DC Bureau - Investigative Journalism, Environmental News, and National Security Stories That Matter

Thursday, Sep 09th

two_wars

On Prioritizing Terrorism

Written by Burton Hersh Wednesday, 13 January 2010

The bungled attempt by the young Nigerian to blow up Northwest Airlines flight 253 on Christmas Day has raised a lot of eyebrows in and out of government.  Within days The New York Times was reporting that Abdulmutallab had been trained in Yemen by the one-time Guantanamo detainee Ali al-Shihri, that his wealthy father, the Nigerian businessman Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had “urgently sought help from American and Nigerian security officials when cell phone text messages from his son revealed that he was in Yemen and had become a fervent radical,” and that the CIA “in November compiled biographical data about Mr. Abdulmutallab – including his plans to study Islamic law in Yemen – but did not share the information with the other security agencies,” most significantly the National Counterterrorism Center.  The Center already had Abdulmutallab on a 550,000-person list of individuals with “possible ties to terrorism” but declined to include him on “more refined watch lists” or the worldwide no-fly list vital for airport security.

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Vietnam Reconsidered

Written by Burton Hersh Tuesday, 15 December 2009

A recent NEWSWEEK cover story – HOW WE (COULD HAVE) WON IN VIETNAM, by Evan Thomas and John Barry  (November 16, 2009) – has responded to the ever-louder jungle drums of the recovering Right and pulled the stake and raised up for more recent generations the vampire logic behind the argument that “..the United States could have won in Vietnam – if only the U.S. Congress hadn’t cut off military aid to South Vietnam.”  It quotes Dwight Eisenhower as maintaining that “if you fight you must fight to win.”  It discovers several stages during that time of debilitating national anguish when “..the military was finally having success with a new counterinsurgency strategy” and urges our ground commanders in Afghanistan to continue with tactics that replicate “..what the Phoenix Program was designed to do 40 years ago in Vietnam: target and assassinate Viet Cong leaders.” The implication is that Vietnam was a rushed, incidental involvement for the United States, which we abandoned too quickly.

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Trento's Take: Who Kept Major Hassan In The Army and For What Real Purpose?

Written by Joseph Trento Monday, 16 November 2009

The Army and FBI versions of Major Nidal Hasan’s history do not add up. When American intelligence notified the Joint Terrorism Task Force in Washington last December that the major was sending e-mail questions to a radical cleric in Yemen, the Defense Department investigator allegedly pulled Hasan’s personnel file, read the e-mails and decided nothing was wrong. The cleric, Anwar-al-Awlaki, had counseled three of the 9/11 hijackers during the same time frame that Hasan had attended his mosque in Falls Church, VA. Awlaki has remained a target of American surveillance continuously since it let him leave the country in 2002. Now preaching hate in the friendly confines of Yemen, Awlaki’s activities are known to U.S. intelligence in painful detail.

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Disgraced USA Today Reporter Makes Comeback as the Kurds’ DC Flack

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Wednesday, 04 November 2009

A spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Washington is an ex-USA Today reporter who resigned under pressure amid accusations of plagiarism, DCBureau has learned. The reporter, Tom Squitieri, once covered the Iraqi Kurds, who now pay him $8,000 a month as a registered agent of the KRG.

In 2005, Squitieri, then a Pentagon correspondent with the Gannett-owned USA Today, left the paper after his editors learned that he had lifted quotes from other publications. Several years later, he found himself gainfully employed by the Kurds—a group that has sought to become one of the most powerful foreign lobbies in the United States. Led by their Washington envoy, Qubad Talabani, the son of Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, the rulers of Iraqi Kurdistan have garnered widespread support from members of Congress, the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House. Enlisting the services of K Street’s boutique PR firms, Talabani has effectively portrayed the autonomous Kurdish region—home to 20 percent of Iraq’s population—as the sole bright spot in a conflict-ridden nation.

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Baghdad’s Ambassador Confronts a Fragmented Iraq in the Washington Front of the War

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Monday, 13 July 2009

Samir Sumaida’ie, Iraq’s Ambassador to the United States, is a revolutionary.

A decade ago, Sumaida’ie was an integral part of the diverse cadre of Iraqi dissidents who, from their perches in London, Washington, and Iraqi Kurdistan, provided impetus for the coup-by-proxy that would become one of the largest foreign policy blunders in modern American history.

But since he acquired his coveted post in Washington, the 65-year old ambassador has confronted a new lobbying offensive: a group of Iraqi political factions hoping to, by vying for the attention and confidence of American leaders, propel themselves into the upper echelons of power in Iraq.

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Unlicensed “New- Fields Exhibitions” Claims To Provide Clients Easy Access in Iraq

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Wednesday, 01 July 2009

Since the fall of 2003, New-Fields Exhibitions, a Dubai-based marketing company with a corporate office in Washington, has organized over a dozen conferences promoting opportunities in Iraq’s reconstruction, security and oil sectors.

