DoD Statement on Jack Shaw and the Iraq Telecommunications Contract

[seemslikeadream]

For several months there have been allegations in the press that activities of John A. Shaw, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for International Technology Security, were under investigation by the Inspector General of the Department of Defense (DoD IG). The allegations were examined by DoD IG criminal investigators in Baghdad and a criminal investigation was never opened.



Furthermore, attempts to discredit Shaw and his report on Iraqi telecommunications contracting matters were brought to the attention of the DoD IG and were accordingly referred to the FBI.



Shaw carried out his duties in the investigation of Iraqi telecommunications matters pursuant to the authorities spelled out in the Memorandum of Understanding between the DoD IG and the Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. Shaw provided a copy of his report to the DOD IG and, at the request of the Coalition Provisional Authority, to the Iraqi National Communications and Media Commission.



Shaw is not now, nor has he ever been, under investigation by the DoD IG. Any questions concerning FBI activities should be addressed to the FBI.
http://www.dod.mil/releases/2004/nr20040810-1103.html

[aquart]

1. So he did his job and they tried to slime him?

Gosh, I wonder why.

[seemslikeadream]

2. Winds of Change:Troubled Waters Ahead For the Neo Cons

by
Wayne Madsen

The neo-con attack on Shaw was predictable considering their previous attacks on Ambassador Joe Wilson, his wife Valerie Plame, former U.S. Central Command chief General Anthony Zinni, former counter-terrorism coordinator Richard Clarke, former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, CIA counter-terrorism agent Michael Scheuer (the "anonymous" author of Imperial Hubris who has recently been gagged by the Bush administration), fired FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (who likely discovered a penetration by Israeli and other intelligence assets using the false flag of the Turkish American Council and who also has been gagged by the Bush administration), and all those who took on the global domination cabal. But Shaw showed incredible moxie. When he decided to investigate Pentagon Inspector General Reports that firms tied to Perle and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz were benefiting from windfall profit contracts in Iraq, Shaw decided to go to Iraq himself to find out what was going on. When Shaw was denied entry into Iraq by U.S. military officers (yes, a top level official of the Defense Department was denied access to Iraq by U.S. military personnel!), he decided to sneak into the country disguised as a Halliburton contractor. Using the cover of Cheney's old company to get the goods on Cheney's friends' illegal activities was yet another masterful stroke of genius by Shaw. But it also earned him the wrath of the neo-cons. They soon leaked a story to the Los Angeles Times claiming that Shaw actually snuck into Iraq to ensure that Qualcomm (on whose board sat a friend of Shaw's) was awarded a lucrative cell network contract.

But nothing could be further from the truth. Shaw, who worked for Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, represented the Old Guard Republican entity that in August 2003 set up shop in the Pentagon right under the noses of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Feith to investigate the neo-con cabal and their illegal contract deals. The entity, known as the International Armament and Technology Trade Directorate, was soon shut down as a result of neo-con pressure. Not to be deterred, Shaw continued his investigation of the neo-cons. Although the neo-cons told the Los Angeles Times that the FBI was investigating Shaw, the reverse was the case: the FBI was investigating the neo-cons, particularly Perle and Wolfowitz, for fraudulent activities involving Iraqi contracts. And in worse news for the neo-cons: Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was giving the Inspector General's and Shaw's investigations a "wink and a nod" of approval.

The financial stakes for the Pentagon are high - the Iraqi CPA's Inspector General recently revealed that over $1 billion of Iraqi money was missing from the audit books on Iraqi contracts. For Shaw and the FBI, it was a matter of what they suspected for many years - that Perle, Wolfowitz, and their comrades were running entities that ensured favorable treatment for Israeli activities - whether they were business opportunities in a U.S.-occupied Arab country or protecting Israeli spies operating within the U.S. defense and intelligence establishments.

Shaw certainly must have recalled how, during the Reagan administration, an Israeli spy named Jonathan Pollard was able to steal massive amounts of sensitive U.S. intelligence over a long period of time and hand it over to his Israeli control officer, a dangerous and deadly agent provocateur named Rafael "Rafi" Eitan. That had disastrous effects on U.S. intelligence operations throughout the world because some of the documents were handed by the Israelis to the Soviets in return for letting more Soviet Jews emigrate to Israel.

more
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081104_winds_change_summary.shtml

Thanks lancdem and medeak
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x2197970

[seemslikeadream]

22. Tracking weapons

NUSACC welcomes Kuwaiti Minister of Commerce & Industry
Monday, March 1st, 2004, U.S.-Arab Tradeline
Rebecca Givner-Forbes
TEXT On February 6, the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce (NUSACC) welcomed to Washington H.E. Abdullah Al-Taweel, Kuwait’s Minister of Commerce and Industry, with a luncheon at the Four Seasons Hotel. More than fifty representatives from the government, press, business, and trade associations turned out for this high-level event.
Minister Al-Taweel arrived in the US on February 5 with his delegation, composed of government and private sector leaders, to sign a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with the US Trade Representative, Ambassador Robert Zoellick. NUSACC’s luncheon kicked off the delegation’s five-day visit.
NUSACC’s President, David Hamod, opened the event by welcoming Minister Al-Taweel and introducing Kuwait’s ambassador to the United States, H.E. Salem Al-Sabah. The Ambassador characterized the strong US-Kuwaiti alliance as “Partners in Peace,” describing Kuwait as a gateway into Iraq. He concluded by stating that Kuwait was working to recapture its leading trade and commerce status in the region and that Kuwait’s “prime partner in that effort will be the United States.”
The second guest speaker was Hon. John A. Shaw, Deputy Under Secretary for International Technology Security at the Department of Defense, who shared valuable information on the contracting process for Iraq reconstruction projects. He also described Kuwait’s vital role in providing inroads to Iraq and the opportunities available to Kuwaiti businesses to supply reconstruction materials.
Mr. Shaw highlighted efforts that are underway by the Public Affairs Committee of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to improve the contracting process. In addition, he announced the establishment of an Inspector General’s office to improve the way reconstruction resources are distributed. The Inspector General’s office will have a significant presence, and will “alter the way a lot of things are being done on the ground,” Mr. Shaw contended.
The Iraqi office will be modeled on the one that was established in Kuwait to manage funds that the US provided for reconstruction there. In that case, a full $75 million was allotted for the Inspector General’s office to oversee $18.5 billion in reconstruction funds.
Speaking about future contract opportunities, Deputy Under Secretary Shaw noted that a lot of resources would be directed at further developing the infrastructure at Um Qasr and expanding the port’s capacity. He also reached out to the Kuwaiti delegation, emphasizing that opportunities would be available not only for American companies but for regional players as well.
more
http://www.arabdatanet.com/news/DocResults.asp?DocId=5953


Tracking weapons
The Pentagon has started an effort with the difficult task of tracking conventional arms transfers around the world and working to fix weak weapons-export controls.

The program is led by John Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, who also is a Pentagon inspector general for international armament and trade through a memorandum of understanding with the Pentagon inspector general.

"We handle international technology-transfer issues, as well as the investigative side of things," said Edward Timperlake, the Pentagon's director of technology assessment, who works with Mr. Shaw.

