Israel

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- The retired Pakistani general who is closest to the Taliban and Osama bin Laden contends the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington were the work of renegade U.S. Air Force elements working with the Israelis. Gen. Hameed Gul led Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence during the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Gul serves as an adviser to Pakistan's extremist religious political parties, which oppose their government's decision to support the United States in any action against Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Gul contends bin Laden had nothing to do with the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, saying instead that they were the work of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service -- a version of events that has been endorsed by Islamic fundamentalist clerics and is widely accepted by Muslims throughout the Arab world.

Here is the transcript of the exclusive interview Gul gave to Arnaud de Borchgrave, United Press International editor at large:

Gul: Mossad and its accomplices. The U.S. spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies. That's $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don't believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators. It created an instant mindset and put public opinion into a trance, which prevented even intelligent people from thinking for themselves.

A: I know bin Laden and his associates. I've been with them here, in Europe and the Middle East. They are graduates of the best universities and are highly intelligent with impressive degrees and speak impeccable English. These are people who have rediscovered fundamental Islamic values. Many come from the Gulf countries where ruling royal families have generated hatred by the way they flout divine law, wasting billions on gratifying their whims, jetting around in large private jets by themselves, and sailing the Mediterranean in big private boats for weeks on end. Osama's best recruits come from feudal areas that are U.S. protectorates and where millions of poor people are seeking human dignity. I have even visited a Christian convent school in Murree, 60 miles from here, where my 13-year-old daughter is studying. The young girls there have told me Osama is their hero. Osama's followers identify with Mujahideen freedom fighters wherever they are defending Islam and its values.

A: From a cave inside a mountain or a peasant's hovel? Let's be serious. Osama inspires countless millions by standing up for Islam against American and Israeli imperialism. He doesn't have the means for such a sophisticated operation.

A: Mossad and its American associates are the obvious culprits. Who benefits from the crime? The attacks against the twin towers started at 8:45 a.m. and four flights are diverted from their assigned air space and no air traffic controller sounds the alarm. And no Air Force jets scramble until 10 a.m. That also smacks of a small scale Air Force rebellion, a coup against the Pentagon perhaps? Radars are jammed, transponders fail. No IFF -- friend or foe identification -- challenge. In Pakistan, if there is no response to IFF, jets are instantly scrambled and the aircraft is shot down with no further questions asked. This was clearly an inside job. Bush was afraid and rushed to the shelter of a nuclear bunker. He clearly feared a nuclear situation. Who could that have been? Will that also be hushed up in the investigation, like the Warren report after the Kennedy assassination?

Q: At this point, someone might be asking what you've been smoking. What is Israel's interest in such a monstrous plot, which, of course, no one believes except Islamist extremists who concocted this piece of disinformation in the first place, presumably to detract from the real culprits?

A: Jews never agreed to Bush 41 (George H.W. Bush, the 41st president) or 43 (his son George W. Bush, the 43rd president). They made sure Bush senior didn't get a second term. His land-for-peace pressure in Palestine didn't suit Israel. They were also against the young Bush because he was considered too close to oil interests and the Gulf countries. Bush senior and Jim Baker had raised $150 million for Bush junior, much of it from Mideast sources or their American go- betweens. Bush 41 and Baker, as private citizens, had also facilitated the new strategic relationship between Saudi Arabia and Iran. I have this from sources in both countries. So clearly the prospect of a Bush 43 was a potential danger to Israel.

Jews were stunned by the way Bush stole the election in Florida. They had put big money on Al Gore. Israel has given its imperialist guardian parent opportunities to turn disaster into a pretext for imposing an all-encompassing military, political and economic agenda to further the cause of global capitalism. While Colin Powell is cautious and others are reckless and want to make up for their failure to defeat Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War 10 years ago, the global agenda is the same.

Israel knows it has a short shelf-life before it is overwhelmed by demographics. It is a state that was born in terrorism that terrorized Palestinians into the exile of refugee camps, where they have now subsisted in squalid refugee camps, and is now very much afraid of Pakistan's nuclear capability.

