(source)Israeli companies suspected of spying

L'avventura continua!

JERUSALEM -- It started out as a family feud. But a small-time computer break-in has erupted into Israel's biggest business scandal in decades, reaching into some of the country's powerful corporate suites and jolting the cozy world of the industrial elite.

Top Israeli blue chip companies, including a high-tech giant that trades in New York, are suspected of using illicit surveillance software to steal information from their rivals and enemies.

The list of victims is equally impressive, ranging from a cigarette importer to the local operations of the Ace hardware chain and Hewlett-Packard Co. Even a well-known TV entertainment reporter is caught up in the affair, claiming hackers invaded his computer to get phone numbers of celebrities.

The investigation has shed an unflattering light on the Israeli business world, where cutthroat competition in a small market, high-tech sophistication and the secretive traditions of the army form a volatile mix.

The case is also attracting the attention of top security software makers. Software firms in the U.S. have been updating their products to defend against similar outbreaks.

Sever Plocker, a leading Israeli economic commentator, said the scandal could have "unpleasant consequences" for foreign investment.

"People don't like to invest in countries where companies do some very unethical things," he said. "I think it is bad for Israel, bad for the image of Israel and nothing to be proud about."

The "Trojan horse" scandal, named after the monitoring software secretly planted on the corporate computers, has been front-page news since police lifted a gag order this week. Police say 22 people have been arrested, and more arrests are expected.

"It's getting bigger every day," said Nir Nateev, head of the police computer and cyber crime department in Tel Aviv, who said some 100 computers have been confiscated. "In the end, there will be dozens (of companies) involved."

The burgeoning scandal has sent a shudder through the business world. The country's central bank chief, American economist Stanley Fischer, warned this week that the case could harm foreign investment.

Amir Barnea, a business professor at the Interdisciplinary Center, a prestigious Israeli university, attributed the scandal to the hypercompetitive business atmosphere in a tiny market of 7 million people.

"Unfortunately some managers may lose the distinction between a legitimate fight for survival and doing illegal acts," he said.

Others said the combination of Israel's high-tech culture, fine-tuned in secretive military units, and a penchant for independent thinking made the scandal inevitable. Some of the world's top computer security companies, including Check Point Software Technologies Ltd., are Israeli.

Quelli dei firewall? Prendiamo nota...

"If Israelis see a wall, they will try to break it," said TV commentator Motti Kirshenbaum. "It is a challenge to break a wall. Israelis don't say, 'There's a fence, let's respect it.'"

Police say they stumbled upon the case after author Amnon Jackont discovered excerpts on the Internet of a book he was still writing. More documents from his computer began appearing on the Internet and someone tried to use his bank details to make transactions.

Jackont realized his computer had been invaded and told police he suspected the spy was his stepdaughter's ex-husband, Michael Haephrati.

In a newspaper interview, he said Haephrati became "vengeful and obsessive" after the collapse of his marriage. Police subsequently found the surveillance software on Jackont's machine.

Nateev said the discovery snowballed into an international investigation involving British, German and American authorities. "We never saw this in the past," he said. "They were very, very, very surprised by the size of the case and helped us a lot in this."

Investigators determined that Haephrati sold customized copies of his program to three Israeli private investigators. Haephrati, who reportedly lives in London and Germany, has been detained with his new wife by British authorities. The Metropolitan Police decline to say whether he was cooperating.

Some versions of the spy software tempted victims into installing it by posing as a package of confidential documents delivered via e-mail. Once installed, the software recorded every keystroke and collected business documents and e-mails on a victim's PC and transmitted information to a server computer registered in London.

"This was not designed very well," said Robert Sandilands, the head of the virus research lab for Authentium Inc., a Florida security firm. "This does not seem to be the work of an experienced virus writer."

The suspects in Israel include senior executives from three prominent private investigation firms, among them a former top military investigator, retired Shin Bet security agent and former police officers. Police said 12 people are in jail and eight others are under house arrest.

The list of clients implicated in the affair reads like a Who's Who of Israeli blue chips: Amdocs Ltd., a business-software maker that trades on the New York Stock Exchange; the Cellcom phone carrier and three subsidiaries of the Bezeq phone monopoly, a long-distance carrier, cell phone provider and satellite TV firm.

Prendiamo nota di Amdocs.

Most of the companies have denied wrongdoing or said they were unaware of the tactics used by investigators they hired.

The alleged victims, meanwhile, reportedly include Hewlett-Packard and the Ace hardware chain, as well as the Globes business daily, Strauss-Elite food group, the HOT cable company, and the Bezeq parent company.

Ira Winkler, author of the book "Spies Among Us," said Trojan horses are a relatively new tactic in a growing epidemic of global high-tech espionage.

He said the break in the case - tracing the scandal to a vindictive relative - was typical. "Never underestimate the stupidity of criminals."

Cerchiamo Amdocs!

The Israeli Spy Ring

Veramente? Cosa vi ricorda?

Prior to 9/11, the FBI had discovered the presence of a massive spy ring inside the United States run by the government of Israel. This seems a harsh gratitude from a nation which obtains 10% of its annual budget from the American taxpayer, $3+ billion a year. Over the years, American taxpayers have been required to send Israel more than four times what the US spent to go to the moon.

What Israel has done in return was to set up government subsidized telecommunications companies which operate here in the United States. One of these companies is Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for 90% of the phone companies in the USA.

E' la stessa Amdocs! E' incredibile! Shocked!

Amdocs' main computer center for billing is actually in Israel and allows those with access to do what intelligence agencies call "traffic analysis"; a picture of someone's activities based on a pattern of who they are calling and when.

Another Israeli telecom company is Comverse Infosys, which subcontracts the installation of the automatic tapping equipment now built into every phone system in America.

Sempre meglio.

Comverse maintains its own connections to all this phone tapping equipment, insisting that it is for maintenance purposes only. However, Converse has been named as the most likely source for leaked information regarding telephone calls by law enforcement that derailed several investigations into not only espionage, but drug running as well.

A proposito di drug running...

Yet another Israeli telecom company is Odigo, which provides the core message passing system for all the "Instant Message" services. Two hours before the attacks on the World Trade Towers, Odigo employees received a warning. Odigo has an office 2 blocks from the former location of the World Trade Towers.

Cosa ci ricorda?

Israel frees senior Hamas leader

Every time the DEA, FBI and Los Angeles Police Department task force infiltrated an agent inside the Orgad ring, his or her identity was blown within a matter of days. Everytime a court ordered wiretap was put in place, the target immediately "began behaving like Mother Teresa," according to a source familiar with the case. A highly confidential federal counter-surveillance effort eventually revealed that the Orgad gang was receiving inside information about phone taps, and even details of conversations between the federal and local police officials on the task force, as well as their home addresses and phone numbers. Investigations into the sources of the leaks converged on two prominent Israeli corporations, which are both core service providers to the American telecommunications industry and to U.S. law enforcement agencies. The two companies are Amdocs and Comverse.

Sono ancora loro... ancora:

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT - News) will supply equipment to the United States Postal Service worth hundreds of millions of dollars in a deal expected to boost employment at the firm, the head of the company's Israeli unit said on Monday. Elisha Yanay, general manager of Motorola Israel Ltd., told a news conference that the agreement to manufacture and supply scanning equipment was worth more than $300 million. The transaction was first announced in July.

"It is a huge transaction and will create numerous jobs," he said. Motorola Israel employs about 5,000 people, and has annual sales in excess of $1 billion. Yanay said Motorola has provided equipment to United Parcel Service (NYSE:UPS - News), FedEx Corp. (NYSE:FDX - News), DHL and Deutsche Post (XETRA:DPWGn.DE - News). "All this equipment is developed and manufactured in Israel," he said.

L'attento lettore avrà colto il vago trend.

Let us be clear here. There is nothing benign about Israel spying on the United States. When Jonathan Pollard stole our nuclear secrets (which your taxes paid to develop) and sent them to Israel, Israel did not hesitate to trade those secrets to the USSR in exchange for increased emigration quotas.

Ancora:

The implication of these facts is that the billions of our tax dollars sent to Israel (while women and children sleep in America's alleys and eat out of trash bins) have bought and paid for a monstrous phone tracking and phone tapping system that can eavesdrop on almost any phone call in America. Even the White House phones were open to such tapping by listening in on the other end outside the White House itself.

This actually happened. The Ken Starr report on Whitewater describes how Bill Clinton informed Monica Lewinsky that their phone sex conversations had been recorded. At the same time, Clinton ordered the FBI to cease the hunt for an Israeli mole known to be operating inside the White House itself!

Lewinsky... russa? Leonid? Pronto? (niente...)

So here we have a foreign nation able to listen in on most phones at will, using taps that cannot be found because they are built into the phone system itself, and willing to use the information gleaned from those calls to blackmail Americans into any desired course of action. This may well be what Ariel Sharon meant when he stated that the Jewish people control America.

Te lo sei sognato!

Ariel Sharon Quotes

Don't worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.

Pipes! Aiutaci tu! Avanti:

That the information gleaned from these phone taps is being used to coerce the behavior of key individuals in the US Government and media is illustrated by the manner in which the government and the media have handled this scandal of the largest spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, and of phone taps on all of our phones. They are downplaying it. Actually, burying it is a better word.

Non me l'aspettavo... è proprio strano.

Fox News, alone of all the media, actually ran the story as a four part broadcast, and put the story up on its web site. Then, without explanation, Fox News erased the story from their web site and have never mentioned it again.

Si potrebbe andare a cercare i video.

CNN followed by "Orwellizing" their report of the two hour advance warning of the WTC attacks sent to Odigo employees. But far more telling is the admission made by a US Official in part one of the Fox News report that hard evidence existed linking the events of 9/11 not to Arab Muslims, but to some of the more than 200 Israeli spies arrested both before and after 9/11, but that this evidence had been CLASSIFIED.

Cerchiamo ancora...

Odigo says workers were warned of attack

Odigo, the instant messaging service, says that two of its workers received messages two hours before the Twin Towers attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, and the company has been cooperating with Israeli and American law enforcement, including the FBI, in trying to find the original sender of the message predicting the attack.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

"I have no idea why the message was sent to these two workers, who don't know the sender. It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right.

Certo, e noi siamo tutti imbecilli.

And I don't know if our information was useful in any of the arrests the FBI has made," said Macover. Odigo is a U.S.-based company whose headquarters are in New York, with offices in Herzliya.

As an instant messaging service, Odigo users are not limited to sending messages only to people on their "buddy" list, as is the case with ICQ, the other well-known Israeli instant messaging application.

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.

Ne avete più saputo nulla? No? Mistero.

Ancora:

Hundreds of Mossad agents caught running wild in America!

Since then, any and all mention of the Israeli spy ring and phone tapping scandal has resulted in a barrage of shrill screams of "hate" and "anti-Semite", two well worn and frankly over used devices to try to silence discussion on any topic unfavorable to the nation which owns the spy ring in question.

Sempre più strano!

Ricordiamo brevemente le misteriose moving companies. Continua:

The story of the uncovering of the largest spy ring ever discovered inside the United States should be the story of the century, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That this spy ring helped drug smugglers evade investigators should be a major scandal, if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people. That the spy ring includes companies able to track and tap into any phone in America, including the White House, should be a cause celebre', if indeed the US media is looking out for the best interests of the American people.

Avete mai letto una singola parola su un quotidiano?

But they are not. The media is trying to bury this story. They are spiking it, erasing it from their web sites in a chilling real-life Orwellian rewriting of history.

The actions of the US media are those of people trying to protect this spy ring and those that the spy ring worked for.

Non è tutto straordinario e meraviglioso?

The story on Israeli spying inside the focused on three companies, Amdocs, which provides billing and directory assistance for most American phone companies, Comverse Infosys, which installs and mainstains telephone tapping equipment for US law enforcement, and Odigo, which provides services for the various "Instant Message" systems on your computer. All three companies are owned by Israel and have strong ties to the Israeli Defense Force.

Both Amdocs and Comverse Infosys were implicated in the sale of telephone data which compromised US investigations into drug running, and Comverse Infosys phone taps are suspected of being the means by which Bill Clinton's phone sex sessions were recorded, as reported in the Ken Starr Report. Odigo, which had offices near the World Trade Towers, is the company which received a two hour advance warning of the attacks of 9-11.

Now, in a chilling real life version of the plotline from "The Net", it turns out that the majority of the firewalls on US corporate and government computer systems are provided by just one company, Checkpoint Systems, which like Amdocs, Comverse Infosys, and Odigo, is headquartered in Israel.

Viene voglia di comprare un firewall Checkpoint e chattare tutto il giorno con Odigo.

Visto che siamo di strada, cerchiamo ancora.

Amdocs man grilled in Israel spy case

Israeli police have questioned an executive from Amdocs, one of Israel's largest companies, in connection with a growing corporate espionage case that has shaken the country's business world.

At least 19 people have been arrested in the affair, in which business executives and private investigators allegedly used sophisticated software to infiltrate competitors' computers. The investigation has implicated a car importer, two mobile phone providers and the country's main satellite television company, and police say they expect the investigation to widen. Earlier this week, Israel's central bank chief, Stanley Fischer, warned the affair could harm investment in the country.

Police officials said an Amdocs executive was questioned "under caution" on Tuesday. The executive was identified by Israeli media as Eitan Shiron, a security manager at the company. The company, which makes customer-management software, confirmed it had used one of the private investigators arrested in the case, but said it instructed the agency to act in "full compliance" with the law.

"Amdocs is a law-abiding company that operates according to and in the spirit of the highest legal and ethical standards," a company statement said.

It said it had hired the investigator to help "prevent confidential and proprietary information from leaking to persons and organisations outside the company."

The Israeli business daily Globes said Amdocs was suspected of spying on a journalist at the newspaper who used to cover the company.

Amdocs, whose shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange, maintains its global headquarters in Chesterfield, Missouri, but roughly half of its 10,000-strong workforce is based in Israel.

Qualcuno commenta:

Nortel VP: Trojan horse a wake-up call

The industrial espionage case that has implicated some of Israel's leading companies should serve as a wake-up call for the international business community, network solutions giant Nortel's VP Marketing (EMEA) Peter Finter said in an interview.

Qualcuno ci è arrivato!

Finter explained that while most companies are concerned with individual hackers, we see now that the problem has developed into organized crime, and extends beyond Israel.

The intense competitiveness in the Israeli market is testimony to the country's high level of technological sophistication, he added.

Finter's visit to Israel for the annual Nortel Israel conference comes days after a Tel Aviv sting operation led to the arrest of a number of Israel's top-tier executives for using a "Trojan horse" computer virus to steal classified information from their competitors. Senior police officers said major internationally based companies were also affected.

Finter said ensuring the integrity of an enterprise's system requires a blending of technology, people and processes, and companies need to focus on how their networks can limit the actions of individuals both in and out of the system.

"Our message to customers at the conference is to educate them on how to apply future technologies to meet security challenges," he said.

In view of this, the company believes that network security solutions are evolving to focus on convergence, in order to bring together contrasting factors such as data and voice, wireline and wireless, and the private and public domain to ensure the protection of an enterprise's information.

Finter explained that Nortel achieves this through its own technology and partnerships with systems operators to customize the best product for the client. These solutions encompass end-to-end broadband, Voice over IP, multimedia services and applications, and wireless broadband applicable to both service provider and enterprise customers.

In Israel, Nortel's customers include Bezeq, HOT, Pelephone, Cellcom, Partner and the Defense Ministry. The Airport City-based local operation, with some 200 employees, also manages the company's activities in Eastern Europe, which Finter said is testimony to the success Nortel has had in Israel in bringing solutions to a highly competitive market - a success, he added, the company aims to duplicate in Eastern Europe over the next 18 months.

Altre spie assortite:

AIPAC's Big, Bigger, Biggest Moment

How much clout does AIPAC have?

E' una domanda retorica?

Well, consider that during the pro-Israel lobby's annual conference yesterday, a fleet of police cars, sirens wailing, blocked intersections and formed a motorcade to escort buses carrying its conventioneers -- to lunch.

The annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has long produced a massive show of bipartisan pandering, as lawmakers praise the well-financed and well-connected group. But this has been a rough year for AIPAC -- it has dismissed its policy director and another employee while the FBI examines whether they passed classified U.S. information to Israel -- and the organization is eager to show how big it is.

Reporters arriving at the convention center yesterday were given a list of "Food Facts" for the three-day AIPAC meeting: 26,000 kosher meals, 32,640 hors d'oeuvres, 2,500 pounds of salmon, 1,200 pounds of turkey, 900 pounds of chicken, 700 pounds of beef and 125 gallons of hummus.

Another fact sheet announced that this is the "largest ever" conference, with its 5,000 participants attending "the largest annual seated dinner in Washington" joined by "more members of Congress than almost any other event, except for a joint session of Congress or a State of the Union address." The group added that its membership "has nearly doubled" over four years to 100,000 and that the National Journal calls it "one of the top four most effective lobbying organizations."

"More," "most," "largest," "top": The superlatives continued, and deliberately. In his speech Sunday, the group's executive director, Howard Kohr, said the "record attendance" at the conference would dispel questions about AIPAC raised by the FBI investigation.

"This is a test, a test of our collective resolve," Kohr said of the "unique challenge" presented by the FBI probe, "and your presence here today sends a message to every adversary of Israel, AIPAC and the Jewish community that we are here, and here to stay." (The official text has two exclamation points after that sentence.) Kohr, without mentioning the fired staffers, told participants that "neither AIPAC nor any of its current employees is or ever has been the target."

As yesterday's session showed, the scandal isn't keeping the powerful from lining up to woo AIPAC. The morning brought Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the evening brought congressional leaders, and at a luncheon "debate" in between, Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and informal administration foreign policy adviser Richard N. Perle tried to one-up each other in pro-Israel views.

Perle è un altro gradito ospite del Bilderberg.

Perle drew cheers for denouncing Palestinian anti-Semitism and the French. Harman mentioned that an aide once worked for AIPAC, called her audience "very sophisticated" and celebrated Yasser Arafat's death as "a blessing." Debating a hard-liner in front of a pro-administration crowd, Harman heaped praise on President Bush, calling the Iraqi elections "sensationally impressive" and moving to "applaud" or "commend" Perle and the administration a dozen times. "Richard is right, and so is President Bush," she said at one point.

But after half an hour of this, Harman could not keep up. Perle provoked cheers from the crowd when he favored a military raid on Iran, saying that "if Iran is on the verge of a nuclear weapon, I think we will have no choice but to take decisive action." When Harman said the "best short-term option" is the U.N. Security Council, the crowd reacted with boos.

Domanda: chi mandiamo a farsi ammazzare in Iran? I figli dei taxpayers?

AIPAC is a demanding crowd, and even Rice, introduced as a "very special friend," did not satisfy universally. The participants applauded heartily her reminder that Bush did not meet with Arafat, but when she said Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, "is committed to both freedom and security," and when she mentioned more U.S. funds for Palestinians, the room was quiet.

Likewise, Rice's call for Arab states to "establish normal relations with Israel" earned an extended ovation; her reminder that Israel must not "jeopardize the true viability of the Palestinian state" did not.

In pratica la Rice è il cagnolino ammaestrato della situazione? Se fa la cuccia prende applausi? Se scrive boiate come questa riceve un biscotto?

There were subtle signs of dissent within AIPAC (a sticker critical of Israel's "disengagement" from Gaza, a policy supported by AIPAC) and not-so-subtle dissent from without:a group of anti-Zionist orthodox Jews with signs proclaiming, "Torah Forbids any Jewish State."

Indovina chi erano?

But the attendees overall showed an impressive ideological discipline -- right down to AIPAC's multimedia show, "Iran's Path to the Bomb," in the convention center's basement.

Che carino!

The exhibit, worthy of a theme park, begins with a narrator condemning the International Atomic Energy Agency for being "unwilling to conclude that Iran is developing nuclear weapons" (it had similar reservations about Iraq) and the Security Council because it "has yet to take up the issue." In a succession of rooms, visitors see flashing lights and hear rumbling sounds as Dr. Seuss-like contraptions make yellowcake uranium, reprocess plutonium, and pop out nuclear warheads like so many gallons of hummus for an AIPAC conference.

Ti piace l'angolino multimediale? Perché non provi a vedere se ti piace questo:

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 1

These items have since been removed from the FOX News web site

Strano!

BRIT HUME, HOST: It has been more than 16 years since a civilian working for the Navy was charged with passing secrets to Israel. Jonathan Pollard pled guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage and is serving a life sentence. At first, Israeli leaders claimed Pollard was part of a rogue operation, but later took responsibility for his work.

Now Fox News has learned some U.S. investigators believe that there are Israelis again very much engaged in spying in and on the U.S., who may have known things they didn't tell us before September 11. Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron has details in the first of a four-part series.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Since September 11, more than 60 Israelis have been arrested or detained, either under the new patriot anti-terrorism law, or for immigration violations. A handful of active Israeli military were among those detained, according to investigators, who say some of the detainees also failed polygraph questions when asked about alleged surveillance activities against and in the United States.

Stupore! (forza, tutti in coro!) "Stupooore."

There is no indication that the Israelis were involved in the 9-11 attacks, but investigators suspect that they Israelis may have gathered intelligence about the attacks in advance, and not shared it. A highly placed investigator said there are "tie-ins." But when asked for details, he flatly refused to describe them, saying, "evidence linking these Israelis to 9-11 is classified. I cannot tell you about evidence that has been gathered. It's classified information."

Se è classified, come si fa ad aprire un'indagine?

Fox News has learned that one group of Israelis, spotted in North Carolina recently, is suspected of keeping an apartment in California to spy on a group of Arabs who the United States is also investigating for links to terrorism. Numerous classified documents obtained by Fox News indicate that even prior to September 11, as many as 140 other Israelis had been detained or arrested in a secretive and sprawling investigation into suspected espionage by Israelis in the United States.

Investigators from numerous government agencies are part of a working group that's been compiling evidence since the mid '90s. These documents detail hundreds of incidents in cities and towns across the country that investigators say, "may well be an organized intelligence gathering activity."

The first part of the investigation focuses on Israelis who say they are art students from the University of Jerusalem and Bazala Academy. They repeatedly made contact with U.S. government personnel, the report says, by saying they wanted to sell cheap art or handiwork.

Eccoli!

Documents say they, "targeted and penetrated military bases." The DEA, FBI and dozens of government facilities, and even secret offices and unlisted private homes of law enforcement and intelligence personnel. The majority of those questioned, "stated they served in military intelligence, electronic surveillance intercept and or explosive ordinance units."

Another part of the investigation has resulted in the detention and arrests of dozens of Israelis at American mall kiosks, where they've been selling toys called Puzzle Car and Zoom Copter. Investigators suspect a front.

Shortly after The New York Times and Washington Post reported the Israeli detentions last months, the carts began vanishing. Zoom Copter's Web page says, "We are aware of the situation caused by thousands of mall carts being closed at the last minute. This in no way reflects the quality of the toy or its salability. The problem lies in the operators' business policies."

Certo, e noi ti guardiamo con la faccia da imbecilli cantando "oooh, stupooore."

Why would Israelis spy in and on the U.S.? A general accounting office investigation referred to Israel as country A and said, "According to a U.S. intelligence agency, the government of country A conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the U.S. of any U.S. ally."

A defense intelligence report said Israel has a voracious appetite for information and said, "the Israelis are motivated by strong survival instincts which dictate every possible facet of their political and economical policies. It aggressively collects military and industrial technology and the U.S. is a high priority target."

The document concludes: "Israel possesses the resources and technical capability to achieve its collection objectives."

Soprattutto se qualcuno fa finta di non vedere e non capire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy here in Washington issued a denial saying that any suggestion that Israelis are spying in or on the U.S. is "simply not true." There are other things to consider. And in the days ahead, we'll take a look at the U.S. phone system and law enforcement's methods for wiretaps. And an investigation that both have been compromised by our friends overseas.

HUME: Carl, what about this question of advanced knowledge of what was going to happen on 9-11? How clear are investigators that some Israeli agents may have known something?

CAMERON: It's very explosive information, obviously, and there's a great deal of evidence that they say they have collected - none of it necessarily conclusive. It's more when they put it all together. A bigger question, they say, is how could they not have know? Almost a direct quote.

HUME: Going into the fact that they were spying on some Arabs, right?

CAMERON: Correct.

HUME: All right, Carl, thanks very much.

L'angolo multimediale continua:

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 2

BRIT HUME, HOST: Last time we reported on the approximately 60 Israelis who had been detained in connection with the Sept. 11 terrorism investigation. Carl Cameron reported that U.S. investigators suspect that some of these Israelis were spying on Arabs in this country, and may have turned up information on the planned terrorist attacks back in September that was not passed on.

Tonight, in the second of four reports on spying by Israelis in the U.S., we learn about an Israeli-based private communications company, for whom a half-dozen of those 60 detained suspects worked. American investigators fear information generated by this firm may have fallen into the wrong hands and had the effect of impeded the Sept. 11 terror inquiry. Here's Carl Cameron's second report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fox News has learned that some American terrorist investigators fear certain suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks may have managed to stay ahead of them, by knowing who and when investigators are calling on the telephone. How?

By obtaining and analyzing data that's generated every time someone in the U.S. makes a call.

Every time?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What city and state, please?

CAMERON: Here's how the system works. Most directory assistance calls, and virtually all call records and billing in the U.S. are done for the phone companies by Amdocs Ltd., an Israeli-based private elecommunications company.

Eccoli!

Amdocs has contracts with the 25 biggest phone companies in America, and more worldwide. The White House and other secure government phone lines are protected, but it is virtually impossible to make a call on normal phones without generating an Amdocs record of it.

In recent years, the FBI and other government agencies have investigated Amdocs more than once. The firm has repeatedly and adamantly denied any security breaches or wrongdoing.

E io ci credo.

But sources tell Fox News that in 1999, the super secret national security agency, headquartered in northern Maryland, issued what's called a Top Secret sensitive compartmentalized information report, TS/SCI, warning that records of calls in the United States were getting into foreign hands - in Israel, in particular.

Investigators don't believe calls are being listened to, but the data about who is calling whom and when is plenty valuable in itself. An internal Amdocs memo to senior company executives suggests just how Amdocs generated call records could be used. "Widespread data mining techniques and algorithms.... combining both the properties of the customer (e.g., credit rating) and properties of the specific 'behavior....'" Specific behavior, such as who the customers are calling.

The Amdocs memo says the system should be used to prevent phone fraud. But U.S. counterintelligence analysts say it could also be used to spy through the phone system. Fox News has learned that the N.S.A has held numerous classified conferences to warn the F.B.I. and C.I.A. how Amdocs records could be used. At one NSA briefing, a diagram by the Argon national lab was used to show that if the phone records are not secure, major security breaches are possible.

Another briefing document said, "It has become increasingly apparent that systems and networks are vulnerable.... Such crimes always involve unauthorized persons, or persons who exceed their authorization... citing on exploitable vulnerabilities."

Those vulnerabilities are growing, because according to another briefing, the U.S. relies too much on foreign companies like Amdocs for high-tech equipment and software. "Many factors have led to increased dependence on code developed overseas.... We buy rather than train or develop solutions."

U.S. intelligence does not believe the Israeli government is involved in a misuse of information, and Amdocs insists that its data is secure. What U.S. government officials are worried about, however, is the possibility that Amdocs data could get into the wrong hands, particularly organized crime.

Ad esempio gli allegri trafficanti di ecstasy?

And that would not be the first thing that such a thing has happened. Fox News has documents of a 1997 drug trafficking case in Los Angeles, in which telephone information, the type that Amdocs collects, was used to "completely compromise the communications of the FBI, the Secret Service, the DEO and the LAPD."

We'll have that and a lot more in the days ahead - Brit.

HUME: Carl, I want to take you back to your report last night on those 60 Israelis who were detained in the anti-terror investigation, and the suspicion that some investigators have that they may have picked up information on the 9/11 attacks ahead of time and not passed it on.

There was a report, you'll recall, that the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, did indeed send representatives to the U.S. to warn, just before 9/11, that a major terrorist attack was imminent. How does that leave room for the lack of a warning?

CAMERON: I remember the report, Brit. We did it first internationally right here on your show on the 14th. What investigators are saying is that that warning from the Mossad was nonspecific and general, and they believe that it may have had something to do with the desire to protect what are called sources and methods in the intelligence community. The suspicion being, perhaps those sources and methods were taking place right here in the United States.

The question came up in select intelligence committee on Capitol Hill today. They intend to look into what we reported last night, and specifically that possibility - Brit.

HUME: So in other words, the problem wasn't lack of a warning, the problem was lack of useful details?

CAMERON: Quantity of information.

HUME: All right, Carl, thank you very much.

Ancora:

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 3

HUME: Last time we reported on an Israeli-based company called Amdocs Ltd. that generates the computerized records and billing data for nearly every phone call made in America. As Carl Cameron reported, U.S. investigators digging into the 9/11 terrorist attacks fear that suspects may have been tipped off to what they were doing by information leaking out of Amdocs.

In tonight's report, we learn that the concern about phone security extends to another company, founded in Israel, that provides the technology that the U.S. government uses for electronic eavesdropping. Here is Carl Cameron's third report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm, with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software, made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

E' davvero un peccato che non funzioni con il

Voice Over IP. Urge una nuova regolamentazione del mercato! (strano!)

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches. This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA. Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise, and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system.

Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned Oct. 18 in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect, a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties.

Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel, Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs, gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade. But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

Indovina perché?

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years, they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks. A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concerns that too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system. And the FBI's own nondescript office in Chantilly, Virginia that actually oversees the CALEA wiretapping program, is among the most agitated about the threat.

But there is a bitter turf war internally at F.B.I. It is the FBI's office in Quantico, Virginia, that has jurisdiction over awarding contracts and buying intercept equipment. And for years, they've thrown much of the business to Comverse. A handful of former U.S. law enforcement officials involved in awarding Comverse government contracts over the years now work for the company.

Forse c'è un lieve conflitto di interessi stile Carlyle?

Numerous sources say some of those individuals were asked to leave government service under what knowledgeable sources call "troublesome circumstances" that remain under administrative review within the Justice Department.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

And what troubles investigators most, particularly in New York, in the counter terrorism investigation of the World Trade Center attack, is that on a number of cases, suspects that they had sought to wiretap and survey immediately changed their telecommunications processes. They started acting much differently as soon as those supposedly secret wiretaps went into place - Brit.

HUME: Carl, is there any reason to suspect in this instance that the Israeli government is involved?

CAMERON: No, there's not. But there are growing instincts in an awful lot of law enforcement officials in a variety of agencies who suspect that it had begun compiling evidence, and a highly classified investigation into that possibility - Brit.

HUME: All right, Carl. Thanks very much.

Lo spasso continua:

Israel Is Spying In And On The U.S.? Part 4

TONY SNOW, HOST: This week, senior correspondent Carl Cameron has reported on a longstanding government espionage investigation. Federal officials this year have arrested or detained nearly 200 Israeli citizens suspected of belonging to an "organized intelligence-gathering operation." The Bush administration has deported most of those arrested after Sept. 11, although some are in custody under the new anti-terrorism law.

Cameron also investigates the possibility that an Israeli firm generated billing data that could be used for intelligence purpose, and describes concerns that the federal government's own wiretapping system may be vulnerable. Tonight, in part four of the series, we'll learn about the probable roots of the probe: a drug case that went bad four years ago in L.A.

Sembra di guardare una puntata di Studio Aperto, o un altro telegiornale d'assalto al quale siamo abituati!

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Los Angeles, 1997, a major local, state and federal drug investigating sours. The suspects: Israeli organized crime with operations in New York, Miami, Las Vegas, Canada, Israel and Egypt. The allegations: cocaine and ecstasy trafficking, and sophisticated white-collar credit card and computer fraud.

Leggi: trafficanti di ecstasy, diamanti e accessori vari.

The problem: according to classified law enforcement documents obtained by Fox News, the bad guys had the cops' beepers, cell phones, even home phones under surveillance. Some who did get caught admitted to having hundreds of numbers and using them to avoid arrest.