The focus of the effort is not on weapons of mass destruction. Rather, the group is looking at conventional arms and dual-use items with commercial as well as military applications. The program began after Operation Iraqi Freedom, which uncovered huge stockpiles of foreign weapons in Iraq. The weapons came from a variety of suppliers, including Russia, France and China.
more
http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring022704.html

Kuwait Economic Mission Urges Closer U.S. Ties
A high-level delegation from Kuwait came to Washington last week showcasing business opportunities in the nation, particularly regarding reconstruction projects in Iraq. Keeping up the profile of wireless broadband as key in the communications component of such projects, I participated on behalf of WCA in a luncheon Friday at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, hosted by the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce and its new President David Hamod. Featured speakers included Kuwait Minister of Commerce and Industry Abdullah Al-Taweel and the Hon. John A. Shaw, who is Deputy Under Secretary for International Technology Security at the U.S. Department of Defense. A key figure in the reconstruction effort, he described the Coalition Provision Authority website http://www.rebuilding-iraq.net as the best first stop for any would-be contractor. I spoke with the featured speakers at the luncheon, a fairly intimate function introduced by Kuwait's Ambassador to the U.S. and with about 55 attendees - members of the National US-Arab Chamber of Commerce, Kuwait Chamber of Commerce & Industry, relevant U.S. government and Kuwait government agencies, plus Reuters and the Washington Times. These are the kinds of ties that WCA fosters for members through the year, and will be especially prominent during WCA 2004 this June in Washington, DC. For those with more immediate interests in Kuwait opportunities, visit the site of the Kuwait Chamber of Commerce & Industry (www.kcci.org.kw), illustrating a major theme from the Friday luncheon, "Kuwait: A launching pad for the region."
http://www.wcai.com/hs_news2004.htm


New agency for Iraq contracts
by correspondents in London, news.com.au
October 14th, 2003



THE United States will create a new agency, under the aegis of the Pentagon, to oversee the distribution of contracts to rebuild Iraq, a US defence official told a conference today.

The new agency, as yet unnamed, will be introduced at the beginning of next month under the direction of retired admiral David Nash, said Deputy Under-Secretary of Defence for International Technology Security John Shaw.
It will be charged with coordinating sub-contracting work in Iraq, notably by US groups Bechtel and Halliburton, the main contractors in Iraq's reconstruction, Shaw told the Doing Business in Iraq conference.

Shaw admitted there were "divergences" between the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - responsible for the rebuilding of Iraq under the supervision of the State Department - and the Department of Defence over the distribution of sub-contracts.

The US administration was represented by several officials at the conference, which also heard calls for Western firms to set aside their doubts and help to rebuild war-torn Iraq.
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=1383


Nomination of John A. Shaw To Be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce
September 12, 1991
The President today announced his intention to nominate John A. Shaw, of Maryland, to be an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement. He would succeed Quincy Mellon Krosby.

Since 1988 Dr. Shaw has served as Associate Deputy Secretary of the Department of Commerce. Prior to this Dr. Shaw served as senior advisor to the Administrator of the Agency for International Development, 1988; and as vice president for Washington Operations for the Hudson Institute, 1987 - 1988.

Dr. Shaw graduated from Williams College, (B.A., 1962) and Cambridge University (M.A., 1967: and Ph.D., 1976). He was born July 1, 1939, in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Shaw is married, has two children, and resides in Washington, DC
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1991/91091208.html

[seemslikeadream]

3. Defense Official Probed on Contracts

Los Angeles Times
July 07, 2004
T. Christian Miller

Washington -- A senior Defense Department official conducted unauthorized investigations of Iraq reconstruction efforts and used their results to push for lucrative contracts for friends and their business clients, according to current and former Pentagon officials and documents.
John "Jack" Shaw, deputy undersecretary for international technology security, represented himself as an agent of the Pentagon's inspector general in conducting the investigations this year, sources said.

In one case, Shaw disguised himself as an employee of Halliburton Co. and gained access to a port in southern Iraq after he was denied entry by the U.S. military, the sources said.

In that investigation, Shaw found problems with operations at the port of Umm al Qasr, Pentagon sources said. In another, he criticized a competition sponsored by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority to award cell phone licenses in Iraq.

In both cases, Shaw urged government officials to fix the alleged problems by directing multimillion-dollar contracts to companies linked to his friends, without competitive bidding, according to the Pentagon sources and documents. In the case of the port, the clients of a lobbyist friend won a no- bid contract for dredging.

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/unitedstates/democracy/2253.html
Pentagon urges repeal of Iraq phone contracts


By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


The Pentagon has asked the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to cancel three contracts for Iraqi cell phone networks worth about $500 million annually, citing fraud and the companies' links to an Iraqi-born Briton with ties to Saddam Hussein.
A June 14 memorandum from John A. Shaw, deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, says an investigation uncovered "fraud on the Ministry of Communications by Orascom, Atheer and AsiaCell."

The companies are suspected of rigging the bids for the cell phone contracts in favor of Nadhmi Auchi, who owns part of Orascom and a controlling interest in the bank BNP Paribas, which "is the French bank selected by Saddam Hussein to run the Oil for Food program."
"His role in assisting the Saddam regime, to his own immense profit, makes all three firms ineligible under Section 6.1.4 in that all the evidence strongly indicates Auchi had a direct or indirect ownership interest in all three firms at the time of signature, and his role continues today," the memorandum said.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040621-115845-4340r.htm

[IndianaGreen]

4. However, Dov Zakheim, former DOD Comptroller is under investigation!

DOD IG is investigating Zakheim, who reported directly to Paul Wolfowitz. Apparently there is the matter of the money that was appropriated for Afghan reconstruction that got sidetracked for the invasion of Iraq before there was any Congressional authorization for doing so. There is a little known law with a funny name that was broken if the allegations against Zakheim bear fruit, the Anti-Deficiency Act. This law does have teeth!

You heard it first hear on DU's LBN!

[seemslikeadream]

8. Dr. Zakheim

Dov S. Zakheim was sworn in as the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and Chief Financial Officer for the Department of Defense on May 4, 2001. Dr. Zakheim has previously served in a number of key positions in government and private business. Most recently, he was corporate vice president of System Planning Corp., a technology, research and analysis firm based in Arlington, Va. He also served as chief executive officer of SPC International Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economic consulting. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then-Governor Bush.

From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Policy). In that capacity, he played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic planning processes. Dr. Zakheim held a variety of other DoD posts from 1981 to 1985. Earlier, he was employed by the National Security and International Affairs Division of the Congressional Budget Office.

Dr. Zakheim has been a participant on a number of government, corporate, non-profit and charitable boards. His government service includes terms on the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad; the Task Force on Defense Reform (1997); the first Board of Visitors of the Department of Defense Overseas Regional Schools (1998); and the Defense Science Board task force on "The Impact of DoD Acquisition Policies on the Health of the Defense Industry" (2000).