Israel has now handed the Bush family the opportunity it has been waiting for to consolidate America's imperial grip on the Gulf and acquire control of the Caspian basin by extending its military presence in Central Asia. Bush conveniently overlooks -- or is not told -- the fact that Islamic fundamentalists got their big boost in the modern age as CIA assets in the covert campaign I was also involved with to force the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Bush senior was vice president during that entire campaign. And no sooner did he become president on Jan. 20, 1989, than he summoned an inter-agency intelligence meeting and issued an order, among several others, to clip the wings of ISI (Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence) that had been coordinating the entire operation in Afghanistan. I know this firsthand as I was DGISI at the time (director general, ISI).

A: The destabilization of Pakistan is part of the U.S. plan because it is a Muslim nuclear state. The U.S. wants to isolate Pakistan from China as part of its containment policy. President Nixon's book "The Real War" said China would be the superpower of the 21st Century. The U.S. is also creating hostility between Pakistan and Afghanistan, two Muslim states to reverse the perception that the Islamic world now has its own nuclear weapons. Bush 43 doesn't realize he is being manipulated by people who understand geopolitics. He is not leading but being led. All he can do is think in terms of the wanted-dead-or- alive culture, which is how Hollywood conditions the masses to think and act.

All summer long we heard about America's shrinking surplus and that the Pentagon would not have sufficient funds to modernize for the 21st century. And now, all of a sudden, the Pentagon can get what it wants without any Democratic Party opposition. How very convenient! Even your cherished civil liberties can now be abridged with impunity to protect the expansion of the hegemony of transnational capitalism. There is now a new excuse to crush anti-globalization protests.

Bush 43 follows Bush 41. Iraq was baited into the Kuwaiti trap when the U.S. told Saddam it was not interested in his inter-Arab squabbles. Two days later, he moved into Kuwait, which was an Iraqi province anyway before the British Empire decreed otherwise. Roosevelt baited the Pearl Harbor trap for the Japanese empire, which provided the pretext for entering World War II. And now the Israelis have given the U.S. the pretext for further expansion into an area that will be critical in the next 25 years - the Caspian basin.

Q: Were you a fundamentalist in the days of the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan when you worked closely with the CIA?

A: President Ishaq Khan, who succeeded Zia ul-Haq after his plane was blown out of the sky, wanted to appoint me chief of staff, the highest position in the Pakistani army. The U.S., which by then had clipped ISI's wings, also blocked my promotion by informing the president I was unacceptable. So I was moved to a corps commander position. As ISI director, I held the whole Mujahideen movement in the palm of my hands. We were all pro-American. But then America left us in the lurch and everything went to pieces, including Afghanistan.

The U.S. pushed for a broad-based Afghan government of seven factions and then waved goodbye. Even in the best of democracies, a broad- based coalition does not work. So we quickly had seven jokers in Kabul interested in only one thing - jockeying for power. The gunplay quickly followed, which led to the creation of Taliban, the students of the original Mujahideen, who decided to put an end to it.

Q: What happened to the 1,000 shoulder-fired Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that were supplied by president Reagan in 1986 and 87 to the Mujahideen, and that literally grounded the Soviet air force?

A: After the Soviets pulled out, the CIA allocated $60 million to try to buy them back. This just drove the black market price up for one Stinger from $100,000 to $300,000. The Taliban still have about 250 of them for the kind of situation they face today against U.S. aircraft.

A: Is the U.S. national interest in contradiction with the Muslim world? The U.S. needs oil, as do its European allies. You have between 6 and 8 million American Muslims and their ranks are growing. About the same number in Europe. Israel aside, we are America's natural allies. Prof. Sam Huntington in his "Clash of Civilizations" puts Confucius and Judeo-Christians in one corner, and us in the other. His prescription is wrong but is being adopted by Bush 43 who has now put 60 countries on his hit list. This is the diabolical school that wants to launch an anti-Muslim "crusade." Muslims understood what Bush meant when he used that word.

We need a meeting, not a clash, of civilizations. We are on the brink of disaster. It is time to pull back from the brink and reassess before we blow ourselves up. The purpose of Islam is service to humanity. The time for like-minded people to have a meeting of the minds is now.

A: Democracy does not work. Politicians are constantly thinking of their next election, not the public good, which means, at best, constantly shading the truth to hide it from their constituents. Their pronouncements are laced with lies and the voters are lulled or gulled into believing utter nonsense. The Koran says call a spade a spade. It is the supreme law and tells right from wrong. There is no notion of "my country right or wrong" under divine law. The creator's will predominates. All if subservient to Allah's will and adherence to a set of basic, fundamental values.

