed his prison term [for the assassination attempt against the Pope] and he wouldnt be so foolish to commit crimes again. All people will know about him and everybody will watch him [in Poland]. If your main argument against granting him the citizenship is that he has shot at the Pope, the fact that the Pope himself pardoned him should be enough. And his choice of Poland could be influenced by this. If I dont err, there have been similar cases of conversions in the past, even [described] in the Bible

But not all readers of the surprising news supported Agcas motion:

Look, this declaration is meant to turn the attention from the real perpetrators of the attempt against the Pope wrote another Pole. Never! Let him keep off Poland. If I would meet such a guy in a street, he would be finished. And what would you do? There should be set conditions. When a foreigner wants to immigrate to Canada or to Australia, he or she has to fulfill definite conditions, fill in several inquiry sheets, has to prove that he/she will make a good worker and citizen. And that fellow thinks he is so important and so well known that its enough for him to present his wish, and that would be accepted in spite of the committed crimes. A big EGO indeed! Most probably his true motive is that he has still to languish in jail for having killed a journalist in Turkey, and he would like to avoid that wrote a Polish woman.

Among foreign voices, I have found this opinion:
Agca to become a Polish citizen? Sometimes I come across a story that is confusing. Other times the story is just plain odd. This one is a bit of both wrote an American Catholic blogger. What do you think? Should we pardon Mehmet Ali Agca and allow him to spend the rest of his life in Poland? His criminal past has already cost him more than 25 years in jail. Isnt that enough? Should we expect from the former would be assassin of the late Polish Pope his conversion to the Catholic religion, or let him remain a Muslim? How should Mehmet Ali Agca compensate to the Polish nation and to the world for his crimes? What we expect him to do?

Between forgiveness and vengeance
Mahatma Gandhi (1869 1948), the late nonviolence leader of India once said expressing his anger at the misbehavior of the then British colonialists: "I do like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Christians are so unlike your Christ!" An Indian columnist, Ms. Dayanand Edappally wrote in her recent article Tooth for tooth (April 20, 2008): Forgiveness may not be tangible and immediate. But in the long run forgiveness creates a far more productive than retaining ideas of vengeance. The world needs a healing touch of forgiveness and peace.

Not knowing of Mehmet Ali Agcas decision, she reminded: When Pope John Paul II was shot by Mehmet Agca, he went to Agcas prison and forgave him. This forgiveness was world news at that time. The Pope gained in stature by his act of magnanimity. And Agca repented.

Then she concluded: In the Old Testament, the Israelites had a strict moral code, which advocated a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye. Injury had to be repaid in kind. Insult was not to be forgiven. The New Testament, however, has a different set of morality. Concerning retaliation, Jesus said, If anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.

On another occasion he also taught: The law was made for humankind, and not humankind for the law. Norms should not deter people from doing well. They should promote kindness, compassion, empathy.

Whom to blame?
The unsolved mystery of the May 13, 1981 and other attempts at life of John Paul II bleed our memory like a thorn. Who to blame for these plots and acts of violence on St.Peters Square in Rome, in the Vatican, Poland, in Pakistan? As the years pass by, the evidence becomes more and more unattainable. But the facts and logical assumptions inevitably point to the Kremlin and Lyubianka Square [KGB] and to The Aquarium [GRU], all places in Moscow, as the source of the plots against the late Polish Pope.

Many books have been written to prove these traces, including the most recent book, published in Poland on April 28 this year: Its About the Pope. Spies in the Vatican (in Polish: Chodzi o papieża. Szpiedzy w Watykanie) by a veteran American journalist and researcher and former U.S. military intelligence officer John O. Koehler. This book, based on Polish, Italian, German and other sources describes an enormous effort made by the Soviet leadership to counter the fast-growing influence of the Roman Catholic pope in the then Communist-dominated Eastern Europe and the world.

A leading Polish weekly Wprost (vprost = direct), in a series of articles written by its investigative journalists, exposed the complicated deception game directed from the Kremlin to hide the Soviet responsibility. Some of these articles have been mentioned in my own stories, published on the CFP, like: New investigation:KGB behind all plots to assassinate John Paul II; Ali Agca's Secret Services (2006) and Plot to kill John Paul II: General Giuseppe Cucchi Confirms New Evidence ;New evidence about the plot to kill John Paul II in 1981 (2007) and the most recent in 2008 A Moscow Contract on Pope John Paul II.

My own research into the May 13, 1981 attempt against John Paul II, conducted from the very day of Agcas shooting until now, proved that the plots against the Polish Pope had originated in instructions of the Soviet leadership from the late 1970s and were carried out under the supervision of the two main Soviet special services: the KGB and the GRU. The links between the Turkish extreme right Grey Wolves and the Bulgarian secret services had been used to instruct, guide and finance Mehmet Ali Agca and other assassins.

A strange blend of the Soviet spies, Bulgarian spies and Turkish extremists, supported by Palestinian Arab terrorists and some Arab and Muslim intelligence services was used to hide the true contractors from the Kremlin and to put the blame on hired guns like Mehmet Ali Agca and Oral Celik and on Turkish drug mafia bosses. The Bulgarians: Sergei Antonov, Zheluyu Vassilev and Todor Ajvazov provided cover and logistic support to them under supervision of the GRU station in Rome.

There was also a Polish trail to the attempt of the 13th of May 1981 and to other hostile actions against the Polish Pope. Polish secret service (SB) had their spies in the Vatican and some agents were present on St. Peters Square in the very day and moment of the shooting. The most astonishing fact (uncovered by Wprost weeklys investigative reporters, Mr. Indulski and Mr. Jakimczyk) was that the then Polish Communist Military Intelligence (WSW-WSI) had learned about the supposed time and place of the attempt in April of 1981, only a few weeks before Agcas shootout at the pope. The probable source of this information was a Polish intelligence agent in Syria.

The astonishing fact was that the news about the secret note passed by a Polish military attache Colonel Bak to his Italian counterpart Col. Cucchi in Cairo had been quickly leaked to the secret services of the Warsaw Pact. Giuseppe Cucchi, now a top-ranking general of the Italian services, in a personal interview with the Polish weeklys journalists in Rome denied any links to the KGB or the GRU. He said that the tape with Col. Baks recorded warning might have been passed to the Soviets by a mole in the Italian intelligence.

