The Fourth Reich

The Third Reich was never defeated it just moved to America, Britain and elsewhere... Investigator Journalist John Buchanan documents that Prescott Bush was a Nazi traitor

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington

Saturday September 25, 2004

The Guardian

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in
1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.

While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.

Tantalising

Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.

Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel
Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.

A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".

Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert
Walker, in 1921.

In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.

One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.

The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.

August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.

By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow
Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.

By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.

Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.

In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.

There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble
started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.

There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.

Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel.

Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.

May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."

May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.

By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.

Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family,
nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.

Red-handed

Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.

Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.

The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have.

You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."

But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.

"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.

Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.

The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.

Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."

Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.

In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.

The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case.

A ruling is expected within a month. The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz.

The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews.

The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director. Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."

The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.

In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s.

Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.

"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.

"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horseshit. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."

"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."

Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share.

Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.

The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.

The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".

In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been
compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."

The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.

However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".

The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."

However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.

More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.

Update:

NYT: CIA holding onto Nazi papers

WASHINGTON, Jan. 30 (UPI) -- The CIA refuses to provide documents sought by the U.S. government under a law requiring disclosure of classified records related to Nazi war criminals.

Under the 1998 law, the spy agency has already provided more than 1.2 million pages of documents. Some of the papers made public last year showed a closer relationship between the U.S. government and Nazi war criminals than had previously been understood.

But for nearly three years, the CIA has nixed requests for more records, Congressional officials and some members of a government working group told The New York Times.

The officials believe the stance seems to violate the law and say the agency has sometimes agreed to provide information about ex-Nazis, but not about the extent of the agency's dealings with them after World War II.

"I think that the CIA has defied the law, and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II," said Elizabeth Holtzman, a former congresswoman from New York and a member of the group. Copyright 2005 by United Press International. All rights reserved.

The Bush - Nazi Connection
31 July 1941

Existence of a $3,000,000 fund established here by Fritz Thyssen, German industrialist and original banker of Adolf Hitler, was disclosed today in a news story in the New York Journal American. The money exists in funds of the Union Banking corporation, an investment company incorporated and licensed under New York state laws in August 1924. Among members on the board of directors are E.R. Harriman, Ray Morris, and Prescott Bush, partners in the firm of Brown Brothers Harriman and company.

The Bush-Nazi Connection The Zanesville
Signal, Zanesville, Thursday, July 31, 1941

Article showing Skull and Bones members, E. R. Harriman, and Prescott S. Bush(The President's Grandfather.) tied to Hitler's funding and Banking.

Three Generations of Bush's

“Bush -
Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951” - Federal Documents

7 November 2003

After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal. Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.

Bush Family Funded Adolf Hitler
26 August 2003

Have you ever wondered how Adolph Hitler - a mediocre painter of Austrian origin - transformed himself into Germany's Fuhrer during the 1930s and 1940s? U.S. authors Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Cheitkin reveal in the recently published George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography that Prescott Bush (George W. Bush's grandfather) and other directors of the Union Banking Company (UBC) were Nazi collaborators.

President Eisenhower signing one of Senator
Prescott Bush's bills

The Nazis in Dubya's Closet
2 October 2003

Adolf Hitler wasn't entirely a German phenomenon. The rise of fascism had gleeful fans throughout Europe -- and in America. Henry Ford was one, as were Dubya's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his great-grandfather, George Herbert Walker. Walker was president of Union Banking Corp., and Prescott Bush was a board member. On Oct. 20, 1942, the federal government seized the assets of Union, declaring that it was "trading with the enemy." Later, a variety of other Walker-Bush companies -- at least one a front for German espionage -- were also seized by the government.

Documents in National Archives Prove George
W. Bush's GrandfatherTraded with Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor
10 October 2003

After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his "enemy national" partners.

How the Bush family made its fortune from the Nazis
9 February 2002

From 1945 until 1949, one of the lengthiest and, it now appears, most futile interrogations of a Nazi war crimes suspect began in the American Zone of Occupied Germany. Multibillionaire steel magnate Fritz Thyssen -- the man whose steel combine was the cold heart of the Nazi war machine -- talked to successive teams of inquisitors who tried to break Thyssen's simple claim to possess neither foreign bank accounts nor interests in foreign corporations. What Thyssen deposed was true - he did not have to transfer his Nazi assets, all he had to do was transfer the ownership documents -- stocks, bonds, deeds and trusts -- from his bank in Berlin to his American friends in New York City: Prescott Bush and Herbert Walker.

