February 2, 1998
February 9, 1998
Who Is Behind the Clinton Scandal?
February 16, 1998
February 23, 1998
Two deputy sheriffs say that the federal government had foreknowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing. The congressman they name says it's not true.
Two Oklahoma County reserve deputy sheriffs, on duty at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma city immediately following the bombing in April 1995, claim under oath that the federal government had prior knowledge of the event.
On January 15, in downtown Oklahoma City, state Rep. Charles Key (R) held a press conference at which Deputies David Kochendorfer and Don Hammons said that they understood Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-Okla.) To indicate that the federal government had foreknowledge of the blast. "We blew it," they quoted the congressman as saying".
"The statements given today [Jan. 15] at the news conference of state Rep. Charles Key are wrong.' Istook said in an official statement. "I have no knowledge that any government entity knew in advance that the Murrah Building would be bombed, and I've never said any differently."
The press conference, carried live on KTOK-AM-1000, was reported in the Tulsa World, but was conspicuous by its absence in the Daily Oklahoman.
Hoppy Heidelberg, a disgruntled member of the original, federal grand jury, said at the time that it appeared the government had something to hide. On January 19, Heidelberg told The SPOTLIGHT that the Oklahoman was represented at the press conference, but no story was forthcoming.
According to Heidelberg, the Oklahoman is an ally of county District Attorney Bob Macy, who tried to prevent the impaneling of the current county grand jury.
"It happened," Jerry Bohnen, news director at KTOK, told The SPOTLIGHT, when informed that there had been little national news coverage of what appears to be a major crack in the government's claims that the blast came as a surprise.
Bohnen interviewed the deputies and reports that Kochendorfer said the congressman was talking to him on the day of the blast. Istook reportedly said, "Yeah, we knew this was going to happen. We blew it."
At the same time, the other deputy, Hammons, was escorting come of the congressman's aides around the building site. Hammons says one of the aides told him the congressman had told her that the government knew about the coming bombing on April 9, 10 days before the incident.
Kochendorfer told the reporters that Istook said, additionally, "We got word through our sources that there is a radical fundamental Islamic group in Oklahoma City and that they were going to bomb the federal building.'
When Kochendorfer identified himself as being with the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office, the congressman reportedly said, "Oh! I thought you were with the highway patrol," and immediately left the vicinity.
"Why do they [the federal government] refuse to admit that foreknowledge and why do they refuse to continue to look for them [alleged other perpetrators]?" Key asked. "Why has it been so difficult to get to the questions? Why have we been fought every step of the way in an unprecedented manner?"
He ended the conference by asking for 'truth to be allowed to get through. That all we want,' key said.*
In Geneva, at the headquarters of WHO, a draft plan for dealing with an influenza pandemic has been formulated. But SHO officials are refusing to make it public.
The World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the United Nations, has seized the authority to control the treatment of a looming flu epidemic in all of the world's nations, including the United States.
As medical authorities in Hong Kong are trying to control a new and mysterious strain of Type A influenza virus, called H5N1 and being referred to in the media as the "avain flu" and "chicken flu," WHO is keeping secret a global plan to deal with a pandemic outbreak.
Both WHO and U.S. health authorities say that an influenza pandemic revealing one that killed more than 20 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919 could strike without warning.
There are now 17 confirmed cases of the H5N1 flu strain in Hong Kong, including four deaths from the virus. The illness originated from poultry exported to Hong Kong from the southern provinces of Red China. Tens of thousands of chickens have been reported dying from the flu strain in south China.
Experts claim the virus has jumped directly from chickens to humans, unlike the normal progression of influenza virus strains. Normally, flu viruses go from birds to pigs, where they develop within the lung tissues of the hogs, and then become communicable to human beings.
WHO officials, as well as scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, are hopeful that the Hong Kong outbreak will just die out.
However, experts admit that the flu strain, if airborne, could spread from Hong Kong throughout the world almost overnight. Hundreds of international flights from around the globe fly in and out of Hong Kong daily.
While countries like Thailand, as one example, have put warning advisories about travel to Hong Kong, U.S. health officials have done nothing.
One of the criticisms that Hong Kong medical officials have received in the past several weeks is keeping quiet about the emerging avian virus. After the first patient died last May, medical authorities in Hong Kong - and worldwide - were aware that they could be facing a potential pandemic situation.
U.S. citizens are likewise being kept in the dark about the flu danger. For example, most Americans are under the assumption that the flu shots they received last fall will protect them form all flu outbreaks. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Currently, a draft U.S. plan for dealing with a pandemic situation has been turned over to Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala for approval. However, U.S. medical experts who drafted the plan admit that it will require numerous revisions before it can be approved for action.*
Many Americans think they are doing poor kids a favor when they donate to UNICEF, but an independent study found the funds could be going to fat cats who are addicted to wasteful spending habits.
The United Nations apparatus, whatever its original characteristics and achievements may have been, has "degenerated into a corrupt and self- perpetuating bureaucracy" by now, a recent review by Nicholas Eberstadt, a senior researcher at Harvard University's Center for Population and Development Studies, has found.
Other foreign-policy analysts interviewed for this SPOTLIGHT report voiced similar views.
"Note that Dr. Eberstadt is not talking about the secretary-general's staff, a notoriously spendthrift and self-promoting clique," said Henrietta Garzon, a former researcher in the U.S. State Department's International Organizations office.
In fact, the Eberstadt study was focused on UNICEF, the international children's fund long considered one of the UN's most benign and relatively cost- effective agencies.
