The Recycle Bin

Found in my email inbox (adapted for this post):

HOW TO START EACH DAY WITH A POSITIVE OUTLOOK

1. Create a new file folder on your computer.
2. Name it 'Hillary Rodham Clinton.'
3. Drag it to the recycle bin.
4. Your PC will ask you, 'Do you really want to send 'Hillary Rodham Clinton' to the recycle bin?
5. Firmly Click 'Yes.'
6. Feel better instantly. Next week we'll do Nancy Pelosi.

When you go to the polls in November, the ballot is going to offer you some choices -- more than just two, as there are inevitably minor party candidates.

You know, you don't have to choose from among the options offered. You have a legal right to vote for someone else, even for someone whose name is not on the ballot.

You can send them all to the recycle bin!

Enter the Dragon

We begin with some excerpts from PAKISTAN - The Saudi Factor, dated August 9, 2004:

A report in The Financial Times on Aug. 5 recalled that, a week before Pakistan's maiden nuclear tests in May 1998, then Premier Nawaz Sharif received a late night telephone call from a Saudi prince. India, Pakistan's arch-rival, had conducted nuclear tests that month and Sharif was weighing the consequences of following suit. As Sharif told a hurriedly organised meeting of senior officials, the Saudi prince had offered to provide up to 50,000 b/d of oil to Pakistan for an indefinite period and on deferred payment terms. This would allow Pakistan to overcome the impact of punitive Western sanctions expected to follow the tests.

The FT reported a former aide to Sharif as saying the message from Saudi Arabia, delivered on behalf of Crown Prince Abdullah, the de-facto ruler, had once again bailed out Pakistan at one of the most difficult moments in its history. The FT quoted the same former aide as adding: "It is possible that Pakistan may still have conducted its nuclear tests without the Saudi oil. But the tests would have been done with the knowledge that the economic fallout was going to be far more severe".

The telephone call illustrated the intimacy between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, a relationship that receives little international attention but has so far proved, for both sides, probably more profound and secure than any other. A year after the tests, Prince Sultan, the Saudi defence minister, visited the uranium enrichment and missile assembly plant at Kahuta, then run by the now disgraced Pakistani scientist Abdul-Qadeer Khan. He thus became the first foreign official known to have visited a Pakistani nuclear research facility.

Saudi financial support has fuelled suspicions of nuclear co-operation between the two countries. The FT quoted a "senior US official" as saying Saudi finance helped fund Pakistan's nuclear programme, allowing it among other things to buy nuclear technology from China. But the FT added: "Officials discount the possibility of Pakistani help to build an indigenous Saudi nuclear weapon: Saudi Arabia does not appear to have the necessary technical infrastructure. But they say there could be a sort of 'lend-lease arrangement' that would allow weapons from Pakistan to be made available to Saudi Arabia". The paper quoted the US official as saying: "The argument that they (Saudis) have options on Pakistan's arsenal are more likely".

Saudi Arabia may have available to it Pakistani bombs!

Here we have an excerpt from Chapter 2 of the Cox Report, which is the unclassified version of a report by the House Select Committee that investigated during the Clinton years Communist Chinese espionage in the United States:

The PRC's nuclear weapons intelligence collection efforts began after the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, when the PRC assessed its weaknesses in physics and the deteriorating status of its nuclear weapons programs.

The PRC's warhead designs of the late 1970s were large, multi-megaton thermonuclear weapons that could only be carried on large ballistic missiles and aircraft. The PRC's warheads were roughly equivalent to U.S. warheads designed in the 1950s. The PRC may have decided as early as that time to pursue more advanced thermonuclear warheads for its new generation of ballistic missiles.

The PRC's twenty-year intelligence collection effort against the U.S. has been aimed at this goal. The PRC employs a "mosaic" approach that capitalizes on the collection of small bits of information by a large number of individuals, which is then pieced together in the PRC. This information is obtained through espionage, rigorous review of U.S. unclassified technical and academic publications, and extensive interaction with U.S. scientists and Department of Energy laboratories.

The nice thing about the "mosaic" approach is that the information could be immediately marketable in the right hands; what you learn, though perhaps not useful to you, might be exactly what somebody else wants to know, and providing it might be very profitable.

The trouble is to find a middleman.

In that context, it is chilling to recall the information from Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China, which was presented in The Islamic Bomb, Part 4:

U.S. intelligence officials concluded years ago that China provided early assistance to Pakistan in building its first nuclear weapon -- assistance that appeared to have ended in the 1980s. Still, weapons experts familiar with the blueprints expressed surprise at what they described as a wholesale transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to another country. Notes included in the package of documents suggest that China continued to mentor Pakistani scientists on the finer points of bomb-building over a period of several years, the officials said.

China continues to tutor Pakistani scientists on bomb-building.

Skipping ahead now with another excerpt from Chapter 2 of the Cox Report (emphasis in original):

The PRC stole classified information on every currently deployed U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The warheads for which the PRC stole classified information include: the W-56 Minuteman II ICBM; the W-62 Minuteman III ICBM; the W-70 Lance short-range ballistic missile (SRBM); the W-76 Trident C-4 SLBM; the W-78 Minuteman III Mark 12A ICBM; the W-87 Peacekeeper ICBM; and the W-88 Trident D-5 SLBM. The W-88 warhead is the most sophisticated strategic nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal. It is deployed on the Trident D-5 submarine-launched missile.

Skipping back now with another excerpt from Chapter 2 of the Cox Report:

The Select Committee judges that the PRC's intelligence collection efforts to develop modern thermonuclear warheads are focused primarily on the Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

As a result of these efforts, the PRC has stolen classified U.S. thermonuclear design information that helped it fabricate and successfully test a new generation of strategic warheads.

Returning now to another excerpt from PAKISTAN - The Saudi Factor (I adjusted the punctuation, inserting the dashes, to make it more readable):

So far, there is no suggestion that Saudi Arabia purchased nuclear equipment or expertise from the Khan network. But the network's ability to outsource important elements of a nuclear weapons programme would make it easier for any country -- even one without much technical infrastructure -- to start weapons development.

"To be sure", the FT said, "Saudi Arabia has plenty of reasons and the financial muscle to seek nuclear weapons. Saudis live in a dangerous environment, surrounded by rivals. They include Israel, whose undeclared nuclear arsenal Saudi Arabia criticises as the main block to a nuclear-free Middle East, and Iran, Saudi Arabia's strategic competitor suspected by western governments of developing nuclear weapons". The FT recalled that, in the 1980s when Saddam Hussein was considered a close friend of Saudi Arabia, "Iraq's military strength was seen as protection for the Sunni Muslim monarchies of the Gulf against the ambitions of a revolutionary Shia regime in Iran". After Saddam invaded Kuwait in 1990, however, Iraq became the main threat in the Gulf and the Saudis called on the US for protection.

It is not assessed that Saudi Arabia is trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, but the Saudis do have reason to want nukes, and may have options on Pakistani nuclear weapons, which the Saudis helped pay for.

Recall now the quote from the hearing held by the 109th Congress on Thursday, May 25, 2006, entitled THE A.Q. KHAN NETWORK: CASE CLOSED?, quoted in The Islamic Bomb, Part 1 (the BBC China was the ship that was transporting the smuggled material):

Four months after the BBC China was interdicted, Khan appeared on Pakistani television, and on that show he apologized. The following day, President Musharraf apparently felt compelled to call Khan a national hero. Or does he believe that? I wonder.

[snip]

Khan claims to have acted without Pakistani Government support, yet former Pakistani President Zia spoke about acquiring and sharing nuclear technology, in his words, with the entire Islamic world. Khan advanced Zia's mission well. Some of Khan's exports were transported by Pakistani military aircraft. Many ask how can the network aggressively market its nuclear products, including the glossy brochures, without Pakistan's Government taking notice?

Recall also the quote from Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned by Joby Warrick, which was reproduced in The Islamic Bomb, Part 3:

When the United States learned in 2001 that Pakistani scientists had shared nuclear secrets with members of al-Qaeda, an alarmed Bush administration responded with tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment such as intrusion detectors and ID systems to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

For emphasis, I again present the image shown in the previous post. The caption at the bottom reads: The PRC has stolen classified information on every currently deployed thermonuclear warhead in the U.S. ICBM arsenal.



How much of that stolen information about U.S. thermonuclear warhead design has made it to Pakistan?

How much has made it beyond Pakistan, perhaps to someone in Saudi Arabia, or perhaps even to Al Qaeda?