One could only conclude basing on all these mishaps that the prophecy from Fatima had to be fulfilled. The bullet from Agcas gun was later placed by John Paul II in the Virgin Mary Shrine in Fatima, Portugal. Let me repeat the words of the Pope, uttered after the December 27, 1983 meeting with Mehmet Ali Agca in Rebbibi Prison: I had a feeling that I would survive. I was in pain, I had reason to be afraid, but I had this strange feeling of confidence
Was Gorbachev really involved? - A Moscow Contract on JP II
Soviet politbureau members, Gorbachev included, signed an "informal" death sentence on John Paul II

David Dastych, 67, is a veteran journalist who served both in the Polish intelligence and the CIA; jailed in Poland by the Communist regime he spent several years in special prison wards; released in early 1990s he joined international efforts to monitor illegal nuclear trade in Europe and Asia; handicapped for lifetime in a mountain accident in France, in 1994; now he returned to active life and runs his own media agency in Warsaw.

Was Gorbachev really involved? - A Moscow Contract on JP II

sfux — 2008-04-29T19:10:00Z

David Dastych - A new sensational book was launched in Poland on Monday, April 28. Its author, an American journalist and writer John O. Koehler claims that in November 1979 in Moscow a group of nine prominent Soviet Communist Party leaders signed a secret document instructing the KGB to use all available possibilities to prevent a new political trend, initiated by the Polish pope, and if necessary - reach to means beyond disinformation and discreditation.

Two journalists of a top-ranking Polish weekly Wprost (read: vprost, it means direct in Polish) reached the author of that book, entitled Its about the Pope: Spies in the Vatican. In their article, published on April 28, Rafal Pasztelanski and Grzegorz (Greg) Sadowski quoted a conversation with Mr. Koehler about his discovery: "I was shocked, when I found this order. The means beyond disinformation and discreditation meant only one thing: an approval to kill the pope.

Who signed the informal death sentence against John Paul II? The party document quoted by the author of the book listed nine prominent Soviet CP members: the chief of the Soviet propaganda - Mikhail Suslov, members of the Presidium of the CC CPSU - Andrei Kirilenko, Konstantin Chernenko, secretaries of the CC - Konstantin Rusakov (responsible for the contacts with the PUWP - the Polish Communist party), Vladimir Ponomarev, Ivan Kapitonov, Mikhail Zimyanin, Vladimir Dolgikh and Mikhail Gorbachev.

Gorbachevs responsibility?
In 1979, Gorbachev was promoted to the Politburo as a candidate member, and received full membership only in 1980. Gorbachev owed his steady rise to power to the patronage of Mikhail Suslov the powerful chief ideologist of the CPSU, and Yuri Andropov head of the KGB (see: Mikhail Gorbachev, career Wikipedia). Was Mikhail Gorbachev involved in the later KGB plot against John Paul II, which led to the historic attempt at the popes life on May 13, 1981? The document quoted by John O. Koehler listed him only as a co-signatory of the instruction to the KGB. There is no direct proof that the future General Secretary of the CC CPSU and the father of perestroyka wanted the Polish pope to be assassinated or that he had enough influence to put his consent to action.

A "Grey Wolf" free after 25 years: Ali Agca

The Soviet leadership, then under Leonid Brezhnev, fully realized that the rise of a Polish cardinal, Karol Wojtyla, to the papacy would cause trouble to the Communist regime in Poland and to the entire Soviet bloc. The new pope, elected just one year ago (1978) was known as a staunch anti-Communist, though also as a talented negotiator who avoided a head-to-head clash with the regime. In his first year at the papal throne in the Vatican, John Paul II received a strong backing from the West, and from the United States in particular.

His first pilgrimage to Poland, in June 1979, was a huge manifestation of the Polish nations support to the Church and his symbolic words at the Warsaw Victory Square, You are not who they say you are. Let me remind you who you are, by restoring to the Polish people their authentic history and culture created a revolution of conscience that, fourteen months later, produced the 10-million strong nonviolent Solidarity resistance movement.

The Tower of Secrets: In November 1979, the Soviet leadership had all reasons to worry about the influence of John Paul II unpon Poland and the whole Communist world.

The Polish pope received a strong backing also from the American intelligence, the CIA. As a famous British journalist and the author of Pontiff, Gordon Thomas, wrote for Canada Free Press in January 2007 in his article The pope and the secret world of intelligence:

It was the CIA who kept him continuously informed on global events. As well as the CIA Rome station, based in the shadow of the Vatican walls, the agency operated a network of what Casey called "our messengers". They included Lee lacocca, the car magnate; Spyros Skouras, the shipping millionaire; Robert Abplanalp, the aerosol tycoon; Barron Hilton, the hotelier; William Simon, a former US Treasury Secretary; and Robert Wagner, the former Mayor of New York who became President Carter's personal envoy to the Holy See.

Finally there was Clare Boothe who served on the US government's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversaw the CIA's covert operations.Throughout his long reign, John Paul knew he was never more than a telephone call from the present CIA director. In turn they had the direct line to the ivory-white telephone on the pontiff's desk: extension 3101 in the Apostolic Palace.

Casey's "messengers" unfailingly called the number to let John Paul know "an extra important message" was being hand-carried from Casey, and later his successors. Those messages remain one of the many secrets stored in the Vatican archives.

In November 1979, the Soviet leadership had all reasons to worry about the influence of John Paul II unpon Poland and the whole Communist world. John O. Koehler quotes a KGB defector (1980) Victor Sheimov from a book The Tower of Secrets. In his earlier book Stasi: The Untold Story Of The East German Secret Police (Basic books, 2000) ) Koehler expressed a similar opinion, now repeated in his just published Polish edition Its about the Pope: Spies in the Vatican(ZNAK, 2008). Let me quote from the article in Wprost weekly:
Sheimov wrote that the KGB was afraid of the consequences stemming from the election of a Polishman as the Roman Catholic Pope. In April of 1979, the East German secret service, Stasi, prepared a report with a conclusion that the pope, who had a direct contact with Marxism and took an uncompromising stand against it, will firmly defend the interests of the Church. Victor Sheimov also quotes his conversation with Valeriy Titov, then a security officer of the Soviet Embassy in Warsaw. Titow openly complained to him about the hostile attitude of the Poles to the Russians and, mentioning the newly elected pope he warned: If [the pope] gave a sign to them, Poles would go to the streets and they would fight against our tanks. Both Soviet officers agreed that the Soviet Union had only two ways out: to kill the pope, that could be a mistake, or to support [General] Wojciech Jaruzelski, because if we go out of here, [Poles] will hang him.
According to Wprost (and Koehler), Sheimov also talked to General Nikolai P. Kuritsin, then a KGB liaison officer to the Polish security service [SB]. When Kuritsin learned that the KGB HQ wanted to [physically] eliminate John Paul II, he got mad and exlaimed: Idiots! This is a political suicide. Not only political. If we liquidate the pope, our days would be numbered. Even if we tried to hold on, we would have to get rid of the Poles everyone of them will sacrify his life for him.

