Turkish Intelligence: Al-Qaeda a U.S. Covert Operation
Kurt Nimmo | 16.08.2005 00:30
And still no-one within the tightly-controlled mainstream media machine bothers to investigate the clear link between American/British intelligence, and every single one of these groups.
Turkish Intelligence: Al-Qaeda a U.S. Covert Operation
August 15th, 2005
Consider the following, published in Zaman, the fifth largest newspaper in Turkey: “Amid the smoke from the fortuitous fire [i.e., the capture of Louai Sakra, said to be the al-CIA-duh regional boss in Turkey] emerged the possibility that al-Qaeda may not be, strictly speaking, an organization but an element of an intelligence agency operation. Turkish intelligence specialists agree that there is no such organization as al-Qaeda.
Rather, Al-Qaeda is the name of a secret service operation. The concept ‘fighting terror’ is the background of the ‘low-intensity-warfare’ conducted in the mono-polar world order. The subject of this strategy of tension is named as ‘al-Qaeda.’” Note the use of the phrase “strategy of tension,” an obvious reference to Gladio, the state-sponsored terrorist operation in Italy (basically a series of fascist false flag operations, or “low intensity warfare,” blamed on leftists). It is interesting that Turkish intelligence would admit that the neocon “war against terrorism” is an entirely artificial construct.
Moreover, according to Turkish intelligence, “Sakra has been sought by the secret services since 2000. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogated him twice before. Following the interrogation CIA offered him employment. He also received a large sum of money by CIA. However the CIA eventually lost contact with him.” It is curious how alleged key people in the al-CIA-duh network end up working for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
For instance, Abdurahman Khadr, who (according to ABC News Online) “lived side-by-side with Osama bin Laden,” was a “double agent, sent to spy on Al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia.” Ali Mohamed, a former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, worked for the FBI (Mohamed, obviously with the grace of the feds, brought Ayman al-Zawahiri to San Francisco on a covert fund-raising mission), according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hamid Reza Zakeri claimed (during the trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of helping the nine eleven hijackers) that “Iran’s secret service had contacts with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network ahead of the September 11 attacks,” according to Reuters. It just so happens Zakeri claims the CIA owes him $1.2 for services rendered as a double agent. Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, told al-Hayat newspaper in 2003 he had “a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them,” an offer Krekar said he refused. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, “a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister,” according to the Chicago Tribune, was such a valued CIA asset it was deemed necessary to kidnap him off the streets of Milan after he had second thoughts about his work. And then there was Muhammad Naeem Noor Khanm, the al-Qaeda “computer engineer” who “became part of a sting operation organized by the CIA,” according to the Washington Post.
Of course, all of this CIA funny business is coincidental. Remember, the CIA is ineffectual, even if it did create Islamic terrorism—the agency actually boasts about this, says the Afghan Mujahideen (aka “al-Qaeda”) was its most successful operation to date—and it was “intelligence failures” that caused nine eleven.
August 15th, 2005
Consider the following, published in Zaman, the fifth largest newspaper in Turkey: “Amid the smoke from the fortuitous fire [i.e., the capture of Louai Sakra, said to be the al-CIA-duh regional boss in Turkey] emerged the possibility that al-Qaeda may not be, strictly speaking, an organization but an element of an intelligence agency operation. Turkish intelligence specialists agree that there is no such organization as al-Qaeda.
Rather, Al-Qaeda is the name of a secret service operation. The concept ‘fighting terror’ is the background of the ‘low-intensity-warfare’ conducted in the mono-polar world order. The subject of this strategy of tension is named as ‘al-Qaeda.’” Note the use of the phrase “strategy of tension,” an obvious reference to Gladio, the state-sponsored terrorist operation in Italy (basically a series of fascist false flag operations, or “low intensity warfare,” blamed on leftists). It is interesting that Turkish intelligence would admit that the neocon “war against terrorism” is an entirely artificial construct.
