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-- SPECIAL REPORT --
Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East
theater
By Wayne Madsen
Sept. 24, 2007
Author's website
WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise
Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were
destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency
personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear
weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the
Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.
Yesterday, the /Washington Post/ attempted to explain away the fact that
America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented
manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at
multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control
breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense
and White House, was not the result of a command and control
chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back
by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against
a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons.
The /Washington
Post/ story on BENT SPEAR may have actually been an effort in damage
control by the Bush administration. WMR has been informed by a
knowledgeable source that one of the six nuclear-armed cruise missiles was,
and may still be, unaccounted for. In that case, the nuclear reporting
incident would have gone far beyond BENT SPEAR to a National Command
Authority alert known as EMPTY QUIVER, with the special classification of
PINNACLE.
Just as this report was being prepared, /Newsweek/ reported that Vice
President Dick Cheney's recently-departed Middle East adviser, David Wurmser, told a small group of advisers some months ago
that Cheney had considered asking Israel to launch a missile
attack on the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.
Cheney reasoned that after an Iranian retaliatory strike, the United States would have ample reasons to
launch its own massive attack on Iran. However, plans for Israel to attack Iran
directly were altered to an Israeli attack on a supposed
Syrian-Iranian-North Korean nuclear installation in northern Syria.
WMR has learned that a U.S. attack on Iran
using nuclear and conventional weapons was scheduled to coincide with Israel's September 6 air attack on
a reputed Syrian nuclear facility in Dayr az-Zwar, near the village
of Tal Abyad,
in northern Syria,
near the Turkish border. Israel's
attack, code named OPERATION ORCHARD, was to provide a reason for the U.S. to strike Iran. The neo-conservative
propaganda onslaught was to cite the cooperation of the George Bush's three
remaining "Axis of Evil" states -- Syria,
Iran, and North Korea -- to justify a sustained
Israeli attack on Syria
and a massive U.S.
military attack on Iran.
WMR has learned from military sources on both sides of the Atlantic that
there was a definite connection between Israel's
OPERATION ORCHARD and BENT SPEAR involving the B-52 that flew the six
nuclear-armed cruise missiles from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota to
Barksdale. There is also a connection between these two events as the
Pentagon's highly-classified PROJECT CHECKMATE, a compartmented U.S. Air
Force program that has been working on an attack plan for Iran since June 2007, around the same time
that Cheney was working on the joint Israeli-U.S. attack scenario on Iran.
PROJECT CHECKMATE was leaked in an article by military analyst Eric
Margolis in the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the /Times of London/, is a
program that involves over two dozen Air Force officers and is headed by
Brig. Gen. Lawrence Stutzriem and his chief
civilian adviser, Dr. Lani Kass,
a former Israeli military intelligence officer who, astoundingly, is now
involved in planning a joint U.S.-Israeli massive military attack on Iran
that involves a "decapitating" blow on Iran by hitting between three to four thousand targets
in the country. Stutzriem and Kass
report directly to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael Moseley,
who has also been charged with preparing a report on the B-52/nuclear
weapons incident.
Kass' area of speciality
is cyber-warfare, which includes ensuring "information
blockades," such as that imposed by the Israeli government on the
Israeli media regarding the Syrian air attack on the alleged Syrian
"nuclear installation." British intelligence sources have
reported that the Israeli attack on Syria
was a "true flag" attack originally designed to foreshadow a U.S. attack on Iran. After the U.S. Air Force
push back against transporting the six cruise nuclear-armed AGM-129s to the
Middle East, Israel went ahead with its attack on Syria in order to help
ratchet up tensions between Washington on one side and Damascus, Tehran,
and Pyongyang on the other.
The other part of CHECKMATE's brief is to ensure
that a media "perception management" is waged against Syria, Iran,
and North Korea.
This involves articles such as that which appeared with Joby
Warrick's and Walter Pincus'
bylines in yesterdays /Washington
Post/. The article, titled "The Saga of a Bent Spear," quotes a
number of seasoned Air Force nuclear weapons experts as saying that such an
incident is unprecedented in the history of the Air Force. For example,
Retired Air Force General Eugene Habiger, the
former chief of the U.S. Strategic Command, said he has been in the
"nuclear business" since 1966 and has never been aware of an
incident "more disturbing."
Command and control breakdowns involving U.S.
nuclear weapons are unprecedented, except for that fact that the U.S. military is now waging an internal war
against neo-cons who are embedded in the U.S.
government and military chain of command who are intent on using nuclear
weapons in a pre-emptive war with Iran.
CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD would have provided the cover for a
pre-emptive U.S. and
Israeli attack on Iran
had it not been for BENT SPEAR involving the B-52. In on the plan to launch
a pre-emptive attack on Iran involving nuclear weapons were, according to
our sources, Cheney, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley; members of
the CHECKMATE team at the Pentagon, who have close connections to Israeli
intelligence and pro-Israeli think tanks in Washington, including the
Hudson Institute; British Foreign Secretary David Miliband,
a political adviser to Tony Blair prior to becoming a Member of Parliament;
Israeli political leaders like Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
and Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu; and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, who did his part last week to ratchet up
tensions with Iran by suggesting that war with Iran was a probability. Kouchner retracted his statement after the U.S. plans for Iran were delayed.
Although the Air Force tried to keep the B-52 nuclear incident from the
media, anonymous Air Force personnel leaked the story to /Military Times/
on September 5, the day before the Israelis attacked the alleged nuclear
installation in Syria
and the day planned for the simultaneous U.S.
attack on Iran.
The leaking of classified information on U.S. nuclear weapons
disposition or movement to the media, is, itself, unprecedented. Air Force
regulations require the sending of classified BEELINE reports to higher Air
Force authorities on the disclosure of classified Air Force information to
the media.