Letters: Prescott Bush's business history
with Nazis well-documented
14 May 2003

Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the United States government siezed all Union Banking Corporation stock shares, all of which were owned by Prescott Bush, E. Roland "Bunny" Harriman, three Nazi executives, and two other associates of Bush. Office of Alien Property Custodian, Vesting Order No. 248: The order was signed by Leo T. Crowley, President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, executed Oct. 20, 1942; F.R. Doc. 42-11568; Filed, Nov. 6, 1942, 11:31 A.M.; 7 Fed. Reg. 9097 (Nov. 7, 1942). Also seized were Seamless Steel Equipment Corp; Holland-American Trading Corp; and Silesian-American Corp — all companies under the control of Prescott Bush.

Prescott Bush conversing with future Richard
Nixonin the 50's

Geronimo's head bone connected to Bush 23
September 2000

One expects, from a family of politicians, a certain amount of skullduggery. But that is a term of art; it should not involve the actual digging of skulls. So begins one of the odder political stories of recent years: it involves allegations that George W. Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush, late of the United States Senate by way of Connecticut, had joined a midnight foray 82 years ago into an Oklahoma graveyard whence he emerged with the mortal skull of Geronimo.

Related:

The British Monarchy Has Its Roots in Nazism

Working for the Clampdown

What might the president do with his new power to declare martial law?

How many pipe bombs might it take to end American democracy? Far fewer than it would have taken a year ago.

The Defense Authorization Act of 2006, passed on Sept. 30, empowers President George W. Bush to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist “incident,” if he or other federal officials perceive a shortfall of “public order,” or even in response to antiwar protests that get unruly as a result of government provocations.

The media and most of Capitol Hill ignored or cheered on this grant of nearly boundless power. But now that the president’s arsenal of authority is swollen and consecrated, a few voices of complaint are being heard. Even the New York Times recently condemned the new law for “making martial law easier.”

It only took a few paragraphs in a $500 billion, 591-page bill to raze one of the most important limits on federal power. Congress passed the Insurrection Act in 1807 to severely restrict the president’s ability to deploy the military within the United States. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 tightened these restrictions, imposing a two-year prison sentence on anyone who used the military within the U.S. without the express permission of Congress. But there is a loophole: Posse Comitatus is waived if the president invokes the Insurrection Act.

A new Kent State?

War Lies and the Compliant Media

At a House investigation panel this week, more lies about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were uncovered and lay bare as comprehensive plan to purposely deceive the American people. It has to do with the two media heroes in both conflicts- the army's poster girl Jessica Lynch in Iraq and the war casualty NFL star Pat Tillman in Afghanistan- and beyond the obvious evidence of government alteration of the facts there is the unsettling feeling that the US media had been compliantly negligent in covering the story at worst, or merely dropped the ball at best. Either way, the controlling element and vanguard of American opinion- which is the popular press- seems to be experiencing an identity crisis not unlike the one it experienced in 1964 and took until the Watergate investigation in the early 70's when it declared itself cured.

Hitlery Clinton: US might have to confront Iran

Democratic presidential candidate and New York Senator Hitlary Clinton said Tuesday that it might be necessary for America to confront Iran militarily, addressing that possibility more directly than any of the other presidential candidates who spoke this week to the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Clinton first said that the US should be engaging directly with Iran to foil any effort to gain nuclear weapons and faulted the Bush administration for "considerably narrowing" the options available to America in countering Iran.

Other candidates who addressed the NJDC only went as far as saying that "no option should be taken off the table" when it came to thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions. All of the major Democratic presidential contenders appeared at the three-day conference, but Clinton received the most time and applause. She hit on the importance of the US-Israel relationship

Posada May Participate in Chavez Assassination

The United States released Luis Posada Carriles either to kill him or to give him a new mission, which might be the assassination of President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan Higher Education Minister Hector Navarro said on Friday.

The only explanation to release Posada Carriles is to kill him, because they know how to do it, and prevent him from talking about his dirty deals with the US government, or he was given a new mission, Navarro told Venezolana de Television.

The Venezuelan minister recalled that the recently released terrorist is responsible for the deaths of 73 people on board a Cuban civilian plane in 1976. He has contacts with criminals all over the world and knows how to get C-4 explosive.

In particular, Navarro pointed out that Posada Carriles, who was a member of the DISIP (Venezuela's political police), still has relations with officers from that repressive corps, who are also CIA operatives.