"This compromised law enforcement communications between LAPD detectives and other assigned law enforcement officers working various aspects of the case. The organization discovered communications between organized crime intelligence division detectives, the FBI and the Secret Service."

Shock spread from the DEA to the FBI in Washington, and then the CIA.

"I am shocked!!"

An investigation of the problem, according to law enforcement documents, concluded, "The organization has apparent extensive access to database systems to identify pertinent personal and biographical information."

When investigators tried to find out where the information might have come from, they looked at Amdocs, a publicly traded firm based in Israel. Amdocs generates billing data for virtually every call in America, and they do credit checks. The company denies any leaks, but investigators still fear that the firm's data is getting into the wrong hands.

When investigators checked their own wiretapping system for leaks, they grew concerned about potential vulnerabilities in the computers that intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls. A main contractor is Comverse Infosys, which works closely with the Israeli government, and under a special grant program, is reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by Israel's Ministry of Industry and Trade.

Asked this week about another sprawling investigation and the detention of 60 Israeli since Sept. 11, the Bush administration treated the questions like hot potatoes.

ARI FLEISCHER, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I would just refer you to the Department of Justice with that. I'm not familiar with the report.

COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: I'm aware that some Israeli citizens have been detained. With respect to why they're being detained and the other aspects of your question - whether it's because they're in intelligence services, or what they were doing - I will defer to the Department of Justice and the FBI to answer that.

Non vedo, non sento, non parlo, altrimenti: career suicide.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMERON: Beyond the 60 apprehended or detained, and many deported since Sept. 11, another group of 140 Israeli individuals have been arrested and detained in this year in what government documents describe as "an organized intelligence gathering operation," designed to "penetrate government facilities." Most of those individuals said they had served in the Israeli military, which is compulsory there.

But they also had, most of them, intelligence expertise, and either worked for Amdocs or other companies in Israel that specialize in wiretapping. Earlier this week, the Israeli embassy in Washington denied any spying against or in the United States - Tony.

SNOW: Carl, we've heard the comments from Ari Fleischer and Colin Powell. What are officials saying behind the scenes?

CAMERON: Well, there's real pandemonium described at the FBI, the DEA and the INS. A lot of these problems have been well known to some investigators, many of who have contributed to the reporting on this story. And what they say is happening is supervisors and management are now going back and collecting much of the information, because there's tremendous pressure from the top levels of all of those agencies to find out exactly what's going on.

At the DEA and the FBI already a variety of administration reviews are under way, in addition to the investigation of the phenomenon. They want to find out how it is all this has come out, as well as be very careful because of the explosive nature and very political ramifications of the story itself - Tony.

SNOW: All right, Carl, thanks.

Guarda che bella storia: sarà per questo che è stata abbattuta come un cane idrofobo da Fox e soci.

Spy scandal takes disturbing turn

The corporate espionage scandal took a disturbing turn Thursday, as police sources revealed that sensitive security-related information was also stolen via the Trojan Horse spy software.

Da dove arriveranno tutte quelle strane email?

The information was stolen from senior politicians' personal computers as well as from corporate-owned computers, but police officials would not offer details regarding the extent of the information stolen or whether any use has been made of it.

Chiaro.

"This is not just about corporate spying anymore," Judge Mordechai Peled said as he extended the remand of 11 suspects in the case. "This is about additional acts that include major infringements of the right to privacy in other aspects that cannot be disclosed at this point."

Senior police officials heading the investigation said during the court hearing that the spy scandal has security, legal, and personal connotations.

Also on Thursday, "Pelephone" CEO Yaakov Gelbard and "Yes" satellite TV Head Ofer Bloch were interrogated after their deputies were arrested last week in suspicion of soliciting private investigators to transfer information stolen from the computers of rival communications company "Partner" and cable TV company "HOT," respectively.

The deputies claimed the CEOs were unaware the information handed to them was, in fact, stolen.

Guarda mamma, c'è Bin Laden vestito da Babbo Natale...

Cops say CEO's knew of spying

TEL AVIV - Less than a day after the "Trojan Horse" computer spying scandal hit the papers, Tel Aviv district police are convinced this corporate espionage case is the real deal.

As of Sunday night, police said indictments will be handed out against all 11 private investigators arrested in the affair.

All the way to the top

The question is: What of the CEO's of the major companies involved, some of whom already have testified and others who are expected to do so in coming days?

That all depends on whether it can be proven that the businessmen involved knew that they were getting illegal information from their detectives.

The head of Tel Aviv's fraud squad, Superintendent Aryeh Eidelman, said he believes the question to be practically rhetorical in nature.

"I compare this to someone who buys property on a street corner and knows that it was gotten illegally but buys it anyway. When he's caught later, you can indict for possession of stolen property," Eidelman said.

Though the court will ultimately decide the fate of the CEOs involved, Eidelman told Ynet, "Anyone who demands and receives from a private investigator downloaded computer information, balance sheets, PR campaigns, and future plans of rival companies needs to explain why he never felt it necessary to report that the material was acquired through improper channels."

Judge Mordechai Peled remarked this past weekend that it was not unreasonable to assume that material so sensitive could only have been gotten from rival companies by illegal means.

Looking for an informant

The police are now trying to get the investigators to admit the companies that hired them knew their computer-based industrial espionage was illegal.

So far, the only suspect to "sing" has been Alex Weinstein, a computer specialist who worked for Krochmal Special Investigations, but never sat in on high-level company discussions.

As for the top executives arrested last week, they will be brought before the Tel Aviv magistrates court Monday and be released.

However, the police plan to keep an eye on them.

Cerchiamo ancora!

Life in the jungle

The creators of the Trojan Horse software tried their product out on unsuspecting 12-year-olds. Are there no red lines?

Chissà perché circolano tutti questi strani virus via email?

Before software developers Ruth and Michael HaEfrati presented their program to the business, world, they tried it out on a group of innocent civilians.

Every new gun needs a testing ground, computer espionage is no different. The HaEfratis found their testing ground in a small neighborhood in Tel Aviv. Their first victims were 12-year-old school kids.

Michael HaEfrati became interested in one particular class following a family dispute (because the victims are minors, all identifying characteristics have been deleted). He asked one of the children in the class to do some work for him, something the child was forbidden by his parents from agreeing to.

Soon after, other children in the class, especially girls, began receiving threatening and pornographic emails supposedly from the first kid, on their home computers. The child denied the ensuing accusations, but classmates found the denials hard to believe.

Who knew Trojan Horses speak Hebrew?

Digital Terror

Aryeh Ofner is the Israeli head of CA, an American company specializing in information security. The company stands to capitalize nicely on the Trojan Horse scandal, but he remains worried, nonetheless.

"(The scandal) is damaging in two ways.," he says. "First, it creates the impression of having broken a concept, that everything we've done in the industry up to now amounts to nothing.

"Secondly, it gives the impression that the Trojan Horse is the problem. But if information security is like 10 fingers, the Trojan Horse scandal is no more than the little pinky," he says.

He also says that "someone who only takes care of that little pinky will surely pay a much dearer price with the rest of his fingers."

"OK," I asked him. "So a couple of big companies got screwed. Why should this worry the rest of us?"

He looked at me over the top of his glasses, saying, "we must approach this like digital terror. Breaking into a computer could bring this country to a halt. It could create a security issue, grind the country's economy to a halt, destroy the banks. It could even reach the country's food supply.

Un altro caro ricordo.

According to Ofner, the country's legal structure is "not built" to take care of digital crime, and that red lines here have been crossed.

"We live in a jungle," he says. "Israeli managers have no red lines. All the stereotypes of the scheming, dishonest Israeli find expression (in the business world). We create problems as well as we fix them."

He also says it will take months to figure out if business leaders have learned their lesson.

"Managers must understand that the game has changed. If, in nine months from now, the country suffers some catastrophe, we will know we have failed to get this message across."

Ciliegina sulla torta:

Amdocs upgraded to "strong buy"

NEW YORK, June 3 (newratings.com) - Analyst Mike Latimore of Raymond James upgrades Amdocs Ltd (DOX.NYS) from "market perform" to "strong buy," while raising his estimates for the company. The target price is set to $33. In a research note published this morning, the analyst mentions that the company is gaining ground in the global billing and OSS markets and the recent reports about its link to a private firm involved in espionage are overblown. Amdocs is well positioned to benefit from the expected growth of the billings software and services market, the analyst believes. The company is likely to be awarded large deals in the near future, according to Raymond James. The EPS estimates for FY05 and FY06 have been raised from $1.40 to $1.41 and from $1.58 to $1.62, respectively.

Non è incredibile?

La ricerca continua:

Israel bugged Syrian first lady's e-mails

THE personal computer of Syria's British-born first lady was bugged by Israeli military intelligence to build up a profile of her husband, President Bashar al-Assad, it emerged last week.

Troppo strano!

The Israelis used "Trojan horse" spy software to record her messages, including e-mail exchanges with her husband, and forward them to a server computer.

Intelligence sources quoted in an Israeli newspaper admitted to the operation after police arrested 22 suspects in Israel's biggest industrial espionage scandal last week.

The so-called Trojan Horse affair involved leading defence contractors stealing secrets from rivals by sending spy software to their computers disguised as a package of confidential documents. The programme recorded every keystroke and collected business documents and e-mails, which it then sent to a server computer registered in London.

Intelligence sources claimed the Syrian leader and his wife had proved ideal targets. Assad is said to be addicted to computer games.

Asma, his wife, is a computer science graduate from King's College London, and is known to spend long hours corresponding online with her friends and family.

The sources claimed Assad was aware that Israeli intelligence experts had gained access to all his wife's e-mails and documents and had complained about it to "some European leaders".

Another military intelligence expert said: "The wives of leaders are soft targets."

Most leaders, including Assad, would have well- protected computers, he said, but those belonging to their spouses were less secure. "Sometimes they do not even have a basic firewall."

Syria's first lady, the former Asma al-Akhras, now 29, graduated in 1996 and worked as an economist for Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan. She married Assad, who trained as an eye surgeon in London, in December 2000.

The intelligence official said Asma's personal correspondence was of little value but the bugging provided an ideal method of monitoring the thoughts of the president.

"Israel is, of course, interested in the husband, not the wife," he said. "Assad, even after five years in power, is an enigma."

Ancora...

Israeli firms 'ran vast spy ring'

At least 15 Israeli firms have been implicated in the espionage plot, with 18 people arrested in Israel and two more held by British police. Among those under suspicion are major Israeli telecoms and media companies. Police say the companies used a "Trojan horse" computer virus written by an Israeli to hack into rivals' systems. Interpol and the authorities in Britain, Germany and the US are already involved in investigating the espionage, which Israeli police fear may involve major international companies.

Hi-tech rivalry

"This is one of the gravest scandals in... industrial and market espionage in Israel," special fraud investigator Supt Roni Hindi told Israeli media. Israel's investigation has been running since November, uncovering as it expanded an intricate web of alleged espionage among some of the nation's best-known companies. The country's biggest telecoms company, Bezeq, initially came under suspicion as the parent company of two mobile phone operators accused of spying on a mutual rival.

Bezeq now says the Trojan horse virus has been discovered on its own systems. Police now suspect that another mobile phone operator ordered the spying against Bezeq, Israel's Haaretz newspaper reports. Two rival car import firms are suspected of spying on each other, as are two of Israel's major satellite and cable television companies.

No charges have been brought so far and the companies at the centre of the police inquiry say they have done nothing wrong and are co-operating with the authorities. Police fear that as many as 60 Israeli and international companies could be involved or affected. Trojan horse viruses work by installing themselves within a computer system and then allowing hackers to monitor, track or even control that system.

Police have arrested an Israeli man living in London, 41-year-old Michael Haefrati, on suspicion of writing the software and then selling it onto middle men acting for interested parties within the corporate sector. Company executives, private detectives, and former members of the Israeli state security services are among others already arrested.

"Above all it's a story of company fat cats who left their morals in their limousine," said Sever Plotsker, a commentator in Israel's mass-market newspaper Yediot Ahronot.

Non una parola su Amdocs e soci da parte degli amici alla BBC.

Israel: Spy Software Code Had Design Flaw

WASHINGTON (AP)--The spy software at the center of an Israeli economic espionage scandal quietly harvested stolen business documents and e-mails from victims' computers, and secretly transmitted them to a computer in London, where police arrested a key suspect.

Here's how it worked:

Some victims received e-mails that appeared to include a packet of confidential documents. But when the recipient clicked on the e-mail attachment, the spying software--a variant known among Internet researchers as "Hotword"--was installed.

Once active, the so-called Trojan horse software recorded every keystroke and collected business documents and e-mails on a victim's PC and transmitted information to a rented computer server registered by a Paris firm using a Seattle address but located in London.

The British National Hi-Tech Crime Unit declined to say whether it had searched the rented London computer to help track whomever might be responsible. But last week police there arrested Michael Haephrati, 41, and his wife, Ruth Brier-Haephrati, 28. They face an extradition hearing Friday.

Investigators said Haephrati's former step-father, Amnon Jackont, was among the earliest espionage victims in Israel.

Computer security researchers said "Hotword" was not a very sophisticated piece of software code.

Due to a design flaw, if it failed to transmit its stolen documents it effectively overwhelmed the victim's computer and rendered it useless.

Geniale.

"This was not designed very well," said Robert Sandilands, the head of the virus research lab for Authentium Inc., a Florida Internet security firm. "This does not seem to be the work of an experienced virus writer."

"Circolare, non c'è niente da vedere..."

In order to help hide their tracks, experienced cyber-criminals commonly harvest stolen passwords and files using computers they hack into. It's the Internet equivalent of using a stolen cell phone to make threatening calls.

Less sophisticated hackers have left a virtual trail of crumbs back to their doors.

A Minnesota teen-ager convicted of spreading a version of the Blaster infection to more than 50,000 computers in 2003 had designed it so victimized computers checked with a central Web site when they were taken over.

Investigators easily tracked down the teen, Jeffrey Lee Parson, because he had registered the Web site using his own name and listed the address of his parent's home, where he was arrested.

Altro genio.

Israeli Trojan Horse

"It was late in the evening on May 16, 1973, and I was in the Washington bureau of the Times, immersed in yet another story about Watergate. The paper had been overwhelmed by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting for the Washington Post the previous year, and I was trying to catch up. The subject this time was Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon's national-security adviser. I had called Kissinger to get his comment on a report, which the Times was planning to run, that he had been involved in wiretapping reporters, fellow Administration officials, and even his own aides on the National Security Council. At first, he had indignantly denied the story. When I told him that I had information from sources in the Justice Department that he had personally forwarded the wiretap requests to the F.B.I., he was silent, and then said that he might have to resign.

"... Alexander Haig, Kissinger's sometimes loyal deputy, had called a few times during the day to beat back the story. At around seven o'clock, there was a final call. 'You're Jewish, aren't you, Seymour?' In all our previous conversations, I'd been 'Sy.' I said yes. 'Let me ask you one question, then,' Haig said. 'Do you honestly believe that Henry Kissinger, a Jewish refugee from Germany who lost thirteen members of his family to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics as wiretapping his own aides? If there is any doubt, you owe it to yourself, your beliefs, and your nation to give us one day to prove that your story is wrong.' That was Watergate, circa 1973. The Times printed the story the next day, and Kissinger did not resign."

Qui c'è anche l'elenco delle prodezze di Kissinger.

This supposed ethno-religious-historical resistance to bugging is apparently something that never occurred to the Israelis, who blithely have been bugging each other's computers, according to this fascinating story: apparently it all came out when a mystery writer, Ammon Jacont, and his co-author wife noticed that sections of their new as-yet-unpublished novel were appearing on the internet. An investigation unraveled a case of industrial espionage involving "spyware" -- software that infiltrates computers, steals information, and records every keystroke -- that involves at least three Israeli "private" investigating outfits, as well as the executives of major Israeli companies.

As one account describes it:

"The full extent of the industrial spying operation has yet to be discovered, Peal Liat, superintendent at Tel Aviv police headquarters, told Computer Weekly: 'Right now it is a very sophisticated investigation. We have something like 150 different computers that were taken by the investigators. Every computer they open, they discover more. Every day it gets us more companies that ordered the information and more companies that were infected,' she said.