"If even UNICEF has gone rotten at the core, that may be the end of any leftover illusions about globalist dogooders," Mrs. Garzon says.
Yet the facts and figures assembled in the new study convincingly demonstrate that congress was right in demanding not just a cut in U.S. dues assessed by the world organization but as independent audit of its budget by the General Accounting Office, the congressional watchdog. A sampler of Eberstadt's findings:
* In 1967, most of UNICEF's resources were directed at lowering infant mortality, juvenile disease control and improve child nutrition. But by last year, well over a third of the agency's annual budget - about $1 billion - was spent on "administrative" outlays - that is, bureaucratic boondoggles.
* Americans who donate to UNICEF are unaware that much of the money is kept by the so-called UN national committees that organize the fund-raising drives. "Between a quarter and two-fifths of the money raised n UNICEF's name now goes straight to the fund raisers themselves," Eberstadt found.
* The audit of a single UNICEF field office - in Nairobi - discovered that $1 million was stolen outright and nearly $10 million wasted on first-class travel and endless "conferences" staged in posh hotels by high-living regional UN bureaucrats.
* A recent study by Booz, Allen & Hamilton, a U.S. consulting firm, was reproachful about what it called UNICEF's "proclivity for luxury accommodations during official travel." Booz Allen was sharply critical of the agency's habit to disguise its self-serving spending habits by maintaining a huge in-house public relations operation at a cost of some $25 million yearly.
* Even the U.S. State Department's bureaucrats, described by Eberstadt as inveterate "UNICEF boosters," have grown critical of the agency's self- indulgent corruption last year. A State Department report demanded that UNICEF tighten its belt and sharpen its accounting.
But is UNICEF listening?" asked the Eberstadt review. "If so, it isn't apparent."*
The names of the perpetrators of Clinton's scandal-driven downfall are included as fingers are pointed in the direction of the Israel lobby.
A veteran political spy and undercover agent has been identified as the prime mover behind the latest white House scandals, a SPOTLIGHT investigation has found.
Lucianne Goldberg, 62, a self-styled literary agent with what one acquaintance called "bone-deep" ethnic and emotional ties to Israel reportedly provided the technical equipment, the encouragement and the expectation of "six-figure" payoffs that set in motion a series of secret tape recordings of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky's phone chats with a trusted friend.
Those tapes, in which Lewinsky describes a sleazy sexual liaison with President Bill Clinton, and then complains of being pressured to lie about the affair under oath, form the core evidence in the sensational Clinton and some of his closes cronies by Independent counsel Kenneth Starr.
Mrs. Golberg one worked for Murray Chotiner, the shadowy Nixon-era White House intelligence operative known for his links to the Mossad, Israel's secret service.
The finding that Mrs. Goldberg, who reportedly told friends she "master- minded" the latest Clinton scandals, has an unsavory background as an undercover agent in the service of a Zionist network linking the Nixon White House to the Mossad is a "startling discovery," intelligence sources say.
In the consensus of most expert observers, it raises new issues about the role played in the affair by the Israel lobby, the most powerful and ruthless alien interest pressure group in Washington.
POWER PLAY
Among them there are urgent questions about the actions of the hardline Israeli loyalists in the white House who have become disaffected over the president's feud with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.
During his first administration Clinton handed more key national security posts to known dual loyalists than any of his predecessors. John Deutch become director of Central Intelligence; Samuel Berger took over the white House National Security Council; Martin Indyk - whose U.S. citizenship was then only a few days old - was made director of Middle eastern affairs; Dan Kurtzer took over a similar post at Madeline Albright's State Department.
The policies sponsored by these officials - often rigged to serve the ministate's interests above our own - demoralized the Washington intelligence establishment and exposed it to pubic disgrace. They also led to setbacks and conflicts all over the map, turning the administration's handling of foreign affairs into a "sorry mess," says Jessie Thayer, a retired foreign service analyst who is writing a book about Clinton era diplomacy.
"If only as a successful politician, Clinton wants to break loose from this alien-directed, accident-prone praetorian guard in Washington," explained Thayer. "He wants to be his own master, especially since the main advantage he hoped to gain from his submissive courtship of the Israel lobby - favorable treatment by the mainstream media - proved to be an illusion."
In the consensus of Washington intelligence sources and diplomatic observers, the real question is not whether Clinton can overcome his follies: the real issue may turn out to be whether this president with his buoyant political will - or, for that matter, any American president - can survive a known - down drag-out - fight with Zionism, its undercover operatives and its attack-ready Washington lobby.*
Maybe Hillary Clinton is right, and there is a "right-wing conspiracy" to destroy her husband. But don't count of Hillary to tell you whose "right-wing" is behind that conspiracy - and how the scandal is being used to manipulate U.S. Middle East policy.
Hillary Clinton's argument that a "right-wing conspiracy" in America is behind the sex-and-perjury scandal that may topple her husband has one big flaw. It is the major media in America - led by the Washington Post and Newsweek, joined by the New York Times and Time Magazine, along with the major networks - that has hyped the scandal and suggested it may be Bill Clinton's undoing.
Newsweek enlisted longtime Clinton confidant George Stephanapolous to write of Clinton's "betrayal." Young Stephanapolous, now an ABC commentator, even went on the air to bring up the possibilities of resignation and impeachment.
And nobody has ever accused any of those mainstream media voices of being a voice for the "right wing" - or the "right wing" in America, at least.
However, the first lady may have put her finger on something when she claimed that a "right-wing conspiracy" is energizing the ongoing "Monicagate" scandal.
If you dig deep enough, you will find a connection that goes all the way to the hardline "right wing" in Israel and all the way back to "Monicagate" right here in Washington, D.C.