In another highly unusual move, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked an
outside inquiry board to look into BENT SPEAR, even before the Air Force
has completed its own investigation, a virtual vote of no confidence in the
official investigation being conducted by Major General Douglas Raaberg, chief of air and space operations at the Air
Combat Command.
Gates asked former Air Force Chief of Staff, retired General Larry Welch,
to lead a Defense Science Board task force that will also look into the
BENT SPEAR incident. The official Air Force investigation has reportedly
been delayed for unknown reasons. Welch is President and CEO of the
Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA), a federally-funded research
contractor that operates three research centers, including one for Office
of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President
and another for the National Security Agency. One of the board members of
IDA is Dr. Suzanne H. Woolsey of the Paladin Capital Group and wife of
former CIA director and arch-neocon James
Woolsey.
WMR has learned that neither the upper echelons of the State Department nor
the British Foreign Office were privy to OPERATION ORCHARD, although Hadley
briefed President Bush on Israeli spy satellite intelligence that showed
the Syrian installation was a joint nuclear facility built with North
Korean and Iranian assistance. However, it is puzzling why Hadley would
rely on Israeli imagery intelligence (IMINT) from its OFEK (Horizon) 7 satellite when considering that U.S. IMINT satellites
have greater capabilities.
The Air Force's "information warfare" campaign against media
reports on CHECKMATE and OPERATION ORCHARD also affected international
reporting of the recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
resolution asking Israel
to place its nuclear weapons program under IAEA controls, similar to those
that the United States
wants imposed on Iran
and North Korea.
The resolution also called for a nuclear-free zone throughout the Middle East. The IAEA's
resolution, titled "Application of IAEA Safeguards in the Middle East," was passed by the 144-member IAEA
General Meeting on September 20 by a vote of 53 to 2, with 47 abstentions.
The only two countries to vote against were Israel
and the United States.
However, the story carried from the IAEA meeting in Vienna by Reuters, the Associated Press,
and Agence France Press, was that it was Arab and
Islamic nations that voted for the resolution.
This was yet more perception management carried out by CHECKMATE, the White
House, and their allies in Europe and Israel with the connivance of
the media. In fact, among the 53 nations that voted for the resolution were
China, Russia, India,
Ireland, and Japan. The
47 abstentions were described as votes "against" the resolution
even though an abstention is neither a vote for nor against a measure. America's close allies, including Britain, France,
Australia, Canada, and Georgia, all abstained.
Suspiciously, the IAEA carried only a brief item on the resolution
concerning Israel's
nuclear program and a roll call vote was not available either at the IAEA's web site -- www.iaea.org -- or in the
media.
The perception management campaign by the neocon
operational cells in the Bush administration, Israel
and Europe was designed to keep a focus on Iran's
nuclear program, not on Israel's.
Any international examination of Israel's nuclear weapons program would
likely bring up Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai
Vanunu, a covert from Judaism to Christianity,
who was kidnapped in Rome by a Mossad "honey
trap" named Cheryl Bentov (aka, Cindy) and a
Mossad team in 1986 and held against his will in
Israel ever since.
Vanunu's knowledge of the Israeli nuclear weapons
program would focus on the country's own role in nuclear proliferation,
including its program to share nuclear weapons technology with apartheid
South Africa and Taiwan in the late 1970s and 1980s. The role of Ronald
Reagan's Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Ken Adelman in
Israeli's nuclear proliferation during the time frame 1983-1987 would also
come under scrutiny. Adelman, a member of the Reagan-Bush transition State
Department team from November 1980 to January 1981, voiced his
understanding for the nuclear weapons programs of Israel, South
Africa, and Taiwan in a June 28, 1981 /New
York Times/ article titled, "3 Nations Widening Nuclear
Contacts." The journalist who wrote the article was Judith Miller.
Adelman felt that the three countries wanted nuclear weapons because of
their ostracism from the West, the third world, and the hostility from the
Communist countries. Of course, today, the same argument can be used by Iran, North Korea, and other
"Axis of Evil" nations so designated by the neocons
in the Bush administration and other governments.
There are also news reports that suggest an intelligence relationship
between Israel and North Korea.
On July 21, 2004, New Zealand's
/Dominion Post/ reported that three Mossad agents
were involved in espionage in New Zealand. Two of the Mossad agents, Uriel Kelman and Elisha Cara (aka Kra),
were arrested and imprisoned by New Zealand police (an Israeli diplomat in
Canberra, Amir Lati, was expelled by Australia
and New Zealand intelligence identified a fourth Mossad
agent involved in the New Zealand espionage operation in Singapore). The
third Mossad agent in New
Zealand, Zev William Barkan
(aka Lev Bruckenstein), fled New Zealand -- for North Korea.
New Zealand Foreign Minister
Phil Goff revealed that Barkan, a former Israeli
Navy diver, had previously worked at the Israeli embassy in Vienna, which is also
the headquarters of the IAEA. He was cited by the /Sydney Morning Herald/
as trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Thailand, Myanmar,
Laos, and Cambodia. New Zealand's One News reported that Barkan was in North Korea to help the nation
build a wall to keep its citizens from leaving.
The nuclear brinkmanship involving the United
States and Israel
and the breakdown in America's
command and control systems have every major capital around the world
wondering about the Bush administration's true intentions.
NOTE: WMR understands the risks to informed individuals in reporting the
events of August 29/30, to the present time, that concern the discord
within the U.S. Air Force, U.S. intelligence agencies, and other military
services. Any source with relevant information and who wishes to contact us
anonymously may drop off sealed correspondence at or send mail via the
Postal Service to: Wayne Madsen, c/o The Front Desk, National Press Club,
13th Floor, 529 14th St., NW,
Washington, DC,
20045.
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