A startling Federal Security Service (FSB) report on the 22 July massacre in Norway states that two-days prior to this catastrophic attack Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg [photo top right with Putin] placed an “urgent” call to Putin “begging” Russia’s leader to help stop the events that left nearly 100 innocent civilians dead.
According to the FSB, Stoltenberg first learned of this plot against his country this past Wednesday after reading a “top secret” report prepared for him by the Norwegian Intelligence Service (NIS) on the late March computer attack against Norway’s top military leaders that showed them involved in a conspiracy with Britain’s MI5 Security Service and the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to launch a “two-phase” attack upon Norway modeled after false-flag operations in both Australia and America in the mid-nineties.
The false-flag operations being modeled in Norway were based on the 19 April 1995 bombing attack on the Oklahoma Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building said caused a lone right-wing Christian fundamentalist who used a fertilizer bomb that killed 168, and the 28 April 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Australia where a lone gunman killed 35 mainly because the police failed to show up in a timely manner, and which the aftermath of both attacks caused a fundamental shift away from freedoms and liberties these peoples once enjoyed.
The FSB further reports that this false-flag attack on Norway was a “clear textbook example” of an Operation Northwoods operation designed and prepared by US Military experts. Operation Northwoods was a series of false-flag proposals that originated within the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the CIA or other operatives, to commit acts of terrorism in US cities and elsewhere in order to influence public opinion and have been used by many Western governments over these past five decades.
FSB experts note in this report that the false-flag attacks on Norway further mirror those of Oklahoma City and Port Arthur in: 1.) A large vehicle holding a powerful fertilizer bomb was able to gain undetected entrance to a protected government centre; 2.) The armed police response to an ongoing massacre of civilians was delayed for reasons still not explained; 3.) A lone suspect has been indentified as the sole perpetrator of the attacks contrary to witness statements that more people were involved; 4.) The lone suspect is denied the right to an open hearing before the public.
This report also notes that within hours of these attacks occurring, a “virtual flood” of information relating to the suspected mastermind of this massacre was released indentifying him as a “blond-haired blue-eyed” Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik and caricatured as a right-wing Christian fundamentalist. A person which (coincidentally?) the United States had warned barely 24-hours earlier in a video released by their Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was the type of person they feared most would carry out such a terror attack.
The critical problem with the flood of information being released on/or by Breivik, the FSB asserts, is to what is true and what isn’t. This issue was made even more important by American computer experts noting that the Facebook page said belonging to Breivik appears to have been faked, and as they note:
1: Why is there a version of Anders Behring Breivik’s Facebook profile not showing Christian / Conservative? Even Google’s cache of the Facebook profile retrieved on Jul 22, 2011 23:52:36 GMT supports this factor.
2: How was Christian / Conservative added prior to the profile being removed from Facebook? If our PDF was printed out/saved at Jul 23 01:39 GMT, and the profile was deleted soon afterwards by Facebook, how was a detained Anders Behring Breivik able to change it?
3: Which then needs to be asked, Who had access to in changing the Profile before it was removed?
Aside from the “most likely” faked Facebook page, Breivik is, also, said to have posted an astonishingly detailed 1,500-page manifesto and video [view on left] titled “2083: A European Declaration Of Independence” datelined “London, 2011” on the Internet that claims “the number of Muslims in Western Europe is “reaching critical mass” and there is a core of Cultural Communist elites in Western Europe who really want to destroy Western civilization” and that “Europe will burn again.”
Breivik further said he regarded himself as a successor to the medieval Knights Templar, and claimed to have been recruited at a meeting in London in April 2002, which was hosted by two English extremists and attended by eight people in total. Breivik’s ties with London, and hence MI5, was due to his father being a top economist at the Norwegian Embassy in London where Anders was described as a “mummy’s boy” and “privileged” son of an elite liberal family. [Especially interesting to note about this description of “mummy boy” Breivik is his stating that the main target of his attack was Norway’s “Mother of the Nation” and former Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland.]
The FSB, however, in this report disputes Breivik’s ties with the Knights Templar stating, instead, that this false-flag attack has provided an “ancillary benefit” to the West’s royal and banking elite classes in discrediting this ancient order as “open warfare” between them looms, and as we had detailed in our 21 July report “Murdoch Threat To Expose Obama As “Christ-Child” Ignites Western Fury.”
To the reason(s) behind this attack, this FSB report states, is a “desperate attempt” by British, European Union and American banking interests to force Norway into their “union” [Norway is not a member of the EU] in order to loot their Sovereign Wealth Fund of its estimated $1.5 Trillion in wealth which without the entire Western economy may collapse. Important note, the FSB says, is that what is being done to Norway has already been done to Libya when in what is now called the “Financial Heist of the Century” these same elites launched an unprovoked attack upon this North African nation and promptly looted it of nearly $150 Billion of their Sovereign Wealth Fund in order to sustain their crumpling empire.
Though there is more, much more, contained in this FSB report that we will have to examine further in order to report to you on it accurately upon it. So, and in closing this first report on this tragedy we’ll end with some of the words attributed to Breivik that in light of what this whole issue is being made out to be do, indeed, note us paying attention to them:
“A majority of the people I know support my views, they are just apathetic. They know that there will be a confrontation one day, but they don’t care because it will most likely not happen within the next two decades I am a pioneer in this fight, and I have no doubt whatsoever that we will see a political shift in our favor sooner than we might expect. It might look grim at the moment, but we are after all fighting a self-defeating ideology (Cultural Communism that is, not Islam). The only pragmatic approach towards Islam is to isolate it to Muslim countries once we are in a position to do so — on September 11th, 2083.”
The 1,500-page manifesto written by Anders Behring Breivik. He claims links with far-right groups, including the English Defence League. Photograph: AFP/Getty
Anders Behring Breivik, the man behind the Norway killings that left 93 people dead, began his journey in extremist rightwing politics at a small meeting in London in 2002, according to his online manifesto, and may have attended a far right demonstration in the UK as recently as last year.
In a 1,467-page document that contains chilling details of his preparations for Friday’s attacks, Breivik outlines his UK links, claiming he met eight other extremists from across Europe in London in 2002 to “re-form” the Knights Templar Europe – a group whose purpose was “to seize political and military control of western European countries and implement a cultural conservative political agenda”.
The manifesto, signed “Andrew Berwick London 2011”, contains repeated references to his links to the UK far right group the English Defence League. On Sunday there were unconfirmed reports from one of the organisation’s supporters that the 32-year-old had attended at least one EDL demonstration in the UK in 2010.
“[B]ar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho he did come over for one of our demo in 2010 … but what he did was wrong,” said an EDL member online.
In the manifesto titled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik writes: “I used to have more than 600 EDL members as Facebook friends and have spoken with tens of EDL members and leaders. In fact; I was one of the individuals who supplied them with processed ideological material (including rhetorical strategies) in the very beginning.”
The EDL – which has staged a series of street demonstrations, many of which have turned violent, since it was formed two years ago – issued a statement on Sunday condemning the attacks in Norway. It added that the league was a peaceful organisation which rejected all forms of extremism.
“There has never been any official contact between him and the EDL, our Facebook page had 100,000 supporters and receives tens of thousands of comments each day,” it added. “And there is no evidence that Breivik was ever one of those 100,000 supporters.”
The group pointed out that Breivik was critical of the EDL in the “manifesto”, describing it as “dangerously naive”.
Another UK-based organisation, Stop Islamisation of Europe , told Reuters that Breivik had tried to join their Facebook group but had been rejected over his apparent neo-Nazi links. However, they said it was possible he had attended one of its demonstrations.
Emblazoned with a red Iron Cross and published in English, the manifesto appeared online a few hours before the attacks. It appears to be a mixture of bomb-making manual, diary and political rant against a range of perceived enemies from “cultural Marxists” to Muslims, liberals and journalists.
It includes an detailed diary covering the 82 days leading up to the attacks which reveals Breivik’s mood swings, his attempts to make explosives on a remote farm and even his favourite DVDs.
On the day he was to kill 93 people Breivik wrote: “The old saying; ‘If you want something done, then do it yourself’ is as relevant now as it was then.” A few hours later he added: “I believe this will be my last entry. It is now Fri July 22nd, 12.51.” Berwick signed off “AB Justiciar Knight Commander, cell 8, Knights Templar Europe.”
The document details Breivik’s isolated life on the farm as he carried out meticulous preparations for the attack, testing explosives and obtaining weapons.
It reveals an obsession with the Crusades and a supposed threat to Christian Europe posed by Muslim immigrants and mainstream political leaders. Breivik predicts a European civil war will take place in three stages, ending in 2083 with the execution of “cultural Marxists” and the deportation of all Muslims.
Friday’s attack was being planned for at least 18 months, according to the document. Breivik expresses concern that preparations for the attack and the manifesto would alert the security services.
“I do fear sometimes that my endeavours relating to the research of the book, and acquisitions of these addresses has resulted in me being put on various watch lists,” an entry dated March 2010 reads. “The question is; have they flagged me? I guess I will find out eventually.”
In one section Breivik argues that is better to kill civilians than those who would offer more resistance, writing: “It is much more rational and pragmatical to focus on the easier unprotected targets instead of sacrificing good men on an impossible target … we should target unprotected category A and B traitors first and foremost.”
He goes on to outline plans for a possible attack on a gathering of investigative journalists which he says is one of the “most attractive” potential targets.
“To illustrate; in Norway, there is an annual gathering … where the most notable journalists/editors from all the nations media/news companies attend (500 delegates – 98% of them are considered ‘quality category B traitor targets’.”
He sets out a detailed plan for a car or lorry bomb “covered with layers of projectiles for maximum damage” followed by an attack with rifles and flame throwers.
Breivik advocates attacks on traitors across Europe. “[W]e should under normal (optimal) circumstances not exceed (per 2010) aprox. 45 000 dead and 1 million wounded cultural Marxists/multiculturalists in Western Europe.”
Anti-racist groups in the UK said they were not aware of the Knights Templar Europe and cautioned that Breivik may have made up some or all of the details.
Gurgaon: The country’s elite NSG has embarked on an ambitious project to prepare new-age commandos equipped with high-end weapons to undertake specialised counter- terrorism and counter-hijack operations through land, air and water.
The force, known as the ‘black cats’, will churn out close to 2,000 commandos by 2015-16. They will be completely independent to operate in a hostile environment with the help of artificial intelligence gadgets being developed for them indigenously by DRDO and other premier organisations.
“The National Security Guard is now on the verge of a quantum jump. We have set our plans to prepare a modern commando. A five-year plan has been activated. It primarily concentrates on the commando…a commando who will be independent to operate,” NSG DG R K Medhekar said.
He was talking to reporters on the occasion of NSG’s Raising Day at Manesar garrison here.
The plan has been made keeping in mind that a commando should be independent when he operates…his weapon, his body armour, communication devices, body wearable computer. Water and food should be with him on his body. Some elements in this regard are already under trial and we hope to get the first batch of such new age commandos by 2015-16, Medhekar said.
The NSG chief said two battalions (2000 commandos) will emerge out once the trials and tests are complete and they will be able to operate from air, water and land.
Medhekar said the modern commando will be on par with the men of other elite special forces of the world as “terrorists and their designs are advancing with time.”
“This (developing of modern commando) requires a lot of work and developing of data…we are doing it in collaboration with DRDO and artificial intelligence institutes. We have to depend on indigenous methods for this as no one shares their expertise in this field,” Medhekar said.
The NSG DG said the new age commando would be able to transmit real-time images of a crucial operation like the one that killed global terrorist Osama bin Laden in Pakistan’s Abbottabad early this year.
Medhekar said the government has approved a host of sophisticated weapons and other logistical requirements which include corner-shot weapons and advanced sniper guns.
“Some of the finest equipment for bomb disposal teams and digital communication has been procured,” he said.
“Our sanction for manpower has been approved keeping in mind our expansion because of four new hubs and two regional centres that were announced in the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. The permanent structure facilities will soon be inaugurated in all the hubs,” he said.
The NSG has created the hubs in Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad including a regional centre each in Hyderabad and Kolkata after 26/11 terror strikes.
The West Bengal government recently approved a 35-acre land in Rajarhat area of Kolkata for the regional centre of the force. However, this is much less land than what NSG was looking for in the eastern metropolis as compared to the 600-acres land for a similar centre which has been handed over by the state government in Hyderabad to the NSG.
The NSG chief also said his commandos will have fresh training exchanges with other special forces of the world including with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the US department of Defense.
Earlier, Union Minister of State for Home M Ramachandran, who was the chief guest, said “responsibilities of the NSG have increased manifold” in the current security scenario and the force should be prepared to meet these expectations.
Talk to Air Force pilots about drones and they’ll be quick to correct you on the nomenclature. The flying robots aren’t really “unmanned,” they’ll stress, but “remotely piloted,” since a real live human being is at the controls far away. But the Navy? Navy aviators want their drone to really fly themselves.
Take the X-47B experimental killer drone made by Northrop Grumman, the first drone intended to fly off an aircraft carrier. At the Navy League’s annual Sea Air Space convention outside Washington, Northrop and the Navy and unveiled new details about the tailless, triangular plane and their schedule to get it flying off a carrier. Rule number one of the X-47B: it’s not “remotely piloted.”
Put the phrase “remotely piloted” out of your mind, says Janis Pamiljans, a Northrop vice president who handles the company’s Unmanned Combat Air System Demonstration (UCAS-D) portfolio. When it gets on board an aircraft carrier, it’s going to be controlled by a “mouse click,” Pamiljans says. The click of a mouse will turn on the engines. Another will get it to taxi. Keep clicking, and the plane will “take off and come home.”
No joysticks and no pilot controlling it from a metal box somewhere. Just push-button operations and 3.4 million lines of software code and functionality to control the X-47B. “That’s about it,” Pamiljans deadpans.
Not that that’s an understatement or anything. Pamiljans’ counterpart from the Navy, Capt. Jaime Engdahl, tells reporters assembled for a briefing on the future of the plane — which took its first flight at Edwards Air Force Base in February — that if there’s one thing he wants to impress upon the crowd is that there’s something about landing a plane on a ship at sea “that’s special.” It’s not just a floating airstrip, it’s a delicate, precise minuet. And that means the autonomous aspects of the plane have to be suited to the carrier’s crew.
“How we integrate the unmanned vehicle, maneuver it to taxi, its stealth characteristics — it’s a big learning thing,” Engdahl says.
That’s why, by “early to mid 2013,” the plane’s program managers will be simulating carrier operations for a “seamless integration,” using Nimitz-class carrier decks at Pautuxent River, Md., to get both the X-47B and the carriers ready for one another. They’ll be practicing launch operations, “hard” landings, datalink downloads from the plane to the crews, everything. Taxi controllers will have display units mounted on their arms that send radio frequencies to direct the plane across the decks.
