MORE TRANSLATION FOLLIES?

Oh no, here we go again. More excuses to hire more Muslims in sensitive government agency jobs, while rejecting Jewish applicants who are well-versed in these languages. Why reject Jewish and other linguistic experts? Because the Muslim religious mafia objects, that's why, and what oil-greased Muslim thugs demand, oil-greased Muslim thugs get. Despite the fact that several of these folks have been arrested on charges of espionage, have lobbied for special privileges and set asides at various agencies, and have conducted various other acts of jihad right under the nose of our own homeland security forces, the stealth jihad rolls on. If the Pentagon and CIA obliged them under the Bush administration, how much more so under the current POTUS, who has made it perfectly clear how well he treats his friends and their enemies in the Middle East...

CIA DIRECTOR Leon E. Panetta will ask Congress in the coming weeks to fund an "aggressive" five-year plan to enhance the spy agency's language capabilities.

In a letter to agency employees Friday, Mr. Panetta said the goal of doubling the number of analysts and collectors proficient in foreign languages is imperative for dealing with developing threats around the world.

"Language skills are the keys to accessing foreign societies, understanding their governments and decoding their secrets," Mr. Panetta said. "This important initiative will require significant new funding. In the coming weeks and months, I will reach out across the intelligence community, to the Office of Management and Budget, and most importantly, to our partners in Congress to find the necessary resources."

The clandestine agency hopes to dramatically transform the way the CIA trains officers in foreign languages. Languages of particular interest are Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan), Urdu (used in Pakistan), and Persian.

SWISS INVOLVED IN NUCLEAR SHENANIGANS

THE PRESIDENT OF SWITZERLAND stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

The Swiss president, Pascal Couchepin, took no questions. But he asserted that the files—which included an array of plans for nuclear arms and technologies, among them a highly sophisticated Pakistani bomb design—had been destroyed so that they would never fall into terrorist hands.

Behind that official explanation, though, is a far more intriguing tale of spies, moles and the compromises that governments make in the name of national security.

The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.

Over four years, several of these officials said, operatives of the C.I.A. paid the Tinners as much as $10 million, some of it delivered in a suitcase stuffed with cash. In return, the Tinners delivered a flow of secret information that helped end Libya’s bomb program, reveal Iran’s atomic labors and, ultimately, undo Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market.

In addition, American and European officials said, the Tinners played an important role in a clandestine American operation to funnel sabotaged nuclear equipment to Libya and Iran, a major but little-known element of the efforts to slow their nuclear progress.

The relationship with the Tinners “was very significant,” said Gary S. Samore, who ran the National Security Council’s nonproliferation office when the operation began. “That’s where we got the first indications that Iran had acquired centrifuges,” which enrich uranium for nuclear fuel.

Read it all in the New York Times. And, of course, far be it from the Times to hold the lid on American secret operations. Here's the deal:

An inventor and mechanical engineer, Friedrich Tinner got his start in Swiss companies that make vacuum technology, mazes of pipes, pumps and valves used in many industries. Mr. Tinner received United States patents for his innovative vacuum valves. By definition, his devices were so-called dual-use products with peacetime or wartime applications. Governments often feel torn between promoting such goods as commercial boons and blocking them as security risks.

As recounted in books and articles and reports by nuclear experts, Mr. Tinner worked with Dr. Khan for three decades, beginning in the mid-1970s. His expertise in vacuum technology aided Dr. Khan’s development of atomic centrifuges, which produced fuel for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, now variously estimated at 50 to 100 warheads.

Yet while Mr. Tinner repeatedly drew the attention of European authorities, who questioned the export of potentially dangerous technology, he never faced charges. Mr. Tinner’s involvement with Dr. Khan deepened beginning in the late 1990s, when, joined by his sons, he helped supply centrifuges for Libya’s secret bomb program.

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated. Spy satellites can be fooled. Documents can lie. Electronic taps can mislead. But a well-placed mole can work quietly behind the scenes to get at the truth.

For instance, the United States had gathered circumstantial evidence that Iran wanted an atom bomb. Suddenly it had a direct view into clandestine Iranian procurement of centrifuges and other important nuclear items.