He added that many of those CIA agents are still living in Venezuela, participated in the 2002 coup d'etat against President Chavez and can be key elements in a plot to assassinate the head of State.

Navarro noted that in addition to the sabotage of the plane off Barbados, Posada Carriles is responsible for assassinating and torturing Venezuelans during the time he was known as DISIP's "Commissar Basilio" and headed repressive activities against left-wing movements.

Beck: Why we went to Iraq

Beck fueling an attack on Iran
Beck on Fox talks about Iran and how the US Zionist/Christian right has long been planning to steal their oil through a biblical intentioned interpretation

Federally Funded Boffins Want To Scrap The Internet

Researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time.

Time magazine has reported that several foundations and universities including Rutgers, Stanford, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are pursuing individual projects, along with the Defense Department, in order to wipe out the current internet and replace it with a new network which will satisfy big business and government:

The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.

This would be a faster, more streamlined elite equivalent of the internet available to users who were willing to pay more for a much improved service. providers may only allow streaming audio and video on your websites if you were eligible for Internet 2.

Of course, Internet 2 would be greatly regulated and only "appropriate content" would be accepted by an FCC or government bureau. Everything else would be relegated to the "slow lane" internet, the junkyard as it were. Our techie rulers are all too keen to make us believe that the internet as we know it is "already dead".

Google is just one of the major companies preparing for internet 2 by setting up hundreds of "server farms" through which eventually all our personal data - emails, documents, photographs, music, movies - will pass and reside.

Iran 'is seeking N Korea's nuclear expertise'

Con Coughlin

Iran and North Korea have appointed high-level delegations to deepen co-operation between the two countries on nuclear weapons technology, according to diplomatic sources in Beijing.

The countries are keen to seal a deal before North Korea starts to close its controversial Yongbyon reactor under the terms of an agreement with the United States and regional powers in February.

The Feb 13 accord was negotiated after North Korea conducted a successful test of a nuclear warhead at the end of last year. Following the international outcry that greeted the test, Pyongyang agreed to close the reactor in return for aid.

But the North Koreans missed the weekend's deadline to start shutting down the reactor, claiming that the United States was refusing to release £15 million of North Korean funds frozen in bank accounts in Macau. See this before you believe the Zionist Telegraph

London Telegraph

MTV using 'all seeing eye'

MTV using a high grade illuminati symbol with their broadcasting, the infamous New World Order 'all seeing eye'. footage set to the theme from the Omen.

Bush has "near dictatorial power"

Weekly Standard: Bush has "near dictatorial power"

The Weekly Standard's Michael Goldfarb participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell yesterday, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. This is what Goldfarb wrote about that call:

Pam Hess, the UPI reporter who gave us this extremely moving and persuasive glimpse of the liberal case for the war in Iraq, asked if timetables for withdrawal "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?" Mitchell's less than persuasive answer: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."

True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.

So apparently, the American Founders risked their lives and fortunes in order to wage war against Great Britain and declare independence from the King -- all in order to vest "near dictatorial power" in the American President in all matters of foreign policy and national security. And, of course, for the Michael Goldfarbs of the world, "war" and "national security" -- and the "near dictatorial power" vested in the President in those areas -- now encompasses virtually every government action, since scary and dangerous Muslims are lurking everywhere, on every corner, and the entire world is one big "battlefield" in the "War on Terrorism," including U.S. soil.

India successfully tests missile able to hit China

India announced Thursday a successful test-firing of a nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile than can reach the Chinese cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

The Agni-III missile was launched from Wheeler Island, 180 kilometres (110 miles) northeast of Bhubaneswar, capital of the eastern state of Orissa.

"The 16-metre-long (52-feet) missile weighing 48 tonnes lifted off successfully from its rail mobile launcher system leaving a trail of orange and yellow smoke," India's Defence Ministry said in a statement from New Delhi.

"The entire flight path of approximately 15 minutes duration validated all mission objectives," the statement said, adding the test "confirmed India's strategic capability for minimum credible deterrence."

The ministry gave the range of the missile tested Thursday as more than 3,000 kilometres (1,860 miles) and said it was capable of carrying a nuclear or conventional payload of 1.5 tonnes

The Missile-Defense Flap

The U.S. intention to locate advanced elements of its missile-defense system in Eastern Europe is alarming Russian experts. Claims that 10 anti-missiles are a small number and pose no threat to Russia, which they say boasts thousands of nuclear warheads, and that "these missiles will protect Europe from rogue nations" -- meaning Iran and North Korea -- are tongue-in-cheek and directed at ignorant people.
It all sounds like the speech made by Colin Powell during his tenure as U.S. Secretary of State at a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. In it, he argued Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the world community was obliged to stop their proliferation and use. The upshot of all that is well known: Such weapons were never found anywhere in Mesopotamia.