The schedule for the plane has slipped: the Navy used to anticipate carrier launches for the X-47B as early as this year. As the schedule stands now, the last round of tests will occur by 2014, when the plane will practice mid-air refueling and successful landing back on a carrier — another mouse click, one that effectively means, “X-47B, find your tanker,” Pamiljans says.
Necessarily, that’s going to mean “a high level of redundancy and reliability,” Engdahl says, or the program’s going to be a crash-prone disaster. There are only two X-47Bs in existence, and Northrop doesn’t plan to build any more.
The one thing they’re not going to test? Weapons. Nothing about the next several years’ worth of testing will involve weapons mounts or releases, Engdahl and Pamiljans both insist. That’s despite the fact that the plane can carry up to 4500 lbs. worth of payload in its twin weapons bays. And that it’s supposed to be a killer. (Even if it moonlights as a stadium-ready rock-n-roller in the video above, produced by Northrop.)
Both Engdahl or Pamiljans accordingly ducked a question about how the plane’s boasted autonomy will handle any weapons releases. Everyone who fears Skynet generally blanches at the idea of robots firing weapons on their own. But the X-47B will be “on autopilot 100 percent of the time,” Engdahl says. Nothing left to do but welcome our robot overlords.
For the second year in a row, more American soldiers—both enlisted men and women and veterans—committed suicide than were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Excluding accidents and illness, 462 soldiers died in combat, while 468 committed suicide. A difference of six isn’t vast by any means, but the symbolism is significant and troubling. In 2009, there were 381 suicides by military personnel, a number that also exceeded the number of combat deaths.
Earlier this month, military authorities announced that suicides amongst active-duty soldiers had slowed in 2010, while suicides amongst reservists and people in the National Guard had increased. It was proof, they said, that the frequent psychological screenings active-duty personnel receive were working, and that reservists and guardsmen, who are more removed from the military’s medical bureaucracy, simply need to begin undergoing more health checks. This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any suggestion that things are “working.” Even if something’s working, the system is still very, very broken.One of the problems hindering the military’s attempt to address soldier suicides is that there’s no real rhyme or reason to what kind of soldier is killing himself. While many suicide victims are indeed afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder after facing heavy combat in the Middle East, many more have never even been deployed. Of the 112 guardsmen who committed suicide last year, more than half had never even left American soil.
“If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know,” Army Vice Chief of Staff General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, “because we don’t know what it is.”
In 2004, the Bush administration flew twenty billion dollars of shrink-wrapped cash into Iraq on pallets. Now the bulk of that money has disappeared. The funds flown into the war zone were made up of surplus from the UN’s oil-for-food program, as well as money from sales of Iraqi oil and seized Iraqi assets. Recent estimates had the amount of missing money at about $6.6 billion, but according to Al Jazeera, Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi says the figure is closer to three times that amount.
Officials were supposed to distribute the money to Iraqi government ministries and U.S. contractors tasked with the reconstruction of Iraq, but it now appears that the bulk of the cash was stolen in what may be one of the largest heists in history.
The Iraqi government argues that U.S. forces were supposed to safeguard the cash under a 2004 agreement, making Washington responsible for the money’s disappearance. Pentagon officials claim that given time to track down the records they can account for all of the money, but the U.S. has already audited the money three times and no trace of what happened to it can be found.
Al Jazeera says that it has been unable to find any documents whatsoever accounting for the money’s disappearance. Some believe that U.S. officials absconded with the money, but it’s more likely, sources say, that corrupt Iraqi officials used the funds to line their own pockets.
To date, it’s estimated that the Iraq War has cost the United States more than a trillion dollars.
‘Now what is [Vice President] Omar Suleiman’s position? No one knows that he remains in his position as vice president. The government of course is going to be changed. But the top brass, all of the members of this military council, [are] all very close hand-picked generals picked by Mubarak over the years. And obviously screened by CIA. So I still have reservations, we’re just starting. We have succeeded in a very important step which is getting rid of Mubarak. But Mubarak for the past five years has not been governing this country.
He’s been sitting in Sharm el-Sheikh where he is now; he has been for five years. He hardly ever comes to Cairo. It has been run by General Omar Suleiman who was vice president until a couple of hours ago, may still be. It was run, from security point of view and from a foreign policy point of view by Omar Suleiman. He is a close friend of the Israelis and of the Americans. Nothing has changed.’
I have been watching the understandable euphoria in Egypt live on Al Jazeera television, but please, there must be a sense of perspective here – and urgently.
There has been NO REVOLUTION so far – a despicable tyrant has gone, but the army that imposed the will of that despicable tyrant for 30 years is now in charge and the Egyptian army is not only controlled by the US, it is funded by massive American military ‘aid’ – second only in scale to Israel.
It is true that the army didn’t fire on the demonstrators as it would have done before, but it did so at the time that its masters in America were calling for Mubarak to step down, in effect, and for the protestors to be left alone. Why did the US government do this after supporting the tyrant for 30 years? Because they want ‘regime change’ in Egypt as part of a domino effect across the whole Middle East to advance a much bigger agenda.
Mubarak’s demise was announced by his vice-president, the US puppet, Omar Suleiman, the head of the vicious and murderous Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate that as well as controlling the population through sheer terror also accepted Muslim detainees arrested by the US to be tortured in Egypt in ways that would have been illegal in America – the so called ‘Extraordinary Rendition’.
And waiting in the wings is America’s (the Illuminati’s) man, Mohamed ElBaradei, who is on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group of Rothschild front-man, George Soros, and his associate Zbigniew Brzezinski, who specialise in triggering and manipulating ‘peoples’ revolutions’ to change regimes while hiding the force that is really behind it all.
It is wonderful to see the joy of the Egyptian people at the end of Mubarak, but the job is only half done and if it ends here nothing will change. ‘Peoples’ revolutions’ covertly inspired by the money and agencies of George Soros in Georgia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and elsewhere also has their moments of enormous euphoria when a regime fell, but any revolution of the people can only be judged by what replaces that which is removed.
Others have been deeply disappointed and disillusioned in the past and if Egypt is not to go the same way the focus and determination must not be lost – and ElBaradei must not prevail, nor anyone else who represents the forces of control and suppression.
Out of the frying pan into the fryer is not a revolution.
Team Spirit (1976–1993) — Annual joint exercise with South Korean forces.
Dwarka(1965)— Pakistan Navy’s attack on the Indian coastal town of Dwarka on 7 September 1965. This was the first use of a Navy in the Indo-Pakistan Wars.
Reforger — Annual American exercise to “return forces to Germany”.
Retail (1946) — British clearance of naval mines laid in Albanian waters.
Silver (1949) — covert British communications tap in Austria
Banner (1969–2007) Deployment of British troops to Northern Ireland. To prevent sectarian killings and support the Police (RUC). Op Banner resulted in over 700 British Armed Forces deaths and 303 Police deaths at the hands of the Irish Republicans
Operation Danube (1968) — Warsaw Pact invasion to halt Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” reforms
The track down operation (1967) — that capture and executed Che Guevara
Operation Condor (1970’s) — — A campaign run by then South American Military Dictatorships’ intelligence services with United States’ support, which goal was extrajudicial and secretly, find, capture and eliminate political dissidents who, had succeeded to escape political repression in their homelands but could be found in any of these other countries.
Operation Pluto (1961) — plan to invade Cuba and overthrow its’ government using an CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles.
Mongoose (1962) — plan for information gathering, sabotage, civil insurrection and the overthrown of the Cuban government.
Phibriglex (1962) — US plan and mock invasion by its armed forces of a Caribbean island. The exercise took place on Vieques and the purpose of the mock invasion was to overthrow a fictitious leader called “Ortsac”, whose name was, in fact, Castro spelled backwards. It occurred in August, shortly before the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is also known by the names Operation Ortsac, Operation Swift Strike II and Exercise Phibriglex-62.
Cubana Flight 455 (1976) — a Cuban civilian flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down by a terrorist attack did by CIA anti-Castro Cuban exiles and members of the Venezuelan secret police.
Amphibian (2001) — South African deployment to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda of observers to verify implementation of the Pretoria Agreement.
Astute (2006) — Deployment of Australian military forces to East Timor following the May 2006 civil unrest.
Citadel — Australia’s contribution to the United Nations Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET). Later ongoing peacekeeping actions were known as Operation Tanager.
Scorched Earth — Or Operasi Sapu Bersih in Indonesian, also known as Operation Clean Sweep; campaign of violence and arson allegedly committed by the TNI-supervised pro-integration militias following the 1999 United Nations supervised plebiscite.
Spitfire — Evacuation of foreign nationals from East Timor by Australian defence assets, as a result of post-referendum violence.
Operation Otkos 10 (end Oct-Nov 1991) — Croatian actions against rebel Serbs and regular Serbian forces on area from Mount Bilogora to Mount Papuk (on west of Slavonia)
Able Sentry (1993–94) — Berlin Brigade deployed as part of Multi-National United Nations Protection Forces (UNPROFOR) to the Republic of Macedonia to establish Camp Able Sentry and monitor sanctions imposed by NATO against Serbia/Kosovo. *This mission was later taken over by the (then) Germany-based, 3rd Infantry Div (Mech)
Essential Harvest(2001) — month-long NATO mission of disarming ethnic Albanians in Macedonia
Forage — Canadian contribution to NATO’s Essential Harvest
Kinetic — Canada’s contribution to NATO’s mission KFOR to secure Kosovo and Macedonia and to provide humanitarian needs to displaced persons
Echo — Canada sending air forces to Aviano, Italy to enforce a no-fly zone over Balkan region (UNSFOR and UNKFOR)
Mountain Storm — Macedonian special police operation against Albanian extremists (2007).
Relex (2001) — Australian defence force operations to secure Australia’s northern maritime approaches against illegal immigration. Reactivated in 2004 as Operation Relex II.
Exercise Unified Spirit — large NATO exercise held every two years to train the armed forces of member nations in joint and combined operations.
Operation Vijay (1999) — Indian operations against Pakistan during the Kargil war that took place between May and July 1999 at Kargil district, Jammu & Kashmir, India.
Century (1996) — ill-fated Essex police / Royal Ulster Constabulary operation to pressure persons of interest for information about a drug-related triple murder.
Gaddafi was being demonised by the Reagan-Father Bush administration (the Rothschilds) in the 1980s when the CIA and Mossad led a campaign to destabilise Libya that mirrors what has happened in 2011. Newsweek reported on August 3rd, 1981:
‘The details of the plan were sketchy, but it seemed to be a classic CIA destabilization campaign. One element was a “disinformation” program designed to embarrass Kaddafi and his government. Another was the creation of a “counter government” to challenge his claim to national leadership. A third — potentially the most risky — was an escalating paramilitary campaign, probably by disaffected Libyan nationals, to blow up bridges, conduct small-scale guerrilla operations and demonstrate that Kaddafi was opposed by an indigenous political force.’
Sound familiar? That was 30 years ago.
But so many just buy the lie no matter what the era or generation. As Adolf Hitler said: ‘Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.’ And his propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, said: ‘The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly – it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over. Hitler also said, with equal relevance: ‘What luck for the rulers that men do not think.’
NATO planes pepper-bombed Tripoli in support of the ‘rebels’ on the ground. Thousands of the very civilians that the UN resolution said should be protected were killed in the process. But we hear nothing of this in the mainstream media and precious little of the murder and executions of Gaddafi supporters by the ‘rebels’ throughout the conflict and after they entered Tripoli.
The emphasis is always on alleged executions and killings of rebel supporters by Gaddafi’s forces. No doubt some of these claims are true, but where is the balance? There is none, and Syria is now being demonised to go through the same process of demonise, invade, conquer, control. Richard Haas, president of the Illuminati Council on Foreign Relations which directs US foreign policy, has admitted that the NATO bombing of Libya was not about protecting civilians, but removing Gaddafi. He also called for an ‘international force’ to occupy the country and ‘maintain order’.
It is the same rhetoric, the same blueprint, which we have seen in every other country ‘liberated’ by the architects of tyranny. It really is goodbye Libya: rest in peace. The United States and its conscripted NATO allies are not going to walk away and leave Libya to the Libyans. It is an occupation force to pillage the oil resources and the banking system, and it was always going to be.
The board of a study centre at the London School of Economics with links to the Gaddafi regime in Libya includes no fewer than four men who have served at the highest levels of the British Intelligence community.
As well as Sir Mark Allen, former head of MI6’s Middle East desk, there are two ex-chairmen and one former member of the Joint Intelligence Committee – the top-secret Cabinet Office body which coordinates all national security assessment for ministers.
Gordon Barrass, visiting professor at the centre – known as LSE Ideas – was a member of the JIC in the last years of the Cold War and is a Soviet expert. Sir Colin Budd was chairman of the JIC in 1996-97. And between 2005 and 2007 Sir Richard Mottram was Cabinet Office permanent secretary for intelligence, security and resilience, and chairman of the JIC.
LSE Ideas is at the centre of a storm over the university’s decision to help Colonel Gaddafi seek international acceptance before the Libyan uprising and to accept enormous amounts of cash from his son Saif. Its chairman, formerly one of Tony Blair’s most senior political aides, sought yesterday to distance himself from the scandal.
Sir David Manning is the ex-ambassador to Washington who was Mr Blair’s confidant throughout the run-up to the Iraq war.
He claimed to have no more than a ‘very small association’ with the LSE, which controversially accepted a £1.5million donation from Saif a year after awarding him a questionable PhD. Asked if the LSE should have taken Saif’s cash, Sir David said: ‘It wasn’t a huge sum of money. It’s a pity probably it happened, but if you were trying to draw Libyans into the mainstream of international life then I suspect that was the motivation.’
Angry students are demanding a full-scale inquiry into the Libyan funding controversy which has heaped embarrassment on the LSE as more links emerge between the Ideas centre, the Blair government, security services and big business.
Formed three years ago, the Ideas centre had an income of just over £2.5million between 2008 and 2010, with 94 per cent coming from ‘external sources’. The LSE claims the centre – whose stated aim is ‘understanding how today’s world came into being and how it may be changed’ – has received no money from Libya.
Aside from Sir David, the Ideas advisory board members include Mr Blair’s ex-chief of staff Jonathan Powell, former Foreign Office Minister Baroness Symons – forced to stand down from Libya’s National Economic Development Board this week – and Sir Mark Allen, a former MI6 spy who played a pivotal role in bringing Blair and Colonel Gaddafi together and lobbied ministers to secure the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Whenever the military rolls out a new robot program, folks like to joke about SkyNet or the Rise of the Machines. But this time, the military really is starting to venture into robot-apocalypse territory: swarms of little semi-autonomous machines that can team up to manufacture complex objects (including, presumably, more robots).
That’s right, the only thing scarier than a swarm of intelligent military mini robots is a swarm of intelligent military mini robots in control of the means of production. And your Navy is hard at work on making it a reality.
