State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq

[David Guyatt]

The below article has some references to the Omagh bombing which in light of the news this week that Britain's NSA, GCHQ, monitored the mobile phone calls of the bombers but did nothing with the intelligence they gathered. This goes to the heart of Irish troubles and raises the spectre that some, if not several of the the atrocities resulted from 'home team' black operations under the rubric of "false flag operations".

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...a&aid=9447

by Andrew G. Marshall

Shining Light on the "Black World"

In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, "Worldwide Attack Matrix," which was "outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history." The plan entailed CIA and Special Forces "covert operations across the globe," and at "the heart of the proposal was a recommendation that the president give the CIA what Tenet labeled "exceptional authorities" to attack and destroy al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the rest of the world." Tenet cited the need for such authority "to allow the agency to operate without restraint -- and he wanted encouragement from the president to take risks." Among the many authorities recommended was the use of "deadly force."

Further, "Another proposal was that the CIA increase liaison work with key foreign intelligence services," as "Using such intelligence services as surrogates could triple or quadruple the CIA's effectiveness." The Worldwide Attack Matrix "described covert operations in 80 countries that were either underway or that he was now recommending. The actions ranged from routine propaganda to lethal covert action in preparation for military attacks," as well as "In some countries, CIA teams would break into facilities to obtain information."[1]

P2OG: "Commit terror, to incite terror… in order to react to terror"

In 2002, the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board (DSB) conducted a "Summer Study on Special Operations and Joint Forces in Support of Countering Terrorism," portions of which were leaked to the Federation of American Scientists. According to the document, the "War on Terror" constitutes a "committed, resourceful and globally dispersed adversary with strategic reach," which will require the US to engage in a "long, at times violent, and borderless war." As the Asia Times described it, this document lays out a blueprint for the US to "fight fire with fire." Many of the "proposals appear to push the military into territory that traditionally has been the domain of the CIA, raising questions about whether such missions would be subject to the same legal restraints imposed on CIA activities." According to the Chairman of the DSB, "The CIA executes the plans but they use Department of Defense assets."

Specifically, the plan "recommends the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception. For example, the Pentagon and CIA would work together to increase human intelligence (HUMINT) forward/operational presence and to deploy new clandestine technical capabilities." The purpose of P2OG would be in "‘stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces."[2] In other words, commit terror to incite terror, in order to react to terror.

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2002 that, "The Defense Department is building up an elite secret army with resources stretching across the full spectrum of covert capabilities. New organizations are being created. The missions of existing units are being revised," and quoted then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as saying, "Prevention and preemption are ... the only defense against terrorism."[3] Chris Floyd bluntly described P2OG in CounterPunch, saying, "the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people--your family, your friends, your lovers, you--in order to further their geopolitical ambitions."[4]

"The Troubles" with Iraq

On February 5, 2007, the Telegraph reported that, "Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone" [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG)." The members of the JSG "are trained to turn hardened terrorists into coalition spies using methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles, when the Army managed to infiltrate the IRA at almost every level. Since war broke out in Iraq in 2003, they have been responsible for running dozens of Iraqi double agents." They have been "[w]orking alongside the Special Air Service [SAS] and the American Delta Force as part of the Baghdad-based counter-terrorist unit known as Task Force Black."

It was reported that, "During the Troubles [in Northern Ireland], the JSG operated under the cover name of the Force Research Unit (FRU), which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA. By targeting and then "turning" members of the paramilitary organisation with a variety of "inducements" ranging from blackmail to bribes, the FRU operators developed agents at virtually every command level within the IRA." Further, "The unit was renamed following the Stevens Inquiry into allegations of collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups, and, until relatively recently continued to work exclusively in Northern Ireland."[5]

Considering that this group had been renamed after revelations of collusion with terrorists, perhaps it is important to take a look at what exactly this "collusion" consisted of. The Stevens Inquiry’s report "contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s." It was, "a state policy sanctioned at the highest level." The Inquiry, "highlighted collusion, the willful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder," and acknowledged "that innocent people had died because of the collusion." These particular "charges relate to activities of a British Army intelligence outfit known as the Force Research Unit (FRU) and former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police officers."[6]

In 2002, the Sunday Herald reported on the allegations made by a former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who stated that, "he was told by his military handlers that his collusion with paramilitaries was sanctioned by Margaret Thatcher herself." Fulton worked for the Force Research Unit (FRU), and had infiltrated the IRA, always while on the pay roll of the military. Fulton tells of how in 1992, he told his FRU and MI5 intelligence handlers that his IRA superior was planning to launch a mortar attack on the police, yet his handlers did nothing and the attack went forward, killing a policewoman. Fulton stated, "I broke the law seven days a week and my handlers knew that. They knew that I was making bombs and giving them to other members of the IRA and they did nothing about it. If everything I touched turned to shit then I would have been dead. The idea was that the only way to beat the enemy was to penetrate the enemy and be the enemy."[7]

In 1998, Northern Ireland experienced its "worst single terrorist atrocity," as described by the BBC, in which a car bomb went off, killing 29 people and injuring 300.[8] According to a Sunday Herald piece in 2001, "Security forces didn't intercept the Real IRA's Omagh bombing team because one of the terrorists was a British double-agent whose cover would have been blown as an informer if the operation was uncovered." Kevin Fulton had even "phoned a warning to his RUC handlers 48 hours before the Omagh bombing that the Real IRA was planning an attack and gave details of one of the bombing team and his car registration." Further, "The man thought to be the agent is a senior member of the [IRA] organization."[9]

