New information on undercover policing networks obtained by German parliamentary deputies

New information on the 2014 activities of European police cooperation groups and networks has been published by the German government (pdf), in response to questions from Die Linke parliamentary deputies. The answers include information on the work of Europe’s secretive undercover policing coordination networks. However, the government claims – as it has done in the past – that many of the questions cannot be answered publicly, due to the need for confidentiality.
The questions concern a number of groups and networks, including:

The European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG);
The International Working Group on Police Undercover Activities (IWG);
The Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW);
The International Specialist Law Enforcement (ISLE) project;
Europol’s ‘Focal Point Dolphin’.
European Cooperation Group on Undercover Activities (ECG)

The ECG was established in 2001 and deals with: “The promotion of international cooperation by law enforcement agencies at the European level with respect to the deployment of undercover investigators to combat organised crime.” [1]

However, the German government has previously referred to “politically motivated” crime as one of the “main issues” looked at by the group, [2] and has admitted that the work of the exposed police spy Mark Kennedy has been discussed at its meetings.

The extent to which the ECG is involved in coordinating or directing police infilitration of protest movements across Europe is unknown, although a number of the British undercover police exposed in recent years are known to have travelled abroad frequently. German officers have also been sent abroad on a number of occasions. [3] Attempts by a number of women to obtain justice after being deceived into spending years in relationships with undercover police officers are ongoing. [4]

According to the German government, the ECG met in Bucharest from 20 to 23 May, and the group’s third workshop on “Undercover on the Internet” was held in Marburg from 6 to 9 October.

The list of attendees is lengthy. At the main ECG meeting, there were representatives present from 22 EU Member States:

Austria (Federal Criminal Police Office, Vienna)
Belgium (Federal Police)
Bulgaria (Government Agency for National Security)
Croatia (Criminal Police Directorate)
Czech Republic (Czech National Police)
Denmark (Danish National Police)
Estonia (Central Criminal Police)
Finland (National Bureau of Investigation)
France (Central Directorate of Criminal Investigation Department)
Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office, Central Office of the German Customs Investigation Service)
Hungary (Hungarian National Police and Hungarian Customs)
Italy (Carabinieri)
Latvia (Criminal Police Department)
Lithuania (Criminal Police Bureau)
Netherlands (National Police Agency)
Poland (Polish National Police)
Portugal (Policia Judiciária)
Romania (Romanian National Police)
Slovakia (Slovakian National Police)
Slovenia (General Police Directorate)
Spain (Spanish National Police)
United Kingdom (National Crime Agency and Metropolitan Police)
And six non-EU states:

Albania (Central Criminal Police)
Macedonia (Office of Public Security)
Norway (Oslo Police Department)
Russia (Federal Drugs Control Service)
Switzerland (Federal Criminal Police)
Turkey (National Police)
At the October workshop the same organisations were present from Austria, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Slovenia and the UK. Also present were representatives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The content of the agendas has not been published by the German government. Its justification for the secrecy was lengthy:

“The meetings dealt inter alia with tactical and operational measures in the context of undercover police investigations, for instance on the Internet. In addition to this, joint training measures in a particular area were discussed…

“The said undercover measures are only used in areas of criminal activity in which a particularly high level of conspiracy, danger to the public and willingness to employ violence must be assumed.

“…making public specific contents of discussions of certain operational resources conducted with foreign police authorities, as discussed in the meeting in question, would gravely undermine the trust and confidence of the international cooperation partners in the integrity of German police work and render significantly more difficult continued cooperation in the area of undercover policing.”

The same justification was referred to in response to a wide number of other questions put forward by Hunko and his colleagues, and similar statements have been previously been put forward by the government in response to parliamentary questions on policing issues.

International Working Group on Police Undercover Activities (IWG)

The IWG was established in 1989 and its purpose has previously been described as “international exchange of experience on all matters related to the covert deployment of police officers.” 2014 saw the 45th meeting of the group, which took place from 21 to 24 October in Warsaw. Poland organised the meeting itself, but Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office prepared the invitations and agenda “in close consultation with the Member States.”

