ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN, No. 491
Tom Burghardt
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
___________________________________
- AFIB No. 491, February 4, 2004 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
END THE OCCUPATIONS!
ISRAEL OUT OF PALESTINE! U.S. OUT OF IRAQ!
The real story of the Aryan Republican Army lies in what the gang tells us
about our times. Its road depicts the specific ways in which rage can be
elevated to righteousness in the minds of men, and then transformed into
collective criminal action. Socialized in America's mall culture, the men
of the ARA found themselves in a world where money, entertainment, and
fashion were valued over human compassion, service, and love--where the
outside of a person was valued over the inside; appearance over actuality,
selfishness over kindness. In this world, materialism matters more than
religion. When a society suppresses sophisticated religious expression, it
encourages unsophisticated ones. ... Enter the guru. As the ARA's
charismatic spiritual leader, Mark Thomas introduced something wholly
unprecedented into the annals of paramilitary criminality. ... Through his
hip and clever elocution, Thomas created the psychological conditions
necessary for ARA members to assemble for themselves an internally cohesive
style of collective existence that transformed their rage into what Robert
Jay Lifton calls holy terrorism. -- Mark S. Hamm, In Bad Company: America's
Terrorist Underground [Boston, Northeastern University Press, 2002] pp.
287-288.
Contents: Number 491
01. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: California Killing: The Case of Kevin Cooper.
02. THE INDEPENDENT [London]: Intelligence chief's bombshell: "We Were
Overruled on Dossier."
03. ANOTHER DAY IN THE EMPIRE [Las Cruces, NM]: Bush's Independent
Commission: Exonerating the Spooks.
04. GREEN LEFT WEEKLY [Australia]: Iraq: Ex-Diplomat Reveals Australia's
Illegal Killing Spree.
05. THE INDEPENDENT [London]: Does One Man on Death Row Hold the Secret of
Oklahoma?
06. McCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE [Idabel, OK]: Searching for OKC Bombing
Evidence, Police Raid Home of Former Congressman's Aide.
07. ASIA TIMES ONLINE [Hong Kong]: Pakistan Nukes: General Mayhem.
* * *
____________________________________________________________________
CALIFORNIA KILLING: THE CASE OF KEVIN COOPER
____________________________________________________________________
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 1/9/04]
Source: Afrikan Frontline Network, natt...@comcast.net
- Sunday, 1 February 2004 -
A man named Kevin Cooper has been given a date to die: On Feb. 10, 2004,
the State of California plans to kill him, by pumping him full of poison.
Cooper, convicted back in 1984 of the slaying of 3 members of the Ryen
clan, and a visiting family friend, was also charged with stabbing an
8-year old boy, but luckily the child survived.
Why lucky? Well, apart from the obvious reason (his sheer survival), Joshua
Ryen saw who attacked him, and upon recovery told police that it was 3
white or Latino men who slew his family, his friend, and tried to kill him.
When young Josh saw TV news accounts of the attacks, he turned to a cop who
was present, and exclaimed, when the picture of Kevin Cooper flashed across
the screen, "That wasn't the guy who did it. It was 3 Mexicans."
... out of the mouths of babes, eh?
But, San Bernardino officials didn't care; what does it matter that the
lone surviving victim cleared their suspect? It meant nothing. They had
their man -- and on the 10th of February, they wanna kill him.
Kevin Cooper, now a man of 45 years, has spent the last 19 years of his
life on California's Death Row, for a series of brutal crimes -- that he
did not commit.
Cooper turned his cell into a school room; studying writing, politics and
African-American history. He has grown into a vibrant, talented and
educated individual -- yet California still wants to extinguish his light.
It is important to note that he is an African-American man. That wasn't
lost during his Dec. 1984 trial, around which time demonstrators, calling
for his death, hung a toy gorilla in effigy. Indeed, the media coverage was
so hyped, the demonstrations so hostile, that the trial was moved to San
Diego.
Not only was the only living eyewitness ignored; but shortly after the
murders, a local woman came forward to tell police that she thought her
boyfriend was involved in the grisly killings. Why? When he came home the
night of the slayings, she said, he was wearing a pair of overalls,
drenched in blood. The woman turned them over to the cops. Before the day
was over, the overalls were pitched into the station's dumpster. Did it
matter that the man was wearing a t-shirt the color and brand of the
t-shirt found in the scene -- it also, bloody? No. Did it matter that he
owned a hatchet, like a weapon used in the Ryen home, and it was
conveniently missing from the couple's home. No.
None of it mattered.
They wanted, and focused on, Kevin Cooper; nothing else mattered.
Police and prosecutors told jurors that a bloody shoe- print found at the
scene conclusively proved Cooper's guilt. Were the jurors told that Deputy
William Baird had a pair of prison shoes in his (crime) lab, which were
Cooper's size? What they also didn't know was that the Deputy, post-trial,
was fired for stealing five pounds of heroin from the evidence locker --
*five pounds* -- both to use and to sell -- to drug dealers!
Kevin Cooper is on Death Row, awaiting a date with death, based on
'investigators' such as these!
Incredible!
Welcome to the American Way of Death!
Help save--no; help Free Kevin Cooper!
(Visit http://www.savekevincooper.org/ and make sure to check the Feb. 3
Day of Action Info!)
Copyright 2004 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved.
Mr. Jamal has written widely about war and other issues. His latest work,
*Faith of Our Fathers* (Africa World Press, 2003) was named one of "The
Most Remarkable Books of 2003" by *Black Issues Book Review* (Nov/Dec '03).
Check out Mumia's NEW book: "Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the
Spiritual Life of African and African-American People":
http://www.africanworld.com.
These are VERY SERIOUS TIMES for political activists in this country and
around the world. Get full details and keep updated by reading ACTION
ALERTS!! at http://www.mumia.org and http://www.movenet.org.
To download Mp3's of Mumia's commentaries visit http://www.prisonradio.org
or http://www.fsrn.org
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
CHECK http://www.mumia.org FOR IMPORTANT ACTION ALERTS!
PLEASE CONTACT: International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ; P.O. Box
19709; Philadelphia, PA 19143; Tel: 215-476-8812; Fax: 215-476-6180:
E-mail: icf...@aol.com AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN NOT REST!!
