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‘CIA front’ company bombed in Saudi Arabia

Compiled by Eamon Martin

May 14 (AGR)— On Monday night, attackers shot their way into three housing compounds in synchronized strikes in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh and then set off multiple suicide car bombs. A fourth car bomb attack struck the offices of Siyanco, a partly US-owned military contractor.

The bombings, which took place at about 11:30pm, constituted one of the deadliest terror attacks on Americans since Sept. 11, 2001. The entire front of one four-story building was ripped apart, throwing concrete, twisted steel bars, furniture and human remains in all directions.

The attacks were clearly timed to coincide with the arrival in Riyadh of Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, in the region to push the “road-map” plan for the Middle East.

The bombings left at least 34 people killed, including nine bombers and seven Americans, and 194 injured.

The terrorists knew that the three residential compounds were among the most popular with Westerners working in Saudi Arabia. But intelligence experts believe the first location that the terrorists chose to attack was their main target. Known locally as the Vinnell compound, it is home to scores of former US servicemen who train the Saudi Arabian National Guard.

As befitting a company that has been accused of being a CIA front, of recruiting “executive mercenaries,” and attempting to overthrow the Prime Minister of a Commonwealth state, the Vinnell Corporation has kept a low profile in the city.

Vinnell has participated in every major war since WWII. Vinnell was the major contractor for US military operations in Okinawa, overhauled Air Force planes in Guam in the early 1950s, and sent men and equipment onto the battlefields of the Korean War.

Now based in Fairfax, Virginia, the company has been controlled in the past through a web of interlocking ownership by a partnership that included James A. Baker III and Frank Carlucci, former US secretaries of state and defense under presidents George Bush senior and Ronald Reagan respectively.

Perhaps the most important military contract Vinnell landed was in 1975 when the Pentagon helped the company win a bid to train the 75,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guard, a military unit descended from the Bedouin warriors who helped the Saud clan impose control on the peninsula early in last century.

An article in Newsweek at the time described the company’s first recruitment efforts with the aid of “a one-eyed former US Army colonel named James D. Holland” in a cramped office in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra to put together “a ragtag army of Vietnam veterans for a paradoxical mission: to train Saudi Arabian troops to defend the very oil fields that [US Secretary of State] Henry Kissinger recently warned the US might one day have to invade.”

“We are not mercenaries because we are not pulling triggers,” a former US Army officer told the magazine. “We train people to pull triggers.” One of his colleagues wryly pointed out: “Maybe that makes us executive mercenaries.”

Vinnell’s relationship with Saudi Arabia over nearly three decades has been intriguing and controversial. For five years until 1997 it was owned by the Carlyle group, a defense and investment house close to the Bush family.

George Bush senior sits on Carlyle’s board.

Vinnell paved the way for cooperation between the United States and Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War.

Since 1994 the company has been paid $800 million for training and construction alone. In return Vinnell has constructed, run, staffed, and written doctrine for five military academies, seven shooting ranges, and a healthcare system, as well as training and equipping four mechanized brigades and five infantry brigades.

In the early 1980s, Time magazine reported that two Vinnell employees were embroiled in a failed attempt to overthrow Maurice Bishop, the left-wing Prime Minister of Grenada, and soon after that a former employee was implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Vinnell is a Virginia subsidiary of Northrop Grumman, functioning as a part of the company’s “Mission Systems” sector. Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, according to its website: “is a $3.5 billion global integrator of complex, mission-enabling systems and services for defense, intelligence and civil government markets. The sector’s technology leadership and expertise spans areas such as strategic systems, including ICBMs; missile defense; intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; command and control; and technical services and training.”

Earlier on the day of the bombings, Northrop Grumman Corporation had announced that it had successfully redelivered the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, to the US Navy.

On May 6, Northrop Grumman’s “Integrated Systems” sector announced it would begin production of a “smart bomb rack assembly” for the B-2 stealth bomber. The new assembly will allow the B-2 to carry as many as 80 independently targeted, GPS-guided weapons, compared with its current capacity of 16.