The same fate may befall an American defense shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. The references to threats from Iran and North Korea don't have a leg to stand on.

The first reason is that neither Tehran nor Pyongyang has or will have in the near future intercontinental missiles able to fly more than 3,400 miles. The ones they have are unable to go farther than 1,900 miles. To overstep this boundary requires other design solutions and more advanced electronic hardware and software for keeping missiles on course.

Russia Works on Industrial Development of Moon — Expert

Russia is working on a space transport system that could eventually lead to the industrialization of the moon, the Reuters news agency quoted a Russian space expert as saying.

Thirty-eight years after the United States put the first man on the moon, Russia could reach it using Soyuz rockets, the head of the Russian space company RKK Energia, Nikolai Sevastianov, told the Vedomosti daily.

“It is time to think about industrial development of the moon. We are sometimes criticized for making such suggestions too early,” Sevastianov was quoted as saying in an interview released on Wednesday.

“But it is time to do this given the limits to natural reserves on Earth and the pace of civilization’s progress. Nor can we dismiss the idea of outsourcing harmful industries into space.”

Sevastianov said Energia was working on a new space transport system called Kliper/Parom.

“We can start flying to the moon using the Soyuz ships and those technologies that we already have. As for industrial development, that will be with the new technologies that the Kliper system will give us.”

The Secret Government

Bill Moyers, the respected TV journalist, analyzes the threats to constitutional government posed by an illegitimate network of "superpatriots", spies, profiteers, mercenaries and ex-generals. His documentary gives a fascinating overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA and the Cold War (including Iran, Guatamala, Cuba, Vietnam and Chile). He features such people as Ralph McGeehee and Phil Retinger (both former CIA agents), Rear Admiral Gene La Rocque (Ret. U.S.N.), Theodore Bissell (active in the CIA at the time), Sen. Frank Church and many others.

Who owns America and YOu

This is a clip from 'Jordan Maxwell & Michael Tsarion (The queen of England exposed)' As we all know the movie Freedom to Facsism came to cinemas 28 july. Jordan Maxwell explains how it all came toghether, and how it became so wrong. Big thanks to him for getting this information!



Read this article

    

    

A grim vision of the future

Information chips implanted in the brain.

Electromagnetic pulse weapons.

This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks". Rear Admiral Chris Parry, head of the MoD's Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre which drew up the report, describes the assessments as "probability-based, rather than predictive".

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

USRAELI CRIMES

No, anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism

Zionism And The Birth Of Middle East Terrorism

Made in Israel and for Israel

The Sephardi Holocaust

News Zealand passports

Quotes From Zionist Monsters

Why The Zionists Killed General George S. Patton

"The "Dirty Work" Of Zionism is Unfinished

Mossad hits five Iraq churches with sophisticated weapons

Mossad kills 250 at two sacred Mosques on Ashoura

Madrid Bombing: Mossad operation

Zionist Monsters Maul Madrid

Israeli Attack on US Navy War Ship

The Israeli Massacre At Luxor

Zionist s Killing of US marines in Beirut

Mysterious Ambush Kills Five Marines, And Wounds Nine

Mossad attack at Taba

Car Bomb Kills Five Marines

The Fifth Column

Israeli Mercenaries in Iraq

Israeli Advisors - Too Close For Comfort

Israeli Massacre: Falluja

World's most prolific terrorist

Female Jewish Suicide Bomber

Purim Sacrifice

Skull and Bones Flag Flies With U.S. Troops in Iraq

With the Skull & Bones pirate banner flying over U.S. forces engaged in an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, it should come as no surprise that nothing but lies comes from the Pentagon.

As U.S. military aircraft known as the AC-130 (Spectre) relentlessly bombard a civilian city of 300,000 with 105mm rounds, Bofors cannons, and heavy machine guns, the Pentagon calls the action "defensive."

This kind of military action killed 60 children under the age of 5 in the first days of the punishing siege, which began on April 5. More than 600 civilians were killed in the first week alone. How many innocent civilians have been killed in Fallujah may never be known, just like the Israeli raid of Jenin. This is why Skull & Bones control so much of the media, so that Americans will believe any, and every lie.