*****
____________________________________________________________________
Intelligence chief's bombshell
'WE WERE OVERRULED ON DOSSIER'
____________________________________________________________________
THE INDEPENDENT
UK: Politics
04 February 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=487557
By Paul Waugh, Deputy Political Editor
The intelligence official whose revelations stunned the Hutton inquiry has
suggested that not a single defence intelligence expert backed Tony Blair's
most contentious claims on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
As Mr Blair set up an inquiry yesterday into intelligence failures before
the war, Brian Jones, the former leading expert on WMD in the Ministry of
Defence, declared that Downing Street's dossier, a key plank in convincing
the public of the case for war, was "misleading" on Saddam Hussein's
chemical and biological capability. Writing in today's Independent, Dr
Jones, who was head of the nuclear, chemical and biological branch of the
Defence Intelligence Staff (DIS) until he retired last year, reveals that
the experts failed in their efforts to have their views reflected.
Dr Jones, who is expected to be a key witness at the new inquiry, says: "In
my view, the expert intelligence analysts of the DIS were overruled in the
preparation of the dossier in September 2002, resulting in a presentation
that was misleading about Iraq's capabilities."
He calls on the Prime Minister to publish the intelligence behind the
Government's claims that Iraq was actively producing chemical weapons and
could launch an attack within 45 minutes of an order to do so. He is
"extremely doubtful" that anyone with chemical and biological weapons
expertise had seen the raw intelligence reports and that they would prove
just how right he and his colleagues were to be concerned about the claims.
Downing Street was triumphant last week when Lord Hutton ruled that Andrew
Gilligan's claims that the dossier was "sexed up" were unfounded, but Dr
Jones's comments are bound to boost the case of the BBC and others that the
dossier failed to take into account the worries of intelligence officials.
Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said yesterday that he might not
have supported military action against Baghdad if he had known that Iraq
lacked weapons of mass destruction.
Acutely aware of the American inquiry into the war, Mr Blair said that a
committee of inquiry would investigate "intelligence-gathering, evaluation
and use" in the UK before the conflict in Iraq. Lord Butler of Brockwell,
the former cabinet secretary, will chair the five-strong committee, which
will meet in private. The Liberal Democrats refused to support the inquiry
because they said that its remit was not wide enough.
Dr Jones was the man whose decision to give evidence electrified the Hutton
inquiry as he disclosed that he had formally complained about the dossier.
The Government attempted to dismiss his complaints as part of the normal
process of "debate" within the DIS and claimed that other sections of the
intelligence community were better qualified to assess the 45-minute and
chemical production claims.
But today Dr Jones makes clear that he was not alone and declares that the
whole of the Defence Intelligence Staff, Britain's best qualified analysts
on WMD, agreed that the claims should have been "carefully caveated".
Furthermore, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), which allowed the
contentious claims to go into the dossier, lacked the expertise to make a
competent judgement on them.
Dr Jones makes clear that it was John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC,
who was responsible for including the controversial claims in the executive
summary of the dossier that was used to justify war. It was Mr Scarlett's
strong assessment that allowed Alastair Campbell to "translate a
probability into a certainty" in Mr Blair's foreword to the document, Dr
Jones adds.
He says he foresaw at the time of the Government's dossier in September
2002 that no major WMD stockpiles would be found. He made a formal
complaint about the dossier to avoid himself and his fellow experts being
cast as "scapegoats" for any such failure.
In his article, Dr Jones warns that intelligence analysts should not be
blamed for the lack of any significant finds in Iraq and points out that it
was the "intelligence community leadership" - the heads of MI6 and MI5 and
Mr Scarlett - who were responsible for the dossier. It would be a
"travesty" if the DIS was criticised over the affair, he says.
Dr Jones complains that he and others were not allowed to see vital
intelligence supporting the 45-minute and chemical production claims.
He reveals, however, that he has discovered from a colleague that the
reports from the ground did not meet his and others' concerns about the
wording of the JIC's assessments. Also, he says, the Deputy Chief of
Defence Intelligence, Tony Cragg, did not see the supposedly clinching
intelligence and took on trust assurances from MI6 that it was credible.
The Government yesterday finally slipped out its response to the
Intelligence and Security Committee's report last autumn on the
intelligence case in the approach to war.
For the first time ministers conceded that they "understand the reasoning"
for the committee's criticism that the presentation of the 45-minute claim
in the dossier "allowed speculation as to its exact meaning", including the
firing of WMD on long-range missiles. But the Government said it had not
linked the claim to ballistic missiles.
It also rejected the MPs' call for complaints such as that of Dr Jones to
be sent direct to the JIC chairman. "It is important to preserve the line
management authority of JIC members," it said.
Copyright ) 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
*****
____________________________________________________________________
Bush's Independent Commission
EXONERATING THE SPOOKS
____________________________________________________________________
ANOTHER DAY IN THE EMPIRE
Life in Neoconservative America
Monday, February 2, 2004
http://www.kurtnimmo.com/blogger.html
By Kurt Nimmo
Bush's so-called independent commission looking into "intelligence
failures" will be handpicked by the administration. It will be similar to
the 9/11 investigative commission -- that is to say it will produce results
acceptable to Bush and the spooks. The chairman of the 9/11 commission is
Thomas Kean.
Consider Kean emblematic.
"Thomas Kean is a director (and shareholder) of Amerada Hess Corporation ,
which is involved in the Hess-Delta joint venture with Delta Oil of Saudi
Arabia (owned by the bin Mahfouz and Al-Amoudi clans)," notes Michel
Chossudovsky. "In other words, Delta Oil Ltd. of Saudi Arabia -- which is a
partner in the Hess-Delta Alliance -- is in part controlled by Khalid bin
Mafhouz, Osama's brother in law."
You'd think concerned people would be up in arms over a commission assigned
to investigate a terrorist incident blamed on Osama bin Laden with a
director who does business with the main suspect's family. And yet nothing
said about it -- at least nothing said by the Bush Ministry of
Disinformation, otherwise known as Fox, CNN, and all the other alphabet
corporate news agencies.
A so-called "news analysis" of the Bush commission published in the New
York Times notes that another commission -- one head up by Frank Church in
the 1970s chaired to look into the dirty dealings of the CIA -- "is
remembered by many as an inquisition."
Of course, the CIA and its apologists consider it an "inquisition" because
it revealed the true nature of the intelligence organization: election
rigging, assassination, staged military coups, and other covert dirty
tricks.
Bush will hand his commission a big wide brush and a tub of white paint.
Intelligence "professionals" will run the show. Porter Goss (R-Fla.), a
former CIA and Army intelligence officer, and currently the Republican
chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, "is among those who have
argued that any new intelligence inquiry should look forward, rather than
dwell on any past mistakes."