I think we cant directly blame Mikhail Gorbachev with a decisively hostile attitude towards the Polish pope. In November 1979, the Soviet leadership had to express their disapproval for the new-elected sovereign of the Roman Catholic Church. Later on, when Gorbachev became the supreme Soviet leader (1985) he took a more concilliatory stand versus the Holy See and John Paul II. He met the Polish pope for the first time in 1989, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and on April 5, 2005 he praised him in Moscow by saying that Pope John Paul II's "devotion to his followers is a remarkable example to all of us.

The notorious Bulgarian connection
The authors of the above mentioned article in Wprost weekly recall other Koehlers findings concerning the KGB plot against the late pope. In the German archives John Koehler found KGB documents with an order to hush up the participation of the Bulgarian secret services in the operation to kill John Paul II. In September of 1982, general Markus Wolf, the head of DDRs Main Intelligence Directorate and then the head of Stasi, received a sealed envelope with an inscription [in German]: Operation Papst [Operation Pope]. Its sender was the Active Operations Department of the Bulgarian intelligence.

The content of the said envelope was later lost. But soon after that instruction some Western left-wing media supported by the KGB began to publish articles to divert attention from the participation of the KGB and the Bulgarian secret services in the attempt to kill the pope. This could be an indirect confirmation that the Soviet authorities had been seriously engaged in the organization of the attempt [on St. Peters Square, on May 13, 1981].

I remember these propaganda efforts wery well. In 1982 I went to Sofia to interview two Bulgarian intelligence agents who had escaped from Italy soon after the Mehmet Ali Agcas attempt on the life of John Paul II. One of them, Zhelyu Vassilev granted to me an exclusive and very emotional interview, later printed in a Polish weekly Przeglad Tygodniowy.

Bulgaria's special services blamed the so-called Bulgarian connection in the assassination attempt on Western services, CIA in particular and the Italian services which visited Turkish gunman Ali Agca in prison shortly after the shooting.
Following their visit, Ali Agca said the plot for the assassination was hatched in July -August 1980 during his stay in Bulgaria. In his words he contacted Todor Ajvazov, a financier from the Bulgarian Embassy in Rome and Zhelyu Vassilev, secretary of the military attache at the Embassy in Rome. According to Agca Sergei Antonov, the only Bulgarian arrested for complicity in the papal attack, was to be in charge of the transportation of Agca and the other gunman Oral Chelik.

Sergei Antonov was held for more than three years in Italian prisons only to be acquitted over lack of evidence. Shattered and physically damaged, he returned to Bulgaria unable to carry on a conversation or concentrate on complex tasks, symptoms his friends say came from the use of psychotropic drugs in his interrogation. In 2005, I tried to contact Antonov, with the help of Bulgarian journalists. I was told, he was ill and could not control himself. Antonov was found dead at his appartment in Sofia on the 2d of August 2007. Doctors said, his dead body remained there for several days. He was 58, living alone, ruined.

One year later, I tried to contact and interview Mehmet Ali Agca in a Turkish prison. My Turkish friend, a known journalist helping me, was refused a visit to Agca by the Police. She told me they threatened her and blocked her any contact with the assassin, who had been briefly set free and then rearrested and put to jail.

The Bulgarian trail still remains unaccessible.

Spies in the Vatican
The article in Wprost weekly concluded that the Communist secret services had placed many spies in the Vatican, since the beginning of the Cold War. The then Polish secret intelligence service scored a big success placing a spy near Pope Paul VI. That person had access to top secrets. He reported about conversations of Paul VI with diplomats from France, Britain or Vietnam, said priest Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, who was writing a book about the activity of the Communist secret services in the Vatican.

But the most outstanding successes in the placing of agents in the Vatican scored the East German Stasi. From 1971 to 1980 Stasi located there at least 17 spies. One of their more valuable agents was a priest, Paul Dissemond, who had been recruited in 1974 as agent Peter. Strong proofs of Peters collaboration with the Stasi have been presented in Koehlers bookAccording to John O. Koehler, every more important department of the Holy See had been infiltrated. Koehler asserts that after the fall of Communism in the USSR the KGB and then the FSB never stopped its infiltration of the Vatican.

Moscow constantly denies any [Soviet] participation in the attempt(s) against the [Polish] pope. The present Russian authorities do not want to disclose the archives about that subject. Therefore Polish investigators count on the Hungarian archives and on the archives of the recently opened Czech counterpart of the [Polish] Institute of National Remembrance [IPN], concluded Pasztelanski and Sadowski, the authors of the article.

I think we can also count on Italian cooperation in solving of some riddles of the Communist secret services plotting against John Paul II and participating in the attempts on his life. There were more than just one attempt, that of May 13, 2008. Back in 2007, journalists of Wprost weekly interviewed an Italian general Giuseppe Cucchi, who confirmed that the then Polish Military Intelligence (WSI) could have known (from an Arab source) about the assassination attempt, some days before May 13, 1981.

The confirmation of the alleged KGB and other Communist plots has a fundamental historical significance for Poland, the Catholic Church and the world opinion. But in the past the secretive nature of the Soviet regime did not allow to disclose the truth about the Katyn Forest mass murder of Polish officers and civilians on the 5th of March 1940 until Soviet scholars revealed in 1989 that Joseph Stalin had indeed ordered the massacre, and in 1990 Mikhail Gorbachev admitted that the NKVD had executed the Poles and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyn: Mednoje and Pyatikhatki.

On 30 October 1989 Gorbachev allowed a delegation of several hundred Poles, organized by a Polish association named Families of Katyn Victims, to visit the Katyn memorial. This group included former U.S. National Security Advisor, Professor Zbig Brzezinski. It took 49 years to the Soviets to finally admit to their crime. But they never admitted Katyn and other Soviet mass murders of Poles were genocide.

How long shall we have to wait for a Russian disclosure of Soviet plots against the late Pope John Paul II? Another 50 years, or more?

Soviet politbureau members, Gorbachev included, signed an "informal" death sentence on John Paul II

David Dastych, 67, is a veteran journalist who served both in the Polish intelligence and the CIA; jailed in Poland by the Communist regime he spent several years in special prison wards; released in early 1990s he joined international efforts to monitor illegal nuclear trade in Europe and Asia; handicapped for lifetime in a mountain accident in France, in 1994; now he returned to active life and runs his own media agency in Warsaw.

Horch - was kommt von draußen rein?

sfux — 2008-04-27T12:54:00Z

World Content News - German Armed Forces Command: Man freut sich ja über jeden Seiten-Besucher. Aber bei dem hier fällt einem glatt die Zigi aus der Fluppe. Der Streitkräftige vom Bundeswehrkommando USA und Kanada (BwKdo US/CA) suchte hier via Google nicht etwa einen Stadtteil oder Bauernhof in Geilenkirchen, sondern - wow - eine geheime BND-Residentur.