A: The world needs a post-modern state system. Right now, the nation- state and round the clock satellite TV lead people to imitate America's way of life. Which is mathematically impossible. You have 4 percent of the world's population consuming 32 percent of the world's resources. The creator through Prophet Mohammed said equal distribution. Capitalism is the negation of the creator's will. It leads to imperialism and unilateralism.

A: A global village under divine order, or we will have global bloodshed until good triumphs over evil. Islam encapsulates all the principal religions and what was handed down 1,400 years ago was the normal evolutionary sequel to Judaism and Christianity. The prophet's last sermon was a universal document of human rights for everyone that surpasses everything that came since, including America's declaration of independence and the U.N. Charter of universal rights. If you superimpose true secular values on true Islamic values, there is no difference. So surely divine law should supersede man-made law. Islam is egalitarian, tolerant and progressive. It is the wave of the future.

A: Socialism jumped the rails when it was co-opted by the imperialist Soviet state. Islam believes in dynamism, Christianity stands for static statism. The pope in all his pronouncements has expressed a dogmatic attachment to the status quo. Why are so many black Americans converting to Islam? Because they are looking for true equality which they cannot find under capitalism. Allah has no gender, neither male nor female. Islam has no indirect taxation in an interest-free economy. Usury was a Jewish concept.

A: There isn't a single true Islamic state in the world today. Iran has moved forward from its 1979 revolution, but I am not sure whether it's the right direction.

A: They represent Islam in its purest form so far. It's a clean sheet. And they were also moving in the right direction when this crisis was cooked up by the U.S. Until Sept. 11, they had perfect law and order with no formal police force, only traffic cops without sidearms. Now, in less than two weeks, they have mobilized some 300,000 volunteers to fight American and British invaders if they come.

A: If Pakistan gives the U.S. base rights we will have a national upheaval. And if the U.S. attacks Afghanistan, there will be a call -- a fatwa -- for a general jihad. All borders will then disappear and it will be a no-holds-barred Islamic uprising against Israel and American imperialism. Pakistan will be engulfed in the firestorm. So I can only hope that cooler heads will prevail in Washington.

A: Overflight rights are meaningless since the U.S. violates air space daily all over the world. As for intelligence sharing with

ISI, you can't even catch your own terrorists. And what ISI gives you will be of marginal value anyway.

A: He was my student in the army. He is a good man, but he doesn't understand Islam. The army will never fight the masses. If push comes to shove, Musharraf will say no to the Americans rather than turn against the people. He is not just facing a handful of angry people. By his own admission, it's 10 percent to 15 percent of the population, or at least 10 million people willing to fight. For openers, they would close the port of Karachi. A country cannot breathe without lungs.

Q: Back to Osama's terrorist network. Who was behind the bombing of the U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya?

A: Mossad is strong in both countries. Remember the Israeli operation to free hostages in Entebbe (Uganda)? Both Kenya and Tanzania were part of the logistical tail. A so-called associate of Osama was framed at Karachi airport. The incidents took place on Aug. 8, 1999, and on the 10th a short, clean-shaven man disembarks at Karachi airport and presents the passport of a bearded man. Not your passport, he was told. He then tries to bribe the clerk with 200 rupees. A ludicrously small sum given the circumstances. The clerk says no and turns him in and he starts singing right away. Not plausible. Osama has sworn to me on the Koran it was not him and he is truthful to a fault. Pious Muslims do not kill innocent civilians who included many Muslim victims. The passport must have been switched while the man was asleep on the plane in what has all the earmarks of a Mossad operation. For 10 years, the Mujahideen fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and not a single Soviet embassy was touched anywhere in the world. So this could not have been Osama's followers.

Q: What if bin Laden has been lying to you and is guilty. Is that inconceivable?

A: If Taliban are given irrefutable evidence of his guilt, I am in favor of a fair trial. In America, one is entitled to a jury of peers. But he has no American peers. The Taliban would not object, in the event of a prima face case, to an international Islamic court meeting in The Hague. They would in turn extradite Osama to the Netherlands.