RIGHT-WING PLOT
It may be no coincidence that just as the American supporters of Israel's right wing - the Likud bloc - were launching a bitter public relations campaign against President Clinton (see The SPOTLIGHT, February 2), the orthodox media in America picked up the lead and suddenly began trumpeting the allegations about yet another Clinton "sexcapade."
Let's look at some basic facts that have somehow gotten buried in the midst of all the frenzy over the allegations that have been bandied about.
The media have focused on former White House staffer Linda Tripp and her brassy New York promoter friend, Lucianne Goldberg, as being the prime instigators of "Monicagate."
But the Washington Post pointed out in a story buried at the back of the paper on January 28 that lawyers for Paula Jones "first received several anonymous tips that Lewinsky may have had a sexual relationship with the president."
It apparently wasn't until after this that lawyers for Paula Jones contacted Miss Lewinsky, tipping off the president that his Presumed relationship with Monica had been exposed.
At his juncture, it seems neither Mrs Tripp mor Mrs. Goldberg were the "anonymous" sources, inasmuch as they had other interests to exploit in the Clinton-Lewinsky caper. In fact, Mrs Tripp instead went directly to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr.
WHODUNIT?
The big question is: Who tipped off the lawyers for Paula Jones that there might be a "smoking gun" in the president's relationship with Monica Lewinsky?
Monica- at least until recently, it seems - was a Clinton loyalist and it was certainly not she who leaked the story to the lawyers. So someone close to - or spying on - the president's inner circle had to have leaked the word about the president's relationship with her to Jones's attorneys.
Could it have been someone in Al Gore's camp - close to the White House - eager to move the vice president into the Oval Office?
But let's go further. Michael Isikoff of Newsweek (published by the Meyer- Graham empire, which also owns the Washington Post) was the first journalist officially "digging into" the story.
It now turns out, according to the Post, that William Kristol - described generally as "editor of the conservative Weekly Standard" - was one of the first to "publicly mention" the allegations.
Kristol's role as being one of the "first" to float the story publicly is critical to understanding the big picture.
Not only is Kristol the front man for billionaire media tycoon Rupert Murdoch - a major ally of Israel's hard-line Likud - but Kristol and historian Gertrude Himmelfarb.
Kristol and Himmelfarb are two self-styled "former Marxist" who have emerged as "neoconservative" figures with long-standing close ties to Israel's "anti- communist right wing."
Young Kristol is, like his parents, a "Likudnik" and has been a harsh critic of Clinton's decision to "turn his back" on Israel.
Also significant is that Kristol, like Clinton, has been initiated into the Bilderberg Group, the high-level elite foreign policy conclave dominated by the Rockefeller and Rothschild families. Kristol is identified with Bilderberg's "Republican" wing.
And on January 26, just as the Lewinsky affair began escalating and engulfing Clinton, Kristol released a letter to Clinton, pressuring the president to launch a military attack on Israel's hated enemy, Iraq.
Signing the letter along with Kristol were a bevy of other famed American supporters of Israel's "right wing" including former Rep. Vin Weber, a longtime close ally of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle, a notorious Israeli agent and former U.S. deputy secretary of defense who is now a highly- paid consultant for Israeli arms interests.
In light of the Kristol-Murdoch connection, it is interesting to note that Murdoch's Fox Television is essentially leading the charge in the Establishment media forcing the other networks to compete.
The Fox News Channel has carried the story almost non-stop around the clock. Even when other features have been telecast, they have been subject to interruption for any breaking developments in the Clinton scandal regardless of how mundane they might be.
Not surprisingly, some of the most tawdry stories to break in the burgeoning scandal have been in the New York Post, along with other Murdoch-owned news publications.
STANDS UP FOR BILL
In her effort to once again "stand by her man," the first lady has named television preacher Jerry Falwell and his friend, Sen. Helms (R-N.C.), as among those who are part of the "right wing conspiracy" that is out to get her president.
What Hillary has not mentioned is that both Falwell ahd Helms are especially close to - once again - the hardline "right-wing" Likud bloc in Israel. Both are adamantly opposed to President Clinton's perceived support for Likud's rivals in Israel's Labor Party which has been far more amenable to the peace process.
Clinton was not a backer of Netanyahu in the Israeli elections that brought the current Likud extremist coalition to power. The U.S. president was embarrassed politically when Netanyahu won by defeating the liberals led by the more moderate Shimon Peres. The later preached peace: Netanyahu, no compromise.
As The SPOTLIGHT reported on February 2, even prior to his official meeting with President Clinton, the Israeli prime minister had already met with and appeared at a pro-Likud rally in the company of Falwell, one of Clinton's most vociferous critics.
The SPOTLIGHT noted that even the Washington Post had revealed on January 22 that "a senior Netanyahu official had said the Israeli leader was prepared to respond to opposition from the White House by demonstrating his 'own ammunition' in U.S. political circles" - namely Falwell and the obediently pro- Zionist "Christian right."
In Israel, according to the Post on January 24, the press has "lapped up the Clinton allegations." The Post said that "interest seemed particularly sharp because Monica Lewinsky is Jewish.
Writing in the January 22 issue of the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonoth, Nahum Barnea Wryly commented: "We innocently thought the fate of the peace process was in the hands of a Jewess, born in Prague, named Madeleine Albright. Apparently, the fate of the peace process is, to no lesser degree, in he hands of another Jewess, named Monica Lewinsky, 24 years old, a Beverly Hills native, who spent a fun filled summer three years ago as an intern at the White House."