Information Dominance, Part 11

We begin with Spying for fun and profit, December 21, 1999, which I reproduce in its entirety with quotes from other sources and my comments interspersed:

Wang Xi, an 11th century scholar in the Sung Dynasty Hanlin, or Imperial Academy, wrote commentary on the "Use of Spies." According to Wang Xi, "Dead spies are those who are fooled by their own leaders into passing on false information to the enemy; when the facts are determined, they are inevitably killed."

In 1999, according to the official Chinese news service, Chinese defector and missile scientist, Hua Di was sentenced in a People's court to 15 years for passing state secrets to the United States.

State Department spokesman James Foley said, "Based on what we know of his activities as an academic researcher in the U.S., we are aware of no reason to justify his detention and sentencing. We remain deeply concerned about Mr. Hua's reported health problems and need for medical treatment. We're concerned that his detention may have a chilling effect on academic exchanges between the U.S. and China."

So far, so good. A Chinese defector gets sentenced to prison by Beijing, and the U.S. government protests. The only hint that a surprise might be coming up is the first introductory paragraph about dead spies.

Why all the concern over a foolish missile scientist? In 1989, Hua Di defected from China, leaving after the Tiananmen Square crackdown on student democracy demonstrators. Hua Di went to work as a researcher at Stanford's Center for International Security and Arms Control, whose co-directors are former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Stanford Political Science Professor John Lewis.

Tiananmen Square crackdown, terrible thing, appalled scholar defects & winds up working at Stanford....

In late October 1998, it was announced that Hua Di had returned to China. He met with Chinese security officials in late 1997 and was assured that he would not be prosecuted. On Dec. 31, 1997, Hua Di returned to China; on Jan. 6, 1998, he was arrested and charged with passing state secrets to U.S. officials.

Guy wants to go back, Beijing says it isn't holding a grudge, guy goes back, gets arrested and thrown in prison....

The U.S. government is concerned.

Nothing suprising so far....

Stanford University officials and Dr. John Lewis have written to the Chinese government appealing for Hua Di's release. In 1998, then Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice said Professor John Lewis "had provided evidence to the fact that the source materials for publications written by him and Mr. Hua were provided by approved Chinese authorities or already were available through the Stanford University library."

The issue on the part of Beijing was supposedly that Hua Di had worked on sensitive programs for the People's Liberation Army, and may have passed sensitive information to the U.S. about Chinese missiles. But, those concerns were unfounded, Beijing was assured by the Stanford Provost, Condoleeza Rice -- after all, the information was already publicly available, much of it approved by Chinese authorities.

Notice above the name Dr. John Lewis....

However, Stanford officials have refused all requests for a comment or interview on Hua Di. Former Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice, now serving as a foreign policy advisor to presidential candidate George W. Bush, has refused to comment. In addition, Perry has likewise refused all requests for an interview on Hua Di.

Why the silence from the very people who have made open statements to defend Hua Di? Perhaps it is because the other Hua Di, agent of the Chinese army, fooled Stanford University and the Clinton administration.

Hmm....

Hua Di was born into a family of prominent Communist officials. He studied missiles in Russia and worked in China's missile program for 24 years. In 1984, Hua Di went to work for the China International Trust and Investment Company (CITIC), a firm part owned by the Chinese army.

In 1989, after defecting to America, Hua Di arranged for the Chinese army to obtain a secure fiber-optic communication system. Hua Di participated in the "Hua Mei" scandal documented by the General Accounting Office (GAO report GAO/NSIAD-97-5).

Some key elements of the GAO report GAO/NSIAD-97-5 are as follows:

HuaMei, while a commercial enterprise, has as its principal Chinese partner, a company controlled by the Chinese military. As shown in figure 1, SCM Brooks Telecommunications and Galaxy New Technology each own 50 percent of HuaMei. However, the Chinese military is the primary shareholder of Galaxy New Technology, with two other Chinese government agencies each holding a minority interest in the company. Several members of the HuaMei board of directors are military officers or have direct ties to the Chinese military. Such a high degree of involvement in HuaMei could indicate a strong military interest in this company.

[snip]

According to Commerce Department officials, an exporter is responsible for knowing its end user when exporting under GLX (or CIV).

[snip]

If there are no suspicious circumstances, the exporter is not required to verify the buyer's representations of civil end use. AT&T officials stated that they did not ask the Commerce Department to determine if HuaMei was a civil end user, nor were they required to under GLX.

Commerce officials stated that the civil end-user requirement in GLX was specifically included to allow Commerce to review exports going to the military. However, in the export of telecommunications equipment to HuaMei, the Commerce Department did not have an opportunity to review the end user because prior government review is not required under GLX. Consequently, the equipment was exported to HuaMei without Commerce review, even though the company was partially controlled by several high-level members of the Chinese military.

So, this Hua Di helped obtain high-tech communications equipment to upgrade the People's Liberation Army's command and control systems.

Returning now to Spying for fun and profit:

According to Hua Di's statements to the Far Eastern Economic Review, Dr. Lewis and he worked together on the Hua Mei project through an American contracting firm called SCM/Brooks. SCM/Brooks formed a joint venture with Galaxy New Technology, a newly formed Chinese company, to arrange the purchase of the fiber-optic system for "civilian" use.

However, Galaxy New Technology was actually owned by the Chinese army. In 1994, Hua Di contacted an old friend in the Chinese army, Lt. Gen. Huai Guomo. Huai arranged for a Madam Nie Li to run the project as the Chinese co-chair. Dr. Lewis, himself a board member of the project, located Adlai Stevenson III, the former Democratic Senator from Ohio, to lead the American side.

The details on all this are a little hard to follow, so I reference here one diagram of the arrangement. Some of the names are spelled a little differently, but you get the idea.

Dr. John Lewis of Stanford helped set this whole thing up.

Is this the Dr. John Lewis of Stanford? The Dr. John Lewis of Stanford University whose bio sheet says this?

John Lewis is the William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics, emeritus, and an FSI senior fellow by courtesy. He is an expert on Chinese politics, U.S.-China relations, China's nuclear weapons program, and U.S. policy toward Korea. He founded and directed the Center for East Asian Studies, in 1969-1970; the Center for International Security and Arms Control (now the Center for International Security and Cooperation, or CISAC) from 1983 to 1991; and the Northeast Asia-United States Forum on International Policy (now APARC), from 1983 to 1990. He currently directs CISAC's Project on Peace and Cooperation in the Asian-Pacific Region.

Keep in mind Dr. Lewis' extensive background and expertise regarding Chinese politics, U.S.-China relations and China's nuclear weapons program, as you continue reading from Spying for fun and profit about the organization he helped set up:

Yet, Galaxy New Technology head Madam Nie Lie was also the wife of Chinese army Gen. Ding Henggao. In fact, according to a 1997 report from the Congressional Reporting Service, Madam Nie Lie was actually Lt. Gen. Nie Lie of the Chinese army. In 1994, Gen. Ding was also the boss of Lt. Gen. Huai, the Chinese military contact for Hua Di. Ding also commanded the Chinese army unit COSTIND, the Commission on Science Technology and Industry for National Defense.

COSTIND, according to the General Accounting Office "oversees development of China's weapon systems and is responsible for identifying and acquiring telecommunications technology applicable for military use."

The U.S. firm, SCM/Brooks contracted AT&T to ship advanced, secure communication systems directly to the Chinese army using Galaxy New Technology as a front. AT&T officials who sold most of the equipment and software to SCM/Brooks were adamant that there was no need to check the Chinese firm since it was led by the "civilian" Madam Nie Lie.

Yet, the so-called "civilian" firm was actually packed with Chinese army officers and experts. One member of Galaxy New Technology management, according to a Defense Department document, was Director and President "Mr. Deng Changru." Mr. Deng Changru was also Lt. Col. Deng Changru of the People's Liberation Army, head of the PLA communications corps. Another Chinese army officer in the Galaxy New Technology staff is co-General Manager "Mr. Xie Zhichao" who is really Lt. Col. Xie Zhichao, director of the Chinese army Electronics Design Bureau.

There's no way around it: on the Chinese side, two partners were government agencies, and the controlling partner was a front company for the Red Army.

This was an operation on the part of the People's Liberation Army to gain important military technology.

Did Dr. Lewis, Stanford University's William Haas Professor Emeritus of Chinese Politics, not realize or even suspect as much?

Documents obtained from the Department of Defense using the Freedom of Information Act show that Dr. Lewis was being paid by the Chinese army while working for Secretary of Defense William Perry as a civilian "consultant."

You can go back to the link with the diagram and scroll down a little to get an idea what they're talking about.

In August 1994, Lewis and Perry traveled to Beijing to meet with Chinese army generals. Included in the meeting were Lewis' Chinese army business partners, Gens. Huai and Ding. According to the official list of attendees, Lewis accompanied Perry as his personal consultant.