A 1970 graduate of Columbia University with a bachelor's in government, Dr. Zakheim also studied at the London School of Economics. He earned his doctorate in economics and politics at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where he was graduate fellow in programs of both the National Science Foundation and Columbia College, and then a research fellow. Dr. Zakheim has been an adjunct professor at the National War College, Yeshiva University, Columbia University and Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., where he was presidential scholar.
http://www.defenselink.mil/bios/zakheim_bio.html

[seemslikeadream]

9. Dov Zakheim, called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event

In a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century" published by The American Enterprise's "Project for a New American Century"(1), System Planning Corporation (SPC) International executive, Dov Zakheim, called for "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor" being necessary to foster the frame of mind needed for the American public to support a war in the Middle East that would politically and culturally reshape the region. A respected and established voice in the intelligence community, his views were eagerly accepted, and Dov went from his position at Systems Planning Corporation to become the Comptroller of the Pentagon in May 2001.

http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

[seemslikeadream]

23. This quote is incorrect

He was a signitory to a document that actually said,


"Furthermore, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to ba a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."


http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf

sorry for the error

[seemslikeadream]

10. The CEO of SPC

Dr. Dov Zakheim has been nominated to serve as Under Secretary of Defense and Comptroller. He is presently the CEO of SPC International, and in the past he has served as Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources as well as in a variety of Defense Department positions under former President Reagan. He was a member of the Task Force on Defense Reform under then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen and in February of 2000 he was appointed to the Defense Science Board Task Force on the Impact of DoD Acquisition Policies on the Health of the Defense Industry. He has received the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal; the Bronze Palm to the DoD Distinguished Public Service Medal and the CBO Director's Award for Outstanding Service. A New York native, Dr. Zakheim is a graduate of Columbia University and has also studied at the London School of Economics. He received his doctorate degree from St. Anthony's College at Oxford University.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/20010212-2.html

It was an SPC subsidiary, TRIDATA CORPORATION, that oversaw the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993.

[Octafish]

26. CP asks: "Is Zackheim the mastermind behind 9-11?"

Dov Zakheim: The Mastermind Behind 9/11?

by STEPHEN ST. JOHN

Coincidence or conspiracy? Former Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim was CEO of Systems Planning Corp., which markets the technology to take over the controls of an airborne vehicle already in flight. For example, the Flight Termination System technology could hijack hijackers and bring the plane down safely.

With regard to Blueridge's reference to remote control of 9/11 flights, please check out System Planning Corporation of Alexandria, Virginia. www.sysplan.com

System Planning Corporation designs, manufactures and distributes highly sophisticated technology that enables an operator to fly by remote control as many as eight different airborne vehicles at the same time from one position either on the ground or airborne.

For those looking for an extraordinarily interesting hobby, please see photos and specs of this hardware (about the size of a small refrigerator)at www.sysplan.com/Radar/CTS

Just be sure your mom doesn't catch you causing havoc with the airlines.

CONTINUED...

http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=101&contentid=1406

[seemslikeadream]

29. Flight Termination System

System Planning Corporation's is proud to offer the Flight Termination System (FTS), a fully redundant turnkey range safety and test system for remote control and flight termination of airborne test vehicles. The FTS consists of SPC's Command Transmitter System (CTS) and custom control, interface, and monitoring subsystems. The system is fully programmable and is flexible enough to meet the changing and challenging requirements of today's modern test ranges.




http://www.sysplan.com/


Dr. Dov S. Zakheim
CEO, Systems Planning Corporation International

Dov S. Zakheim is Corporate Vice President of System Planning Corporation (SPC), a high technology, research, analysis, and manufacturing firm based in Arlington, Virginia. He is also Chief Executive Officer of SPC International Corporation, a subsidiary of SPC that specializes in political, military and economic consulting, and international sales and analysis. In addition, Dr. Zakheim serves as Consultant to the Secretary of Defense and the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. He is an Adjunct Scholar of the Heritage Foundation, and a Senior Associate of the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

From 1985 until March 1987, Dr. Zakheim was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Planning and Resources. In that capacity, he played an active role in the Department's system acquisition and strategic planning processes. Dr. Zakheim also guided Department of Defense policy in a number of international economic fora including the US-USSR Commercial Commission; the Caribbean Basin Initiative; and the Canadian-US Free Trade Agreement. He also successfully negotiated numerous arms cooperation agreements with various US allies.


A graduate of Columbia University, New York, where he earned his B.A., Surnma Cum Laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, Dr. Zakheim also studied at the London School of Economics. Dr. Zakheim earned his doctorate in economics and politics at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow, a Columbia College Kellett Fellow, and a post-doctoral Research Fellow. He has served as Adjunct Professor at the National War College, Yeshiva University and at Columbia University. He is currently Presidential Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Trinity College, Hartford, CT.

Dr. Zakheim served for two terms as a Presidential appointee to the United States Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. In 1997 he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Cohen to the Task Force on Defense Reform. In May 1999 Secretary Cohen named him to the first Board of Visitors of the Department of Defense Overseas Regional Schools.

Dr. Zakheim writes, lectures, and provides radio and television commentary on national defense and foreign policy issues both domestically and internationally, including appearances on major US network news telecasts, McNeil-Lehrer Newshour, Larry King Live, BBC Arab and World Service. and Israeli, Swedish, and Japanese television. He is an editorial board member of Israel Affairs and of The Round Table (the Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs), and serves on review panels for the Wilson Center for International Scholars, the United States Institute of Peace, and the U.S. Naval Institute. He is the author of Flight of the Lavi: Inside a US.-Israeli Crisis (Brassey's, 1996), Congress and National Security in the Post Cold War Era (The Nixon Center, 1998), and numerous articles and chapters in books. Dr. Zakheim is also a trustee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute; serves on the Board of Directors of Search for Common Ground, and of Friends of the Jewish Chapel of the United States Naval Academy; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and other professional organizations. Dr. Zakheim is a member of the advisory boards of the Center for Security Policy, the Initiative for Peace and Cooperation in the Middle East, and the American Jewish Committee

more
http://www.ndu.edu/inss/symposia/jointops00/zakheim.html

[IndianaGreen]

11. Yep, that's the guy!

Another of the PNAC boys. He is no longer in DOD.

[seemslikeadream]

27. Pentagon finance manager resigns

Thursday 11 March 2004

Rabbi Dov Zakheim's refused to tell journalists the exact reason for his departure on Wednesday. A former adjunct economics professor at New York's Yeshiva University, Rabbi Zakheim has spent more than 30 years working in various jobs at the Pentagon.

But he has also worked in private industry, specifically as a consultant to McDonnell Douglas and Boeing.


Rabbi Dov Zakheim,
Pentagon comptroller and chief financial officer, a conservative Republican who graduated from Jew's College in London in 1973, Zakheim first joined the Department of Defence in 1981 under former president Ronald Reagan.

He was responsible for such tasks as preparing defence planning guidance for nuclear war.

As Pentagon Comptroller and Chief Financial Officer, Rabbi Zakheim's priority has been financial management.
But that does not include additional spending needed to support US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - a sum expected to range from $30 billion to $50 billion.


