Bilderberg.org

[TonyGosling]

US considers assassination squads
Pentagon said to be discussing use of units to work abroad

Oliver Burkeman in New York
Tuesday August 13, 2002 = 11-months before Dr. David Kelly's death.
The Guardian

The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate al-Qaida leaders in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday.

The Pentagon is discussing proposals which could see special operations units dispatched to capture or kill terrorists wherever they are be believed to be hiding, despite a long-standing presidential order forbidding US personnel from carrying out assassinations abroad, the New York Times reported.

Senior army advisers believe they could justify the practice on the grounds that it would constitute "preparation of the battlefield" in a war against terrorism that has no boundaries, because the September 11 terrorist attacks in effect initiated a world-wide state of armed conflict, the newspaper said.

"We're at war with al-Qaida. If we find an enemy combatant, then we should be able to use military force to take military action against them," a senior adviser to the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was quoted as saying.

The plan was said to be causing concerns in other parts of the US government because it might blur the line between army activity and missions usually handled, under strict legal guidelines, by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The president and Congress monitor CIA activities to ensure compliance with a presidential executive order first signed by President Gerald Ford, but regularly renewed since, forbidding government-sponsored assassinations.

The order followed revelations of CIA plans to murder foreign leaders including Fidel Castro and Patrice Lumumba of the Congo.

But Mr Rumsfeld is said to be frustrated by the CIA's activities in Afghanistan, especially when the activities of special forces working with local war lords were slowed down because the Afghans were still waiting for cash payments they were promised for co-operating against the Taliban.

The CIA's director, George Tenet, was understood not to oppose the proposals Mr Rumsfeld is considering, and discussions were under way to negotiate a new relationship between the agency and the army, an official said.

The soldiers who would be used in any such plan are the army's secretive Delta Force and the navy's Seal unit.

"The people in these units are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, anywhere around the world. They are very highly trained, with specialised skills for dealing with close-quarters combat and unique situations posed by weapons of mass destruction," a military officer said.

A senior official in the Bush administration told the New York Times that the US had to adapt its methods to match al-Qaida's for speed and stealth.

"If we find a high-value target somewhere, anywhere in the world, and if we have the forces to get there and get to them, we should get there and get to them," the official said.

"Right now, there are 18 food chains, 20 levels of paperwork and 22 hoops we have to jump through before we can take action. Our enemy moves faster than that."

Shortly after last September's attacks, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, indicated that the administration might review the ban on assassinations, because "to be able to penetrate organisations you need to have on the payroll some very unsavoury characters... It is a mean, nasty, dangerous, dirty business out there, and we have to operate in that arena."

Asked directly if there was a law which would outlaw assassinating Osama bin Laden, he said he did not think so, "but I'd have to check with the lawyers on that".

Presidents since Mr Ford have often been accused of side-stepping the executive order by launching targeted military attacks primarily to kill leaders, such as the 1986 attack on Libya authorised by Ronald Reagan, of which he later commented that he would not have shed tears if it had happened to kill the Libyan leader, Muammar Gadafy.




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Kelly's fatal secret
By Tim Shipman Defence Editor 457 words
16 January 2005
Sunday Express (c) Copyright Express Newspapers 2005
He was 'about to reveal' details of missing nukes.

Dr. David Kelly, the weapons expert who died in mysterious circumstances after the Iraq war, may have been about to reveal alarming details concerning missing nuclear weapons.

Security sources say the scientist, who helped expose how Tony Blair's dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was "sexed up", knew that two 200 kiloton nuclear warheads went missing during the first Gulf War.

Sources familiar with Dr Kelly's work with South Africa's security services say he also knew damaging details of how nuclear weapons decommissioned by South Africa were lost in the Middle East in 1991…….. Each was moved in a military ambulance from Iraq to Syria 10-days or so before the start of Gulf War-2. In that way each could be deployed on the battlefield within 45-minutes.

Informed experts who have contacted the Sunday Express claim the missing nuclear weapons found their way to Iraq.

The claims raise new questions about the extent of Dr Kelly's knowledge of British security secrets, which some insiders believe may have contributed to his death.

Some believe he may have been silenced to prevent him revealing more secrets to the media.

The South African weapons allegedly went missing in Oman on their way to be decommissioned in the US and may have then been smuggled to Iraq.

A source claimed: "Dr Kelly knew about the South African nukes because he worked for research facilities there.

Allegations also surround the fate of an American B-52 bomber, which crashed in the Indian Ocean in February 1991 with two nuclear missiles on board. ...these lost USAF nukes are now thought to be in Iran.

A catastrophic electrical failure forced it down on its way back to base on the British island territory of Diego Garcia.

Half the crew drowned, but others were rescued, suggesting they were near to land at the time.

The fate of the nuclear weapons is unknown, but it is thought likely the crew jettisoned them in the sea when the engines caught fire. ....

The Sunday Express source said: "I have reason to believe they beached in Africa and were recovered. Shortly afterwards the Americans deployed troops in Somalia.

Without navigational aids the plane would have hugged the coast before it went down."

Over the last year intelligence sources in both Britain and America have told journalists they believe that whatever Doomsday arsenal Saddam Hussein had accumulated before the second Gulf War was smuggled into Syria before the Spring 2003 invasion.

Last month the Sunday Express revealed that MI5 investigators looking for details of Dr Kelly's involvement with the South African government, seized his laptop computers after he died.

The coroner charged with investigating the Government scientist's death has said he will not reopen the case.
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