In short, Goss will make sure the closet remains closed and the sacred
territory of the Office of Special Plans (OSP) will not be trespassed.
Instead, the CIA will be issued a mild rebuke and then it will be time to
move on. For its effort, the CIA may even be rewarded.
"Mr. Goss and others will argue that an inquiry ought to lead Americans to
understand that intelligence gathering and analysis is, at best, an
imperfect science."
Americans ought to learn one thing and one thing only -- the CIA, DIA, NSC,
and OSP are not open to public inquiry.
"We've been watching too many James Bond movies, to think it always comes
out all right in the end. It doesn't," Goss excoriated the American people.
In other words, the CIA (actually the untouchable OSP; in this instance the
CIA is a momentary patsy) will not be held accountable for making up far
fetched stories about Saddam's illusory WMD, lies Bush used to invade a
nation. Hey, we all make mistakes, right?
Let's move forward.
Forward means invading countries more effectively. Both Goss and David Kay
believe Bush's invasion of Iraq was the right thing to do. The problem
wasn't Rumsfeld's OSP and its unprincipled lies about Iraq's WMD or
Saddam's imaginary connections to al-Qaeda, but rather the inability of the
CIA to penetrate Saddam's inner circle of thugs.
If Bush's commission demonstrates anything, it will be that the CIA and
other spook agencies need more power, not less. Less oversight, not more.
According to the Bushites and Goss, the CIA needs less political
correctness and more understanding of why the US did business with the
likes of the Shah of Iran, "Papa Doc" Duvalier, Sese Seko Mobutu, Vinicio
Cerezo, Pol Pot, Alfredo Christiani, General Suharto, and a whole lot of
other reprehensible dictators and sadists, including Sadddam Hussein.
Following the logic of Goss and Kay, the arbitrary arrest, torture,
disappearance, and killings of political opponents in Guatemala, Honduras,
El Salvador, the Philippines, Chile, Nicaragua, Indonesia, the Dominican
Republic, Iran, and Iraq -- all facilitated with the assistance and
encouragement of the CIA and the US government -- is nothing less than
business as usual. Such behavior does not need to be modified. It only
needs to be accomplished more effectively.
"One option sure to be addressed by the new commission is one already under
review by the independent panel looking into the Sept. 11 attacks," writes
the New York Times. "The idea is to establish a single director of national
intelligence, appointed to a fixed term of office like the current FBI
chief, and give that director real authority over bodies like the Defense
Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, which now remain
under Pentagon control."
But not the OSP, which remains unnamed. It will continue to crank out
customized "intelligence" and feed it to Bush in preparation for invasions
of Syria and Iran. In the future, if the CIA et al want to stay out of hot
(actually lukewarm) water, they will make sure they are on the same page
with Rumsfeld and the OSP.
Maybe the new intelligence czar will issue straight from the ranks of the
OSP or Bush's inner circle. Is it possible the grooming of Abram Shulsky or
William Luti -- both OSP hacks -- has already moved forward?
Bush's commission will not only mean a reshuffling of the deck, but a fresh
influx of cash.
"[The] attention the inquiry will get may bring other help, like bigger
budgets for agencies whose spending has soared since the Sept. 11 attacks
but that plead for still more money for spies, satellites and other means
of collecting intelligence."
As it now stands, we don't even know the numbers of the CIA's budget. US
District judge Thomas Hogan threw out a lawsuit in 1999 attempting to
compel the government to tell the public how much it spends on
intelligence. The CIA said the numbers are irrelevant. Hogan said revealing
the budget would provide "too much trend information and too great a basis
for comparison and analysis for our adversaries."
Adversaries -- like the American people.
"It is not a question of reluctance on the part of CIA officials to speak
to us," said Senator Leverett Saltonstall in 1966. "Instead it is a
question of our reluctance, if you will, to seek information and knowledge
on subjects which I personally, as a Member of Congress and as a citizen,
would rather not have."
Nothing has changed in the 30 odd years since Saltonstall made his comment.
Congress does not want to know what the CIA or the OSP does -- and they
certainly don't want you to know.
As Chalmer Johnson writes, the term "blowback" came to be "shorthand for
the unintended consequences of U.S. policies kept secret from the American
people. In fact, to CIA officials and an increasing number of American
pundits, blowback has become a term of art acknowledging that the
unconstrained, often illegal, secret acts of the United States in other
countries can result in retaliation against innocent American citizens. The
dirty tricks agencies are at pains never to draw the connection between
what they do and what sometimes happens to those who pay their salaries."
And that's what Bush's "independent" commission is all about -- severing
the connection between what the CIA and the OSP do under the cover of
darkness and the outcome of their actions. It will serve as a grandstand
not to reform the agencies, but rather increase their power and magnify the
damage they inflict. It is a case of rudimentary physics: for action there
is a reaction.
Bush and Congress have bunkers.
We're expected to get by on duct tape.
Kurt Nimmo is a photographer and multimedia developer in Las Cruces, New
Mexico. Nimmo is a contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's, The Politics of
Anti-Semitism. A collection of his essays for CounterPunch, Another Day in
the Empire: Life in Neoconservative America, with an introduction by
Jeffrey St. Clair is now available through Dandelion Books: $17.95 trade
paperback. He can be reached at: ni...@zianet.com.
Copyright ) 2004 Kurt Nimmo
*****
GREEN LEFT WEEKLY
Australia's Socialist Newspaper
E-mail: g...@greenleft.org.au
Web: http://www.greenleft.org.au
- Number 569, February 4, 2004 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
IRAQ: EX-DIPLOMAT REVEALS AUSTRALIA'S ILLEGAL KILLING SPREE
____________________________________________________________________
NICK EVERETT
http://www.greenleft.org.au/back/2004/569/569p24.htm
On January 17, former diplomat Tony Kevin revealed that Australian SAS
forces in Iraq had engaged in a "turkey shoot" against Iraqi troops -- 30
hours before US President George Bush's declaration of war. Green Left
Weekly's Nick Everett spoke to Kevin about the implications of Australia's
role in this covert war.
Kevin explained that he was first alerted to the SAS operation by the award
of "declarations": "Commander of Operation Falconer Maurie McMahon has
received an overt award for his role as commander. But all of the other men
-- and perhaps women -- who received declarations received them
anonymously."
