Iran Policy Committee: Pentagon mouthpiece...

[RPankn]

Iran Policy Committee: Pentagon mouthpiece, Israeli ally, MEK supporter

By John Stanton
Online Journal Contributing Writer

May 21, 2005—The Iran Policy Committee (IPC) has a website up and running at iranpolicycommittee.org.*

The IPC made the news in February when it released a report titled "US Options for Iran." In that report, the IPC recommended that a terrorist group known as the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization (MEK) be removed from the US government's hit list. The authors of the IPC report equate the terrorist MEK with the African National Congress that fought long and hard against the despicable all-white South African regime and its US supporters so many years ago. Of course, the implication here is that the MEK will somehow produce a Nelson Mandela, or at least is on the same playing field as Mandela's group was.

Those two wacky thoughts should be enough to dismiss the 11 IPC principals, their mission and their clumsy report as nonsense. But inside the Washington Beltway, it's never wise to dismiss ignorance until performing background checks on the individuals and their affiliations. The record shows that the IPC operates in very close proximity to the US intelligence community, has the support of 150 members in the US Congress, and is linked to individuals/groups who successfully lied and led the US into another Vietnam-like war, and whose primary purpose is the creation of a US empire that controls the world's resources and protects a greater Israel. Crazy is selling these days and the loonies are in charge.

The IPC is supported by the neocon all-stars that we've come to know and love such as Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Michael Leeden, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, et al. But these frontbenchers are running out of political muscle as their war in Iraq continues to drain the resources of the American people on political, economic and military fronts. What's worse, perhaps, is their "with us or against us" mentality has caused new political and economic alliances to form (example: South America-China-Iran) and has accelerated both conventional and nuclear arms races. Having failed on so many fronts, they recognize that to get the US into Iran, some new faces are needed and that's where the IPC backbenchers are critical to the forthcoming anti-Iranian/Persian propaganda operations.

The IPC is linked through its purpose and people to the Coalition for a Democratic Iran and the MEK, the Washington PAC, JINSA, AIPAC, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Department of Defense (DoD), the Center for Security Policy, and all the major US intelligence agencies. IPC members are primarily defense and security contractors/consultants and would benefit financially from a war with Iran.

FOX This!

Anyone who can tolerate FOX News—the electronic equivalent of Reverend Moon's Washington Times—on a regular basis will recognize these IPC members: Lt.Gen. Tom McInerney, USAF (Ret.) formerly of the Business Executives for National Security and member of the Center for Security Policy; Major Gen. Paul Vallely, USA (Ret.); Capt. Chuck Nash, USN (Ret.); and Lt.Col. Bill Cowan, USMC (Ret.). These four folks are frequently seen and heard discussing military matters on FOX. Other IPC heavy hitters include Raymond Tanter, a former staffer at the National Security Council and current member of the Committee for the Present Danger and the Washington Center for Near East Policy; Clare Lopez a former CIA analyst; and Jim Atkins, former US President Richard Nixon's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who is known in some circles as "the westerner who knows the most about the Middle East . . ."

The military heavyweight of the IPC is McInerney. One of the highlights of McInerney's military career, besides being a top-notch pilot in Vietnam, was assisting Alaska in the clean up of the oil spill caused by the Exxon Valdez when it ran aground in March of 1989. From April to September of that year, McInerney admirably headed the Joint Task Force Alaska Oil Spill while commander of the Alaskan Air Command (then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney argued for a minimalist DoD/federal government role). These days, though, McInerney is busy promoting the neocon cause and dabbling in a host of money-making and influence peddling activities.