A General Accounting Office report found Defence inventory systems so lax that the US army lost track of 56 aeroplanes, 32 tanks and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/635B6007-9DD0-436C-BFF6-E6521520B1C7.htm

[seemslikeadream]

30. US tells Afghan warlords security needed for aid

US tells Afghan warlords security needed for aid

MAZAR-I-SHARIF: US Undersecretary of Defence Dov Zakheim has told rival factions in northern Afghanistan they cannot expect reconstruction aid if they continue to fight each other.

Speaking after meeting faction leaders in the northern town of Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday, Zakheim said there was a link between such aid and security. “Of course, if the conflict continues, it makes it very hard for the humanitarian efforts,” he said.

“They have seen that we have invested in places where there are no skirmishes.”

In Mazar, Zakheim met Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, his rival Ustad Atta Mohammad of the Jamiat-e-Islami faction, and a representative of the Shi’ite Hezb-i-Wahdat. Repeated clashes between Dostum’s and Atta’s forces in northern Afghanistan in recent months have claimed the lives of dozens of people, both soldiers and non-combatants.

Zakheim said he had received assurances from them that they would work to improve security to allow implementation of humanitarian and reconstruction programmes.

Last week, after a visit by the US special representative to Afghanistan Zalmai Khalilzad, the rivals agreed to start disarming their forces in the cities and remote areas.

Zakheim said relations between Dostum and Atta appeared civil.

“They seemed to be very comfortable together,” he said, adding that said they were working together to disarm and reduce the number of what they termed “skirmishes” between their forces.

Both Atta and Dostum are members of President Hamid Karzai’s U.S-backed government that came to power last year after the ouster of the former Taliban regime. However they have appeared more interested in pursuing regional interests than helping the central government establish its control.

Last month Karzai threatened to sack regional warlords and government officials if they continued to abuse their power.

Before his visit to the north, Zakheim met in Kabul with Defence Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim to discuss US-backed efforts to rebuild the national army, ministry officials said. —Reuters

more
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_3-11-2002_pg4_15

It was Karzai who declared at a February 26 joint news conference, with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on the occasion of his one-day visit to Kabul, that the Taliban were defeated and "as a movement does not exist any more." "They are gone," he said, attributing continuing violence to "common criminals", as opposed to politically driven insurgents.

These were the boldest public statements made by Karzai about the Taliban since he took office after the Taliban's ouster, in early 2002. Similarly dismissive of the group's capabilities, Rumsfeld stated: "I'm not seeing any indication the Taliban pose any military threat to Afghanistan." Only a week earlier, one of Rumsfeld's top aides at the Pentagon, Under Secretary of Defense Dov S Zakheim, contemptuously spoke of the "cowardly" nature of Taliban operations.

Such proclamations would normally arouse feelings of unbridled relief and joy among most Afghans and internationals working in Afghanistan - that is, if they did not contrast so sharply with recent events on the ground. More than 550 people have been killed over the past six months, making it the most violent period in the two years that have elapsed since the fall of the Taliban regime. Within 12 days, between February 14 and February 26, nine Afghan aid workers and one US soldier were killed in separate incidents across the country. Perhaps what is most alarming about this recent spate of attacks are the tactics that have been employed. Since December 28, 2003, there have been four suicide attacks in Afghanistan, resulting in the deaths of eight people - six Afghan intelligence agents and two International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) peacekeeping soldiers.

The evidence does not support the notion of an overwhelmed and defeated enemy.
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Imcfb34lGvcJ:discuss.agonist.org/yabbse/index.php%3Fboard%3D1%3Baction%3Ddisplay%3Bthreadid%3D18492+zakheim+Fahim&hl=en

Defense Department Hails Progress Toward Afghan Elections
Official briefs reporters on Rumsfeld's agenda for Afghan stopover
11 August 2004
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-2609.html

[seemslikeadream]

12. IndianaGreen is this what you're refering to

Is this the reason he stepped down to spend more time with his family?

Analysis: Defense budget practices probed
Thursday, 02-Oct-2003 10:00AM PDT Story from United Press International
Copyright 2003 by United Press International (via ClariNet)

MIAMI, Oct. 2 (UPI) --

Zakheim said, however, he was limited in his response because of the ongoing audit of the issue, which originally was sparked by a telephone call to the Pentagon's Defense Hotline.


"Our objective will be to review the allegations to the Defense Hotline concerning funds 'parked' at the U.S. Special Operations Command by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)," said a letter from the inspector general's office to Gen. Charles Holland, who has since retired as Special Operations commander.

Among several documents The St. Petersburg Times obtained during its investigation was e-mail sent by Special Operations Command Comptroller Elaine Kingston to colleagues in February 2002.
She said an unidentified official in the Pentagon comptroller's office had asked her if the command could "park" $40 million of research-and-development money in its proposed budget for the 2003 fiscal year.


The programs where the money was placed included missile warning systems on aircraft, infrared equipment on helicopters and radar system. The amounts ranged from $2 million to $5 million.
Kingston said in the e-mail message she coached her colleagues on how to account for the money and avoid attracting congressional attention to it.

"We are doing a favor for the OSD (Office of the Secretary of Defense) which we hope will benefit the command if we should need additional (research and development funds)," the message said.
Young said at the hearing on President Bush's request for $87 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan Tuesday that he wants to know if it is a common practice.

Young is clearly not finished and called it "an obvious attempt to keep from Congress what was happening. I think that would make you suspicious. It makes me a little suspicious."

more
http://quickstart.clari.net/qs_se/webnews/wed/dp/Uus-defense-young-analysis.RUt1_DO2.html

[IndianaGreen]

16. That's a great find, seemslikeadream!

Apparently there is more money involved than what they "parked" at SOCOM. DOD IG is currently doing an audit of all funds distributions made at the direction of OSD.

As the story said, the Anti-Deficiency Act is the law in question. If I recall correctly, the penalties are $5,000 and a year in prison for each violation. The activities under investigation involve several violations for each illegal distribution or pulling of funds, and each level of distribution, will count as one offense. This can add up pretty quick!

Great research, seemslikeadream! :thumbsup:

[seemslikeadream]

17. Thanks IndianaGreen

I just want to know more about Dov

Dov S. Zakheim to Resign from the Department of Defense
March 24, 2004
In this position, Zakheim initiated an enterprise architecture to achieve a vision of simpler budget processes, activity-based costing, and a clean audit by 2007. He oversaw three Department of Defense budgets, each totaling more than $300 billion, and recently proposed a 2005 budget of $401.7 billion. He played a leading role in raising in excess of $13 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, and walked through six wartime supplementals in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He further created the Defense Business Board and worked closely with the Office of Management and Budget and the Government Accounting Office on financial management affairs.

“I am proud to have been part of President Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld's senior Pentagon team for the past three years,” said Zakheim reflecting on his tour. “It has been an exhilarating, albeit extremely demanding experience. Even as we have addressed the many concerns arising out of the War on Terror and Operations Enduring Freedom, Noble Eagle and Iraqi Freedom, including winning both military and financial support from the international community for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, we have also tended to ongoing budget needs to support our forces and defense civilians at home and abroad. We have also made great strides in rectifying the department's antiquated financial management system; we continue to anticipate that DoD will receive clean audits in the not too distant future.”