"This is very unusual. You don't normally award military honours to
soldiers when you are not prepared to say when and where the act of bravery
took place. The people of the SAS are pretty angry about this. They are not
politicians. They don't understand why."
Kevin told GLW that "for some 30 hours between March 18 and 20, the SAS was
in military action inside Iraq".
Based on information he obtained from Department of Defence briefing
papers, Kevin observed that "two units with approximately 75 men in each"
had entered Iraq some time before Bush's 48-hour ultimatum on March 18 that
demanded Saddam Hussein stand down.
"One was just west of Baghdad monitoring the highways for possible
movements of Iraqi missiles. That group remained covert and did not engage
in fighting. The second group of 75 men, however, was in the area of
suspected missile sites in western Iraq, just east of the Jordanian border
and that group was in active and high-level military combat."
"They were heavily armed with high technology weaponry and they used it in
ambush type situations. They took out a lot of Iraqi casualties. There were
no casualties whatsoever among the SAS."
Kevin described the attack by SAS troops as a "turkey shoot".
"On March 17 in Washington, which was the morning of March 18 in Canberra,
Bush said he gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to stand down from power. Now any
reasonable person would understand the meaning of that to be that military
action would not commence until after that 48 hours. Indeed, the US took
great care to take no declared military action during that 48 hours. The
first declared action of the war took place 1.5 hours after the end of the
48 hours, on March 20 Iraq time, when the attempt was made to kill Saddam
Hussein in the 'decapitation' bombing raid."
Immediately after Bush's ultimatum, Howard made a statement in Canberra
"choosing his words very carefully", explained Kevin. "He said that he was
committing Australian military forces to the coalition for 'possible future
military action' and he said that our forces were ready to take part in any
military action that may take place in the future."
But while the media interpreted his statement to suggest that the SAS was
ready to engage in military action only after it had been declared, the SAS
was in fact mounting an ambush operation against Iraqi troops. Howard
maintained the fiction throughout this ultimatum period.
According to Kevin, "two days later -- on March 20 -- Howard made a second
statement at Parliament House announcing 'today marks the first indication
of our active involvement' and he pledged that Australian forces will
operate in accordance with the laws of war."
But an Australian Defence Force briefing on May 9 by Colonel John Mansell
revealed more details. Mansell stated that the SAS had been fighting on the
first night -- hours after Howard had committed Australia to operations in
Iraq. An article in the Jerusalem Post by Australian writer Colin
Rubenstein confirms that the SAS was "actually fighting for about 30 hours
in the period of that ultimatum", explained Kevin.
"This was going out all guns blazing at different levels of weaponry --
they talk about three levels of weaponry to kill at three different ranges.
This is deliberate mass-killing war", said Kevin.
In a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald on January 20, defence minister
Robert Hill conceded that SAS forces were in action before March 20,
stating "the government's decision to commit the Australian Defence Force
to Coalition operations in Iraq was announced on March 18 and from that
time the Defence Force was under operational command".
But Hill's assertions belie the reality that this information had been
carefully disguised to an Australian public largely opposed to Australian
involvement, says Kevin.
Kevin told GLW that "[Australian SAS] troops were ordered to go into war in
a situation where the enemy -- or the putative enemy -- did not know he was
at war. That is treacherous, that is immoral", asserted Kevin. "We should
not be asking our soldiers to do those things. Basically we were asking
those men to behave as outlaws."
This covert action, according to Kevin, "was a huge risk to those men,
quite apart from the hundreds of Iraqis they killed or wounded. Had they
been captured they would have been war criminals. They could have been up
before the International Criminal Court, to which Australia subscribes".
Reflecting on why the federal government chose to engage Australian troops
in a covert operation, Kevin explained "I think PM John Howard was very
keen to demonstrate absolute loyalty to the US alliance. Australia is
signaling that we are prepared to fight for the US in the 'war against
terror' anywhere in the world. We have shown this in the way we are
prepared to make ourselves a diplomatic hostage over North Korea... We have
shown it in Afghanistan [and] we have shown it now in Iraq".
"It may have a little bit to do with the forthcoming bilateral trade
agreement negotiations", he added.
On the Australian government's current commitment to the occupation, Kevin
noted that "one of the clever things that PM John Howard did was have an
exit strategy".
"There are heavy casualties being taken by all occupation troops -- not
just Americans, but British and Polish and Spanish -- Australia saved
itself from all of that. Howard, by this act of conspicuous bravery and
political risk taking at the beginning gave himself an out. He could say to
the Americans we have done our bit and we don't what to have anything to do
with the occupation", said Kevin.
While acknowledging the Australian government remains committed to the
occupation, Kevin observed that the Australian government has sought to
keep Australian troops "out of harms way" to minimise the potentially
damaging political cost of any Australian casualties.
Kevin urged the anti-war movement to remain vigilant. "Expose the truth and
bring the guilty to account", he told GLW.
All rights reserved, Green Left Weekly. Redistribution permitted with this
notice attached. Redistribution for profit prohibited.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
DOES ONE MAN ON DEATH ROW HOLD THE SECRET OF OKLAHOMA?
____________________________________________________________________
THE INDEPENDENT
World: Americas
29 January 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=485716
Andrew Gumbel reports
One of the most notorious criminals in the US, David Hammer was imprisoned
alongside Timothy McVeigh. As he faces execution, his memoirs will only
fuel the whispers of conspiracy around the 1995 bombing.
If he had only his own tale to tell, the story of David Paul Hammer -
career criminal, scourge of the US prison system and, now, the next federal
prisoner in line to be executed - would already be extraordinary enough. In
his native Oklahoma, where he first entered the prison system 26 years ago
at the age of 19, he so exasperated and terrified the state prison
authorities with his spasms of extraordinary violence and his two
successful escapes that they constructed a special isolation cage for him
with shatterproof glass and reinforced steel doors. Since arriving on
federal death row, he has often been likened to Hannibal Lecter, the
savagely intelligent man-eating serial killer of pulp fiction and Hollywood
movies. And not without reason.
Like Lecter, the crimes he has admitted committing are little short of
flabbergasting. At the age of 18, strung out on PCP and contemplating
suicide, he held several hostages at gunpoint at the Oklahoma City
Hospital. At 24, during the second of his two prison escapes, Hammer took a
man at gunpoint, ordered him to undress on a lonely road and shot him three
times in the head. The man, who somehow survived, later testified in court
he found Hammer to be "crazy, man ... completely insane".