Moreover, according to Turkish intelligence, “Sakra has been sought by the secret services since 2000. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogated him twice before. Following the interrogation CIA offered him employment. He also received a large sum of money by CIA. However the CIA eventually lost contact with him.” It is curious how alleged key people in the al-CIA-duh network end up working for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
For instance, Abdurahman Khadr, who (according to ABC News Online) “lived side-by-side with Osama bin Laden,” was a “double agent, sent to spy on Al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia.” Ali Mohamed, a former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, worked for the FBI (Mohamed, obviously with the grace of the feds, brought Ayman al-Zawahiri to San Francisco on a covert fund-raising mission), according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hamid Reza Zakeri claimed (during the trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of helping the nine eleven hijackers) that “Iran’s secret service had contacts with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network ahead of the September 11 attacks,” according to Reuters. It just so happens Zakeri claims the CIA owes him $1.2 for services rendered as a double agent. Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, told al-Hayat newspaper in 2003 he had “a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them,” an offer Krekar said he refused. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, “a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister,” according to the Chicago Tribune, was such a valued CIA asset it was deemed necessary to kidnap him off the streets of Milan after he had second thoughts about his work. And then there was Muhammad Naeem Noor Khanm, the al-Qaeda “computer engineer” who “became part of a sting operation organized by the CIA,” according to the Washington Post.
Of course, all of this CIA funny business is coincidental. Remember, the CIA is ineffectual, even if it did create Islamic terrorism—the agency actually boasts about this, says the Afghan Mujahideen (aka “al-Qaeda”) was its most successful operation to date—and it was “intelligence failures” that caused nine eleven.
Kurt Nimmo
Homepage:
http://kurtnimmo.com/blog/?p=908
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Psy op double bluff?
16.08.2005 06:42
NATIONAL 08.16.2005 Tuesday - ISTANBUL 09:28
[NEWS ANALYSIS]
Al-Qaeda, a Secret Service Operation?
By Ercan Gun
Published: Sunday, August 14, 2005
zaman.com
A fire in a house near the docks in the southern Turkish city of Antalya has revealed that al-Qaeda was preparing an attack to target Israeli cruise ships. The security operations that followed this fortuitous incident made Turkish security the focus of security agencies all around the world.
Countries facing the al-Qaeda threat are awaiting the intelligence Turkish security is to provide. Amid the smoke from the fortuitous fire emerged the possibility that al-Qaeda may not be, strictly speaking, an organization but an element of an intelligence agency operation. Turkish intelligence specialists agree that there is no such organization as al-Qaeda. Rather, Al-Qaeda is the name of a secret service operation. The concept “fighting terror” is the background of the “low-intensity-warfare” conducted in the mono-polar world order. The subject of this strategy of tension is named as “al-Qaeda.”
Sakra, the fifth most senior man in Osama bin Ladin’s al-Qaeda that has challenged the whole world from a base in the Afghan mountains, is in the hands of Turkish Justice. Sakra has been sought by the secret services since 2000. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogated him twice before. Following the interrogation CIA offered him employment. He also received a large sum of money by CIA. However the CIA eventually lost contact with him. Following this development, in 2000 the CIA passed intelligence about Sakra through a classified notice to Turkey, calling for the Turkish National Security Organization (MIT) to capture him. MIT caught Sakra in Turkey and interrogated him. Sakra’s protests that, “MIT abducted my wife and interrogated her for 20 days,” as he was brought to Besiktas court in Istanbul for sentencing, seem to confirm these claims.
Sakra was sought and caught by Syrian al-Mukhabarat as well. Syria too offered him employment. Sakra eventually became a triple agent for the secret services. These astounding claims are the outcome of Sakra’s four-day interrogation at Istanbul Anti-Terror Department Headquarters. Turkish security officials, interrogating a senior al-Qaeda figure for the first time, were thoroughly confused about what they discovered about al-Qaeda. The prosecutor too was surprised. A second hearing of the case about the attacks in Istanbul between November 15-23, 2003, is reportedly possible.
Last Update: Saturday, March 6, 2004. 12:33pm (AEDT)
Son of dead Al Qaeda suspect blows CIA cover
A Canadian man who says his family once lived side-by-side with Osama bin Laden, has claimed he was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) double agent, sent to spy on Al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia.