You can find him—and fellow IPC cohorts Vallely, Cowan and Lopez—at conferences like Intelcon 2005** as speakers and members of the Intelcon's Program Advisory Group (Michael Leeden, Frank Gaffney and Daniel Pipes are among them). Former directors of the NSA, CIA and DIA are featured panelists, along with more, yes more, FOX News commentators no doubt opining in conference as on the network with all the volume of an announcer at a Monster Truck bash. Yehoshuah Mizrachi of Operation Shiloh apparently spoke at Intelcon about handling terror like an Israeli (he equates the Battle of Shiloh from the US Civil War with 9–11). Finally, the conference program shows that the standard mix of defense contractors and US government bureaucrats round out Intelcon's conferees, along with a few token liberals thrown in for what appears to be some sort of balance.

Do You Hear What I Hear?

So what are all these IPC characters doing at Intelcon? Well it's a good place to drum up business and get nod-and-wink-intel about what's really going on "over there and with that contract award." At the Intelcon blast held this past February, McInerney chaired a panel on Securing Intelligence Networks. As a director of NetStar Systems, that subject matter is an important part of his job. According to NetStar's website, it is "a fast-growing Virginia corporation with headquarters in Vienna, Virginia. It was founded in 1998 and most of our employees are cleared at the Top Secret or higher levels. NetStar is growing rapidly in the Intel and DoD sectors and has provided numerous solutions and staff to many of the Intelligence agencies in the DC metro area." Clients include the NSA, CIA, DIA, FBI, DHS and the Office of Naval Intelligence. NetStar is a member of the National Military Intelligence Association (NMIA). Most of NetStar's clients were at Intelcon 2005 including General Jim Williams, USA (Ret.), former director of DIA, and NMIA's current director.

With the IPC plugged into US global and domestic intelligence operations, and connected with neocon/Israeli lobbying activities here in the USA, it's important to listen to them—no matter how maniacally they articulate their position. So when McInerney was quoted by the Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough in February about the likelihood of an attack on Iran, one has to wonder how and where he is getting his information as he states it with an air of complete certainty

What are we to make of his almost 30-year old assessment of Iranian anti-aircraft defenses? Is it likely that Iran has done nothing about its defenses since the 1970s or does personnel experience mean something else given his contacts in the neocon pipeline and US/foreign intelligence communities?

"He [Bush] doesn't have any choice [but to attack Iran because] he understands [the Iranians] are the king of terror right now. They are striving for nuclear weapons that can get into the hands of terrorists and then it's too late. B-2 stealth bombers, armed with the huge penetrating bombs commonly called bunker busters, would be able to pierce Iran's aging air defenses and hit 20 or more sites. They have not updated that very, very old air defense system. McInerney said that as a colonel in 1977 he went to Iran and conducted a war exercise against various Iranian targets during the rule of the United States' ally, the Shah of Iran. They were not very good then, and they have clearly just gotten worse . . . I can tell you from my personal experience we would have no problem there."

McInerney's buddy, Vallely, is of the same mind. According to FOX News, Vallely believes that "while the United States has the ability to launch a major ground invasion, it wouldn't have to . . . we can take a country down with just our air assets . . . we don't have put boots on the ground all the time if we're after specific targets."

Did they forget about how difficult Iran could make it for US troops on the ground in Iraq? What about the impact on the US and world economy?

It is vacuum packed thinking like this that prompted the following Amazon Books review of McInerney and Vallely's book Endgame: Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror. Robert Steele of the noted Open Source Solutions had this to say: "I finally figured it out. This is a puff piece of, by, and for FOX Cable News viewers. There are no footnotes in this book. It is a rambling opinion piece. Let us not confuse rank with brains, or opinions with thought. This is a double-spaced book that could probably be distilled to 30 pages of core reading, all summed up as 'we're always right, no matter the cost.' This book also adopts the Richard Perle neoconservative game plan of using terrorism as a pretext to invade Syria and Iran. The authors—who demonstrate how far one could get in the Cold War military without reading or thinking, call this a military assessment. It is not . . . It avoids discussing Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Central Asia, Muslim Africa, and Muslim Pacifica. This is not analysis, this is flim-flam . . . This book is a blueprint for a nuclear winter in which America self-immolates."

We Know Terrorism?

