Paid Advocacy for MKO Terrorists
In the news section, Jason Ditz tells us that the State Department is preparing to remove the Iranian dissident group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MeK) from their official list of terrorist organizations. 
This, after years of praise and advocacy from elite members in American politics, from Ed Randell to John Bolton to Howard Dean and Rudy Giuliani. These types of people collected payments from the MeK for their advocacy to get the group removed from the State Department’s list, which amounts to “material support” for terrorist groups, a felony. Of course, such well-connected, high-society types don’t get prosecuted for unlawful behavior unless it involves betraying the sanctity of marriage. And the fact that the U.S. government secretly trained MeK fighters in recent years and is now being employed by Israel to conduct acts of terrorism inside Iran probably won’t increase the likelihood of such prosecutions.
Interestingly, Glenn Greenwald has dug up the following bit of history. A document written by the Bush administration in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, still in the archives of the White House’s website, seeks to justify the war on the basis of Saddam’s support for the very “terrorist” group we are now supporting!
Iraq shelters terrorist groups including the Mujahedin-e-Khalq Organization (MKO), which has used terrorist violence against Iran and in the 1970s was responsible for killing several U.S. military personnel and U.S. civilians.
This makes flagrantly clear that, as Greenwald writes, “the application of the term ‘Terrorist’ by the U.S. Government has nothing to do with how that term is commonly understood, but is instead exploited solely as a means to punish those who defy U.S. dictates and reward those who advance American interests and those of its allies (especially Israel).”
For another example, think back to the height of Obama’s war in Libya. Preeminent AEI jingo Marc Thiessan tried to justify ousting Gadhafi because, of course, he was a committed terrorist. After all, Theissan wrote, Gadhafi was:
the man who blew up Pan Am 103 over Scotland, killing 270 people; destroyed a French passenger jet over Niger, killing 171 people; bombed the La Belle discotheque in West Berlin, killing two U.S. soldiers and injuring more than 50 American servicemen; established terrorist training camps on Libyan soil; provided terrorists with arms and safe haven…
See how easy that is? Theissan and other supporters of the war went through this rap sheet repeatedly, refusing to highlight the fact that the NATO-backed rebels had direct ties to al-Qaeda and had themselves committed serious acts of “terror.”
So a terrorist is whoever our military and political leadership say it is. Until they begin to collude with them, then they’re not terrorists anymore.
By John Glaser
Via Glenn Greenwald, Daneil Denvir writes about former Governor Ed Rendell trying to explain why he shouldn’t be indicted for providing “material support” to the Iranian cult terrorist group MEK:
One 10-minute speech earned Rendell $20,000, and he frequently flew to Europe to call for MEK’s removal from the terror list. That would appear to fall within the extraordinarily broad definition of “material support” used by theObama administration.
Rendell calls that “ludicrous.” He says, “The only thing we’ve done is spoken out on their behalf. And you certainly can’t in any way encumber free speech in America. You know that ? you’re a journalist.”
I do sort of know that?you shouldn’t be able to encumber free speech. But the Supreme Court did just that, and Muslims have been prosecuted for doing less: a satellite TV salesman sentenced to five years for broadcasting Hezbollah’s TV channel; a man indicted for favorable web comments on shooting U.S. soldiers.
…“Whatever one’s views are on this ruling, it is now binding law. To advocate on behalf of a designated Terrorist group constitutes the felony of ‘providing material support’ if that advocacy is coordinated with the group,” writes Salon blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald. “They’re providing more substantial ‘material support’ to this Terrorist group than many people ? usually vulnerable, powerless Muslims ? who are currently imprisoned for that crime.”
…“If you indict me, [Rendell explained] I hope you know, you have to indict 67 other Americans who did the same thing, including seven generals … [who] served in Iraq. You’d have to indict James Jones, President Obama’s first NSC chief adviser, you’d have to indict former Attorney General [Michael] Mukasey, former FBI Director Louis Freeh … the whole kit and caboodle.” That caboodle is voluminous and high-powered, including Tom Ridge, UN Ambassador John Bolton, Rudolph Giuliani and Howard Dean, among others.
Seriously, don’t tease me…
“You tell me that anyone has the right to restrict my freedom of speech and I’ll tell you you’re dead wrong,” Rendell insists.