Abdurahman Khadr told Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) he also led CIA agents hunting terror suspects after the September 11 attacks to Al Qaeda safehouses in Kabul.
Mr Khadr, who lives in Toronto with his family, is the son of Ahmed Said Khadr, an Egyptian-born Canadian, who was killed last October in Pakistan.
Mr Khadr senior was fingered by Western intelligence services as an Al Qaeda operative and a leader of the terror network.
Mr Abdurahman related his explosive story during a two-part interview with CBC, in which he also divulged secrets of bin Laden's surprisingly mundane homelife, including the terror kingpin's love of volleyball and struggles to discipline his children.
Abdurahman Khadr was taken prisoner in Kabul in November 2001 as US forces hunted Taliban and Al Qaeda holdouts, months after the September 11 attacks.
He said in the second part of the interview on Thursday that he agreed to work as a CIA agent to escape jail and travelled around the Afghan capital with US agents.
"There was this tour, they called it Abdurahman tour, I was famous for that," he told CBC.
"I took people from the CIA, the FBI, and the military, we'd go around in a car in Kabul and I'd show them the houses of Al Qaeda people, the guesthouses, the safe houses, the house they used [before September 11] and the houses they used after."
He said he was offered $US3,000 a month to work for the CIA then told he would be taken to Guantanamo Bay to spy on inmates.
To protect his cover, Mr Khadr said he was treated like a normal prisoner, chained in a plane on the journey from Afghanistan, and kept in isolation for a month when he first arrived.
When the Guantanamo experiment failed, the CIA decided to send him to infiltrate Al Qaeda operatives in Bosnia, Mr Khadr said.
The US agents wanted him to volunteer to go to Iraq with Al Qaeda militants mounting an insurrection against the US occupation, but he declined and was allowed to return to his family in Toronto on condition he did not reveal his CIA links.
Mr Khadr said in the documentary on Wednesday he was sent to Afghanistan by his father to become a member of Al Qaeda.
"I was raised to become a suicide bomber; I was raised to become a bad person," he said.
-- AFP
That's enough then!
__
Um, and if you want to take it one stage further:
Perhaps all this anti-CIA stuff is psy op? Disseminate wildly that Al Qaeda is just the CIA and try scaring away potential recruits.
Is indy media being targetted by spooks spreading disinfo about Bin Laden being an agency man?
magoo
London bombing never existed
16.08.2005 14:19
We should be asking questions to the Prime Minister instead of protesting against something that never existed
Journalist
on the contrary, this is posturing
16.08.2005 15:03
to gain favour for their proposed entry to the EU
[also of usable interest is the drug routes utilised by MI6/CIA through Turkey]
Both The French & the Gemans are seemingly against Turkish EU integration
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Cyprus spat casts doubts on Turkey EU bid
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The Turks could well be using this AL-CIA-DUH info as a buffer against the German elections
which look like they may well be going to Angela Merkyl
who is being touted by many as Germanys version of Thatcher...
[although her right wing speeches haven't helped the middle ground by getting zenophobic]
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She received the most applause for what she had to say about Turkey's desire to join the EU and immigration. Every child in Germany, she said, should be able to speak German before it started school. There was no place in Germany for those who preached hatred, and one could not expect the European Union to accept Turkey as a full member.
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This shift to the right for German politics will be bad for Turkeys aspirations
and we might also see a less caustic German response to the US neocon policy
Schroeder earlier this week tried to batter Bushes Iran posturing...
surely a weak attempt to gain votes
we might even see yet another G8 staged Bombing to send a message to
the Turkish renegade intell
as in Egypt, failure to play ball in the 'terror index'
IE their failure to name a London Bombing 'Mastermind'
is punished
by bombs which effect the tourist money supply...