In 2002, it was revealed that, "one of the most feared men inside the Provisional IRA," John Joe Magee, head of the IRA’s "internal security unit," commonly known as the IRA’s "torturer- in-chief," was actually "one of the UK's most elite soldiers," who "was trained as a member of Britain's special forces." The Sunday Herald stated that, "Magee led the IRA's internal security unit for more than a decade up to the mid-90s - most of those he investigated were usually executed," and that, "Magee's unit was tasked to hunt down, interrogate and execute suspected British agents within the IRA."[10]

In 2006, the Guardian reported that, "two British agents were central to the bombings of three army border installations in 1990." The claims included tactics known as the ‘human bomb’, which "involved forcing civilians to drive vehicles laden with explosives into army checkpoints." This tactic "was the brainchild of British intelligence."[11]

In 2006, it was also revealed that, "A former British Army mole in the IRA has claimed that MI5 arranged a weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers," and "British intelligence co-operated with the FBI to ensure his trip to New York in the 1990s went ahead without incident so that his cover would not be blown." Further, "the technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops."[12]

Considering all these revelations of British collusion with IRA terrorists and complicity in terrorist acts in Northern Ireland through the FRU, what evidence is there that these same tactics are not being deployed in Iraq under the renamed Joint Support Group (JSG)? The recruits to the JSG in Iraq are trained extensively and those "who eventually pass the course can expect to be posted to Baghdad, Basra and Afghanistan."[13]

P2OG in Action

In September of 2003, months after the initial invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraq’s most sacred Shiite mosque was blown up, killing between 80 and 120 people, including a popular Shiite cleric, and the event was blamed by Iraqis on the American forces.[14]

On April 20, 2004, American journalist in Iraq, Dahr Jamail, reported in the New Standard that, "The word on the street in Baghdad is that the cessation of suicide car bombings is proof that the CIA was behind them." Jamail interviewed a doctor who stated that, "The U.S. induces aggression. If you don't attack me, I will never attack you. The U.S. is stimulating the aggression of the Iraqi people!" This description goes very much in line with the aims outlined in the Pentagon’s P2OG document about "inciting terror," or "preempting terror attacks."[15]

Weeks after the initial incident involving the British SAS soldiers in Basra, in October of 2005, it was reported that Americans were "captured in the act of setting off a car bomb in Baghdad," as, "A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday. … Residents of western Baghdad's al-Ghazaliyah district [said] the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon. Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the … police." However, "the Iraq police arrived at approximately the same time as allied military forces - and the two men were removed from Iraq custody and whisked away before any questioning could take place."[16]

It was reported that in May of 2005, an Iraqi man was arrested after witnessing a car bombing that took place in front of his home, as it was said he shot an Iraqi National Guardsman. However, "People from the area claim that the man was taken away not because he shot anyone, but because he knew too much about the bomb. Rumor has it that he saw an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away."

Further, another story was reported in the same month that took place in Baghdad when an Iraqi driver had his license and car confiscated at a checkpoint, after which he was instructed "to report to an American military camp near Baghdad airport for interrogation and in order to retrieve his license." After being questioned for a short while, he was told to drive his car to an Iraqi police station, where his license had been forwarded, and that he should go quickly. "The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was driving as if carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and inspected it carefully. He found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat and along the two back doors. The only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements."[17]

On October 4, 2005, it was reported by the Sydney Morning Herald that, "The FBI's counterterrorism unit has launched a broad investigation of US-based theft rings after discovering some vehicles used in deadly car bombings in Iraq, including attacks that killed US troops and Iraqi civilians, were probably stolen in the United States, according to senior US Government officials." Further, "The inquiry began after coalition troops raided a Falluja bomb factory last November and found a Texas-registered four-wheel-drive being prepared for a bombing mission. Investigators said there were several other cases where vehicles evidently stolen in the US wound up in Syria or other Middle Eastern countries and ultimately in the hands of Iraqi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda in Iraq."[18]

In 2006, the Al-Askariya mosque in the city of Samarra was bombed and destroyed. It was built in 944, was over 1,000 years old, and was one of the most important Shi’ite mosques in the world. The great golden dome that covered it, which was built in 1904, was destroyed in the 2006 bombing, which was set off by men dressed as Iraqi Special Forces.[19] Former 27-year CIA analyst who gave several presidents their daily CIA briefings, Ray McGovern, stated that he "does not rule out Western involvement in this week's Askariya mosque bombing." He was quoted as saying, "The main question is Qui Bono? Who benefits from this kind of thing? You don't have to be very conspiratorial or even paranoid to suggest that there are a whole bunch of likely suspects out there and not only the Sunnis. You know, the British officers were arrested, dressed up in Arab garb, riding around in a car, so this stuff goes on."[20]

Death Squads for "Freedom"

In January of 2005, Newsweek reported on a Pentagon program termed the "Salvador Option" being discussed to be deployed in Iraq. This strategy "dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers." Updating the strategy to Iraq, "one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions."[21]