Secret paper reveals Labour's lies over ID cards

The Government faces damaging claims of misleading voters over ID cards after documents revealed it always planned to make the controversial scheme compulsory. Whitehall papers, which the Government has fought for two years to suppress, disclose that Labour intended to force the public to sign up to the programme.

They appear to contradict commitments given by Labour in its 2005 Election manifesto, which pledged that the cards, and the national identity register containing people's names, addresses, fingerprints and other information, would be 'on a voluntary basis'. The briefing notes, released under the Freedom Of Information Act, show that civil servants had already been told ID cards would be compulsory for everyone by 2014.

Opposition MPs said the papers proved the Government had 'purposely set out to mislead the public and politicians about their plans'.

The Order of Death

To commemorate the five year anniversary of his historic infiltration of the Bohemian Grove, the occult playground of the global elite, Alex Jones presents his newest film, The Order of Death, an amazing and horrifying look into the rites and rituals of the modern day descendents of Babylonian mystery cults.

This new film delves deeply into the history of the Grove where powerful men make decisions that affect the world but are completely hidden from public scrutiny. "The Order of Death" details how the Grove has been the backdrop for some of the most earth shattering events in human history including the development of the Starwars program and the Manhattan Project.

Inside The Bohemian Grove

Dark Secrets: Inside the Bohemian Grove documents the first ever hidden camera incursion into the Bohemian Grove and the bizzare pagan ritual, the Cremation of Care, practiced by its member elites, all men, including both Presidents Bush, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Colin Powell, and Henry Kissenger to name but a few.

The Order of Death, picks up where Dark Secrets leaves off. This new work exposes the connections between the Bohemian Club and Skull and Bones and other occult secret societies. Jones explores the roots of the Grove and its links to occult networks dating back to ancient Egypt and Babylon.

Bohemian Grove Fact Sheet

Rise of the Police State

Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State was filmed primarily during the Republican Party's 2004 national convention in New York City. The Republican Party's choice to hold the event there drew both strong praise and strong criticism. Alex Jones' clear intent was that the people who were truly guilty of planning and carrying out the events of September 11, 2001 were coming back to the scene of the crime. In the film, Jones shows what he believes are signs of a growing police state: constant surveillance, a defined military presence, a militarized civilian police force, mass roundups and arrests of protesters, detention in a makeshift facility laden with asbestos which one interviewee called a "concentration camp", and threats of arrest for constitutionally legal activities. Many different views are presented, including one semi-humorous confrontation with a group of American communists.

This video is copyrighted, but Alex Jones has permitted and encourged the distribution of these videos for non-profit, educational purposes. If you would like to help Alex Jones and/or have a hard copy, buy one from him by going through his website. It can be done online or through his office.

Exposing Tony Blair’s secret army: Death Squads

The secret Force Research Unit, the British Army’s counter-intelligence squad, pictured in 1988. The circled man is Gordon Kerr - now in Iraq

Simon Basketter exposes how special British units in Iraq are run by the same man who commanded death squads in Northern Ireland. Two of Britain’s most secret military units operating in Iraq are run by a man who ran death squads in Northern Ireland. British covert military unit the Joint Support Group (JSG) works alongside US covert forces in the aptly named “Task Force Black”.

British soldiers from the SRR unit arrested in Iraq in 2005

Earlier this year the JSG was lauded in the Sunday Telegraph for its role in running dozens of double agents in Iraq, many of who had infiltrated the various insurgent groups and militias. The Telegraph claimed the regiment is “one of the coalition’s most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror”. The other unit is the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR). At its creation in 2005, suitably anonymous “military sources” told the media, “We want to place electronic ‘bugs’ close to terrorist leaders such as Osama bin Laden and have agents within the ranks of global terrorist groups.

Shooting

“We got very good at doing this in Northern Ireland in the 1980s and 1990s, and now we want to transfer this capability to the global war on terrorism.”

In July 2005, the SRR was involved in the surveillance operation which led to the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station in London. SRR officers were apparently engaged in “low-level intelligence behind the scenes” when Jean Charles was shot. According to the “military sources”, this was the first time the new regiment had been engaged in an operation. In December that year two British soldiers in the SRR were arrested by police in Iraq.

Who were the two men and what were they doing when they were seized outside al-Jamiat police station in Basra? What prompted British soldiers to smash down the wall of the station and demolish several buildings inside the compound in the operation to snatch them back?