The U.S. Navy recently issued a proposal for aspiring mad scientists to build it “a coordinated and distributed swarm of micro-robots” capable of manufacturing “novel materials and structures.”
This isn’t heavy industry, though. They want the robot swarm to use desktop manufacturing — a technology that allows you to “print” 3-D objects using equipment that can fit on your desk and be programmed with nothing more sophisticated than your own laptop.
In its more benign uses, desktop manufacturing takes the form of products like Makerbot, which lets users fabricate cool 3-D objects out of plastic. In the hands of intelligent robots, though, think of this more as the Easy-Bake Oven of the robot apocalypse.
The proposal says the mini manufacturers will be able to “pick and place, dispense liquids, print inks, remove material, join components” and “move cooperatively” to not just make things, but assemble them, as well.
And what exactly will they make? The Navy lists a number of examples like “multifunctional materials” and “metamorphic materials” but its mention of “programmable materials” really caught our ear.
Darpa, the Defense Department’s far-out advanced research wing, has previously experimented with “programmable materials” to create shape-shifting machines like the self-folding origami robot that can change into a small plane and boat.
Former Saudi political prisoners gathered recently in Riyadh to discuss politics. Some former political prisoners feel embittered by the public’s lack of support.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — As one nation after another has battled uprisings across the Arab world, the one major country spared is also its richest — Saudi Arabia, where a fresh infusion of money has so far bought order.
The kingdom is spending $130 billion to pump up salaries, build housing and finance religious organizations, among other outlays, effectively neutralizing most opposition. King Abdullah began wielding his checkbook right after leaders in Tunisia and Egypt fell, seeking to placate the public and reward a loyal religious establishment. The king’s reserves, swollen by more than $214 billion in oil revenue last year, have insulated the royal family from widespread demands for change even while some discontent simmers.
Saudi Arabia has also relied on its unusually close alliance with the religious establishment that has long helped preserve the power of the royal family. The grand mufti, the highest religious official in the kingdom, rolled out a fatwa saying Islam forbade street protests, and clerics hammered at that message in their Friday sermons.
But the first line of defense in this case was the public aid package. King Abdullah paid an extra two months’ salary to government employees and spent $70 billion alone for 500,000 units of low-income housing. As a reward to the religious establishment, he allocated about $200 million to their organizations, including the religious police. Clerics opposed to democratic changes crowed that they had won a great victory over liberal intellectuals.
“They don’t care about the security of the country, all they care about is the mingling of genders — they want girls to drive cars, they want to go the beaches to see girls in bathing suits!” roared Mohamed al-Areefy, a popular young cleric, in a recent Friday sermon.
Financial support to organizations that intellectuals dislike “was a way to cut out their tongues,” he said.
Saudi Arabia, a close ally of the United States, has struggled to preserve what remains of a regional dynamic upended by the Arab Spring — buttressing monarchies and blocking Iran from gaining influence.
While the United States has pressed other Arab nations to embrace democratic changes, it has remained largely silent on Saudi Arabia and the kingdom’s efforts to squelch popular revolts in neighboring Bahrain and Oman.
Saudi Arabia’s efforts have succeeded in the short run, at home and in its Persian Gulf backyard. But some critics call its strategy of effectively buying off public opinion unsustainable because it fails to address underlying problems.
“The problem is that some leaders do not understand what is going on and do not learn the lessons while these things are unfolding in front of their eyes; they do not learn the lessons of history,” said Prince Talal bin Abdul Aziz, 79, a brother of the king.
The prince, whose 14 living children include the billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, said: “These people want to preserve their power, their money and their prestige, so they want to keep the status quo. They are afraid of the word change. This is a problem because they are shortsighted, but the difficulty is I don’t know how to change their way of thinking.”
The monarchy has not completely escaped calls for change. There have been at least three petitions, with a group of youths and even some members of the Sahwa, the staunchly conservative religious movement, calling for an elected consultative council.
The only major street protest scheduled for March 11 largely fizzled — its organizers were anonymous, and its stated goal of toppling the government lacked broad appeal. In the largely Shiite eastern provinces, though, police officers arrested scores of protesters.
The ruling princes have also moved against dissent in other ways, like imposing a new press law with punishments including a roughly $140,000 fine for vaguely defined crimes like threatening national security.
Saudis of all stripes say that they are less concerned about democratic elections than about fixing chronic problems, including the lack of housing, unemployment that is officially 10 percent but likely 20 percent or more, corruption, bureaucratic incompetence and transparency on oil revenues.
Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s
You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to
BIN LADEN NEVER MENTIONED IN McCHRYSTAL REPORT OR OBAMA SPEECH
“HUNT FOR BIN LADEN” A NATIONAL SHAME
By Gordon Duff/STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor
Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry’s claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarrassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn’t nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.
However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time? Since we spent 200 million dollars on “special ops” looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that? Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that? Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US? This is a criminal act if there ever was one.
In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden. Everything is “Mullah Omar”now. In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden. Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it “out of the bag” long ago. Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.
America knew Osama bin Laden died December 13, 2001. After that, his use was hardly one to unite America but rather one to divide, scam and play games. With bin Laden gone, we could have started legitimate nation building in Afghanistan instead of the eternal insurgency that we invented ourselves.
Without our ill informed policies, we could have had a brought diplomatic solution in 2002 in Afghanistan, the one we are ignoring now, and spent money rebuilding the country, 5 cents on the dollar compared to what we are spending fighting a war against an enemy we ourselves recruited thru ignorance.
The bin Laden scam is one of the most shameful acts ever perpetrated against the American people. We don’t even know if he really was an enemy, certainly he was never the person that Bush and Cheney said. In fact, the Bush and bin Laden families were always close friends and had been for many years.
What kind of man was Osama bin Laden? This one time American ally against Russia, son of a wealthy Saudi family, went to Afghanistan to help them fight for their freedom. America saw him as a great hero then. Transcripts of the real bin Laden show him to be much more moderate than we claim, angry at Israel and the US government but showing no anger toward Americans and never making the kind of theats claimed. All of this is public record for any with the will to learn.
How much of America’s tragedy is tied with these two children of the rich, children of families long joined thru money and friendship, the Bush and bin Laden clans.
One son died in remote mountains, another lives in a Dallas suburb hoping nobody is sent after him. One is a combat veteran, one never took a strong stand unless done from safety and comfort. Islam once saw bin Laden as a great leader. Now he is mostly forgotten.
What has America decided about Bush?
We know this: Bin Laden always denied any ties to 9/11 and, in fact, has never been charged in relation to 9/11. He not only denied involvement, but had done so, while alive, 4 times and had vigorously condemned those who were involved in the attack.
This is on the public record, public in every free country except ours. We, instead, showed films made by paid actors, made up to look somewhat similar to bin Laden, actors who contradicted bin Ladens very public statements, actors pretending to be bin Laden long after bin Laden’s death.
These were done to help justify spending, repressive laws, torture and simple thievery.
For years, we attacked the government of Pakistan for not hunting down someone everyone knew was dead. Bin Laden’s death hit the newspapers in Pakistan on December 15, 2001. How do you think our ally felt when they were continually berated for failing to hunt down and turn over someone who didn’t exist?
What do you think this did for American credibility in Pakistan and thru the Islamic world? Were we seen as criminals, liars or simply fools? Which one is best?
This is also treason.
How does the death of bin Laden and the defeat and dismemberment of Al Qaeda impact the intelligence assessments, partially based on, not only bin Laden but Al Qaeda activity in Iraq that,not only never happened but was now known to have been unable to happen?
How many “Pentagon Pundits,” the retired officers who sold their honor to send us to war for what is now known to be domestic political dirty tricks and not national security are culpable in these crimes?
I don’t always agree with Col. Pappas on things. I believe his politics overrule his judgement at times. However, we totally agree on bin Laden, simply disagree with what it means. To me lying and sending men to their deaths based on lies is treason.
Falsifying military intelligence and spending billions on unnecessary military operations for political reasons is an abomination. Consider this, giving billions in contracts to GOP friends who fill campaign coffers, and doing so based on falsified intelligence is insane. This was done for years.
We spent 8 years chasing a dead man, spending billions, sending FBI agents, the CIA, Navy Seals, Marine Force Recon, Special Forces, many to their deaths, as part of a political campaign to justify running American into debt, enriching a pack of political cronies and war profiteers and to puff up a pack of Pentagon peacocks and their White house draft dodging bosses.
How many laws were pushed thru because of a dead man?
How many hundreds were tortured to find a dead man?
How many hundreds died looking for a dead man?
How many billions were spent looking for a dead man?
Every time Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld stood before troops and talked about hunting down the dead bin Laden, it was a dishonor. Lying to men and women who put their lives on the line is not a joke.
Who is going to answer to the families of those who died for the politics and profit tied to the Hunt for Bin Laden?
The Global Terrorism Database (GTD) is an open-source database including information on terrorist events around the world from 1970 through 2010 (with annual updates planned for the future). Unlike many other event databases, the GTD includes systematic data on domestic as well as international terrorist incidents that have occurred during this time period and now includes more than 98,000 cases. Learn more
The GTD Data Rivers is an interactive visual exploratory tool that allows users to investigate temporal trends in terrorism in the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The GTD Data Rivers aggregates important variables from the database and visualizes them as a comprehensible stack chart.
01/31/1999: A British oil worker employed by U.S.-owned Hunt Oil was kidnapped by unknown tribesmen in an unnamed location in Yemen. The victim was released six hours later. No further information was available on this incident.
01/31/2004: A suicide car bomb detonated outside of a police station in Mosul, Iraq, killing nine people, including policemen and civilians, and wounding forty-five. No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Our understanding of terrorism was forever transformed by the events of September 11, 2001. As we approach the 10th anniversary of those attacks, this new release of the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) marks a milestone in our collective knowledge of terrorist activity. For the first time, we have information spanning four decades on both domestic and international terrorist attacks from around the world.
I’m sure we’re all very tired by now of the Osama bin Laden nonsense, I know I am, and I really wish it would just go away. Sadly, that seems an unlikely prospect in the near future.
You’re probably aware that yesterday, Sat. 7th May 2011, the US government released “new” videos of ‘bin Laden’ that they claimed were part of the haul from the ‘compound’ in Pakistan, which, by the way, is very conveniently scheduled for destruction.
These new videos include footage that is similar to previous ‘bin Laden’ tapes, but also include footage of some guy sitting in a room watching news reports about Osama bin Laden. The US government and the fawning Western media are claiming that the guy sitting on the floor watching television is Osama bin Laden in his ‘compound’ and that the video could have been made as recently as Spring 2011. The problem is that we only get to see the man sitting on the floor from the side, there are no front-on shots that would allow us to see the man’s face and ascertain whether or not he looks anything like bin Laden and there is no audio (apparently it was edited by the Pentagon). Again, this is very convenient, and I think you will agree that, even from the side-on angle, the man on the floor does not look like any of the images of the person we know to be the real bin Laden.
But the real smoking gun is to be found in the videos allegedly taken from the Pakistan ‘compound’ and which provide higher resolution images of a man who appears to be the same person that appeared in a ‘bin Laden’ video released in 2007.
I’ve taken a few screen shots of the ‘older’ ‘new’ videos of ‘Osama’ in his fancy duds, and I’d like to do a little nose, ear and shoulder comparison with images of the real bin Laden:
Here’s an image of the real bin Laden:
And here’s a screen shot from one of the ‘new’ videos from the above CNN report:
Is this the same person?
Consider the two noses:
The real bin Laden’s nose
‘New’ bin Laden’s nose
But here’s the real smoking gun that, in a sane world, would put an end to all of this CIA psy-ops nonsense: bin Laden’s left ear:
Here’s the offending ear in a new video that we are told was recovered from the ‘compound’:
A rather petite shell-like ear for a ‘terror mastermind’
And here it is on the real bin Laden:
As you can see, the real bin Laden has a pronounced deep and flattened helix (the top outer rim of the outer ear). Whereas the ‘new’ ‘bin Laden’ has a rather petite ear (quite the envy of all in the psy-ops division of the CIA I’d say).
In fact, both of the real bin Laden’s ears have this characteristic. Here’s the right one:
Right ear showing the same flattened helix
It’s pretty astounding that the CIA would be so cavalier as to release videos that can so easily be proven to feature someone other than the real Osama bin Laden. Then again, perhaps this is indicative of the contempt with which the CIA and US government consider the general US, and to a lesser extent world, public. I think we can safely assume that the US government and all of those behind the phony ‘war on terrorism’ (which is clearly a global war of imperial conquest) and the 9/11 attacks believe that there is little if anything that the public will not accept as long as it comes from official sources. So far, the public has done nothing to suggest that this belief is ill-founded.
In short, and once again, you are being sold a monstrous lie. And you can have no doubt that believing lies always carries consequences for the believers. The seriousness of the consequences depends on the seriousness of the lie. Given that the lie that is the official narrative of the ‘war on terror’ implicates the believers in the murder of 1.5 million Iraqi and Afghan citizens, 3,000 US citizens, the torture of thousands of innocent people and the destruction of civil liberties the world over, they may want to reconsider their position.
Morgan O. Reynolds was a professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX.
He served as chief economist for the United States Department of Labor during 2001–2002, George W. Bush’s first term. In 2005, he gained public attention as the first prominent government official to publicly claim that 9/11 was an inside job, and is a member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
Glad to see these kind of people speaking out!
Iraqi policemen walk through debris at the central jail in Basra. Photograph: Nabil al-Jurani/AP
British troops used tanks last night to break down the walls of a prison in the southern Iraqi city of Basra and free two undercover British soldiers who were seized earlier in the day by local police.An official from the Iraqi interior ministry said half a dozen tanks had broken down the walls of the jail and troops had then stormed it to free the two British soldiers. The governor of Basra last night condemned the “barbaric aggression” of British forces in storming the jail.
Aquil Jabbar, an Iraqi television cameraman who lives across the street from the jail, said dozens of Iraqi prisoners also fled in the confusion.
In a statement last night the defence secretary, John Reid, said: “I am pleased to be able to say that the British servicemen who were seen being injured in the graphic photographs are being treated for minor injuries only and are expected to return to duty shortly. We remain committed to helping the Iraqi government for as long as they judge that a coalition presence is necessary to provide security.”
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “We have not had confirmation of the full details of this. We’ve heard nothing to suggest we stormed the prison. We understand there were negotiations.”
In a day of dramatic incidents in the heart of the British-controlled area of Iraq, the two undercover soldiers – almost certainly special forces – were held by Iraqi security forces after clashes that reportedly left two people dead and threatened to escalate into a diplomatic incident between London and Baghdad.
The soldiers, who were said to have been wearing Arab headdress, were accused of firing at Iraqi police when stopped at a road block.
In another incident an angry crowd attacked a Warrior armoured personnel carrier with petrol bombs. A British soldier was forced to flee from his burning vehicle.