Total value of the work, scheduled to run through the first quarter of 2006, is $31.7 million.

Northrop Grumman’s Corporate Vice President of Government Relations is Ronald Reagan’s former US Asst. Secretary of Defense Robert W. Helm, who joined the company in 1989 immediately after leaving office. Previously, he was senior defense analyst for the US Senate Budget Committee and subsequently director of defense programs and national security telecommunications policy for the National Security Council.

In 2001, George W. Bush appointed Northrop Grumman CEO Herbert W. Anderson as a principal member of the President’s National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee.

Suicide bombers took “thirty seconds to a minute” to knock out the security post at the Vinnell compound. From within a Ford sedan, the attackers started by killing or wounding security guards sitting in a vehicle equipped with a machine gun, then seized control of the guard post to allow a booby-trapped Dodge Ram truck through the compound’s gate.

Gunmen in the car opened fire with automatic weapons, killing four Saudi sentries. One of the attackers managed to force his way inside the main guardhouse and open the heavy iron gates, allowing the truck and its explosive load to pass through the security cordon. The truck was driven a further 250 yards until it reached the highest building in the compound. There it exploded in a sheet of flame.

Some witnesses say that they saw some of the gunmen escaping, including at least one man who had been in the truck.

The Bush administration was quick to allege that al-Qaida was responsible for the attacks, though evidence to support that claim has yet to surface.

The Riyadh attack came as the US is pulling out most of the 5,000 troops it has based in Saudi Arabia, whose presence has fueled anti-American sentiment.

Osama Bin Laden, as well as other strains of militant Islamic extremists, has repeatedly railed against the presence of what he calls “infidel” troops on Muslim holy land.

In 1995, a car bomb exploded at a US-run military training facility in Riyadh, killing seven, including five American advisers to the Saudi National Guard. The Islamic Movement for Change and two smaller groups claimed responsibility.

Sources: The Age, Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, CorpWatch, Independent (UK), New York Times, Times (UK)

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Afghans protest US presence
Resurgent Taliban claims Russian funding

Compilated by Nicholas Holt

May 14 (AGR)— A large number of people took to the streets of the Afghan capital Kabul last week to show their opposition to the US military presence in the country and president Hamid Karzai’s policies.

The protests came after US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited Afghanistan, declaring that US military combat operations in the country are over and sights should be now set on reconstruction efforts as well as keeping a watchful eye on the southeastern borders, thought to be the stronghold of Taliban remnants.

The protesters, who included government employees and university students complained of growing insecurity, slow post-war reconstruction, and delays in payment of state salaries by Hamid Karzai’s US-backed government. Some even called for the withdrawal of US-led coalition forces from Afghanistan and said the time had come for Afghans to fight the “American invasion,” just as they had resisted the British and the Soviets in the 20th Century.

“We don’t want the Brits and the Americans!” shouted one of the protest leaders, a young and irate Kabul University student. “We want Islam to rule. We want security. They have failed to bring it to us and we want them out!”

The protest was a rare event in Kabul, where past demonstrations have usually been organized by the government.

The demonstrators chanted the scathing slogans with one message; that the situation there is not much different from before the ouster of the Taliban regime more than a year ago.

One protest organizer said that about the only changes people had noticed were that some women had stopped wearing coverall burqa garments and the introduction of the Internet.

Many Afghans question US efforts to improve their living conditions, as they still live in ramshackle houses amid contaminated water supplies and poor sanitation.

“Access to safe drinking water is sparse and access to sanitation is also low,” said Afghanistan’s Urban Development and Housing Minister Yousuf Pashtun, noting that an average of 18 members of a family lived in one house in the capital.

“Our infrastructure, which has been destroyed and damaged, cannot cater to this large influx of people to the urban areas,” Pashtun added.

One in five children die in Afghanistan before the age of five and many women still do not have access to adequate health care.