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RIYADH, Nov 4 (PNS): A Saudi newspaper charged Saturday that the Israeli secret service Mossad was behind the September 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington that killed thousands of people.

The mass-circulation Okaz said in an editorial that an attack on such a scale could not have been carried out with such accuracy and precision without the help of parties inside the United States or with strong links in Washington.

"Six Israelis suspected of involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington were arrested in the US, to be later released. This confirms our strong suspicions about the involvement of Israel's Mossad in the ugly crime," Okaz said.

"If we look carefully into this matter, we can find no more influential sides in the US than the Israeli Mossad agents, who have the ability to penetrate and the capability to execute with high efficiency," the daily said.

The paper said there was not sufficient evidence that Arabs and Muslims were behind the attacks, but it did not rule out the possibility that Mossad may have recruited some Muslims to carry out the atrocities.

"The main purpose of the conspiracy (attacks) is to undermine ties between Arabs and Muslims, especially moderate states, on the one hand and the US on the other, and to turn the Muslim and Christian civilizations against each other and incite hatred between their adherents," it said.

The positive change in Washington's policy on Middle East peace and its support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state confirms that the United States has laid its hands on important leads indicating a direct role by the Mossad in the attacks, the paper asserted.

"We don't think we will wait too long before (the United States) reaches this result. This crime should not pass without knowing its actual masterminds, instead of focusing on 'stupid' tools," Okaz said.

DID THE MOSSAD BUG MONICA (HONEY TRAP) LEWINSKY'S PHONE?

Sept. 16 (EIRNS)--According to a little-noticed passage in the Starr Report, during March 1997, President Clinton told Monica Lewinsky that he suspected a foreign embassy was tapping his telephone conversations.

Nothing more is said in the report about the incident, but according to information received by this news service, that reference could provide the key to the entire Lewinsky scandal and to the setting-up and entrapment of the President. Reportedly, the embassy involved was that of Israel, under the control of the right-wing Likud government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

First, the time-frame of the Lewinsky affair should be taken into account. It is bounded by two events: (1) the assassination of President Clinton's partner in the Middle East peace process, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin, on Nov. 4, 1995, which opens the path for Netanyahu becoming Prime Minister in May 1996; and (2) Netanyahu's visit to Washington in mid-January 1998--just as the Lewinsky affair was breaking in the U.S. news media. On this visit, Netanyahu publicly insulted the President by meeting with Bill Clinton's worst enemies, televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

Netanyahu carried out this affront over the objections of both President Clinton and moderate Jewish leaders in the United States.

The question must be asked: Was the set-up of President Clinton part of the effort by the Likud fanatics in Israel, and their "Temple Mount" backers in London, to punish the President for his efforts to force through an implementation of the 1993 Oslo peace accords?

The Real Lewinsky Tapes British investigative journalist Kevin Dowling has released an article for publication to a variety of British and American news organizations, charging that the Israeli Mossad was bugging the Watergate apartment telephone of Monica Lewinsky, and was able to obtain material used to blackmail the Clinton administration into shutting down a probe of widespread Israeli espionage in Washington.

Dowling reports that well-placed sources in Tel Aviv say that full transcripts of more than 30 sexually explicit conversations between Clinton and Lewinsky are held by the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

The backdrop is as follows, Dowling reports, and it is backed up by published sources in the U.S., that the U.S. government was aware, from late 1995 on, that the Mossad was carrying out extensive espionage activity in the United States. When the Defense Investigative Service issued a warning to defense contractors about the Israeli spy program, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith went into an all-out mobilization to denounce the DIS memo as "anti-Semitic." Of course, just one year earlier, the ADL had been the subject of a lengthy espionage probe by the FBI and the San Francisco Police; and the ADL had earlier been deeply implicated in the Jonathan Pollard spy affair.

In May of 1997, the Washington Post and other media reported that the U.S. National Security Agency had intercepted a phone conversation between a Mossad officer posted at the Israeli embassy in Washington, and Danny Yaton, the Mossad chief, in Tel Aviv, during January 1997. The Mossad agent was seeking clarification whether he should attempt to obtain a copy of private letter from then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Yassir Arafat, via a Mossad mole high-up in the Clinton administration codenamed "Mega." The Mossad boss told the agent that under no circumstances should "Mega" be approached, as he/she was the top Israeli penetration agent inside the Clinton inner circle. An extensive FBI counterintelligence probe to determine the identity of the high-level Israeli mole in the U.S. government was triggered by the NSA intercept.