The Times reported that, "the Pentagon is considering forming hit squads of Kurdish and Shia fighters to target leaders of the Iraqi insurgency in a strategic shift borrowed from the American struggle against left-wing guerrillas in Central America 20 years ago. Under the so-called ‘El Salvador option’, Iraqi and American forces would be sent to kill or kidnap insurgency leaders." It further stated, "Hit squads would be controversial and would probably be kept secret," as "The experience of the so-called "death squads" in Central America remains raw for many even now and helped to sully the image of the United States in the region." Further, "John Negroponte, the US Ambassador in Baghdad, had a front-row seat at the time as Ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85."[22]

By June of 2005, mass executions were taking place in Iraq in the six months since January, and, "What is particularly striking is that many of those killings have taken place since the Police Commandos became operationally active and often correspond with areas where they have been deployed."[23]

In May of 2007, an Iraqi who formerly collaborated with US forces in Iraq for two and a half years stated that, "I was a soldier in the Iraqi army in the war of 1991 and during the withdrawal from Kuwait I decided to seek asylum in Saudi Arabia along with dozens of others like me. That was how began the process whereby I was recruited into the American forces, for there were US military committees that chose a number of Iraqis who were willing to volunteer to join them and be transported to America. I was one of those." He spoke out about how after the 2003 invasion, he was returned to Iraq to "carry out specific tasks assigned him by the US agencies." Among those tasks, he was put "in charge of a group of a unit that carried out assassinations in the streets of Baghdad."

He was quoted as saying, "Our task was to carry out assassinations of individuals. The US occupation army would supply us with their names, pictures, and maps of their daily movements to and from their place of residence and we were supposed to kill the Shi'i, for example, in the al-A'zamiyah, and kill the Sunni in the of 'Madinat as-Sadr’, and so on." Further, "Anyone in the unit who made a mistake was killed. Three members of my team were killed by US occupation forces after they failed to assassinate Sunni political figures in Baghdad." He revealed that this "dirty jobs" unit of Iraqis, Americans and other foreigners, "doesn’t only carry out assassinations, but some of them specialize in planting bombs and car bombs in neighborhoods and markets."

He elaborated in saying that "operations of planting car bombs and blowing up explosives in markets are carried out in various ways, the best-known and most famous among the US troops is placing a bomb inside cars as they are being searched at checkpoints. Another way is to put bombs in the cars during interrogations. After the desired person is summoned to one of the US bases, a bomb is place in his car and he is asked to drive to a police station or a market for some purpose and there his car blows up."[24]

Divide and Conquer?

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in October of 2006, that, "The evidence that the US directly contributed to the creation of the current civil war in Iraq by its own secretive security strategy is compelling. Historically of course this is nothing new - divide and rule is a strategy for colonial powers that has stood the test of time. Indeed, it was used in the previous British occupation of Iraq around 85 years ago. However, maybe in the current scenario the US just over did it a bit, creating an unstoppable momentum that, while stalling the insurgency, has actually led to new problems of control and sustainability for Washington and London."[25]

Andrew G. Marshall contributed to breaking the Climate Change consensus in a celebrated 2006 article entitled Global Warming A Convenient Lie, in which he challenged the findings underlying Al Gore's documentary. According to Marshall, 'as soon as people start to state that “the debate is over”, beware, because the fundamental basis of all sciences is that debate is never over'. Andrew Marshall has also written on the militarization of Central Africa, national security issues and the process of integration of North America. He is also a contributor to GeopoliticalMonitor.com
He is currently a researcher at the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) in Montreal and is studying political science and history at Simon Fraser University, British Columbia.

NOTES

[1] Bob Woodward and Dan Balz, At Camp David, Advise and Dissent. The Washington Post: January 31, 2002: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...00702.html

[2] David Isenberg, ‘P2OG’ Allows the Pentagon to Fight Dirty. Asia Times Online: November 5, 2002: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak02.html

[3] William M. Arkin, The Secret War. The Los Angeles Times: October 27, 2002: http://web.archive.org/web/2002103109243...5676.story

[4] Chris Floyd, Into the Dark: The Pentagon Plan to Provoke Terrorist Attacks. Counter Punch: November 1, 2002: http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd1101.html

[5] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The Telegraph: February 5, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1...rists.html

[6] Michael S. Rose, Britain's "Dirty War" with the IRA. Catholic World News: July 2003: http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=23828

[7] Home Affairs, The army asked me to make bombs for the IRA, told me I had the Prime Minister’s Blessing. The Sunday Herald: June 23, 2002: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn...76952/pg_2

[8] BBC, UK: Northern Ireland Bravery awards for bomb helpers. BBC News: November 17, 1999: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/north...524462.stm

[9] Neil Mackay, British double-agent was in Real IRA's Omagh bomb team. The Sunday Herald: August 19, 2001: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn..._n13961517

[10] Neil Mackay, IRA torturer was in the Royal Marines; Top republican terrorist. The Sunday Herald: December 15, 2002: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn..._n12579493

[11] Henry McDonald, UK agents 'did have role in IRA bomb atrocities'. The Guardian: September 10, 2006: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/...rnireland1

[12] Enda Leahy, MI5 'helped IRA buy bomb parts in US'. Sunday Times: March 19, 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk...742783.ece

[13] Sean Rayment, Top Secret Army Cell Breaks Terrorists. The Telegraph: February 5, 2007: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1...rists.html

[14] AP, U.S. Blamed For Mosque Attack. CBS News: September 2, 2003: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/0...1279.shtml