The demonstrations are seen as an indicator of how far the country has walked on the road to democracy and freedom of speech since the downfall of Taliban.

But many protestors recalled the student demonstration “crushed” by police last month, raising popular and international concerns over the way the government deals with peaceful gatherings.

Taliban reemerges

Across the southern portions of Afghanistan, where the Taliban found strong support among the rural conservative Pashtun populations, there are definite signs that the Taliban are making a comeback. Some Taliban leaders are giving interviews once again. Others are dropping leaflets, calling for a jihad against US forces and against Karzai’s government. Still others are increasingly willing to discuss the secret hierarchy that is directing this jihad and the sources of funding that keep it running.

It’s this confidence that undercuts recent assertions by Rumsfeld that major combat operations in Afghanistan are over.

According to former Taliban Supreme Court Justice Salam, Russia gives money and weapons to the opponents of the central Afghan government, as do the intelligence agencies of Iran and Pakistan. “The Russians are not happy with the US presence here, and neither are Iran, Pakistan, and even China,” he says.

The alarming claim will prove acutely embarrassing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been trying to rebuild relations with the US in the wake of the acrimonious split between the two countries over Iraq.

Taliban activists in Pakistan and Afghanistan say they are receiving direct support from Pakistan’s powerful religious parties, including Jamaat-i Islami and Jamiat Ulema-i Islam, which control the government of two key border provinces.

The Indian government is Pakistan’s chief rival, and among the largest aid donors to the new Afghan government. In the past year, India has reopened consulates in the border cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad, raising fears among Pakistan’s security analysts that Pakistan may find itself in a vise between two bitter enemies.

Another Taliban leader, Mullah Dadullah, has publicly claimed that the Taliban had regrouped under the leadership of Mullah Omar, their one-eyed spiritual leader, who is still being hunted by the Americans.

He added that the Taliban were also receiving money from the Afghan people.

Despite the massive technological superiority of their forces in Afghanistan and the millions of dollars offered as rewards, the Americans have not managed to catch or kill any of the Taliban’s top leadership.

Kandahar, former fiefdom of the ultra-orthodox Taliban militia and the sanctuary of ethnic Pashtuns, has been gripped for the past two months by a wave of unprecedented violence.

Attacks against pro-government forces, ambushes against international aid organization convoys, grenade explosions, and landmines have become almost a daily occurrence in the war-ravaged country’s south, forcing the United Nations (UN) to suspend all activities in the area.

The UN’s special envoy to Afghanistan, Lakhdar Brahimi, told the UN Security Council on May 6 that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, in cahoots with followers of renegade Islamist leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, were behind the attacks.

“There are now almost daily attacks by elements hostile to the central government and those who support it,” he said.

The UN officially suspended all operations in the south in May after two ambushes of international aid vehicles.

The frustration of the local population is accentuated by the disappointment of Afghan refugees returning home from Pakistan, and Pashtuns who have fled their homes in the north because of ethnic-based attacks against them.

Moreover, Kandaharis feel they have been excluded from the transitional government in Kabul, which is heavily associated with the US-backed anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, dominated by Tajiks from the Panjshir Valley.

Finally, a bumper harvest of opium poppies, which are manufactured into heroin, is in full swing, landing Afghanistan back at the top of the world’s drug-producing nations, according to a UN report in March.

The insecurity suits opium traffickers, who are suspected of having connections with anti-government elements, and do not want any witness to their operations.

More prisoners transferred to Guantánamo

Pentagon officials say about 30 detainees have been transferred to the Camp Delta detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba from Afghanistan.

Earlier, the Pentagon had confirmed that 13 prisoners had been “transferred for release” in Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The total number of prisoners at the US base now stands at about 680.

The Pentagon says the latest transfers to the base are mainly Afghan and had been held in Afghanistan until now.

The US has used the base to house what it terms “unlawful combatants” it encounters in its so-called “war on terror.”

It has not granted them prisoner-of-war status, and none has been charged or stood before a judge -- a fact harshly criticized by human rights groups.