In 1997, Lewis was charged with using Stanford University funding to set up the profitable Hua Mei deal. Lewis faced an investigation from Stanford Provost Ms. Rice because he had used University stationery for his Hua Mei business. No formal charges were filed. Ms. Rice dropped the investigation and left Stanford for the Bush presidential campaign.

So Condoleeza Rice left her post at Stanford to advise then-Governor Bush on his Presidential bid. When Bush won, she was appointed as National Security Advisor and from there, moved up to Secretary of State when Colin Powell left at the end of Bush's first term.

Given that, I could understand leaving as unfinished business an investigation into whether some kid cheated on a test or something, but leaving as unfinished business an investigation into the affairs of a man who used his position at Stanford to help the People's Liberation Army skirt laws and upgrade its command and control capability? That seems like something an aspiring National Security Advisor would want to have completed out of professional interest and patriotic duty.

Assuming, of course, getting to the bottom of this was the desired result....

The Galaxy New Technology deal went public in 1996, drawing a General Accounting Office report and the Department of Defense documents cited here. It also drew far too much public attention to Hua Di. Thus, Hua Di returned home to China.

While he served at Stanford, Hua Di passed incorrect and misleading information about Red army missile developments. In 1992, Hua Di and Lewis published "China's Ballistic Missile Program," in which Hua Di claimed a newly developed missile, called the DF-25, was not a success. Hua Di's work is cited by Stanford and Clinton administration officials as "gospel" in an effort to minimize the PLA's recent advances.

So, as alluded to in the first paragraph of the article, this guy's job was to get what could be gotten, and to throw us off the track of the real capabilities of the People's Liberation Army.

According to the co-author of the new book, "Red Dragon Rising," William Triplett, in August 1999, the Clinton administration was shocked by Chinese communist press announcements declaring the DF-25 to be fully operational and tipped with multiple nuclear warheads.

Despite the disinformation, Stanford continues to publish information based on the twisted and false tales spun by Hua Di. Stanford's latest report, "The Cox Committee Report: An Assessment," asserts that China's latest long range nuclear missile, the DF-31, is "less likely to be used first."

The Cox Committee Report: An Assessment is a rebuttal to The Cox Committee Report, which are a couple of TiNRATs. More on that to follow. For now, we continue with the article:

According to the Stanford report, "A mobile ICBM, the DF-31, was initially tested this year. If deployed, it could increase the survivability of Chinese land-based missile forces. ... How U.S. interests are affect by survivability of Chinese nuclear forces is a complex question, however. Survivable weapons are less likely to be used first."

The Stanford conclusion that the mobile Chinese DF-31 can survive a U.S. first strike is correct and misleading. Of all the weapons at the disposal of the Chinese 2nd Artillery Corps, the DF-31 is the most likely to be used in a first strike against the United States.

The mobile DF-31 is also very accurate, thanks to the Chinese espionage documented in the Cox Report. The DF-31 can put three nuclear warheads anywhere inside America. In fact, the "mobile" DF-31 is so accurate that, unlike other Chinese nuclear weapons, it can destroy our "fixed" silo-based U.S. missile force in a first-strike attack. A Chinese first strike with a limited number of DF-31 missiles could destroy our land-based missile force, and in the process, kill millions of Americans.

Again, information in The Cox Committee Report is very interesting, and pertinent, but will be addressed in a subsequent post.

What is key to keep in mind here is the cooperation between Beijing and Islamabad on so many issues. After all, they have a common potential enemy on their borders, India, with which both China and Pakistan have fought wars in the past few decades.

With that in mind, and in the context of the suprising capabilities of the People's Liberation Army's missile forces, we must recall the evidence we saw in The Islamic Bomb, Part 4, of Beijing's assistance to Islamabad: actual blueprints of nuclear weapons, in Chinese, turned up as far afield as Libya, via A. Q. Khan's nuclear blackmarket.

Certainly, those plans were for vintage implosion devices, and were not for state-of-the-art nuclear weapons.

But what else might be lurking in the Shadow Realm, waiting to pop up?

I am certain that Stanford officials will continue to comment on the military and political relationships between the United States and China. However, also expect Stanford officials to remain silent on questions about their former employee Hua Di. Do not be surprised if they continue to refuse all comments on the so-called "defector" in order to dodge questions of his espionage while at the university.

Hua Di served the Chinese Communist party and the People's Liberation Army by doing their dirty work in America. He passed disinformation, he was cozy with top Clinton defense officials and he was personally responsible for upgrading the Chinese army communications network, making them more "survivable" in case of nuclear war.

However, in accordance with the military theories of Wang Xi, the eleventh century Chinese espionage scholar, Hua Di may have one more service to perform. I anticipate that Hua Di will be reported as "dead" in the red Chinese controlled press.

With this post, I begin a new label, one I should have begun long ago: Espionage.

I leave you now with the image of a page from Chapter 2 of the Cox Report:

The Islamic Bomb, Part 4

It is worth reviewing some old news to learn some new things.

Normally, I pick one article and reproduce it in its entirety. However, in this post, I present excerpts from different sources. Consequently, please pay attention to which source is being worked with; also, please note the date of each item quoted as we skip around. (This will be good practice for upcoming posts!)

From an article from the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies entitled Proliferation Unbound: Nuclear Tales from Pakistan by Gaurav Kampani, February 23, 2004:

After years of blanket denials, Pakistan's government has finally admitted that during 1989-2003 Pakistani nuclear scientists and entities proliferated nuclear weapons-related technologies, equipment, and know how to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. The Pakistani government's denials collapsed after Libya formally decided to terminate its clandestine weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in October 2003 and make a full disclosure of its efforts to build nuclear weapons; and after Iran, in fall 2003, agreed to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and provide details of its clandestine uranium enrichment programs that originated in the mid-1980s.

Notice: "The Pakistani government's denials collapsed...."

So, Libya and Iran decided to come clean, and have helped us piece together what is happening.

This happened in late 2003, after Iraq had been invaded earlier that year, a major reason for the invasion given as Iraq's efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Was that an influencing factor? Iran was listed among the Axis of Evil, but Libya was not.

The Iranian and Libyan revelations have exposed a vast black market in clandestine nuclear trade comprising of middle men and shell companies; clandestine procurement techniques; false end-user certifications; transfer of blueprints from one country, manufacture in another, transshipment to a third, before delivery to its final destination. But even more remarkably, the investigations of Iranian and Libyan centrifuge-based uranium enrichment efforts have exposed the central role of the former head of Pakistan's Khan Research Laboratories (KRL), Dr. A.Q. Khan, in the clandestine trade. Detailed information has surfaced about transfers of technical drawings, design specifications, components, complete assemblies of Pakistan's P-1 and P-2 centrifuge models, including the blueprint of an actual nuclear warhead from KRL. But the transfer of hardware apart, there is equally damning evidence that Khan and his top associates imparted sensitive knowledge and know how in secret technical briefings for Iranian, North Korean, and Libyan scientists in Pakistan and other locations abroad.

The blueprints for actual nuclear weapons! Cool!!

Notice how it was done -- everything in the shadows, hard to trace.

Recall: "The Pakistani government's denials collapsed...."

Supposedly, this A. Q. Khan network was doing this despite Pakistani government policy. Why would Islamabad be denying it until witnesses came forward, instead of investigating at the first hint of trouble?

We now go to a Washington Post story entitled Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China from a few days earlier:

Pakistanis Resold Chinese-Provided Plans

By Joby Warrick and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 15, 2004; Page A01

Investigators have discovered that the nuclear weapons designs obtained by Libya through a Pakistani smuggling network originated in China, exposing yet another link in a chain of proliferation that stretched across the Middle East and Asia, according to government officials and arms experts.

The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China's long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, they said. The Chinese designs were later resold to Libya by a Pakistani-led trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe.

The packet of documents, some of which included text in Chinese, contained detailed, step-by-step instructions for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could fit atop a large ballistic missile. They also included technical instructions for manufacturing components for the device, the officials and experts said.

"It was just what you'd have on the factory floor. It tells you what torque to use on the bolts and what glue to use on the parts," one weapons expert who had reviewed the blueprints said in an interview. He described the designs as "very, very old" but "very well engineered."

A how-to-build-a-nuke manual, with information on how to torque the bolts and what kind of glue to use! The only hard part was: the instructions were in Chinese!

U.S. intelligence officials concluded years ago that China provided early assistance to Pakistan in building its first nuclear weapon -- assistance that appeared to have ended in the 1980s. Still, weapons experts familiar with the blueprints expressed surprise at what they described as a wholesale transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to another country. Notes included in the package of documents suggest that China continued to mentor Pakistani scientists on the finer points of bomb-building over a period of several years, the officials said.