bearing in mind that Britain are Holding the EU presidncy:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The FBIs Office of International Operations, in conjunction with the CIA and the US State Department counter-narcotics section, the United Kingdoms MI6, Israels Mossad, Pakistans ISI, the US DEA, Turkeys MIT, and the governments and intelligence agencies of dozens of nations, were in one way or another involved in the illicit drug trade either trying to stop it or benefit from it. What can be surmised from the public record is that from 1998 to September 10, 2001, the War on Drugs kept bumping into the nascent War on Terror and new directions in US foreign policy.-
It's easy to imagine the thousands of drug couriers, middlemen, financiers and lab technicians moving back and forth between Pakistan and Turkey, and over to Western Europe and the United States, and the tidbits of information they gleaned from their sponsors as they traveled. As information gathering assets for the intelligence agencies of the world, they must have been invaluable. And given the dozens of foreign intelligence services working the in the counter-narcotics/terrorism fields, the "chatter" that just dozens of well-placed operatives may have overheard about attacks against Western targets must have found its way into the US intelligence apparatus. But, again, who could believe the audacity of non-state actors organizing a domestic attack against the supreme power of the day, the USA? Implementing a new strategic direction and business deals may have overcome the wacky warnings from the counter-narcotics folks.
Back in the late 1990's and early 2000, who would have believed the rants of a drug courier from Afghanistan saying that some guy named Bin Laden was going to attack America, particularly if it involved America's newest friend, Turkey? Or that a grand design to reshape Central Asia and the Middle East with Turkey and Israel as pivot points was being pushed by the Clinton Administration as a matter of national policy.
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MI5 is linked to death of drugs baron 'Popeye'
Customs demand answers over smuggler whose exploits cost life of heroic agent
WHEN the millionaire drugs baron known as "Popeye" absconded from prison, the criminal underworld was sure that his friends in the British security services had helped Roddy McLean to escape.
[snip] agents are also angry at the apparent reluctance of their own officers to demand a full, public investigation. The Prison Service has yet to fully explain why McLean, a category-A convict, was moved so quickly to Leyhill open prison in south Gloucestershire, which has the worst record in Britain for absconders. He lied to the authorities about wanting a transfer to be closer to his wife, who had just bought a home in Edinburgh. On a Saturday in November 2003 McLean was allowed out of prison for a day release. A van-load of MI5 agents are alleged to have been waiting for him. They are said to have given him a fresh set of clothes. a new identity and fake documents and slipped him on to a ferry to Ireland. McLean travelled on to Wexford on the southeast coast to make contact with fellow smugglers, who would help him to get in touch with a notorious London-based crime family. The authorities were desperate to discover the heroin- smuggling routes that the Turkish-Cypriot crime clan were using. Within 24 hours of his escape, McLean, who gained the nickname "Popeye" because of his love of the sea, was sailing for a rendezvous with a Spanish fishing boat to pick up a consignment of cannabis
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pc
pc
16.08.2005 17:13
As for the rest, just the usual load of speculative tosh. It offers no proof whatsoever! All it tells us was the guy was possibly at some interviewed by the CIA with a view to being an asset. The purpose of the attempt isn't clear.
The blogger reads prisonplanet. All I need to know he's an eejit.
Um, what's the 3rd largest rag in Canada and how high/low brow and independent is it?
magoo
Turkey Disallowed US Bases For Iraq War
16.08.2005 19:30
You seem to be the only Spook here, my friend.
Policies Supported By Beliefs
...
16.08.2005 21:13
Still telling yer big fat lies about spooks I see.
magoo
Al Qaeda = CIA
17.08.2005 01:01
But this is hardly the only source for this claim. They are but one on a long line of Governments who have suggested this to be true. Most notably, Germany.
Again, if you are NOT a Spook, then how did you know I had posted that comment ... ?
Hardly The Only Ones Making The Claim
PsyOps
17.08.2005 07:17
"Again, if you are NOT a Spook, then how did you know I had posted that comment ... ?"
Hahahaha! I'm a trained linguist... and that's all your getting. You also post agreements to your own post don't you...