The 13 men sent back to Afghanistan last week had been held for more than a year.

Sources: Agence Presse France, BBC, Christian Science Monitor, Islam Online, Latin America Press, Reuters, The Scotsman

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Senate broadens powers of secret court

Compiled by Shawn Gaynor

May 13 (AGR)— This week the US Senate passed a measure expanding the powers of a secret government court to monitor foreigners. The measure, which passed by a vote of 90-4, would amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978(FISA), to include foreigners not connected to a government or terrorist group.

As used in the act, the term “agent of a foreign power” includes those controlled by governments, political organizations, or terrorist groups. But lawmakers claimed that this requirement could hinder the FBI when its investigators can’t make such a link to a known terror organization or a foreign government.

The legislation, introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ), removes the requirement that non-citizens targeted for surveillance under warrants issued by the top-secret FISA Court be acting on behalf of a foreign power.

Before the adopted changes, record numbers of searches and wiretap orders granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2002 underscores a growing trend of reliance on the secret court in government investigations, privacy advocates say.

“Increasingly, FISA is becoming the surveillance weapon of choice,” said Barry Steinhardt, who directs the American Civil Liberty Union’s Technology and Liberty program.

The number of FISA orders jumped more than 30 percent to 1,228 last year, compared to 934 the year before. The FBI uses the warrants in investigations of suspected terrorists and spies to eavesdrop on communications and conduct physical searches.

Since FISA’s inception in 1978, the court has approved every FBI application it has received, despite disclosing last year in a report that the agency had misled FISA judges in 75 cases.

“This legislation fails to address the root causes of our 9/11 intelligence missteps,” said Timothy Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. “Rather than any inability to collect information, Congress’s own inquiry into 9/11 revealed that deep structural problems and a deficit in effective analytical capacity led to our intelligence breakdown.”

“The government’s current powers, if used effectively, are more than sufficient to meet the threats of the ‘lone wolf’ terrorists the bill seeks to target,” Edgar added.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, criticized the bill as a “quick fix” that the FBI hadn’t even sought.

“This is aimed at making Americans feel safer, but it doesn’t make them safer,” Leahy said.

Senators rejected 35-59 an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that would have given federal judges more discretion when to approve such surveillance warrants against foreigners believed to be acting on their own.

The FISA court, comprised of seven district court judges appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court, meets every two weeks inside a windowless room at the Justice Department to review the department’s warrant applications.

Supporters of the bill said the FBI had been hampered in its investigation of Zacarias Moussaoi, the sole conspirator charged with involvement in the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

The FBI’s Minneapolis headquarter’s request for a FISA warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui’s computer was found by a Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees to be the result of officials misinterpreting the “legal standard for obtaining an order under FISA” and not the result of any legal limitation on surveillance authority.

“Calling this bill a fix to the ‘Moussaoui problem’ is false advertising and simply ignores the findings of Congress’s own investigation,” Edgar said.

Sources: ACLU, AP, Wired News

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United States declares occupation of Iraq

Compiled by Eamon Martin

May 14 (AGR)— The shape of Iraq’s future came into clearer focus on May 9, when the United States and Britain laid out their blueprint for the nation in a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council, declaring themselves “occupying powers” and giving them control of the country’s vast oil revenues.

The proposal would relegate the UN to an advisory role, alongside the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, while lifting economic sanctions.

Having snubbed and abandoned the United Nations and gone to war in Iraq without UN backing in defiance of international law, the Bush administration returned to the Security Council this week - hoping to win UN legitimacy and legal authority for its designs.

The letter marks the first time that the US has referred to its role in Iraq as an “occupying power,” a status governed by the Geneva Conventions that would entail wide-ranging responsibilities to provide for the Iraqi people.

The United States acknowledged in the draft that, with Great Britain, it intended to run Iraq for possibly years as a conquering power.

The proposal also would phase out the oil-for-food humanitarian program over four months. The program has been feeding 90 percent of Iraq’s 24 million people.