Parenthetically, it is interesting that by the time Barnea's comments were reported in the February 2 issue of Newsweek which devoted a special issue to the scandal, Newsweek had carefully edited Barnea's words so that they now read: "It turns out that the fate of the peace process depends on a different woman."
In fact, the Lewinsky scandal has forced the president into retreat as far as punishing Israel is concerned - much to the delight of Israel-firsters both here and in Israel.
On January 27 the Washington Post again let the cat out of the bag when it reported that "last week, Clinton demonstrated he could not compel the Israelis to meet their responsibilities for a further military pullback. This week in the wake of the scandal he is even less capable, if only because people in his own party, not to mention the Republicans, will not support a policy of greater pressure on Israel."
Those watching the Clinton scandal unfold must surely wonder why the establishment media is rushing to judgment in many instances, while trying, unsuccessfully, to display an image of impartiality.
It is almost as if there is, somewhere, a large button, labeled "Get Clinton," and someone has punched it.*
Israel's fingerprints lie all over the possible political corpse of Bill Clinton, and Israelis are calling Monica Lewinsky a 'God-send."
Proclaiming the "G-d has sent this young woman to save Eretz Iarael," Chief Rabbi Ovada Yosef, spiritual leader of the ministate's Spehardic faithful, welcomed the crippling crisis faced by President Bill Clinton over revelations of his relationship with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Naming Ms. Lewinsky as "one of the historic women" whose intervention helped rid Israel of hostile rulers in "moments of danger," Chief Rabbi Yosef made it plain that Zionist hard liners now considered Clinton an enemy and a threat to their plans for a greater Israel.
A number of principals on the affair, including Lewinsky herself, are reportedly driven by deep ethnic and emotional ties to Israel - and, in the case of at least one key player, long standing links with its secret service the Mossad, a SPOTLIGHT investigation has confirmed.
Knowledgeable diplomats and intelligence sources expressed doubt that the scandal was inspired by divine providence.
"Clinton's own improvidence is responsible for much of this mess," said Otto Alinsky, a public affairs adviser for the U.S. Catholic conference of democratic Clubs.
The problem goes beyond the president's adulterous affairs, Alinsky asserted. "He has fostered an amoral atmosphere in his administration and what I can only call a climate of corruption among its financial and corporate supporters."
Much of this, however, including some of the worst about Clinton's degenerate dalliances, had been known for years. It was not until the White House found itself on a collision course with the Israeli government that the scandals came to a head and threatened to undercut the president, diplomatic observers say.
These sources listed five major issues over which Clinton and Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's hardline prime minister, are now in bitter conflict.
* The huge U.S. handouts going to Israel every year will be capped - and eventually reduced - if Rep. Sonny Callahan (R-Ala.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations and a determined budget- cutter, gets his way.
That he will get it became more likely in recent months when the White House lent its support to Callahan's proposal to limit the total of all U.S. aid to the Middle East to 5 billion next year, prompting an engry outburst by Israeli Finance Minister Yaakaov Ne'eman.
* Netanyahu has made repeated personal appeals to Clinton to free Jonathan "Jay Pollard, a deep-penetration spy for Israel serving a life sentence in a federal prison. But Clinton, after telling Israeli President Ezer Weizman that "a pardon was in the works," refused to let Pollard go, largely because of his growing dislike for what he once reportedly called "The lying, two-faced Netanyahu and his thugs."
* The Israeli prime minister, in turn, was said to be enraged by the slights and thinly veiled insults he had to endure in Washington. These included a presidential order not to let Netanyahu stay at Blair House, the official residence for honored visitors of state, Clinton's pointed decision to shun the Israeli leader while both were in Los Angeles last month, and to deny Netanyahu the customary White House dinner reception during his most recent official visit.
* Curing his first term, Clinton allowed well known Israeli agents such as Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and Stephen Grossman to shape his administration's Middle Eastern policies. Now the president must confront the miserable failure" of this experiment, intelligence sources say.
It has inflamed tensions throughout the region and threatens to trigger renewed violence, insurgency and possibly an all-out war at key flash-points, including Palestine, the Gulf and even the Mediterranean, where infiltrated Mossad agents are fanning a campaign of brutal repression against Turkey's majority Islamic faithful.
* Israeli demands for stepped-up economic warfare against Iran now threatens a rift between the U.S. and its European allies who have no trouble getting along with the Islamic regime in Teheran, and have made large investments in Iranian oil exploration. Clinton has been told that the Netanyahu administration is leaking doctored and fabricated intelligence information to leading American news organizations about Iran's efforts to arm itself with nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction - a buzzword also widely used to ignite a new war against Iraq.
The so-called "dual-containment" strategy, formulated
by Martin Indyk, the hardline Israeli agent whom Clinton put in
charge of Middle Eastern and Arabian
Peninsula affairs, "has been nothing but trouble," says
a veteran foreign service officer who, like other diplomatic sources,
requested anonymity before discussing sensitive issues.
"The result is that we face another armed conflict over Iraq and a bitter confrontation with our European allies as well as the Islamic world over Iran," commented this knowledgeable observer, who recently resigned his post at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo in protest against the appointment of Dan Kurtzer, a known Israeli loyalist, as the new U.S. Ambassador to Egypt.*
What might an Al Gore administration look like if he ascends to the presidency?
Leon Fuerth, a shadowy presence in Washington's corridors of power and a mystery man to the vast majority of American voters, will turn up as the U.S. foreign affairs czar - the next Henry Kissinger - if Bill Clinton is ousted or "resigned" and Vice President Al Gore takes over his office.