:-)
magoo
Magoo
17.08.2005 12:41
it might not be the Turkish intell
who are revealing this CIA Bin laden link
it might be an op designed to make the turks look like loons
or the first point i made
which was
EU membership based
could be either...though
these finks all work in mysterious ways
with limited hangouts
and testers all designed
to change the course of
the poltical river
by gradual means
I don't believe everyting i read
but i do ask why these things are
placed in public view
in the first place
how many sides to an argument?
if its just 2, then you are living in
a bipolar oversimplified world, my man
pc
PC
17.08.2005 16:24
No-one with any integrity makes a case by reverse enginnering a motive against a suspect, as opposed to letting the evidence lead the way.
Some people think they are being clever doing this. They just stupid.
Magoo
'Round & 'round
17.08.2005 18:42
And this is hardly the only source for this claim. They are but one on a long line of Governments who have suggested this to be true. Most notably, Germany.
The CIA's ties to all of the people attributed to "al Qaeda" are a matter of public record, and usually surface right after the tightly-controlled media repeats the claims of the people who brought us "Iraq has WMD!!!" that so-and-so within the group is responsible for some act which requires them to "respond", and further their stated agenda.
Your Focus Betrays Your Intent, SPOOK
Focus is repetitive...
17.08.2005 21:35
And where's yer proof of spookdom lying fraudster?
magoo
Turkiye and AB
17.08.2005 22:27
The capitalist elite in Turkey tries to manupulate Turkish people with media propoganda, but we started to wake up from the deep sleep.
EU is the most important project of the capitalist elite and multi-national companies. It brings nothing to Eupean people. We should struggle together against the elite and set up Socialist European Union instead of Capitalist imperalist EU!
Kemalist
e-mail:
kemalist@kemalistler.net
Buzz Off
18.08.2005 18:25
al Qaeda = CIA/Mossad
al Qaeda = CIA/Mossad
20.08.2005 11:17
I'll glady translate any BND or BfV reports.
Magoo
'P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
23.08.2005 03:37
It is my understanding that this program has already been initiated, however that might not be the official story.
Incidents such as the exposure of a Mossad operation attempting to create and direct an "Al Qaeda cell" in Palestine suggests that there may be much more to this program than anyone cares to talk about. These policies seem just as much about continuing the illusion of a dire threat as securing anyone from acts of violence.
'P2OG' allows Pentagon to fight dirty
By David Isenberg
"Run away from the light": Such might be the motto of a new, covert policy that the Bush administration is considering implementing.
According to recent news reports, it would be the largest expansion into the world of black ops and covert action since the end of the Vietnam War in the 1970s.
And that's saying quite a lot, considering that since Vietnam the Pentagon has not exactly been dormant in this area.
As well-known military analyst William Arkin pointed out in an October 27 column in the Los Angeles Times, the development of the Pentagon's covert counter-terror capability has its roots in the 1979 Iran hostage crisis. The army created a highly compartmentalized organization that could collect clandestine intelligence independent of the rest of the US intelligence community, and follow through with covert military action. Today, it operates under the code name Grey Fox. In Afghanistan it operated alongside the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) paramilitary Special Activities Division and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command.
Then there are numerous recent initiatives, such as net assessment capabilities at combatant commands, a new campaign support group at Fort Bragg, a counter-terrorism Technology Support Office, to name just a few.
Yet the Pentagon wants more. Its Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a 2002 "Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism". Excerpts from that study, dated August 16, were leaked and obtained by the Federation of American Scientists, which posted them on their website. The report was produced by a 10-member panel of military experts that included Vice Admiral William O Studeman, former director of the National Security Agency.
According to the leak, the United States is engaged in a global war on terrorism that is "a real war" in case anyone doubts it. This means, among other things, a "committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach" against whom the US will wage "a long, at times violent, and borderless war" which "requires new strategies, postures and organization".
That explains why the United States has, so to speak, decided to fight fire with fire. Although the study is filled with lots of the usual buzzwords and phrases that Pentagon planners love, such as "robust connectivity, agile ground forces, adaptive joint command and control and discriminant use of force", one thing that does stand out is its call for "preemption/proaction/interdiction/disruption/quic k-response capabilities".
This is consistent with the administration’s new National Security Strategy, which called for preemption; indeed, since the DSB study preceded the release of the strategy, it is possible that the strategy was written to incorporate some of its aspects.