"Israeli police are investigating the role of 15 senior executives from top Israeli companies, after they allegedly hired detective agencies to obtain confidential information from their competitors' computer systems. Telecoms companies, advertising agencies and public relations firms are among more than 20 organisations known to have been targeted. Twenty-two staff from Israel's three leading private investigation firms have been arrested."

Just how "private" these "private investigators" are is an open question, however, especially when we take the following news item into consideration:

"The personal computer of Syria's British-born first lady was bugged by Israeli military intelligence to build up a profile of her husband, President Bashar al-Assad, it emerged last week. The Israelis used 'Trojan horse' spy software to record her messages, including e-mail exchanges with her husband, and forward them to a server computer."

Were "private" investigators spying on the First Lady of Syria? I dont think so. With the Larry Franklin spy scandal now breaking into the headlines, in which a spy nest in the Pentagon and within the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been caught stealing U.S. secrets on behalf of Israel, the question of how the Israelis are using this technology in the U.S. becomes pertinent. The extent of Israeli "Trojan horse" spy tactics is perhaps even bigger than anyone now imagines, if we take this report by Carl Cameron of Fox News from 2001 into account.
[...]
In this context, Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland's comment that "the FBI's attempts to break and then use Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin in national security sting operations look to be truly Nixonian in character and method" has it exactly backwards (but what else do you expect from a dolt like Hoagland?). It is the Israeli government's inclination to spy on everyone and everything that is "truly Nixonian in character."

Paraphrasing Haig: 'Do you honestly believe that the Israelis, a nation of Jewish refugees who lost at least 6 million to the Nazis, could engage in such police-state tactics as wiretapping (and otherwise spying) on their own allies?'

An honest answer: Absolutely positively yes.

Orrore! Avanti:

Israel espionage case points to new Net threat

Executives of top telecom firms accused of spying on each other. A jealous ex-husband suspected of monitoring his former in-laws. Private investigators implicated in computer-hacking-for-hire; one now involved in a possible attempted suicide. So much bad publicity, government officials worry it might impact the entire nation's economy.

At the center of it all - a tiny computer program that's caused the biggest corporate scandal anyone in Israel can remember.

Most consumers have heard of software that can spy on them, and their computers. Such malicious software is often brazenly marketed to spouses who suspect their mate is cheating. But that same technology, sometimes called a Trojan horse, because it sneaks onto a victim's computer in disguise, can be used to commit brazen acts of industrial espionage.

And U.S. experts say what happened in Israel could - and probably already has - happen here.

Israel is now reeling from what some are calling "Trojangate," a corporate scandal that has dominated news coverage there since it was revealed May 29. Already, there have been nearly 20 arrests. Published reports indicate mountains of documents have been stolen from dozens of top Israeli firms. Some 100 servers loaded with stolen data have been seized.

Israeli 'Trojan horse' scandal widens

But Trojangate, experts say, is not unique. It's just the first time a major cyber-espionage case has been unmasked by law enforcement. There's evidence suggesting U.S. firms have already been targeted by similar attacks.

Last fall, banks in the New York area were targeted by a program designed to infect only certain financial institution computers and obtain critical bank passwords, according to Webroot Software's Richard Stiennon, who studies emerging threats for the anti-spyware firm. At the time, he was an analyst with the Gartner research firm, and he helped the banks complain to their anti-virus providers.

Also last year, anti-virus firm MessageLabs discovered a Trojan horse designed specifically to attack a type of software used only in airplane design.

Guarda un po'?

"The phenomenon should worry everyone," said Baruch Gindin, managing director of Gartner's Middle East operations, based in Israel. "There is nothing unique to Israel here. The technology is simple to use. This is a moral issue rather than a technology issue."

Some call the program used in the Israeli case a computer virus; others, spyware. But whatever the lingo, those doing the Internet's really dirty work are much more subtle than their predecessors. The authors of the Melissa and LoveBug viruses wanted to infect as many computers as possible. Those who make adware and spyware want to hijack as many machines as possible and display as many pop-up ads as they can, or steal as many passwords as they can.

But the program used in Israel, now called "Rona" by anti-virus firms, takes a very different tactic. It's narrowly focused. It doesn't call attention to itself. And it operates well below the radar of most modern anti-virus and anti-spyware products. Those computer safety products generally rely on lists of known malicious programs, which they hunt for on a user's computer. But to do so, the security firms need to know what they are looking for. Before the Israeli investigation was revealed two weeks ago, no one in the security industry had a copy of Rona, so anti-spyware and anti-virus software didn't spot it.

"The problem for anti-virus companies was they couldn't detect this threat because they hadn't seen a sample," said Maksym Schipka, a London-based virus expert at MessageLabs. "The scary part of this story is for one and a half years nobody even thought they may be infected. Nobody could imagine they had malware installed on their system."

That's why experts say the next great Internet threat, and perhaps the first very real threat, is the advent of what are being called "targeted attacks." Targeted attacks, by hackers for hire, could steal millions of dollars worth of corporate secrets and never be detected. That's far more dangerous than pranksters overwhelming a Web site with traffic for a few hours.

Assessing the size of the corporate espionage problem has always been a challenge; companies struck by it rarely speak out. But privacy expert Larry Ponemon, a former auditor who was at Price-Waterhouse Coopers five years ago when it published the most recent landmark study on espionage, says its far more common than many realize.

"Unless you've been on the inside you don't understand how pervasive this problem is," he said.

In 1999, PriceWaterHouse Coopers said U.S. firms lose $45 billion to espionage, nearly twice the estimate given a few years before by the FBI.

High-tech tools can only be making things worse, Ponemon said. Hiring employees to infiltrate the competition, or to dig through their trash, as Oracle's Larry Ellison did five years ago to spy on Microsoft, is hard work. Particularly when there's a simpler way.

Electronic dumpster diving

Rob Douglas is a former private investigator who now runs PrivacyToday.com. In his prior life he said he committed what he believes were several acts of legally permissible industrial espionage - hunting for what his clients called "competitive intelligence." One time he was paid $10,000 to attend a trade show, pose as a company executive and buy a competitor's technology. His employer planned to reverse engineer the hardware to see if their technology had been copied. In another incident, he was paid by a boating association to "dumpster dive" on another boating association for corporate data the association had discarded as trash.

While Douglas said he believes the surreptitious use of Trojan horse software is clearly illegal, he fears that for some unscrupulous private investigators stealing such data remotely is simply the next logical step.

Scommetto che funziona meglio se usiamo tutti Outlook Express.

"This is the electronic version of dumpster diving," he said. "For private investigators that would spend hundreds of hours dumpster diving, digging through dirty trash, with all the risks you have, electronic dumpster diving is much easier. And it's 100 percent accurate. You're not digging through junk, bags of dog poop thrown in the trash, that kind of thing."

Discussion lists for private investigators were abuzz with Trojan talk after the Israeli incident. Private investigators rarely publicly disclose their methods, but many PI Web sites do sell such spying software, designed to evade detection by anti-virus and anti-spyware computers.

Six months ago, Ponemon said, he would have dismissed the possibility of a Trojangate in the U.S. But a research project he's now conducting for his current firm, The Ponemon Institute, has convinced him otherwise. He's placed a computer with fake critical business documents on the Internet, a honeypot, designed to entice hackers and study their techniques. What he's learned: Virus writers are now authoring programs designed specifically to look for documents flagged as "confidential" or "critical." They've also built software that can quickly index information on spy-software attacked computers - a sort of Google for economic espionage -to make sorting through mountains of stolen data easy.

"I'm starting to believe it could be much more common," Ponemon said. "If you asked me this question three or four months ago, I would say we're giving too much credit to the criminal. But we are starting to see these technologies.... I'm really worried now."

Ma se Internet è in pericolo, allora occorre una Internet Governance...

Security consultants like Ponemon are hamstrung in what they can say by non-disclosure agreements; their claims of massive data theft sometimes fall flat - or suffer utter disbelief - without the supporting details. That's why the Israeli incident is both important and fascinating for security experts; it offers a glimpse of the world of economic espionage rarely seen by outsiders. It is perhaps the first definite proof that this kind of thing actually happens.

Jealousy and booby-trapped CDs

The tale has all the makings of a made-for-TV movie. The only reason authorities caught on, apparently, was jealousy. The scheme unraveled when Israeli author Amnon Jackont stumbled on portions of a book he was writing - but had not published or shared with anyone - on the Internet. After initial confusion, Jackont suspected his computer was bugged. His suspicions soon focused on his daughter's ex-husband, Michael Haephrati; the couple went through a messy divorce eight years ago.

When police investigated Jackont's computer they say they found the "Rona" Trojan horse program and were able to trace it back to Haephrati, who now lives in Britain. The investigation quickly widened, however, as police uncovered scores of other bugged computers. In addition to what reads like a who's who of Israel's telecom industry, victims included the local divisions of Hewlett-Packard and the Ace hardware chain.

Police accuse Haephrati, 41, of selling the program to private investigators, knowing they intended to use it to commit corporate espionage. In addition to Haephrati, executives from three of Israel's biggest private investigative firms have been arrested. One, 54-year-old Yitzhak Rath, who heads the Modi'in Ezrahi agency, fell from a three-story building earlier this week.

Strano!!

Rath sustained head and spinal cord injuries, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Police are unsure whether it was an accident, an attempted suicide or even an attempted murder.

Gindin said the attackers were clever - they apparently send CD-ROMs with business proposals to the target firms. Once the CDs were loaded, the Trojan horse was secretly installed. The CDs were often sent to marketing managers and others who would be in a position to have early knowledge of company product development, he said.

How common are such cases?

John Fialka, author of "War by Other Means: Economic Espionage in America," wrote seven years ago about the threat U.S. firms face from widespread espionage efforts. The drama of the Israeli incident doesn't surprise him.

"People seem shocked when it happens. They shouldn't. The threat has always been there. The risk is huge," Fialka, now a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, said.

"Shocked!"

"There's not more information because companies keep it a secret," he said. "There is incredible disinformation that surrounds this area. If you are a big corporation and you find a Trojan horse in your computer, the first problem you have is, 'Do you tell anybody or just absorb the information?'"

There's no question that the technology is easily accessible. Stiennon, from anti-spyware firm Webroot, says there are currently 4,000 known pieces of spyware in the world, capable of copying and transmitting every key typed on a computer to a spy. And, as was the case with the Rona spyware, a would-be spy can always take an existing keystroke-logging program and alter it slightly so it slips under the radar of anti-virus programs - creating a targeted attack that could go undetected for months.

Still, Stiennon is not among the crowd who thinks U.S. firms are busily spying on each other this way.

"My guess is it would be as rare as Enron-style fraud," he said. "It wouldn't surprise me if it's going on; but it would surprise me a lot if it was common everywhere."

Richard Smith, a noted cybersleuth who runs ComputerBytesMan.com, has much the same perspective. He said he thinks the risk of cybersnooping on competitors would be too steep for most U.S. firms, who would pay a dear public relations price if exposed.

"It's got to be going on to some degree. But I don't think name-brand companies would be doing this," he said.

'Our guard should be up'

There are other risks from targeted attacks, however: hacktivists, who wanted to disrupt U.S. firms, would likely be eager to expose the inner workings of companies they were targeting. And this method would be an easy way to do it.

L'ennesimo vago ricordo.

"A company could be hurt very badly," Smith said. "I see that as a huge risk, a company being embarrassed in the public eye."

Fialka, the espionage author, said he sees the threat in broader terms. He says foreign governments, particularly China, have targeted U.S. business intelligence for years. While U.S. firms might not spy on other U.S. firms, the threat of nation-sponsored electronic corporate espionage is real.

"Our guard should be up, but it's not," he said.

Gadi Evron, an Internet security manager for the Israeli government, also sees things that way. He says he was approached twice in the computer underground with hacker-for-hire offers; he turned both down, but learned there is plenty of easy money to be made in a world where corporate intelligence is so valuable, and remote hacking is so easy. Reportedly, companies were paying $4,000 for each hijacked PC in the Trojangate case.

"Today, the business case behind Trojan horses is significant," Evron said. "This used to be a game of kids trading candies. Today, the money involved is quite significant.... I'd say that this kind of thing is commonplace globally."

Visto che ci siamo:

New hack cracks 'secure' Bluetooth devices

Cryptographers have discovered a way to hack Bluetooth-enabled devices even when security features are switched on. The discovery may make it even easier for hackers to eavesdrop on conversations and charge their own calls to someone else's cellphone.

Bluetooth is a protocol that allows different devices including phones, laptops, headsets and printers to communicate wirelessly over short ranges - typically between 10 and 100 metres.

Over the past few years security experts have devised many ways of hacking into Bluetooth communications, but most require the Bluetooth security features to be switched off.

In April 2004, UK-based Ollie Whitehouse, at that time working for security firm @Stake, showed that even Bluetooth devices in secure mode could be attacked. His method allowed someone to hijack the phone, giving them the power to make calls as if it were in their own hands.

Pairing up

But this technique did not pose a serious risk because it could be performed only if the hacker happened to catch two Bluetooth devices just before their first communication, during a process known as "pairing".

Before two Bluetooth devices can communicate they must establish a secret key via this pairing process. But as long as the two devices paired up in a private place there was no risk of attack, explains Chris McNab of the UK security firm TrustMatta.

Now Avishai Wool and Yaniv Shaked of Tel Aviv University in Israel have worked out how to force devices to pair whenever they want. "Our attack makes it possible to crack every communication between two Bluetooth devices, and not only if it is the first communication between those devices," says Shaked.

Avanti!

"Pairing allows you to seize control," says Bruce Schneier, a security expert based in Mountain View, California. "You can sit on the train and make phone calls on someone else's phone."
Sniffing the airwaves

During pairing, two Bluetooth devices establish the 128-bit secret "link key" that they then store and use to encrypt all further communication. The first step requires the legitimate users to type the same secret, four-digit PIN into both devices. The two devices then use this PIN in a complex process to arrive at the common link key.

Whitehouse showed in 2004 that a hacker could arrive at this link key without knowing the PIN using a piece of equipment called a Bluetooth sniffer. This can record the exchanged messages being used to derive the link key and feed the recordings to software that knows the Bluetooth algorithms and can cycle through all 10,000 possibilities of the PIN. Once a hacker knows the link keys, Whitehouse reasoned they could hijack the device.

But pairing only occurs the first time two devices communicate. Wool and Shaked have managed to force pairing by pretending to be one of the two devices and sending a message to the other claiming to have forgotten the link key. This prompts the other device to discard the link key and the two then begin a new pairing session, which the hacker can then use.

Surprisingly easy

In order to send a "forget" message, the hacker must simply spoof one of the devices personal IDs, which can be done because all Bluetooth devices broadcast this automatically to any Bluetooth device within range.

"Having it done so easily is surprising," says Schneier. He is also impressed by the fact that Wool and Shaked have actually implemented Whitehouse's idea in real devices.

They show that once an attacker has forced two devices to pair, they can work out the link key in just 0.06 seconds on a Pentium IV-enabled computer, and 0.3 seconds on a Pentium-III. "This is not just a theoretical break, it's practical," says Schneier.

Shaked and Wool will present their findings at the MobiSys conference next Monday in Seattle, Washington, US.

Ancora su AIPAC e soci, visto che ormai siamo qua.

FBI Tapped Talks About Possible Secrets

In July 2004, a Defense Department analyst and a senior official from an influential pro-Israel lobbying group met at the Pentagon City mall in Arlington. Amid the stores and shoppers, the analyst warned that Iranian agents were planning attacks against American soldiers and Israeli agents in Iraq, sources familiar with the meeting said.

Domanda: cosa ci fanno degli Israeli Agents in Iraq? Fammi indovinare...

Alarmed, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee official, Keith Weissman, left the mall and went to the office of colleague Steve Rosen. The two men then relayed the information to the Israeli Embassy in Washington and a reporter for The Washington Post.

What the AIPAC officials did not know, the sources said, was that the FBI was listening in -- to both the meeting and their subsequent phone calls -- and that the Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, was cooperating in an investigation of whether classified U.S. information was being passed on to the government of Israel.

Allora anche quelli dell'FBI sono capaci di ascoltare...