Comparisons to the Pollard spy affair were naturally raised; the deeper issue is that many observers believe that Pollard's controller (sometimes referred to as "Mr.. X," or the "X Committee") is still burrowed deep in a high-level position in a U.S. government agency.

According to the Tel Aviv sources cited by Dowling, there was an emergency meeting of top Israeli intelligence officials, as soon as the NSA intercept was discovered; a Mossad electronic-bugging team of yalohim was dispatched to Washington, and one of the targets of their operation was the home telephone of Monica Lewinsky.

According to the Dowling sources, the Mossad obtained wiretap tapes of at least 30 X-rated conversations between the President and Lewinsky. These tapes, according to the sources, were hand-carried back to Tel Aviv, and were then used to blackmail the Clinton administration into calling off the search for "Mega"; the threat was that if the search for "Mega" were not shut down, the Israelis would begin leaking material from the tapes.

According to Michael Isikoff, the reporter who first started investigating the Lewinsky story, he first learned about a story involving the President and "an intern" in March-April of 1997.

The Dowling story is consistent with many leads assembled by this news service over the past several years, suggesting that the Israelis were operating against the Clinton Presidency in underhanded ways, as well as in an overt policy was, to sabotage the Middle East peace process.

It should not be overlooked that the appellate attorney for convicted spy Jonathan Pollard was Theodore Olson--Kenneth Starr's long-time colleague and close friend, and host of the "Get Clinton" salon. Olson was still Pollard's lawyer as late as 1993, when Olson was already launching the anti-Clinton "Arkansas Project" with the American Spectator magazine and Richard Mellon Scaife's money--out of which operation came the Whitewater investigation and the Paula Jones case.

On 9/14/98, during a White House press conference, a reporter asked Mike McCurry , "Is it true that the White House is bugged by a foreign country?"

It is known that Bill Clinton ordered the FBI to stop searching for a White House mole code-named "Mega".The prevailing story is that Clinton was being blackmailed by a recording of Bill having phone sex with Monica Lewinsky. It's now known that the Israeli owned companies providing billing and tapping sevices were well positioned to intercept any and all phone calls going into Monica's Watergate apartment, as well as all phone calls in and out of the secure White House communications system.

For a brief period of time in early 1997, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the National Security Agency engaged in a frantic mole hunt for an Israeli spy, believed to be operating inside the highest levels of the Clinton Administration national security establishment. By the time the mole hunt was made public--in a May 7, 1997 Washington Post leak--the hunt had been abruptly ended, and for all intents and purposes, the story disappeared from the news within a matter of days.

According to the Post account, in January 1997, the National Security Agency (NSA) had intercepted a phone conversation between an Israeli official at the embassy in Washington, and Danny Yatom, the head of the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service. The official sought permission from the spy boss to "go to Mega" in order to obtain a copy of a confidential letter that had been sent by then-U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, concerning U.S. assurances about a recently negotiated agreement for an Israeli military withdrawal from the Hebron area in the West Bank. Yatom, according to the NSA intercept, rejected the request, admonishing his agent, "This is not something we use Mega for."

The idea that the Israeli government was running another spy operation inside the U.S. national security establishment created a tremendous stir. The Washington Post, in its May 7, 1997 leak, had reported, "One official with knowledge of the FBI investigation into the identity of Mega cautioned that much remained unknown. But the official said that if it turned out that a senior U.S. official was passing sensitive information to Israeli authorities, it could prove more serious than the espionage case involving Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former Navy analyst who was convicted in 1986 of selling U.S. military intelligence documents to Israel."

To this day, the Pollard affair is a hot-button issue inside the U.S. intelligence community. At the time of Pollard's arrest in November 1985, it was known that the Navy analyst had been "tasked" to obtain specific U.S. military intelligence secrets, by someone much higher up in the U.S. intelligence community. To this day, the hunt for "Mr. X," Pollard's inside controller, continues. In 1986, EIR had revealed the existence of not merely a "Mr. X," but an "X Committee," made up of nearly a dozen top-level Pentagon and National Security Council officials, all suspected of having been part of the Pollard spy network.