This is all very sad, and precisely why the peace movement, dear friends, can and should never be localized. War is a global business with unsavory players in every nook and cranny. There is always more cloak and dagger intrigue going on behind the scenes than any self-righteous group of ordinary citizens can possibly know at any given moment in time. There will be a war of massive scale, so devastating, so wicked, so awful in its reach that finally mankind will be defeated in its pursuits for domination. Only then will peace be possible. I personally despise this notion, but I fearfully suspect it is also the truest statement to be written about the mind of man in these dangerous times. Thus, I support my own government to do its military best to stop this next war, by any means necessary. Because this next war will not be cheered by victors.

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE NAPPING

Introducing Bruce Tefft, the Director of CRA's Threat Assessment Center. Retired from the CIA as a case officer in 1995 after 21 years, 17 working in Stations abroad, Tefft was a founding member of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center in 1985 and has been involved with terrorism issues since then. After his retirement, he has continued studying Islamic terrorist techniques and training more than 16,000 first responders, law enforcement, military and intelligence officials in terrorism awareness and prevention. For a two year period following 9/11, he was the Counter-Terrorism and Intelligence advisor to the New York Police Department.

Here is his quite succinct statement on the current threat circling the globe with stealth wings:

The "War on Terror" and the use of the terms "Islamofascism" or "radical Islam" are basic examples of faulty nomenclature. One terrorism is a tactic, used by an enemy. One wages war on the enemy, not the tactic. During WWII we did not wage war on the "blitzkrieg" or "kamikaze pilots"—we fought a war against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japanese. We are fighting a 14-century year old war against Islam and its adherents, Muslims. And it is a war that they have declared on all non-Muslims as part of their religious mandate, their ideology, to make the whole world Islamic, under the Caliphate, and to convert, kill or enslave all non-Muslims.

In a recent interview with FrontPageMag, Tefft is characteristic clear, "Well sir, again, it is not Muslims that are the problem. Islam is the problem. There are many Muslims who want a modernized and democratic Islam—Salim Mansur, Thomas Haidon, Kamal Nawash and Mustafa Akyol are among them. And these reformers and moderates oppose the extremists in their religion just as much as any one us."

BURNING BUSH CONSPIRACIES

Despite a recent poll that 12% of Americans defy the functions of ordinary intelligence amidst clear evidence to the contrary in suggesting that the Bush administration had an active hand in the September 11 attacks on American soil, we cannot dismiss all the bad news thrown at us by conspiracy theorists aiming to tear America apart at the seams.

The following scenario, while old news, is almost certainly factual, and continues to point up the hard conclusion that Saudi Arabia is no less a declared enemy against the West and the United States than Iran is, and that the US military is little more than a mercenary force controlled by Saudi interests held in place by the kingdom's subtle threats against our nation's economical best interests.

And it is this realization that compels me to advocate with the most avid anti-war protestor that the US needs to vacate Iraq and Afghanistan, cease all overt military actions until we are attacked once more, close our borders to ALL immigration, begin rebuilding our own infrastructure and fortitude, leaving the ME Islamists (Arabs & Chaldeans) to quarrel among themselves for supremacy in the hopes of weakening the Camp of Islam as it pursues its oft-stated desire to reconstitute its beloved Caliphate, And then we should take a hard look at shutting down the Saudi-financed madrassas springing up all over the West since the 1970s, and deporting or charging with treason all hard line Muslims and sympathizers who would call for jihad and sharia law on American soil. War is a nasty business. And it is rarely won with words. Let the saber-rattling masquerade begin!

Given the impossible task of actually earning or owning its own right of return according to Leftists even those among their own people, Israel can and therefore must protect itself. After all, it has vowed to use the Samson option if pushed to the wall, and will not flinch. Never again!

America, unfortunately, is a house divided, and must be healed, or face our own painful reality check. After all, Ahmadinejad has proclaimed that both Israel and America will perish from among the nations of the earth. I have no reason not to take him at his word (no matter how preposterous), if we in the West don't change our ways and learn to name our enemy, and fight this inevitable war with a strategy based on winning not the hearts and minds of our enemies but those hearts and minds of those who support the enemy from within our own borders, those Americans who may hold dear to cherished ideals but for some reason cannot recognize the true enemies of those ideals.

From Greg Palast of the BBC, a fiendishly far-left outfit I usually avoid:

On November 9, 2001, when you could still choke on the dust in the air near Ground Zero, BBC Television received a call in London from a top-level US intelligence agent. He was not happy. Shortly after George W. Bush took office, he told us reluctantly, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI, “were told to back off the Saudis.”

We knew that. In the newsroom, we had a document already in hand, marked, “SECRET” across the top and “199-I” - meaning this was a national security matter.