That meeting and those phone calls are a focus of a criminal case prosecutors are building against Rosen and Weissman, who recently left their jobs at AIPAC, according to multiple sources familiar with the investigation. Franklin has already been charged, and a looming court battle will probably turn on whether he and others were illegally passing government secrets or were merely conduits of the type of policy-related information that is frequently bandied about in official Washington.

The meeting at the mall is not mentioned in the publicly filed charges, and new details are emerging about a series of FBI-monitored meetings between Franklin and the former AIPAC officials dating back to early 2003. But many questions remain unanswered, such as whether the information Franklin allegedly passed along at those sessions was classified, and if it was, whether Rosen and Weissman knew it was classified, and whether any damage was done to U.S. national security.

Rosen and Weissman have been notified that prosecutors are preparing to charge them with disclosing classified information, sources familiar with the investigation said.

Federal prosecutors and the FBI would not comment, nor would John Nassikas, an attorney for Weissman. An attorney for Rosen, Abbe D. Lowell, said that "when all the facts come out, the government will have more to explain about its conduct than Steve Rosen will about his." Earlier, he said that Rosen "never solicited, received or passed on any classified documents" from Franklin. A spokesman for the Israeli Embassy did not return phone calls. A Post spokesman confirmed that the reporter, Glenn Kessler, recently declined a Justice Department request to be interviewed. Kessler would not comment yesterday.

Franklin's attorney, Plato Cacheris, confirmed that Franklin briefly cooperated with investigators in the summer of 2004, during the time of the meeting at the mall. Cacheris said that Franklin, whom he described as a "loyal and patriotic American citizen," is no longer cooperating and plans to go to trial.

Last month, Franklin was charged in a criminal complaint in U.S. District Court in Alexandria with disclosing classified information related to potential attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Court documents did not reveal who received the information, but federal law enforcement sources have said that Franklin disclosed it to Rosen and Weissman at an Arlington restaurant in June 2003.

The sources also said the attacks would have been carried out by Iran. At the time, the U.S. government was concerned about Iranian activities in Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion that year. Federal prosecutors in Alexandria have notified Franklin that he would be indicted by a grand jury, and Franklin has been told to appear in federal court June 13. Sources familiar with the case said the court appearance relates to a sealed indictment.

Franklin was also charged again last week in federal court in West Virginia with possessing 83 classified documents dating back three decades. They were found at his West Virginia home.

The contacts between Franklin, an Iran specialist, and former AIPAC policy director Rosen and senior analyst Weissman extend back before the June 2003 lunch. In February 2003, the three met at the Ritz-Carlton Pentagon City hotel in Arlington in a session that they only learned later was under FBI surveillance, sources said. It is unclear whether agents were following Franklin or the AIPAC officials.

After the 2004 meeting, sources said that Rosen and Weissman called Kessler and relayed what Franklin had told Weissman about possible Iranian attacks against Americans and Israelis in Iraq. Law enforcement sources said that Kessler, who did not write an article based on the phone conversation, is not a target of the investigation.

Pulling US strings on Israel

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) decision in early May to arrest Lawrence Franklin, the Pentagon analyst accused of disclosing classified information about US forces in Iraq, has put in the spotlight the work of an influential pro-Israel lobbying outfit, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), as well as its many supporters in and outside government, including former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz (now World Bank chief), Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith.

According to an FBI affidavit, Franklin related information about possible attacks on US forces in Iraq to two AIPAC employees during an FBI-monitored lunch in June 2003. Franklin was allegedly upset that his hardline stance on Iran was being overlooked and he hoped AIPAC would be able to attract attention to his views.

According to the New York Times (May 5, 2005), supporters of the "influential circle in the Pentagon", whose members were leading advocates for war in Iraq and have long-standing ties to AIPAC, blame the FBI's investigation on "the continuing struggle inside the administration over intelligence", arguing that individuals who supported the Iraq war have been unjustly targeted.

Although the two AIPAC employees had not been charged (as of early May) and the lobbying group was informed that it was not under investigation, the Franklin case has brought some unwanted attention to AIPAC, as well as to the larger issue of US-Israeli relations. Many observers have long suspected that key supporters for the Iraq war inside the administration - including Wolfowitz and Feith - were at least in part motivated by their views on Israeli security. These views were also in line with the stance of AIPAC and several other pro-Israel outfits.

E che dire di 9/11 Commission Director: Iraq War Launched to Protect Israel?


Of all the US lobbies, few wield more influence than the pro-Israel interest groups. According to some estimates, about 500 national and local organizations collectively make up the pro-Israel lobby. And of those, AIPAC arguably carries the most weight - "the most effective general interest group over the entire planet", former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich once said of AIPAC. Extremely active in securing weapons deals for Israel, in lobbying for sanctions against the country's Middle East rivals, and in promoting the political agenda of whatever government happens to be in power in Israel, AIPAC has long played a highly public role in American policymaking in the Middle East.

Glossario - deals: regalo del taxpayer.

A proposito: "Like much of Israel's US-acquired military hardware, the Saraf will receive improvements in its armament and navigational systems, using technology that does not yet exist in the US."

Paga, taxpayer, paga, che sono soldi investiti bene.

AIPAC has also been active in pushing US intervention in the region. In fact, its efforts to persuade US lawmakers to go after Iraq date back to the first Gulf War. In an interview shortly after the 1991 Gulf War began, Thomas Dine, then the president of AIPAC, told the Wall Street Journal that his organization had been busy behind the scenes building support for the war. "Yes, we were active," said Dine. "These are the great issues of our time. If you sit on the sidelines, you have no voice."

According to press reports, in 1990 alone pro-Israel groups gave nearly US$8 million in campaign contributions. Of those on the Democratic side of the aisle who received public affairs committee (PAC) cash and later supported the decision to go to war were Senator Harry Reid, an influential Democrat who had received $150,000 from pro-Israel PACs during his senate election bid (a dozen years later, in 2002, Reid would again support the use of force against Iraq).

Other Democrats who voted for the 1991 Iraq war resolution and received lobby cash included Senator Richard Bryan and Senator Howard Heflin. According to the Wall Street Journal, the entire Alabama delegation in both the House and Senate voted for the resolution. Although at first glance "this can be ascribed to the conservative, pro-military character of the state", opined the Journal, it is clear that "pro-Israel PACs have also cultivated Democrats [in the state] in recent years".

A key AIPAC supporter at the time who actively worked to get congressmen on board the war resolution was Representative Stephen Solarz. Solarz, who later became a supporter of various Project for the New American Century (PNAC) initiatives (he signed the notorious September 20, 2001 PNAC letter calling for war against Iraq "even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the [September 11] attack"), personally lobbied Senator Al Gore, who voted for the resolution, as well as several other fence-sitters among the Democrats, whom Solarz accused of being "tragically shortsighted" in their view of the Israeli-American relationship. Solarz also pushed AIPAC to play a more public role in supporting the use of force, as well as several other pro-Israel lobbies, including the Reform Jewish Movement.

Once war was underway, AIPAC immediately set about to capitalize on the growing US public support for Israel in the wake of Saddam Hussein's scud missile attacks on the country. According to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (WRMEA), by the end of January 1991, AIPAC had rushed off a letter to its supporters outlining a post-war campaign. Reported WRMEA: "Counting on the American public's newfound understanding of Israel's vulnerability, AIPAC will press for a new package of security aid for Israel far larger than any previous package. Second, the lobby will encourage the United States to strengthen its friendship with Israel and avoid pandering toward Arab states hostile to the West and Israel. Third, it will request millions of dollars more in housing loan guarantees to settle Soviet Jews.

Tradotto: metà della Yukos in fuga?

And finally, it will work to ensure that any diplomatic efforts to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict will be based on close cooperation and trust between the United States and Israel."

Cooperation?

Within a few short months, however, newspapers were reporting that AIPAC and the rest of the pro-Israel lobby had suffered a "damaging reversal" and that Israel was "no longer an automatic ally". It seems that the administration of George H W Bush was more interested in maintaining relations with other Arab states and pushing for a comprehensive Middle East peace deal than it was in keeping the lobby happy.

Despite these setbacks, AIPAC was again in the thick of things during the leadup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. According to press reports, AIPAC membership jumped nearly 50%, to some 70,000, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, in part through ties the group had made with the Christian Right, which reflected a key strategy promoted by many neo-conservatives and foreign policy hardliners during the 1990s. In late 2002, as talk about war heated up in Washington, AIPAC held a "national summit" in Atlanta to discuss the possible war and to strategize with supporters. Among the speakers at the conference were Wolfowitz, Tom Ridge and Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition.

Prendiamo nota di Christian Right.

Commenting on the burgeoning relations between the Christian Right and the pro-Israel lobby, Reed said: "I don't think there's any question that since September 11 and the attack on the United States there's been a renewed dialogue and a new relationship between the Jewish community and the Christian community because of their shared friendship to Israel and their mutual opposition to terrorism."

Not long after Bush declared an end to the war in Iraq in May 2003, AIPAC focused its attention on a new target - Syria. AIPAC helped lobby for the passage of new US sanctions against Syria, long a key goal of neo-conservatives and Likud supporters both in the US and Israel. Reported the Deutsche Presse Agentur (November 14, 2003):

In his speech this month about the need for the Middle Eastern countries to move toward democracy, US President George W Bush won some praise, but his words were also met with apprehension among Arab countries in the region... The basis for such worries... was that Bush's speech was preceded by suggestions from the so-called neo-conservatives. They were the spearhead of the drive that led to the invasion of Iraq. For example, one of them, Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, talked [while in Israel] about the Syrian government's failure to stop infiltration of guerrillas into Iraq. He coupled that with the observation that Syria's military strength was feeble. This occurred at the same time that the Israeli lobby in Washington, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was using its muscle on the US Congress to pass the Syria Accountability Act. This would impose US sanctions on Syria unless Syria ended its occupation of parts of Lebanon, cut its ties to Palestinian groups the United States regards as terrorists and stopped its alleged developments of chemical and biological weapons.

Per fortuna la comunità internazionale si è unita tutta in coro per suggerire alla Siria di uscire pacificamente dal Libano, in modo da non far sembrare che si siano fatti smuovere dagli USA, evitando la caduta del governo, eccetera?

AIPAC has also lobbied heavily for US funding of various Israeli weapons programs, including its Arrow missile defense system. Its website explains: "Since 1990 the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the US Ballistic Missile Defense Organization have cooperated to develop missile defense technology to counter the threat of long-range missiles, which are being developed by countries such as North Korea and Iran. This military cooperation between the US and Israel has resulted in the deployment of the Arrow missile defense system, and the continuing development of the Tactical High Energy Laser (THEL)."

Per due risate sull'Arrow vedi qui e qui.

Sul Tactical Laser ci siamo già fatti due risate l'altra volta.

After the Senate voted in 2002 to include money for the Arrow system and other Israeli military priorities in a defense spending bill, AIPAC proudly reported, "In a vote of 95-3, the Senate last week passed the fiscal year 2003 Defense Appropriations bill, which provides substantial funding for US-Israel strategic cooperation.

E' sempre la cooperation di poco fa: "Like much of Israel's US-acquired military hardware, the Saraf will receive improvements in its armament and navigational systems, using technology that does not yet exist in the US."

The Arrow missile defense program received $80 million above the administration's request for a total of $146 million. Additional funding includes the following: $23.5 million for the Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser (MTHEL); $64.9 million for the Litening II Targeting Pod; $35 million for Bradley Reactive Armor Tiles; $22 million for the Hunter Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; and $20 million for the Improved Tactical Air-Launched Decoy (ITALD). Learn more about these defense programs by visiting our interactive strategic showroom."

Chi paga questa roba?

Several high-profile Bush administration folks have had financial interests in many of the weapons systems pushed by AIPAC, including Jay Garner, the former "mayor of Baghdad", whose SY Coleman produced parts for the Arrow missile system. Garner also has strong ties to the neo-conservative Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Troppo strano!

Andiamo a cercare la Christian Right di cui abbiamo preso nota.

Women-only council planned for pro-Israel evangelical lobby group

At the National Religious Broadcasters convention in California earlier this year, Christian Zionist leader Kay Arthur declared in a since memorable speech that despite her love for the United States, "if I had to chose between America and Israel, I would choose Israel."

E il taxpayer tace.

According to reports, the gathering, which included the who's who in the religious broadcasting world, responded with "tepid" applause, a few faces "cringing with embarrassment."

Arthur, who was in Israel this week, had apparently crossed a sort of fine line, that until now most outspoken Christian Zionists have managed to delicately, for the most part, maintain.

But Arthur, whose name often appears alongside the likes of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Ralph Reed, insisted in a Jerusalem interview this week that she stands behind the declaration and plans, in fact, on becoming even more involved in the Holy Land with the creation of a women's council within the Christian Allies Caucus, the increasingly influential evangelical lobby group in the Knesset.

"I completely stand behind my speech at the conference," she insisted. "God has chosen Israel above all the nations of the earth, and because I love God, I have to follow God's heart and be dedicated to the land and the people of Israel."

Cosa c'entra God con il taxpayer?

Arthur, 71, the co-founder of the Precept Ministries, which is based in the U.S. but has branches in some 120 countries worldwide, was in Israel this week leading a tour group of 150 devoted Christians to various holy sites - save Bethlehem, "because it's a hassle to get there."

By her own estimates, she's been to Israel "at least 30 times" since she was born-again at age 29. She hosts her own radio show and television program, where she appears before hundreds of thousands of co-religionists and rattles off verses from the Old and New Testament alike, convincing them of Jewish nation's uniqueness and the biblical-basis for her gung-ho Zionism.

"When my feet touched Eretz Israel," she says of her first trip here, "I felt at home."

Un po' come Kerry alias Kohn?

AIPAC the unstoppable

06/01/05 "Middle East Times" - - If Social Security is the third rail of US politics, Israel is the third rail of US geopolitics. For most of Israel's short life as an independent state, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has played the role of a political action committee defending and advocating Israeli interests in both houses of the US Congress. It is the single most important organization affecting the relationship with Israel.

Over the past 50 years, AIPAC has nursed through Congress scores of pro-Israel legislative initiatives, blocking at the same time pro-Arab measures Israel deemed dangerous to its security.

AIPAC's list of almost 100,000 members reads like a Who's Who of generous supporters of Israeli causes. The fact that AIPAC never had to register as a foreign agent demonstrates Israel is an integral part of the body politic, a de facto 51st state of the union. Its most successful lobbying effort was to convince each new Congress and the occupant of the White House that Israeli interests are identical to the United States' fundamental interests, ergo no need to register if you are lobbying for a safer America.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon recently concluded his 11th tête-à-tête with US President George W. Bush. He had flown to the United States for AIPAC's annual conference, attended by 5,000 activists at the Washington Hilton, where congressional and administration luminaries consider it a "must" to be seen on the podium extolling eternal friendship between the two countries. The event draws more politicians than any other convention, except for the president's State of the Union message.

AIPAC hall of famer Richard N. Perle's 'Israel-right-or-wrong' speech drew thunderous applause when he said he favored a military raid on Iran. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice drew stony silence when she said Yasser Arafat's successor Mahmoud Abbas "is committed to both freedom and security".

Unfortunately, the FBI threw caution to the wind when it ignored the friendly advice this column dispensed last September, and decided to try its hand at touching the third rail. And what a mess this created.

A Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, who had worked at the US Embassy in Tel Aviv and fell in love with Israel, was seen sharing national security documents with his pals at AIPAC over lunch at the Tivoli restaurant in Arlington, Va. FBI surveillance tapes show Franklin relaying top-secret information to Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. But this was the kind of routine exchange that had gone on for half a century. It was hardly another Jonathan Pollard case, the Israeli spy who carted off secret documents by the wheelbarrow-full, and is now serving a life sentence.

Franklin, 58, surrendered in early May at the FBI's Washington field office after the government filed a criminal complaint accusing him of handing over classified national defense information to those not entitled to receive it. This was the first time AIPAC officials had been tagged as unworthy to hear high-level confidences. They had listened to, or been shown, classified information of interest to Israel for decades - and no gumshoe had ever filed a complaint. The FBI, for reasons the bureau has kept close to its bulletproof vest, elevated routine practice to treason.

