Back To Work
Time to get back to work. Many stories and articles to post and loads of work to be done.
Vacation Time
Time for a much needed vacation for the next 4 weeks on the beach. While I am away the blog will be in rss aggregation from the Foreign Policy Afpak desk. While it is not the best aggregation, it is the only one I could come up with that gives an insight into what is going on in Pakistan and Afghanistan daily. It might take a day or two for the articles to catch up to being more current, so give it a few days to work its way through. I will be back in a month or so posting on articles I have been working on the last two weeks which are aimed at the financial sector, the doomsday scenarios for various meltdown dates ahead, and with a few insights gained on how those people are reaping massive profits while portending doom and gloom globally. Have a good month and see you sometime in May.
Situational Ethics; The Truth Shall Set You Free
This is an update on the story from the New York Times concerning the so called rogue operation with civilian military contractor Mike Furlong using private assets to run his own spy and assassination team operation. From what has been gathered so far, it seems we now have a more clear picture than we had when we visited this story a few days ago. After much discussion with a number of people, it seems that the operation was run by a cast of characters right out of central casting. We have Robert Pelton, whose adventures and story could fill volumes of books, Mike Furlong, a decorated former military officer, Dewey Clarridge, a former CIA officer and known to many in the Iran Contra investigation, and Eason Jordan, a former CNN executive who now runs his own private concern, and a mysterious CIA or Pentagon staffer who leaked everything to the press. All of them had their own private agendas and desires to help the cause of the United States in the war on terror. It appears that the CIA or Pentagon is now using the press in the guise of the New York Times to run a smear and destroy campaign against Mike Furlong because Mike was on their turf doing the job they were assigned to do, but for some reason he was doing it better or cheaper than the CIA and or Pentagon were, and they were pissed off over it. Of course this inflamed the powers that be, in which they decided to launch a search and destroy mission against Furlong’s operation and in effect shut him down and left him facing charges for fraud and a host of other problems. This is your government at work, when they lose control, they get pissed, and when they get pissed, they strike out, and trust be damned, at anyone they see as being in or on their turf. Amazing that no one so far is calling for an investigation into who leaked internal and highly classified data to a media conglomerate as the New York Times. But there it is. The government no longer just picks up the phone and shuts things down quietly, they run to the press and spill the beans, forcing covert operations to be exposed, thus putting everyone else in danger.
Analyzing Failure; The Business of Freelance Intelligence Contracting
Highlighting an earlier article written on trust in this business. It now comes to pass we see another blown intelligence operation. This time however it is a freelance intelligence operation that was blown as opposed to some state sponsored operation. What the earlier article highlighted was how hard it is to trust someone in the intelligence business. In this article I want to highlight just how that trust is misplaced or how easily it can be betrayed by others. Not only that, I will try and highlight the article written to see if there is anything to be gained in hindsight by looking at the story covered by the media, and the operation itself, which seemed to unfold through that media.
»» Analyzing Failure; The Business of Freelance Intelligence Contracting
Terrorism 101; Jihad Jane
Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Jane, was recently indicted on terrorism charges in the United States. I thought to take a few moments to dig through the stupidity of this indictment and the lunacy surrounding her cause to murder Lars Vilks. It seems that the United States Justice Department is anxious to show that they are still up to the task of stopping terrorism wherever it may lead, and thus we now have the indictment of Colleen LaRose to wade through, as if this woman should even be considered anything more than she really was, which was a woman needing medication and psychiatric help. Of course the FBI knew in advance everything she was doing, but instead of getting her some help mentally, and or getting her on some medication, they chose to let her go to Sweden and foment this supposed lunatic plot to kill a guy she didn’t even know, and who is so far down the totem pole of insignificance as to never have been heard of outside of Sweden. In 2007 Lars Vilks, a somewhat lame cartoonist and artist, made an image of the Prophet Muhammad in an insulting and derogatory manner just so he could get some publicity in his otherwise drab existence pushing sub par art to the extreme. So, he decided to incite and inflame the Muslim community who then decided to put out a contract out on his life for 100k USD, a rather cheap price considering others who have committed the same vulgar acts having higher prices on their heads.