Wer sich jetzt wundert, was die Bundeswehr / der BND in Virginia zu suchen hat, auf der Seite der Deutschen Botschaft in Washington gibt's Nachhilfe:

Activities in the U.S. and Canada
Building upon a history of close military cooperation, the U.S. allows Germany to deploy complete military units to the States. German air force and navy combat jet crews and all surface-to-air missile operators are trained entirely in the U.S. and Canada (Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico; Fort Bliss, Texas; Goose Bay, Labrador, Canada). German troops participate in military exchanges, training programs and exercises conducted with U.S. forces. Command and control of these units and individual German soldiers in the U.S. and Canada is exercised by the German Armed Forces Command USA/CA in Reston, Virginia.

Nein, Herr Verbindungsoffizier, zu Ihrer Information: Ihr Boss hat noch nicht seinen Schlapphut genommen. Der sitzt fest im Sattel wie ein Rodeo-Reiter. Und es soll heute 25 Grad heiß werden in Virginia, ist denn noch genug German Beer im House?

So, jetzt hab ich meine ganz persönliche Spitzelaffäre. Warum sollen eigentlich immer nur die Behörden überwachen?

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Soviet politbureau members, Gorbachev included, signed an "informal" death...

sfux — 2008-04-27T11:35:00Z

David Dastych - New, sensational documents concerning the attempt against the late pope, John Paul II, have been revealed in a new book by John O. Kohler, an American journalist and writer. The book, entitled "It's About the Pope. Spies in the Vatican", will be released in Poland on Monday, April 28, 2008 by ZNAK Publishing House, known for its publications about the late pope.

The author reached a Kremlin document, which listed Soviet Politbureau members, who had signed an "informal death sentence" on the Polish pope. "Use all available possibilities to prevent a new political trend, initiated by the Polish pope, and "if necessary - reach to means beyond disinformation and discreditation." This instruction was given to their subordinates in the KGB by members of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party in November of 1979.

"I was shocked, when I had found this order. The means "beyond disinformation and discreditation" meant only one thing: an approval to kill the pope", John O. Kohler told a leading Polish weekly "Wprost" (read: vprost) this week, prior to the official launching of his book in Poland.

Who signed the "informal" death sentence against John Paul II? The party document obtained by the author of the book listed nine prominent Soviet CP members: the chief of the Soviet propaganda - Mikhail Suslov, members of the Presidium of the CC CPSU - Andrei Kirilenko, Konstantin Chernenko, secretaries of the CC - Konstantin Rusakov (responsible for the contacts with the Polish Communist Party), Vladimir Ponomarev, Ivan Kapitonov, Mikhail Zimyanin, Vladimir Dolgikh and Mikhail Gorbachev.

An article, written by Michal Krzymowski quoting Mr. John O. Kohler, will appear in the next issue of "Wprost" weekly, on Monday, April 28, 2008 - on the very day the new book is to be lauched and put on sale in Poland.

The Book: Chodzi o papieża szpiedzy w watykanie

David Dastych, 67, is a veteran journalist who served both in the Polish intelligence and the CIA; jailed in Poland by the Communist regime he spent several years in special prison wards; released in early 1990s he joined international efforts to monitor illegal nuclear trade in Europe and Asia; handicapped for lifetime in a mountain accident in France, in 1994; now he returned to active life and runs his own media agency in Warsaw.

Geheimdienstchef Flop: Ozapft isch das Fässle

sfux — 2008-04-26T15:17:00Z

Stephan Fuchs Der schweizerische Auslandsgeheimdienst, der Strategische Nachrichtendienst (SND) hat einen neuen Chefspion. Er nennt sich Flop. Wohlgemerkt, nicht im Zusammenhang mit den vermuteten Qualitäten des Geheimdienstes, sondern aus seiner Zeit einer Studentenverbindung in Biel. Dort ist er, laut Webseite noch immer Vorsitzender und beliebter Referent.

Flop wie James Bond: In der Publiation der International School of Managment.

Der 49-Jährige wird auf den ersten Juni 2008 Direktor der Geheimdiensttruppe und löst Hans Wegmüller ab. Wegmüller übernahm nach dem Rücktritt des umstrittenen Haudegen und Draufgängers Peter Regli die Leitung und umhüllte den Geheimdienst mit der nötigen Biederkeit, um den Dienst aus den Schlagzeilen zu bringen. In Wegmüllers Amtszeit fiel der Übergang des SND vom militärischen zum zivilen Auslandgeheimdienst. Insgesamt war Wegmüller fast 30 Jahre lang für den Nachrichtendienst tätig gewesen.

Flop, im Dienst auch als Paul Zinniker bekannt, schloss 1987 seine Studien an der Universität Bern als lic. phil. mit dem Diplom für das Höhere Lehramt ab. Nach seiner Tätigkeit als Lehrer an der Gewerblich-Industriellen Berufsschule Bern trat er 1991 als Führungsoffizier in den SND ein. Über dreißig Jahre ist Flop in der studentischen Verbindung Commercia Biennensis von Biel, im Kanton Bern aktiv. Das dreißigste feierte er 2006, spendierte ein Fass Bier und leckere Fleisch- und Käseplatten. Damals arbeitete er noch an seinem Doktorat. Dazu die Commercia Post, das Publikationsorgan der Verbindung: Es hat sich somit einmal mehr gezeigt, dass man es trotz (oder gerade wegen) der Commercia zu etwas bringen kann! Oder eben: Ozapft isch das Fässle.

Dokumentation: Das CIA-Video zu Syriens angeblichem Atomreaktor

sfux — 2008-04-26T08:42:00Z

World Content News - Ein knappes halbes Jahr nach der Bombardierung eines angeblichen Atomreaktors in Syrien hat die CIA "Beweise" vorgelegt, die nahelegen sollen, dass der Bau und das Know-How aus Nordkorea stammen. Die von der US-Regierung herausgegebene Videopräsentation ist ein Mix von Satellitenphotos und Schaubildern, der Angriff zur Zerstörung des Gebäudes selbst ist nicht dokumentiert.

CIA-Vorführung Teil 1

Teil 2

[Update] Das Video dürfte als Beweis wohl kaum geeignet sein, um mögliche unfreundliche Aktionen gegen Bushs Lieblingsschurken international rechtfertigen zu können, doch die verbalen Angriffe (insbesondere gegen den Iran) nehmen derzeit an Stärke zu. Selbst Joschka Fischer hört schon die Kriegstrommeln, auch wenn seine Analyse in der ZEIT - mit Verlaub - die globalstrategischen US-Interessen fast völlig hinten anstellt.