The names adorning the delegate lists of New-Fields’ events are among the Who’s Who of Iraq war profiteers: Halliburton/KBR, Bechtel, Titan, General Dynamics, Blackwater, Fluor, Perini, URS Corporation. But while the rebuilding effort in Iraq has become characterized by pervasive waste and fraud—turning funds once touted as a new Marshall Plan into what critics classify as corporate blood money—New-Fields, the self-arrogated hookup for Iraqi business deals, has avoided the scrutiny faced by some of its more dubious clientele.

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What Are an Iraqi CIA Agent and His Novice Lobbyist Up to in Washington?

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Friday, 15 May 2009

In between puffs from a pungent water pipe, Janet Bitar begins an enthusiastic pitch for her man in Iraq. Facts and details get lost in the smoke from the burning shisha, but what Ms. Bitar lacks in information, she makes up for in conviction. “He will be a good leader for the Iraqi people, and he will be a good ally for the U.S.,” the Syrian-born American says passionately, brushing aside dark, elegant bangs and leaning back into the florid couch of a Lebanese restaurant in suburban Washington.

Ms. Bitar certainly does not act like a K Street lobbyist—she speaks far too candidly, and her well-coiffed appearance barely contains her deep support for “the mission in Iraq.” But the fashion designer-turned-military translator is being paid $10,000 a month to represent a largely unknown aspirant to the Iraqi presidency, Dr. Nehro Abdulkarim Kasnazani.

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The Illusion of Stability

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Tuesday, 21 April 2009

For the first time in seven years, Iraq is not among the top news stories in the U.S. media. Reporting on the war began declining sharply in 2007; by 2008, it amounted to a mere 1-2 percent of total media coverage, a tenth of the time major networks devoted to Iraq in 2003. In the U.S. presidential campaign, the war became largely a peripheral issue—either because we were on the cusp of “victory” or the brink of departure, depending on which side you asked. After the inauguration of the ostensibly anti-war candidate, “the end is near” became the axiomatic mantra that reverberated throughout Capitol Hill and the Beltway journalistic establishment.

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Whatever Happened to the Darling Chalabi?

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Tuesday, 07 April 2009

For a guy who used to parade about Washington in a gold Rolls-Royce, manipulating credulous neoconservatives and revealing just how much influence a foreign lobbyist can have in this town, Ahmed Chalabi doesn’t really come around any more.

The former double agent appears to have gotten pretty comfortable in Baghdad, doing a heckuva’ job restoring the city’s municipal services as the head of the Iraqi Services Committee. Matt Duss has a nice tidbit on Chalabi’s recent interview with Dar al-Haya, where, aside from contending that the U.S. conspired with the Iranians in overthrowing Saddam, he claimed to despise power and money, and said that he has never done a corrupt thing in his life.

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Under Siege in Kurdistan, Can the Talabanis Keep Their Influence In Washington?

Written by Adam Lichtenheld Tuesday, 31 March 2009

"There is a common saying in Kurdistan -- if you buy a kiosk in the street, make sure half of it belongs to Barzani or Talabani…Otherwise, don't get the kiosk."

On Saturday, March 21, the Washington Post carried a rigorous report of the nepotism that has bred corruption and conflicts of interest in the increasingly-tenuous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. But the real story of the Kurds’ lucrative governing enterprise—and the one that is most compelling for the American people—is how the Talabanis and Barzanis are using their concentrated money and power to influence the U.S. public and policy community. What the Post piece overlooked is the fact that Kurdistan’s fate is not just being determined by the political aristocracy in Sulaymaniyah, Dahuk or Erbil; it’s also playing out among the kingmakers in the D.C. Beltway. In 2007 and 2008, the Washington Monthly’s Laura Rozen published a pair of informative pieces about how Qubad Talabani, Jalal Talabani’s son and the Kurdistan Regional Government’s U.S. representative, had effectively penetrated the Washington power elite. In promoting the “Other Iraq”, the young Talabani has garnered widespread support for the Kurdish cause among American policymakers, activists and journalists.

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Custer Battles Case Highlights War Profiteering in Iraq

Written by National Security News Service Sunday, 12 February 2006

A 60 Minutes story aired on February 12th, 2006 which examined the activities of Custer Battles, a company accused under the False Claims Act of defrauding the Coalition Provisional Authority of millions of dollars. 60 Minutes said that the Custer Battles case provides insight into the widespread war profiteering committed by US companies during the war in Iraq. The National Security News Service worked closely with 60 Minutes on the Custer Battles piece by providing general research assistance.

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Is Pakistan Motivated To Find Bin Laden?

Written by National Security News Service Sunday, 25 September 2005

NSNS contributed to this 60 Minute's piece on Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI. It was the first inside look at the notorious agency. NSNS played a major role in helping 60 Minutes get access to high-ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officials. The news service also provided extensive background material for the piece.

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