Muhammad al-Abadi, an official in the Basra governorate, told journalists the two undercover soldiers had looked suspicious to police. “A policeman approached them and then one of these guys fired at him. Then the police managed to capture them.”
Senior British officials said the Iraqis who attacked the Warrior armoured vehicle had prepared their petrol bomb attack before the incident involving the two undercover soldiers. The origins of the attack on the Warrior, they say, lay in events the previous day when about 200 members of the al-Mahdi Army, a militia headed by the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, made a show of force in Basra, blocking roads in the city and demanding the release of their local commanders.
What’s Erik Prince been doing since he sold off Blackwater, the infamous mercenary company he founded and turned into a juggernaut of the private security world? His shadiest, most morally-compromised guns-for-hire scheme yet.
Prince moved to Abu Dhabi last year as legal and governmental scrutiny of Blackwater intensified. “I’m done. It’s all sold or shut down,” he told journalist Robert Young Pelton shortly before boarding his farewell flight. “I’m getting out of the government contracting business.” And provided he meant the U.S. government, that vow has stood the test of time. But his adoptive country is a different story.
Documents obtained by the New York Times indicate that Prince rebooted his efforts in private security to build a praetorian army of mercenaries for the ruling clique in the United Arab Emirates. His new company, Reflex Responses, hires a mixture of Colombian soldiers of fortune and South African vets of Executive Outcomes, the pre-Blackwater merc firm that fought nasty counter-guerilla wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. That’s right: forces from Christian nations hired to protect Muslim leaders, possibly against their own people. And in keeping with Prince’s history, if Reflex is doing business legally — from the perspective of U.S. law — it’s only barely so.
The tiny UAE is a financial giant on the Persian Gulf, drenched in oil and unconcerned with political liberty for its wealthy citizens. It lives in fear of Iran. And its military keeps only about 65,000 men under arms. It’s had a murky interest in helping Somalia contain its piracy problem — another effort rumored to involve Prince. And so far, the Mideast uprisings haven’t touched the UAE, but you never know. Its ruling sheikhs are used to paying foreigners to do their dirty work: its labor force is imported. Now it prefers to apply that model to its security needs.
That’s where Prince comes in.
Under terms of Reflex’s contract with the consortium of monarchies, obtained by the Times, Prince will build, train and field a battalion of foreign auxiliaries “independent of formal command and support structures throughout the UAE.” They’re supposed to be for “internal” defense, conducting “cordon and search,” “stability and support operations” and general “security operations.” Only “leaders” of the force need be proficient in English; the contract doesn’t say anything about the mercs speaking Arabic.
Consider for a second that this is a force comprised of mercs from Christian countries operating on Islamic soil. The Executive Outcomes veterans — not exactly known for their subtlety; they were involved in a coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea — will staff a quick reaction force, able to seize key infrastructure and put down a protest that spins out of control. What could go wrong?
Indeed, Reflex is supposed to provide a full survice military in miniature. It’s going to have “aviation support capability,” with “rotor and/or fixed wing aircraft,” capable of medevac and “basic” intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. “Advanced mission training” will include “sniper,” explosive ordnance disposal, “scout/surveillance [and] military working dog” responsibilities. There’s even a private navy, tasked with “small boat operations and seaman ship, Maritime Interdiction Operations (MIO), Securing Oil Delivery Stations/Platforms” and more.
That’s a lot to ask of 800 people. It also begs the question of why the UAE would continue to invest in its elite military units, which have served in Afghanistan, when there’s this new hired Army to use.
The contract doesn’t specify what gear they’re going to use. But it’s going to need ships, helicopters, transport planes, communications gear, fuel depots or access to existing ones, a motor pool of trucks and, of course, guns. They’ve built a barracks in the desert to house and train the new Reflex force.
Because of all this gear and all this construction, it’s surprising that the effort — which the contract indicates began in June 2010 — stayed secret for this long. But it’s astonishing that someone leaked the Times the actual contract Reflex holds with the UAE. Is there internal dissent within Reflex already?
Prince’s new gig also might run afoul of U.S. laws prohibiting citizens from trailing foreign militaries. That kind of work requires a government license. The State Department wouldn’t say if Reflex has such a license, and told the Times it’s “investigating” to see if Reflex is on the right side of the law.
Some aspects of Reflex make it seem like Prince is getting the old band back together. One of his top deputies is Ricky Chambers. Chambers, a former FBI agent, ran the Blackwater subsidiary Paravant — whose guards in Afghanistan signed for guns under the name “Eric Cartman” and shot Afghan civilians dead during a 2009 vehicle accident.
Mideast leaders are reeling from the reformist uprisings. So far, only Moammar Gadhafi has hired mercenaries to backstop his rule. And the UAE’s interest in Reflex predates the current Mideast uprisings. But while it might be crazy to hire South Africans and Columbians to break up protests by Muslims calling for democratic change, desperate autocrats have done far crazier things. They surely know how to get in touch with Erik Prince.
THE US army is planning to field “rubber bullets” for machine guns. Military officials claim the ammunition will allow them to more effectively quell violent protests without loss of life, but human rights campaigners are alarmed by the new weapon.
The final design for the XM1044 round has not been selected, according to an order placed on the Federal Business Opportunities website last month, but the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate has been working on a ring aerofoil projectile for some years. The round is a hollow plastic cylinder 40 millimetres across, looking something like a short toilet-paper roll. In flight its shape generates lift, giving it a longer range.
The army’s existing crowd-control rounds are single shots fired from handheld grenade launchers with a range of about 50 metres – the XM1044 would double this range. It would be supplied in belts for the Mk19 grenade launcher, a truck-mounted weapon that can fire almost six rounds per second. The Mk19 has been exported to some 30 countries, including Egypt.
“The US army has a requirement for a rapid-fire non-lethal capability,” says Ken Schulters, project manager for close combat systems at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. “All currently fielded non-lethal ammunition is single shot.”
Firing rapidly at long range is likely to be dangerously inaccurate, says Angela Wright of Amnesty International. “Such a weapon system would allow for a burst of non-accurate fire at a crowd, with high risk of hitting bystanders, ricochets and of hitting vulnerable areas of the body,” she says.
Despite being hollow and plastic, if a round were to strike someone in the head, it could severely injure or kill them, she adds.
HONOLULU (AP) — The Army on Thursday conducted its first flight test of a new weapon capable of traveling five times the speed of sound.
The Army launched the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon from the military’s Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai at about 1:30 a.m.
The weapon’s “glide vehicle” reached Kwajalein Atoll — some 2,300 miles away — in less than half an hour, said Lt. Col. Melinda Morgan, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Research Service said in a report the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon is part of the military’s program to develop “prompt global strike” weapons that would allow the U.S. to strike targets anywhere in the world with conventional weapons in as little as an hour.
The Air Force and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, are developing a similar vehicle.
The Pentagon said the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon, or AHW, vehicle is designed to fly long ranges within the earth’s atmosphere at speeds that are at least five times the speed of sound.
The objective of Thursday’s test was to collect data on technologies that boost the hypersonic vehicle and allow it to glide. The Army was also testing how the vehicle performed in long-range flight.
The Congressional Research Service report said the AHW would be able to maneuver to avoid flying over third party nations as it approached its target. The weapon would use a precision guidance system to home in on the target, it said.
Sen. John McCain walks with Lt. Gen. William Caldwell at Camp Eggers in Kabul, Afghanistan on January 6, 2009.
Senior Airman Brian Ybarbo/U.S. Air Force (Homepage image: AP)
The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in “psychological operations” to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.
The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.
“My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave,” says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. “I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line.”
The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.
The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on “hostile foreign groups.” Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a “propaganda rider” that also prohibits such manipulation. “Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans,” says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “It’s what you learn on day one.”
When Holmes and his four-man team arrived in Afghanistan in November 2009, their mission was to assess the effects of U.S. propaganda on the Taliban and the local Afghan population. But the following month, Holmes began receiving orders from Caldwell’s staff to direct his expertise on a new target: visiting Americans. At first, the orders were administered verbally. According to Holmes, who attended at least a dozen meetings with Caldwell to discuss the operation, the general wanted the IO unit to do the kind of seemingly innocuous work usually delegated to the two dozen members of his public affairs staff: compiling detailed profiles of the VIPs, including their voting records, their likes and dislikes, and their “hot-button issues.” In one email to Holmes, Caldwell’s staff also wanted to know how to shape the general’s presentations to the visiting dignitaries, and how best to “refine our messaging.”
Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a “deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds.” The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. “How do we get these guys to give us more people?” he demanded. “What do I have to plant inside their heads?”
Merely a week after President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, there is literally a deluge of evidence that clearly indicates the whole episode has been manufactured for political gain and to return Americans to a state of post-9/11 intellectual castration so that they can be easily manipulated in the run up to the 2012 election. Here are ten facts that prove the Bin Laden fable is a contrived hoax….
2) The official narrative of how the raid unfolded completely collapsed within days of its announcement. First there had been a 40 minute shootout, then there was no shootout and just one man was armed, first Bin Laden was armed then he was not, first Bin Laden used his wife as a human shield and then he did not. First the compound was described as a “$1 million dollar mansion” then it turned out to be a rubbish-strewn dilapidated compound that was worth less than a quarter of that. Almost every single aspect of the official narrative has changed since Obama first described the raid last Sunday as the White House struggles to keep its story straight.
3) The alleged body of Bin Laden was hastily dumped in the sea to prevent any proper procedure of identification. The White House claimed this was in accordance with normal Islamic burial rituals, however numerous Muslim scholars all over the globe disputed this claim, pointing out that Muslims can only be buried at sea if they die at sea. While the White House claimed that Bin Laden’s death on May 1st was proven by DNA and facial recognition evidence, such proof was never released for public scrutiny and the Obama administration refused to release photos of Bin Laden’s dead body, suggesting a cover-up.
4) Despite the fact that the White House released “situation room” photos which purported to show Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and the rest of Obama’s security staff watching the raid which killed Bin Laden live, it was later admitted by CIA director Leon Panetta that Obama could not have seen the raid because the live feed was cut off before the Navy SEALS entered the compound. The photos were described by many as having “historical significance,” forming a “captivating” record of Obama’s greatest success and being the “defining moment” of his Presidency. One image showed Hillary Clinton with her hand over her mouth as if witnessing an anxious or crucial moment in the raid. Media reports at the time claimed that the photos represented the moment when “The leader of the free world saw the terror chief shot in the left eye.” However, the photos were staged as a PR stunt for public consumption, nobody in the photos ever saw Bin Laden killed live, nor did they see the Navy SEALS even enter the compound.
5) As even mainstream journalists began to cast suspicion on the official narrative behind the raid, the media reported that Al-Qaeda itself had confirmed every detail of Obama’s address the the nation. However, the conduit for such a claim was in fact an organization called SITE, which is a notorious Pentagon propaganda front run by the daughter of an Israeli spy that has been caught on numerous occasions releasing fake cartoonish “Al-Qaeda” videos at the most politically expedient times for both the Bush and Obama administrations. The SITE organization is nothing more than a contractor for the U.S. government, receiving some $500,000 a year annually from Uncle Sam, and yet the corporate media instantly swallowed and regurgitated the claim that “Al-Qaeda” had confirmed the official story after SITE directed them to an anonymous posting on an Islamic website.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
6) Almost every single neighbor that lived near the alleged Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad that was interviewed by news reporters said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there. Since the town is a staging ground for the Pakistani military, which has a training facility situated virtually a stone’s throw away from the alleged Bin Laden compound, residents were required to show ID when they moved into the area. Pakistani troops and anti-terror police in the town refused to confirm that Bin Laden had lived in the house. Barack Obama himself admitted to 60 Minutes that the White House was only 55/45 sure that Osama lived there before the raid and this uncertainty prompted concerns that the US Navy SEALS sent in could have targeted a “prince from Dubai” or some other individual that was not Bin Laden.
8: Despite the fact that numerous neo-cons came out on the days after the alleged raid to erroneously assert that torturing terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay led to the discovery of Bin Laden, Osama himself, the supposed world’s most wanted terrorist and a treasure trove of terror information, despite the fact that he was unarmed, was not taken in for questioning, he was instantly shot in the head according to the official narrative.
9) The US government has been caught on several occasions within the past decade staging military operations for the purposes of generating contrived, pro-war sentiment amongst the American public. Both the “rescue” of Jessica Lynch and the death of Pat Tillman were complete fables, scripted and staged at complete odds with the truth and unleashed on Americans as part of a psychological warfare offensive to elicit support for the war on terror, almost identical to what we’re seeing now with the Bin Laden sideshow. Given the fact that the US government has been caught red-handed scripting tales of pure fiction in order to justify the war on terror, notably in the cases of Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman, why on earth should we believe them now?
10) Despite the fact that Obama announced last Sunday on live television that the world was now “safer” because Bin Laden was dead, his administration, with the aid of the fearmongering mass media, instantly seized upon the situation to terrify Americans into being afraid of imminent “reprisal” terror attacks inside the United States, later claiming that Bin Laden had formulated an “aspirational rather than operational” plan to derail US trains that travel over 500mph, although no trains in the US can actually travel at such speeds. This led “terror experts” to salivate over how TSA agents were now needed in shopping malls to stick their hands down Americans’ pants, while New York Senator Chuckie Schumer called for the no fly list to be expanded to trains and subways. Obama hurried to ground zero for a photo op as he desperately tried to use the Bin Laden hoax to whip up phony patriotism as a means of boosting his flagging poll numbers. Others, like Democrat Bill Richardson, exploited the situation to try and push through policies that had no connection to Bin Laden or terrorism at all, like cap and trade. The haste with which the whole Bin Laden fable was exploited for political points scoring and as a psychological ploy to return Americans to a post-9/11 state of intellectual castration was painfully transparent, clearly suggesting that the entire farce was planned well in advance to achieve precisely those goals in the run up to 2012.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
The following introductory paragraph was not included in the copy I received from my source… I include it here now at the request of Dimitri Khalezov who has also informed me that it was part of the original interview conducted by Daniel Estulin.
[Dimitri Khalezov is a former Soviet commissioned officer of the “military unit 46179”, otherwise known as “the Special Control Service” of the 12th Chief Directorate of the Defense Ministry of the Soviet Union. He has agreed to this exclusive interview and it is our pleasure to be able to offer readers of www.danielestulin.com another quality first. Dimitri is a crucial piece of the puzzle in the case of Victor Bout. It is safe to say that had it not been for Dimitri´s dedication to helping Mr. Bout, his incorruptibility and brilliance, Victor, might very well have found himself today behind bars in some high-profile American prison. Dimitri is the first man to see Mr. Bout after his world famous arrest in Bangkok and he is the man who has given more headaches to the United States government than anyone else in the world. Furthermore, Dimitri Khalezov is the first person in the world to have uncovered the true reasons for the United States government’s dogged pursuit of Victor Bout. Mr. Bout´s arrest is directly linked to 9/11, and Mr. Khalezov, because of his unique vantage point as a former member of the Soviet “atomic” and later “nuclear” intelligence says that he knew about the in-built so-called “emergency nuclear demolitions scheme” of the Twin Towers as long back as early 1980´s, while serving in the Soviet Special Control Service.]
victorbout
photo of Victor Bout courtesy of Dimitri Khalezov
(Bout is in the middle)
How did you get involved in the case?