Congressional staffers, intelligence and diplomatic sources interviewed in Washington and New York about the likely cast of a transitional Gore administration predicted - with concern - that the key players would be seasoned dual loyalists.
"During his first term, Clinton bent over backwards to assure Israel it was his favorite nation," said Dr. Jacques Oweiss, a Middle Eastern historian. "But Gore went further - he went all-out to be Israel's favorite politician."
As a senator, Gore made himself known "as one of the most pro-Israel legislators in congress," said Morton Klein, the hard-line president of the Zionist Organization of America.
As vice president, Gore has "grown only better - and stronger - as a supporter of the state of Israel," added former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, another leading lobbyist for the ministate.
Unconditional devotion to Israel's interests has marked many of the senior aides who surround Gore now and are expected to moin his administration in the event of Clinton's early departure.
THE PLAYERS
They are:
* Leon Fuerth, the vice president's chief adviser on national security and foreign affairs. Fuerth, with fervent ties to Zionism, has been Gore's closest counselor and mentor since his days in the Senate, congressional staffers say. He is reportedly slated to be named secretary of state in a Gore cabinet.
Gore's dependence on Fuerth resembles the relationship between the late Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson and his powerful chief of staff, the Israeli agent Richard Perle, known as the "Prince of Darkness" for his ability to turn his boss into an unquestioning promoter of the ministate's agenda. Jackson became known as the "senator from Tel Aviv."
* John Deutch, described by one source as an "orthodox Zionist" who served as Clinton's director of central intelligence, is another long-time adviser and mentor to the vice president, although never in a salaried position. Deutch is said to be first in line as Gore's secretary of defense, a post he has long coveted.
* Ronald Klein, the vice president's chief of staff and confidential liaison with Israel is expected to move up to director of the National Security Council in any White House team headed by Gore.
* Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a tried-and-true Israel-firster, is widely held to be the top candidate for the post of Gore's vice President.
*Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), another Israeli loyalist, will be offered the post of White House chief of staff, Capitol Hill insiders say.
At the United Nations, Middle Eastern delegates anxiously weighed the impast of a Gore administration on their region.
"For us the name has ominous double meaning; we fear it threatens the gory cataclysm of war, a flare-up of violence at a number of critical flashpoints," said a veteran Arab diplomat.*
The president and Republican leaders - all of whom had excuses not to serve in Vietnam - now want to destroy Iraq.
President Bill Clinton has signed an Executive Order allowing the United States military for the first time to target Iraq with tactical atomic warheads.
This is the scenario: If Iraq's President Saddam Hussein should launch a chemical or biological attack against other neighboring countries, after the United States attacked Iraq, then the Clinton administration has a contingency plan to strike Iraq with tactical nuclear weapons.
The secret directive was signed by Clinton in November, according to Newsday, a New York daily published on Long Island.
At the time, The SPOTLIGHT also has learned the U.S. military, now with three carrier battle groups in place and ready to launch aircraft against Iraq, is expected to attack any time, as this issue of The SPOTLIGHT goes to press. Washington wants to force Hussein to allow United Nations' inspectors free rein in his country. Hussein claims this violates Iraqi sovereignty.
According to the Air Force source, initial strikes by carrier-bases Navy fighter-bombers, Air Force bombers and cruise missiles will "take out" 67 targets suspected of being Iraqi chemical and biological manufacturing or storage facilities.
Many military experts claim the only way to make certain Iraqi chemical and biological arsenals are totally destroyed is through the use of tactical nuclear weapons.
If tactical nukes are used in Iraq, it will mark the first
time atomic weapons have been used in warfare since the United
States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan,
bringing World War II to a rapid conclusion.
"There is little doubt," one retired Air Force officer
told The SPOTLIGHT, "THAT IF NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARE USED ON
Iraqi targets, and noting how Hussein has in the past shielded
such targets with civilians, loss of civilian life will be terrible."
He also said Hussein is expected to retaliate in any way available to him. "You can just count on this," he said.
LITTLE OPPOSITION
Ironically, efforts in Congress to give the president what is described as unlimited authority for the "unrestricted use" of force against Iraq has brought opposition from members only of Clinton's own party.
Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) Is concerned that "I the objective is to use the military to destroy Iraq's chemical and biological weapons capability, then a bombing campaign may not achieve this objective. Does the president intend to commit ground troops to accomplish that task?"
Cleland, in addressing the Senate on the subject, was apparently not aware of Clinton's nuclear options already in place.
The Georgia Democrat, a severely wounded veteran of the Vietnam War, expressed his concern congressional support of the president's war plans against Iraq could be later used as the "legal basis" for military action in the Persian Gulf.
He pointed out that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, enacted by Congress during the administration of President Lyndon Johnson, legalized the Vietnam War.
Cleland was supported in his cautious approach to giving Clinton carte Blanche military authority n the Gulf by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).
Meanwhile, Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) were chomping at the bit to give Clinton the authority for the use of "unrestricted" force against the Iraqi nation.*
Religious holidays are costing American businesses a bundle. Denying "reasonable accommodation" could be even more costly.
When Congress debated establishing a holiday for Martin Luther King Jr., it was argued that each federal holiday costs taxpayers billions of dollars in lost production.
And with multiculturalism becoming trendy, the price goes up. For the business community, it can be not just costly in terms of production, but disruptive as well.
When an employee demands a holiday for a religion the boss has never heard of, what does he do?
If denied, will the employee complain to the trigger-happy Equal Employment Opportunity Commission? Or perhaps bring a "civil rights" case to the Justice Department? Or is his religion a "disability" under the Americans With Disabilities Act?