I wish I were wrong. The Supreme Court’s three dissenters protested that the decision “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” So it does. It’s a frightening law and a horrible ruling that pulverizes First Amendment free speech protections. But as long as political nobodies face prosecution for speech crimes, so should elites. Indict Rendell ? and Ridge, Mukasey, Giuliani, etc. ? or repeal this law.
See here for background on the push inside elite U.S. circles to get the MEK delisted from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
It should be well known that the law simply doesn’t apply to elite members of the American political community. But I just think it’s fascinating that Rendell actually used the argument that, if you indict him, you’ll have to then apply the law to other important people! At least 67 of them! Oh, the unspeakable chaos!
By John Glaser
If you are a Muslim American who is appalled by U.S. foreign policy, most specifically its 
penchant for invading Islamic countries in a bid to change their regimes, and you make the mistake of saying something to that effect on the phone or writing about your concerns in an email, there is a good chance that the FBI will come after you. You will in short order find yourself with a new friend who is a Muslim just like you and who shares your frustration with American foreign policy. At a certain point he will reveal his affiliation with a certain overseas group that is interested in obtaining revenge for all the Muslims who have been killed or injured by the United States. He will suggest that doing something about the problem would be neither sinful nor really wrong, and he will hint that he has access to the weapons or bombs that could be used for a revenge attack. You take the bait. The bomb or gun is a dud and the new friend turns out to be an FBI informant. Another “terrorist” is arrested and sent to jail for 20 years. End of story.
Americans who are not Muslim should be concerned by the repeated entrapment of so-called terrorists, first of all because the process reveals that our private communications are no longer very private. Second, the law enforcement use of a planted informant to encourage and enable someone to commit a crime used to be illegal. It is not so anymore.
Many of the terrorism cases are not related to actual terror but rather to what is described as material support. It is interesting to read what exactly the United States Code states. It is 18 USC § 2339A — Providing Material Support to Terrorists:
)a) Offense.— Whoever provides material support or resources or conceals or disguises the nature, location, source, or ownership of material support or resources, knowing or intending that they are to be used in preparation for, or in carrying out, a violation of section [38 sections and acts are cited] or in preparation for, or in carrying out, the concealment of an escape from the commission of any such violation, or attempts or conspires to do such an act, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 15 years, or both, and, if the death of any person results, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life. A violation of this section may be prosecuted in any Federal judicial district in which the underlying offense was committed, or in any other Federal judicial district as provided by law.
)b) Definitions [my emphasis]: As used in this section—(1) the term “material support or resources” means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safe houses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials; … (3) the term “expert advice or assistance” means advice or assistance derived from scientific, technical or other specialized knowledge.
To see how loose the definition of support can be, consider an actual case dating from September 2011. Pakistan-born Jubair Ahmad, 24, was accused of providing material support to the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. Ahmad produced and posted a propaganda video for LeT “glorifying violent jihad” in 2010, some three years after he arrived in the United States with his parents and two younger brothers. “Terrorist organizations such as LeT … use the Internet and other media as part of well-orchestrated propaganda campaigns,” the FBI stated in its affidavit on Ahmad. Though the charge is not spelled out in any more detail, one would assume that Ahmad is considered to be guilty of providing “expert advice or assistance” to LeT.
Which brings me to the subject of the Mujahedin-e Khalq, better known as MEK. The MEK has been on the State Department roster of foreign terrorist organizations since the list was established in 1997. Its inclusion derives from its having killed six Americans in the 1970s and from its record of violence both inside and outside Iran since that time. The group was driven out of Iran, denied refuge in France, and eventually armed and given a military base by Saddam Hussein. Saddam used the group to carry out terrorist acts inside Iran. The MEK is widely regarded as a cult and is headed by spouses Massoud and Maryam Rajavi. Its members are required to be celibate, and there are reports that they are subjected to extensive brainwashing, physical torture, severe beatings even unto death, and prolonged solitary confinement if they question the leadership. One scholar who has studied them describes their beliefs as a “weird combination of Marxism and Islamic fundamentalism.” Like many other terrorist groups, the MEK has a political wing that operates openly, the National Council of Resistance, which is based in Paris, and another front organization called Executive Action, which operates in Washington.