Both Victor Bout and I are Russian. We are both former Soviet military officers. Moreover, we actually come from the same village. I think, these are good enough reason to try and help him with his case, considering that Victor was arrested in Bangkok and I happened to have been living in Bangkok at the time of his arrest. Furthermore, I have extensive experience with the Thai legal system, especially when you consider that the United States government has tried to have me arrested and extradited to America too in connection with 9/11. It happened back in 2003. So, I have enough motivation to try to help Victor.
In March 2008, Victor Bout was Osama bin Laden´s equal as far as notoriety on the world´s stage. How did you manage to see Victor Bout on the very first day of his detention in Bangkok?
Under the Thai Criminal Procedure any person under arrest has his or her undeniable right to be visited by friends while under arrest. Victor Bout, despite being the so-called “Merchant of Death” and the so-called “Lord of War”, was not excluded from the provisions of the Thai Criminal Procedure Code. I simply came to the police station where he was detained and requested to visit my friend. They had to let me see him as much as it might have pained them. In fact, the police went out of their way to help. They seated both of us on a sofa in the corridor and let us chat nicely. Usually they only allow visitors to talk to detained persons through bars of a detention cage, but for Victor and me they made an exception to this rule.
Is there a link between your case, 9-11 and Victor Bout?
Apparently yes. I was wanted by the United States allegedly in connection with 9/11, and with the 2002 Bali bombing (which was a mini-nuke bombing), while Victor Bout is apparently wanted by the Americans in connection with 9/11 and in connection with the 2003 El-Nogal bombing. Incidentally, El-Nogal is known to have been a mini-nuke bombing – at least known to appropriate security officials. As you can see there are a lot of similarities.
Who are the main players: US and Bout’s camp?
It might appear that a certain alleged ‘Bout camp’ exists, it is a totally false impression. The so-called ‘Bout camp’ consists of Victor Bout, his wife, his brother, his mother, his daughter, me (Dimitri Khalezov), a couple of Victor’s personal friends from the Soviet Union, his Thai lawyer – Mr. Lak Nittiwatvicharn, his Russian lawyer, of course, Daniel Estulin, and, perhaps, a few journalists who came to know Victor and his family during their investigation of the case. If you can call this rag-tag army “Bout´s camp”, then yes, there are two main players – “Bout’s camp” and the US camp. Aside from the US government, however, there are quite a few other powerful players who have positioned themselves against Victor.
Who are these powerful players and why have we not heard anything about them?
First of all, the Russian Government (at least certain powerful individuals within the Russian Government), and the Russian secret service.
What? Are you serious? You have just accused the Russian government of working against Victor Bout when the entire world is convinced that had it not been for Putin and Medvedev, Victor Bout, most likely would have been extradited to the United States a long time ago!
You will not be able to hear anything about them, because they are not so stupid as to show off. They would rather show you something entirely opposite – that they are allegedly “helping” Victor Bout. But make no mistake – from the very beginning of this unprecedented set-up, the Russian side was heavily involved with the Americans in the entire operation in framing Victor and in luring him to Bangkok. It was conceived and conducted by both – the Russian and the American secret services working together. In addition to the Russians, other players were involved as well. Primarily, the Israeli secret services – the Mossad and Sayaret Matkal. They have keen interest in this case, too. It was demonstrated by the unprecedented Sayaret Matkal’s involvement in the case of one of the FARC leaders – Raul Reyes and “his” weapon-grade Uranium that was planted by “someone” around his camp in the Ecuadorian jungle. Don’t miss this point – Raul Reyes was murdered on March 1, 2008, while Victor Bout was scheduled to be lured to Bangkok on March 4, 2008, in direct connection with the FARC and Uranium affairs, while all legal paperwork that requested the Thais to arrest him has been submitted to the Thai side by the Americans in the last day of February – that is BEFORE the murder of Raul Reyes.
And, please, note that it was the Israeli Sayaret Matkal (a highly tailored organization that deals exclusively with nuclear weapons of enemies and with nothing else but that) involved in the actual murder of Reyes and in the “discovery” of “his” Uranium. Don’t miss to notice also that Victor Bout arrived in Bangkok not alone, but in a strange company of his alleged “friend” – a certain colonel from the Russian FSB, who was initially arrested with Victor and then strangely released and sent back to Moscow on the first available flight. To understand how improbable it is, try to imagine the following situation. Let´s say that a certain secret service (the French, for example) arranged to lure Osama bin Laden to Paris, promising the Saudi terrorist that he will meet in Paris with his Muslim brothers and in the meeting they will discuss how to demolish the Eiffel Tower with a stolen Soviet mini-nuke. But Osama bin Laden arrives to the meeting in Paris not alone, but accompanied by a certain colonel from the Taliban counter-intelligence service who decided to travel together with Osama just for the occasion – to have a chance to see the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower (before it is nuked).
The French secret service arrests both – Osama bin Laden and the colonel from the Taliban. Except that the French realize that the one they want is Osama bin Laden, and not the colonel from the Taliban’s counter-intelligence who indeed came to Paris to see its attractions and who simply kept his friend Osama bin Laden company on the flight to France´s capital. So, the French police decide to release the colonel and send him back to Kabul on the next available flight, detaining only Osama bin Laden, because ONLY he was the target of their sting-operation. Does this version sound believable to you? Just as “believable” sounds the explanation why the Thai police and the U.S. DEA so quickly released Victor Bout’s casual companion – the FSB colonel – who strangely arrived with the infamous “Merchant of Death” and “Lord of War” on the same plane and in the same taxi and checked into the same hotel, but in reality did not want to help the latter to sell “portable anti-aircraft missiles” to the blood-thirsty narco-dealers from FARC – he only wanted to see Bangkok and to have a chance to try the famous Thai massage.
Of course, this FSB colonel arrived to Bangkok by “mistake”, so this “mistake” was promptly corrected by the honorable and honest Thai police who quickly realized that the friend of the “Merchant of Death” was innocent and sent him back home immediately. Do you believe this nonsense? I don´t. At least four countries were heavily involved in Victor Bout´s frame up: Russia, United States, Israel and Thailand. There is plausible evidence that other nations were involved in this disgusting frame-up, but involved to a lesser extent than the abovementioned four. It appears that the Danes, the Dutch and the Romanians were involved too; at least, it appears so from the legal paperwork available in Victor’s case-file at the Thai Criminal Court.
The entire world has the impression that the Russian government and Russian Embassy in Thailand have gone above and beyond the call of duty to help Mr. Bout? In fact, the United States government has bitterly complained publicly about the apparent behind-the-scenes pressure Putin and Company are allegedly applying on the Thais to release Mr. Bout.
Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest mistakes to think that the Russian Government is allegedly involved in Victor Bout’s extradition case in the Thai court on the side of Victor. Indeed, the “official line” in many hysterical publications in the Western and even in the Russian press imply that the Russian officialdom is allegedly “trying hard to help Victor” as Victor could, allegedly, implicate “certain Russian politicians” in some alleged “wrongdoings”.
This impression is somehow supported by the fact that Russian Embassy officials regularly attended Thai court during Victor’s extradition case hearings, and also as a result of a number of statements coming from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But this leaves one with a false impression. Russian Embassy officials visiting Victor Bout and attending court hearings are nothing but a regular consular assistance to a Russian citizen; be it to a citizen named Victor Bout or an unknown Sergei Ivanov.
That said, I can assure you that even though the Russian Consul attended every court hearing, the Thai judges were not “pressured” by the Russian delegation. It is normal for consuls to attend hearings of foreign defendants and the judges are used to it. So by no means the fact that the Russian Consul has diligently performed his duties could be considered as a kind of an “extrajudicial assistance” to the Defendant Victor Bout in the courtroom.
When it comes to the apparent statements of unflagging support made by the Russian Foreign Ministry they should not mislead you either into believing that the Russian officials are allegedly “helping Victor Bout”. They were not and are not helping him at all, but are rather doing their best to harm his position in the Thai court. It sounds strange to a lay Westerner, but you have to understand some peculiarities when it comes to the Russians. First of all, besides Putin, Medvedev and Co., there are other political powers in Russia – so-called “patriots” led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, for example, or “communists”, just to mention a few. Some of the “old Russians” sincerely believe that the United States government must not be allowed to arrest a Russian citizen abroad, especially in a third country. Because if allowed to do so with impunity, it will set a dangerous precedent. Today they dare to frame and arrest an alleged “Merchant of Death” who knows no government secrets. But tomorrow, they might arrest a real colonel from the Russian Strategic Missile Forces who decided to spend his holidays in Thailand. The United States government can accuse this colonel of “planning to annihilate the United States as an entity with a massive thermo-nuclear strike” and to demand his extradition to America. What´s more, such a hypothetical accusation would in fact be correct – because such a colonel could indeed plan to annihilate the US due to his service duties.
Please understand, a great majority of Russian citizens as well as Russian Armed Forces, are extremely unhappy that the United States can arrogantly claim their alleged jurisdiction over territories that are not part of the United States and they are especially annoyed when such bullying directly affects Russian citizens. Medvedev, Putin and Company are aware of this and they have to take it into account when making their public statements.
Hence the public pledges of support from the Russian Foreign Ministry which sound like they really care about Victor Bout and his case in Thailand. But nobody should be fooled by these tearful pledges of support. They are nothing but a publicity stunt. In reality, they are no more harmful to the Americans and their cause than barking of stray dogs around the Criminal Court in Bangkok. All these actions of the Russian Foreign Ministry are merely intended to appease Russian population by creating an impression that the Russian Government allegedly “works for Russia” and still “constitutes a challenge to the US hegemony in the world”. However, neither of these is true in reality. Moreover, if the Russian Government did nothing at all to help Victor Bout fight his extradition case in the Thai courts, he would have had a much better chance at winning his case.
Does the United States want Victor Bout for being an arms merchant as he is portrayed by the UN and US journalist Douglas Farah or is there more to his case?
In reality, Victor Bout is not wanted for being an alleged “arms merchant” as he is portrayed and as he is perceived by the people who put more stock into a newspaper article than they do into facts. If Victor was really wanted for what you suggested, then the Americans would not wait until March 2008 to arrest him – they would have initiated criminal proceedings against Victor Bout back in the ‘90s, or, at the latest, at the very beginning of the new millennium. The problem is, Victor is NOT wanted for being the “arms merchant”, at least in the sense he is portrayed in the infamous movie or described in the irresponsible UN report by a former United Nations weapons inspector, Johan Peleman. Victor is wanted for something totally different, but, perhaps, we will discuss that further in more detail.
How strong of a case does the United States government have?
From the judicial point of view, US government’s case is very weak and Victor could easily have won it. Can you imagine that the accusers (US government) failed to bring to the Thai court even a single “portable anti-aircraft missile” that Victor was alleged to have been illegally selling to “the highest bidder”? But the main problem was that the Russian Government and the Russian secret service did their best to harm Victor’s position in the Thai court, to force him to defend himself in the wrong way from the judicial point of view, to make false promises that would dull his vigilance, and, moreover, to deprive Victor of funds, so that he would have simply no money to conduct his defense in the Thai court in an effective manner. If the Russian Government were indeed concerned about Victor’s defense as believed by most people, then it would have at the very least subsidize his legal expenses. It would be normal to expect for the Russian Government to at least provide the best legal experts from the Russian side free of charge and contribute a couple of millions US dollars to cover the legal expenses on the Thai side. At least, it is logical to expect it. What is the two million US dollars for the government of a country with over 150 millions populations that sells gas and oil and brandishes nuclear weapons capable of destroying the Earth a hundred times over? Such petty cash is a small price to pay for Mother Russia to defend its famous citizen in such a notorious case, isn’t it?
But in reality not only the Russian Government did not pay anything either openly or covertly (in disguise through a “private donation”) to Victor Bout and his family; the Russian secret service did their best to force Victor’s brother and Victor’s wife into absolutely unnecessary expenses that drove them into total bankruptcy. Instead of helping them financially, the Russian Government indeed sucked out their last savings. If you also add that it was the Russian officials who advised Victor to conduct his defense in the Thai court in the most wrongful manner and if you add that one of Victor’s lawyer – a proven shill for the American DEA – was also recommended by the Russian officials, you will understand the travesty and injustice and treason involved. Let me say it again, the Russian Government, from the very beginning was secretly, but very efficiently working with the Americans to get Victor Bout to the United States to stand trial, and at the same time, to create an impression that Russia is still “great” and could still “defend its citizens”.
Let´s go over the basic facts of the case. First of all, the Russian secret service managed to convince Victor and his wife Alla, not to conduct the defense in the Thai court by proving the fact that there were no actual portable anti-aircraft missiles available to be sold to the FARC. Solely based on this evidence alone, the case should have been dismissed. The Russian officials proposed, instead, to conduct the defense by proving to the Thai court that the case was allegedly “political”, because the FARC is a political organization, the Communist party. This was a suicidal method of defense if looking at the case through the eyes of a professional lawyer. By proving that the case was “political” Victor automatically proved that he agreed with the existence of the actual “case”, that is missiles and such. This case could have been easily won by proving that there were “no case at all” and as such a non-existent “case” can not be “political” because there was nothing to be “political”.
Instead, Victor and his wife agreed with the proposal of the Russian officials and limited the defense in the Thai court by claiming that the case of dealing with the FARC was “political” without challenging the actual “case” whatsoever. The most important point of the entire case – that there was not even a single alleged “portable anti-aircraft missile” captured – was not voiced in the court-room. And no questions have been asked by Victor’s lawyer from the witnesses of the prosecution as to WHY the arresters failed to go after the alleged “missiles” in order to seize them and to deprive the so-called “Merchant of Death” of his deadly arsenal. Therefore, from the way Victor´s lawyer conducted the actual defense, it appeared to the judges that Victor was indeed selling the missiles, but the matter to consider was only if the FARC was a terrorist organization (as claimed by the Americans) or a political one (as claimed by Victor). As you may expect, the court eventually disagreed with such an interpretation and ruled that the case was NOT political, while Victor and his then lawyer (who was a shill for the Americans) did absolutely nothing to prove to the court that there were no case, no missiles, and no FARC – instead of proving that so-called “FARC” was represented by the US citizens while the “missiles” was merely a product of their sick imagination and existed only in their bogus paperwork, Victor and his then lawyer managed to prove by default that the actual accusations of the Americans had some grounds.