HIGH COST
Even if complaints are frivolous, their nuisance value is high. The cost, including management time and legal fees, to respond to the most absurd complaint is often many times what it would cost to be "accommodating." So, as a practical matter, small businessmen tend to capitulate.*
Big Brother isn't just watching you; he's listening to you, too. And not just in the United States.
The European Union (EU) has officially discovered what American patriots have known for decades: electronic communications cannot be kept secret.
A special report commissioned in 1996 by Civil Liberties Committee of the European Parliament, governing body of the EU, names Uncle Sam as Big Brother.
The report - Assessing the Technologies of political Control - contains details of a network of American-controlled spy stations around the world that "routinely and indiscriminately" monitors countless phone, fax and e-mail messages, according to the Daily Telegraph of London.
The report warns that the United States has developed an extensive spying network which is used to eavesdrop on European citizens, a situation which caused a minor stir in the UK when the Daily Telegraph broke the story, but saw little ink on the Continent and in America.
The global electronic spy network can eavesdrop on every telephone, e-mail and telex communication around the world, the EU officially acknowledged when accepting the report late last year.
According to published stories, the report says, in part:
"Within Europe, all e-mail, telephone and fax communications are routinely intercepted by the United States National Security Agency (NSA), transferring all target information from the European mainland via the strategic hub of London, then by satellite to Fort Meade in Maryland via the crucial hub at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire."
SECRET SYSTEM
The report confirms for the first time the existence of the secretive strong "Echelon" system. Until now evidence of such astounding technology has been patchy and anecdotal. But the report - discussed by the committee of the office of Science and Technology Assessment in Luxembourg - confirms that the citizens of Europe are subject to an intensity of surveillance far in excess of that imagined by most governments.
The Daily Telegraph opined that the findings of the committee "are certain to excite the concern of" members of Parliament. But if they did, no one heard about it.
The Echelon system forms part of the U.S. Air Force systems, but unlike many of the electronic spy systems developed during the Cold War, Echelon is designed primarily for non-military targets: governments, organizations and businesses in virtually every country.
For more than a decade, former agents of U.S., British, Canadian and New Zealand national security agencies have claimed that the monitoring of electronic communications has become endemic throughout the world. Rumors have circulated that new technologies have been developed which have the capability to search most of the world's telex, fax and e-mail networks.
Former signals intelligence operatives have claimed that spy bases controlled by America have the ability to search nearly all data communications. They claim that Echelon automatically analyzes most e-mail messaging for data which assists intelligence agencies to determine targets.
WHO'S CALLING
According to former Canadian Security Establishment agent Mike Frost, a voice recognition system called "Oratory" has been used for some years to intercept diplomatic calls.
The driving force behind the report, says the Daily Telegraph, is Glyn Ford a Labor Party member of Parliament for greater Manchester East. He believes the report is crucial to the future of civil liberties in Europe.
The report recommends a variety of measures for dealing with the increasing power of the technologies of surveillance being used at Menwith Hill and other centers.
It bluntly advises: "The European Parliament should reject proposals from the United States for making private messages via the global communications network [Internet] accessible to U.S. intelligence agencies."
The report also urges a fundamental review of the involvement of NSA in Europe, suggesting that the activities be either scaled down, or become more open and accountable.
Such concerns have been privately expressed by governments since the Cold War, but surveillance has continued to expand. U.S. intelligence activity in Britain has enjoyed a steady growth throughout the past two decades, said the London newspaper.
BACKGROUND
The principal motivation for this rush of development, according to published stories, is the U.S. interest in commercial espionage. In the 1950s, during the development of the "special relationship" between America and Britain, one U.S. institution was singled out for special attention.
NSA, the world's biggest and most powerful signals intelligence organization, received approval to set up a network of spy stations throughout Britain.
"Their role was to provide military, diplomatic and economic intelligence by intercepting communications from throughout the Northern Hemisphere," according to the Daily Telegraph.
NSA is one of the most shadowy of all the shadowy U.S. intelligence agencies. Until a few years ago, its existence was a secret. Any mention of its duties are still classified. However, it does have a Web site (www.nas.gov:8080) in which it describes itself as being responsible for the signals intelligence and communications security activities of the U.S. government.
One of its bases, Menwith Hill in the UK, was to become the biggest spy station in the world. Its ears - known as "radomes" [short for radar domes] - are capable of listening in to vast chunks of communications spectrum throughout Europe and the old Soviet Union.
In its first decade the base sucked data from cables and microwave links running through a nearby Post Office tower, but the communications revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s gave the base a capability that even its architects could scarcely have been able to imagine.
With the creation of Intelsat and digital telecommunications, Menwith and other stations developed the capability to eavesdrop on an extensive scale on fax, telec and voice messages. Then, with the development of the Internet, electronic mail and electronic commerce the listening posts were able to increase their monitoring capability to eavesdrop on an unprecedented spectrum of personal and business communications.
Says the Daily Telegraph, this activity has been all but ignored by Parliament. When Labor representatives raised questions about the activities of NSA, the government invoked secrecy rules.
Ford says he hopes his report may be the first step in a long road to more openness. Some democratically elected body should surely have a right to know at some level opined the London newspaper, and lamented that at the moment that's not the case.*
Once again a foreign intelligence service has hoodwinked an American president. This time the subject is Iraq.
The Clinton administration is being relentlessly driven toward another armed clash with Iraq - and a disastrous confrontation with the vast world of Islam. The motivating factor is a stream of deceptive and fabricated intelligence reports fed to the White House, congressional leaders and the U.S. mainstream media by the Israeli government and its powerful Washington lobby.