The U.S. military and the CIA have in the past recruited MEK agents to enter Iran and report on nuclear facilities. Other MEK agents, recruited and trained by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, have recently killed a number of Iranian nuclear scientists and officials. The group appears to have ample financial resources, and it is generally believed that at least some of the money comes from Mossad. The MEK is able to place full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers and is also known to pay hefty speaker’s fees to major political figures who are willing to speak publicly on its behalf. The group claims to want regime-change in Iran to restore democracy to the country, an odd assertion as it itself has no internal democracy.
Because the MEK is a resource being used by Israel in its clandestine war against Iran, it is perhaps inevitable that many friends of Israel in the United States are campaigning vigorously to have the group removed from the terrorism list. Indeed, neocons at their various think-tanks and publications as well as AIPAC all support delisting the group. At this moment, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not surprisingly, appears to be inclined to give in to the pressure and delist the MEK once it completes its departure from Camp Ashraf in Iraq, where it has been based for the past 20 years. There might be some problem in arranging the move, as few countries want to take the MEK supporters, fearing that they would have to be deprogrammed from their brainwashing.
The MEK’s friends argue that the group has not killed anyone since 1999, though the recent assassinations employing MEK members belie that assertion, as do FBI reports revealing terrorist planning as late as 2004. Many speakers defending the MEK have also admitted that they do not know much about the group, most particularly in regard to its cult status, though they insist that their support is based on the fact that the organization is now not lethal (and, of course, the handsome speaking fees they have received).
The well-connected friends of the MEK include well-known neocons like John Bolton and James Woolsey. And there is also the paid supporting cast including former head of the Democratic Party Howard Dean; former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani; ex-CIA director Michael Hayden; former generals Anthony Zinni, Peter Pace, and Hugh Shelton; former congressman Lee Hamilton; ex–attorney general Michael Mukasey; former Homeland Security director Tom Ridge; former national security adviser Jim Jones; ex-senator Robert Torricelli; former FBI director Louis Freeh; and former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. Current representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Brad Sherman also openly support the MEK and joined 96 other congressmen in calling for the lifting of the terrorism label.
Lee Hamilton has praised the MEK for providing useful intelligence on Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, but some of the intelligence in question is believed to be fabricated by the Mossad. Hamilton subsequently admitted that he was paid a “substantial amount” to speak and conceded that he might have been fooled by the group’s democratic credentials. “You always can be misled,” he said. Ethically challenged former senator and current lobbyist Robert Torricelli is less flexible, stating that he is “personally offended” by the group being listed as terrorist, noting that it can be “used” against Iran.
In August 2011, Rep. Ted Poe of Texas struck a similar note, referring to the MEK as “freedom fighters,” the only “real” opposition to the government in Tehran. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney advocates delisting the group so it can undertake “provocative actions” against Iran, which he describes as killing Iranians if and when they kill Americans. So the objective for some MEK supporters clearly seems to be to give a pass to a terrorist group and to even encourage it to undertake violent action, as long as it is “our” terrorist group attacking people that we consider the bad guys.
Given the history of the MEK as a terrorist organization and the deliberately broad wording of the relevant U.S. statute, it would seem that speaking on behalf of the group amounts to material support of terrorism. So I have to ask why is it that the numerous prominent MEK supporters are walking free while Jubair Ahmad can be called a terrorist for the exercise of what might well appear to be similar First Amendment rights in producing something for a website? Can it be that the richly compensated MEK spokesmen are too important to arrest? Or is there one justice system for working-class Muslims and another for blowhards like John Bolton? Or is it just a fool’s game with the usual Washington crowd queuing up for a bad cause because they are both lining their pockets and thinking they are helping Israel? In any event, it is a poor bargain for the rest of us, but that hardly seems to matter anymore.
by Philip Giraldi
Clinton says if anti-Tehran terrorist group can’t find someplace to go after being evicted from Iraq, they may get de-listed.
If the terrorist Iranian dissident group Mujahadin-e Khalq (MeK) can’t find someplace to go after being evicted from its base in Iraq, the United States may remove the group from the State Department’s terrorist list.