At the request of the MoD, the British media obscured the faces of the two captured men (pictured above). They had been sitting in a car outside the police station in Arabic dress. They were heavily armed and had an impressive array of surveillance equipment with them. It was claimed at the time that the two undercover men had opened fire when they were stopped at a police roadblock, killing at least one police officer. They were part of the Britain’s undercover war in Iraq.

Both the JSG and the SRR are run by Brigadier Gordon Kerr.

Kerr’s career has taken him to troublespots all over the world. An officer in the Gordon Highlanders, he served briefly in Cyprus before his first posting in Northern Ireland in 1972.
Tony Blair appointed Kerr to head up military intelligence in Iraq in 2003 – just two weeks after an inquiry into collusion with paramilitaries in Northern Ireland sent a file about Kerr to the director of public prosecutions. Kerr is the most senior serving intelligence officer in the army and has been rewarded with both an OBE and the queen’s gallantry medal.

In Iraq Kerr applies the “methods developed on the mean streets of Ulster during the Troubles”, as the Sunday Telegraph excitedly relates. The government has repeatedly claimed that Northern Ireland provides the blueprint for the British army’s operations in Iraq.

Paramilitaries: From the late 1970s, various British governments backed a secret unit of the army, the Force Research Unit (FRU), which, along with the special branch of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, supplied names, addresses and photographs of Catholic targets to Loyalist paramilitaries. The FRU was led by Gordon Kerr. When Kerr became the FRU’s commander in 1986, the 100-strong squad adopted a more aggressive approach to the running of informers.

The key person supplying information was British army agent Brian Nelson. He infiltrated the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), the biggest Loyalist paramilitary group. His information was responsible for the murder of at least 30 Catholics. These included many who had no connection to the IRA, including the Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane who was murdered in 1989 by the UDA’s death squad, the Ulster Freedom Fighters. The FRU also obtained “restriction orders” from other British security and military units whereby the FRU would withdraw from an area to allow Kerr’s UDA agents to get in and out without hindrance.

Drawing on his sources in British intelligence, Nelson passed on the names and addresses of apparent IRA activists to the UDA, whose gunmen would promptly go out and “execute” the suspects. Nelson’s activities were regularly discussed at London meetings of the Joint Intelligence Committee. This was chaired by then Tory prime minister Margaret Thatcher.

In January 1992 Nelson agreed to plead guilty to five conspiracies to murder, and at least four sectarian murder charges against him were dropped. In a bizarre court case lasting less than a day, Nelson’s real role was effectively covered up. After a moving tribute to his sterling work for the British army from an anonymous colonel, Nelson got ten years. Speaking from behind a security screen the colonel stressed the lives Nelson had allegedly “saved”. Nelson was released after serving less than half his sentence, and spent the rest of his life under a false identity.

The anonymous colonel was Gordon Kerr. Beyond Gordon Kerr, the Special Reconnaissance Regiment includes at least 100 other veterans of Britain’s dirty war in Northern Ireland.

Iranians behind Sept. 11 attacks: Rudy Giliani

You can't make this stuff up.

As Rudolph W. Giuliani introduced himself to primary voters this week, he rarely talked about the details of New York’s darkest day.

But Sept. 11 was a constant backdrop, and as Mr. Giuliani promoted his vision of a forceful foreign policy that calls for the United States to continue slugging it out in Iraq, he let his audiences know that his was an outlook forged by fire.

“What they say in Washington is not going to affect the fact that there are terrorists around the world that are planning to come here and kill us,” he said in Iowa, in the most spirited part of his newly honed stump speech.

Pointing his finger and bouncing up and down on his toes, he declared, “It is something I understand better than anyone else running for president.”

He then casually lumped Iran with Al Qaeda. “Their movement has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he said.

Mr. Giuliani was asked in an interview to clarify that, inasmuch as Iran had no connection to the Sept. 11 attacks. Further, most of its people are Shiites, whereas Al Qaeda is an organization of Sunnis.

“They have a similar objective,” he replied, “in their anger at the modern world.”

US Investors In Bahrain Advised To Pack And Leave

The advice came from officers with US Central Command 5th Fleet HQ at Manama, who spoke of security tension, a hint at an approaching war with Iran. Arab sources report the positioning of a Patriot anti-missile battery in Bahrain this week; they say occupancy at emirate hotels has soared past 90% due mostly to the influx of US military personnel. They also report Western media crews normally employed in military coverage are arriving in packs.