China's actions "were irresponsible and short-sighted, and raise questions about what else China provided to Pakistan's nuclear program," said David Albright, a nuclear physicist and former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq. "These documents also raise questions about whether Iran, North Korea and perhaps others received these documents from Pakistanis or their agents."

So A. Q. Khan's network funneled technology -- including detailed blueprints and how-to manuals on nuclear bomb-building -- from China to countries like Iran and Libya.

"China's actions 'were irresponsible and short-sighted, and raise questions about what else China provided to Pakistan's nuclear program,'...."

The package of documents was turned over to U.S. officials in November following Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi's decision to renounce weapons of mass destruction and open his country's weapons laboratories to international inspection. The blueprints, which were flown to Washington last month, have been analyzed by experts from the United States, Britain and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog.

And Libya's Gaddafi is our hero for ratting these guys out?

How times have changed!

Back to Proliferation Unbound: Nuclear Tales from Pakistan:

Three decades ago, Khan, with the support of Pakistan's government, set out to create a new model of proliferation. He used centrifuge design blueprints and supplier lists of companies that he had pilfered from URENCO's facility in the Netherlands to launch Pakistan's nuclear weapons program. In the process, he perfected a clandestine model of trade in forbidden technologies outside formal government controls. By the end of the 1980s, after KRL acquired the wherewithal to produce highly-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapons program, it reversed course and began vending its services to other clients in the international system. KRL and Khan's first client was Iran (or possibly China even earlier); but the list gradually expanded to include North Korea and Libya. Starting in the late 1980s, Khan and some of his top associates began offering a one-stop shop for countries that wished to acquire nuclear technologies for a weapons program. Khan's key innovation was to integrate what was earlier a disaggregated market place for such technologies, design, engineering, and consultancy services; and in the process offer clients the option of telescoping the time required to develop a nuclear weapons capability.

"Three decades ago, Khan, with the support of Pakistan's government, set out to create a new model of proliferation."

By telescoping development time, they mean shortening the time needed -- dramatically!

For example, one technology needed is how to purify fissile materials. Another is how to compress a fissile mass so it achieves supercritical density, which yields a runaway chain reaction. This is often done explosively, so explosives technology is needed, too. Other technologies are needed, as well.

It is true that many of these technologies would be developing simultaneously, but a change regarding one may drive another to move in a whole new direction. Consequently, any delay in any one technology could hold up the production of the entire weapon.

Now, however, thanks to A. Q. Khan, critical technology, know-how and even components could be bought from KRL Nuke Supplies, so there is no longer a need for delays. With enough money, you can buy not just the appropriate components, but even blueprints to put them together -- although you may need consultants to translate the instructions from Chinese for your technicians!

From a March, 2005, paper entitled New Players on the Scene: A.Q. Khan and the Nuclear Black Market by Colonel Charles D. Lutes, USAF:

Current nonproliferation regimes "may be inadequate to deal with the emerging threat of non-state proliferation" that Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan represents, according to U.S. Air Force Colonel Charles D. Lutes.

[snip]

A Nuclear Marketplace

The godfather of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, A.Q. Khan is a legendary and celebrated figure in his country for his years of secretive work in developing the first "Islamic bomb" to counter the threat from long-time rival India.

As a scientist working for the Dutch Urenco firm in the 1970s, Khan had access to blueprints for uranium enrichment technology, which he stole and brought back to Pakistan when he returned home.

Khan was appointed by then-Pakistani Prime Minister Ali Bhutto to run Pakistan's nuclear-research program, with the goal of countering India's nuclear aspirations with a weapon of its own. Running counter to the nonproliferation norms of the international community, Khan was forced to pursue this goal with the utmost secrecy. However, Pakistan's indigenous scientific and engineering infrastructure was underdeveloped for the task. So Khan did what any good entrepreneur would do: he outsourced.

He cultivated a network of suppliers and manufacturers, many of whom did not realize the ultimate objective of the science project undertaken at the Khan Research Laboratories. By 1998, however, there was no doubt. To the surprise of the international community, Pakistan completed five underground nuclear tests and joined an elite club of nuclear weapon states.

For A.Q. Khan, the patriotic fervor surrounding this achievement was only the beginning. A shrewd businessman, he saw potential for financial gain between his network of suppliers and a burgeoning market for nuclear arms. North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Libya were foremost on a list of those at least window-shopping for such capability.

An ongoing investigation reveals that the Khan network played a significant role, beginning in the early 1990s, in the development of Iranian and North Korean enrichment technology. In exchange, North Korea appears to have shared its ballistic missile technology with Pakistan.

One key point here is that the movement of technology, components and know-how was not along a one-way street; it was more like an exchange, with some things moving one way, and other things moving the other way.

A case in point is North Korea's ballistic missile technology. Pyongyang got nuclear know-how, but Pakistan got missile technology.

If Pakistan got missile technology from North Korea, and we know Khan's network got nuclear weapons technology (including blueprints for bombs) from China, might it stand to reason that Khan's network got other kinds of technology from China? Might China have gotten access to F-16 technology from Pakistan?

Picking up later on in Colonel Lutes' paper:

Supply Always Meets Demand

Now that A.Q. Khan is under house arrest in Pakistan, but unavailable to Western authorities for interrogation, vexing questions remain. It is clear that Khan met with, and possibly sold components to, officials in a number of nuclear-aspiring states. Ongoing investigation has linked Khan to nuclear programs in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Additionally, published reports have identified Khan meetings with potential customers in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Algeria, Kuwait, Myanmar, and Abu Dhabi. The wider the spread of this dangerous knowledge and expertise, the greater the opportunity exists for terrorists or criminals to become armed with a nuclear bomb.

Clearly, al-Qaida and its affiliates are in the market for nuclear weapons. On the one hand, Khan's far-flung conglomeration of shady manufacturers, unsavory middlemen, and illicit traffickers seems the ideal supplier to meet the terrorist demand for nuclear arms. Its loosely coupled network mirrors the cellular structure favored by al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists. This structure facilitates surreptitious and relatively untraceable transactions among those who wish to wreak catastrophic violence.

On the other hand, in considering the terrorist link it is important to look at the wares that Khan and his cronies offered for sale. Primarily, Khan purveyed the necessary materiel for a state nuclear program: centrifuge components and designs, weapons blueprints, and technical expertise. There are no published reports of Khan dealing in nuclear fissile material itself, the final product of the enrichment process that fuels a nuclear weapon.

Presumably terrorists would prefer to purchase a finished weapon or, at a minimum, the fissile material, as they likely have little ability or patience to develop a program infrastructure. To a terrorist, then, dealing with Khan would be tantamount to asking for AK-47s and bullets, and instead receiving steel, metal casts and molds, and a fabrication instruction manual.

As much damage as the black market may have done in bringing North Korea and Iran closer to membership in the nuclear club, the present danger lies in how the supplier network adapts now that Khan is no longer at the helm.

Although President Bush has stated that Khan's network has been shut down, it remains possible that parts of it may have just burrowed more deeply underground. While it is unlikely that Khan Research Laboratories will engage in any further black market activity, it remains to be seen what will become of its associates.

Just as terrorist networks re-form and adapt, so too can the supplier network. The predominant commodity will be the knowledge base and expertise resident in the remaining supplier nodes. Cut off from Khan's access to the rogue state market, a new network of nuclear scientists and engineers may coalesce around the terrorist market.

To the extent that these profiteers may have any access to fissile material or even a finished weapon, the risk of proliferation to terrorists increases exponentially. Unfortunately in the case of terrorist actors, unlike state actors, possessing a nuclear weapon probably has only one purpose: for detonation into a visible mushroom cloud.

Just like Al Qaeda morphed and is now somewhat harder to track in the aftermath of the invasion of Afghanistan, so has Khan's network presumably morphed in the aftermath of its "closing down".

The concern is that it has a great deal of profitable momentum, supplying goods and services that are in great demand to people who have a great deal of money.

Logically, then, it is not shut down, but rather is just harder to track, and now more tailored as a supplier to meet the demands of its most likely customers -- Islamic terrorists.

Returning now to Libyan Arms Designs Traced Back to China for some excerpts near the end:

As for who delivered the material to the Libyans, a European official who has studied the question said the connection to the Khan network was indirect. "The middleman is quite invisible. The middleman has covered his tracks very well."

[snip]

"Did the Chinese make a huge mistake in sharing technology with Pakistan? Sure. Did we make a mistake by looking the other way in the 1980s when Pakistan was developing the bomb? Yes," Wolfsthal said. "But none of that should get in the way of dealing with the real threats we face today. Our priority must be to drain the swamp created by the action of these nuclear suppliers and businessmen over the past 10 years."