[15] Dahr Jamail, Dahr Jamail Blog From Baghdad. The New Standard: April 20, 2004: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-jamail200404.htm

[16] FMNN, UNITED STATES CAUGHT IN IRAQ CAR-BOMBING. Free Market News Network: October 14, 2005: http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=1326

[17] Michael Keefer, Were British Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra? Global Research: September 25, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c...icleId=994

[18] Bryan Bender, Cars stolen in US used in suicide attacks. The Sydney Morning Herald: October 4, 2005: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/cars-st...58703.html

[19] Sam Knight, Bombing of Shia shrine sparks wave of retaliation. The Times Online: February 22, 2006: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...733559.ece

[20] Prison Planet, Former CIA Analyst: Western Intelligence May Be Behind Mosque Bombing. Prison Planet: February 26, 2006: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/feb...ombing.htm

[21] Michael Hirsh and John Barry, "The Salvador Option". Newsweek: January 14, 2005: http://www.pagecache.info/pagecache/page...ached.html

[22] Roland Watson, El Salvador-style 'death squads' to be deployed by US against Iraq militants. The Times Online: January 10, 2005: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/wo...410491.ece

[23] Max Fuller, For Iraq, "The Salvador Option" Becomes Reality. Global Research: June 2, 2005: http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FUL506A.html

[24] AMSII, Ordered Assassinations, Sectarian Bomb Attacks Targeting Iraqi Civilians. Association of Muslim Scholars in Iraq: May 12, 2007: http://heyetnet.org/en/content/view/490/27

[25] Craig Murray, Civil War in Iraq: The Salvador Option and US/UK Policy. CraigMurray.org: October 18, 2006: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2...in_ir.html

[Jan Klimkowski]

David - you and I have discussed such deep black ops on many occasions.

As a way of approaching the "morality" of such operations, I'm going to veer off into fiction

In "Apocalypse Now", the Willard (Martin Sheen) character travels down the river into a Conradian "Heart of Darkness", and ultimately finds Marlon Brando playing Walter E Kurtz, the Special Forces Colonel who's "winning" the war his way.

The entire movie is worth unpicking.

The script was essentially a collaboration between, crudely, the Nietzschian right-wing libertarian, John Milius, and the more left-wing Francis Coppola. This tension plays out in many ways, including the various different endings of the movie (some of which exist in the DVD, or in released and subsequently withdrawn cuts).

The Vietnam War scenario is fascinating too. Kurtz's decision, whilst still a US Army Colonel, to execute those Vietnamese he suspected of collaboration, could easily have been a defacto Phoenix Program operation. The despatching of Willard to terminate Kurtz with extreme prejudice would also have been an archetypal Phoenix Program mission (even if most such missions targetted non-Americans).

Ultimately, the scenario is Phoenix on Phoenix, deniable black op on deniable black op.

Perhaps the person most convincingly described as the model for Kurtz is Anthony Poshepny (aka Tony Poe):

http://www.sfweekly.com/1999-11-17/news/...ovocative/

By some accounts, Tony Poe (who was known by Col Prouty), allegedly was involved in US intelligence narcotic smuggling operations in SE Asia.

Here is Poe's Namebase network diagram, which includes proximity to everyone from Colby & Shackley to the Dalai Lama (who he claimed to have spirited out of Tibet):

http://www.namebase.org/cgi-bin/nb06?_POSHEPNY_ANTHONY_

The establishment defence of black ops - be they in Vietnam, Northern Ireland or Iraq - is that "one has to fight fire with fire, old chap". I'm sure Milius would agree with this view - though not in the accent of an English toff.

The alternative view is that the End does not justify the Means. Particularly when the Means involves hiring psychopaths, and protecting them at the cost of entirely unnecessary and innocent civilian casualties. And - whether by design or weary inevitability - these black ops nearly always end up as criminal, drug- and gun-running enterprizes, with a bunch of strung-out, deluded, but very dangerous Dogs of War being declared to have served their usefulness and to be henceforth "disposable" by the real powers that be.

Kurtz and Willard empowered and then discarded by the secret rulers, like used condoms....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here is a very interesting article on another inspiration for Colonel Kurtz: Colonel Robert Rheault, Commander of US Special Forces troops in Vietnam.

http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HT...y_War.html

Oh, What a Lovely War
Jeff Stein

The whiff of political assassination is in the air again, as President George Bush toys with the future of Saddam Hussein. It seems as good time as any for him--and other Americans inclined to embrace "simple" solutions for complex foreign affairs--to remember that old chestnut, "What goes around comes around."

Twenty-two years ago this June, a Green Beret intelligence unit in Viet Nam decided on a "simple" solution to the discovery of a suspected North Viet double agent in their ranks: after seeking approval from the CIA, they took him out in a boat, wrapped him in chains and tire rims, shot him in the head, and dumped him into the South China Sea.

In that single act, one among many during more than a decade in Viet Nam, their lives and careers were ruined.

It could have been me. The so-called Green Beret Murder Case broke into the news when I was running my own military intelligence operation out of the French colonial villa in Da Nang, a once-lovely port city on the South China Sea. Just when the Green Beret case surfaced, I received evidence that my own agent was working for the other side. I pondered what to do.