Secondly, the Russian secret service promised Victor and his wife that if Victor conducted his defense in the Thai court in the abovementioned manner (by proving that the case was “political” without challenging the actual claims and the total absence of any evidence of the Americans) then the Russian Government would guarantee that Victor would win the case. As you may expect this promise and this “guarantee” was just a cheap ploy invented by the Russian secret service in order to blunt his vigilance and to ensure that Victor would lose his case in the Thai court despite total absence of the alleged missiles and despite an absolute presence of abundant evidence that the entire “case” was merely a frame-up by the American DEA.
Furthermore, Victor’s wife, at my insistence made a very efficient complaint against her husband’s illegal detention (because the actual detention of Victor was indeed illegal due to technicalities and during the entire extradition hearings in the Thai court Victor must have been freed, and not behind bars). Submission of such a complaint by Victor’s wife caught all Victor’s enemies – the Thais, the Russians and the Americans – virtually with their pants down. The problem was that the detention of Victor was indeed technically illegal and he must have been released immediately – the technicalities of the illegality of the detention were obvious, if not to say self-evident, and were presented in the written complaint by Alla Bout in such a clear manner that they could not have been challenged even by the best lawyers in the world. The only way left to the judges was to consider the case and to rule to release Victor Bout from unlawful custody and to continue the extradition hearings with him released from prison. Apparently, it was not an option for the Russians, Americans and Thais who worked too hard to get Victor arrested, thrown behind bars, and deprived of any income. But what could they do in this situation? Unfortunately, they found a way out: the “trusted guys” from the Russian secret service approached Victor’s wife and convinced her to voluntarily withdraw her complaint against her husband´s illegal detention (claiming that it puts the Thai court in a difficult position and the court does not like this at all – which was indeed true) in exchange for the deal: once the complaint is withdrawn, the “grateful” Thai court would immediately rule to release Victor on bail – as a kind of a “settlement” that allows everyone “to save face”.
Victor and his wife again put their faith in the Russian government and agreed to withdraw the complaint. Except that the “grateful” Thai court never released Victor on bail as promised. This is just another example of how the Russian officials actually “helped” Victor Bout. The list of their “help” is very long, but I don’t want to make it too long and too boring. I would mention that on the recommendation of the Russian secret service, Victor’s brother has paid U.S. $120,000 for Victor’s bail, but the money was stolen, the bail has never been granted and the money was never returned. Again, on the recommendation of the Russian secret service, Victor’s brother paid $250,000 dollars allegedly for an “out of court settlement” whereas Victor would be released before conclusion of the case. According to the promise of the Russian officials, if the 250 thousand USD were paid, Victor Bout will be freed by May 1, 2008. The money was paid as demanded, but nothing happened in the Thai court – the case just continued and nobody bothered to return the money or take responsibility for the false promise.
As a result of this despicable behavior on the part of the Russian officials, “Victor Bout’s camp” as you call it, ran out of money to such an extent that when it became necessary to translate several important court documents from Thai to English in order to understand what the Thai witnesses said in court, Victor could not afford to pay the 2,000 USD for the translation and till today, some of the important papers from the case-file remain only in Thai language. I hope this is more than enough to establish how the Russian Government is actually “helping” Victor Bout to lose his extradition case in the Thai court.
Then, why is the Russian government working against Victor Bout?
Because of the Russian, to be more exact the Soviet-made missile that hit the Pentagon on 9/11.
What? I think you better explain that and, please go slowly.
The Americans, understandably, demand from the Russians to find a fall guy or a patsy (or a group of fall guys) who is/are responsible for the missile that was found in the middle of the Pentagon. Considering that the missile was actually nuclear-tipped (with a half-megaton thermo-nuclear warhead that is more than 25 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb) you can imagine that the Americans are quite insistent with their demands to the Russians to find, at last, the culprit and to surrender him to the US Justice.
It is indeed serious. But when it comes to the Russians, they can not admit the truth – that the “Granit” missile with its thermo-nuclear warhead was stolen from the sunken “Kursk” submarine, because Putin back in 2000 solemnly declared to the world that there were no nuclear weapons on board of the sunken submarine.
What is a “Granit”?
The P-700 “Granit” missile (also known by its NATO classification as “Shipwreck” or “SS-N-19” – where “N” apparently stands for “Navy”) is the most advanced Soviet-era Navy missile. It is intended to be fired from submarines in submerged position and is primarily intended to destroy the US aircraft-carrier battle-groups. This is a highly sophisticated and highly “intelligent” missile. The “Granit” missiles could be used to strike battle-groups and other ship orders while fired in swarms of 12 missiles in one salvo, but could be as well used in single shots – fired against single naval targets, as well as against stationary ground targets (as was demonstrated in the case of the Pentagon strike on 9/11). Each “Granit” missile weighs about 7 tons, has length of about 10 meters, could fly up to 625 km at the supersonic speed at 2.5 Mach. Each missile is typically equipped with a standard “Navy-type” 500 kiloton thermo-nuclear warhead; conventional warheads for this missile even though exist in theory, are never used in reality – so that all without any exception “Granit” missiles in service are nuclear-tipped.
This missile deems to be totally indestructible, because NATO lacks any means to shot down this missile even if they detect it in advance. In fact, it was demonstrated in the case of the Pentagon attack on 9/11 – NORAD managed to detect the upcoming “Granit” missile at least 6 minutes before it struck the Pentagon. NORAD’s operational officers managed to ring the atomic alert, scramble the so-called “Doomsday plane” in response, but were not able to prevent the actual strike – the missile managed to successfully approach Washington DC and hit the wall of the Pentagon despite being detected by NORAD 6 minutes in advance. Make you own conclusions – as to the danger of this weapon. I would also like to note, that according to the Soviet and Russian strategic plans, the submarines armed with the “Granite” missiles could be used as a “back-up” option for the retaliatory nuclear strike against the United States (while the primary role in such a strike belongs to strategic intercontinental- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles, of course).
For the reason of possible usage in the retaliatory strike the “Granit” missiles are also designed to produce airbursts above the US cities – so they are equipped with special non-contact detonators for such reason, in addition to the usual contact detonators. I should mention also that the “Granit” missile has a very advanced inertial guidance system that also has a list of pre-loaded most important NATO targets. While flying above the ocean the “Granit” missile will scan and reconnoiter the operational theater and try to distinguish ship orders and especially aircraft-carrier battle-groups and to select the most important targets in the ship orders and to strike them in automated manner. If flying above the territory the missile will reconnoiter it too and will try to detect the most important stationary targets by comparing their coordinates with those pre-loaded in its warhead. Once encounter such targets the missile’s on-board computer will immediately select the most important target by the order of priority and the missile will strike it. So, once the missile was fired towards Washington D.C. it compared the two most important targets – the White House and the Pentagon and “preferred” to strike the latter one as being in its “opinion” the more important target. Perhaps I should mention that this is the most heavily armored missile in the world – it is made from very thick steel and in fact it could be compared with a flying tank or with a giant bullet. Due to its tremendous speed, weight and strength of its body this missile managed to penetrate six capital walls of the Pentagon building when it struck it on 9/11.
Ok, please continue.
You have to understand that now Putin can not afford to take his noble presidential words back and to admit that he was outright lying to the world community and that all nuclear missiles from the “Kursk” were indeed stolen. Some other solution is badly needed to meet the US demands for the “culprit” behind the Pentagon attack. And this “solution” was eventually found. The problem is that all “Granit” missiles, despite being made in the Soviet days, could only belong to Russia and to no other former Soviet republic.
Can you prove this?
Absolutely. The ‘Granit” is the Navy missile; it is not used by anyone except the Navy. In the Soviet Union there were four Navy fleets – the Arctic Fleet, the Pacific Fleet, the Baltic Fleet, and the Black See Fleet. Out of the four Russia inherited in its entirety the three fleets – the Arctic, the Baltic, and the Pacific ones. Only the Black See Fleet has been divided between Russia and Ukraine. However, the “Granit” missiles were in service only on the Pacific Fleet and on the Arctic Fleet; so such missiles could not have ended up in the hands of Ukrainians, even theoretically. All the “Granits” must have been inherited by Russia alone. However, to shift blame away from Russia for the Pentagon strike, the Russian officials had no chance than to blame that some “Granit” missiles were allegedly a part of the Black See Fleet and for sometime they were allegedly in the temporary possession of the Ukrainians during the turmoil caused by the Soviet Union collapse and by the consecutive dividing of its property (nuclear weapons and the Black See Fleet inclusive). For this reason the Russian secret service concocted a bogus back-dated paper-work which “revealed” that one of the heavy cruisers of the Black See Fleet was allegedly scheduled to be re-armed with the “Granit” missiles and for that reason in the last years of the Soviet rule several “Granit” missiles were allegedly transferred to the Black See Fleet and were kept there and eventually they allegedly ended up with the Ukrainians after the break up of the Soviet Union. And, from these Ukrainians these “Granit” missiles were allegedly “stolen” and thus ended up with the terrorists (who eventually fired one of such missiles into the Pentagon on 9/11). This version is ridiculous because even if you imagine that several “Granit” missiles were indeed kept in Ukraine, intended for the re-armament of that heavy-cruiser, as claimed, these missiles would never be kept in storage with their nuclear warheads attached. In accordance with the rules, in the Soviet Union, missiles were kept in one place, while the nuclear warheads were kept in another location, moreover, under control of a different department of the military. Only lay people who know nothing about the Soviet Armed Forces and their rules could believe such a version that it was allegedly possible for the “reckless Ukrainians” to lose the missiles and the nuclear warheads at the same time. The missiles with the attached nuclear warheads could only be stolen from one place – from a submarine in service. However, it seems that some responsible security officials believe (or “pretend to believe”) this ridiculous version with the “Ukrainian trail” which seems to successfully exonerate the Russians.
In this case the Russians are not guilty at all. Some “bad guys” who stole the missiles from Ukraine (and not from Russia) are allegedly guilty. Now they need the actual “bad guys”. Who, do you think, fits the bill? You guessed it, the infamous “Merchant of Death” and the “Lord of War”, thanks to the fact that his personality has been demonized long ago and everyone would easily believe that it was indeed Victor Bout who sells not only weapons, but NUCLEAR and even THERMONUCLEAR weapons to the highest bidder. That is exactly why the Russians and the Americans got into this seemingly strange agreement – to frame Victor Bout. It is not so strange in reality, if you try to analyze the actual circumstances – because both parties badly need to close the Pentagon case and they simply can not find any one better than Victor Bout for the role of the scapegoat who could sell such a missile to the terrorists. There is simply no one else in the world who could fit this role.
Let´s move to Bout´s alleged partner in the FARC deal, Andrew Smulian, who was arrested along with Victor. What happened to him?
The so-called “co-conspirator Smulian” was Bout´s former friend and a former business-partner. But in this particular case, Smulian was a “co-conspirator” of the DEA agent-provocateurs who framed Victor, rather than a Victor Bout “co-conspirator”. Unlikely you can be a “co-conspirator” to the one who is innocent. This is a clarification of terminology usage, if you don’t mind me being pedantic with such a correction. Andrew Smulian was the one who visited Victor in Moscow several times and presented him with business offers – particularly, he promised to find good customers for the last plane in Victor´s possession, still parked in UAE and which Victor dreams to get rid of in exchange for badly needed cash. As an aside, keep in mind that Victor was totally broke even before his arrest in Bangkok and to sell his last aircraft was a big deal for him.
Eventually Smulian lured Victor to Bangkok – to finally negotiate with the prospective buyers. During the negotiations, according to the US government documents presented in his case, Smulian introduced Victor to several people who allegedly looked Latin American and who allegedly spoke Spanish. These people were alleged to be from a Colombian revolutionary organization named FARC – which is basically a Marxist guerilla movement fighting the capitalist government of Colombia for decades. The deal to sell the plane was held in the hotel business-center. A few minutes after the meeting began, the Thai police and the American DEA agents from the US local Embassy barged in and arrested everyone – Victor Bout, his “friend” from Moscow (who was found to be an FSB colonel), and Andrew Smulian. Out of the three only Victor was naturally arrested and detained. Victor’s FSB colonel friend was immediately released, put on the first available flight and appeared in Moscow the next morning.
Andrew Smulian allegedly escaped (i.e. escaped from the custody of the Thai police) and disappeared. Keep in mind, he allegedly escaped from a locked down hotel guarded by over 150 Thai commandos. Then, without anyone noticing his disappearance, he alleged flagged a taxi to the airport, with his hands handcuffed behind his back. Once at the airport, he allegedly bought a ticket with no money and no passport to the United States, the only country in the world that if arrested, he would be looking at 30 years to life in prison. This is the American version of the events. Mr. Andrew Smulian suddenly “appeared” in America and was arrested in New York for being an alleged “co-conspirator” of Victor Bout. There is confirmed information that Andrew Smulian has been turned to be a prosecution witness who would testify against his former friend. Smulian is not in jail in America – he is in a “protective custody”.
What is your opinion of Bout’s two lawyers: Lak and Chamroen?
Lak has been my lawyer for many years and naturally, I know him very well. I am the one who recommended him to Victor for his case in the first place. Lak was introduced to Victor on March 7, 2008 when Victor was first brought to the police station, i.e. before he was first brought to the court. When he was brought to the court Lak was there and the first defense statements – both spoken and written – were made by Lak. Lak was also the one who managed to get back Victor’s passport and all his personal belongings – mobile phones and Victor´s personal computer, even though the Americans demanded these items to be transferred to the United States. Lak managed to make a good deal with the local police to get all of these invaluable items back almost immediately to the United States government’s chagrin and disbelief. Later Lak was also working hard on Victor’s further defense in the criminal case and also on the extradition case, as well as on Victor’s own complaint for illegal detention. However, thanks to clandestine efforts of the Russian secret service, Lak was dismissed from the case and replaced with a new lawyer – Chamroen.
Chamroen was a shill for the American DEA and was introduced to Victor through a long chain of people who worked for the DEA as unofficial agents. But make no mistake – Chamroen, being a 100% proven shill for the Americans, was introduced by none other than the Russian secret service officials who were well aware of what they were doing: the Russians who introduced Chamroen to Victor KNEW FOR SURE that he was the American shill and, DESPITE this KNOWLEDGE, they still introduced him to Victor and highly recommended to use his services. Chamroen was the one who resisted and blocked all positive attempts to defend Victor and who conducted Victor’s defense in the extradition case in the most wrongful manner. He managed to make Victor to technically lose a 100% winnable case. In addition, Chamroen did his best to prevent what you called above “Bout’s camp” from submitting to the Thai court documents that might clarify the ridiculousness of the US charges and to serve as a real defense for Victor.