Given the seriousness of the Mega security breach, the abrupt shutdown of the mole hunt naturally prompted some wild speculation about the circumstances under which the search for Mega was abandoned. In March 1999, British author Gordon Thomas released a book, Gideon's Spies, which alleged that Israel had blackmailed the Clinton Administration, with the threat to release tapped telephone conversations between the President and Monica Lewinsky, to force Washington to abandon the Mega hunt. Indeed, in her testimony before independent counsel Kenneth Starr, Lewinsky had reported that the President had warned her, on March 29, 1997, at the height of the Mega hunt, that he suspected the White House telephones were being tapped by agents of an unnamed foreign country.

Years later, it was revealed that the White House communications system had been overhauled and modernized during the early Clinton era, and one of the main outside contractors involved in the project was an Israeli firm, Amdocs. According to a May 2000 story in Insight magazine, Amdocs employees would have had nearly unfettered access to White House telephone lines and other super-sensitive communications equipment. However, the nature of the request from the Mossad man in Washington to Yatom—to obtain a confidential State Department document—rules out the possibility that Mega was an electronic eavesdropping source.

Mega-Suspects Even though the Mega hunt was formally called off, still in some U.S. intelligence quarters, the effort to unearth the suspected Israeli spy cell apparently continued. In September 2000, a CIA team of counterintelligence specialists arrived in Israel, after U.S. Ambassador Martin Indyk had his security clearances temporarily lifted. Ostensibly, Indyk had breached security guidelines by bringing classified U.S. government documents to his residence in Tel Aviv. But it later was revealed that the CIA probe was triggered by an August 2000 unauthorized meeting between Indyk and the former head of the Mossad, Ephraim Halevy, which the ambassador had never reported back to Washington.

If there were anyone in the Clinton Administration's political hierarchy who was a prime candidate to be the Israeli spy Mega, it was Indyk. A British-born Australian citizen, Indyk had been Australia's top Mideast security official in the late 1970s, as deputy director of current Mideast intelligence at the Australian Office of National Assessments, the equivalent of the U.S. National Security Council. But, Indyk abruptly quit the post after just ten months, prompting speculation that he had come under suspicion of spying for Israel (he had lived in Israel while completing his dissertation on "The Power of the Weak: The Ability of Israel and Egypt to Resist the Policies of their Super-Power Patrons"). According to British journalist Kevin Dowling, Indyk next surfaced in Israel, as a "media consultant" to Israel's Likud Prime Ministers, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.

In 1982, Indyk came to America, ostensibly on a six-month sabbatical from his duties with the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister. Based out of Cornell University, Indyk formed a research department for the America-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the "official" Israeli lobby in the United States. Within a year, AIPAC had ponied up $100,000 to Indyk to hive off the research unit as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). Pro-Israel luminaries in Washington, including former Vice President Walter Mondale, former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Alexander Haig, and former United Nations Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, were among the initiating members of WINEP's advisory board, according to Dowling's Sept. 27, 2000 account of the Indyk counterintelligence probe.

Indyk's "six-month sabbatical" never ended, but it was not until 1987 that the Australian got his first green card, permitting him to work in the United States. Indyk was made a U.S. citizen on Jan. 12, 1993—just eight days before he was appointed to the incoming Clinton Administration's National Security Council (NSC) staff as Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs. Indyk had already been an informal Mideast policy adviser to President George H.W. Bush, at the initiative of Dennis Ross, Bush's Assistant Secretary of State, previously a deputy to Indyk at WINEP. At the time of the Mega hunt, Indyk had Ross' old job as Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East.

Another prime suspect in the Mega mole hunt was Leon Fuerth, Vice President Albert Gore's national security adviser, and another well-known pro-Likud fanatic. The Washington Post, in a 1998 profile of Fuerth, reported that he was suspected by U.S. intelligence officials of passing sensitive U.S. policy information to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud), a passionate, personal enemy of President Clinton, who was suspected of activating the Mega spy operation.

Also on the Mega list of suspects inside the Clinton national security apparatus was Richard Clarke, the National Security Council "counterterrorism czar," who was fired from the State Department and brought onto the Bush Administration NSC in 1992, after he was accused by the State Department's Inspector General of concealing illegal Israeli arms sales to China.