In the Green Beret case, the Army had announced only that it had arrested Col. Robert Rheault, commander of all Special Forces troops in Viet Nam, and seven of his men, on charges of first-degree murder of "a Vietnamese civilian male." The press soon reported that the victim had been working for the Green Berets in sensitive espionage operations in Cambodia when a captured photo showed him in the company of high-ranking North Viet officers. His name was Thai Khac Chuyen.

My own agent had just failed a polygraph examination dealing with his allegiances. When we asked him if he was "loyal to the government of South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu," his affirmative answer showed attempts at deception--lying.

The Green Beret case made me wonder what I should do if, in fact, my own spy was really working for the communists. Under the rules, the very existence of our operation was supposed to be kept secret from our South Vietnamese "allies"; turning him over for prosecution and trial was impossible. Would I take him out in a boat and shoot him in the head with a silencer-equipped pistol, as the Green Berets had just been charged with doing?

As anyone who spent time in-country knows, it was nearly impossible to establish the truth of these matters in Viet Nam, where a kind of frontier justice prevailed.

I had been in Viet Nam long enough, and I spoke the language well enough, to know something about the society and its history. I soon learned that the political loyalties of most Viets were splintered along family, clan, religious, and multiple ideological faults. It had been foolhardy to try and fit Viet Nam into our Cold War box. It was impossible to define any Viet, with certainty, as "procommunist," pro-Saigon," or "pro-U.S." (which, viewed from the perspective of Nguyen Van Thieu, might define such a person as a traitor), unless they were in uniform and armed. That, in a nutshell, was the whole problem of the war: defining who the enemy was.

Sad to say, and it has been said many times, the U.S. failed utterly at culling the communists from the crowd, but that didn't keep us from trying through such odious methods as the Phoenix Program. Meanwhile, with an initial guilt that soon gave way to desperation, the U.S. bombed and strafed rural villages (concluding that the murder of innocent civilians was worth the price of a few dead communists).

So it was that the arrest of Rheault and his men in July 1969, at the height of the war, sparked widespread curiosity and cynicism among us in the war zone. Why would the Army arrest such high-ranking Green Berets for executing one North Viet double agent? Wasn't that their job?

The Army's straight-faced explanation that the defendants had violated the Geneva Convention and killed someone they weren't sure was an enemy spy rang hollow. The idea that the Green Berets should have turned their suspected spy over to the South Viets for a trial was laughable. To U.S. intelligence in Viet Nam, the Saigon government was every bit as much the enemy as the Viet Cong--often they were the same thing.

Yet the Rheault case was troubling. The summary execution of the suspected spy seemed to symbolize the anarchy that had overtaken much of the conduct of the war. While one part of the war was being fought above-ground with uniforms and rules, the other was being carried out in the dark with terror and assassination. The killing of Thai Khac Chuyen and the later sight of his grieving widow and children begging for justice outside the United States Embassy rang the knell once again that it was time to leave.

To others, however, the Army's prosecution of the men seemed to symbolize the political limits Washington had put on winning the war. If only the Green Berets could be encouraged to execute more spies, the argument went, the U.S. might win.

Both sides, in their own way, were right. And wrong.

All this went through my mind as I pondered my own spy's fate in the late summer of 1969, as the Green Beret affair bloated into a spectacle in Saigon and the Army announced a date for the courts martial of the eight men. The Viet Cong, to whom assassination was old hat, were having a propaganda holiday with the case.

Would I kill my own spy, I wondered, if it turned out he was working on the other side, if the lives of all my other agents were thrown into jeopardy? My own commander, I was sure, would not want me to ask him what to do.

Luckily for me, the decision was aborted when further interrogations revealed that my agent had not "bounced" the polygraph because he was a communist, but because he was a member of a right-wing political movement conspiring against the Saigon government! Such were the perilous currents of Viet politics that a 22-year-old college dropout, as I was then, was supposed to fathom.

The CIA, as it turned out, had no appetite for a Green Beret court-martial that would have put a spotlight on the agency's own record of assassination in Viet Nam (or anyplace else). It finally persuaded President Nixon to quash the charges. Revelations about the "excesses" of the Phoenix Program and other seamy intelligence activities were left for another day's scandal.

Like most veterans, I came home and tried to forget about the war. The Green Beret case continued to haunt me, however, with its beguiling paradox of defining moral standards while in the service of illegal, government-sponsored, activities.

The Cold War romance of the time, fed by James Bond and other patriotic caricatures, held that assassination was a necessary and even glamorous concomitant to the West's twilight struggle for democracy. That began to crack with the Viet Nam war, and was obliterated by Watergate.

For me, however, it was demolished by the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The classified study, leaked by Pentagon consultant Daniel Ellsberg, revealed that the main product of America's Cold War obsession with intrigue and deception in Viet Nam was self-hypnosis: The government had talked itself into believing it knew what the Viet Nam war was all about, and how to solve it--even as it discarded one losing strategy after another, lied to Congress, and ignored wiser heads.

The Pentagon Papers, along with the Nixon administration's invasion of Cambodia, finally spurred me to get off the sidelines and I began writing articles on U.S. intelligence operations in Viet Nam (despite the security pledges I had signed never to discuss such subjects). My first pieces were on the U.S. intelligence connection to the Cambodian coup plotters who ousted Prince Sihanouk.

I soon enrolled in a graduate school with the goal of trying to find the roots of our appalling ignorance and folly in Indochina. On a more personal level, I was searching to understand how I had ended up carrying out such fruitless and morally questionable activities myself. Not surprising, I found the answer in our corrosive addiction to secrecy and deception during the Cold War.