Regarding Zakheim’s resignation, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said, “Dov Zakheim has been a cornerstone to the Department of Defense over the past three years. He has been a leader in helping transform the Department to better address the needs of the 21st century. I thank him for his commitment and his counsel. He will be missed.”

Zakheim was sworn in to his current position May 4, 2001. Prior to that, his government service included a number of key positions, to include from 1985 until March 1987, as the deputy under secretary of defense for planning and resources in the office of the under secretary of defense (policy). He also held a variety of other Department of Defense posts from 1981-1985 and served with the National Security and International Affairs Division of the Congressional Budget Office.

During other periods of Zakheim’s career, he served as a senior foreign policy advisor to then-Gov. Bush, during the 2000 presidential campaign. Prior to that, he was the corporate vice president of System Planning Corporation (SPC), a technology, research and analysis firm. He also served as chief executive officer of SPC International Corp., a subsidiary specializing in political, military and economical consulting.

http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-635.html

"According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions," Rumsfeld admitted.

$2.3 trillion — that's $8,000 for every man, woman and child in America. To understand how the Pentagon can lose track of trillions, consider the case of one military accountant who tried to find out what happened to a mere $300 million.

"We know it's gone. But we don't know what they spent it on," said Jim Minnery, Defense Finance and Accounting Service.

Minnery, a former Marine turned whistle-blower, is risking his job by speaking out for the first time about the millions he noticed were missing from one defense agency's balance sheets. Minnery tried to follow the money trail, even crisscrossing the country looking for records.

"The director looked at me and said 'Why do you care about this stuff?' It took me aback, you know? My supervisor asking me why I care about doing a good job," said Minnery.

He was reassigned and says officials then covered up the problem by just writing it off.

"They have to cover it up," he said. "That's where the corruption comes in. They have to cover up the fact that they can't do the job."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

18. I look forward to more time with my family

Zakheim has been a participant on a number of government, corporate, non-profit and charitable boards. His government service includes terms on the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad; the Task Force on Defense Reform (1997); the first Board of Visitors of the Department of Defense Overseas Regional Schools (1998); and the Defense Science Board task force on "The Impact of DoD Acquisition Policies on the Health of the Defense Industry" (2000).

A 1970 graduate of Columbia University with a bachelor's in government, Zakheim also studied at the London School of Economics. He earned his doctorate in economics and politics at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, where he was graduate fellow in programs of both the National Science Foundation and Columbia College, and then a research fellow. Zakheim has been an adjunct professor at the National War College, Yeshiva University, Columbia University and Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., where he was presidential scholar.

Zakheim has written, lectured and provided media commentary on national defense and foreign policy issues domestically and internationally. He is the author of "Flight of the Lavi: Inside a U.S.-Israeli Crisis" (Brassey's, 1996), "Congress and National Security in the Post-Cold War Era" (The Nixon Center, 1998), "Toward a Fortress Europe?" (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2000), and numerous articles and chapters in books.

Recently reflecting on the sacrifices associated with managing the financing of the nation's war effort, Zakheim said, “Our people need to be constantly on their guard, constantly at the ready, razor sharp, in difficult conditions; we don’t want to make (the mission) one iota more difficult over something that’s easily taken care of … if something bothers our people in uniform, I don’t consider it trivial at all.”

“I look forward to more time with my family, and to an exciting new phase of my life,” said Zakheim, regarding his departure from the Department of Defense, “but I shall indeed miss the pleasure of working closely with my colleagues at DoD, and throughout the government, in the Congress, and in many capitals overseas.”
http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/m-news+article+storyid-635.html

[seemslikeadream]

19. So where is that missing $1.1 trillion?

In a report to the DoD comptroller, Undersecretary of Defense Dov Zakheim, acting Assistant Inspector General for Auditing David Steensma wrote: "We reported that DOD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DOD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DOD financial statements for FY2000. For FY2001 we did not attempt to quantify amounts of unsupported accounting entries; however, we did confirm that DOD continued to enter material amounts of unsupported accounting entries to the financial data."

What this gibberish means is that the DoD still cannot account for at least $1.1 trillion from fiscal 2000 under former president Bill Clinton, and the assistant inspector general of DOD wouldn't even touch the unsupported money expenditures for fiscal 2001 because "material amounts" still couldn't be accounted for properly in the year George W. Bush came to power. The trillion-dollar question is how much is "material amounts"? Because the auditor would not "quantify" the amount, some fear it's worse than the previous year's unaccounted for $1.1 trillion.

Of course the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a "stand-alone" financial statement for 2001 because of "the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack."

So where is that missing $1.1 trillion? Traditionally the top dogs at the Pentagon haven't liked the word "missing." The rationale at DoD has been that just because the money can't be accounted for doesn't mean it is lost, stolen or strayed. According to Susan Hansen, a spokeswoman for DoD: "These are unsupported entries. When the auditors go to audit the books and they look at the balance sheet for the year, someone has entered in an adjustment because they made an error somewhere."
more
http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=246188

[emad]

20. Spookier and spookier (it IS Friday 13th...)

Creative accounting is what sent Enron down the pan. Are the same auditing techniques being used by the DoD? Or is there really something much worse being hidden?

I was going to say "payments to mercenaries" but $1.1trillion is an awful lot of freelancers.

Anyone remember just how much Junior returned in tax cuts to taxpayers when he slimed his way into office? About that same amount? Just wondering....

[seemslikeadream]

21. Grand old profiteering

Yet even Allbaugh is small-time compared to the latest defector to the private sector, Pentagon comptroller Dov Zakheim, who announced two weeks ago that he will be leaving for a partnership at Booz Allen Hamilton, the technology and management strategy giant that is one of the nation's biggest defense contractors. Although Zakheim is not nearly as familiar as Condoleezza Rice, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, or Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, he too has been identified as one of the ultrahawkish "Vulcans" who shaped Bush foreign and military policy from its earliest days. Zakheim has bustled through the revolving doors before, serving as a deputy undersecretary of defense during the Reagan administration, where he worked for Perle before leaving government to join a missile-defense contractor.

At the mammoth Booz Allen firm, Zakheim will join R. James Woolsey, the former director of central intelligence and Perle associate on the Bush Defense Policy Board. These were the defense intellectuals who favored invading Iraq long before Sept. 11 -- and long before any U.N. resolutions on the topic were introduced.
So far Booz Allen has yet to win any major Iraq contracts of its own, although it has shared Pentagon boodle for several years with Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that is by far the biggest contractor out there. (At a recent hearing on Halliburton's scandal-scarred performance in Iraq, Zakheim did his best to defend the vice president's old company. "They're not doing a great job," he shrugged, "but they're not doing a terrible job.")

Booz Allen swiftly jumped on the Baghdad bandwagon last May, when it co-sponsored (with the Republican-connected insurance giant American International Group) a postwar conference on "The Challenges for Business in Rebuilding Iraq" that featured speeches by Woolsey and Undersecretary of Defense Zakheim. (The price of admission for industry executives ranged from $528 to $1,100 a head.) Included was the chance for executives to participate in a "not-for-attribution session that will permit a dynamic, frank exchange of views on the opportunities and challenges businesses will face in post-conflict Iraq."