The SPOTLIGHT has learned exclusively from briefings and documents provided by high-level diplomatic sources that President Bill Clinton's decision to order U.S. forces in the Gulf on a war footing came after he was shown top secret strategic estimates arguing that the regime of Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein could be toppled by "crippling" air raids.
UNRELIABLE REPORTS
But Middle eastern diplomatic sources warn that these reports are based on information put out by the Mossad, Israel's secret service, after its agents purportedly co-opted and debriefed a key Iraqi defector last December.
In a detailed intelligence summary distributed both to the White House and the U.S. defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Mossad identified the defector as Iraqi Lt. Col. Wafik al-Samarrai. He was described as a former chief of Saddam Hussein's military intelligence service, who was said to have defected in late 1996 while on a trip to Greece.
Col. Al-Samarrai allegedly told Israeli interrogators that a number of Iraq's armed forces commanders were "fed up" with Saddam Hussein's one-man rule and opposed his "suicidal" confrontation with the West.
According to the Mossad summary sent to Washington through back channels, the renegade Iraqi officer identified some of these disaffected generals by name.
If pounding, merciless U.S. air raids smashed the Iraqi ruler's
palaces, his national communications network including Baghdad
TV and radio, as well as other key installations, the generals
would "see the light" and oust Saddam Hussein, Col.
Al-Sammarrai reportedly assured his Israeli interrogators.
WARNING NOTICE
But senior Middle Eastern diplomatic sources have provided this populist newspaper's diplomatic correspondent with access to a warning notice circulated last month by the Arab League among the leaders of its 21 member states.
The confidential memorandum points out that the Mossad's intelligence summary, attempting to justify all-out bombardment of Iraq, sounds like a fabrication.
It appears to be just another "disinformation, cover and deception operation of the sort Israel has launched on numerous past occasions" to mislead and manipulate U.S. Strategy, the Arab League circular cautions.
It cites several inconsistencies in the Mossad's intelligence summary, including the fact that Col. Al-Sammarrai "is known to have left Iraq well before 1996; in fact, he has been described as a paid international anti-Saddam operative ever since 1993."
As for the Israeli intelligence summary's claim that aerial warfare will set the stage for a military uprising in Iraq, independent observers around the world scoffed at the proposition.
Even the staid London Times - the voice of Britain's ruling Establishment, claimed by Clinton as his closest ally - dismissed the notion with a single word: "Lunacy."
OPPOSITION
The Saudi government responded to these developments with an official announcement by Prince Sultan, its defense minister and second prime minister, widely respected as the Arab world's wisest and most statesmanlike leader.
"Saudi Arabia is opposed to bombing raids or other military action against the nation and people of Iraq," Prince Sultan proclaimed.
Egypt - known in ordinary times as Washington's best-paid and least troublesome Mideast client - went even further. President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would convene an emergency Arab summit to adopt "measures to prevent any armed aggression against Iraq."*
Is there a constitutional basis for the United States to attack Iraq?
It appears the Clinton Administration is now ready to bomb Iraq.
The stated reason, of course, is to force UN inspectors into every inch of Iraqi territory to rule out the existence of any weapons of mass destruction: an impossible and implausible task. While some will try to claim that the president's personal problems may influence this decision (which should not be completely discounted), the real problem is the flawed foreign policy which underlies all our activities abroad.
Why is Iraq a greater threat to U.S. security than Red China, North Korea, Russia or Iran? They all possess weapons of mass destruction, and at least three are hostile to American policies. It makes no sense that a petty dictator without weapons is the target of hostilities while big dictators with massive armaments are the recipients of U.S. aid.
There was a time in our history that bombing foreign countries was considered an act of war, done only with a declaration by Congress. War is something to be feared, and thoughts of which should never be entertained lightly. It is this reason that our Constitution specifically states that declarations of war, the initial commitment of military personal in armed situations, is to be made only by Congress.
Today, tragically, decisions to place our troops in harm's way are done at the whim of the presidents, though often at the urging of some congressional leaders without a vote of the entire congress. As repugnant as it may be to our sensibilities, the UN Security council and the leaders of our "ally" countries often have more say in whether or not our troops go to battle than the elected representative constitutionally charge with this decision.
Trying to appease the military industrial complex and appear tough for campaign ads, many congressmen will make strong public statements goading the president to battle, going so far as to draft meaningless resolutions supporting bombings and military action. But they refuse to claim their proper constitutional role and take responsibility for sending America's youth to die in the sands of a foreign desert.
Poll after poll shows Americans are not anxious for war, and few constituents I meet offer any advice other than that we get out of the situation before it gets bloody. But even internationally the president is getting little support - in fact a lot of resistance - from our allies for his aggressive talk.
Indeed, it is surprising to find that our allies in the Middle East, who are most likely to suffer if Hussein indeed develops weapons of mass destruction, are the least inclined to go to war.
Several years ago we fought a war for the people of Kuwait after Hussein invaded their land.
Today, the Kuwaitis are opposed to seeing U.S. troops destabilize the region with war.
A Kuwaiti professor was quoted in a pro-government Kuwaiti newspaper as saying, "The U.S. frightens us with Saddam to make us buy weapons and sign contracts with American companies," thus ensuring a market for American arms manufacturers and United States' continued military presence in the Middle East.
And a Kuwaiti legislator was quoted as saying, "The use of force has ended up strengthening the Iraqi regime rather than weakening it."