IPC notable Cowan runs a company called wvc3. Among other things, Cowan's group states "Talking about terrorists is one thing. Having conducted successful operations against them in their midst is another. We know terrorism. It's not something we've learned since 9/11. We can speak with absolute authority about how they organize, think, act, and operate. Programs and operations designed to neutralize them will only be as successful as the thinking behind them. We provide the bedrock around which sound counterterrorism initiatives and efforts are based."

Uh, if that's so, where were they on 911? What about the MEK?

Anyway, Cowan's group links to companies like Aegis whose claim is that "Our management staff consists of prior U.S. military, police and government personnel. Their many years of dedicated service provides Aegis MEP with a network of international contacts that enable us to act anywhere in the world. Our linguists are rigorously tested to ensure their proficiency in English and their specialty language(s). Our consultants and operational personnel have extensive international experience and are accustomed to acting professionally in politically sensitive environments . . . The projects we complete for our clients are generally sensitive in nature."

In sum, they are either guarding people and things, killing/destroying people and things, or watching and listening to someone on something. Which makes one wonder why resort to all the self-inflating crypto military/intelligence speak?

MEK: Terrorists Working for America

On April 6, a number of IPC principals met with elected officials in the US government. The IPC has the complete account on its website from US Newswire. Here are some of the highlights:

"The IPC convened on Capitol Hill at the invitation of the Iran Human Rights and Democracy Caucus of the U.S. House of Representatives. At issue were US policy options for Iran. In attendance were over 80 members of the Congress and their aides, foreign diplomats, experts from other think tanks . . . Co-chairs of the caucus, Congressman Tom Tancredo (R-CO.) and Congressman Bob Filner (D-CA), chaired the briefing. Tancredo raised the issue of the terrorist designation of Iran's main opposition group, the Mujahedeen e-Khalq organization and IPC panelists concurred on the need to remove it from the U.S. Foreign Terrorist Organizations List. Tancredo stated that the MEK was designated not because it was involved in terrorist activities, but because the Clinton administration sought to curry favor with the Iranian regime."

In fact, the MEK did a lot of Saddam Hussein's dirty work inside Iraq, according to GlobalSecurity.org. The MEK assisted Saddam Hussein's suppression of the 1991 Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish uprisings and in the 1970s MEK members killed a number of US soldiers and contractors. Its membership has been steadily falling. "The MEK was allied with the Iraqi regime and received most of its support from it. MEK members supported the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

The MEK assisted the Hussein regime in suppressing opposition within Iraq, and performed internal security for the Iraqi regime. MEK was founded in the 1960s by a group of college-educated Iranian leftists opposed to the country's pro-Western ruler, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Although the group took part in the 1979 Islamic revolution that replaced the Shah with a Shiite Islamist regime, MEK's ideology, a blend of Marxism and Islamism, put it at odds with the post-revolutionary government. MEK activities have dropped off in recent years as its membership has dwindled."

But the future is bright. The MEK has the IPC and its supporters working on its behalf.

* All biographies for the IPC members and the referenced report can be found on the IPC website.

** There are far too many websites to reference in the body of the article. You can find the links to IPC member companies on their website. Intelcon is at fbcinc.com/intelcon/organizers.asp. Operation Shiloh is opshiloh.com. NetStar is netstarsys.com. NMIA is at nmia.org. Go to the NMIA Awards/Citations and you'll get an idea of some of the intelligence ops being run in the USA and elsewhere.

John Stanton is a Virginia based writer specializing in security and political matters. He is the author of "America 2004: A Power But Not Super." Reach him at [e-mail].


www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/052105Stanton/052105stanton.html

[Moses]

Another Usraeli defense contractors front org used for propaganda by Ailes/Ruppert Fox news.

[Moses]

Ray Tanter is a major Usraeli cabal insider directing the policies of both Bush and Blair. He has been involved in cooking policy for Israel for a couple of decades, at least, and is instrumental in forging the propaganda and shaping and writing the stuff that Blair speaks, as well as Blair's policy.