Having been transferred to the federal prison system - Oklahoma could not
cope - Hammer then brutally murdered the first man unlucky enough to be
assigned as his cell mate, tying him to his bunk with knotted bedsheets,
stuffing a sock in his mouth and slowly garrotting him with a braided cord.
That was the crime that earned him the death sentence and a final transfer
to "Dog Unit", the federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Like Lecter, Hammer is also a man of impish deviousness. In Oklahoma, he
ran scams using the credit card numbers of prison guards, set up a bogus
church with himself as minister and his fellow inmates as the board of
directors, conned a department store into sending him thousands of dollars
of merchandise, orchestrated death threats against elected officials and,
on one notorious occasion, brought the Oklahoma legislature to a standstill
with a chillingly convincing bomb threat.
For a long time, the system simply did not know what to do with him. The
judge who tried him after the kidnapping and shooting incident sentenced
him to 1200 years behind bars, prompting a shocked Hammer to blurt out:
"But, your honour, I can"t do 1200 years!" The judge replied: "That's okay,
son, just do as much as you can."
Hammer is more than just a criminal monster, however. He may be deeply
tormented, for reasons stretching back to earliest childhood, but he is
also highly intelligent and almost limitlessly resourceful when it comes to
understanding the prison environment and figuring out how to take his quiet
revenge on the system.
Already before he arrived in Terre Haute, he made himself useful to lawyers
and researchers working on cases that depended on an intimate knowledge of
the US prison system. Nothing gave him greater pleasure than to read of a
possible miscarriage of justice and then volunteer his services as the most
inside of inside sources.
After he arrived in Terre Haute, he was granted access to one of the most
notorious and, in many ways, least understood American criminals of modern
times, the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. For 23 months, between the
establishment of the Terre Haute death row in 1999 and McVeigh's execution
in 2001, the two men lived three cells down from each other. Although each
had plentiful reason to be wary of the other " McVeigh, like everyone,
appears to have been terrified of Hammer at first " they eventually formed
a bond that deepened into genuine friendship.
And now Hammer has written a book about it. Or rather, he has written a
book that promises to unlock a whole treasure chest of secrets about the
Oklahoma City bombing, based in part on his conversations with McVeigh. The
book, entitled Secrets Worth Dying For and due to be issued by a small
Indiana publishing house next month, is likely to be Hammer's epitaph since
he has just relinquished all further appeals and is awaiting an execution
date, expected to be set sometime this spring or early summer.
It turns out that Hammer has not one but three extraordinary stories to
tell " his own, McVeigh's and that of a certain Kenneth Michael Trentadue,
who starts out as a bit player and ends up taking on a role of surprising
prominence. Even if one chooses not to believe everything (this is, after
all, the memoir of a violent criminal, not a work of investigative
journalism) what is inescapable by the end is an absolutely hair-raising
trail of dead bodies, many of them found hanging in prison cells under less
than transparent circumstances, and all of them traceable in some way back
to the Oklahoma City bombing. Real-life mysteries don"t get much better
than this.
The first time Tim McVeigh spoke to David Hammer, he immediately bragged
about the death toll at the Oklahoma City federal building in a
characteristic mixture of bravado and utter tastelessness. "All I have to
say is that the official score is 168 to 1. I"m up," said. To which Hammer
replied: "Well, I guess they can"t kill you more than once."
Even on federal death row, McVeigh's crimes were on a scale that disgusted
his fellow inmates. He was frequently tarred as a "baby killer" (the bomb
exploded directly beneath a children's day care centre) and taunted for
everything from his conviction that the world would tumble into chaos as
the year 2000 rolled around, to his apparent dearth of sexual experiences.
"Virgin McVeigh", they called him.
Hammer describes McVeigh as being obsessed with posterity and his
reputation as the lone-wolf mastermind of what was then the worst peacetime
atrocity committed on US soil. He refused to keep any compromising items in
his cell, for fear that they would be found in the event of his sudden
death. He didn"t even want a dictionary, in case people accused him of
being a bad speller. When he needed medicine, he would ask another inmate
to describe his symptoms to a doctor and get the prescription on his
behalf. Illness, he thought, might be interpreted as a form of weakness.
Slowly, though, Hammer, McVeigh and a third inmate, Jeffrey Paul, started
to spend time together, if only because they were the sole white prisoners
on death row. They nicknamed their regular meetings "Klan rallies", even
though McVeigh was the only white supremacist among them. Hammer explained
the relationship this way: "Our associations were not always amiable, there
were intense disputes and allegations of broken promises and even
treachery, but in the end the necessity for cooperation won out." Hammer
and Paul helped McVeigh project the image of himself that he wanted, and
McVeigh, in turn, started talking to them about some of the details of the
Oklahoma City bombing that he was not willing to share with anybody else.
Much of what Hammer writes about the bombing goes over terrain already
explored in a number of books and articles challenging the lone-wolf theory
put forward publicly by both McVeigh and his government prosecutors.
Notably, he runs through the compelling evidence, laid out in The
Independent in May 2001, that McVeigh was part of a neo-Nazi bank robbery
gang which financed the bombing and actively participated in bringing it to
fruition " a version the government has been at great pains to pooh-pooh,
because it would make a mockery of the scenario its prosecutors impressed
upon the courts and the public at large. It is not clear how much of
Hammer's material came directly from McVeigh, and how much from outside
sources " the manuscript suggests a bit of each.
Sifting through Hammer's information and deciding how much to believe is a
delicate process. The McVeigh in the book is not immune to paranoid
self-aggrandisement, to put it mildly, and some of his claims say much more
about him than they do about the bombing itself. In an extended riff, for
example, he suggests he was approached towards the end of his time in the
armed forces by a shady US government operative calling himself only The
Major. The Major supposedly recruited McVeigh to infiltrate the militant
far right, and later encouraged him to go ahead with the Oklahoma City
bombing because its sheer brutality would shock the right-wing militia
movement into breaking apart. In other words, the whole thing was a
convoluted government plot, with McVeigh as the feds" fall guy. It's an
intriguing story, except there isn"t a shred of credible evidence to back
it up.
Other avenues of conversation proved much more fruitful from a factual
point of view. None seems to have drawn Hammer and McVeigh together more
closely than the story of Kenny Trentadue, a man neither of them had ever
met but who came to fascinate them both and serve their mutual interest in
embarrassing the federal government.