Die Meldung, dass bei der Bombardierung von Al Kibar zehn Nordkoreaner ums Leben gekommen sein sollen, wurde vom südkoreanischen Geheimdienst in der japanischen Presse lanciert.

Nicht aussagekräftig, aber trotzdem interessant sind diverse Vergleiche auf crypton.org von Google-Maps-Fotos zwischen dem syrischen Gebäude und der nordkoreanischen Reaktoranlage Yongbyon.

News:
USA beschuldigen Nordkorea des Reaktorbaus in Syrien
(AFP, 25.04.2008)
Syriens geheime Nuklearpläne Damaskus müsste außer sich sein
(FAZ, 25.04.2008)
Syria accuses U.S. of aiding Israel in raid
(Reuters, 25.04.2008)
USA glauben an Atomverschwörung: Verschärfter Konflikt mit Nordkorea
(taz, 25.04.2008)
Syriens Atomprogramm im Visier
(FAZ, 24.04.2008)
Israelische Medien vom Militär zur Zensur gezwungen
(Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 24.04.2008)
Israels Angriff galt offenbar syrischem Reaktor
(Netzeitung, 14.10.2007)
! 'USAF struck Syrian nuclear site' (Jerusalem Post, 02.11.2007)

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The Curveball Affair

sfux — 2008-03-25T20:00:00Z

John Prados - On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell made a dramatic presentation before the United Nations Security Council, detailing a U.S. bill of particulars alleging that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that threatened not only the Middle East, but the rest of the world. Unbeknownst to the public at the time, a key part of the U.S. caserelating to biological weaponswas based on the direct knowledge of a single agent known as CURVEBALL, whose credibility had previously been cast in serious doubt.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell holds up a model vial of anthrax during his historic presentation before the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003.

CBS News 60 Minutes is now reporting the identity of the agent as one Rafid Ahmed Alwan, (Note 1) who appeared in a German refugee center in 1999 and brought himself to the attention of German intelligence. CBS News describes Alwan as a liar a thief and a poor student instead of the chemical engineering whiz he claimed to be. (Note 2) If accurate, the CBS report raises even more troubling questions about the basis for the Bush administrations decision to go to war in Iraq, as well as more general considerations about the relationship between intelligence and the policy process.

By way of background to this latest revelation, the National Security Archive is reproducing the existing public record on CURVEBALL as derived from declassified records, official inquiries and former officials accounts. The documents below are a small fraction of the full record, which remains almost entirely classified. The National Security Archive has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for these still-secret materials and will post them as they become available.

The public record as of this posting, while miniscule, nevertheless has an important story to tell, the centerpoint of which is Powells speech, which represented the Bush administrations most powerful public argument leading to the decision to invade Iraq.

Powells address, modeled after Adlai Stevensons vivid appearance before the same body in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, was punctuated by a glossy slide presentation and show-and-tell devices including a vial of powder which he held up before his audience, declaring that if it were a biological weapon it would be enough to kill thousands of people. Saddam Hussein, Powell forcefully asserted, possessed stockpiles of such weapons and the infrastructure to produce them. (Note 3)

According to both of the major official U.S. investigations into Iraqs weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programsby the so-called Silberman-Robb Commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Note 4)Powell based this particular claim on data gathered by the CIA, which in turn relied principally on information it had obtained indirectly from CURVEBALL.

Read all at the National Security Archive

Did the FSB Betray Victor Bout?

sfux — 2008-03-22T08:42:00Z

David Dastych - In my first article, published on Canada Free Press on March 14, and then reposted on political Web sites in Britain, Switzerlands "Nachrichten Heute"and in the United States, I reported about the DEA sting operation against Victor Bout and also on some events from the past, involving him and other people.

A few hours only after the CFP publication, I received interesting documentation from Bucharest, Romania, which was published in part in my second article, posted on the CFP on Tuesday, March 18, 2008. A story recently printed in a Polish magazine Gazeta Polska provided more facts about international links of Victor Bouts criminal network, including his business with Polish Military Intelligence, and also with Russian and Polish gangsters Semyon Mogilevich and Riccardo Fanchini (Marian Kozina). According to the Polish TV reporter Witold Gadowski, one of the high-positioned protectors of Victor Bout in the Putins Kremlin was Igor Ivanovich Sechin, known as an opponent of the new President of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.

High connections, FSB and the mafia
On February 4, 2008 one of the most popular Polish TV documentary shows SuperWizjer of the private TVN network aired a sensational report entitled The Russian Mafia, the Polish Government and Gas. The documentary, whose authors were two Polish investigative journalists, Przemyslaw Wojciechowski and Witold Gadowski, was the result of their teams 2.5-year work in many countries. The report stirred big waves in Poland, because it proved that the Polish Government was paying for the imports of Russian natural gas not directly to its producer, GAZPROM, but to an intermediary co-owned by the Russian mafia and The Brainy Don, Semyon Mogilevich.

One of the co-authors of that documentary, Mr.Gadowski, wrote a follow up story for a conservative Polish magazine Gazeta Polska. In the 2nd part of his article, entitled Gas Stinking of the Mafia: Traces of the Death Barons, Gadowski linked the recent arrest of Semyon Mogilevich in Russia to the arrest of Victor Bout in Thailand and to the election of the new President of Russia. The article is very interesting and I am going to quote from it several times throughout this piece.

Officially, Bout fell into a trap arranged by American special services. But in fact he had been pointed for a shot in Thailand by the FSB [the Russian Security Service]. At the same time, FSB agents were hurriedly liquidating his base in Bulgaria [From another source, AIA: The old ties have come into the limelight this week for another reason: Russian arms trader Victor Bout, who supposedly had excellent contacts to the Soviet and later to the Russian secret service, had delivered a load of weapons worth several hundred million dollars to Bulgaria just before he was arrested on March 6.]

According to the official version, Bout, looked for in the whole world, fell into the hands of the Thai special servicesand was arrested with his accomplice, Andrew Smulian, when he tried to strike a deal to sell weapons to the Colombian FARC But there is also another, closer to the truth version of Major Bouts give-away. Somebody in the Kremlin has decided to wind up a protective umbrella over the most wanted international criminals. Mogilevich and Bout, used before in many actions, became useless ballast to the new tsarevich Medvedev.

Following the arrest of Victor Bout, Mr. Gadowski e-mailed several of his contacts, knowledgeable of the Russian special services. One of the answers was symptomatic: Igor Sechin, now one of the most important people of the top [Russian] leadership responsible for the management of the biggest state-owned oil company, Rosneft, which was built on the ruins of [Mikhail Khodorkovskys] Yukos, knows very much about Bouts business. Sechin (a former KGB officer) was an interpreter of Portuguese language in Mozambique, where he met a fellow-interpreter, Victor Bout.