As you might sincerely expect, Chamroen was not cheap either – he cost Victor well over 100 thousand US dollars which is an absolutely fabulous amount of money by Thai standards. During the time when lawyer’s work was important – i.e. during the time the court of first instance was hearing witnesses and accepting documents – the case was under control of Chamroen. I was able to re-introduce Lak back to the case by a strange trick: he was no longer a lawyer of Victor, but a lawyer of Victor’s wife Alla, who submitted to the court an additional complaint against the illegal detention of her husband that was joined with the main extradition case.
In this capacity, Lak managed to get back to the case at the last moment; however, it was too late by then – the case was effectively lost by Chamroen, who intentionally failed to call right witnesses for the defense and who sabotaged cross-questioning of the witnesses of the prosecution. Despite being only Alla’s lawyer and not Victor’s, Lak, nonetheless, managed to somehow turn this case into something more favorable in the very last moment: instead of making Alla only a witness in the illegal detention’s case, he managed to make her the most important witness in the extradition case, despite all efforts of Chamroen to the contrary.
Alla’s testimony was probably the most powerful evidence ever added to the extradition case, thanks to Lak. Furthermore, Lak managed to object to the latest set of new “evidence” that the Americans attempted to submit to the judge at the last moment, when the hearing of the case was almost over. The Americans actually submitted the last set of new “evidence” under the silent approval of Chamroen, but Lak managed to stand up and loudly voice his objections (despite actually being a lawyer in a different case – i.e. technically having no right to do so) and thus the most dangerous addition to the case by the Americans was not accepted by the Thai court. So, you can make you own conclusions what is Lak and what is Chamroen. And eventually when Victor lost the case and was about to be extradited to America, Chamroen simply disappeared and it was Lak who managed to prevent Victor from being immediately extradited to the United States.
Just to clarify, did the jet actually arrive to Bangkok or did it turn back shortly after taking off from the United States?
The actual jet with the armed US court marshals arrived, but, thanks to Lak, went back empty.
What you are saying is absolutely shocking. Not as much for the treason of both the Russian government and Victor´s lawyer, but for the collective stupidity of people involved in the case. Why on Earth didn´t you say something and how is it possible that Victor and his wife didn’t realize what was being done to them? I am sorry, but this sounds utterly implausible.
For me it also sounds implausible and I could only wonder how could it happen that way. But, taking into consideration purely psychological aspects of the problem and also the fact that Victor and his wife are not seasoned criminals, but merely innocent people, it could be explained. The problem is that Victor does not know that he is the one who allegedly “sold” the missile that hit the Pentagon to the “terrorists”. It seems that only now, when he lost the case in the Court of Appeal (as I told him would long time ago), he began to slowly realize what really happened with him and who stood behind the entire affair with this frame-up. But before, he was confident that he was winning the case because his vigilance was effectively lulled by the false promises and by the irresponsible assurances of the Russian officials, which Victor, nonetheless, took seriously. Just imagine yourself in his shoes. You are behind bars and you are being constantly assured by officials from your country that everything is “OK” and everything is “under control”, moreover, you wife also constantly conveys you similar messages from the Russian officials in Moscow who promise the same things (don’t forget that while in Moscow Alla Bout was always invited by high-ranking government- and secret service officials and the mere fact that such “big guys” condescended to talk to her and, moreover, to assure her that everything was allegedly “under control” created the desired effect). Just imagine yourself in such a situation: would you doubt when the secret service officials and the government officials promise you all help possible and they promise it on behalf of the president of the state and all of it is being accompanied by corresponding public statements of the Foreign Ministry. Wouldn’t such a performance blunt your vigilance too?
Victor and his wife had simply no reason to suspect the Russian officials in any wrongdoing in those days. You must be a cynic to be able to suspect the Russian officials in this situation, but Victor is simply too nice and too innocent for this. Furthermore, the Russians appointed to harm Victor’s position in the Thai court were professionals from the secret service and they know their job very well. They know how to make their lies sound plausible and convincing. It is difficult to deal with this type of the professionals when you yourself are simply an innocent person who has no criminal background, no previous convictions, not even encounters with the legal system prior to this, and no experience with the inner workings of the secret service. When you are an innocent person you simply can´t realize how dirty the actual world of the secret service is. Add here that neither Victor, nor his wife are lawyers and therefore the ridiculous method of defense that the Russian officials enforced on them might look quite “reasonable” for them and they failed to notice the dirty game behind it.
You know more about this case than anyone else. USG knows how dangerous you are. So does the Russian government. Have these governments tried to buy your silence or threaten you?
Yes, they have. The Americans on several occasions tried to either threaten me with the prospect of being arrested and charged with something or with some offers of cash. At first, they promised me an undisclosed amount of money if I would help them to get Victor to America by secretly harming his case in the court – in the same manner Chamroen did. When I refused, they said that they could still pay me for doing nothing, as long as I withdrew from this case, stopped visiting Victor in prison, stopped attending the court hearings and giving Victor and his wife advise. I refused that as well.
But when it comes to the Russian Government, they did not dare to offer me any money or to try to threaten me, because it would be just too dangerous for their own story. Don’t forget that while the Americans were open enemies of Victor, the Russians were openly “Victor’s friends”, so while the Americans could afford to offer money or to try to threaten someone who helps Victor and it would look natural, the Russians could not afford doing so, because otherwise they would betray themselves.
The Russians have never showed their dissatisfaction with my activities openly, they rather tried to harm my reputation by spreading vicious rumors about my alleged “cooperating with the Americans” and “Dimitri can not be trusted” and so on. In fact, these efforts yielded some result in the initial stage of the case – at one point I noticed that Victor’s wife suddenly stopped trusting me, and also as I have said that the Russians managed to get Lak dismissed and replaced with a new lawyer based on the same thing.
How valuable is Victor Bout to the United States?
If you mean that Victor Bout is allegedly “valuable” to America as an alleged “Merchant of Death” and a “Lord of War” you are dead wrong. Many people, who believe Western propaganda, think that Victor Bout is allegedly wanted in America for his involvement with illegal weapons trade as alleged by the Hollywood film, the book, and by hysterical Western publications. It is not true at all. You have to understand that Victor has never sold any weapons, whether legally or illegally, in Africa, in Asia or anywhere else. In his entire life he has never sold even a single Makarov pistol or a single AK-47, not to mention large quantities of Soviet-made or any other weapons. Yes, on several instances airlines controlled by Victor Bout and by his brother Sergei Bout indeed transported weapons, munitions, and even armed troops, but the problem is that these were NOT THEIR weapons, these were weapons of THEIR CUSTOMERS. Moreover, all of such customers were LEGAL CUSTOMERS. Wherever Victor’s or Serguei’s airlines transported weapons or armed troops it was ALWAYS governmental troops and the weapons always belong to the governments! Not once, did Victor Bout´s or his brother Serguei´s aircraft transported weapons of any illegal customers!
But people seem not to realize this obvious fact. Victor Bout can´t be turned into “an illegal weapons trader” by the hysterical Western media. Only the court verdict could do this. But not once during all these years has Victor Bout receive a summons to any court of law whereby someone sued him for being an illegal weapons dealer. There was not even a single attempt by any government, or by any public prosecutor, or by UN, or by any other organization, or by even a private individual to sue Victor Bout for his being an alleged “Merchant of Death”.
Why not, you ask? The answer is very simple: because no solid evidence exists that could be admissible in a court of law. The image of Victor Bout being an alleged “Merchant of Death” is based exclusively on the Hollywood movie, on Douglas Farah’s book, and on the bogus “UN report” concocted by a certain unscrupulous inspector, Johan Peleman. A number of Mr. Peleman´s former associates are willing to come forward and testify in the court of law that in every UN report, Victor Bout´s name was added to the final version of the report and that his name was absent in every preliminary UN report on arms trafficking. You simply can’t sue Victor Bout for being an illegal weapon trader based on the evidence compiled by the shameless Johan Peleman or bring to court the movie “Lord of War” as a substitute for the evidence. That is exactly why the Americans do not want Victor Bout for any illegal weapons trade as appears to many people around the world. If they really wanted him for that they would have done it long time ago. The evidence is simply not there.
The Americans wanted Victor for something else. And for this “something” his apparent Hollywood-inspired image of the “Merchant of Death” was not enough due to this being legally inadmissible in the American court of law. Certain REAL and PROVABLE charges must have been created in order to get him arrested for real. And the American officials found nothing better than to employ the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) for that reason. Since the DEA area of operations are drugs and drug dealers, their modus operandi is corresponding – to plant drugs on a victim and thus, to get the victim arrested. The very same approach was used in Victor Bout’s case: the DEA agent-provocateurs created a certain provocation that looked perhaps “normal” for a typical drug-policeman, but ridiculous to anyone else. The DEA sent their agent to meet Victor Bout. This agent, turned out to be Bout´s former friend, Andrew Smulian, who offered him a deal. But, instead of planting drugs on Victor Bout, the DEA planted bogus documents and falsified “intercepts” of alleged e-mail exchanges and alleged telephone conversations claiming that Victor Bout allegedly: 1) had in his possession portable anti-aircraft missiles; 2) was willing to sell them to FARC rebels in Columbia; 3) in doing so he was planning of- and willing to participate in murdering (sic) the US citizens/US officials working in Columbia.
Despite the fact that compared to the typical planting of real heroin on their clients the DEA failed to plant any actual anti-aircraft missiles on Victor, this ridiculous case was judged by the DEA superiors to be “solid” enough to be brought to court. And only after THIS provocation of the DEA, the US officials dared, at last, to arrest Victor Bout and to pass this matter to the court of law. Before that, they have simply nothing in their hands that would be admissible in the court-room. Therefore we can not even talk about alleged former “criminal activities” of Victor Bout in Africa or elsewhere in connection with his current case in the court. The current case is purely about his alleged attempt to sell the alleged “portable anti-aircraft missiles” to FARC in Columbia and nothing else besides that.
This is the official “open” part of the story. However, there is also an official but “secret” part of the same story. Victor Bout is not really wanted in America for these absurd and non-existent portable anti-aircraft missiles. This ridiculous frame-up could never be successfully won by the US government in the US court. Victor, in reality, is wanted for something far more serious that can not be made public and can not be discussed in the courtroom in any open proceedings. I mean you can compare it with the case of the infamous nuclear bomber Timothy McVeigh who was openly indicted of using the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD, but in a form of the Ryder truck loaded with cheap fertilizer) against US citizens, but whose case was strangely conducted behind closed doors. The same thing is with Victor Bout’s case.
Of course, the US officials and especially those US officials responsible for legal matters are apparently reasonable enough to realize that they would never be able to win the ridiculous case against Victor based on the proceeds of the abovementioned DEA provocation primarily because no actual anti-aircraft missile have ever been found and not even an attempt to find such missiles has been made by the DEA.
Why do you think that is?
Because they knew that the entire story was invented and no missiles would be found anywhere. That is why they did not even attempt to go after the missiles. The real cause of the extradition attempt against Victor Bout is not these non-existent portable anti-aircraft missiles. The real cause is that the US Government in collaboration with the Russian Government secretly blamed an individual named “Victor Bout” for selling to the terrorists a Soviet-made “Granit” missile that struck the Pentagon on 9/11. And THIS is the real truth behind Victor’s case. And THIS secret part of the case the American legal experts plan to win in the US court behind closed doors. Because it appears that the Russian FSB has secretly concocted some “plausible” evidence that implicates Victor Bout in that alleged deal and the US officials appear to be gullible enough to believe the Russian colleagues and to believe that such “evidence” would lead to the successful conclusion of the still pending 9/11 Pentagon case. In addition, Victor is being secretly accused of selling portable nuclear weapons – known as “mini-nukes” or “suite-case nukes” to various terrorist organizations, ranging from the Columbian FARC to Osama bin Laden´s Al-Qaeda. Apparently, several recent real and alleged mini-nuclear bombings are secretly being blamed on Victor Bout. The most important of them is the infamous “El Nogal” nuclear bombing in Bogotá that was presented to the uninitiated as a “car-bombing”, in which, according to the US security officials, the same type of a mini-nuke was used as in the 1995 Oklahoma bombing.
Dimitri, you are a former nuclear intelligence officer of the 12 Chief Directorate of the Russian armed forces. Public Prosecutor’s August 26, 2009 appeal stated that BOUT conspired to provide GUIDED BALLISTIC MISSILES to the FARC. Are they suggesting that BOUT is involved in nuclear terrorism?
Yes. This is just a slip of the tongue. The Freudian syndrome. In the official paperwork of Victor Bout’s case in the Thai court, as well as in the official (a/k/a “public”) part of the US extradition request they do not talk about any “guided ballistic missile”. They talk about “portable anti-aircraft missiles” (that are small enough to be launched from one’s shoulder). However, behind closed doors, the US officials tried to convince their Thai colleagues that while the anti-aircraft missiles provocation against Victor Bout was indeed very crude and ridiculous, the real cause of the extradition for which Victor is wanted are far more serious, but, unfortunately, can not be disclosed to the general public or discussed in the court-room in open proceedings.
So, the US officials in order to convince the Thais to accept the extradition case despite total lack of evidence and despite numerous violations of Thai law, had no choice but to reveal the “awful truth” to at least some of the Thai officials. Therefore high-ranking Thai police and security officials, as well as a select few amongst Thai public prosecutors, know very well that Victor is wanted not for selling the small portable anti-aircraft missiles, but for selling the cruise missile with an unexploded 500 kiloton thermo-nuclear warhead that hit the Pentagon on 9/11 and narrowly missed incinerating the entire Washington D.C. thanks to its broken detonator.
But since Thailand is a non-missile and non-nuclear state, the Thais don’t see much difference between a cruise missile and a ballistic missile, so the public prosecutor mistakenly believed that the Pentagon was hit by a ballistic missile with a thermo-nuclear warhead, while in reality it was hit by a cruise missile with a thermo-nuclear warhead. But it is forgivable for the Thais to make such a mistake, because it is not really a big difference in this sense. However, there is a big difference when you compare a portable shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile that weighs just a few kilograms with a tens-of-meters-long ballistic missile that weighs many tons. While it is forgivable for a Thai public prosecutor (who is a military officer, by the way) to confuse the first two, considering that he is Thai, it is not forgivable for him (considering that he is a military officer) to mistake the second two with each other.