The draft resolution does not define the make-up or duties of a provisional government, which if approved would effectively leave it up to the United States and Britain to decide.



Army General ousted

On May 13, the first day of operations for the new US boss in Iraq began after a bloody bomb attack in neighboring Saudi Arabia left at least 29 dead, including seven Americans, overshadowing US hopes of reshaping the region. Paul Bremer, the new chief US administrator, hastily cancelled his first press conference after the bombings in Riyadh.

Bremer, a career diplomat and anti-terrorism advisor with no previous Middle East experience, is faced with the huge task of installing a Washington-friendly government in Iraq while winning back Iraqis’ trust after a month of unrelenting chaos since Saddam Hussein’s overthrow.

The man he replaces in the top slot, Jay Garner, the much-criticized retired US Army General, will leave the country in mid-June. After less than a month in charge of the reconstruction operation, General Garner and five top aides were eased out after failing to get a government running in Iraq and to restore a semblance of normality to Baghdad.

Although US officials insisted that the arrival of Bremer was not a reflection on Garner, the facts suggest otherwise. Arguably the situation, far from improving, is deteriorating, with potentially dangerous political consequences.

Barbara Bodine, a former US Ambassador to Yemen who was supposed to run the Baghdad region, was among those returning home. At one recent meeting with the press, she was asked about the murder of 17 Iraqis by US troops in Fallujah, a town outside Baghdad and within her jurisdiction. It was clear from her answer that she was unaware of the incident, which was making headline news around the world.

Margaret Tutweiler, another senior US diplomat and former State Department spokeswoman, was supposed to be in charge of communications, but repeatedly she refused to meet the media in Baghdad.

The most damning assessment of Garner’s team comes from many Iraqis themselves. Over the past three weeks, nobody had heard of their first new leader. Those who did meet him were underwhelmed by the gray-haired, retired soldier, whose relaxed appearance did little to encourage the impression that he was the right man to run a country of 23 million people.

Garner and his staff based themselves in Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Palace, where their camp beds and desks are arranged in a grand reception hall the size of a Gothic cathedral.

The headquarters is as detached from Baghdad life as was Saddam Hussein’s leadership when he was in power. The decision to base Garner’s office in a palace that is utterly remote from Iraqis, who were too scared to even look through the gates of such places, and a symbol of a despotic and cruel regime, has been criticized.

Without functioning telephones, television and other basic communications, there has been little contact between the civil administration and ordinary Iraqis. The only time that Garner was sighted was when his armored convoy raced through the city streets.

What normality has returned to Baghdad is due largely to the Iraqis themselves. Volunteers help to direct traffic. Merchants have reopened for business, but rely on their own weapons and gunmen for security. What few hospitals and schools are running are doing so largely due to the dedication of unpaid staff.

Baghdad residents feel the utter absence of any strategy to get the city functioning again.

Although Garner’s Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance promised to have normal electrical power running by now, it is at 40 percent capacity and will take two months to be completely restored. Hospitals cannot function normally. Water treatment plants are at risk.

“I have no answers for the people,” said Army Sgt. Keith Hudson, whose 3rd Infantry Division unit patrols Baghdad. “I feel like a paid liar. To look these people in the eye and say, ‘Tomorrow, you’ll have electricity.’ And then, tomorrow, they look you in the eye and say, ‘When?’”

Security in Baghdad is deteriorating. Gunfire is heard more often than it was two weeks ago, thieves drag drivers from their cars in broad daylight, and looters continue to steal whatever is left from public buildings in full view of passersby.

”I’ve been shot at more in the last few days than during the whole war,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Milstead.

Sunday, the telecommunications tower, which had survived heavy bombing, was burned and damaged by vandals.

Heroin — banned under Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship with the punishment of hanging — is now being traded in back alleys.

“In Iraq there were no drugs until March 2003,” said Salah Sha’amikh, a pharmacist. “You would be hanged for trafficking. But now you can get heroin, cocaine, anything.”