Thursday, March 29, Gen. Khaled al-'Absi, Bahrain's chief of air defense operations disclosed that new alarm networks had been installed and air defense systems upgraded to handle chemical, biological and radioactive attacks.

The USS Nimitz and its support ships will be departing San Diego Monday, April 2, to join the John C. Stennis Strike Group in the Persian Gulf. The nuclear carrier is due to relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower , but military sources in the Gulf believe all three US carriers will stay put if tensions continue to climb or if fighting breaks out involving American, British and Iranian forces. The mighty American armada is further supported by the USS Bataan and USS Boxer strike groups. War tensions have been triggered most recently by the crisis over the seized British sailors and large-scale US sea, air and amphibious exercises in the Gulf.

1. DEBKAfile's Tehran sources report that in the contest within the Iranian leadership over how to handle the affair of the captured British seamen, the wildest radical element has gained the upper hand, reducing the prospects of their imminent release. Heading the tough Tehran faction are hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Gen. Rahim Safavi, commander of the Revolutionary Guards whose naval wing performed the seizure.

They gained strength from the British premier Tony Blair's initial passive, semi-conciliatory response. Tehran quickly grasped it had acquired not just a propaganda tool but a military asset, which the UK cannot match as long as the Americans desist from throwing their military might into the fray. Washington has refused to risk of a full-scale war confrontation with the Revolutionary Guards for the sake of the British sailors.

Iranian strategists also registered that, although the Blair government has begun moving mountains to gain the freedom of the marine crew held in Tehran, London appeared fairly laid back about the kidnap of BBC correspondent Alan Johnston in broad daylight by gunmen in Palestinian Gaza, although three weeks had gone by. Revolutionary Guards serving with Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza no doubt filed a full report on the Johnston case to Tehran, which drew its own conclusions.

2. Taking part in the big demonstration of American naval, air and marine force launched March 27 are the two nuclear carrier strike forces Stennis and Eisenhower , thousands of marines and 100 warplanes. Maneuvers on this scale in the tight, overcrowded waters of the Persian Gulf carry risks of a collision between American and Iranian craft.

DEBKAfile's military sources report that the Nimitz group is composed of the Princeton guided-missile cruiser, four guided missile destroyers ­ the Higgins , Chafee , John Paul Jones and Pinckney . The strike force is armed with two helicopter squadrons and a special unit for dismantling sea mines and other explosive devices.

Earlier, DEBKAfile quoted intelligence sources in Moscow as predicting that a US strike against Iranian nuclear installations codenamed Operation Bite has been scheduled for April 6 at 0040 hours. Missiles and air raids will conduct strikes designed to be devastating enough to set Tehran's nuclear program several years back.

Rove escapes protesters at American University

Tuesday night after White House Adviser Karl Rove's scheduled appearance at a meeting of the Young Republicans club at American University, a group of protesters delayed Rove's car from leaving the campus.

A group of about 20 students lay down in front of the car, yelled, and kicked it, according to witnesses.

Secret Services spokeswoman Kimberly Bruce said that "several individuals who had gathered outside the speech area threw unknown objects at the vehicle."

AU junior Josh Goodman told the Washington Post that protesters planned to make a "citizen's arrest" of Rove based on evidence they claimed to have that Rove had violated a presidential records act about recording White House emails.

No arrests were made.

The following video clip from MSNBC's Hardball shows a video of the incident.

Marine Captain Admits: 'We Gathered Intelligence' On Iran

Hostages my Foot!

The captain in charge of the 15 marines detained in Iran has said they were gathering intelligence on the Iranians. Sky News went on patrol with Captain Chris Air and his team in Iraqi waters close to the area where they were arrested - just five days before the crisis began.

We withheld the interview until now so it would not jeopardise their safety. And today, former Iranian diplomat Dr Mehrdad Khonsari said if the Iranians had known about it, they would have used it to "justify taking the marines captive and put them on trial".

Captain Air and his team were on an 'Interaction Patrol' where their patrol boats came alongside fishing dhows. The operation was mainly to investigate arms smuggling and terrorism but Captain Air said it was also to gain intelligence on Iranian activity. He told Sky Correspondent Jonathan Samuels: "Basically we speak to the crew, find out if they have any problems, let them know we're here to protect them, protect their fishing and stop any terrorism and piracy in the area," he said.