In the Security Council of Thailand there was a discussion that Bout is being blamed for the entire Pentagon attack on 9/11 – for both the missile and its thermo-nuclear warhead. Apparently, the public prosecutor picked up this idea from them and as a slip of the tongue, when he composed his appeal, he accidentally mentioned the “guided ballistic missile” instead of the “politically correct” “portable anti-aircraft missile(s)”. To answer the second part of your question – yes, Victor Bout is apparently wanted for nothing less then NUCLEAR TERRORISM. He is being secretly blamed for at least: 1) selling the Soviet-made “Granit” missile with the half-megaton thermo-nuclear warhead to the terrorists who later launched it against the Pentagon on 9/11; 2) selling at least 3 or more Soviet-made mini-nukes known as “RA-115” and “RA-116” to terrorists prior to 9/11 (at least so it appears from the “El-Mundo” newspaper’s article as of 16 of September, 2001, and also from John D. Negroponte’s [the former director of the US National Intelligence] official communiqué released right after Victor Bout’s arrest in Bangkok in March, 2008 – available here: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/tnt_03-08.pdf ); and 3) selling of weapon-grade enriched Uranium to terrorists – as appears from the actual course of actions against the FARC and particularly against Raul Reyes’ group in the Ecuadorian jungle only 5 days before Victor was actually lured to Bangkok to be arrested there.
For our readers’ benefit, can you explain the difference between ballistic missile with the thermo-nuclear warhead and cruise missile with the thermo-nuclear warhead.
A ballistic missile is launched vertically and it travels with speeds comparable to the first cosmic velocity well above the Earth atmosphere on a ballistic trajectory – meaning its engines bring the ballistic missile into what we call “space” and then its warhead falls towards its target from space in the same manner as would a meteorite. You can roughly compare a trajectory of a ballistic missile with a trajectory of a football when a goalkeeper strikes it from his area into the other half of the football pitch. A cruise missile is much slower when compared to the ballistic missile – its speed is just sub-sonic or slightly super-sonic and a missile travels to its target (and delivers its warhead to it) in the atmosphere – in the same manner as would do a typical jet-fighter. In the case of particularly the “Granit” missile which is very expensive and very advanced, its speed is about 2.5 Mach while traveling in the cruise altitude and it is decreased to only 1.5 Mach when the missile descends and sets itself to the final path of attack – that is parallel to the ground (exactly as it was demonstrated in the actual 9/11 Pentagon strike). But when it comes to the actual thermo-nuclear warhead there is no difference. You will not feel any difference when a half-megaton thermo-nuclear warhead suddenly produces a blinding white flash and in the next few milliseconds incinerates you with its intensive thermal radiation. It does not matter if such a half-megaton warhead was delivered by a ballistic missile falling from space, or by a horizontally flying cruise missile. The effects of the actual thermo-nuclear explosion and the destruction caused by it will be undistinguishable.
Victor Bout’s name is often mentioned along with the alleged sale of X-55 missiles to Iran and China. Can you tell us more?
This is a kind of “controlled leak of information” that was afforded on purpose in order to create some “grounds” and so to convince some officials who are not entitled to know the full truth, but who could be fed some half-truth. The story with the X-55 illegal sale was just a cover-up story that was concocted to distract attention from the real culprit – the awful “Granit” missile. To talk about the “Granit” missile that hit the Pentagon is TABOO. It is off limits. Only very few high-ranking US security officials (as well as high-ranking security officials of Russia and of some highly-trusted US allies) are entitled to know that it was the “Granit” missile. For the rest, it is taboo to know this word. But many people know that it was the missile (and many also know that it was a certain Russian- or Soviet-made missile) that hit the Pentagon. But the problem is that those who know or suspect the awful truth are much more than those who are entitled to know it in full detail. Therefore to feed the “half-truth” for those not entitled to know the full truth, the story with the alleged X-55 has been concocted.
Secondly, even from the technical point of view the story with the X-55 can not be true – that missile is not technically capable of penetrating 6 (six!) capital walls of the Pentagon as was demonstrated in the 9/11 attack. Only one missile in the world – the “Granit” – could achieve such a penetrating feat. That is to say that the Americans and the Russians together are trying hard to cover up the real truth behind the Pentagon attack, while trying in the same time to apprehend and to bring to justice someone [allegedly] responsible for the actual attack. Hence the persecution against Victor Bout. Hence the ridiculous stories about the alleged illegal deal with the X-55 missiles (that are also nuclear-capable, by the way – don’t miss this point: the fact that X-55 missiles are nothing less than “nuclear-capable” is always being diligently mentioned along with the claims that Victor Bout and his companions allegedly sold these missiles from Ukraine to Iran).
I understand that the first question the DEA asked Bout during their interrogation of him is the name of the cruise missile he had sold to Iran. Why would they ask him that?
Yes, it is true. The first question asked of Victor after his arrest was not about the ridiculous deal with the non-existent shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles that were allegedly intended for the Columbian FARC. The first question was about the alleged cruise missile Victor allegedly sold to Iran. This was because those mid-ranking DEA operatives were low enough not to be entitled to know the full awful truth – about the “Granit” cruise missile, but were fed by their superiors the half-truth – about the alleged “X-55” cruise missile that was discussed in the previous question.
A great deal of effort has been made by mainstream US and European press to link Bout with FARC and uranium. What do they have to do with Bout?
The US security officials have a double task actually. One: they have to close the case with the missile that hit the Pentagon on 9/11. Two – they also have to close several cases where mini-nukes were really or allegedly used in disguise of the so-called “suicide” and “non-suicide” “car-bombings”. The most important – the case of nuclear bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 on an anniversary of Hiroshima bombing, the 1996 Khobar Tower nuclear bombing, the 1995 Oklahoma nuclear bombing, the 2002 Bali nuclear bombing, the 1993 first nuclear bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, several recent nuclear bombings in Iraq, Pakistan, Algeria and Saudi Arabia that were reported to the gullible plebs as “car-bombings”, and also the El-Nogal nuclear bombing in Bogotá in 2003, as well as the previous nuclear bombing in Bogotá in November 1999, both blamed on the FARC. As not too many specialists in nuclear weapons are available for consultation, it is possible to present to the lay people a notion that it is allegedly possible to produce a self-made low-caliber nuclear bomb made out of Uranium (while in reality all mini-nukes are made exclusively out of Plutonium and have nothing to do with any Uranium).
Well, is it possible to produce a homemade low-caliber nuclear bomb?
Thanks to the general ignorance of the people (many security officials and high-ranking politicians inclusive) in regard to the nuclear weapons, the abovementioned mistaken belief is widespread: indeed many security officials and politicians sincerely believe that it is possible to obtain 50 kg (single critical mass) of highly-enriched Uranium-235 on the black market and to make a mini-nuke out of it. In reality it is impossible to make any “mini-nuke” out of Uranium even in an industrial process, not to mention in the cottage industry, but many gullible folks believe to the contrary. Therefore a few unscrupulous individuals who really stood behind those nuclear “car- and truck-bombings” shamelessly exploit such gullibility. In the particular case with the FARC group led by Raul Reyes they planted on them almost 50 kg of weapon-grade Uranium-235 that was hidden around Reyes’ camp in the Ecuadorian jungle, then they murdered Reyes and additionally created some bogus computer files planted into Reyes’ computer where it was claimed that Reyes and his group were allegedly responsible for the 2003 nuclear bombing in Bogotá and were also seeking more weapon-grade Uranium. The gullible security officials who understand little about the real nuclear weapons technology would not miss the point as was suggested – when they encounter the 50 kg of REAL weapon-grade Uranium around Reyes’ camp while knowing for sure that both – 1999- and 2003- bombings in Bogotá were indeed mini-nukes bombings. However, this theater should not mislead serious people: both bombings in Bogotá, as well as 1995 Oklahoma bombing and the rest of well-known and little-known nuclear “car-bombings” was made with mini-nukes made out of PLUTONIUM and NOT URANIUM, and so the 50 kg of Uranium-235 planted to Reyes’ camp should not dupe any serious person into believing otherwise.
When it comes to Victor Bout if you carefully review available public sources you will find out that: 1) Victor Bout’s alleged connection with the FARC was mentioned in the same list of “evidence” allegedly “found” in Reyes’ computer right next to Reyes’s attempt to buy 50 kg (single critical mass enough to make one atomic bomb of Hiroshima yield) of weapon-grade Uranium-235 and alleged Reyes’ responsibility for the El-Nogal “car-bombing” (that is known to be nuclear to any and every security official); and 2) Alleged “international channels” by which the alleged “portable anti-aircraft missiles” of Victor Bout were allegedly transported – namely: Russia-Armenia-Romania-Denmark-Netherlands’ Antilles-Columbia strangely coincides to the country with the alleged rout of transportation of the weapon-grade Uranium that was obtained by Reyes and indeed found around his camp after Reyes was murdered by the Americans on March 1, 2008 – just 5 days prior to Victor Bout’s arrest in Bangkok. Anyone is welcome to make his own conclusions.
Add here that the US officials actually exploit two levels of the “truth” in regard to the WTC demolition during 9/11 events. Just imagine that there are quite a lot of mid-ranking security officials and politicians who are advanced enough to know that kerosene can not “melt steel” into fluffy microscopic dust and that “ground zero” in pre-9/11 English language had no other meaning than “a place of a nuclear explosion”. Therefore these types of people would not swallow the plebeian version of the “planes brought down the towers 9/11 truth”. Some “higher” and more plausible version of the “truth” needed to be invented to satisfy them. So according to the intermediate level of the 9/11 “truth” (that is intended to satisfy the mid-ranking security officials and mid-ranking politicians both in America and abroad), the Twin Towers of the WTC, as well as the building #7 of the WTC, were demolished by 3 mini-nukes that allegedly belonged to Osama bin Laden’s operatives. You can find a confirmation of what I mean in the article “Mi Hermano bin Laden”, published in the Spanish daily, El-Mundo, on September 16, 2001. However, once you claim that the WTC was demolished by the three Soviet mini-nukes allegedly bought by Osama from Ukraine, then, being a responsible security official, you should also find Russian or Ukrainian nationals who first stole these mini-nukes for the Soviet nuclear arsenals and who actually sold such awful weapons to the terrorists. Isn’t’ it? Hence another attempt of the Americans – to implicate Victor Bout into trading in mini-nukes and in weapon-grade nuclear materials, in addition to the missiles with half-megaton thermo-nuclear warheads that usually fly around and strike pentagons. It appears that Victor Bout was made a scapegoat just for everything that is nuclear. Add here is where the Americans began their unprecedented persecution against Victor Bout only after 9/11 and in an apparent connection with 9/11. Read the “nuclear” communiqué of John D. Negroponte (available here: http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/tnt_03-08.pdf ) that was released immediately after Victor’s arrest in Bangkok in March 2008 and that was directly connected to his arrest and moreover, entirely devoted to his arrest. And compare that communiqué by John D. Negroponte with the abovementioned “El Mundo” article about the 3 mini-nukes bought by Osama from Ukraine and allegedly used for destroying the three WTC buildings on 9/11 and surely you will not miss the main point. There are two more additional moments that could clarify the alleged “nuclear” connections of Victor Bout, FARC, and actual so-called “car-bombings” and “truck-bombings” (spots of which are being strangely called by the strangest nuclear name “ground zero”). First of them occurred soon after Victor Bout’s arrest.
About two weeks after his arrest there was a video published on YouTube showing Russia Today footage titled “Merchant of Death denied bail in Bangkok”. As you know, anyone registered as a YouTube user could post a comment under a video. Guess what was the very first comment published by some alleged “Victor Bout’s friend” under that video? This is what the comment said: “180 Compact Russian Nukes are missing, soon US will get a nuclear apocalypse up its ass”. How do you like the comment? Or you prefer to believe in coincidences? In the world of intelligence there is a saying: There are well made and badly made operations. Coincidences do not exist. Especially when soon after this comment appeared, a real nuclear explosion occurred in Dubai on March 26, 2008 – in the city where Victor Bout was kicked from and where he lost all his former airline business. You can see details of this nuclear explosion on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRws9eHvVgw or you can read (between the lines) here: http://www.arabianbusiness.com/514699-explosion-in-al-quoz-in-dubai?ln=en – please notice words such as “mushroom cloud” and “civil defense” in that article. By the way – when I noticed that YouTube provocation and compared it against the mini-nuke’s explosion in Dubai a few days later I immediately complained about this to the security official at the local Russian Embassy in Bangkok. And what do you think happened? The next day the provocative comment/promise about “180 stolen mini-nukes” and the “nuclear apocalypse” was removed from YouTube.
Luckily, I made a screenshot of the YouTube web page with that comment still there, so I still have it. Oh, I almost forgot it. Since I was involved with Victor Bout’s legal defense here in Bangkok right from the next day following his arrest – i.e. from March 7, 2008, I understandably attracted a lot of attention from the US side. The local DEA officer – Mr. Derek Odney, responsible for Victor’s apprehension in Bangkok on March 6, 2008, invited me to drink coffee and to “discuss something” around mid-April. Since I was curious to know what they would ask me about Victor and also perhaps I could have a chance to ask them something that would clarify the mystery of the case I agreed “to drink coffee”.
Derek showed up with someone who appeared to be from another department, perhaps from the US military intelligence or may be from the CIA. The conversation began in a roundabout way and with no mention of Victor Bout. They asked me to help the DEA to catch certain drug dealers in Bangkok. On the surface it may seem logical, considering what the DEA does, but certainly not normal, considering the actual circumstances – I was helping Victor Bout and his case had nothing to do with drugs. Anyway, this discussion about the drugs and drug-dealers slowly moved on to something different: Derek´s companion asked me if I knew anything about a black market nuclear materials, particularly enriched Uranium and how much, in my opinion, such weapon-grade Uranium could cost on such a black market. Out of politeness I expressed my humble opinion on the subject, adding that it is only my humble opinion, but I don’t know the exact figures, because I am not involved in illegal trade in nuclear materials.
In turn, I asked them if they were asking me this question because of highly-enriched Uranium that was found around Reyes’ camp in the Ecuadorian jungle? They told me that yes, they wanted to know the answer to that question for exactly that reason, because the US Government took that matter very seriously. The most laughable was that no alleged “portable anti-aircraft missiles” were mentioned during that conversation, but only the FARC Uranium alone (and neither any “portable anti-aircraft missiles” in connection with Victor Bout were mentioned in Reyes’ computer, but only the weapon-grade Uranium purchase deal and the FARC responsibility for the nuclear “car-“bombings…) This was my first conversation with Mr. Derek Odney.
Let´s fast forward to today, Dimitri. Where is Victor at and what´s left for him as far as his defense options.
Victor Bout is still in Bangkok, to be more exact in Nonthaburi province (on the outskirts of Bangkok) inside the high-security Bangkwang prison, known to many people as “Bangkok Hilton” thanks to the famous movie of the same name. He was transferred there from the Bangkok Remand Prison on August 20, the day his court verdict which ordered the extradition was read.
To answer the second part of your question is not so easy. Several defense options are available but I would prefer not to disclose them publicly, because the Americans will read this interview with great interest and they might take certain countermeasures. But surely something is pending when it comes to the legal means to defend Victor Bout. His lawyer, Lak, is still there and he is working hard on his defense. Despite Victor´s extradition case appearing to be “final” after the Appeals’ Court verdict, it is not so “final” in reality. Many things can still be done, God willing.