Trentadue was a convicted bank robber who had served his time and then
skipped out on his parole officer, apparently because he was outraged at
being barred from drinking beer. On August 18, 1995 " four months after the
Oklahoma City bombing " he was picked up crossing the border from Mexico to
southern California and then, for reasons the government has yet to
explain, was transported to the Department of Justice's brand-new Federal
Transfer Center in Oklahoma City. Three days later, his bloody, battered
corpse was released to the state medical examiner's office. Prison
officials claimed he had committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell.
There the story might have ended, but for Trentadue's family which refused
to accede to official requests to have the body cremated and insisted on an
autopsy. In the contorted events that followed, it turned out that
Trentadue's body was covered in blood from head to toe. He had suffered
three massive blows to the head, rupturing his scalp and skull, and his
throat was slit. The government continued to insist that his injuries were
self-inflicted, even as a growing chorus of journalists, congressmen and
legal experts voiced their suspicions of foul play.
David Hammer read about the case in the papers and wrote to Trentadue's
brother Jesse, a lawyer in Salt Lake City, to offer his help in negotiating
a path around the federal prison bureaucracy in the hunt for the truth. At
that time it occurred to nobody that Kenny Trentadue's death might have had
anything to do with the Oklahoma City bombing.
That changed, however, when Hammer arrived in Terre Haute and showed
McVeigh a picture of Trentadue. McVeigh responded immediately: "Now I know
Trentadue was killed, because they thought he was Richard Guthrie."
Guthrie is a name that looms very large in all of the alternative theories
of the Oklahoma bombing. He was one of the neo-Nazi bank robbers suspected
of involvement in the bombing, a former Navy SEAL with explosives training
and a track record of anti-government violence. At the time of Trentadue's
arrest, he was at large, believed to be in either Mexico or Canada, and
urgently sought by the FBI. He was the same height and the same weight as
Trentadue, with similar complexion and a similar thick moustache. Both men
used aliases. They even had the same dragon-motif tattoo on their left arms
" something they had in common with the police sketch in circulation at the
time of McVeigh's presumed accomplice, referred to simply as "John Doe 2".
In other words, Trentadue's fate appears to have been the result of a
disastrous case of mistaken identity. As the Trentadue family now sees it,
Kenny was apprehended at the border, immediately flagged as a possible
"John Doe 2", and shipped off to Oklahoma City for further questioning. Why
he ended up dead in his cell is a matter of pure speculation, but he was
not the only person connected to the Oklahoma bombing to end up that way.
The real Richard Guthrie was apprehended in January 1996 and charged on
bank robbery charges only - the government having apparently lost interest
in linking the robberies to the bombing by then. (The hunt for John Doe 2
formally ended a year later, with the FBI publicly announcing they now
believed McVeigh acted alone.) Six months after his arrest, Guthrie was
found hanging in his cell under circumstances that some friends and family
found suspicious. He had been due to give a major television interview the
very next day.
As the Trentadue investigation deepened, an inmate who had been in the
Oklahoma Federal Transfer Center at the time of Trentadue's death came
forward claiming to have witnessed the whole thing. According to FBI
documentation repeatedly disavowed by the Justice Department, Alden Gillis
Baker had actually been sharing Trentadue's cell on the fateful night. And
now " this was sometime in 1999 - he was volunteering to testify that
Trentadue was murdered. But then something went wrong. In December 1999,
Baker told a lawyer he feared for his life because of threats from the
guards in his new prison in California. In August 2000, he was found
hanging by a sheet in his cell.
Is it outrageous to think these deaths might all be related? Is the federal
government that scared of having its lone-wolf theory of the Oklahoma City
bombing contradicted? Or is this string of 'suicides" explainable simply as
a result of unstable prisoners coming into contact with less than
upstanding employees of the criminal justice system?
The nuances of the cases are too complex to go into in this space, but here
are a couple of considerations. First, in May 2001 the Trentadue family was
awarded $1.1 million in damages for "intentional infliction of emotional
distress" by the Justice Department, lending considerable credence to their
suspicion that Kenny was murdered. The federal judge who ruled in their
favour lambasted three government witnesses for what he said were 'serious
questions about their truthfulness". The court was unable, however, to rule
on the exact cause of Trentadue's death because too much evidence in the
case had been destroyed. Trentadue's family has lodged an appeal to try to
push the case further their way.
Secondly, the crucial clue McVeigh gave Hammer about the resemblance
between Trentadue and Guthrie looks more and more convincing on closer
inspection. It is perhaps appropriate to approach the source of the
information with some scepticism, but if McVeigh didn"t say it, then Hammer
must have made it up, and there is absolutely no reason to presume Hammer
knew who Richard Guthrie was, let alone have a detailed idea of what he
looked like. Conversely, if McVeigh did say it, then he not only offered a
plausible explanation for Trentadue's transfer from the Mexican border to
Oklahoma City, he also linked himself to Guthrie and the neo-Nazi bank
robbers " the most significant admission extant from him to that effect. We
do know from a separate source that McVeigh was extremely interested in
Trentadue's case: Trentadue took up a large chunk of space in McVeigh's
correspondence with a writer from Esquire magazine, published shortly after
his execution in 2001. McVeigh also told Hammer he had come up with a new
verb participle, "trentadued", meaning murdered by the federal government.
The Trentadue family has gladly adopted the term as its own.
What could Hammer's motivation be in revealing all this now, on the eve of
his own death? Part of it, no doubt, is a continuing desire to stick it to
the system and shame the prison system with some unpalatable truths from
deep within its bowels. He has gone on record many times to say how
strongly he opposes capital punishment and the way the US prison
bureaucracy works. Another part of his motivation, bizarrely, is an homage
to his friend Timothy McVeigh. Hammer was so upset by McVeigh's execution
that he attempted suicide the night before by injecting himself with an
overdose of insulin (he is diabetic). After he recovered, he wrote the
following diary entry which is reproduced in his book:
"My friend, Tim, is a troubled and misguided man. We disagree on most
issues, but he is also a kind, loving and caring person with a quick smile,
keen wit and a sense of humour. I will miss him and I continue to pray for
his soul." The psychotic monster and the headline-grabbing mass murderer:
it must have been one hell of a relationship.