The MEK has a long history of terrorist activity going back to the 1970′s and it remains on America’s official list of foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and has the goal of overthrowing the Iranian government. Because of this goal, there has been a big money push by many influential people in Washington to get the group removed from the State Department’s terrorist list, presumably to make it eligible for U.S. funding and harm Iran.
MeK’s former ally, the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, had allowed the group to settle at Camp Ashraf, 40 miles from Baghdad. But now Iraq’s Shi’ite majority has forged closer ties with its Shi’ite neighbor Iran, and the MeK is no longer welcome at Ashraf.
Despite still being officially considered a terrorist group, the U.S. has sort of taken MeK under its wing, opening up a former U.S. base in Iraq for the 3,000 MeK members in Ashraf to resettle to, and trying to find a third country that might welcome them, since both Iraq and Iran will not.
But they can’t stay at the U.S. base in Iraq permanently. And if a new home can’t be found for them, the U.S. may de-list them, and possibly even welcome them on U.S. soil.
“Given the ongoing efforts to relocate the residents, MeK cooperation in the successful and peaceful closure of Camp Ashraf, the MeK’s main paramilitary base, will be a key factor in any decision regarding the MEK’s FTO status,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently told U.S. lawmakers.
This is a despicable and hypocritical approach on the part of Washington. U.S. officials recently told NBC News that Israel has financed, trained, and armed MeK terrorists to carry out unprovoked attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists inside Iran. To help MeK find refuge or even de-list them would clearly be U.S. support for terrorists. Of course, when terrorists target the United States or its allies, they are detained without charge or trial, tortured, or even executed. But if terrorists target an adversary of the U.S., like Iran, suddenly they’re worthy of Washington’s help.
by John Glaser,
Today it was revealed that Israel has been funding, arming, and training the Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK), designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department, to conduct terrorist attacks killing Iranian nuclear scientists. Anonymous U.S. officials confirmed to NBC News that allegations of this Israeli-MEK connection are accurate. This is a story of national and international significance and, while it was published by NBC, it has been completely absent from the mainstream media.
Hey, I’m no idiot. I know the news media is incredibly biased in favor of powerful institutions and especially the state. But I don’t think I was naive to actually expect some coverage of this news on the day it broke. I scoured the major news media – CNN, MSNBC, Fox, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Daily Beast, al Jazeera English, my twitter feed and even my RSS feed (both of which are filled with the kind of dissident material that could spark the interest of Homeland Security) – and nothing. Virtually no coverage.
The U.S. has supported terrorism (and conducted its own state terrorism) innumerable times in the past without appropriate coverage in the news media. But this story of Israeli support of the MEK isn’t about some obscure, chronically marginalized issue. We’re not talking about U.S. support for murderous Colombian paramilitaries, an issue that has never piqued the interest of Americans. The issue of the impending conflict with Iran, however contaminated by false statements and jingoistic war propaganda, has certainly received its fair share of coverage. This is a mainstream issue.
This is a situation where the U.S. government’s closest ally, receiving billions in annual aid and unmatched diplomatic cover, is cooperating with a group that the State Department itself characterizes as a terrorist organization, to conduct assassination programs against innocent people in a sovereign nation. Taken in isolation, this is bad enough. But this kind of behavior has the potential to destabilize a very precarious situation and possibly suck the United States into another war in the Middle East. And these facts have now been confirmed by U.S. officials. I can’t imagine a more headline-worthy revelation.
But the news media is so subservient to the U.S. government and the credibility of its allies that this momentous story isn’t just twisted or lied about like America’s other propaganda – it’s erased. Whitewashed. Never happened.
It may be more enlightening at first, for those dismissing my observation as wacky conspiracy, to think about al Jazeera instead of the mainstream news in America. During the Iraq war, al Jazeera was often turned to in order to get the hard-hitting stories that the U.S. media couldn’t and wouldn’t report. It was “alternative.” They’ve since evolved and have had lots of questionable coverage that unfortunately overlaps that in the U.S. media. But why would a news organization, based in the region in which these Israeli terrorist attacks have taken place, whitewash this story?