The case of the Green Berets was never far from my mind. In 1978 I saw a movie, Breaker Morant, that reignited my interest in the affair. It was a true tale of Australian commandos executed for carrying out an approved assassination while serving in the British Army during the South African Boer War. The story seemed to mirror the Green Beret case in its portrayal of a government frame-up. I took a stab at getting the Green Beret documents declassified, but the affair remained deeply buried in secret government archives.

A few years later I learned that the character of Kurtz played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now was modeled on Col. Rheault, the enigmatic former commander of the 5th Special Forces Group and chief defendant in the Green Beret case. Like Kurtz, Rheault was a product of Phillips Exeter Academy and West Point, fluent in French, with a Master's degree in international relations from the University of Paris. He was a paradigm of the Kennedy-era Green Berets, in fact, an upper-class, brilliant soldier as comfortable in a classroom as the straps of a parachute, a guy who could kill in five languages while discoursing on the virtues of Sun Tzu. With the advantage of a post-Viet Nam war, post-Watergate hindsight, I saw him as a metaphor for the kind of hubris that led us into the swamp of Viet Nam.

In the early 1980s, I took another stab at finding the former defendants, but they had scattered to the winds, and the word was that none of them would ever talk about the case, especially the stoic Rheault, whose career and marriage had been ruined by the affair.

Finally I heard he was running an Outward Bound program for troubled Viet Nam vets in Maine. I began writing letters, to which he politely, but firmly, responded with no interest in a book. He had no interest in digging up an episode that reflected so badly on the U.S. Army, he said, which he had loyally served for 26 years. He wanted to get on with his life, he said, and who could blame him?

I respected his reasoning, I told him, but I argued that in the era of Top Gun and Rambo, and an astonishing (to me) enthusiasm from liberals for the Contra War in Nicaragua, a generation that had hardly been born during the Viet Nam war needed to know what counterinsurgency war was really all about.

Finally, one day in 1989, the telephone rang at my desk at UPI, where I was the foreign news features editor. It was Rheault, calling to explain once again why he didn't want to cooperate with a book on the Green Beret affair. As we talked then and in subsequent conversations, however, it became apparent that he had shed his hawk's feathers long ago.

"The Cold War was a waste, a fraud, and a hoax," he now said. He explained that his suspicions had grown over many years of personal study, but it was capped by a trip to the Soviet Union in 1988, where he led a joint wilderness expedition of Viet Nam veterans and Soviet veterans of Afghanistan. During days of mountain climbing and nights around the fire, his conversations with the once-feared Russian enemies convinced him that the Soviet threat had been deliberately overblown by the Pentagon and the CIA. For their part, the Russians said the Red Army had drummed the threat of an American invasion into their heads, too.

Reluctantly, over several more conversations and correspondence, Rheault finally agreed not to stand in the way of a book on the incident that had caused him, and his beloved Special Forces, so much agony and pain. Now, with their former commander's green light, the other defendants who I had located also agreed to talk.

Finally, in 1990, a thick brown package containing nearly all the once-secret Army documents on the case arrived in my mailbox. Heavily blacked out, the documents only hinted at the government's treachery in the case. It would take scores more interviews and documents to establish that the CIA had indeed encouraged the Green Berets to execute Thai Khac Chuyen--it was "the most efficient solution," as one CIA agent admitted to an Army detective. Yet when the Army initiated the prosecution, of course, the CIA denied any responsibility for the killing. The Army command, eager to rein in the rambunctious Green Berets, went along with the lie.

The Green Beret case thus stands as a cautionary tale for those who would seek to get rid of Saddam Hussein by the "simple solution" of assassination. Most likely, a military unit would be picked to carry out the hit for the CIA. And when the inevitable flap comes, the military guys will be hung out to dry.

The overwhelmingly positive reaction to A Murder in Wartime: The Untold Spy Story that Changed the Course of the Vietnam War, has been gratifying, especially since it was a labor of love for my country, as well as younger generations that may be called on to carry out spurious operations in some far-off country for ill-defined goals. Young Americans especially deserve to know what our diddling around in the murky politics of, say, Iraq, is all about. (Certainly, by now, the hapless Kurds do.)

For me, the circle has already been closed. A year ago, halfway through my research, I learned that it was the Army's inept handling of the Green Beret case that prompted Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon Papers. What a great surprise! It was a perfectly ironic ending not only to the book, but to my long, personal odyssey in this affair: Except for Ellsberg's stunning act, I probably would not have become a journalist. And I would not, of course, twenty years later, have written this book.

Even more stunning, if not for the Pentagon Papers, Nixon might not have loosed "the plumbers" on Ellsberg and later, the Democrats at Watergate. The debacle that followed, of course, ruined the president, but it also opened the CIA's sewers for all the world to see.

All because of the Green Beret case.

There is an easy lesson in this for George Bush, the CIA, and of course, a future hit squad of Green Berets. Just remember. What goes around, comes around.