More recently, Booz Allen was listed as a partner in a controversial $327 million contract to outfit the new Iraqi army. The prime contractor in this murky deal was Nour America Inc., which on closer inspection turned out to be controlled by a close associate of Ahmad Chalabi, the dubious former exile promoted by Perle, Woolsey and their ideological associates as the best possible leader for Iraq after Saddam. Chalabi is a leading member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and enjoys enormous influence inside the Defense Department, which issued the Nour contract. Unfortunately Nour had scant qualifications, if any, for the lucrative contract. After protests from more qualified contractors who had lost out, the contract was withdrawn for rebidding. Meanwhile, Booz Allen denied any role in the Nour affair, aside from a post-bid $50,000 consulting contract.


more
http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:iUASMhjvMuIJ:www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/03/30/profiteers/+Booz+Allen+Hamilton+Zakheim&hl=en


GovCon Executive Speaker Series Featuring Former DCI James Woolsey

The GovCon Council is pleased to present this event in partnership with the International Exchange Business Council (IBEC), an emerging initiative of the Fairfax County Chamber.

R. James Woolsey has said that strategic security is the greatest challenge the business world faces today. In his role as a Vice President and officer in Booz Allen Hamilton’s Global Assurance practice, Mr. Woolsey helps corporations and government agencies integrate security into their strategic business planning in an effort to protect the vital networks upon which we all depend.

Those networks - electricity grids, oil and gas pipelines, telecommunications infrastructures, financial systems, food production and delivery systems and hundreds of others - are constructed to be responsive to the public and easily accessed and maintained. However, in a post-September 11 world, these characteristics translate to vulnerability.
http://www.gcn.com/events/16483.html

COMPANIES ON THE GROUND:
THE CHALLENGES FOR BUSINESS IN REBUILDING IRAQ
1 May 2003 - Washington DC
SPEAKERS

Kenneth H Bacon, President, Refugees International (confirmed)
Ashton Carter, Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs, Harvard University (confirmed)
Anthony H. Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, CSIS (confirmed)
Pat Cronin, Assistant Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development (confirmed)
Ambassador James Dobbins, Director, International Security and Defense Policy, RAND Corporation (confirmed)
Jane Harman, U.S. Representative (D-CA), Ranking Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (confirmed)
Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger, German Ambassador to the United States (confirmed)
Zoran Kusovac, Jane's Intelligence Review Correspondent (confirmed)
Alan Larson, Undersecretary for Economic Affairs, State Department (confirmed)
Martin Levine, Senior Managing Director, Shorebank Advisory Services (confirmed)
General William Nash (ret.), Director, Center for Preventive Action, Council on Foreign Relations (confirmed)
Thomas Pickering, Senior Vice President of International Relations, The Boeing Company, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (confirmed)
David Rothkopf, Chairman & CEO, Intellibridge Corporation (confirmed)

Rubar Sandi, President of the U.S.-Iraq Business Council (confirmed)
James Steinberg, Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, Brookings Institution, former Deputy National Security Advisor (confirmed)
John Taylor, Undersecretary for International Affairs, Department of the Treasury (confirmed)
James Woolsey, Former Director of Central Intelligence, Vice President, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., CSIS Trustee (confirmed)
Daniel B Yergin, Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates (confirmed)
Dov S. Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) (confirmed)

http://www.janes.com/defence/conference/rebuilding_iraq/speaker_info.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

5. Plame

Fitzgerald continues to expand his case against the leakers of Plame's identity. But he may be getting more than he originally bargained for. As his investigation expanded into the bowels of the Pentagon, he was bound to discover that the treachery of the neo-cons was not merely confined to the leaking of the name of a covert CIA officer - disastrous in itself - but coupled with other activities that call into question the loyalties and financial dealings of those who swore an oath to the U.S. Constitution.

With Ashcroft's deputy, James Comey, the person who appointed Fitzgerald, finding himself increasingly frozen out of Ashcroft's inner sanctum deliberations, it is clear that the neo-cons are worried about what Fitzgerald is discovering and how far his investigation will go. Also unusual was the fact that as Fitzgerald's case began to gain steam - with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both retaining criminal defense attorneys - FBI Director Robert Mueller suddenly transferred the lead FBI agent on the Plame case, John C. Eckenrode, a well-seasoned 29-year veteran of the bureau, to head up the FBI's Philadelphia office. An FBI spokesman in Philadelphia said that such sudden transfers, in the middle of major investigations, sometimes, just "happen."


Make no mistake about it: the violation of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 by the disclosure of Plame's identity and that of her non-official cover corporate umbrella organization (Brewster, Jennings & Associates) along with its official counterpart, the CIA's Nonproliferation Center - had a disastrous impact on the ability of the United States to track the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the world. At least one anonymous star (representing a covert U.S. agent killed while working abroad) placed on the CIA's Wall of Honor during the past year was reportedly a direct result of the disastrous disclosures from Cheney's office. The political vendettas of the neo-cons in exposing Plame's dangerous work and retaliating against Wilson's revelations about Bush's use of bogus intelligence regarding a fanciful Iraqi uranium shopping spree in Niger ensured that America's military-intelligence complex was going to seek a final accounting with the neo-cons. And a final accounting they are getting, in spades.

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081104_winds_change_summary.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

6. Official: Pentagon Deputy Used Unauthorized Probes to Secure Lucrative Con

July 07, 2004

By: T. Christian Miller
Los Angeles Times


Schmitz canceled the agreement two weeks after Shaw was first accused of tampering with the emergency phone network contract. Schmitz declined to comment, but in his letter canceling the arrangement, he praised Shaw for "outstanding leadership."

Shaw used the agreement to win permission to visit Iraq last fall. In an Oct. 28 letter to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command, Shaw said he wanted to "investigate those who threatened the national security of the United States through the transfer of advanced technologies to Iraq."

Specifically, Shaw said he planned to identify countries that had smuggled contraband weapons into Iraq and catalog existing conventional weapons stockpiles.

Although he did not mention it in the letter, Shaw also was interested in investigating operations at the port of Umm al Qasr.

Last summer, Shaw was visited by Richard E. Powers, a longtime friend and lobbyist. Powers was representing SSA Marine, a Seattle- based port operations company that had won a controversial limited-bid contract in the early days of the war to manage the troubled port.

more
http://www.independent-media.tv/item.cfm?fmedia_id=8028&fcategory_desc=Under%20Reported

[seemslikeadream]

7. Wolfowitz Approves New DTSA Under Feith

Defense Daily - September 6, 2001

Wolfowitz Approves New DTSA Under Feith
Tarbell To Retire

As expected, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Friday approved shifting what is now the Technology Security Directorate (TSD) out from under the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) overseen by Pentagon acquisition chief Pete Aldridge to the control of DoD policy chief Douglas Feith, and renaming it the Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA), according to documents and officials.

TSD Director Dave Tarbell disclosed the shift yesterday during the ComDef 2001 conference in Washington, D.C. Tarbell also disclosed plans to retire and seek a new career in industry. Lisa Bronson will replace Tarbell as the head of the new DTSA under Feith, while Jack Shaw will serve as Aldridge’s point man on export control issues.