Given Washington's perennial loss of institutional memory, there is no reason the FBI - or anyone else - should remember a famous case that dramatized Israel's clout in Washington during the Carter administration. An Israeli procurement general and his US opposite number were going over a list of US military items the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) needed in its next tranche of military assistance. The Pentagon-based general pointed out several sensitive items were proscribed by Congress and doubtless would be turned down.

The Israeli then decided to humor him. In a famous retort that was leaked to the newspapers, the IDF general said, "Our job is to deliver Congress and yours is to ship the goods to Israel."

Franklin's hot classified news seemed innocuous enough among members of the same family who have no secrets for each other. He had been employed by the US defense department since 1979 and held a "top secret" security clearance. The FBI had been trailing him for three years. They finally nailed him with documents on "axis of evil" Iran that clearly were of concern to both countries.

Franklin was one of 1,300 employees in the policy branch of the Pentagon under Douglas Feith, a passionate advocate of Israel who had once advised the right-wing Likud party. AIPAC executive director Howard Kohr asked Rosen and Weissman to walk the plank and the annual AIPAC conference was spared the sparring. They both knew the FBI possessed incriminating evidence even though the bureau is yet to deliver an indictment.

The Rosen-Weissman legal fees have already reached $1 million, but AIPAC made sure they wouldn't go broke.

Rosen gave his entire life to AIPAC. His Palm Pilot Rolodex spanned 50 states and the rest of the world. He founded the organization's government branch, which pioneered lobbying the administration - the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon - in addition to Congress.

He became AIPAC's government branch. A national security and foreign policy specialist, Rosen frequently called editors and reporters he felt had strayed from the hallowed reservation. He didn't take kindly to articles critical of the Israeli government.

AIPAC never bragged about its many successes. Anyone who's anyone among Israel's friends and admirers knows what AIPAC achieves year in and year out. Over the next year, its new target is to convince Congress to underwrite all the expenses incurred by Israel in its withdrawal from Gaza and four isolated outposts in northern West Bank, as well as the resettlement of the 8,000 Israelis slated for evacuation.

The $2 billion wall-electronic-fence-razorwire-ditch is being funded by a mix of grants and loans - also from the United States. The almost $3 billion Israel receives every year for defense will be increased accordingly.

Full-page ads in The New York Times and Washington Times, placed by the leftist Council for the National Interest Foundation (CNIF), called on AIPAC to register as an agent of a foreign government.

Forget about it. CNIF champions Hizbullah and Hamas, two organizations listed as terrorist by the US state department. It also long enjoyed the support of Abdel Rahman Alamoudi, a Muslim-American who now sits in a Virginia jail cell to face a 19-count indictment, including federal charges of money laundering, financial assistance to terrorist organizations and a role in an alleged Libyan plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah.

CNIF has a fair amount of purging to accomplish before it can expect to be taken seriously by mainstream America. Meanwhile, AIPAC's extraterritorial dispensation will continue unperturbed.

Why Israel?

I can think of no greater mystery in all of American politics that the reasons behind the blind support the US gives to Israel. There is an old joke about why Israel will never become the 51st state of the United States... it is because that would mean that they only have 2 Senators!

Time and time again I have watched politicians publicly declare their support for Israel. Politicians who will never ever make a decision that affects Israel still feel the need to pledge their allegiance publicly. Local assembly people, mayors, dog catchers... every American politician must declare their support for Israel or else they risk losing their office.

Career suicide...

Why? In my entire 41 plus years on this planet I have never heard one damn reason why we have to pledge blind and unconditional support to Israel. Not once. Not from a politician and not from a pundit. The reasons for our support are as deep a secret to the public as are the agendas of secret societies, the global power broker group know as the Bilderberg Group and the goals of our Project for a New American Century (PNAC) government.

Somebody tell me what Israel has done for the US during my 41 years? During my 41 years I have watched Israeli persecution of the people who lived on Palestinian soil prior to the creation of the Jewish state. I have watched dozens of UN Security council violations ignored while others were voided by sole American vetoes. I have watched billions of American tax dollars head over to Israel while I had to walk by homeless New Yorkers on a daily basis. Yet in all my life I have never witnessed a single event that made me feel that our friendship with Israel benefited my own nation.

This is a truly one way relationship yet I am not sure which way it actually goes. I am not sure if the US is controlled by Israel or if Israel is an arm of the US. One of these two scenarios has to apply for nothing else makes sense. Then again maybe, as with many governmental issues there are things we do not know.

There is a great deal of speculation out there, and there has been a great deal of research done on this topic. We can end the speculation if a single American politician would come forward and deliver, along with his or her pledge of allegiance to Israel, a clear and valid reason to support a nation that under present circumstances clearly does not deserve our support.

Somebody... please explain this to me!

Nell'ultima puntata i nostri allegri eroi a stelle e strisce affrontavano con coraggio (?) i trafficanti di ecstasy, diamanti e gli spacciatori di passaporti falsi, mentre strane cose accadevano intorno alla Nuova Zelanda.

Cosa ci riserva il futuro?

Mystery sub was spying for the US

The mystery submarine that Israel detected snooping off its shores last November belonged to the American navy and was on a spy mission, Channel Two reported Sunday.

According to the unattributed report, Israeli officials have not indicated what the Americans may have been looking for.

Military officials declined to comment on the report. Senior military sources have only said that it belonged to a "Western navy."

The incident occurred on the night of November 9 off the northern coast of Israel. The Navy had detected the submarine after it had penetrated two nautical miles into Israel's territorial waters, about 18 kilometers from shore.

The Navy followed the submarine for a few hours, but the moment it took active measures to close in on the submarine, it quickly turn and headed back to international waters.

MK (Likud) Yuval Steinitz, head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee hinted at the time of American involvement when he warned if Israel had attacked the sub "dozens of American or French sailors would have died unnecessarily."

Un po' come accadde con USS Liberty?

Following the incident, reports surfaced late last year that the United States had increased its intelligence operations against Israel as part of an effort to prevent escalation of the conflict with the Palestinians with an invasion of the Gaza Strip following incessant Kassam rocket strikes, or offensive action against Hizbullah in Lebanon or even Syria.

The reports said the United States had increased U.S. satellite monitoring of Israel to determine military movements, import and export of weapons and weapons tests. They also said the Americans had expanded the interception of signals communications from Israeli government and military facilities.

Riusciranno i nostri allegri eroi a togliersi il mastino dalla caviglia?

Security concerns as Israel attempts damage control on growing missile scandal

Security concern are escalating at Caracas (Simon Bolivar) international airport in Maiquetia, after the discovery of a shipment of five (5) missiles in transit from Colombia to Tel Aviv (Israel). German airline Lufthansa is claiming that the security seizure at their air cargo depot is a "misunderstanding."

A Lufthansa spokesman told reporters that Venezuelan officials had stopped a shipment of "five pieces of cargo"... each weighing 65 kilos and destined for Israel. The Lufthansa employee was emphatic that "the freight is neither rockets nor weapons!"

Emphatic!

He declined to specify what the contents of the five packages were, and also did not identify who had dispatched the items or the recipient, citing data protection regulations.

The five pieces of cargo had been declared at Venezuelan transit Customs & Excise as "dangerous materials" and it is claimed that they had otherwise met all required Venezuelan transit regulations covering air transport. Lufthansa: "We believe this is a misunderstanding."

Shocked!

The Lufthansa depot has been closed and a Lufthansa cargo employee is currently being interrogated... as Venezuelan officials released information that five fighter-plane missiles (apparently headed for Israel) had been seized.

The missiles (used on French Mirage and American F- 16 fighter planes) allegedly belong to the regular Colombian Armed Forces... they were discovered, Saturday, when an alert customs officer spotted them as they were about to be loaded onto a Lufthansa flight to Israel. A Lufthansa employee has admitted to reporters that the seized cargo was made up of "missile parts" and said that Lufthansa is trying desperately to sort out the internationally embarrassing situation with local authorities before it becomes an international incident.

Venezuela's Minister of the Interior & Justice (MIJ) has meanwhile confirmed for the Venezuelan media that five missiles were indeed heading to Israel from Colombia... he said he would not go further into details of the missiles, but they could be attached to F-16s or Mirage fighter jets and were found in a hangar belonging to the German airline, Lufthansa.

* The news has also broken in Israel where the local media is claiming the seizure to be a "sequester" of parts of five missiles en route from Colombia to Israel... including capsules of liquid nitrogen used as missile fuel.

The Israelis fear that the incident is gaining all too much attention in the Latin media and are keen to damage-control the situation before it gets out of hand.

Latin...

The seizure/sequestering took place Saturday night at Maiquetia... the Israelis are denying that the Colombian shipment was of complete missiles and are claiming that it was only "missile parts" and that previous shipments had already passed through Venezuelan transit muster without complaint... previous shipments have amounted to the assembly of at least a dozen missiles.

Questions are now being raised as to the United States' involvement in the covert missile operation as well as the surprising role of the Colombian armed forces... especially considering US president George W. Bush and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's nefarious claims that Venezuela is deliberately feeding cross-border Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) and Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels with significantly less sophisticated weaponry -- which allegations the Venezuelan government has vociferously denied as being part of the US disinformation effort against the democratically-elected government of President Hugo Chavez Frias.

Aspetta un po'?

October 31, 2001: Israel Doubles Lockheed-Martin F-16I Order

Israel has chosen the F-16 to be the backbone of its fighter fleet for the next 20 years or more. In early September 2001, Israel exercised an amendment to a January 2000 contract with Lockheed Martin to purchase an additional 52 F-16I-series aircraft on top of the 50 purchased in January 2000.

Pagati da?

The buy reinforced a trend in that has seen increased funding for power projection and strategic defense needs. The total price tag will be over $4 billion, of which Lockheed Martin's share is about $3 billion; the remaining billion dollars covering the cost of the avionics being supplied by Israeli firms.

Questo sempre perché: "Like much of Israel's US-acquired military hardware, the Saraf will receive improvements in its armament and navigational systems, using technology that does not yet exist in the US."

The acquisition will proceed as a buy-now, pay-later deal that will drain much of Israel's $1.8 billion per year U.S. military aid account for the next five years.

Sono pagati dal taxpayer!

The newly ordered planes are to be delivered between 2006-2009 and the agreement covers the aircraft, logistics, support, training and other services for Israel. All of the internal avionic equipment for the aircraft will be supplied by Israeli companies; orders have already been signed with the Lahav division of Israel Aircraft Industries. The purchases will replace Israel's remaining stock of older Boeing F-15 Eagles in service since 1976, advanced multi-role Lockheed Martin F-16A/B series in service since 1980, multi-role F-4E Phantoms in service since 1969, and multi-role A-4 Skyhawks in service since 1967.

Riflettiamo tutti in coro: se Israele ha gli F-16 pagati dal taxpayer e distribuiti dalla Lockheed Martin, cosa se ne fa dei missili colombiani per l'F-16 o per il Mirage?

Mr.Hat> Forse hanno altri numeri di serie e si fa più fatica a rintracciarli!

Ottima idea, Mr. Cilindro! E chi ha dei Mirage parcheggiati sotto casa?

India turns its back on US arms

Making no bones about New Delhi's annoyance, even as US Ambassador to India David Mulford has tried to placate matters, Indian Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced on Tuesday that the government had cleared the purchase of 12 used Mirage 2000 V fighter aircraft from Qatar and 11 Dornier 228 aircraft from Germany for maritime surveillance, virtually as a gesture set against the US offer to sell PC-3 Orions to India.

Liberation dice si a Rotschild

Recent statements by Serge Dassault confirm the worst fears. When he took over Le Figaro, he told his editors: "I would hope that, where possible, the newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is some news that does more harm than good. The risk is that it threatens the commercial or industrial interests of our country" (15). What he meant by "our country" was his arms manufacturing company, Dassault-Aviation. Presumably it was also to protect his company that he censored the story about the fraudulent sale of Mirage aircraft to Taiwan, and the story about discussions between Jacques Chirac and Abdelaziz Bouteflika on the planned sale of Rafale aircraft to Algeria (16).

Israel hand seen in Ivorian clash

Under both the Fourth and Fifth Republics, Israel received more important weapons for its army and air force from France than from any other country. Israel won the 1967 Six Day War with then state-of-the-art Mirage fighter-bombers supplied by France when neither the United States nor any other European nation would or could supply comparable weapons.

Spectacular attacks hit Iraq oil flow

Segui il link...

Iraqi Air Force Equipment - Introduction

Most of Iraq's Air Force was destroyed during Operation Iraqi Freedom during early 2003, and all remaining equipment was junked in the immediate aftermath of the war. None of the aircraft acquired during Saddam's time remained in service.

The status of the Iraqi Air Force was poorly documented in the open literature. According to various estimates, Iraq probably had at least 100 combat aircraft in service, though some estimates suggest that as many as 300 combat aircraft remained in service. This wide variation in estimates probably reflects some underlying uncertainty in classified Western intelligence estimates, as well as a general absence of public reporting of such estimates in recent years. The higher estimates appear to account for all existing airframes, regardless of operational status, while the lower estimates appear to account for the cannibalization of some airframes to provide spare parts to keep at least some aircraft in flyable condition.

Some published estimates suggest that there were as many as 750 combat aircraft in the Iraqi Air Force at the time of the 1991 Gulf War. Other estimates suggest that the actual number of fighter and ground attack aircraft was closer to 500. One problem with the higher number is that it is apparently derived from calculating aircraft deliveries during the 1980s, without accounting for combat and other losses during the decade of war with Iran. While most sources report that over 90 of the 113 one-seat Mirage F.1s from France remained in service as of 1991, other estimates suggest that the number was far lower. And while Iraq received over 200 MiG-21s and F-7s during the 1980s, by some accounts over half of these had been lost by the time of the 1991 Gulf War.

The UN and Kuwait say Iraq did not return extensive Kuwaiti military equipment, including eight Mirage F-1 aircraft.

The equipment of the air force and the army's air corps, like that of the other services, was primarily of Soviet manufacture. After 1980, however, in an effort to diversify its sources of advanced armaments, Iraq turned to France for Mirage fighters and for attack helicopters. Between 1982 and 1987, Iraq received or ordered a variety of equipment from France, including more than 100 Mirage F-1s, about 100 Gazelle, Super-Frelon, and Alouette helicopters, and a variety of air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles, including Exocets. Other attack helicopters purchased included the Soviet Hind equipped with AT-2 Swatter, and BO-105s equipped with AS-11 antitank guided weapons. In addition, Iraq bought seventy F-7 (Chinese version of the MiG-21) fighters, assembled in Egypt. Thus Iraq's overall airpower was considerable.

Between 1977 and 1987, Paris contracted to sell a total of 133 Mirage F-1 fighters to Iraq. The first transfer occurred in 1978, when France supplied eighteen Mirage F-1 interceptors and thirty helicopters, and even agreed to an Iraqi share in the production of the Mirage 2000 in a US$2 billion arms deal. In 1983 another twenty-nine Mirage F-1s were exported to Baghdad. And in an unprecedented move, France "loaned" Iraq five SuperEtendard attack aircraft, equipped with Exocet AM39 air-to- surface missiles, from its own naval inventory. The SuperEtendards were used extensively in the 1984 tanker war before being replaced by several F-1s. The final batch of twenty-nine F1s was ordered in September 1985 at a cost of more than US$500 million, a part of which was paid in crude oil. Iraq also bought more than 400 Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missiles and at least 200 AS30 laser-guided missiles between 1983 and 1986.

While maintaining official neutrality in the Iran-Iraq War, the Soviet Union had provided extensive military assistance to Iraq, and at the same time, continued its efforts to gain leverage on Iran. In early 1987, Moscow delivered a squadron of twenty-four MiG-29 Fulcrums to Baghdad. Considered the most advanced fighter in the Soviet arsenal, the MiG-29 previously had been provided only to Syria and India. The decision to export the MiG-29 to Iraq, also assured Iraq a more advantageous payment schedule than any offered by the West and it reflected Soviet support for one of its traditional allies in the Middle East. In May 1987 the Soviets provided Iraq with better financial terms in a successful effort to prevent Iraq from buying sixty French Mirage 2000 fighters for an estimated US$3 billion. Caught in a financial crisis, Baghdad welcomed the low-interest loans Moscow extended for this equipment.