Under the rule of the former President Vladimir, Putin Mogilevich and Bout were safe in Moscow. Now, when the President-elect Dmitry Medvedev is getting ready to do some face-saving in Russia, the old kings of the criminal underworld, serving the Kremlin as useful agents, are being dumped while new, still unknown replacements will take their place.

The Polish journalist quoted some opinions about Victor Bout:
Sergei P., a Russian businessman with a Western passport, a former AF pilot in Afghanistan: [Bout] is a very brave fellow, he flies to the places that other guys would be scared to show up at, and he will always supply the cargo paid for.
Douglas Farah, an American journalist who had followed Bout and other gun-runners for years, was quoted as saying: Of course, Bout, who has armed rebels, criminals and terrorists from the Taliban in Afghanistan to the RUF in Sierra Leone to the FARC in Colombia, has always operated under the protection of Russian military intelligence. (Now The Fun Begins With Russia Over Bout Arrest)

Farah made these comments on March 7, only a day after Bouts arrest. An unnamed American investigative journalist e-mailed Mr. Gadowski: Dear Polish Colleague, dont mind the names, these are only pawns on a chessboard. Somebody else will replace Bout, who has made dirty arms-trading deals for Putins men. But you better watch your steps, as they could find a nice psychiatric hospital for you

Bouts Polish trail
Not much is known about Victor Bouts connections in Poland. Mr. Gadowski only wrote in his article that after the arrest of Mogilevich and Bout in some Polish homes panic-buttons have been pressed, as both Mogilevich and Bout know the bank accounts, used by some Poles to collect money from suspicious transactions. Who are these people? I have no proof to name them but there are many trails leading to some Polish businessmen and to former officers of the Polish Military Intelligence (WSI), who made fortunes on illegal trading in weapons, drugs and nuclear materials.

Bouts air-services in Eastern Africa probably pushed out a Polish aviation business company, Joy Co. Ltd, from its base in Djibouti in the 1990s. The Russian cargo transports were offered much cheaper, and the Polish exporter lost its monopoly to sell or lease Soviet-made helicopters and planes to African governments. A clash of interests with Bouts business dramatically ended for the Poles: top pilots and managers of Joy Co. Ltd died in a strange helicopter crash on East African desert and the company withdrew from Djibouti.

In 1996, Victor Bout moved his business HQ to Ostend (Oostende) in Belgium. According to Mr. Gadowski, his planes transported narcotics for the Nayfeld brothers. In Belgium he also met a Pole, Marian Kozina, a.k.a. Riccardo Fancini. Bout moved some secret cargo transports for himAccording to one of my informants, some Polish WSI [Military Intelligence] officers, working on foreign outposts, were also involved in some of Bouts operations.

At that time, the Russian-Jewish Nayfeld brothers, Boris and Benjamin, worked for an Italian mafia family, Lucese. A Polish mobster,Marian Kozina, using his fathers Sicilian name Fanchini worked for both the Italian mafia and also the Russian Red Mafia of Semyon Mogilevich. Known as The Polish Al Capone, Fanchini was one of the main residents of the Russian mafia in Europe. He was also suspected of being connected with killing General Marek Papala the chief of the Polish Police. In 2007 Riccardo Fanchini (Marian Kozina), a citizen of Belgium living in London, was arrested in Britain.

Dumping the Baron of Death
In a conversation with Peter Landesman at a Moscow second class Renaissance Hotel (2003), Victor Bout and his Syrian-born American partner, Richard Chichakli, tried to discourage the journalist from pressing them too much about Bouts high connections:

Theyll put you on your knees before they execute you, Chichakli said. And Bout added, a bit later, My clients, the governments I keep my mouth shutIf I told you everything Id get the red hole right here. He pointed to the middle of his forehead.

In a report, published in Belgium (2001), Victor Bout was presented as the brain of a large arms trafficking organization:

Another Ostend-based company, which until 1997 was involved in arms smuggling, was NV Trans Aviation Network Group (hereafter TAN Group"). The company was founded in 1995 and had its main office lodged in a totally new building at the end of the motorway from Brussels to Ostend. The parent company of TAN Group, AirCess is based in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, and seems to perform a pivotal function amongst different aircraft companies trafficking in arms. The brain of the organisation is a Russian ex-KGB major, Victor Anatolevic Bout (previously referred to), reported to be now resident in Sharjah and undoubtedly on excellent terms with Russian and Ukrainian mafia and with former KGB-colleagues. As already noted, Victor Bout bought himself a luxurious house in a residential quarter of Ostend. His Belgian partner was a pilot, Ronald Desmet, resident in France near the Swiss border.

After his true business had been exposed in the Belgian and international media, he had to leave Ostend and moved to Sharjah, but still in 1998 his illegal business via Ostend airport was not stopped:

Crossing borders with extreme ease, the arms traffickers have truly multinational networks and pipelines The Ostend operators, for example, reside in Belgium, collect their cargo from eastern European suppliers and deliver to clients across the world. Bulgaria and Slovakia are major sources of arms to be transported to war zones. Airports from where the arms transfer is organised or effected are mainly Burgas and Plovdiv in Bulgaria, Bratislava in Slovakia, a number of Russian airports, Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates and the airport of Ostend. The arms are subsequently delivered to the Sudanese airport of Khartoum, to Sierra Leone, Angola, the Congo or other war zones. All the airports mentioned above are still visited by aircraft from Ostend.

Later on, Bout fled to Moscow because the FBI, the Interpol and many Western secret services were hunting him everywhere. Why would he allow himself take a great risk and go to Thailand to make a deal with the (alleged) Colombian FARC guerillas?

The answer could be found in a most recent report, published by Bruce Falconer on March 18, 2008 and entitled Victor Bouts Last Deal:

The decision to use the FARC to target Bouts operation was not without precedent. In 2006, the same DEA unit nabbed Syrian arms dealer Monzer al-Kassar, the so-called Prince of Marbella, at Madrids international airport after ensnaring him in a bogus multimillion-dollar deal to supply weapons and explosives to the FARC. Al-Kassar remains in a Spanish jail, awaiting extradition to the United States. The sting that put him there was almost identical to the one that would later snag Bout. How could the Russian, renowned for the care he took in ensuring his own security, have fallen for the same trick?

In Bouts case, another factor may have come into play, namely that the FARC really was trying to acquire the types of weapons and equipment he was known to provide.