Pentagon officials suggested the move in July to improve the export competitiveness of U.S. suppliers by shifting export control oversight away from DTRA, which is charged with controlling the proliferation of defense technologies, a mission in opposition to DTSA’s charge (Defense Daily, July 30).

"The Director, Administration and Management in coordination with the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and the General Counsel, DoD, will take the actions necessary to implement this decision," Wolfowitz wrote in an Aug. 31 memo authorizing the changes that was obtained by Defense Daily. "The Under Secretary for Policy shall ensure that there is appropriate coordination with the Under Secretary of Acquisition, Technology and Logistics on technology security matters. The latter has important responsibilities, especially relating to international defense industrial cooperation, that should be taken into account in the formulation and implementation of export licensing policy."

more
http://www.clw.org/atop/newswire/nw090701.html

[emad]

13. Shaw smeared by Iraqi exiles' misinformation scam????

Washington Post quoted in AP story in the UK Guardian says today:

"A number of critics have faulted the American news media for not being more skeptical about the Bush administration's claims before the beginning of the war in March 2003. In the year and a half since Saddam was toppled, U.S. troops have yet to discover any weapons of mass destruction.

In a study published in March by the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, researchers wrote: ``If the White House acted like a WMD story was important, ... so too did the media. If the White House ignored a story (or an angle on a story), the media were likely to as well.''

In May, The New York Times criticized its own reporting on Iraq, saying it found ``a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been'' and acknowledging it sometimes ``fell for misinformation'' from exile Iraqi sources."

Snip from:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-4414124,00.html

Chalabi family? Or maybe the exiled Pahlavi family - late Shah of Iran's son lives in Washington DC and is up to his ass in BFEE, hoping they will back him in a post-Ayatollahs coup in future Iran.

The Shaw disclaimer is weird weird weird....and stinks of another BFEE cock-up.

[seemslikeadream]

14. So now, it is payback time

Adding insult to injury, neither the CIA nor FBI were happy that Israeli spies operating under the cover of Israeli "art students' and moving van operators, and who were picked up by federal agents and local "first responder" law enforcement officers before and after 911, were quickly deported by immigration officers before they could be fully interrogated. The penetration of FBI and other federal law enforcement data networks and databases by Israeli software and telecommunications companies working under U.S. government contracts has also left a bitter taste in the mouths of federal law enforcement and intelligence personnel.

So now, it is payback time. The recent arrest warrants issued by the Iraqi government for Ahmed and Salem Chalabi (Ahmed's for counterfeiting Iraqi dinars and Salem's for murdering an Iraqi Finance Ministry official) indicates that Shaw's instincts about the fraud engaged in by them and their neo-con friends in the Pentagon were right on the money. Let us ponder that news again: the lead prosecutor against Saddam Hussein murders an official of the Iraqi Finance Ministry - an individual that just may have known something about what happened to $1 billion in missing Iraqi revenues. The accused is a partner of an Israeli-U.S. lawyer who is a close colleague of leading neo-cons in the Pentagon (some of whom are also dual U.S.-Israeli citizens) and the nephew of a man who was supported bureaucratically by a former CIA Director (James Woolsey), financially by hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and politically by a think tank (AEI) that includes the wife of the Vice President of the United States. Uncle Ahmed was also a personal guest of George W. and Laura Bush in the VIP box at the 2004 State of the Union address. The President and First Lady welcomed a person who now is now an accused criminal to America's State of the Union address, a person whose nephew is now an accused murderer! John Le Carre could not have come up with a better international thriller scenario.

The recent decision by the chief judge in the Plame leak to order NBC's Tim Russert to testify about just who it was at the White House that contacted him about Plame's identity, while troubling for First Amendment freedom of the press protections, is an indication that time is growing short for the leakers. Three months before a U.S. presidential election, that could be a crucial windfall for John Kerry and the Democratic Party.

more
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081104_winds_...

[emad]

15. Re: Kerry crucial windfall:

Your analysis is bang-on BUT... the BFEE has choreographed so much already that has gone down the pan viz Uncle Jonathan, Riggs, Pinochet, Farish, Chalabis etc that it will be hardly taking any chances of a Kerry win in November.

Best bet?: they used Idema and Co to infiltrate the toughest Afghani domains and will spring a surprise Osama bust days before the election. CAN'T BELIEVE that Idema's lawyer's statement about videotape and e-mail evidence is totally fabricated. Think they used him knowing he would go belly up. Same with Chalabis. Allawi is the man and always has been but too many Mossad failures in the past prevented a swift Iraq takeover and BFEE needed a few stalking horses.

Maybe someone will shoot Allawi....

[seemslikeadream]

24. `Jews brainwashed Bush? What a joke!'

Four years ago, when Zakheim was on presidential candidate George Bush's foreign policy planning team, he told Haaretz the U.S. did not need to play policeman around the globe, and that American military involvement overseas should be reserved for extreme situations, such as the prevention of genocide.

............

From the time when reports about the Bush administration's intention to go to war started to circulate, critics have charged that Jewish neoconservatives in the Pentagon were responsible for dragging the U.S. into war with Iraq, with the intention of protecting Israeli, not American, interests. Proponents of this claim hail from all parts of the political spectrum, starting with arch-conservative Pat Buchanan, and continuing with two Democrats from Capitol Hill, Congressman Jim Moran (Virginia), and Senator Friz Hollings (South Carolina).

"Pat Buchanan, in my view, is an anti-Semite," said Zakheim. "I'm sorry, but you cannot keep saying what he says, and say he's not an anti-Semite. He is an anti-Semite. I know one when I see one."

..........

Alongside such claims about corruption in Saddam Hussein's regime, Zakheim brings up the issue of terror. Given Saddam Hussein's well-known support for Palestinian suicide bombers, "why is it so hard to believe that he had ties with Al-Qaida," Zakheim wonders. "If you make the connection - Iraq, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism - then it definitely becomes a world problem," he concludes.

.........


Israelis who worked with Zakheim are full of praise for his professionalism. Though he always upheld American interests, they say, he had a warm place in his heart for Israel and he did as much as he could to help. For instance, after the start of the intifada, when it became clear that Israel's police force lacked equipment to defuse bombs, Zakheim found funds, and arranged a transfer of $28 million for automatic gear used by sappers. Zakheim is proud of his close relations with many Israelis - recently his son was married in Jerusalem, but at the time, a stepson who went on a photo-shoot in Hebron was beaten by settlers.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/441712.html


Iraq Survey Group
Donald Rumsfeld's al Qaeda

By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writers


And with the ISG's intelligence fusion operation located in Washington, DC, that means Rumsfeld's hands are dirty. There is also a clear line that can be drawn between the ISG and Undersecretary for Plans and Policy Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans/Office of Northern Gulf Affairs (speculation has been that he is a dual USA-Israeli citizen like Dov Zakheim). Feith reportedly created the disinformation about Iraqi WMD and then Rumsfeld/Cambone allegedly used torture as a tactic to elicit false confessions and exaggerated claims under extreme duress. It is a tactic that SS Commander Heinrich Himmler and Soviet KGB Chief Levrenti Beria practiced so well in Germany and the USSR, respectively. No one claims that the USA and Israel rise to the level of Nazi and Soviet torturers, but, it is too early to say.