Iraqi Su-22 FITTERs and MiG-23 FLOGGERs conducted most air-launched chemical attacks during the Iran-Iraq War. Iraq also utilized several other airframes, fixed and rotary-wing, for the delivery of chemical weapons. The preferred chemical ordnance delivered by Iraqi aircraft during the war were 250 and 500-kg bombs. During the war, mustard- and Tabun-filled 250-kg bombs were delivered by FLOGGER F and FITTER. Also, 500-kg mustard-filled bombs were delivered by FITTER aircraft, and probably by FLOGGERs as well. Iraq may have developed the capability to also use cluster bombs, some of which may have been filled with chemicals since the end of the Iran-Iraq War. In addition to bombs, 55-gallon drums filled with unknown chemical agents (probably mustard) were dropped onto forces from altitudes of 3,000-4,000 feet by Iraqi helicopters. Spray systems mounted on the Mi-8 HIP helicopters were also used against troop concentrations. An unknown number of HIPs were outfitted with two spray tanks on their underside, each with a volume of 1000 liters. A B0-105 reportedly observed near Basrah in April 1988 carried a probable chemical spray tank attached to the exterior near the cockpit, although there is no confirmed use of this helicopter delivering chemical ordnance. Finally, 90-mm air-to-surface rockets filled with chemical agent, possibly fired by Mi-24/25 HINDs, were used against Iranian troops.

By the summer of 1990, the IQAF constituted the sixth largest air force in the world, with 750 fighter, bomber, and armed trainer aircraft, supported by 200 miscellaneous types, including an Iraqi-built airborne early warning aircraft derived from the Soviet IL-76 transport. Iraq's air force included the modern MiG-29 Fulcrum interceptor and air superiority fighter, the MiG-27 Flogger strike fighter, the MiG-25 Foxbat interceptor, the MiG-23 Flogger fighter-bomber, the MiG-21 Fishbed fighter, the Sukhoi Su-25 Frogfoot ground attack airplane, the Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer strike aircraft, the Sukhoi Su -7, -20 and -22 Fitter family of fighter-bombers, and the Tupolev Tu-16 Badger and Tu-22 Blinder bombers. Additionally, it had Chinese-made H-6 and J-7 aircraft, the Czech L-39 armed trainer, and French Mirage F-1 fighters. These carried a variety of Soviet and European air-to-air missiles, bombs, bomblet dispensers, and smart weapons such as the French-built AS-30L laser-guided weapon.

Fewer than half of these aircraft were either third generation (comparable to the US F-4) or fourth generation (comparable to US F-15 technology), and were flown by pilots of marginal quality, compared with US aviators. These aircraft included the Soviet MiG-29 and Su-24 (both fourth generation) as well as the MiG-23, MiG-25, and the French Mirage F-1 (third generation). The rest of the aircraft were 1950s and 1960s Soviet and Chinese technology, and were flown by poorly trained personnel. Nevertheless, under the proper conditions, even the older aircraft models were effective.

The 65 French-built Mirage F-1s and their pilots were the Iraqi Air Force elite. Iraq had acquired a wide range of weapons and electronic warfare gear for the F-1, including laser-guided air-to-surface missiles. French-trained pilots exhibited a high degree of skill and determination when attacking Iranian surface targets, and were more willing to engage in air-to-air combat than their colleagues flying Soviet-built aircraft. It was an Iraqi F-1 that fired two Exocet antiship missiles at the USS Stark (FFG-31) in 1987. During the Iraqi offensives of 1988, F-1s equipped with PGMs attacked Iranian armaments factories, oil refineries and facilities, bridges and causeways, as well as merchant shipping in the Gulf.

Rullo di tamburi...

During Operation Desert Storm the Iraqi Air Force did not seek to challenge Coalition air forces, and nearly half the Iraqi Air Force fled to Iran to escape destruction.

Why the IQAF fled to Iran is not precisely known, and the answer may never be fully known.

Ma Iran e Iraq non erano grandi nemici?

In any case, Iraqi fighters and support aircraft fled for the border -- more than 120 left. Over 200 aircraft were destroyed on Iraqi airfields, and hardened laser-guided bombs devastated Iraq's hardened aircraft shelters. Eventually day-and-night air strikes destroyed or seriously damaged 375 shelters out of a total of 594.

According to the US Department of Defense, Iraq lost 90 aircraft of all types [including helicopters] to coalition air forces during Operation Desert Storm. Of these, 39 were shot down in air-to-air combat [the details remain somewhat obscure, since a total of as many as 42 aircraft were claimed to have been destroyed in action]. Another six were lost in accidents and 16 were captured or destroyed by coalition ground forces. Additionally, another 122-137 were flown to Iran [estimates range from 115 to 140], bringing the total confirmed loss to at least 234 aircraft. In addition to confirmed losses, of Iraq's 594 hardened aircraft shelters, 375 were damaged or destroyed by coalition bombing. According to one estimated as many as 141 aircraft were destroyed in these shelters. By another estimate, 81 aircraft had been destroyed on the ground.

Dopo anni di guerra, aerei iracheni passano allegramente il confine iraniano e atterrano...

Iran retained the 15 Il-76, 40 Su-20/22, 24 Mirage F1, 7-12 MiG-23, seven MiG-25 and four MiG-29 combat aircraft that fled Iraq to escape the Coalition air campaign in 1991. As of early 2000 Iraq claimed it flew more than 100 military planes and 33 civilian airliners to Iran, though the Iranians said the numbers are lower.

In the Air Force Equipment table, the figures for 1990 and 1995 reflect estimated total aircraft inventory, and during this timeframe most of these aircraft could be assumed to be operable. From 2000 on, the figures reflect operational aircraft only. Thus, the change from 1995 to 2000 reflects a reduction in the estimated number of operable aircraft, rather than the total number of extant airframes, which is probably largely unchanged.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, testified before the House Armed Services Committee on 18 September 2002 that Iraq's air force operates more than 50 key air defense radars and has about 300 jet aircraft, including a few Mirage F-1s and MiG-29 Fulcrums, but less than

Forse se piovono missili da un Mirage è colpa degli arabi!

Un vago ricordo per il lettore attento...

Covert Iraq-Iran Alliance

Back in December 2003 when I accurately forecast 4 months in advance that Shi'ite leader Moqtada al-Sadr would "open a southern front against the [Zionist] invaders in Iraq", my prediction was not derived from black magic or some sort of mystical extra sensory perception. Though at the time it probably seemed impossible to most in the west that Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims could or would fight together against America and the Jewish State, such action has in fact been inevitable since the late eighties, when Iraq and Iran formed a covert alliance designed from the outset to rid the entire Middle East of Zionist insurgents forever.

Though this powerful alliance has been generally known to the upper levels of Arab and Persian intelligence agencies in the Middle East for many years, it was easy to hide from countries in the west, who believed what they were taught to believe, and who then in turn forced their false beliefs onto the people by way of the ever-compliant media. "Shi'ite Muslims hate Sunni Muslims" and so on, and just to prove it President Hussein ruthlessly put down a Shi'ite uprising in southern Iraq. It was a stunning and thus utterly convincing put down, because these particular Shi'ites were working for the American CIA rather than for Baghdad or Tehran, making their demise in sovereign Iraq inevitable.

The western intelligence agencies should have been able to recognise the deadly Alliance for what it really was, but most of them sadly lacked the capacity to do so. With the exception of Germany and France, who tend to stand aside from the pack, the agencies of America [CIA], Britain [MI6], Palestine [Mossad] and Australia [ASIS] act like a giant global club, where each member of the club believes the rumors of other club members to the exclusion of all else. So when the Mossad says "Shi'ites hate Sunnis", there is a faint echo of obsequious agreement from the CIA, MI6 and ASIS. Considerably amused by this gross and thus fatally flawed 'western intelligence', the French SDECE in particular keeps its distance, ordering its agents not to spoil the Zionist party by injecting real truth where it might not be welcome.

Most thinking people in the west will be able to understand the Shi'ite - Sunni Alliance perfectly well, based on their own [mostly Christian] history. Though for centuries Roman Catholics and Protestants cheerfully slaughtered each other by the thousand, in recent times both splinter groups of the same religion have fought side by side in conflicts like World War II, to defeat what both factions jointly believed to be an 'evil' foe. Rest assured that Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims react in exactly the same way, and will fight to the death in order to rid their sovereign nations of Christian and Jewish invaders

It is with the reality of this alliance in mind that we must view the latest developments in Iraq and Iran, because it is the only way to decode what is really happening. Though Sunni Baathist Republican Guard attacks on Americans and collaborators in the north of Iraq appear detached from Shi'ite Mehdi Army attacks on Americans and collaborators in the south, they are in reality fully-coordinated strikes by two separate oversized brigades of the same Alliance army, equipped with a very sophisticated military Command Control Communications intelligence [C3i] structure.

The first hard intelligence of the Iraq-Iran alliance was in full public view thirteen years ago, but was completely missed by observers in the west, due partly to the fog of war, and partly to the boastful antics of "Stormin' Norman" and his bevy of adoring junior American army officers. When President Hussein ordered that all serviceable jets and Exocet-equipped helicopters be transferred to Iran, Stormin' Norman branded this an act of cowardice, scornfully accusing the Iraqi Air Force of, "Running away from the fight". In fact, Stormin' Norman had just viewed Act One of the Alliance's master plan to remove all Zionists from the Middle East forever, but he was just too stupid to recognize it.

DEHE!!!

Now think about this very carefully. At that time in 1991, both sides knew perfectly well that America completely lacked the logistic support to invade Iraq nationwide, so the simplest action for the Iraqis would have been to further disperse their combat jets to more than fifty rudimentary satellite airstrips [easy with Mirage and Mig fighters], and sit it out. If this was considered insufficient, then a portion of the Iraqi Air Force could have been temporarily dispersed into Sunni Jordan next door, because King Hussein was very much on Iraq's side. But no, President Saddam Hussein suddenly and inexplicably ordered that the entire Iraqi Air Force be delivered to Shi'ite Iran, an apparent enemy he had fought bitterly for eight long years at the behest of Wall Street.

Stormin' Norman's juvenile theatrics removed all attention from the Iraqi aircrews, who arrived in Iran to a discreet hero's welcome, before being flown back to the Iraqi border near Baghdad in VIP helicopters. This very action alone tells you directly that there was no intent to use these state-of-the-art Exocet launch aircraft at any time during Gulf War I, but no one noticed back in 1991. CNN was frantically milking the increased revenue from the ever-popular Stormin' Norman as fast as it could, and had no time to spare for the analysis of distant and perhaps unsubstantiated events like the total destruction of Zion. Life was wonderful for CNN investors, and they merrily partied on through the night, while Iranian flight mechanics carefully wheeled the precious Mirages and Exocets into specially air-conditioned hangars.

During the years that followed Iraq and Iran publicly threw swear words at each other, while keeping an eye on the distant horizon for Zionists, who they knew would return one day, because Wall Street always does when strategic oil reserves are there to be pillaged. And while Iraq and Iran continued the false animosity, China helped out behind the scenes by fitting a handful of ancient Iranian F4 Phantoms and a host of Iraqi Mig 29s with slightly updated home-grown versions of the French Exocet sea-skimmers, known only as "C 801" and C 802". Iranian F4 aircraft successfully fired the C 801 during their 1997 exercise "Road To Jerusalem", which is a really Freudian name for an anti-ship missile exercise, unless of course you happen to be privy to Alliance forward planning.

Then finally, when Wall Street finally plucked up the courage [and a couple of gullible allies called Great Britain and Australia], the Iranians kept their eyes downcast, and humbly murmured that they would not stand in the way of the "Coalition of the Willing" illegally invading Iraq. Naturally enough perhaps, Wall Street forgot to ask if Iran would allow them to leave again afterwards.

Before the first American soldier even crossed the start line in Kuwait, Russia had discreetly provided the Iraqi Republican Guard with more than a thousand state-of-the-art Kornet anti-tank missiles, and at the same time positioned advanced Sukhoi 27s equipped with nuclear-tipped "Sunburn" supersonic cruise missiles in both Iran and Syria. The Kornets, Exocets, and C 801/802 weapon systems were free fire, i.e. the Iraqis and Iranians could use them whenever they saw the need, but the Russians retained strict fire control of the Sunburns.

Ricordate i Sunburn e i Kornet?

America May Be Forced to Surrender in Iraq

Just after the invasion started, the U.S. discovered to its horror that Russia had supplied the Republican Guard with 1,000+ advanced Kornet anti-tank missiles, quite capable of disabling the previously invincible American Abrams M1 Main Battle Tank, used primarily to protect less heavily armored vehicles and troops. In a very real sense, each Abrams tank was a compact and mobile indestructible 'fort' complete with a large 120-mm gun, just what was needed to protect vast mobile columns of men and equipment, but that was before the Russian Kornet, and long before the new horror shown in the video at the top of this page, whatever it might be.

Russia: Analysts Speculate Over Presence of Russian-Made Antitank Missiles In Iraq

With U.S. military planners weathering accusations that they underestimated the level of resistance their forces would encounter in Iraq, one piece of Iraqi military hardware is especially dogging U.S. tanks advancing on Baghdad: the Russian-made Kornet missile. Although it is not clear exactly who sold them to Iraq, the Kornet is being blamed for U.S. setbacks on the battlefield and has caused a diplomatic spat between Washington and Moscow. RFE/RL questions military experts about how Baghdad likely got its hands on the hardware.

Moscow, 3 April 2003 (RFE/RL) -- With U.S.-led forces closing in on Baghdad, Washington continues to deflect criticism that unexpectedly fierce guerrilla tactics by Iraqi forces have made the battle tougher than expected. Among the most visible blows dealt U.S. and U.K. forces so far was the disabling of at least two technologically advanced Abrams M1 tanks, reportedly attacked by Iraqi soldiers using Russian-made Kornet antitank missiles.

The surprise use of the missiles by Iraq, along with other Russian-made technology, has kicked up a diplomatic dispute between Moscow and Washington that has touched other countries as well.

Russia, Cina, India... Iran... Venezuela... spot the trend.

Independent military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said that, although he has seen no concrete evidence of how the Kornets got to Baghdad, Iraqi forces "would not have been able to put up any resistance" were it not for violations of United Nations sanctions on the country. "Over the past 12-plus years that the sanctions have been in place, Russia, like Ukraine and Belarus, has taken part in violating them. During all those 12-plus years, military materiel and weaponry have been sent to Iraq," Felgenhauer said.

Felgenhauer said that in addition to those three countries, arms dealers in Jordan, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have also violated weapons sanctions to varying degrees, providing both new weapons systems and spare parts through well-organized networks.

The Kornet, manufactured by the state-controlled Russian firm KBP Instrument Design Bureau of Tula, is an advanced, portable, laser-guided missile designed to disable and destroy tanks and armored vehicles from a distance of up to 5 kilometers.

In addition to the Kornet, the United States says it has "credible evidence" that Russian companies sold Iraq night-vision goggles and technology to jam global-positioning-system (GPS) satellite signals.

Iraq denies possessing the Kornet, but RFE/RL correspondent Ron Synovitz, who is traveling with U.S. troops in Iraq, cited U.S. military intelligence in Iraq last week as saying that Iraqis have used Kornets to attack at least two U.S. Abrams M1 tanks and an armored troop carrier. Initial warnings to U.S. troops in the field -- who were unaware the Iraqis possessed the weapon -- had indicated the Kornet was wire-guided instead of laser-guided.

Citing unidentified Pentagon sources, "Newsweek" magazine this week reported that Iraq bought as many as 1,000 Kornets, with 500 supplied by Ukrainian arms dealers and some possibly coming through Syria.

The Russian government angrily denies accusations from the White House that it illicitly sold military technology to Iraq in violation of United Nations weapons bans. Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov dismissed Washington's allegations as "propaganda" intended to distract attention from criticism of its military campaign, "Komsomolskaya pravda" reported yesterday.

Washington has imposed sanctions on several Russian companies it accuses of supplying arms to Iraq, including KBP Tula. The company and the Russian state arms-export company Rosvoruzhenie also deny supplying Kornets to Iraq.