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Georgetown University professor Ray Tanter, who heads the Iran Policy Committee.


  MSNBC.com

Can ‘terrorists’ be turned into allies?
An American professor lobbies Washington on behalf of the MEK
By Michael Moran
Senior correspondent
MSNBC
Updated: 4:51 p.m. ET May 9, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - Iran's insistence that it has the right to pursue nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, if it so chooses, has cast a pall over talks in New York aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. While Iran has pledged to continue talking to European representatives to resolve the dispute diplomatically, it has used the occasion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty talks, held every five years to review progress on proliferation efforts, to make it clear that it won't be kept from the exclusive nuclear club by angry American rhetoric alone.

The European effort, led by Germany, Britain and France, is regarded with some skepticism in Washington. Not surprisingly, then, the United States is looking for a “Plan B,” [sic] some alternative way to put pressure on Tehran that falls between hard-to-enforce threats of economic sanctions and outright war.

Ray Tanter, a nattily dressed Georgetown professor and former Reagan national security aide, thinks he has the answer.

Tanter heads a group called the Iran Policy Committee, a collection of well-connected Republicans and former generals who have been talking up an Iranian group called the Mujahhedin al-Khalq. The MEK, as the group is known, is a historical orphan of sorts: a band of armed Iranians who oppose the current Islamic regime but whose chief sponsor was Iran’s arch rival, Saddam Hussein. Saddam armed the MEK after his long war against Iran in the 1980s ended in stalemate, and as long as he remained in power, the MEK’s encampment on the Iran-Iraq border gave them a base for bloody forays into their native land.

Unsavory past
But there is a problem. The MEK has been on the State Department's list of "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" since 1997, a status confirmed on April 27, when the most recent update of the list was made public. The MEK denies some of the exploits laid at its doorstep. But the State Department report lists a long litany of terrorist activity, including the alleged murders of American contractors during the reign of the Shah, whom the group also opposed, and one spectacular attack on the Islamic regime in 1981 using car bombs that killed 70 high-ranking Iranian officials, including the country’s chief justice, its president and prime minister. There were also reports that the group participated in the brutal repression of Kurds and Shiites who rose against Saddam at America's behest in 1991.

When American forces invaded Iraq in 2003, the MEK negotiated the surrender of its tanks and other heavy weapons to U.S. forces, and have since then been living in fear of being deported by the Shiite government expected to emerge in Baghdad.

Now, aided by Tanter and his influential friends, the group is battling to get off the terrorist list. To many, including many inside the Bush administration, the MEK seems like a perfect candidate to work on behalf of the United States, collecting intelligence on Iran's nuclear program for now, possibly forming the core of a covert war against the mullahs if it comes to that.


“What you want are organizations with the resources and the ability to move undetected inside the target country," says Rick Francona, an MSNBC analyst and former military intelligence officer who helped run CIA operations against Saddam during the 1990s. "They can collect intel, broadcast propaganda, move people in and out of Iran. And if it comes to it, they can be the nucleus of a covert action policy.”

Already, contacts between the MEK and U.S. intelligence are in the works, and not only in Iraq. News reports also suggest that there are active contacts between the U.S. officials MEK members based in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, on Iran’s eastern border.

Tanter, who is in constant contact with the group’s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, acknowledged cooperation between the U.S. military in Iraq and the MEK, as well as reports of activity in Baluchistan.

David L. Phillips, who until last year was a senior adviser to the State Department on the region, says “the MEK has long had defenders within the [Office of Secretary of Defense] who wanted to transform them into a fighting force.”

The Pentagon did not return a call to inquire about it.

Phillips, now at the Council on Foreign Relations, just published a book highly critical of U.S. policy in the region and argues that the idea of using covert guerrilla action to pressure Iran is absurd at this point. “The time to do anything of the kind was several years ago, when we were wasting our time on Iraq,” he says. “Now, as I understand it, Iran’s nuclear program is so dispersed and so urbanized that there’s no way to  deal with it in just a series of airstrikes.”