Keep in mind, these reports are three to four years old.

Also keep in mind that the Able Danger program, when datamining open-source material for intelligence on Al Qaeda, connected Condoleeza Rice to Chinese proliferation. In Information Dominance, Part 4, we see the part of the Congressional record where that came up, and in Part 9, we look at that again.

This is everything Sibel Edmonds has been gagged about -- the international arms black market, where even nuclear secrets are for sale.

Our world is threatened by entities from the Shadow Realm, a world where big terror, big narcotics, big business and big politics hold nothing sacred -- a world into which a "lowly" translator, Sibel Edmonds, caught a peek, tried to go through channels to warn our government about what she saw, and has been gagged for her efforts. Now held in limbo by the Shadow Realm for a sixth year, Edmonds is an embattled American hero on a par with the very best the United States has to offer -- and on a par with the very best her native nation of Turkey has to offer, as well!

Stay tuned to Stop Islamic Conquest, as future posts examine 1) the connection between US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and the intelligence apparatus of Communist China's People's Liberation Army, 2) the illegal proliferation of critical US military technology to Communist China, and 3) the role of parties based in Riyadh, Dubai and other places in the proliferation not just of nuclear weapons technology, but of the means to actually deliver Islamic bombs to their infidel targets.

Information Dominance, Part 10

We continue our Information Dominance series (see sidebar) by reviewing a November 24, 2005, article entitled A 9/11 tip-off: Fact or fancy?

I reproduce the entire article with my comments interspersed; the article also has a timeline as an addendum, which I did not reproduce.

Debate still swirls around claims that secret military program ID'd hijackers a year before attacks.

WASHINGTON - It's either the grandest conspiracy since the JFK assassination and the grassy knoll or much ado about nothing.

Immediately, we start out with that C-word.

Able Danger, a top-secret military program set up in 1999 to probe the al-Qaida terrorist network, is rekindling fierce debate about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Military intelligence officers and contractors who ran the clandestine mission, a computer data-mining operation within the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, claim that more than a year before the attacks, Able Danger identified four of the plot's 19 hijackers and produced a chart that fingered ringleader Mohamed Atta, displayed a photo of him and contained the names of up to 60 al-Qaida operatives around the globe.

The program also identified Condoleeza Rice in connection to proliferation of sensitive military technology to China. (See Part 4 and especially Part 9.) It is that connection that will be explored beginning in Part 11.

Those claims contradict the findings of the 9/11 commission set up by Congress, which in its final report last year spread blame for the attacks across the government but concluded that none of the 19 hijackers, some of whom had lived in the United States for months before Sept. 11, was identified until after the tragedy.

More accurately, the 9/11 Commission contradicted the information on Able Danger. It also contradicted the information supplied by Sibel Edmonds, information which had been verified at least in part -- and never contradicted or disproven -- by CBS 60 Minutes, US Senators and the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General. I have heard, but been unable to confirm, that the 60 Minutes information was retroactively classified. So many other things in the Sibel Edmonds case have been retroactively classified that I consider that credible.

Kristen Breitweiser, a New Jersey woman whose husband died in the World Trade Center's south tower, said she and other relatives of some of the 2,986 Sept. 11 victims have met with the military officers who worked on Able Danger, which the Pentagon ended in early 2001.

"It's very upsetting to hear people tell you that your husband and the father of your children didn't have to die because we had information to stop the attacks," Breitweiser said in an interview.

See also my Phoenix series (links in sidebar) about actionable information that was not acted upon. The series and the label are named after the famous Phoenix memo (although there are other reasons for that title as well), images of which I reproduce in the series. That series also has images of other declassified government documents, especially FBI materials, relating to 9/11.

Part of the problem in untangling the Able Danger web is that the computer-based program was designed to search open source documents - everything in the public domain - for patterns and links among al-Qaida terrorists, but the program as a whole was classified.

So, while at least some of its original material was public, it became secret after entering an Able Danger database.

Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, a Bronze Star recipient and former Able Danger operative who first came forward with details of the program, says Pentagon lawyers thwarted the team's attempts to pass on their findings to the FBI before the attacks. And he claims that after the attacks, staff members of the 9/11 panel met with him and other Able Danger officers, but then failed to adequately pursue their leads.

"The 9/11 commission may not have 'connected the dots' as completely as they could and should have - and that is my concern and the concern of others working this issue," Shaffer said in an e-mail to Sept. 11 family members before the Pentagon issued a gag order two months ago, forbidding him and other former Able Danger officers from discussing the program publicly.

This is what is interesting.

If there was a mistake, why the gag order? The Bush Administration, and specifically then-Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, issued this gag order, preventing these military officers from answering questions to Congress about a program that was supposedly terminated under Clinton.

It is similar to the Sibel Edmonds case, where Congress, whose job is oversight of the Executive Branch, allowed itself to be gagged right along with Edmonds.

Navy Capt. Scott Philpott, who led the Able Danger mission, said in a statement before the Pentagon gag order: "My story is consistent. Atta was identified by Able Danger by January-February of 2000."

After initial refusals to comment, Pentagon officials have acknowledged that Able Danger existed. Army Maj. Eric Kleinsmith told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 21 that he had complied with orders to destroy 2.4 terabytes of computer data produced by Able Danger - 2,400 gigabytes, or about one-quarter the size of all the books in the Library of Congress.

Kleinsmith and other Pentagon officials have cited privacy laws, which they say prohibit the government from maintaining secret files on U.S. citizens or noncitizens in the country on legal visas.

Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican with extensive foreign affairs experience, has taken up the Able Danger officers' cause. Calling Able Danger "the most important story of my lifetime," Weldon last Friday sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a letter signed by 246 lawmakers, split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats, demanding that the program's officers and contractors be allowed to testify in open congressional hearings.

"Further refusal ... can only lead us to conclude that the Department of Defense is uncomfortable with the prospect of members of Congress questioning these individuals about the circumstances surrounding Able Danger," the letter stated. "This would suggest not a concern for national security, but rather an attempt to prevent potentially embarrassing facts from coming to light."

Therein lies the key.

Sibel Edmonds points out that the government officials are not protecting sensitive national security information, but rather criminal conduct by government officials. The criminal conduct deals with proliferation of sensitive military technology, including nuclear secrets. It also connects to narcotics trafficking and international terrorism, which is increasingly funded through organized crime activities since the end of the Cold War.

A key link in all this is the Turkish Deep State, which is the name given to a cartel of Turkish political, military and government leaders who are connected with business interests and narcotraffickers. It is this link that got Edmonds, a native speaker of Turkish, involved as she was tasked to translate FBI materials from Turkish. It was also this link that caused Edmonds herself to be targeted for recruitment into this espionage web: see Sibel Edmonds and the Attack of the TiNRATs, Part 1 and the post on the 60 Minutes transcript.

In a speech on the House floor last month, Weldon said the Able Danger saga is more important than the Watergate scandal that brought down President Nixon.

"I am not a conspiracy theorist, but there is something desperately wrong," he said. "There is something outrageous at work here. This is not a third-rate burglary of a political campaign headquarters. This involved what is right now the covering-up of information that led to the deaths of 3,000 people, changed the course of history, led to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and has disrupted our country, our economy and people's lives."

For some interesting reading on this, go to the other parts of the Information Dominance series (see sidebar), where I review the Congressional testimony on this matter, with a focus on Congressman Weldon's testimony.

Weldon also accuses the Pentagon of engaging in a smear campaign against Shaffer, 42, since the colonel went public, by revoking his security clearance, suspending him and leaking alleged details from his personnel file to reporters and congressional aides. Among the slurs, Weldon says, are claims that Shaffer was having an affair with a Weldon aide - which Shaffer's attorney vehemently denies, that he sought reimbursement for personal cell phone calls, and even that he stole pens from a U.S. embassy where his father was based when Shaffer was 15 years old.

The smear campaign was a standard tactic of the Clinton Administration, only then it targeted women who had been harassed by Bill. Now, under the Bush Administration, the targets are whistleblowers exposing government corruption that predates the Bush Administration. Consequently, not all of the Clinton Administration's scandals came out during the Clinton years, but some have instead been continued during the Bush Administration.

Same scandals, different President.

What are they doing in Washington that neocon Republicans and liberal Democrats can agree to cover up? It must be very embarassing... and very profitable!

"There is something desperately wrong when a military officer (Shaffer) risks his life in Afghanistan time and again, embedded with our troops under an assumed name with a false beard and a false identity ... gets castigated, gets ridiculed, gets some low-life scum at the Pentagon spreading malicious lies about this individual," Weldon told fellow lawmakers.

In response to a request by Rep. Duncan Hunter, a San Diego-area Republican and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, the Defense Department's inspector general is investigating the alleged smear campaign against Shaffer.