But some officials, including Duma Deputy Andrei Kokoshin, a former head of Russian President Vladimir Putin's Security Council, have admitted that Russian-sold equipment may have been resold to Iraq by other countries.

Kyiv, dogged by U.S. accusations last year that it sold sophisticated Kolchuga radar systems to Baghdad, has also denied accusations that Ukrainian arms dealers sold Kornets to Iraq.

"Jane's Intelligence Digest" last week also reported that Belarus was a possible conduit for arms to Iraq.

Jeremy Binnie, Middle East editor of "Jane's Sentinel," agreed that while the origins of the Kornets in Iraqi hands are far from established, former Soviet states are a large source of illicit arms sales. "There seem to be some powerful, almost mafia kind of arms dealers who cut pretty big deals acting as middlemen getting access to the large stores of post-Cold War equipment, etc., or equipment left over from the Cold War, and then they can sell them on to whoever wants to buy them in the Middle East, Africa, or wherever," Binnie said.

Felgenhauer, meanwhile, said that Belarus and Ukraine are unlikely sources for the Kornet itself because they probably do not have stores of the relatively new weapon, which was unveiled in 1994. He said that Syria and the United Arab Emirates are more likely suspects.

Russia has sold Syria more than 1,000 Kornets over the past three years. The United Arab Emirates also bought the missiles as part of larger weapons systems.

Felgenhauer said U.S. accusations that arms falsely marked as destined for Yemen were sold to Iraq through Syria may well be true.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week accused Syria of allowing military supplies, including night-vision goggles, to cross its territory into Iraq, calling it a "hostile act."

Syria did not deny the allegations, with Foreign Minister Faruq al-Shara saying on 31 March that he hoped U.S. and British forces would be defeated in Iraq.

Countries selling arms are obliged to provide so-called end-user certificates in which buyers pledge not to sell on weapons without permission from the source country. Felgenhauer said that these are routinely falsified, allowing source countries such as Russia to claim they are not responsible for weapons resold by third countries. "Of course, everyone really knows what goes where because the false end-point countries never actually receive the arms," he said. "They go straight to places like Iraq."

Ruslan Pukhov is director of Moscow's Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies. He stressed that there is no concrete evidence of Russian arms sales to Iraq. He points his finger at Syria and the United Arab Emirates as possible conduits to Iraq. "It remains an open question as to whether [middle countries] sold arms [to Iraq] with Russian permission or not. It's not possible to know that now, either from the reactions of Russian authorities or from American announcements," Pukhov said.

Felgenhauer said that Kornets will not likely have a significant influence on the course of the war, saying there is no proof they can penetrate Abrams tank armor head-on -- and they are not alone in being able to inflict damage at weak spots.

Binnie said that Iraqi military tactics are also not putting weapons systems such as the Kornet to their best use. By rushing up in pickup trucks during hit-and-run raids, he said Iraqi combatants cannot properly train laser-guided systems on their targets. "Western armies would dig those systems into fortified positions," he said.

Felgenhauer said the Kornets will do the most damage to already frayed U.S.-Russia relations through the public knowledge of their sales. "They'll show greater influence in that regard than on the battlefield itself," he said.

Torniamo a Vialls:

Russia is the undeclared and slightly biased umpire for this conflict, because it had and still has a mutual defense pact with Iran. So although just one Sunburn could transform all of Tel Aviv into heat and light in slightly under 80 seconds, Vladimir Putin reserves the right to decide whether or not this final mammoth step will be taken, because a 400 kiloton thermonuclear blast cannot possibly be mistaken for anything else, which might in turn lead to unpredictable complications at the international level. If at all possible then, Iraq and Iran are required to expel or destroy the Zionists invaders without resorting to critical nuclear weapons.

As we now know, the Russian Kornets were used to great effect during the early phase of the invasion, knocking out a large but unspecified number of "impregnable" American Abrams tanks, though these lumbering beasts were never going to be a serious threat in urban or desert warfare. The tanks eventually got bogged down with everything else, and nowadays all of the American military in Iraq spends 95% of its time sheltering inside giant fire bases reminiscent of Vietnam, because whenever they stray outside the high walls, somebody shoots them.

Casualmente:

Tanks take a beating in Iraq

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military's Abrams tank, designed during the Cold War to withstand the fiercest blows from the best Soviet tanks, is getting knocked out at surprising rates by the low-tech bombs and rocket-propelled grenades of Iraqi insurgents. In the all-out battles of the 1991 Gulf War, only 18 Abrams tanks were lost and no soldiers in them killed. But since the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, with tanks in daily combat against the unexpectedly fierce insurgency, the Army says 80 of the 69-ton behemoths have been damaged so badly they had to be shipped back to the United States.

Le rocket propelled grenades della fatina buona del frigo?

Somehow Rumsfeld [who was never a general] forgot that no one but a madman tries to defeat fresh well-armed invaders with full bellies, because they can be a real pain in the ass. Far better to let the invaders get dirty and smelly over a few months, deliberately restrict [blow up] their convoys of food, fuel, and especially water, then start kicking sand in their faces when morale is rock-bottom and they just want to go home to mom. Decimating a demoralized army is so much easier, and requires less ammunition.

Early intelligence suggests initial Alliance strategy was to hold the sea-skimmers in reserve until America was comprehensively defeated on the ground in Iraq, then sink a frigate or two as the U.S. fleet tried to exit the Persian Gulf, which in turn is the only way back to America. The Persian Gulf is also the biggest and best Exocet shooting gallery anywhere in the world. The American defeat would then be highly visible and totally humiliating, ensuring that just like Vietnam, the American people would not allow its military sons and daughters to return for at least a century or more.

This relatively mild strategy became obsolete the moment that the Zionist Cabal recently decided to "take out" Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf, a man they regarded as a dangerous young upstart who could be removed from the battle with minimal risk to the overall future of Iraq. They could not have been more wrong, because in reality Moqtada al-Sadr is the Alliance's chosen leader for southern Iraq, anointed by both the Sunni Republican Guard in the north of Iraq, and by leading Shi'ite clerics in Iran. As we shall see, if Moqtada al-Sadr is killed or maimed, we will be into an altogether new and exceedingly lethal ball game.

Understand clearly here that the American administration and their puppets in Baghdad have always been aware of a "certain risk" to American servicemen from the refurbished Exocets. Even the remote "possibility" of an Exocet attack on the American Fleet led Secretary Rumsfeld to demand that American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf be conventionally powered rather than nuclear.

The Defense Secretary is not at all concerned by the prospect of 5,500 dead American sailors, but his masters in New York will sew his testicles into his mouth if an "avoidable" critical nuclear event in any way contaminates what Wall Street regards as its private reserves of crude oil in the Persian Gulf. Thus the current fleet carrier in the Gulf is the expendable CV67 "John F. Kennedy", a conventionally powered leviathan of some 80,950 tons, which requires at least 30 nautical miles of sea room to take any meaningful evasive action at all.

New York's sensitivity on the subject of sea-skimming missiles briefly became clear two weeks ago on July 31, when China's official new agency Xinhua reported from Baghdad, "Iraqi Defense Minister Hazim Al Shaalan has announced that his country intends to start negotiations with the Iranian government to restore the airplanes smuggled to Iran by the former Iraqi regime"... "The former Iraqi regime transferred a number of military airplanes to Iran during the first Gulf war in 1991 to preserve them from the danger of the air raids of the coalition forces, but Iran refused to return them after the end of the military operations." The Iraqi defense minister said that the airplanes are Iraqi properties and should be returned to their original owner. "This issue would be discussed through forming an ad hoc committee from the two sides" said the hopeful puppet Iraqi defense minister.

Someone somewhere in downtown Manhattan panicked at this sudden public exposure of the missing Iraqi aircraft, and immediately pulled the western media into line. Not one western media outlet was allowed to print a single detail about this Iraqi defense puppet statement, for fear the American public would find out more than it was allowed to know about the dramatically increased risk to its loved ones overseas in the Persian Gulf. In less than 90 minutes, all reference to this Xinhua press release, and links to the correct Xinhua web page, had been completely wiped off the American Google "Recent News" search engine, which must be a new Internet world record.

There was plenty for Wall Street to panic about. As the vast numbers of Iranian Exocet and C 801/802 missiles became increasingly obvious, the numbed Zionist Cabal finally started to see the vague outline of the massive trap that had been sprung. Every minute of every day, Iranian AWACS aircraft record the precise movements and updated positions of every American vessel in the Persian Gulf. In turn, this precision data is fed to a string of fighter bases positioned north to south in western Iran, where local operations continually program new target coordinates into an array of sea-skimming missile guidance systems.

Try not to be misled by "sophisticated American defensive systems', because no such systems exist that are even remotely capable of countering a massed attack by sea-skimming Exocet and C 801/802 missiles. The Persian Gulf is only 100 miles wide on average, and each missile travels just below the speed of sound at an altitude of only six feet. Iran has all of the high ground, and American AWACS aircraft will be unable to detect the Mirages and Migs until after they burst out of the deep mountain valleys and over the Gulf proper at sea level, travelling at 0.96 Mach. All aircraft will already be on precise track for their American targets, as tersely advised in advance by the Iranian AWACS.

You do the math. Because the Persian Gulf is relatively shallow on the western side, large ships are generally restricted to deeper water in the center, meaning that the John F. Kennedy is never more than 50 miles away from the Iranian coastline, and considerably closer when transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Let us call the range fifty miles, because it will make no difference at all to the sea-skimmers. Let us call the speed of the attack aircraft and the Exocet missiles the same, at 700 miles per hour. From the earliest point at which the attack aircraft can be spotted exiting the Iranian valleys, maximum flight time for either aircraft or missile to the John F. Kennedy is a scant 4.28 minutes.

Still time for American fighters to intercept the Iraqi attack aircraft, you think? No, not a chance, not even a slight one. Because the block 2 Exocet and C 801 both have ranges in excess of fifty miles, all attack aircraft will launch within one minute of breaking cover, then roll back for base at 0.96 Mach while still in sovereign Iranian airspace. The launched Exocets and C 801s, probably numbering between thirty and fifty in the first attack wave, will continue on track at exactly the same speed, just 6 feet above the sea, completely invisible to the radar on the AWACS aircraft and to the radars of the U.S. fleet.

The accuracy and lethality of these relatively small sea-skimming missiles should not be underestimated. On Tuesday May 4, 1982, two Argentine attack planes launched a pair of Exocets at the British Fleet from a range of approximately 30 miles, with one of them locking onto the British destroyer HMS Sheffield. Travelling just below the speed of sound at an altitude between six and eight feet, the Exocet hit Sheffield amidships just above the waterline, its 350# directed-energy warhead penetrating deep inside the electronic fire control room. HMS Sheffield caught fire and sank, with the loss of 21 lives.

Five years later on May 17, 1987, a single Iraqi Mirage locked onto the USS Stark in the Persian Gulf. Though by this time the frigate was fitted with "sophisticated anti-Exocet defenses", its radar completely failed to see the incoming Exocet, which hit the bridge structure, causing massive damage and killing 37 American sailors. In keeping with the best civilian Pentagon procedures, USS Stark's skipper, Captain Glenn Brindel, was relieved of his command, comprehensively scapegoated, and then forced to retire.

Try to remember that in each case, a single Exocet hit amidships [i.e. a direct hit], and caused awesome damage out of all proportion to the size and cost of the missile itself. Exocet is a truly terrifying weapon against which there is still no effective defense, and a minimum of 50% will strike their targets if an attack is launched on an American carrier group in the Persian Gulf. Though a handful might accidentally strike screening destroyers and frigates, a conservative estimate indicates that a minimum of ten Exocets would hit the carrier. Survival under these circumstances would be extremely difficult.

Whether or not a premature attack is launched against the carrier group, seems to be directly linked to the fate of Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf. The Zionists have been repeatedly warned to to leave him alone via diplomatic back channels, but at present it is unclear whether or not the warning has been received and clearly understood.

Moqtada al-Sadr is a key member of the Iraq-Iran Alliance, meaning that a direct attack upon him is a direct attack on both Iraq and Iran. Should the Americans succeed in killing or maiming Moqtada al-Sadr, the balance of power in southern Iraq will be upset to the point where Alliance plans will have to be accelerated. In the casual view of this analyst, the chance of a massed carrier strike will then increase tenfold in order to redress the imbalance.

Those licking their lips at the possibility of reprisals against Iran had best shut their mouths again, because there will not be any. Every attack jet that bursts out of an Iranian valley will be carrying the correct insignia of the Iraqi Air Force, notionally and factually at war with America since the illegal invasion of its sovereign territory. It will be defense at its very best, and entirely allowable under the umpire's rules. If the Zionists ignore the umpire and attack Iran, it is reasonable to expect that two unstoppable Mach 2.0 supersonic nuclear Sunburns will then be launched in the direction of Tel Aviv and Haifa. Game, set and match.

Missile repair deal snags in Colombia

Air-to-air missile components found on a Lufthansa plane on Saturday by Venezuelan authorities in a Caracas airport before being flown to Tel Aviv are the property of the Colombian Air Force, according to statements released by the Colombian Air Force and Lufthansa.

According to the statement by the Colombian Air Force, the missile components were to be sent to Israel for "inspection and maintenance" work to be carried out by the Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd, a R&D authority in the Defense Ministry.

The Colombian Air Force statement confirmed that Rafael would review the electronic part of the missiles, which fall under the technical name of "Optical Guide." The statement added that the transport of the missiles complied with all the international rules for its transport and confirmed the final destination to be Israel.

Colombia claims ownership of missile parts seized in Venezuela

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombia's air force claimed ownership of five missile components seized by authorities from a private airport hangar in neighbouring Venezuela. The electronic guidance devices were being shipped from Colombia to Israel for maintenance and repairs by an Israeli arms manufacturer and do not pose a security risk, the air force said in a statement late Monday.

Venezuelan authorities discovered Saturday what they described as five missiles inside a hangar belonging to Germany's Lufthansa airline at Caracas' Simon Bolivar International Airport. The manager of the hangar was arrested, according to the attorney general's office. "They are electronic parts that don't contain any explosives that would pose a security risk," the statement said. Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said yesterday the government would ask Colombia for more information about the missile components. In a statement released yesterday, Lufthansa said the shipment "has all the legal documentation and exportation permits." The company said it would cooperate with Venezuelan authorities investigating the case.

Circolare, non c'è niente da vedere...

Venezuela seizes Colombian missile parts

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) -- Venezuelan police seized a cargo of Colombian warplane missile components being transported to Israel and detained a warehouse manager employed by the German air freight company Lufthansa Cargo, officials said Tuesday. "Some of these missile parts contained nitrogen which make their transport dangerous," Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra said. The seizure comes at a time when relations between Venezuela and Colombia, which share a long common frontier, have been strained in the past years by border disputes and rows over security.

Venezuelan authorities were investigating the cargo which was intercepted in transit at the weekend at Caracas' Simon Bolivar airport. Colombia's air force, which had sent the parts, said they were non-explosive missile electrical components which it was delivering to a company in Israel for maintenance.

Izarra corrected an earlier public announcement by the office of Venezuela's attorney general, which had reported that five warplane "missiles" had been found late Saturday in a container at Lufthansa Cargo's warehouse at the airport.

Venezuela seizes Colombian missile parts

Caracas, Venezuela, Jun. 8 (UPI) -- Venezuela has seized Colombian missile parts headed for Israel, citing possible dangers associated with their transport. Globovision T.V. in Venezuela reported that the parts contained nitrogen and were a possible health threat, prompting airport officials at Simon Bolivar Airport in Caracas to seize the shipment Tuesday. Colombian officials said the parts were non-lethal electrical components. South American neighbors Venezuela and Colombia often butt heads over security and military issues. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says Colombia's left-wing rebel groups are using Venezuelan territory along the nations' shared jungle border to smuggle arms and launch attacks on the Colombian government. In turn, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe says Chavez is actually a supporter of the leftist rebels Colombia has been battling for 41 years.

Cosa faceva l'American submarine lontano da casa?

Altra gioia per grandi e piccini nelle prossime puntate.

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