But even if Bout had some good reasons to sell Bulgarian IGLA missiles and other weapons to the FARC, immediately available at his stores in Burgas and Plovdiv, why his Russian intelligence protectors (and business partners) did not avert him of a possible trap in Bangkok? The only logical answer is the following: his high Kremlin protectors wanted to dump him. And they really did thatwith the help of the American Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

This article was first published at Canada Free Press

David Dastych, 67, is a veteran journalist who served both in the Polish intelligence and the CIA; jailed in Poland by the Communist regime he spent several years in special prison wards; released in early 1990s he joined international efforts to monitor illegal nuclear trade in Europe and Asia; handicapped for lifetime in a mountain accident in France, in 1994; now he returned to active life and runs his own media agency in Warsaw.

Part I: The bad and good about Victor Bout: Merchant of Death detained in Thailand
Viktor Bout Auslieferung in die USA?
Viktor Bout, Afrikas Merchant of Death
Geheimer Waffendeal mit MEK Terroristen?<
Söldner, Gauner, Waffen und Rohstoffe
Ugandas Ölfunde: Söldner fördern es, die Amerikaner kaufen es.
The agency that runs Pakistan
The criminal stories of the good soldier Bout
Albanien/Kosovo: Mysteriöser Flugzeugabsturz im Gebirge
The last Russian attack on American soil?
Unknown secrets of the communist past (Part I)

Gefangenentransporte nach Guantanamo wieder aufgenommen

softlabhennef — 2008-03-14T22:46:00Z

World Content News - Die USA haben nach eigenen Angaben einen engen Gefolgsmann von El-Kaida-Chef Osama bin Laden in ihre Gewalt gebracht und ihn möglicherweise über Norwegen nach Guantanamo ausgeflogen. Die Zeitung "Stavanger Aftenblad" berichtete Stunden zuvor in ihrer Online-Ausgabe, ein von der CIA für Gefangenentransporte verwendetes Flugzeug sei im norwegischen Sola zwischengelandet. Die Maschine einer vom US-Geheimdienst betriebenen Firma sei aus Brno (Brünn) in Tschechien gekommen und nach dem Auftanken nach Keflavik in Island weitergeflogen, hieß es unter Berufung auf Flughafenmitarbeiter.

Der Name des Gefangenen sei Muhammad Rahim, der Bin Laden 2001 zur Flucht vor den US-Truppen in Afghanistan verholfen haben soll. Er werde seit dieser Woche im US-Gefangenenlager Guantánamo auf Kuba festgehalten, sagte ein Pentagon-Sprecher in Washington. Der US-Auslandsgeheimdienst CIA habe Rahim in die Obhut des Verteidigungsministeriums gegeben, teilte er weiter mit.

Rahim soll Bin Laden geholfen haben, das Höhlensystem von Tora-Bora in den afghanischen Bergen zum Versteck auszubauen. Als US-Truppen Ende 2001 im Anmarsch dorthin waren, habe Rahim dem El-Kaida-Chef angeblich bei der Flucht Hilfe geleistet.

Damit ist erstmals seit September 2006 von offizieller Seite wieder eine Überstellung nach Guantanamo eingeräumt worden. Am 04.09.06 waren 14 hochkarätige Terrorverdächtige mit einer Militärmaschine im Folter-Camp eingetroffen. Tags zuvor wurden laut eines Zeugen, der nicht mehr auffindbar ist, drei arabisch sprechende Gefangene aus einem Gefängnistrakt der US-Kaserne Coleman Barracks in Mannheim-Sandhofen zu einem unbekannten Ziel ausgeflogen. Drei Tage später erklärte US-Präsident Bush, die Überstellungen nach Guantanamo würden für einen begrenzten Zeitraum ausgesetzt.

Folterflieger N4466A, aufgenommen in Stuttgart (2005) (Bild: airliners.net)

Bei dem am 14.03.2008 in Norwegen und anschließend auch in Island gesichteten CIA-Flugzeug handelt es sich um eine Beechcraft 350 mit der Registriernummer N4466A, die von der CIA-Firma Aviation Specialties betrieben wird. Sie landete am Freitag morgen auf dem norwegischen Flughafen von Sola bei Stavanger um 09:35 Uhr, um aufzutanken. Das Flugzeug war nach einem Aufenthalt in Stuttgart seit 2005 von der Bildfläche verschwunden. Erst am 28.01.2008 wurde sie wieder im türkischen Kayseri gesichtet, als sie auf den Weg nach Bagdad war.

Wold.Content.News hat im Anschluss an den norwegischen Medienbericht in Flighttrackern recherchiert und kann inzwischen folgendes bestätigen: Das Folterflugzeug (auf norwegisch: Fangeflyet) von Aviation Specialties landete tatsächlich im Anschluss nach der Sichtung in Norwegen im isländischen Keflavik (Icao: BIKF). Falls sich ein Gefangener an Bord befand, müsste er der Logik nach dort das Flugzeug gewechselt haben.

Terminal Air: Wann bitte geht der nächste Flug nach Guantanamo?

Denn folgendes hat sich auf diesem Flughafen abgespielt: Am Vortag (13.03.) traf eine Boeing 738 mit der Flugnummer BSK208 in Keflavik ein (Rufzeichen: BISCAYNE, fliegt für die Fluglinie Miami Air International). Sie kam aus Portsmouth, NH (Icao: KPSM) und muss wohl in Island auf das verspätete Flugzeug der CIA gewartet haben.

Ziemlich suspekte Boeing-Route: BIKF-KPSM-KGRK-MUGM (Guantanamo)

Wann die Boeing am Morgen tatsächlich wieder in Richtung USA abhob, ist seltsamerweise in den Aufzeichnungen nicht vermerkt (s.o.), diesmal hieß die Flugnummer BSK209. Zunächst ging es zurück nach Portsmouth und dann weiter auf den Luftwaffenstützpunkt Robert Gray AAF in Fort Hood, Texas (KGRK). Hier landen zuweilen auch Flugzeuge, die in Irland verdächtigt werden, Gefangene zu transportieren. Von dort aus schließlich (als BSK118) startete die Boeing mit ihrer Fracht das eigentliche Ziel an: Guantanamo Bay.

Miami Air Intl.: Endstation Torture (Flightaware)

Update: Auch aus Island liegt mittlerweile ein Bericht vor. Auf dem Flughafen von Keflavik wurden am Freitag zwei Piloten beobachtet, die es offenbar mit dem Auftanken mächtig eilig hatten. Anschließend sei die Maschine Richtung Grönland geflogen. Flugaufzeichnungen der 10-sitzigen Beech liegen erst wieder ab Sonntag vor. Sie belegen, dass die N4466A am 16.03. um 13:00 Uhr (Ortszeit) von Goose Bay in Kanada nach Manchester in New Hampshire aufgebrochen ist, und von dort weiter zu ihrem Stüzpunkt in Smithfield, NC (Johnston County) flog.