In the Senate, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the Pentagon of possible "obstruction of the committee's activities" after the Defense Department forbade Shaffer, Philpott and other Able Danger analysts from testifying before the panel. Specter and Pentagon officials are negotiating conditions for an open hearing.

"The American people are entitled to some answers," Specter said. "It is not a matter of attaching blame. It is a matter of correcting errors so that we don't have a repetition of 9/11."

Both Democrats and Republicans have asked for answers from the Administration, but the scandal involves both Democrats and Republicans. As the Edmonds case points out, people on both sides of the aisle are taking bribes -- and Dennis Hastert's name has come up.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, meanwhile, has heard closed-door testimony from Able Danger members and Pentagon employees, and it is nearing completion of a report.

The gag is not just to protect sensitive national security information, as that could be protected in classified, closed-door hearings.

Weldon is an unlikely Pentagon antagonist. Since first being elected to the House in 1986, he has been a defense hawk, consistently pushing for larger Pentagon budgets and new programs. Weldon speaks Russian, has led dozens of congressional delegations to Russia and the former Soviet Union, and has traveled to Libya, North Korea and other countries to deliver stern messages to dictators.

It's not about some liberal bashing the defense establishment.

Weldon's crusade on Able Danger, though, has drawn derision in some quarters, even from some current or former lawmakers who have known him for years.

"By the way he talks about Able Danger these days, you'd think it would have prevented Pearl Harbor," said Timothy Roemer, a former Indiana Republican congressman and member of the 9/11 commission.

They could have prevented 9/11, but someone didn't want to. See my posts under the label The Killing.

Lee Hamilton, a former Indiana Democratic lawmaker who co-chaired the 9/11 panel, said he worked closely with and respects Weldon because the two shared interests in defense and intelligence matters.

But he said the commission investigated the Able Danger officers' claims exhaustively and could not find evidence to support them.

"We've asked for that chart repeatedly," Hamilton said in an interview. "The Pentagon cannot produce it, the White House cannot produce it, and Weldon cannot produce it."

That's because the chart and all related information were ordered destroyed during the Clinton years. My bet is that the higher-ups were appalled when Able Danger started connecting people like Condoleeza Rice to Chinese proliferation.

But, the information was seen as valuable, and at least some of it was kept....

Breitweiser said she is confident additional facts about Able Danger will emerge.

Oh, they will. They are. :)

"As more and more information is coming out, more and more Americans are questioning how this attack could have happened," Breitweiser said. "We're finding out we are not being told the truth. A lot of information was known, and the attacks could have been prevented."

Stay tuned! :)

Lionheart: Urgent

There is an immediacy to Lionheart's situation that I was alerted to by a comment on my previous post. Here is a post from God Help Britain entitled Lionheart Needs Your Help, the substance of which I reproduce with comments:

Hello,

Please note that this is urgent and potentially life saving...

Please look at http://lionheartuk.blogspot.com/

Lionheart, a valiant young British Christian, has been issued with an arrest warrant for breaking British Incitement to Racial and Religious Hatred laws on his blog while discussing his life in Luton, a town with a high proportion of muslims. He has discussed pimps and their drug-addiction to prostitution entrapment methods used on young non-muslim girls, terrorists and extremists from his neighbourhood or connected to it, and drug dealers who control the drug rings in the area with mafia style domination and intimidation.

In a previous post, I quoted the following from another source:

Trafficking of women from Albania is one of the main ways to establish a "War chest" for the organized crime, in order to invest that wealth into the drugs trade. In essence, the first stage for every growth-oriented organized crime unit is to establish a prostitution ring, make large amounts of cash by slaving unsuspecting women and then invest the cash in the drugs trade by constructing the expensive logistics bases, fake companies, and pay corrupted officials. So when looking into the different aspects of organized criminal activity, it is important to look for the interconnectivity of all aspects of criminal activity because each one leads into another. The interconnectivity between drug activities is what makes the differences between organized crime and a spooky wanton criminality.

Getting girls hooked on drugs helps make them submissive to prostitution. They turn tricks to pay for their habit.

Getting girls to turn tricks generates money needed to invest in buying shipments of drugs.

Opiates are especially addictive; after a few hits, one is essentially hooked. As I have been documenting in a still-unfinished series -- Pak Sex Slave Ring in UK, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 -- there is a rise in organized prostitution rings in the UK, the criminal members of which are ethnic Pakistanis. Opiates are what these ethnic Pakistani gangs can most readily get via ties they have to South Asia, where 90% of opiate production now occurs in Afghanstan.

The girls are groomed while they are still 12 or younger. It is often that victims are raped as part of the grooming process to steer them into prostitution, since being raped helps desensitize them to being used by men for sex. In the UK Pakistani prostitution ring MO, the victims are raped on or immediately after their 13th birthday. By not actually raping them until they turn 13, the victims have to complain for a law enforcement investigation to be initiated, whereas if the victim were raped before her 13th birthday, police investigation would be automatic under existing UK laws.

Also in the UK Pakistani prostitution ring MO, the drugs seem to be introduced after the girls are already turning tricks for their "boyfriends", who by that time are giving their attention to other girls, grooming them as fresh recruits.

Consequently, the situation described in the first paragraph of that post has been documented in the UK's mainstream media.

Continuing now with the post from God Help Britain:

His neighbourhood has been dhimmified by its relatively new, yet rapidly mushrooming and highly organised muslim warlords who live like kings with dripping wealth. His story has highlighted the glaringly obvious possibility of the importation of cheap drugs from Pakistan by 'ordinary' muslims due to its ability to generate vast amounts of capital needed to fund the cycle of crime; drugs into the young girls, money generated from prostitution and dealing, money into the warlords pockets and those of their families, money out to the terrorists at home and abroad. We MUST stop this NOW as keeping our heads in the sand will be the death of all of us!

Again, this situation and cycle are well-documented, and are not particular to Islamic mafias in the UK. Albanian organized crime groups got their start in a similar manner, and now are the scourge of Europe.

He is currently in the US but his flight back is in about four days....and counting! He has very little money as his life has been turned upside down and I am very sad to say very few people have put their hands in their pockets to help when he needed their help the most. People who know his plight and sympathise with his views have, on the whole, let him down catastrophically. If something like a book offer, speaking position or similar is not offered to him in the next four days, he will get on that flight and return to the UK and be arrested on arrival. He will most likely be bailed after being charged and returned to his neighbourhood where he will have to live very secretively or be murdered. This is a very real possibility.

Lionheart may wish to simply miss that return flight and consider himself a political refugee, even if the US government will not recognize him as such. If he returns to the UK, Pakistani criminal gangs will likely murder him, and even if they don't, as they say -- there's no going home. By remaining free, even if he has to live in the US underground, illegally, he can promote a counterjihad message.

Let me clarify one point.

I do not advocate breaking US laws. But, if an innocent person must drive down the highway greatly in excess of the speed limit in order to escape criminals who are trying to murder him, then the speed limit pales into insignificance.

Similarly, in this situation, US immigration laws pale into insignificance.

He helped the police imprison one of the drug dealers in his area and muslims in his area may well desire retribution, but more than just an eye for an eye. Even if he is released without charge, he will be in grave danger. If he goes to prison, his companions will be pimps, drug dealers and terrorists, many of whom will be muslim who will know who he is and the man he helped imprison. He has told me he would refuse to be put into protective areas as he would not want to be in the company of sex offenders. He has pictured what could and most likely would happen to him and has accepted that fate as a consequence of speaking the truth but I have not and neither should you!

We must not accept this as an unavoidable consequence. We need to do what we can to give Lionheart options.

I do not want him to go back to the UK as, I believe, he will not live for long and his death would do more damage to the fight against tyranny and Islamification than you could imagine. Blogs would vanish voluntarily as people will look at just how dangerous it is to speak out. We will put ourselves in Lionheart's shoes and admit that we are simply not as brave as he and not as prepared to lose what he have.

Blogs (and bloggers) are going to start vanishing. This is only the very beginning of a big wave of oppression that is about to wash over the blogosphere.

In this next passage, I have modified the email address somewhat to make it less recognizable by robots surfing for addresses.

Please get in contact with him via his blog or via me at [godhelpbritain --at-- hotmail --dot-- com]. Please don't leave it too long. He is a nice young man who has done what he felt was right for his country and men of such character are few and far between and we should protect them with the same gusto which he has mustered all along. He speaks well on live radio and has already done two radio interviews in the US in the last week. Atlas Shrugs was one and it was a really good show.