Copyright ) 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
*****
________________________________________________________________________
SEARCHING FOR OKC BOMBING EVIDENCE, POLICE RAID HOME OF FORMER
CONGRESSMAN'S AIDE
________________________________________________________________________
McCURTAIN DAILY GAZETTE
Local News
Sunday, February 1, 2004
http://www.mccurtain.com
By J.D. Cash
The Fairfax County, Va., home of John Culbertson -- once a member of former
U.S. Rep. James Traficant's scandal-plagued congressional office -- was
raided Friday afternoon by Oklahoma City police detectives searching for
evidence related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
A copy of the search warrant obtained by the McCurtain Daily Gazette
described the evidence sought by detectives as including any and all
computer equipment, letters, correspondence, electronic mail and image
files. The raid was prompted after a Jan. 27 "in-camera hearing" attended
by prosecutors and defense attorneys involved with the Terry Nichols murder
trial, set to begin in McAlester one month from today.
Information seeking the warrant indicates that during the closed-door
meeting with District Judge Steven Taylor, it was brought to the attention
of prosecutors that Culbertson could have critical evidence of the bombing
crime -- evidence that had not come to the attention of state or federal
prosecutors.
According to the affidavit filed with the search warrant, Nichols' defense
attorneys filed a motion under seal with the court and further advised
prosecutors that Culbertson "may have possession of a video and/or still
photographs of a Ryder truck parked in front of the Alfred P. Murrah
building before the explosion and during the explosion."
The motion presented by defense attorneys stated that Dallas, Texas,
attorney Thomas W. Mills Jr. observed and described a video and still
photos that Culbertson showed him.
The affidavit also indicates that Nichols' defense attorneys said they
attempted to contact Culbertson and that he was not cooperative in showing
them the possible evidence.
Following up on a recommendation by Judge Taylor to conduct an
investigation into the matter, next Oklahoma City police detective Mark R.
Easley the next day traveled to Dallas for an interview with Mills at his
law office. Mills advised that years ago he had gone to Washington, D.C. to
meet with Culbertson and actually viewed the video on Aug. 26, 1998.
Mills specifically told police detectives that he saw a portion of a video
and possibly three still pictures that were stored on Culbertson's laptop
computer.
In an affidavit obtained by this newspaper, Detective Easley said Mills
told him the images he was shown included the Murrah building in "pristine
condition."
Mills then said, "Mr. Culbertson pushed a button and a second photograph
came up with a small glow at the bottom of the building. Mr. Culbertson
pushed another button and another frame appeared of a ball of fire rising
from the building and the building fell.
"Mr. Mills asked where the video and pictures came from (and) Mr.
Culbertson said it came from an ATF agent."
In the motion filed by Nichols' defense earlier, attorney Mark Earnest
explained that he interviewed both Mills and Culbertson about the potential
evidence. He said Culbertson told him his request for a copy of the video
and photographs "placed Culbertson in a tight spot."
When contacted by telephone late last week, Culbertson told an Oklahoma
City police detective that he had turned over a copy of the evidence to the
House Judiciary Committee several years ago. Asked if he still had a copy
of the material, Culbertson was described as evasive -- refusing to divulge
that information.
Appearing July 27, 2000, before the Committee on the Judiciary of the House
of Representatives, the record shows that Culbertson alluded to the subject
of the possible existence of a videotape of the bomb blast in Oklahoma
City.
Speaking as the director of the Center for Reform in Washington, D.C.,
Culbertson told members of the committee:
"With respect to the statements made by the Department of Justice that
there are no photos or videos of the explosions of the Murrah Building, we
have discovered that some indeed exist and are known to members of the law
enforcement community.
"We have a short video presentation with a federal police officer
describing a surveillance tape he personally witnessed at a gathering of
law enforcement officers and comparing it to similar photos we have
obtained in the Oklahoma City investigation, which will be presented after
this opening statement, with your consent, Mr. Chairman. It is about 2
minutes long.
"This is a video taken April 13 of this year. It is a Federal police
officer describing a surveillance tape from Oklahoma City he personally
witnessed and comparing it to other photos we have uncovered."
During his appearance before the House Committee, Culbertson filed an
affidavit containing statements he says were made by a federal agent who,
Culbertson claimed, told him he was present at a training seminar after the
bombing when this remarkable videotape was alleged to have been shown to
several federal agents.
The statement included in the official record of the hearing is as follows:
"The Federal Police Officer described two distinct explosions the locations
of which are consistent with evidence uncovered in the course of
investigating the attack on the Murrah Federal Building. The Federal Police
Officer also stated that the photos and video frames recovered as described
above are consistent with the surveillance video that he witnessed in the
training seminar. The officer's statement as well as photos obtained in the
investigation is contained in this document."
Culbertson went on to testify, "The Department of Justice has deprived the
public of this important information as well as the courts in various
jurisdictions charged with trying cases related to the bombing. This act is
nothing short of callous and malicious obstruction of justice in what many
might consider one of the most important cases of the Twentieth Century."
However, under direct examination by a member of the committee, Culbertson
admitted that he did not have possession of the film.
The transcript of the hearing contains this exchange between Culbertson and
Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York:
Mr. NADLER. Have you seen it?
Mr. CULBERTSON. I actually conducted the interview in Mr. Traficant's office.
Mr. NADLER. Have you seen the tape, I asked.
Mr. CULBERTSON. The surveillance tape?
Mr. NADLER. No. You have not seen the surveillance tape. Do you have it
with you today?
Mr. CULBERTSON. The videotape?
Mr. NADLER. No, the surveillance tape.
Mr. CULBERTSON. No.
Mr. NADLER. So this is a tape of an officer talking about a different tape
that we cannot see?
Mr. CULBERTSON. We are attempting to get this tape. This is a tape of a
police officer describing what he saw and comparing it to photographs and
videotape frames that we have in our possession. There are more than one
series of surveillance.
On July 30, 2002, a federal judge sentenced Culbertson's boss, James
Traficant, to eight years in prison and fined him $150,000 after a jury
found the Ohio Democrat guilty on 10 counts of bribery, racketeering and
tax evasion.
The guilty verdict led the House to strip Traficant of his seat, making him
only the second member of Congress kicked out since the Civil War.
Culbertson remained on the former congressman's office staff for a short
time until elections could be held to fill the vacancy.
An inventory of the items removed from the Culbertson residence has not
been made public. So whether the evidence sought was located during
Friday's raid will have to remain a mystery a little longer.
Copyright ) 2004 McCurtain Daily Gazette
*****
____________________________________________________________________
PAKISTAN NUKES: GENERAL MAYHEM
____________________________________________________________________
ASIA TIMES ONLINE
South Asia
February 5, 2004
http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FB05Df05.html
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
KARACHI - According to the official version released this week, Dr Abdul
Qadeer Khan, the architect of Pakistan's nuclear-weapons program, has
admitted in a lengthy confession that he was involved in a personal
capacity in the transfer of technology and information to Iran, North Korea
and Libya over a period of many years up to the mid-1990s.