The study urges the Pentagon to "take the terrorist threat as seriously as it takes the likelihood and consequences of major theater war", urging officials to launch secret missions and intelligence operations to penetrate and disrupt terrorist cells abroad. Some of those operations should be aimed at signaling to countries that harbor terrorists that "their sovereignty will be at risk".
If adopted, some of the proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities.
But William Schneider Jr, chairman of the DSB, rejected such concerns, saying that the panel set out to identify ways that special operations units could do more to assist the war on terrorism, not encroach on other agencies' authority.
"The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets," Schneider said. He emphasized that the board was not recommending any changes to long-standing US policies banning assassinations, or requiring presidents to approve in advance US covert operations. Nor, he said, was the panel advocating changes that would erode congressional oversight.
Yet lawmakers have expressed concern with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's push to expand the Pentagon's covert capabilities, mainly because the Pentagon is not subject to rules that require the CIA to report its covert activities to Congress.
The DSB summary document suggests that many changes are already under way. It cites the expansion of existing intelligence analysis centers and the creation of new management teams to direct covert operations at such installations as Fort Bragg, where US special forces such as Delta Force are based.
It recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception. For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities.
To bolster government HUMINT capabilities, the task force advances the idea of an intelligence "surge/unsurge" capability - a "robust, global cadre of retirees, reservists and others who are trained and qualified to serve on short notice, including expatriates". This group could be pressed into service during times of crisis.
P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at "stimulating reactions" among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to "quick-response" attacks by US forces. The means by which it would do this is the far greater use of special operations forces.
Responsibility and accountability for the P2OG would be vested in a "Special Operations Executive" in the National Security Council (NSC). The NSC would plan operations but not oversee their execution in order to avoid comparisons to past abuses, such as the Iran-Contra operations run out of the NSC by Oliver North during the Reagan administration. Under the board's proposal, NSC plans would be executed by the Pentagon or the CIA.
Costs would include developing new means to enable "deep penetration of adversaries" ($1.7 billion annually); exercises and gaming ($100 million annually); development of technical capabilities and the hiring of 500 new staff ($800 million annually); establishment of centers of excellence to handle increased workload ($500 million annually); and expansion of the Joint Forces net assessment activity ($100 million annually). The total cost is envisaged as $3.3 billion.
The DSB study also provides tantalizing glimpses of new capabilities already in the works, referring to new high-tech sensors in development that would enable the United States more closely to track the movements of vehicles or even individuals by satellite. Some of these capabilities are already advanced, such as high-altitude airships, thermobaric weapons and improved urban assault capabilities. Other new projects are being executed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
If the DSB proposal is adopted, it would only reinforce recent Pentagon activity. The Washington Post reported last month that the Pentagon was preparing to consolidate control of most of the global war on terrorism under the US Special Operations Command, signaling an intensified but more covert approach to the next phase in the battle against al-Qaeda and other international terrorist groups.
Special Operations units have been active in Pakistan for months and are training military forces in Yemen and Georgia. These missions could provide a cover for conducting any covert raids and other actions against suspected al-Qaeda members in the two countries.
The United States has also placed more than 500 Special Operations troops in the African nation of Djibouti, where they are near potential hot spots such as Yemen and Somalia. The USS Belleau Wood, an amphibious assault ship that carries attack helicopters and a handful of Harrier jump jets, has been stationed off the Horn of Africa for about six weeks, ready to carry those troops and some specialized helicopters.
And, in early October, the Washington Times reported that US commandos hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda guerrillas in Afghanistan gained permission to employ "source operations" - clandestine tactics typically confined to the CIA.
"Source operations" generally refers to recruiting and maintaining spies within the enemy's camp. In Afghanistan, it means finding Afghans and Arabs, possibly within the Taliban and al-Qaeda network, who would supply intelligence to US special-operations forces.
David Eisenberg
For Magoo
25.08.2005 10:51
Refuting their crackpot ideas with facts is never going to work, I admire the attempt but it's better to let them have their paranoia and their own web site
T