The Purloined Letter Principle While all of the above-mentioned Bush- and Clinton-era national security operatives may have been, indeed, secretly, or not-so-secretly passing critical American policy papers and classified documents to the Likud faction in Israel; and, while then-Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his Mossad mandarins may have been attempting to blackmail the President, there is a much simpler answer to the Mega puzzle: Mega was not a deep mole inside the White House. Mega was a far more visible, far more powerful entity, known among its several dozen members as "the Mega Group."

The existence of the Mega Group came to light, almost exactly a year after the Washington Post revealed that the mole hunt was under way. Yet, the story of the Mega Group, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on May 4, 1998, made no mention of espionage, and did not mention the Mossad, the CIA, or Monica Lewinsky, even in passing. Despite that, the Mega Group precisely fits the story of the illusive mole hunt, in a manner that has profound policy implications to this day, as President George W. Bush struggles to avoid an outbreak of war in the Middle East, which would have devastating consequences for the entire planet.

Under the innocent headline, "Titans of Industry Join Forces To Work for Jewish Philanthropy," Wall Street Journal staff reporter Lisa Miller reported on an April 1998 gathering of some 20 Jewish billionaires, at the Manhattan apartment of hedge-fund manager Michael Steinhardt. That gathering involved some of the most powerful names in the Jewish lobby in America, starting with Edgar Bronfman, the chairman of the World Jewish Congress. Others included: Charles Bronfman, Edgar's brother and a top executive of the family's flagship Seagrams Corp.; Leslie Wexler of Limited, Inc.; Charles Schusterman, chairman of Samson Investment Co. of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Harvey "Bud" Meyerhoff, a fabulously wealthy and powerful Baltimore real estate magnate; Laurence Tisch, chairman of Loews Corp.; Max Fisher, the Detroit oil magnate and Republican Party powerhouse; bagel magnate Max Lender; and Leonard Abramson, the founder of U.S. Healthcare.

According to the Journal account, the Mega Group was founded in 1991 by Wexler and Charles Bronfman, to add greater clout to the Israeli lobby, by establishing an informal, but all-powerful policymaking group, able to deploy billions of dollars in "charitable" funds for the maximum effect on U.S. policy toward Israel, the Mideast, and other issues of paramount importance to the Jewish megabillionaires. The Mega Group convenes twice a year, for two-day sessions, where, behind closed doors, the members make life-and-death decisions, affecting U.S. policy. Membership is by invitation only; the meetings are secret (the Wall Street Journal story was the only coverage to ever appear in the U.S. media about the existence of the Mega Group, before the publication of this EIR account); and the members each kick in $30,000 in annual dues, to cover "operating expenses" for the twice-yearly sessions.

Charles Bronfman reflected the Mega Group's propensity for secrecy, when he told the Journal's Lisa Miller, "From the beginning we didn't want to be seen as a threat to anybody. And that still pertains. We don't want to be seen as the Sanhedrin," a reference to the highest court of the ancient Jews. "We don't want to be looked at crooked." Charles' far more sinister and slick brother, Edgar, tried to dismiss the activities of the Mega Group, telling Miller, "We want to make it cool to be Jewish."

Not So Cool But then, a March 13, 2001 dispatch by the Jewish Telegraph Agency revealed that the Mega Group is more than a loose bunch of Jewish billionaires out to do good. The JTA reported that newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was about to launch a two-pronged propaganda offensive inside the United States, aimed at winning American support for his plans to overturn the Mideast peace process. First, the JTA revealed, the Sharon government announced that it was hiring two U.S. public relations firms—Rubenstein Associates and Morris, Carrick and Guma—to peddle the Israeli government "spin" inside the U.S. media and in policymaking circles in New York and Washington.

The JTA wire continued, "More controversially, a handful of Jewish mega-donors has created a think-tank they hope will generate long-term strategies for presenting Israel in a favorable light."

