US book exposes secret US military presence in Israel

[Scurrilous]

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=878159&fid=942

<snip>

"A new book published in the US, “Code Names,” by William M. Arkin, exposes information about a US military presence in Israel, including US Army bases at secret locations. It gives a long list of code names that describe milestones in strategic cooperation between Jerusalem and Washington.

The book’s revelations about ongoing cooperation between the US Armed Forces and the Israel Defense Forces impart a new dimension to the saying by late Republican Senator Jesse Helms that Israel is America’s aircraft carrier in the Middle East, and that this fact alone justifies the military aid that the US grants Israel every year.

Arkin is an independent journalist and military commentator for NBC, and a former intelligence analyst for US ground forces. He calls himself a key to decoding slang and code names used by the US Armed Forces."

<snip>

"The book lists US military bases in Israel. According to the book, these bases are called sites, and numbered Site 51, Site 53, Site 54, Site 55, and Site 56. The form indicates that other unspecified “sites” exist, but this is not explicitly stated."

[bemildred]

1. The reviews on amazon are interesting:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1586420836/qid=1107269201/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/002-0143433-3509616

"William Arkin's Code Names will rock the National Security Community. We do not agree on any issue, my problem when we argue is that unlike most of his ilk, he researches the facts thoroughly and has impeccable integrity. Code Names scares the hell out of me because Arkin dredged up so many secrets and turned them into a comprehensive tour of our national security efforts around the globe. This book lays out for the reader what China, Israel, France and Russia probably spent billions trying to find out. It will become the basic reference book for those who study our foreign affairs, unfortunately that includes every spy agency around the world. This book shows the dysfunctional aspects of our all too frequent over-classification process that blocks our agencies from working together, hides waste and stifles debate of important issues. Most of all it proves we need to rethink how we protect our secrets in the information
age."

-- Charles A. Horner, General USAF (Ret.), commander of coalition air forces in Operation Desert Storm, and former commander, U.S. Space Command

****

Having some aquaintance with Arkin from the editorial pages, my own
inclination is not to buy this hook-line and sinker as yet. But then
I haven't read it either. As I said, the reviews on Amazon are very
interesting.

[peacetalksforall]

2. So how does he get away with this? Is it a colloboration?

Site 51....is that number a fun thing...isn't that the number for Area 51 in Nevada - the site of the et spacehip and captured aliens? The government claims that there isn't any area 51?

So, maybe there aren't any 1-50 sites.

So we have Israelis in our government directing us and we have bases in Israel?

And we are told that terrorists hate us for our freedom.

It is quite obvious that we have a pact with England - we fight their wars and we provide the paths so that Israel can manuever.

The public and congress need to know everything.

I still want to know how he got away with publishing this.

[peacetalksforall]

4. If the world allows a pact between the U.S., England, Israel, and Saudi

Arabia - it should be a pact for peace. But, we all know what we have - yesterday, there was a repeat of the feeler placed in the news that Israel might wipe out Iran's nuclear arsenal.

It appears PNAC, JINSA, AEI, and the other groups don't think the U.S. is going to be able to get a war going with Iran...so they are going to let Israel do it this time?

Where is Europe - the Continent? Where is the voice for peace?

[Scurrilous]

6. " I still want to know how he got away with publishing this."

Possibly because the information he provides is either no longer classified or that he didn't use access to classified information to publish this book.


http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/27/1359252

Code Names: A Look Behind Secret U.S. Military Plans in the Middle East, Africa and at Home

We speak with military analyst, William Arkin, author of the new book Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs, and Operations in the 9/11 World. It identifies 3,000 once-secret code names and details the plans and missions they stand for. Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News describes the book as "perhaps the most concentrated act of defiance of official secrecy policies since Howard Morland wrote about the H Bomb Secret in the Progressive in 1979."

<snip>

AMY GOODMAN: You have been hit hard when you talk about issues like this. Can you talk about losing a job over naming names?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, I have been doing this for a long time. I think one of the first jobs I had was working for a little non-profit in Washington, DC called the Center for Defense Information. This was in the early 1980's. And I was -- I worked on an article relating to where all the nuclear weapons were in Germany, US nuclear weapons. And I pieced it together by looking at telephone books and various military manuals. And I promptly was fired from my job. You know, big deal. In a way, I can't work somewhere that's not going to support the notion of openness. As I say in the introduction to the book, you either believe in democracy or you don't. You believe in openness or you don't. There's no way I’m going to convince you of it if you don't believe in it. So I have been doing this now for almost 30 years. I wrote a book in the 1980's that revealed where all the nuclear weapons were around the world. The Reagan administration was not very happy about it and came down on me pretty hard. And --

AMY GOODMAN: How?

WILLIAM ARKIN: Well, they threatened to throw me in jail. And it took many months of negotiations with the Reagan administration to convince them that I had not used any access to classified information in order to compile that book. That was the key that they would have used as the excuse to put me in jail. So it took many, many months to do that. It was quite a hairy time.

[Ruby Romaine]

3. Helms is dead? that's news to me. n/t

[Scurrilous]

5. Wishful thinking. n/t

[hector459]

7. This ought to do a lot for "spreading freedom and democracy" in the Arab

world. Why should any nation trust us?