The same organisations from the list above were present to represent Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, Slovenia, and the UK. Also present were representatives from the Australian Federal Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Swedish National Bureau of Investigation, and the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The IWG also has an International Business Secretariat (IBS), which has been the subject of previous parliamentary questions from Hunko and his colleagues.

In 2014, the IBS held a meeting from 10 to 13 June in Oslo, with Norway organising the meeting and the UK preparing the invitations and agenda.

Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office presented an agenda item on “biometrics” to the other delegations, who came from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.

Cross-Border Surveillance Working Group (CSW)

The CSW was first convened in 2005. It appears to have been busier during 2014 than some of the other networks asked about by Die Linke deputies – a meeting of the CSW itself was held in Rome from 7 to 9 May, the steering group met on the 16 and 17 October in The Hague, and The Hague also played host to the ‘Assembly of Regional Groups on Surveillance’ (ARGOS), which was attended by CSW representatives. Italy organised the meeting in Rome, while the ARGOS conference was organised by Europol.

The purpose of the meetings was “to enable the various mobile special mission units to exchange experiences and, building on this, the optimisation of cooperation during cross-border surveillance operations.”

In response to questions about the CSW, the German made statements on the content of the agendas. The May meeting saw discussions on:

The organisation of Italy’s R.O.S. Carabinieri force “and a case study of an abduction case”
“Current status and outlook for the European Tracking System (ETS) and European Law”
The European Network of Law Enforcement Technology Services (ENLETS)
“Presentation of the legal situation in Belgium and other Member States”
“Use of different licence plates in the respective Member States”
“Presentation of criminal activities and means of detection”
“Police measures”
“Air-based surveillance in the United Kingdom”
“Challenges and opportunities arising from the use of technology in the fight against crime”
“Legislative amendments and presentation of the organisation and deployment possibilities of the French police force”
“Presentation of the different legal foundation and use of resources for the interception of private conversations in the participating countries”
“Overview and presentation of an EU Framework Programme”
The agenda for the ARGOS conference in November included:

A presentation on the CSW
“Presentation of a case study on cooperation in the field of surveillance (SENSEE)”
The European Tracking System and European Law
ENLETS
“Presentation of the Europol Liaison Officers ‘Working Group on Controlled Delivery'”
“Presentation of the possible impacts of the European Investigation Order on cross-border surveillance” (the European Investigation Order was adopted in March 2014 and includes rules on cross-border covert investigations. [5])
“Advantages of cross-departmental surveillance and administration”
However, less detail was provided about the attendees, with the German government’s response stating:

“The CSW meeting was attended by representatives of the mobile special mission units or comparable units from Belgium, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Denmark, Austria, Italy, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Norway and Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office). A representative of Europol also attended. The steering group meeting was attended by representatives from Germany (Federal Criminal Police Office), the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Europol. Representatives of 37 states attended the ARGOS conference.”

International Specialist Law Enforcement

As the IWG was meeting in Warsaw, organisations involved in the International Specialist Law Enforcement (ISLE) project were meeting in Rome, from 20 to 22 October. International Specialist Law Enforcement began life as an EU-funded project run by Belgium, Germany and the UK that sought to build “a network of [EU] Member State organisations that may develop coordination, cooperation and mutual understanding amongst law enforcement agencies using ‘specialist techniques’.” [6]

Although it appeared in mid-2013 that the project might have been discontinued, [7] the German government’s answers show otherwise.

The meeting was prepared, and the agenda drafted, by the German Federal Criminal Police Office and Europol. Including Germany, “members of mobile special mission units from 16 other EU Member States attended the ISLE meeting”.

According to the German government, “the agenda included the following points”:

“Future development of international cooperation in ISLE”
“Discussion on the possibilities provided by the Europol Platform for Experts (EPE)”
Workshops on using the EPE
Expert Meeting Against Right Wing Extremism (EMRE)

A meeting of the EU-funded EMRE project was held in Bonn, Germany, from 19 to 22 May, and was prepared by Germany’s BKA in cooperation with the Czech Republic and Hungary. Representatives from 25 EU Member States and Switzerland attended the event, which “centred around exchanging information on right-wing extremist and right-wing terrorist structures, right-wing events and Internet activities and their impact on the security situation in all European countries.”