The new think-tank, Emet (the Hebrew word for "truth"), JTA reported, is the collective brain-child of Leonard Abramson, Edgar Bronfman, and Michael Steinhardt—three of the leading Mega Group members (JTA made no mention of Mega). The Mega Group is expected to kick in $7 million to launch the new organization, with the Israeli Foreign Ministry also pledged to pony up $1 million in startup cash. But, lest there be any confusion about who's in charge at Emet, JTA revealed that "the group consulted with [Malcolm] Hoelein, [Abe] Foxman and other Jewish activists—and only then notified Israel's Foreign Ministry, Foxman said." Hoelein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, is a fanatical backer of the Sharon war-drive, a view he shared with the just-retired president of the group, Ronald Lauder, a big Sharon financial backer who met with Sharon in September 2000—just before the latter staged his provocation at the Islamic holy sites on the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem, triggering the ongoing violence.

The Emet project has been criticized inside Israel, by Foreign Ministry officials and peace activists alike. As JTA reported, "Some Foreign Ministry officials grumbled that American Jews were poaching on their turf. Not surprisingly, they would prefer that any extra money be funneled to the ministry's efforts.... Israel's left appeared concerned that hawkish American Jews will use Emet to push a hard-line approach to the peace process." Steinhardt, Bronfman, and Abramson refused to talk about the project. But the enthusiastic endorsement for Emet from Morton Klein, president of the hawkish Zionist Organization of America, is strong confirmation that the outfit will peddle Sharon's war line. As EIR reported recently, Klein led a delegation of right-wing Zionists and evangelical Christians in a White House meeting, where they threatened a Presidential representative with a cutoff of support, if Bush attempted to interfere in Sharon's war schemes (see Anton Chaitkin, "Temple Mount Fanatics Seek To Blackmail Bush," EIR Aug. 24, 2001).

The Power of Money The Mega Group story came full circle on May 5, 2001, with the publication of a story in an obscure Israeli online publication, Media Monitors Network, by writer Israel Shamir. Shamir noted, with no lack of irony, the meeting of the Mega Group, which had taken place the previous day at the Manhattan mansion of Edgar Bronfman.

Shamir first described a meeting he had recently had with a Vermont-based psychoanalyst, the nephew of Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion. The nephew prided himself on the fact that his closest friends were Palestinians, and that he rejected the idea of a Jewish "tribal" identity, preferring to view all human beings as brethren.

Shamir observed, "That is the last thing the bosses want. I would not be amazed if they discussed it yesterday, when they met in the Edgar Bronfman mansion in Manhattan. The head of the World Jewish Congress hosted a meeting of the 50 richest and most powerful Jews of the U.S. and Canada. There was no press coverage, no limelight, just a few lines in the newspapers.... They agreed to launch a PR program under the Orwellian codename of 'Truth' with the purpose of influencing American public opinion regarding Israeli policies."

Shamir continued, "The megabucks call themselves 'Mega group.' This name appeared in the media a couple of years ago, as a name for the secret Israeli mole in the upper reaches of the U.S. establishment. It came up in an overheard phone conversation, later denied by the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The newshounds and spook watchers got it wrong. 'Mega' was not an agent, Mega was the boss."

With some bitterness, Shamir wrote, "Megabucks influence us, even more than they influence the U.S. Our politicians are as weak and corrupt as America's and they are easier to swing. Even relative small-timers can cause eruption and bloodshed, like the California bingo-parlor owner [Irving] Moskowitz, who pushed our ex-prime minister Netanyahu to open the tunnel under the Haram al Sharif.... The Megabucks can buy Israel with their spare change. If they wish, we would have peace in Palestine today. But they are not interested in Israel per se.... Megabucks care for themselves, and they need Israel in order to keep the American Jews together, supporting them. That is why they do not mind bloodshed in Palestine, and even a bloody regional war does not scare them."

Shamir concluded: "In my opinion, Megabucks, rather than forces of Caballa, move the events in the Middle East. It is not magic, just money—but a lot of money. They do not rule America or Israel, but they exercise a lot of influence. Fifty multibillionaires united in one framework present a very real force in the world."

Of course, Shamir does not have the picture precisely right. The Bronfman-centered Mega Group is but one component of an insane and desperate element within the transatlantic financial establishment that is now pressing for a "Clash of Civilizations," as a means of responding to the collapse of their global financial empire, and the threat of a new set of Eurasia-centered cooperative arrangements among nations supplanting their power. But, as far as the Mega puzzle is concerned, Shamir has solved the mystery.

No wonder Mossad boss Yatom scolded his Washington-based underling with the warning, "This is not something we use Mega for."

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