Lionheart is to Britain what Brigitte Gabriel was to Lebanon. The US provided sanctuary and a platform to Brigitte. Lionheart could now do what Brigitte has been doing for years; raising awareness and speaking the truth as a grave warning to the US. He could be an invaluable asset to you while remaining free to help his country from afar.

Missing his hour of need will force Lionheart back into the lion's den. Please do whatever you can to ensure that does not happen.

Please, please, please help!

Either we hang together, and do what we can, or rest assured we will hang separately.

1) Considering the legal assault on Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld in regards to her work exposing the financing of terrorism (see the posts in the widget on my sidebar);
2) considering the Bush Administration's efforts to gag Sibel Edmonds and other whistleblowers who have sought to expose criminal conduct which coincidentally furthers the goals of Islamic terrorists;
3) considering the persecution of bloggers, journalists and others in such "enlightened" countries as Israel, Finland, Canada, and so on;
bloggers now need to consider themselves targets of the international jihad and likely victims of government repression.

It is important to keep in mind that we in the English-speaking world have centuries of history and tradition -- replete with legal precedents -- on our side in the battle to stay free. Consequently, our fight is a peaceful one; we shall prevail by refusing to be silenced.

In addition to being illegal and wrong, any other approach to this situation would merely play into the hands of those who seek to enslave us and destroy our society.

I now link to God Help Britain in the sidebar.

With this post, I begin a new label: Persecuted.

I conclude by reposting the text of a previous post, entitled Secret Blogger Man. It's a little cheesy, but it gets the point across.

There's a man who leads a life of danger
To everyone he meets he stays a stranger
With every post he makes
Another chance he takes
Odds are he won't live to blog tomorrow

Secret blogger man, secret blogger man
They've given you a login and taken away your name

Beware of friendly comments you may find
A friendly word can hide an evil mind
Ah, be careful what you post
Or you'll be givin' up the ghost
Odds are you won't live to blog tomorrow

Secret blogger man, secret blogger man
They've given you a login and taken away your name

[Lead guitar]

Secret blogger man, secret blogger man
They've given you a login and taken away your name

Swingin' in cyberspace one day
And then ridin' in the medevac next day
Oh no, you let the wrong word out
While posting with a shout
The odds are you won't live to blog tomorrow

Secret blogger man, secret blogger man
They've given you a login and taken away your name

Secret blogger man

(This post is dedicated to all the bloggers out there, posting to preserve our God-given rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. The Mujahideen can't compete with the truth, so they will have to shut us up, and the Religion of Peace won't be able to do that peacefully. God bless you all, and practice safe blogging!)

I now dedicate this post to Lionheart, and to all those who will similarly be persecuted.

Oh What A Circus!

(Sung to the tune of the song by the same name from the hit musical Evita.)


YD:

Oh what a circus! Oh what a show!
America has gone to the polls!
Over the rise of a senator called Hillary C.
We've all gone crazy,
Campaigning all night, campaigning all day,
Straining our ears to hear all
Hillary has to say!

Oh what a lead-off! That's how to start!
When you're planning your political career,
Demand to be married to someone like Bill!
It's quite a beginning
And good for your career in a roundabout way:
You'll make the front page of all the world's papers each day!

But who is this Hillary Rodham?
Why all this intensive electioneering?
What kind of goddess campaigns among us?
How could we ever not support her?

She has her moments -- she has some style.
The best show in town is the crowd
Eyeing the White House and chanting "Hillary C!"
But that's not here yet;
As soon as the smoke from the primary clears,
We're all going to see how she's been cheating for years!

Conflicts of Interest

Today an article appeared by Alyssa A. Lappen entitled America's First Amendment Lifeline. The original has many links which I did not reproduce. Also, I underlined the title of Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld's book, and fixed the odd additional or juxtaposed word.

World War II began long before the outbreak of military hostilities, with the Nazi campaign to silence its critics. Yet 63 years after the end of World War II, the U.S. today faces new threats to free speech.

Islamic terrorists and their advocates have increasingly succeeded in silencing critics of hatred and inhumanity, much as the Nazis silenced theirs, through intimidation -- but also now, through the courts.

"Islamic terrorists and their advocates" -- think about that expression for a moment.

The presidential candidates should all speak up, but unfortunately, none have yet addressed the issue.

And they won't.

Anyone who has made it this far has long ago learned the rules.

Hillary Clinton has a gigantic $10 million "conflict of interest," in the form of Saudi donations to the Clinton Library and Foundation, according to former Clinton political consultant Dick Morris and Eileen McGann. But Democrats Barak Obama and John Edwards and Republicans Mitt Romney, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee have also been eerily silent.

There's no conflict of interest.

Hillary & Bill are partners in power, partners in crime -- they're in it for themselves.

The only conflict of interest is when his Slickness sees a girl he likes, and has to lie about it. "I did not have sex with that woman...."

The battle lines are particularly sharp in New York State. There, the Court of Appeals ruled on Dec. 20, 2007 that under current "long-arm" statutes governing business transactions, New York lacks jurisdiction to protect author Rachel Ehrenfeld, whom Saudi billionaire Khalid Bin Mahfouz sued for "libel" in London's High Court of Justice. Mahfouz sued Ehrenfeld after the 2003, U.S. publication of her book Funding Evil: How Terrorism is Financed--and How to Stop It, which noted that Mahfouz and his family financially supported al-Qaeda and other "Islamist terror groups."

This is an issue Lappen is familiar with. She is a colleague of Dr. Ehrenfeld at The American Center for Democracy, where you can go to learn about this case and make a donation to support the legal counterjihad.

Only 23 copies of Ehrenfeld's book sold in England--over the Internet--but Mahfouz won in the U.K. by default. On learning that former CIA director R. James Woolsey wrote the book's foreword, U.K. Justice David Eady stated, "Say no more. I award you a judgment by default, and if you want, an injunction, too." He ordered Ehrenfeld to apologize, retract, pay $225,913.37 in damages and destroy remaining copies. In a case still pending before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Ehrenfeld asked the Southern District Court of New York to protect the First Amendment and rule the U.K. judgment unenforceable here.

To protect authors, journalists and First Amendment freedoms, Sen. Dean G. Skelos and Assemblyman Rory I. Lancman on January 13 introduced bi-partisan legislation to establish local jurisdiction. This would deter foreigners from suing and imperiling New York writers and the First Amendment, with the obvious intent of changing U.S. libel laws via overseas courts.

What is described here is an effort at the state level.

The law that they need to pass is a federal law saying that any civil suit that has not been tried in a U.S. court is unenforceable in places subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Any President that was serious about this issue and about the War on Terror would interpret existing Constitutional protections in that light -- especially if such a President was in the habit of making up his own rules anyway (waterboarding "detainees", for starters).

But, that would place such a President on a collision course with powerful interests in Saudi Arabia -- and there goes that conflict of interest, again.

Authors in many states, indeed, nationwide, hope New York will swiftly pass the legislation, and that other states and the U.S. Congress will follow the New York lead. The life blood of Democracy could hang in the balance.

No country has free speech protections as strong as those in the U.S., noted First Amendment attorney Floyd Abrams, who was present Jan. 13 and supports the New York state bill. Moreover, many U.S. federal documents and Congressional testimonies have implicated Mahfouz for terror financing.

But, King George doesn't want to pressure the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about their spreading of Wahhabi hatred and radical militancy in Saudi-funded mosques that are cropping up all over the world, King George doesn't want to question how it was that such a disproportionate number of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, King George doesn't want to call attention to Saudi efforts to acquire nuclear weapons... King George just keeps chanting his mantra that Islam is the Religion of Peace, and Saudi Arabia is our ally in the War on Terror.

The gap between what is said and what is done....

A conflict of interest?

Yet in the last decade, the Saudi billionaire has threatened or successfully sued over 40 authors and publishers in the United Kingdom--including numerous Americans--for reports on terror funding that mentioned him. Without trying a single case on its merits, Mahfouz extracted settlements, default judgments, apologies, retractions and fines in all his British "libel" cases--except in the case of Ehrenfeld. Mahfouz' suits, and others like them, have created an enormous "chilling effect" on free speech, says Ehrenfeld's New York-based attorney, Daniel Kornstein.

The threat of lawsuits has so chilled the publishing community that many authors are censoring themselves, and many publishers simply refuse to address terror funding at all.

It isn't just the publishing community.

They're shutting down the bloggers, too, now.

Many in the counterjihad blogosphere are aware of what they are trying to do to Lionheart. They've also been after Israeli bloggers, Finnish bloggers, and so on -- The Gates of Vienna has had pretty good coverage of this all.