Offenbar ist es den aufmerksamen Flughafenmitarbeitern in Norwegen zu verdanken, dass das Pentagon, kaum dass der Gefangene in Guantanamo angekommen war, auch schon die Öffentlichkeit informieren musste, nachdem der Geheimdienstflug in der Presse Aufsehen erregte. Gut, dass es Leute gibt, die noch aufpassen.

Quellen:
Amnesty krever tiltak mot CIA (aftenbladet.no, 14.03.2008)
CIA flight landed in Stavanger (aftenposten.no, 14.03.2008)
USA melden Festnahme von engem Bin-Laden-Vertrauten
(markenpost.de, 14.03.2008)
Bin Laden escape agent is in Guantanamo now
(San Francisco Chronicle, 15.03.2008)

Dieser Artikel erschien erstmalig bei World Content News

N34315: Welcome to Vienna

softlabhennef — 2008-03-13T17:33:00Z

World Content News - Die geheimnisvollen CIA-Flugzeuge, über die seit Tagen Presseberichte aus der Slowakei, Ungarn und Rumänien kursieren, waren früher häufig zu Gast in Deutschland. Darunter auch der Guantanamo-Flieger N368CE, dem schon das Magazin "Stern" mit einer Reportage seine Aufmerksamkeit schenkte. Und aktuell: Die zitierte Boeing N34315 ist auf ihrer Flucht vor Planespottern soeben in Wien gelandet. Herr Abgeordneter Dr. Pilz, übernehmen Sie!

Bei den gesichteten Flugzeugen handelt es sich um folgende Objekte:

N34315, Boeing 737, c/n 23366, Wilmington Trust
N731VA, Boeing 737, c/n 27456, Wells Fargo Bank
N742VA, Boeing 737, c/n 24773, Wells Fargo Bank

Alle drei Maschinen sind in Treuhandbesitz der obengenannten Firmen, der tatsächliche Besitzer und Operator ist aber die Firma Vision Airlines (früher: Premier Aircraft Management, Inc) aus Las Vegas, logistisch gesteuert werden sie wohl von Irland und Malaysia aus.

Die Boeing N731VA machte 2005 unter ihrer alten Registriernummer N368CE Schlagzeilen in der Presse, als dem Magazin "Stern" interne Unterlagen des Frankfurter Flughafens zugespielt wurden, in der die Nahost-Destinationen der seit längerem als CIA-verdächtigen Maschine gelistet waren.

Tatsächlich ergaben Recherchen in Flugdatenbanken der FAA, dass die Boeing 2004 auch in Guantanamo landete:

N368CE   12.04.04   Wilmington, NC --> Washington
N368CE   13.04.04   Washington --> Guantanamo, Kuba
N368CE   13.04.04   Sal, Cap Verde --> Casablanca, Marokko
N368CE   14.04.04   Rabat, Marokko --> Santa Maria, Azoren
N368CE   14.04.04   Santa Maria, Azoren --> Washington
N368CE   14.04.04   Washington --> Wilmington, DC

Im November 2006 wurde die N368CE auf die Nummer N731VA umregistriert, nachdem Planespotter aus Deutschland und später Irland wiederholt auf die mysteriösen Flüge aufmerksam machten. Jetzt fliegt sie zusammen mit ihren Schwestermaschinen direkt aus den USA nach Rumänien (Constanta und Bukarest) und Slowakei (Bratislava), wo sie auftanken und zu unbekannten Zielen im Persischen Golf weiterfliegen.

World.Content.News hat die Spuren der drei Maschinen gelegentlich verfolgt und innerhalb eines Jahres insgesamt 197 Flüge über Osteuropa festgestellt:

Von	Bis	Landungen	N731VA	N34315	N742VA	Total
22.05.06	19.09.06	Bucharest	0	34	4	38
22.09.06	31.10.06	Budapest	0	13	12	25
03.11.06	25.11.06	Constanta	1	6	7	14
27.11.06	28.04.07	Bucharest	12	32	40	84
01.05.07	30.06.07	Bratislava	12	7	17	36

N34315: Über Bratislava in den Krieg?

In wessen Auftrag die Flugzeuge derzeit tätig sind, welche Destinationen sie am Ende wirklich ansteuern und mit welcher Fracht sie unterwegs sind, lässt sich derzeit nicht beantworten. Im offiziellen Auftrag für die US-Regierung fliegen sie jedenfalls nicht, diese Kontrakte müssen öffentlich ausgewiesen werden. Auffällig sind die zahlreichen (Zwischen-?) Landungen in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, die die N368CE in ihrer Deutschland-Zeit aufwies, aber auch Landungen in Kabul und Bagdad sind darunter.

Dass mit den Flugzeugen nicht gut Kirschen essen ist, legt ein Bericht von slowakischen Medien nahe: Die Besatzung käme in "Wagen mit getönten Scheiben" zur wartenden Maschine bzw. verließe sie so. Den parkenden Boeings dürfe sich niemand nähern, werden Flughafenmitarbeiter zitiert.

Möglich ist, dass sie zur Unterstützung der Kriege im Irak und Afghanistan eingesetzt werden und für private Geheimdienste oder Söldnerfirmen unterwegs sind. Parallelen dazu lassen sich nämlich in Irland festmachen. Auch in Shannon in Irland tauchen seit Monaten ehemalige CIA-Flugzeuge (N475LC, N478GS) auf, die für den Rüstungs- und Mischkonzern L3-Communication unterwegs sind, der auch einen privaten Geheimdienst unterhält.

Ob die Österreicher jetzt den geheimnisvollen Vogel rupfen werden, falls er wieder mal auftaucht? Schön wärs ja, hat man doch noch die Abfangjäger für die CIA Hercules N8183J in Erinnerung, die, wie man heute weiß, damals von einem gewissen Herrn Kamyar Pahlavi von der iranischen Schah-Familie für die CIA angeschafft wurde (Kosten: schlappe 11 Millionen Dollar), wo möglicherweise zusammen mit der N2189M Waffenschmuggel in großem Stil betrieben wurde.

Download: Flugdaten der Vision Airlines
(N368CE/N731VA, N34315, N742VA - zipped Excel-File 190KB)

Quellen:
Geheimnisvolle Boeings landen wöchentlich in Bratislava
(Der Standard, 12.03.2008)
Mysteriöse Boeing-Transporte in Europa? CIA als Initiator geheimer Flüge vermutet (networld.at, 13.03.2008)
CIA Boeing sighted in CEE (Budapest Times, 12.03.2008)
Shannon: Four suspect CIA flights refuel at airport
(limerickleader.ie, 13.03.2008)
Wo die Folterjets heute fliegen (blick.ch, 11.07.2007)
CIA-Flugzeuge sind auch nur Menschen
(N368CE-Bericht, stern.de, 09.02.2006)

Dieser Artikel erschien erstmalig bei World Content News