Consider the politics of the region. The Gulf Arab states for a long time have been on the side of Israel and the U.S. when it comes to the issue of Iran. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, etc. – fear Iranian influence in the region because it crowds out their own. The Saudi King, for example, not only has secretly urged the U.S. to attack Iran, but has a strong interest in seeing Iran further isolated by eliminating its one regional ally, Syria (which is why Saudi Arabia has reportedly funneled support to the rebel Free Syrian Army and why it supported the Arab League’s Security Council resolution for intervention in Syria). Al Jazeera, which is based in Qatar, would be going against the interests of its owner and government (one in the same) if it appropriately covered revelations about Israeli terrorism in Iran.
Virtually the same calculations exist for the American media. Washington consistently pushes misinformation about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program (despite a near-consensus on the part of the intelligence and military community that Iran’s nuclear program is entirely civilian in nature) and demonizes the Iranian leadership because Iran lies outside Washington’s sphere of influence in the world’s most geopolitically important region. The news media reflects the state’s interests, both because ruffling the feathers of their commanders in Washington is against their own interests and because of what I call the “culture of regurgitation” in American journalism (“if my government says it, I’ll say it too”).
The focus of the media today, aside from the painfully stale political horserace, was the bank’s mortgage settlement and Syria. Regarding the former, there was gratuitous praise heaped on the Obama administration for overseeing a $26 billion settlement from the nation’s five biggest banks for their role in the mortgage meltdown (this, of course, after having colluded with banks to screw millions of people and bilk the economy out of far more than $26 billion). Regarding the latter, as I write these words CNN is running a story about Iran’s alleged material support for Syria’s killing of civilians.
I’m going to maintain my naiveté for another 24 hours. Let’s see if Israeli terrorism against Iran gets any coverage tomorrow.
By John Glaser
Scott Horton of Antiwar Radio interviewed Philip Giraldi on December13, 2011. In this interview, produced for KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi reprises and expands 
on his previous interview about his article “Washington’s Secret Wars,” Obama’s newly signed “findings” that authorize covert operations to destabilize the Iranian and Syrian governments, how the US and Israel use the Baluch Jundallah, Kurdish PJAK and MEK groups to commit terrorism-by-proxy, and the MEK’s energetic and well funded campaign to get de-listed as a terrorist group.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.
Below is a brief report on the interview published by Habilian Association.
Philip Giraldi, former CIA counter-terrorism officer and executive director of the Council for the National Interest was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio and elaborated on US and Israeli efforts to destabilize Iran above all the latest assassination.
"I think that’s people who have been recruited by either CIA or Mossad and have been trained and sent back into Iran," said Philip Giraldi regarding the assassins of Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, Iranian scientist assassinated in Tehran on Wednesday, January 11, 2012, Habilian Association database (families of Iranian terror victims) reported on Wednesday.
The contributing editor to the American Conservative Magazine added that, "I suspect they (assassins) were recruited out of MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq) which is why we’re seeing so much stuff in support of MEK coming out of various politicians and other interest groups."
"Because MEK is kind of their boys, their cutting edge in terms of getting inside Iran and carrying out these kinds of operations," Giraldi further explained.
"Because MEK is kind of their boys, their cutting edge in terms of getting inside Iran and carrying out these kinds of operations," included Giraldi, adding that having been an experienced CIA case officer, "I understand how the stuff works a lot better than somebody in a newspaper."
He went on to say that a Mossad or CIA officer does not have the ability to go inside Iran and carry out an operation, concluding that they have acquired somebody else who can do it for them "and in this case there are some obvious candidates, MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq, MKO) would be I think the most prominent."
He made reference to US and Israeli actions against Syria and Iran and emphasized that in the case of Iran they know they cannot overthrow the regime, adding that, "it’s the question of setting up a bunch of relationships and employing various covert actions to destabilize (and) to make the Iranian government waste a lot of resources on dealing with these problems."
Former CIA agent Philip Giraldi also described the assassinations of Iranian scientists as "to be somewhat ineffective."
Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi discusses his article “Washington’s Secret Wars;” Obama’s newly signed “findings,” authorizing covert operations to destabilize the Iranian and Syrian governments; how the US and Israel use the Baluch Jundallah, Kurdish PJAK and MEK groups to commit terrorism-by-proxy; the MEK’s energetic and well funded campaign to get de-listed as a terrorist group (in order to more easily commit terrorist acts); and how the 1996 neoconservative policy document “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” is going according to plan.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and executive director of the Council for the National Interest. He writes regularly for Antiwar.com.