The secret memo released agents to hunt down two members of the bin Laden family operating a “suspected terrorist organization” in the USA. It was dated September 13, 2001—two days too late for too many. What the memo indicates, corroborated by other sources, was that the agents had long wanted to question these characters … but could not until after the attack. By that time, these bin Laden birds had flown their American nest.

Back to the high-level agent. I pressed him to tell me exactly which investigations were spiked. None of this interview dance was easy, requiring switching to untraceable phones. Ultimately, the insider said, “Khan Labs.” At the time, our intelligence agencies were on the trail of Pakistan’s Dr. Strangelove, A.Q. Khan, who built Pakistan’s bomb and was selling its secrets to the Libyans. But once Bush and Condoleeza Rice’s team took over, the source told us, agents were forced to let a hot trail go cold. Specifically, there were limits on tracing the Saudi money behind this “Islamic bomb.”

Then we made another call, this time to an arms dealer in the Mideast. He confirmed that his partner attended a meeting in 1995 at the 5-star Hotel Royale Monceau in Paris where, allegedly, Saudi billionaires agreed to fund Al Qaeda fanatics. We understood it to be protection money, not really a sign of support for their attacks. Nevertheless, rule number one of investigation is “follow the money” — but the sheiks’ piggy banks were effectively off-limits to the US agents during the Bush years. One of the men in the posh hotel’s meeting of vipers happens to have been a Bush family business associate.

Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, let me tell you that we found no evidence — none, zero, no kidding — that George Bush knew about Al Qaeda’s plan to attack on September 11. Indeed, the grim joke at BBC is that anyone accusing George Bush of knowing anything at all must have solid evidence. This is not a story of what George Bush knew but rather of his very-unfunny ignorance. And it was not stupidity, but policy: no asking Saudis uncomfortable questions about their paying off roving packs of killers, especially when those Saudis are so generous to Bush family businesses.

Yes, Bill Clinton was also a bit too tender toward the oil men of Arabia. But this you should know: In his last year in office, Clinton sent two delegations to the Gulf to suggest that the Royal family crack down on “charitable donations” from their kingdom to the guys who blew up our embassies.

But when a failed Texas oil man took over the White House in January 2001, demands on the Saudis to cut off terror funding simply stopped.

And what about the bin Laden “suspected terrorist organization”? Called the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the group sponsors soccer teams and summer camps in Florida. BBC obtained a video of one camp activity, a speech exhorting kids on the heroism of suicide bombings and hostage takings. While WAMY draws membership with wholesome activities, it has also acted as a cover or front, say the Dutch, Indian and Bosnian governments, for the recruitment of jihadi killers.

Certainly, it was worth asking the bin Laden boys a few questions. But the FBI agents couldn’t, until it was too late.

In November 2001, when BBC ran the report on the spike of investigations of Saudi funding of terror, the Bush defenders whom we’d invited to respond on air dismissed the concerns of lower level FBI agents who’d passed over the WAMY documents. No action was taken on the group headed by the bin Ladens.

Then, in May this year, fifty FBI agents surrounded, invaded and sealed off WAMY’s Virginia office. It was like a bad scene out of the ‘Untouchables.’ The raid took place three years after our report and long after the bin Ladens had waved bye-bye. It is not surprising that the feds seized mostly empty files and a lot of soccer balls.

Why now this belated move on the bin Laden’s former operation? Why not right after the September 11 attack? This year’s FBI raid occurred just days after an Islamist terror assault in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Apparently, messin’ with the oil sheiks gets this Administration’s attention. Falling towers in New York are only for Republican convention photo ops.

The 199-I memo was passed to BBC television by the gumshoes at the National Security News Service in Washington. We authenticated it, added in our own sleuthing, then gave the FBI its say, expecting the usual, “It’s baloney, a fake.” But we didn’t get the usual response. Rather, FBI headquarters said, “There are lots of things the intelligence community knows and other people ought not to know.”

Ought not to know?

What else ought we not to know, Mr. President? And when are we supposed to forget it?

**************

Greg Palast’s reports for BBC Television Newsnight and The Guardian paper of Britain (with David Pallister) on White House interference in the investigation of terrorism won a 2002 California State University Journalism School ‘Project Censored’ Award.

The BBC television reports, expanded and updated, will be released this month in the USA as a DVD, “Bush Family Fortunes,” produced by BBC’s Meirion Jones.