Trust; Through Deception Thou Shalt Wage War
I have been wanting to write an article on the business of trust for some time. I wanted to outline how trust is often misplaced, and more often than not there is no trust to be had in the intelligence world or any world for that matter. Trust is a fools game, filled with the promise of better things to come while delivering much less. It has been said that trust is at the core a leap of faith, and I agree with this principal. I studied a number of papers on trust and deception and have come to the conclusion that those who believe in trust realize that they always leave open the possibility of being deceived by giving that trust to others. Therefore trust is a vulnerability that leaves you wide open to failure. Taking a page from the Mossad motto, through deception thou shalt wage war, I want to show the fallacy of trust when dealing with those whose very philosophy is based on deception. I also will outline various examples of betrayal of trust to highlight that in the end trust is not something that anyone can truly believe in.
Radicalization; The Homegrown Terrorist Threat
I have been reading a number of reports on the reasons people become a terrorist or end up supporting it. And while this article will not focus on them as a whole, I would like to pick apart various reports I have read to get to the bottom of radicalization and the reasons for it in the United States. A number of these reports will be used here as a way to define what the government has been studying and trying to come to grips with in its efforts to reduce the chances that people will become radicalized, thus end up supporting or becoming involved in a terrorist act or acts.
The first report I will delve into is written by Michael Jacobson from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In this report he talks about the flip side of terrorism, those that drop out of it or quit organizations that support or commit terrorist acts. It is a very interesting report, which will also be included at the bottom of this article as an attachment for further reading. I will highlight key points he makes concerning radicalization, and his claims on how to prevent people from getting involved in terrorist activities in an attempt to pick apart his analysis, if that is at all possible. His credentials are as good as they come, so one would assume that picking apart his report will be very hard to accomplish. I think after reading it however there are several areas he misses the boat on, and I will attempt to clarify where I think he is off base.
Assassination Tools; The Mystery Unravels
A few things have come to light recently on the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Many new suspects have been identified via surveillance cameras, and as of today Dubai police have claimed a breakthrough using DNA to match the identification of at least one suspect in the assassination. Other details have also come through with the arrest in Syria of a top aid to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in the guise of Muhammad Nasser, who was a top Hamas official. He has since been extradited to Dubai and has been undergoing questioning for his supposed role in identifying to the assassins when Mahmoud al-Mabhouh would be traveling to Dubai. Most of this has been going on this past week which is why I have not posted lately. I figured to wait and see where things would go internationally with the investigation, and decided instead to focus on some of the details of the operation itself that has not been discussed very much in the news. One of those issues is the speculation surrounding how the assassins got into the victims room. Since this key surveillance footage has not been shown, all we have is speculation on what actually took place at the critical moment of the operation itself. Questions continue to mount over why this hallway footage was available earlier in the day when the assassination surveillance team followed the victim to his room, but not available during the murder itself. Where is that footage and why are we not allowed to see it? Was the camera somehow disabled by the kill team prior? If so, and this footage does not exist, then all we have left is speculation on how entry to the room was achieved.
Assassination Tango; Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
The recent murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai has many people discussing whether it was right or wrong to have done. However I wont really go into any of that here. What I would like to concentrate on are the way the job was carried out, the mistakes I see that were made in the operation, and finally, the end results and what the future possibly holds for those involved. So far I have not seen much in the way of a discussion on the merits of the hit team or the mistakes they made. I read on another blog that the mission was probably acted on or commenced in haste. I however disagree with that. I do not believe it was carried out in haste, rather I think it was planned well in advance, and was also the result of betrayal by someone close to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, possibly even someone very high up in his inner circle.