Most Iraqis have not gone back to their jobs, since the ministries and companies that employed them until the war have not yet restarted their operations. That has left millions of citizens with no income and no secure source of food, in the absence of the ration system that prevailed before the war under the now-threatened UN “oil for food program”.

So far, no UN food trucks have arrived in Baghdad, and food aid officials say the ration reserves that Iraqis had built up are likely to run out within a matter of weeks.

But it is the rapidly deteriorating public health system – as summer temperatures take hold – that is most worrying. After a month of occupation it remains in a state of collapse. Drinking water, from the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, contaminated with sewage, has caused outbreaks of cholera and typhoid among children in Basra. And the World Health Organization warned this week that unless the security situation improves and medical staff can work in safety, the cholera outbreak could become an epidemic.

Garner suggested that his team could do better in getting information out to Iraqis. “I want TV going to people. I want a radio station filling time with a soft demeanor that is pleasing for people to hear. I want the right kind of music, cultural stuff,” he said a few days before Paul Bremer’s arrival.

GI’s authorized to shoot looters

United States military forces in Iraq will have the authority to shoot looters on sight, American officials said Tuesday.

“I think you are going to see a change in the rules of engagement within a few days to get the situation under control,” said an official quoted in the New York Times, commenting on the new policy described at a meeting with Paul Bremer that day.

Asked what this meant, the official replied, “They are going to start shooting a few looters so that the word gets around” that assaults on property, the hijacking of automobiles and violent crimes will be dealt with using deadly force.

Imposing measures that call for the possible killing of young, unemployed or desperate Iraqis for looting appears to carry a certain level of risk because of the volatile sentiments in the streets. Iraqis across the country are saying that if the United States only seeks to be a continuing force in running the country’s political affairs and oil industry then Americans will be seen as self-interested occupiers among people who have little but their own festering resentments.

Abraham Ghanan’s body is stunted by malnutrition — a 16-year-old whose sallow frame is fit for a boy of 10 — but he keeps his arms strong, he says, in hopes of throwing grenades with perfect aim someday.

‘’I eat in the morning, a little in the day, not at night,’’ Ghanan said, standing outside a US Army outpost in the center of the city of Fallujah. ‘’But I have strength to kill. We want to put bombs on our body, to make a suicide operation to show we are not down.’’

‘’These soldiers, they are the sons of George Bush,’’ added Omar Nizar, a reed-thin, barefoot 14-year-old. ‘’We will fight them.’’

Anwar Hamid Saeed, a 42-year-old father of eight children between the ages of 2 and 21, said he believes young Iraqi men will begin ‘’liberation operations’’ and ‘’a martyrdom project’’ this summer. The reason, he says, is not fanaticism, but self-interest.

‘’There is no work. There is no fuel. There is no cooking gas,’’ Saeed says. ‘’We are not saying that Saddam is better than America. But we want to govern ourselves.’’

Weapons taskforce leaves in failure

The group directing all known US search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms.

The departure next month of the 75th Exploitation Task Force marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war.

Leaders of Task Force 75’s diverse staff — biologists, chemists, arms treaty enforcers, nuclear operators, computer and document experts, and US Special Forces troops said they expected to find what Secretary of State Colin L. Powell described at the UN Security Council on Feb. 5 — hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb.

Scores of fruitless missions broke that confidence, many task force members said. Motivated and accomplished in their fields, the team found targets identified by Washington to be inaccurate, looted and burned, or both.

US Central Command began the war with a list of 19 top weapons sites. Only two remain to be searched. Another list enumerated 68, top “non-WMD sites,” without known links to special weapons but judged to have the potential to offer clues. Of those, the tally at midweek showed 45 surveyed without success.

The US-proposed resolution to the UN last Friday makes no mention of weapons of mass destruction.


Sources: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, Christian Science Monitor, Boston Globe, CNN, Guardian (UK), Independent (UK), Inter Press Service, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Reuters, Times (UK), Toronto Star, Washington Post

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