Other Kuwaitis have even suggested that the U.S. really wants Hussein in power to make sure his weak neighbors fear him and are forced to depend on the United states for survival. Not a bad theory when we remember that the U.S. supported Hussein as recently as nine years ago, and had until then for a decade supplied him with money and weapons, turning a blind eye to his policies and aggression.
Sadly, our policy in the Middle East has served to strengthen the hand of Hussein and unify the Islamic fundamentalists against the United States. Hussein is now anxious for the bombs to hit so he can further stir hatred and blame toward America for the pain he has inflected on his people.
Indeed, at every turn in this "crisis," Hussein has gone before this people and blamed the U.S. for their problems. And the Iraqi people believe it.
Son now we are faced with the possibility of going to war, alone, for what reason? To protect a region which says publicly that it does not need to be protected? Even now the groundwork is being laid for a war as senseless as the one in Vietnam, in Somalia and in Bosnia.
I, too, worry about a biological or nuclear threat. But I see our cities at a much greater risk because of our aggressive, hostile policies, than if we were friends with all, enjoying economic relationships and open dialogue. The way we usually get dragged into a war is by some unpredictable incident, where innocent Americans are killed after our government placed them in harm's way and the enemy took the bait. Once hostilities begin, debating the policy which created the mess is off limits; the thinking goes that everybody must support the troops by blindly and dumbly supporting irrational and irresponsible policies.
But the best way to support our troops is to have a policy that avoids unnecessary confrontation and bloodshed. A pro-American constitutional policy of nonintervention would go a long way toward guaranteeing maximum liberty and protection of life and property for all Americans.
Unfortunately, we cannot expect such common sense to prevail in the current political climate.*
The Clinton administration's plans to attack Iraq have themselves come under attack.
Dr. Robert John, director of the International Council for Human Ecology and Ethnology (ICHEE), condemned the American and British Mideast war plans at the January meeting of the Steuben Society in New York. (The society is named for Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, the Prussian who trained George Washington's Continental Army.)
Iraq has been identified in the mainstream media as a threat to world peace, dr. John said. The so-called "presidential palaces" or bunker areas for Iraqi government personnel would probably be among the first targets. The prime objective would be to kill Saddam Hussein. In this unprovoked attack, civilians would also be killed.
Dr. John called on the commander of United States forces in the Gulf, Gen. Anthony Zinni, to resign rather than carry out a "war crime of an unprovoked attack," and a crime against humanity because of the certain civilian deaths and injuries.
STARVATION COMPARISON
He compared Iraq's takeover of Kuwait seven years ago with Germany's reoccupation of the Rhineland. Further, the deliberate starvation of Iraqis since the Gulf War by a blockade of U.S., British and French forces ight be compared with their starvation of Germany for six months after the 1918 World WarI armistice, and for more than two years after the 1945 surrender of the Second World war, he said.
Starvation was a deliberate policy of the American-British-Soviet European Advisory Committee.
Dr. John said that his uncle, Lt. Col. J.C. John, had volunteered from the western Front in WWI for the Dunster Force that freed Mesopotamia (now Iraq) from Turkish rule. Kuwait was as much a part of Iraq as the former autonomous princely states of India were part of India, the author and lecturer said. The boundary of Kuwait had been drawn in the sand by British imperialists and enlarged by U.S. dikat to Iraq after the Gulf War.
With their tragic experience, Germany and Americans of German descent should never support food and trade blockades as instruments of policy, In an interview with U.S. Secretary of State (then Ambassador) Madeleine Albright (May 12, 1996) on the TV program 60 Minutes, for which Leslie Stahl was given a Columbia University School of Journalism award in 1997, she said that UN Food and Agriculture Organization figures showed that half-a-million children died from starvation as a result of the American-led sanctions against Iraq.
Stahl: "I mean, that's more than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?
Ambassador Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it."
HYPOCRITICAL SANCTIONS
The United Nations is used as a tool of control, Dr John said. Unlike Iraq or Libya or Iran, countries that the U.S. support, Turkey and Israel for example, may confidently ignore its Security Council resolutions without sanctions being imposed against them, Instead, they are subsidized with foreign aid.
The U.S. has grown very powerful in two centuries profiting from the two world wars, when Allied investments there ware sold to buy supplies, and German investments were confiscated. It is also a country rich in natural resources that includes its people, Dr. John said.
But is fundamental policies have been moved far out of alignment from the positions on foreign affairs, and limited central power, of its visionary Founders. That formulation on foreign relation, expressed by its first president as good relations with all, special relations with none, was affirmed by John Quincy Adams: "America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy" (1821).
POSITION SWITCH
In 1997, that position was dismissed 100 times a day by American warplanes violating the sovereign air space of Iraq, seven years after the Gulf War. The prohibition and prevention of Iraqi flights across southern Iraq was inposed to protect Shite Moslems waging an American=promoted uprising in the south, from attacks by Iraqi national forces.
Despite receiving millions of dollars in financing from the United States (N.Y. Times, Aug. 24, 1995, A14) in the north, a CIA-sponsored secession was stopped by Iraq forces in 1995, and thousands of northerners have been transported to Guam and the U.S. to join the million Vietnamese and other "refugees" from American interventions in other countries. The American congress voted $540 million for the purpose of destroying the currency of Iraq.
"The famous 19th century German American journalist and legislator Carl Schurz opposed U.S. intervention in Cuba and the annexation of Puerto Rico," Dr.John said. When challenged that he should support his country, right or wrong, Schurz replied: 'If right, to be kept right. If wrong, to be put right,'"
Dr. John concluded: "Let us use our votes for a just American policy. That is patriotism."*