Recent evidence offered by General Janis Karpinski, NGO's and investigative reporters, indicates that Israeli interrogators may have been active in Iraqi detention centers. But the Israeli government has stated that any Israelis in Iraq were there on their own. We are inclined to believe them to a point. The problem is that it gives rise to the specter that anti-Arab Israeli xenophobes, including members of the racist and terrorist Kach and Kahane Chai, were participating as either freelance torturers in Iraq or as part of a parallel intelligence operation—separate from Mossad—being run out of Ariel Sharon's office. They, like their American counterparts, make for great recruits. The scary part is that neither government can control them—or, perhaps, does not want to get involved.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/070904Stanton-Madsen/070904stanton-madsen.html

[IndianaGreen]

25. How Zakheim "found funds" is what is at issue here...

For instance, after the start of the intifada, when it became clear that Israel's police force lacked equipment to defuse bombs, Zakheim found funds, and arranged a transfer of $28 million for automatic gear used by sappers.

Alright, Dov, where did you get those funds? It is our money and it was appropriated for a specific purpose, where did you get it from?

[seemslikeadream]

28. John Shaw

Monday, October 13

in iraq

Al Jazeera reports in US launches Iraq contract agency that a new agency is being created to facilitate sub-contracting work in Iraq. The new agency was apparently announced at the most recent conference held in London.

Oddly enough, the new agency will be under the Pentagon, not the State Department. The US administration appears to have difficulty with recognizing the necessity of clearly defined boundaries. All subcontractors will now be viewed as working directly as US military contractors. Given the current status of security, that does not appear to be a wise and well thought out strategy.
The US said it plans to create a new agency, under the auspices of the Pentagon, to deal with awarding contracts related to the rebuilding effort in Iraq.

The new agency, which has yet to be named, will start work at the beginning of November under the direction of retired admiral David Nash, according to the US Deputy Under Secretary of Defence for International Technology Security, John Shaw. The unit will be charged with coordinating the distribution of sub-contracting work in Iraq, notably by US groups Bechtel and Halliburton, the main contractors in Iraq's reconstruction.

Shaw agreed there were “divergences” over the process between the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - which awarded the main contracts under the supervision of the State Department - and the Pentagon.

more
http://blogistonpost.blogspot.com/2003_10_01_blogistonpost_archive.html

Iraq Telecom

Information Gatekeepers Inc. to Hold Half-Day Executive Briefing on Opportunities in the“Telecommunications Reconstruction in Iraq” in Washington DC Sept. 29As part of its “Executive Telecom Briefing Series,” Information Gatekeepers Inc. (IGI) is planninga half-day briefing on “Telecommunications Reconstruction in Iraq” on September 29, 2003 between8 am and noon. The program will include four to six speakers from Government and Industry whohave been intimately involved in the planning and funding of projects for the telecommunicationsreconstruction in Iraq. The keynote speaker will be the Honorable John Shaw, Deputy Undersecretaryfor International Technology Security, office of the Secretary of Defense.Some of the topics to be covered at the briefing include:-Status of the telecommunications reconstruction in Iraq-Plans for funding of major projects-Major players in the reconstruction program-Present state of the Iraq networks-Contracts awarded and planned-How to obtain information on new projects-Meet with key officials from government and industry
more
http://www.biz-lib.com/info/28908.pdf


WASHINGTON—The Pentagon has asked Coalition Provisional Authority head L. Paul Bremer to revoke the three regional mobile-phone licenses in Iraq, according to documents and e-mails obtained today by RCR Wireless News.
The Department of Defense said action is necessary in light of an investigation that found possible illegal activity and fraud in connection with the three wireless operators and their alleged ties to a former business associate of toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

“Wholly aside from allegations of criminal wrongdoing, this memorandum is to inform you that my investigation also uncovered a fraud on the Ministry of Communications by Orascom, Atheer and AsiaCell,” said John Shaw, DoD’s undersecretary for international technology security, in a June 14 correspondence to Bremer.
Shaw said the matter has been referred to the FBI for further action.

It is unclear whether Bremer, attempting to engineer next week’s handover of political sovereignty to a reconstituted Iraqi government—will act on Shaw’s recommendation.

“To fail to act to revoke the licenses before June 30 will in effect ratify the CPA role in the corruption of the process over the past year. Prompt action to rescind the licenses, however, will send a clear message to those who would use the transition to ensure the success of similar nefarious schemes in other sectors,” said Shaw in a June 15 e-mail to Bremer.
A Bremer aide told Shaw the matter has been referred to the CPA general counsel.

more
http://www.rcrnews.com/

Congress made a different judgment. It deemed all crimes within the INA's definition of "aggravated felony" to be particularly serious when committed by an alien, because such crimes are integral to international terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized immigration crime, which do threaten physical (and other) harms. See, e.g., 1994 House Hearing, supra, at 124, 125, 181 (connecting visa and passport fraud to terrorism and drug-trafficking); 1989 House Hearing, supra, at 18 (statement of Jack Shaw, Assistant Commissioner, INS) (listing immigration fraud, along with crimes of violence and drug smuggling, as "activity represents the greatest threat to public safety"), 26 (racketeering is "major law enforcement problem[] involving aliens").

Congress was especially intent upon addressing the harms associated with alien smuggling and related offenses. See H.R. Rep. No. 22, supra, at 7-8 (discussing alien smuggling rings and their involvement in other crimes); H.R. Rep. No. 469, supra, Pt. 1, at 116 ("Alien smuggling is often linked to other crimes, such as drug smuggling and trafficking, prostitution, racketeering, and severe labor law violations."); Testimony of Doris Meissner, supra, 1995 WL 110438 (organized immigration rings engage in criminal activities and enterprises including counterfeiting, illegal acquisition of firearms and explosives, narcotics smuggling and trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering activity such as extortion, bribery, obstruction of investigation by violence, and financial fraud); 1989 House Hearing, supra, at 36 (statement of Jack Shaw) (discussing crimes of alien smuggling rings), 44 (same). As Representative McCollum of Florida explained, aliens in organized crime rings "extort large sums from * * * illegal immigrants in return for passage to the United States and for the fraudulent documents they need to obtain entry. In many cases, these illegal immigrants * * * are forced into involuntary servitude, prostitution, and other crimes in order to repay these fees. In some cases * * *, the attempt to smuggle these illegals goes tragically wrong and people die." 141 Cong. Rec. 4394 (1995). Representative Kennedy likened alien-smuggling to the "slave trade." Id. at 4395-4396; see H.R. Rep. No. 469, supra, Pt. 1, at 117 ("many smuggled aliens are victims, more than beneficiaries," of alien smuggling). Congress thus reasonably determined that smuggling-related crimes are "serious crimes that threaten public safety and national security." H.R. Rep. No. 469, supra, Pt. 1, at 107.

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