On the agenda was:

“[A] lead-in presentation and presentations on the ‘Counter Terrorism Centre’ service unit in Hungary, a set of investigation files by the Czech Republic, the Joint Centre for Countering Right-Wing Extremism (Gemeinsames Abwehrzentrum Rechtsextremismus, GAR) by the Federal Criminal Police Office and the government exit programme for people seeking to leave the right-wing extremist scene in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

The interest of the German authorities in addressing right-wing extremism is notable, given the well-documented failure to deal with a series of racist murders carried out by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground between 2000 and 2007. [8]

Focal Point Dolphin and Europol’s data systems

Europol’s Focal Point Dolphin is part of the agency’s ‘Analysis Work File’ on counter-terrorism, although it also contains information on political activism. [9]

Two meetings were held during 2014 in relation to Dolphin, both at Europol’s headquarters in The Hague: one of the “target group BAZAAR” on 15 April, dealing with the financing of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party); and one from 12 to 14 November at a “Counter Terrorism Event”.

The April meeting focused on “coordination and comparison of the information available in Europe on the financing of the PKK.” The agenda items for FP Dolphin at the Counter Terrorism Event were: “Overview, EIS [Europol Information System] in CT [counter-terrorism] work, ERWED/RWE Ukraine [RWE presumably stands for right-wing extremism], TG BAZAAR status and Ops MED status.”

No German authorities attended the Counter Terrorism Event, but the Federal Criminal Police Office was present at the April meeting alongside representatives from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Europol.

During 2014, the German government “made 24 data deliveries” to FP Dolphin, a minute amount compared to the overall number of German entries into the Europol Information System. As of 4 October 2012, Germany was responsible for 24,199 items in the EIS; on 18 October 2013, 36,047 items; and 30 September 2014, 49,449 items.

According to the government’s response, “Germany is the second most frequent user of EIS,” and “conducted a total of 20,331 searches in the EIS in Q4 [fourth quarter] 2014.”

The EIS contained entries on a total of 259,359 objects and people, although it is not clear what point in time this number relates to. The data in the system “is used mainly in the following areas of Europol’s mandate: drugs trafficking (28%), theft (19%), illegal immigration (11%), counterfeiting (8%) and fraud (6%).”

The full response from the German government also contains responses to questions on the 2014 activities of:

the ‘TC LI Group’ of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute;
the Southeast European Law Enforcement Centre (SELEC);
“the platform for police from South East Europe ‘Police Equal Performance’ (PEP)”;
“twinning projects” between German authorities and other states;
the Baltic Sea Region Border Control Cooperation (BSRBCC);
agreements and cooperation between Europol and non-EU states and organisations;
agreements and cooperation between Frontex and non-EU states and organisations;
the EU Intelligence Analysis Centre (INTCEN);
EU training for police due to serve abroad in “crisis management” missions;
meetings of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC);
the Police Working Group on Terrorism (PWGT);
the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF); and
the European Expert Network on Terrorism Issues (EENeT).
Some significant information has come to light in recent years on undercover policing and the infilitration of protest movements. However, much remains unknown. The release of new information such as that obtained through the German Bundestag makes it possible to put together a picture of cross-border networks and their activities, but understanding in more detail their work – and holding state authorities to account for their actions – is far more difficult.

In the UK, the police appear to have tried to ‘move on’ from the scandal by renaming and re-organising undercover policing units, most recently establishing the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit. [10] Keeping track of the organisations, individuals and institutions involved – and what is known of their activities – can help to make clear the wider picture and what can be done about it.