"Secondly, it's to gather int (intelligence). If they do have any information, because they're here for days at a time, they can share it with us.

"Whether it's about piracy or any sort of Iranian activity in the area. Obviously we're right by the buffer zone with Iran."

The UK Defence Secretary Des Browne told Sky News it was important to gather intelligence to "keep our people safe". He said: "Modern military operations all have an element of gathering intelligence.

"We need to understand as much as we can about the environment we operate in and intelligence gathering is an every day part of that." He added: "The UN mandate would clearly empower the military taskforce to gather information about the environment in which they were working."

Captain Air said that fishing dhows had been robbed by Iranian soldiers on a number of occasions. "It's good to gather int on the Iranians," he said. Fifteen sailors and marines were taken captive nearly two weeks ago after the Iranian government claimed they had strayed into their waters. Sky News=Thursday, April 5, 2007

MI5 'tried to recruit Guantanamo captive as informer'

A British resident now in Guantanamo Bay was approached to become an MI5 informant days before he was incarcerated, it was reported today. The Guardian said Jamil el-Banna, 44, was seized by the CIA and flown secretly to Guantanamo Bay in 2002 when he embarked on a business trip to Gambia. The newspaper says it obtained an MI5 document in which an intelligence officer details a visit to Banna's home to attempt to recruit him as an informer.

Banna knew Abu Qatada, a cleric accused of being Al Qaeda's spiritual leader in Europe. On Friday, his companion Bisher al-Rawi was released without charge from the Cuban detention centre after four years after it emerged he had helped MI5 keep track of Qatada. Banna, a father of five from London, remains incarcerated in Guantanamo. The Guardian says he was taken to Cuba after MI5 "wrongly" told the Americans his travelling companion was carrying bomb parts on a business trip to Gambia.

He was granted refugee status in Britain after arriving in Britain in 1994 alleging he had been tortured in Jordan. His application for British nationality was ongoing at the time he was taken to Guantanamo. The newspaper quotes the report, in which the un-named intelligence officer tells Banna he has a choice: "To continue with his current life...I meant his association with members of the extremist community and his involvement in criminal activity such as a recent arrest for shoplifting...

"Both men had been approached by MI5 to work with them. These cases reflect very badly on the British government who have used these men and their families as expendable pawns."

A spokeswoman for the Home Office said she could not comment on issues of national security.

West Has Bloodied Hands

Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq?

If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong.

The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier.

Iraq's U.S.-installed regime has just announced al-Majid, one of Saddam's most brutal henchmen, will stand trial next week for war crimes.

Al-Majid is accused of ordering the 1988 gassing of Kurds at Halabja that killed over 5,000 civilians. He led the bloody suppression of Iraq's Shias, killing tens of thousands.

These were the same Shias whom former U.S. president George Bush called to rebel against Saddam's regime, then sat back and did nothing while they were crushed.

Test your knowledge

1)Which country alone in the Middle East has nuclear weapons? a) Iraq b) Jordan c) Israel d)Egypt 3) Which country in the Middle East seized the sovereign territory of other nations by military force and continues to occupy it in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions? a) Iraq b) Morocco c) Syria d) Israel 5) What American ally in the Middle East has for years sent assassins into other countries to kill its political enemies (a practice sometimes called exporting terrorism)? a) Iraq b) Syria c) Iran d) Israel 7) What country in the Middle East refuses to prosecute its soldiers who have acknowledged executing prisoners of war? a) Iran b) Egypt c) Israel d) Jordan 9) Which country in the Middle East is in defiance of 69 United Nations Security Council resolutions and has been protected from 29 more by U.S. vetoes? a) Iraq b) Iran c) Syria d) Israel 2) Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and bars international inspections? a) Israel b) Iraq c) Syria d) Egypt 4) Which country in the Middle East routinely violates the international borders of another sovereign state with warplanes and artillery and naval gunfire? a) Sudan b) Iran c) Israel d) Iraq 6) What country in the Middle East blew up an American diplomatic facility in Egypt and attacked a U.S. ship in international waters, killing 33 and wounding 177 American sailors? a) Israel b) Iraq c) Sudan d) Morocco 8) What country in the Middle East created 762,000 refugees and refuses to allow them to return to their homes, farms and businesses? a) Iraq b) Israel c) Iran d) Syria 10) What country is the United States threatening to bomb because "U.N. Security Council resolutions must be obeyed?" a) Israel b) Sudan c) Iraq d) Syria

FreePalestine.com