[Daniel Marvin]

A Special Forces SFC, speaking to me about the movie "Apocalypse Now" told me:
A Special Forces "A" Team was sent into the Cau Mau Peninsula area of South Vietnam to work with a leader - a Catholic Priest named Father Hoa - to train Catholic men as Civilian Irreegular Defense Group (CIDG) fighters and drive the Viet Cong completely out of the Cau Mau Peninsula It was similar to my being sent in to An Phu to command a force of Buddhist Hoa Haos to drive the Viet Cong out of An Phu District. This SFC told me that the team was ordered out by the CIA - the same as my team was ordered out in 1966 (as written in my book "Expendable Elite." The big difference was that all of the team but the leader did abandon their mission and their Catholic CIDG. The Commander stayed and "they" sent two other Green Berets in and killed the CO. In my case - all my men stayed with me, not wanting to abandon the Hoa Haos. The CIA sent an ARVN Regiment to kill all of us in my SF Camp (over 400 men). The rest of the story is history - proven in Federal Court.
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read what follows
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Former Green Beret In Vietnam Wins Federal Libel Case
Financed By Special Forces Association (SFA)


SFA officials caught with their dirty fingers in the 'assassination cookie jar' as jury found former Colonel in Special Forces told the truth in tell-all book exposing CIA-backed assassination attempts and U.S. government policy that would permit the killing of its own and allied soldiers during the Vietnam War.
5 Feb 2006

BY GREG SZMANSKI

Col. "Dangerous" Dan Marvin, once asked to assassinate a military officer at Bethesda Naval Hospital holding damaging pictures of the JFK autopsy, has "stuck it big time" to the SFA and our government's covert operations' policies that permit total disregard of International Treaties and the Geneva Conventions with a recent federal court victory this week revealing hit squads and assassinations are accepted military policy, Col. Marvin fought off a long and costly legal battle for libel concerning statements made in his controversial 2003 book, Expendable Elite - One Soldier's Journey Into Covert Warfare."

After hearing evidence, the jury quickly decided in Col Marvin's favor after only deliberating two hours, coming back with a decision that essentially quashed any attempts by the Plaintiffs or the SFA in calling him a liar by what was printed in his book.

With a recent federal court victory this week revealing hit squads and assassinations are accepted military policy, Col. Marvin fought off a long and costly legal battle for libel concerning statements made in his controversial 2003 book, The Expendable Elite.

After hearing evidence, the jury quickly decided in Col Marvin's favor after only deliberating two hours, coming back with a decision that essentially quashed any attempts by the Pentagon in calling him a liar by what was printed in his book.

"The most difficult part of the whole trial was that someone of strong influence appeared to have intimidated some of my men to lie on the stand about what really happened in Vietnam," said Col. Marvin this week on Greg Szymanski's radio show, The Investigative Journal, where he emphasized the importance of the trial verdict, saying it was "an ultimate victory for the truth and for the American people."

"In 1988 I sent copies of the first manuscript to those of my men who I had located. After reading the draft manuscript, Strait and Sirois set about to make their own audio tapes in which they tell of recalling their time with me in An Phu and sending them to me. I also called Raymond Johnson some years later and sending him a copy of the manuscript. Raymond called and I taped the telephone conversation so as to have the truth of what was said - which he verified later in court. The tape recordings were played to the jury and they believed I was telling the truth and not fabricating anything as the court contended."

The saddest moment of the trial, according to Col. Marvin, came when one his former men of Camp A-424 in An Phu, John Strait, took the stand, and apparently perjuring himself, saying the tapes were fabrications and the incident reported in the book where Col. Marvin talked about saving his life from a mortar blast was also not true.

"I had talked to John's wife when I found out my men were being coerced by someone to lie and she told me I couldn't talk to John anymore otherwise they would lose their military pension," said Col. Marvin. "The incident about saving his life also was, of course, true and it saddened me deeply to hear him on the stand."

Col. Marvin in his book tells how he uncovered the fact that the Johnson administration was permitting the shipment of weapons and ammunition to the enemy in their safe-havens in Cambodia. It was as if the enemy during the Vietnam War on the shores of the Mekong Cong Delta

He further accused the Pentagon and President Lyndon Johnson of slaughtering many innocent American soldiers in furtherance of a hidden policy to keep the war going at any cost with the apparent intent of losing, not winning the war.

Col. Marvin's trial centered on this warmongering policy as it related to the centerpiece of the book, a CIA mission which Col. Marvin would organize and train to kill Cambodian Crown Prince Norodum Sihanouk and make it appear as having been done by the Communists.

In the book, Col. Marvin recounts the CIA request from their agent Mackem that would ask him to organize an assassination ambush team that would enter Cambodia and to kill the Prince:

"We want you to take care of it, 'Dangerous,' because we believe you can get the job done. We've been asked to terminate Prince Sihanouk.Your job will be to bring about his death and make it appear to have been done by the Viet Cong," the CIA agent told Col. Marvin.

Col. Marvin recalls the mission came from the "highest authority" and although he accepted, it came with an important stipulation as Col. Marvin demanded an end to the enemy's safe haven's just inside the Cambodian borders and the end to the needless killing of American GI's.

However, when Col Marvin's demands were ignored, he then refused to carry out the Prince Sihanouk hit, causing the American government to then turn on Col. Marvin.

"The CIA or the Company, as we called them, then dispatched an ARVN regiment to kill me and my men for retribution for standing up against the CIA," said Col. Marvin. "Our own government turned on us and would have killed all of us if it wasn't for the dramatic rescue by ARVN Lt. Gen. Quang Van Dang of eight American Green Berets, including myself and hundreds of South Vietnamese who were fighting with us. Gen. Van Dang got wind of the hit squad and basically saved our lives. He is a heroic, brave an honorable man and there is much, much more to his story.