However, according to those claiming to be close to Khan, who has been
under house arrest for more than a week, the 66-year-old metallurgist
denies elements of his "confession" statement and points instead squarely
to the complicity of the country's military in nuclear proliferation.
What is not in doubt is that from the beginning, in the mid-1970s, Khan has
been intimately involved in every stage of the building of Pakistan's
nuclear bomb, right up to May 1998, when Pakistan conducted underground
nuclear tests. Also not in dispute is that Pakistani know-how - in whatever
form - certainly ended up in Iran, as that country has confirmed to the
United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency.
It is inconceivable, therefore, that Khan could not have known if
technology or information from the closely guarded program (which, for most
of the time from its inception, fell directly under the wing of the
military) was being transferred elsewhere.
And therein lies the dilemma for President General Pervez Musharraf.
If the military has indeed been involved - reports doing the rounds in
Pakistan now even point to Musharraf himself - and Musharraf attempts to
pin the blame on Khan and a few others as "loose cannons" and takes them to
trial, the scientist can easily retaliate by spilling every single unsavory
bean. The other option for Musharraf is to go easy on Khan, such as by
pardoning him, and attempt to spread some of the blame on to lesser figures
not in a position to tell too many nasty tales.
Initially, Musharraf appears to have taken the first route, hence Khan's
confession given to the media late on Sunday, and stories fed to the media
by a brigadier in the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) of the murky
underworld of proliferation in which Khan was the key figure.
But as it emerged that Khan was not prepared to shoulder the blame on his
own, Musharraf has changed tack slightly.
The Interior Ministry announced on Wednesday that it had ordered the
detention of four scientists for three months on accusations that they
passed on nuclear-weapons technology to other countries. The order came
into effect retroactively on January 31. The four, who had been under
investigation for some time, are: Dr Mohammed Farooq, Dr Nazir Ahmed,
Brigadier (retired) Sajawal Khan Malik and Major (retired) Islam ul-Haq.
These are relatively lesser lights who would not have Khan's intimate
knowledge of the country's nuclear secrets.
And now reports are swirling in Pakistan that Musharraf will pardon Khan
without trial. Some newspapers are quoting an unnamed official who has been
closely associated with Khan's investigation as saying that he will be
absolved since there is a risk that a trial would expose the Pakistan
army's involvement in the scandal.
This scenario is reinforced by news on Wednesday aired on state TV that
Khan had met with Musharraf in Rawalpindi and "accepted full responsibility
for all transfers", but importantly, Khan is said to have asked for
clemency.
"Khan has accepted full responsibility for all the nuclear proliferation
activities which were conducted by him during the period in which he was at
the helm of affairs of the Khan Research Laboratories," a government
statement said, referring to Pakistan's main nuclear weapons laboratory.
Musharraf will now consult the National Command Authority, the top
decision-making body on Pakistan's nuclear and missile program, before
deciding whether to accept Khan's plea for mercy, the statement said.
Pakistan television showed an interview with Khan, who said he had told the
president "what had happened". "He [Musharraf] appreciated the frankness
with which I gave him the details and insh'allah [God willing] he will
discuss with the cabinet, with the prime minister, with other colleagues
and then he will take a decision how to proceed and close this matter."
The way is now cleared for Musharraf magnanimously to absolve Khan, who is,
after all, widely revered in the country, as he not only developed the
Muslim world's first nuclear bomb but in doing so, the argument goes in
much of Pakistan, he kept giant neighbor India at bay.
The "clemency" solution seems to be the one favored by Washington, too. On
Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, in a briefing to the
media, said the United States valued Musharraf's assurances that the
Pakistani government had never been involved in technology transfers to
Iran, North Korea and Libya. "He [Musharraf] has assured us that Pakistan
was not involved in any of the proliferation activity that you are talking
about," McClellan said.
This position has been backed up by US Deputy Secretary of State Richard
Armitage, who, in an interview with Japan's Asahi Shimbun, said that only
individuals, and not the Pakistan government, had been involved in nuclear
proliferation. "The US has held significant discussions with the Pakistan
government, which has been very forthright in the last several years with
us about proliferation," Armitage said.
Guilty as charged?
Though Pakistan's nuclear program was the brainchild of premier Zulfiqar
Ali Bhutto, when General Zia ul-Haq overthrew Bhutto's civilian government
in a coup in 1977, Zia embraced the initiative right up until his death in
a plane crash in 1988.
Other military names that have been bandied about as integral to
proliferation include at least three chiefs of army staff: General Mirza
Aslam Beg, General Jehangir Karamat and Musharraf, who held that position
when he grabbed power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
According to an insider familiar with the debriefing of Beg and Karamat -
who maintain their innocence - a whole range of military officials, the ISI
and undercover agents established a massive network with tentacles spread
all over the Asia-Pacific, Southern Africa, Europe and America.
Hussain Haqqani, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace in Washington, DC, spoke to Asia Times Online from the
United States. Hussain was once a favorite adviser of General Zia, and he
served in two civilian governments in Pakistan - those of Nawaz Sharif and
Benazir Bhutto.
"General Musharraf has been trying to persuade the world that he is the
good guy in Pakistan and that he controls the army. But the fact is that it
is incredulous to suggest that one man, alone, can be the West's
trustworthy ally in a nation of 150 million and that somehow he is the only
general in Pakistani history who has seen the light and knows how to do the
right thing ... It is clear that Musharraf and his team of ruling generals
have decided to make Dr Qadeer Khan and a few other scientists scapegoats
for something that the military-intelligence complex probably did as an
institution ... In the 1980s and 1990s, the military leadership felt it had
to go behind America's back to realize its strategic objectives.
"Now, under Musharraf, some of them have changed their minds, but they are
not willing to take collective responsibility for their institution's
actions ... On the one hand Musharraf wants us to believe that the
Pakistani military-intelligence machine controls almost everything that
goes on in the country, and on the other they expect us to believe that
nuclear secrets could have been traded without their approval ... By
pointing the finger solely at Dr Khan, General Musharraf may have paved the
way for Dr Khan's friends and associates to charge back that the
military-intelligence machine is the real rogue in Pakistan. There will
definitely be demands to hold this massive unaccountable machine
accountable ..."
Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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