To safeguard America's publishing capital, New York legislators of all stripes should rush to co-sponsor and pass the new bill. As Senate deputy majority leader Skelos from Rockville Center and Queens Democrat Lancman noted on Jan. 13 in a news conference outside the New York Public Library, the London ruling against Ehrenfeld opened the door to "assault by foreign nationals seeking to silence public debate in America" despite the U.S. Constitutional guarantee of protected free-speech.

You know, all of this is happening during a U.S. Presidential election year, in the new "home state" of a big-name U.S. Senator who is a leading Democrat contender for the center seat.

Do you think this is important to her?

Absolutely.

What is important is that the rich guy wins, but that the little people all think she was really on the side of the little people. You see, it is the little people who vote, so there must be enough of them thought to support this Senator in her bid for power to give her theft of an election some semblance of believability.

Right now, she may be able to plead that she hasn't heard of the issue.

(Hint: contact her campaign about this.)

The Skelos and Lancman bill would amend New York law to give state courts jurisdiction in cases like Ehrenfeld's. Local courts could declare foreign judgments unenforceable unless the foreign country provides free-speech protections equivalent to those of the First Amendment. This would be especially helpful in cases concerning reporting on terrorism--but also in other frivolous libel cases filed to intimidate American writers and publishers.

This is not a theoretical issue. If you are not familiar with the Flying Imams case, Google it and see what kind of an effect it has had.

"Islamic terrorists and their advocates" are determined to commit terrorist acts, and to get away with such acts, and to prevent us from even talking about the matter.

You are not allowed to speak up, even though your life, and the lives of your family, friends, neighbors and even the existence of your country, all depend on speaking up about the danger we face.

The legislation will "protect American authors and journalists from being dragged into kangaroo courts over phony baloney libel charges in jurisdictions that don't respect freedom of speech and of the press as we do here in the United States," Lancman said.

Keep silent in the face of a violent death.

To me, that seems like a conflict of interest.


(Hat tip to my email tipster.)

Talibanistan, Part 3

We continue from Part 2, and now conclude our review of The Truth About Talibanistan by Aryn Baker, Kabul, Afghanistan.

The emergence of Talibanistan may directly threaten the West too. Locals say the region has become one big terrorist-recruitment camp, where people as young as 17 are trained as suicide bombers. "Here, teenagers are greeted with the prayers 'May Allah bless you to become a suicide bomber,'" says Obaidullah Wazir, 35, a young tribesman in Miranshah. National Intelligence Director John McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee last month that "al-Qaeda is forging stronger operational connections that radiate outward from their camps in Pakistan to affiliated groups and networks throughout the Middle East, North Africa and Europe." Muzafar Khan, a headman from one of the local tribes, told TIME that Uzbek commander Tahir Yuldashev, leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and a suspected confidant of bin Laden's, commands some Uzbeks, Chechens, Arabs and local fighters from his base in the borderlands. "We know they are al-Qaeda," says Khan. "They are foreigners, they have different faces, and they don't speak Pashto." He claims that "their camps are easy to find. Even a child could show you."

Again, these Arab-Afghans -- a group which actually includes mujahideen from other places in Central and Southwest Asia, as well as from Afghanistan and the Arab countries -- are foreigners to Pakistan's tribal areas, and the support they have there may not be very deep.

It should be noted, however, that the problem of this area being a big terrorist training camp is not something new cropping up. For years, Pakistan has turned a blind eye to terrorists training for jihad against India in Kashmir. The trouble is, once they get training for jihad against one enemy, it is easy for them to turn on another. Jihad is jihad, and once trained, the mujahideen may go battle not just India, but Israel, Russia, or even the US; the danger also exists for them to make takfir out of the government in Islamabad, and turn on their hosts. For their own good, the people of Pakistan need to eliminate these jihad training camps from their midst -- all of them.

The camps hold from 10 to 300 militants and are usually hidden deep in the forest, according to local residents. They have simple structures, low concrete-and-brick buildings with high walls. Some have underground bunkers for protection in case of attack. Outsiders easily mistake them for traditional village housing. "We know they exist," says the U.S. military official in Afghanistan. "But it's like finding a needle in a haystack." A Pakistani intelligence official says there are training camps in the region and that Pakistan is doing everything it can to find them and destroy them. "I don't say that [foreigners] are not here, but wherever we know of their presence, we go after them and take action," he says. The best hope for dislodging al-Qaeda from the region may be local tribesmen, who have recently engaged in heavy clashes with foreign and local militants around the town of Wana.

There is no substitute for local, on-the-ground intelligence; with a love of high-tech gadgets but a distaste for relatively dirty human intelligence, and notoriously monolingual, that is an area in which the United States has traditionally lacked.

Will Musharraf join the fight? Though the U.S. is pressing Musharraf to do more to rout terrorists in Pakistan, his political survival still depends on parties that resent his ties to Washington. There is a widespread view in Pakistan that Vice President Dick Cheney, during his trip to Pakistan two weeks ago, reprimanded Musharraf for failing to rein in the militants. But officials on both sides say the partnership between Bush and Musharraf remains solid. "Is it doing more? Well, yeah, it's doing more. We all gotta do more, do better, do different. It's a war," says a senior Western diplomat in Pakistan. "But for folks to sit there in Washington or London or wherever and say, 'Damn it! We're tired of this. Go fix it,' is not hugely helpful."

"Will Musharraf join the fight?"

What ever happened to "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists"?

That may be true. But the Bush Administration is beginning to recognize that to stabilize Afghanistan and prevent the rebirth of al-Qaeda, it has to contain the growth of Talibanistan. Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher announced in Islamabad that the U.S. intends to give an extra $750 million to Musharraf over the next five years to support development in the tribal areas. "I think this commitment to the development of Pakistan, this commitment to a long-term relationship, is another example of the very broad and deep relationship we have and that we are developing with Pakistan," Boucher said. "We have a fundamental interest in the success of Pakistan as a moderate, stable, democratic Muslim nation."

How is development of an enemy-occupied region going to help? The Taliban and Al Qaeda need to be chased out.

Then, development might allow for more of a federal Pakistani presence; but, such a presence might also offend the local people and drive them more into the hands of those who seem to respect their culture more.

Might they be fooled by the Taliban again?

That infusion of U.S. money would go far toward developing a region nearly devoid of civil infrastructure. There's no doubt that in the long run, schools, hospitals, roads and electricity would do much more to quell militancy than would an increased military presence. But that kind of development takes years. As the militants consolidate power, Musharraf needs to take bolder steps. The judicial crisis and the resulting protests have weakened Musharraf's credibility among the moderate, secular Pakistanis who could provide a bulwark against the threat of jihadism. Musharraf has pledged to hold general elections at the end of the year, but regaining the support of moderate groups may require him to go further and open up the vote to opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, who have both been exiled. If Musharraf can prove that he is committed to democracy, Pakistanis may well choose to keep him in power. Armed with such a mandate, Musharraf would be better poised to tackle militancy in the tribal areas. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri concedes that the peace agreement with the tribes in Waziristan has "weaknesses" that the government is addressing. An official says Islamabad intends to send two new brigades of troops to seize back the initiative.

It takes years, and it takes permanent changes to the local communities.

Can we afford that much time? Are the permanent changes really a good thing, or might they spark a reactionary backlash?

Last month the same mountain passes used by militants set on attacking U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan served as passage for an unlikely delegation of 45 tribal elders from Pakistan's borderlands. They were headed for a meeting with Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, who has openly criticized Musharraf's failure to stem Pakistani support for the Taliban. "We have had too many years of war, too many widows, too many orphans, too many amputees. If this jihad continues, it will destroy Afghanistan and Waziristan," said an elder. "We need help, and we no longer trust the Pakistani government." The leader of the delegation presented Karzai with a traditional Waziri turban, a great soft-serve swirl of butter-yellow silk. As he placed it on the President's head, he said, "You are our President. You can free us from this disaster. We are at your service, and we support you." That the tribesmen would turn to one of Musharraf's rivals for help against the Taliban is a telling indictment of his leadership. And if Musharraf doesn't find a way to re-establish control over Talibanistan, he may find his backers in Washington giving up on him too.

With reporting by WITH REPORTING BY SIMON ROBINSON/ ISLAMABAD, GHULAM HASNAIN / DARA ADAM KHEL

This could also lead to a redrawing of the border -- Pakistan giving up Waziristan to Afghanistan.

Then, might independent Pashtunistan and Baluchistan also become reality? Recall Part 2; see also the end of Genesis, Part 10.

What might that all lead to?

Or, put another way, how did the United States react when some of its states tried to secede?

Terrorists basing in Pakistan's border areas -- so much so that these areas are now called "Talibanistan" -- are not just a threat to the rest of the world; they may be taking Pakistan -- a nuclear-armed nation, sixth in the world for population, and astride important trade routes -- down the path to civil war.