"In 1989 I learned General Dang had been exiled to Canada, living in poverty as a dishwasher in a poor section of Montreal. After the disrupted the CIA hit on our unit, tour government put out a smear campaign, not wanting him to tell the truth and saying he was a drug lord. It just wasn't true and I tried for 10 months to go through diplomatic channels to get him into this country, but nothing worked.

"Finally, I wrote President George H. W. Bush, saying I would never stop trying to get Van Dang into the U.S. until I was dead or the Lord came to take me. But What I did was slip a little piece of pink paper in the letter saying, 'I am intimately familiar with you involvement in the CIA prior to the date you admitted.' And after that it wasn't more than two weeks that the authority came down to allow Dang in the county.

"So I get ready to go to Montreal, Quebec to get General Dang in a rented U-haul and bring him over the Canadian border in 1989. Two days before I was to leave, I get a call from a friend in the CIA, saying I and Dang were being set up for a Company hit below the border so I'd better watch out."

Colonel Marvin has no proof of just who ordered the hit, but someone obviously had, and it was up to him to see to it that General Dang was in safe hands. "I alerted Congressman Matthew McHugh, my New York Congressman, that there was going to blood on the border if he didn't do something and I advised McHugh that there were four State Troopers standing by to maintain good order. I had obtained four NY State Response team volunteers of four state troopers who would follow me and Dang in unmarked cars loaded with assault weapons," recalled Col. Marvin. "The warning to the Senator worked and Marvin was told by his office that "the safest place in the world for General Dang would be with me coming across the border. The day I brought Dang through customs everything went smooth and I even noticed all the cars pulled over to the side of the road a couple miles above and below the border checkpoint so as it to make it smooth sailing from there. He has always been an honorable man and he and his wife, in their 70's now, are still living happily in California."

Besides the struggle to vindicate Gen. Dang's good name, Col. Marvin's struggle to publish his book was just as difficult.

He first tried to go public with his manuscript almost 20 years ago when he said "he found the Lord" and was no longer afraid of being whacked by military assassins who were trained in the same manner he was by CIA and SF instructors at Fort Bragg's
Special Warfare Center.

After he gathered the inner strength to publish the truth, it took him more than 15 years and 120 rejections from publishers to finally get The Expendable Elite published in 2003 by truth-publisher Kris Millegan.

"I was just about to give up when I met Kris," said Marvin. "I want to say he has stood by me all the way, even when he didn't have to, during the lawsuit. My lawyer told him he could have backed out since I had the sole copyright, but Kris stayed with me even in the face of bankruptcy from the legal bills.

Although victorious in court, Col. Marvin and Millegan remain hundreds of thousands in debt, and are now hoping to sell books in order to avert bankruptcy.

"Remember, the truth will make you free and the Lord will provide," said Col. Marvin.

The federal libel lawsuit, ending last Monday, was officially filed by the plaintiffs who are members of the Special Forces Association against Col. Marvin, a group he said it corrupted, bank rolled and used as a front-plaintiff by the CIA and Pentagon.

Tim Bates, who followed the trial closely had this to say about the use of the fraternal organization as a plaintiff against Col. Marvin: "It is a fact that was brought out in court that the Special Forces Association financed the entire lawsuit against Col. Marvin and Mr. Millegan One can only wonder why this association would get involved in a personal legal battle that has nothing to do with a fraternal organization. I wonder how many members know how much of their dues went to fund this fight. The letters from the Special Forces Association (SFA) to Millegan stated they, SFA, had hard evidence to prove the book was nothing but lies. We can only imagine if the evidence presented in court was all they had . I also wonder if the members of the SFA agreed to the spending of their dues for this lawsuit that had to cost in excess of $100,000. With the truth coming out in court, maybe the SFA will get the truth and decide to go in a new direction with new leadership. I would hope Col. Marvin receives an apology in THE DROP, an SFA quarterly publication, but I won't hold my breath."

The End

[Jan Klimkowski]

Daniel - welcome to the Deep Politics Forum and thank you for posting those very interesting thoughts.

As someone with direct experience of covert operations, I'm sure your insights and perspective will be invaluable.

The first article posted by David drew attention to some notable black operations and their implications. For clarification's sake, my response musing on "Apocalypse Now" was an attempt to start exploring the ethical or moral dimension of black ops.

To the best of my knowledge - both as an experienced filmmaker and a researcher - "Apocalypse Now" is inspired by real historical events rather than faithfully chronicling them. The scriptwriters knew of Robert Rheault, Tony Poe, and quite probably the story you tell of Father Hoa. They then wrote a script, drawing elements from Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". That script then evolved during the filming process.

As a filmmaker, I know that scripts are not static - they develop and evolve throughout the production process. One only has to watch "Apocalypse Now" and "Apocalypse Now Redux" to see two fundamentally different films made from the the same paper pages and celluloid frames.

So, whilst identifying the real life inspirations for "Apocalypse Now" is interesting, I'm most fascinated by examining it as a way of exploring the ethical dilemmas of those involved in black operations: investigating it as a morality tale, if you will.

The moral dilemmas faced by those who authorize "deniable" operations, by those who participate in them, and by those are caught up in them - both as enemy combatants and as civilian bystanders.