Download US backed MEK assassinated Iranian Scientists
|An increasing number of former intel officer that I network with are convinced that the alleged plot to kill the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington is not only completely implausible as 
described by the Justice Department and White House but also possibly the contrivance of an intelligence or security service other than that of Iran. There is a consensus that the Iranian government has no motive for carrying out the attack, as it would have only further isolated Tehran internationally and could easily have led to massive retaliation. The “rogue element” theory that Iran’s fractured politics might mean that someone in the Quds group was actually trying to embarrass someone else in the government has a certain plausibility, but no one who knows anything about Iran actually believes it to be true. Nor is it likely that Iran mounted the complicated operation to avenge the assassinations of several of its nuclear scientists. The scientists were killed by the Israelis, who would have been the target if that had been the case. So the only question becomes, who is doing what to whom and why?
The speculation by Gareth Porter that the whole affair might have been a drug deal that morphed or was manipulated by an FBI sting into yet another terrorism story is compelling. If that was the case, then the U.S. government is guilty yet again of taking a vulnerable individual and turning him to make him into what will pass muster as a genuine terrorist. Nearly every terrorism case since 9/11 has been precisely that — finding a disgruntled individual or group through communications intercepts, inserting an informant into the process, and developing the case to enhance its terrorism potential.
Another possibility that has been mentioned is that it might have been an operation planned by the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, the Iranian opposition group supported by a number of U.S. lawmakers. But the MEK would not have the resources or technical expertise to carry out such a deception, unless it were working in cooperation with the CIA or the Mossad, which raises the possibility that this has been from the start the work of an intelligence agency rather than law enforcement.
Law enforcement normally begins with some kind of case and then allows it to grow, whereas an intelligence operation would be phony from start to finish. If it is indeed an intelligence operation, there are three principal suspects: the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. All three countries have highly sophisticated intelligence services capable of the technical measures required to carry out what is essentially a false-flag operation, in which they would be portraying themselves as representatives of the Iranian government in order to obtain the cooperation of an expat Iranian living in the United States. All three intelligence organizations are highly knowledgeable of Iranian intelligence service operations, and all three have easy access to Farsi speakers capable of role playing. The operation would be tricky to execute but far from impossible if the right resources were dedicated to the problem and the right spin were put on the narrative used to initiate contact with and then develop Mansour Arbabsiar or someone like him.
The United States would have the simplest task in mounting such a false-flag operation. As immigrants to the U.S. are required to identify close relatives in foreign governments as part of their visa process, it would be easy to come up with a candidate for the plot who has a relative in Iran’s security services through inspection of the immigration records. I am certain that the CIA and the FBI both have been exploiting such records since 9/11. Once you have your candidate, you set up a scenario for him in which he receives a phone call quite possibly innocuous in nature, money is dangled in front of him, and your plot to assassinate and bomb gradually takes shape. After you introduce your own informant into the operation, you then run it like the classic FBI sting operation, which we have seen so many times over the past 10 years. You monitor and guide your target, going step by step, getting him more involved and committed. You provide him with money that comes out of an overseas account that you have set up, which is no problem at all for a sophisticated intelligence agency. You can even redirect calls using a switch so that when your target thinks he is dialing Tehran he is actually connected to a listening post in Washington. When the operation is ready to go, you arrest him, claiming as Preet Bharara, the federal attorney for the southern district of Manhattan recently did, that “no one was ever actually in any danger.” You time the arrest and the revelation of the case to the media to obtain maximum possible advantage from it.
Israel would run the operation in precisely the same fashion, assuming that it has access to U.S. immigration records, which may or may not be true, either with the consent of the federal government or clandestinely through one of its many friends in the bureaucracy. The rest of the operation would proceed just as if the CIA were running it. Indeed, one should not rule out the possibility that Israel might have run the operation jointly with the CIA.
Saudi Arabia would likely not have any access to U.S. immigration records, but it is possible that it could come up with a candidate using other resources, including work and travel records from the nearby Emirates, which are much frequented by Iranian travelers.