Target October
Still, Tanter and his well-connected group are determined to get the MEK off the State Department’s list of terrorist groups, where it has appeared regularly, sandwiched between the Tamil Tigers and Columbia’s right-wing vigilantes, for over nearly a decade. And with the Bush administration unenthusiastic about the prospects of a verifiable deal with Tehran on its nuclear ambitions, Tanter believes the MEK’s time has come.

“This administration is much more favorably inclined to obtain intelligence from the MEK than was (former Secretary of State) Colin Powell and (his former deputy) Richard Armitage,” Tanter says. “I think the die is cast, and eventually the MEK will be taken off the list.”

Today, Tanter says, opposition to the idea still exists, “but it’s not the 7th floor (of the State Department) that’s the problem. With Rice and (deputy secretary of state Robert) Zoellick replacing Powell and Armitage. The problem now is on the 6th floor." That's where the State Department’s intelligence, counter-terrorism and arms control units reside.

Turning up the heat, two weeks ago, MEK's political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, organized a convention in Washington’s Constitution Hall to demand that MEK be recognized as the legitimate resistance to the Iranian regime. Tanter attended, as did several members of Congress. Also among those attending and addressing the conference was Capt. Vivian Gembara of the U.S. 4th Infantry division, a military lawyer who helped negotiate the MEK’s disarmament during the invasion, and daughter of a legendary special ops officer from the Vietnam era. [So many family dynasties in the cabal] Having helped disarm the MEK during the war, she is now part of the sophisticated campaign to embrace the group, penning a piece for a specialist website frequented by intelligence and military professionals, Iran Focus.

“It is merely reckless to continue to detain and alienate the [MEK] as we face a more mysterious and formidable threat in Iran,” she wrote. “Though September 11th left us wearier of over reliance on technology and military might, the U.S. handing of the [MEK], and other potential human intelligence resources, hardly suggests we are that much wiser.”


A verified success
In fact, the MEK has shown promise as an intelligence gathering tool. In 2002, it was the MEK that funneled information about nuclear weapons development activity at an Iranian site — Natanz — to the United States, something acknowledged by President Bush recently when he noted that the information was only made known “because a dissident group pointed it out to the world." An inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency subsequently verified the MEK’s tip, though U.S. intelligence agencies have insisted they knew about Natanz already.

The term “dissident group” as applied by Bush to the MEK was music to Tanter’s ears. The White House later denied the president was taking sides on the MEK/terrorist list issue, but the group’s backers sense they are gaining ground. Earlier this year, Rice made a similar statement, and the MEK also has been granted “protected person status” by the U.S government, a Geneva Convention label that places them under the direct protection of American troops. That move raised eyebrows at the State Department and led to a spirited back and forth between department spokesman Adam Ereli and reporters  as the spokesman attempted to explain why American troops would protect 3,800 people regarded by U.S. policy as terrorists.

Tanter, for his part, sees no way the MEK will remain on the list come the fall. A long-time professor of Middle Eastern affairs and a regular in Washington conservative circles, Tanter is a rarity on several counts. He was one of the few African-Americans to serve in influential position during the Reagan administration, when he was a senior staff aide on the National Security Council before taking a leading role in nuclear arms negotiations. And, he’s an unabashed neo-conservative.

Most of all, he seems to relish academic controversy in a field that prefers peer review. This has made him something of a pariah among the small but elite group of Iran experts in Washington.

“I recognize that I’m alone in the scholarly community. There are some great Iran specialists, Michael Eisenstadt, Patrick Clauson, Kenneth Pollack at Brookings, and none of them knows what to do about Iran. They admit they’re on the horns of a dilemma. But I say we can’t afford to sit around and wait. Regime change is the only way that you can decrease the likelihood of a radical Islamist regime will have nuclear weapons. That doesn’t make me popular, but that doesn’t make me wrong, either.”

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© 2005 MSNBC.com

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