U.S. Outsourcing
Special Operations
To Iraq Terror Group, Current and Former Intelligence
officials Report
Larisa Alexandrovna
04/13/06 "Raw
Story"
-- -- The Pentagon is bypassing official US intelligence
channels and turning to a dangerous and unruly cast of
characters in order to create strife in Iran in preparation
for any possible attack, former and current intelligence
officials say.
One of the operational assets
being used by the Defense Department is a right-wing
terrorist organization known as Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK),
which is being “run” in two southern regional areas of Iran,
both bordering Pakistan. They are Balucistan, a Sunni
stronghold, and Khuzestan, a Shia region where a series of
recent attacks has left many dead and hundreds injured in
the last three months.
One former counterintelligence
official, who wished to remain anonymous due to the
sensitivity of the information, describes the Pentagon as
pushing MEK shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The
drive to use the insurgent group was said to have been
advanced by the Pentagon under the influence of the Vice
President’s office and opposed by the State Department,
National Security Council and then-National Security
Advisor, Condoleezza Rice.
“The MEK is run by a brother
and sister who were given bases in northern Baghdad by
Saddam,” the intelligence official told
RAW STORY.
“The US army secured a key MEK facility 60 miles northwest
of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 invasion, but they did not
secure the MEK and let them basically be because [then
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz was thinking ahead
to Iran.”
Another former intelligence
official added that the US military had detained as many as
3,500 members of MEK at Iraq’s Camp Ashraf since the start
of the war, including the highest level ranking MEK leaders.
Ashraf is about 60 miles west of the Iranian border.
This intelligence official,
wishing to remain anonymous, confirmed the policy tensions
and also described them as most departments on one side and
the Pentegon on the other.
“We disarmed [the MEK] of
major weapons but not small arms. [Secretary of Defense
Donald] Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military
special ops team, but policy infighting between their camp
and Condi, but she was able to fight them off for a while,”
said the intelligence official. According to still another
intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year
when Donald Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President
Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having
them simply quit their organization.
“These guys are nuts,” this
intelligence source said. “Cambone and those guys made MEK
members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK
and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and
trained them.”
Stephen Cambone is the
Undersecretary of Defense Intelligence. His office did not
return calls for comment.
According to all three
intelligence sources, military and intelligence
officials alike were alarmed that instead of securing a
known terrorist organization, which has been responsible
for acts of terror against Iranian targets and
individuals all over the world – including
US civilian and military casualties – Rumsfeld under
instructions from Cheney, began using the group on
special ops missions into Iran to pave the way for a
potential Iran strike.
“They are doing whatever
they want, no oversight at all,” one intelligence source
said.
Indeed, Saddam Hussein
himself had used the MEK for acts of terror against
non-Sunni Muslims and had assigned domestic security
detail to the MEK as a way of policing dissent among his
own people. It was under the guidance of MEK ‘policing’
that Iraqi citizens who were not Sunni were routinely
tortured, attacked and arrested.
Although the specifics of
what the MEK is being used for remain unclear, a UN
official close to the Security Council explained that
the newly renamed MEK soldiers are being run instead of
military advance teams, committing acts of violence in
hopes of staging an insurgency of the Iranian Sunni
population.
“We are already at war,”
the UN official told
RAW STORY.
Asked how long the MEK
agents have been active in the region under the guidance
of the US military civilian leadership, the UN official
explained that the clandestine war had been going on for
roughly a year and included unmanned drones run jointly
by several agencies.
In a stunning repeat of
pre-war Iraq activities, the Bush administration
continues to publicly call for action and pursue
diplomatic solutions to allegations that Iran is
bomb-ready. Behind the scenes, however, the
administration is already well underway and engaged in
ground operations in Iran.
The British, however, are
less enthused about a strike in Iran. British Foreign
Secretary Jack Straw has called an American strike on
Iran “inconceivable,” while Prime Minister Tony Blair
has said he’s keeping all his options open. Asked about
the MEK, a senior British intelligence official said
that the Brits are not yet sure of what the situation on
Iran’s southern border is, but vehemently condemned any
joint activity with the terrorist organization.
“We don’t know who
precisely is carrying out those attacks in the south but
we believe it is MEK,” the British official said.
When asked if the US
military is running the MEK, the source was careful to
indicate that while there is a US unit in Iran gathering
information, it’s difficult to say if they are in any
way involved with MEK.
“The people who are inside
Iran are from a US Special mission unit,” the source
explained. “They are called by codenames, but would not
be involved in the bomb blasts. They want to get in, get
the intelligence and go out with anyone knowing they
have been there. But the bomb blasts might be diversions
away from the operations by this US special mission
unit. The British are definitely not involved in any of
this.”
Moreover, the British
official expressed that any operations with MEK would
violate their own military code and would absolutely not
be tolerated.
“We have very strict rules
and can’t go consorting with terrorists," the official
added. "We did it in Northern Ireland. No more.”