Given the fact that all three countries’ intelligence services could have run the false-flag operation, who would have the strongest motive? Cui bono, who benefits? Undoubtedly Israel would. Tel Aviv has been demanding military action against Iran for many years. A terrorist plot to assassinate a friendly ambassador in Washington would be considered a godsend by the Benjamin Netanyahu government, which has stated repeatedly that Iran is a threat and Washington should be taking the lead against it.
The United States has much less motive to create a new crisis with Iran, even accepting that the president would like to appear to be strong against terrorism and what he chooses to call state sponsors of terror in the lead-up to elections. If an armed conflict were somehow to start and go wrong, there would be considerable downside, making this far too risky to contemplate. The White House has several times warned Israel against starting a war with Iran, most recently three weeks ago when Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Tel Aviv. President Obama might be willing to push hard against the Iranians to satisfy demands from Congress, the media, and the Israel Lobby, but he appears unwilling to employ military force.
The Saudis have no love for Iran but would be fearful of the consequences of what could quickly become a major war escalating on their doorstep, so their motivation for heightening tension is also very questionable, even if they would welcome someone else dealing with what they see as the Iranian threat.
The final question: Was it a conspiracy that was designed to fail? It would be a mistake to assume that just because the plot appears idiotic it could not be the product of a sophisticated intelligence service. In my own experience in the CIA, many operations were poorly planned and executed, and often something that appears implausible might be driven by its own perverse logic. In this case, the involvement of an identifiable DEA informant in the plot, if that was done deliberately, suggests that exposure was desired, perhaps due to some laudable
squeamishness about blowing up a restaurant or killing an ambassador in cold blood. That might mean that whoever constructed the operation was willing to have it become public knowledge because the publicity itself would be nearly as damaging as success, which is frequently how covert intelligence operations are designed. Would Israel be bold enough to stage a major terror operation in the United States capital? The Lavon Affair, the USS Liberty, Jonathan Pollard, and the still unexplained actions of Israel before 9/11 suggest that it might. If an Iranian plotter had killed the Saudi ambassador in Washington while blowing up a restaurant full of people, it would have been an act of war, a Pearl Harbor moment. If Tehran had apparently plotted to do so and failed because the plot was discovered, it could still be construed as an act of war by those willing to see it that way (Sen. Carl Levin, for instance). Either way it is blamed on the Iranian government, not on the actual false-flag perpetrator.
I am not suggesting that the above scenario necessarily took place, just describing how it might have been accomplished. My account differs in several details from the information that the U.S. government has either revealed through its court filing, stated in press briefings, or leaked to the media to bolster its case. At least some of the leaked material, most notably the information provided to The Washington Post’s Peter Finn, might reasonably be described as disinformation. Above all, the Obama administration and the FBI have made no effort to explain the role of the informant, who might have been an instigator or enabler of the terrorist plot, if such a plot ever existed, nor will they be generous in releasing information when Arbabsiar is tried. Of course, if the entire affair was a broadly based conspiracy orchestrated by the White House for political reasons, it would have been easy to carry out, as all the evidence and corroboration could have been fabricated from start to finish. That is perhaps the scariest possibility of all, a “homegrown” answer to the question “Whodunit?”
By Philip Giraldi
Fresh off Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s statement to the United Nations insisting that 
Mujahedin e-Khalq (MeK)’s Camp Ashraf should be closed by year’s end has sprung the State Department-listed Foreign Terrorist Organization into action, with a series of condemnations from both them and their supporters.
A gathering of hundreds of MeK supporters rallied in Brussels, today, with former US Senator Howard Dean condemning the idea of closing the camp and demanding that the US force Iraq to postpone the closure before ending the occupation.
“The US remains morally responsible for the people of Ashraf,” Dean insisted. The camp was established by Saddam Hussein as a headquarters for his allies in the MeK in 1986. The US seized the camp during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the group negotiated a ceasefire.
But while the MeK is enjoying something of a renaissance among US officials as a group of “freedom fighters” the group’s open hostility toward Iran and history as a Saddam ally has earned it considerable scorn among the Maliki government, which is determined to see the camp closed.
Jason Ditz