Sources

Statewatch tracks developments in undercover policing; numerous articles can be found in our database
The Undercover Research Group recently published webpages containing further information on numerous aspects of the police infilitration of political movements in Europe, and will at some point launch a Wikipedia-style website on the issue
The Guardian’s Undercover blog has regular updates on developments, mainly focusing on the UK
The Bristling Badger blog frequently contains forensic examinations of issues related to the undercover policing scandal
Document

Minor Interpellation submitted by Member of the Bundestag Andrej Hunko and others and the Left Party parliamentary group, ‘Cooperation and projects by European police forces in 2014’, January 2015

Footnotes
[1] ‘Another secretive European police working group revealed as governments remain tight-lipped on other police networks and the activities of Mark Kennedy’, Statewatch News Online, August 2012
[2] ‘State guidelines for the exchange of undercover police officers revealed’, Statewatch News Online, May 2013
[3] Matthias Monroy, ‘Using false documents against “Euro-anarchists”: the exchange of Anglo-German undercover police highlights controversial police operations’, Statewatch Journal, vol 21 no 2, April-June 2011
[4] Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance; Police Spies Out of Lives
[5] Council of the European Union, ‘Council adopts the “European Investigation Order” directive’, press release, 14 March 2014 (pdf); European Investigation Order (pdf)
[6] ‘Another secretive European police working group revealed as governments remain tight-lipped on other police networks and the activities of Mark Kennedy’, Statewatch News Online, August 2012
[7] ‘Uncertain future for EU-funded police project aimed at enhancing covert surveillance techniques’, Statewatch News Online, July 2013
[8] ‘NSU Crime Spree Report Finds ‘Devastating’ Errors’, Spiegel Online, 23 August 2013
[9] Andrej Hunko, ‘Abolish international databases on anarchy!’, press release, 5 June 2012
[10] ‘Political Secret Police Units’, Bristling Badger, 5 February 2014

20.02.2015

Find this story at 20 February 2015

© Statewatch

Blacklisting: The Secret War Big Business Wages on Workers

You’d hope that construction work would be one area of life where tabloid stories about “health ‘n’ safety going mad” were actually true, in order to stop people getting in the way of machines designed to smash concrete, or falling off some 20th floor scaffolding. In fact, for years, the opposite has been the case, as people raising health and safety concerns have been systematically nixed from getting a job in construction.

From at least the 1980s, construction companies kept a secret “blacklist” of some 3,200 workers that they wanted to ensure never found work. These included various types of people who somehow got in the way of the companies making a fat profit—workers who complained about dangerous practices on sites, trade union organizers who tried to get a better wage, and even environmental protesters who weren’t employed in the industry but got in the way of construction. Lives were ruined as tradespeople found that they were mysteriously denied work all the time, despite being qualified. Some people were even pushed to suicide as they couldn’t provide for their families.

In 2009, an article written by journalist Phil Chamberlain in the Guardian ended up being put on the desk of an investigator at the Information Commissioner Office. That kick started a chain of events which exposed the truth of blacklisting that many had already suspected for years. Following a raid on the organization set up by the companies to manage the secret blacklist—the Consulting Association—the Blacklist Support Group was formed to represent blacklisted workers. The secretary of the group Dave Smith, a trade unionist who was blacklisted himself, has teamed up with Phil Chamberlain to write a book exposing the practice. Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business and Union Activists tells the story of multinationals and the state colluding to undermine trade unionism and thousands of workers fighting for their dignity—a fight which continues to this day. I caught up with the pair at the book’s launch last week.

Continued below.

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VICE: Dave, you’ve written this book as somebody who has been a victim of blacklisting. Tell me about your experience.
Dave Smith: My blacklist file is 36 pages long and runs from 1992 until 2006. The first entry records a protest about several week’s unpaid wages on a Balfour Beatty site. The rest of my file is about safety concerns I have raised including asbestos and overflowing toilets. I could never get a job for any of the large companies but managed to find work with small subcontractors or via employment agencies for a while. But it reached a point where even the agencies wouldn’t offer me a job. This is recorded in my blacklist file. I went from driving a large four by four to a £300 [$445] fiesta van and during the height of the building boom I was virtually unemployable. I had to leave the industry to pay the mortgage.

“Blacklisting people who complain about safety causes deaths on building sites. It’s as simple as that.”

How big was the human cost throughout the industry?
Some people we interviewed for the book have been out of work for 20 years. When you first tell someone that, they go “out of work for 20 years? Building work? That can’t be right,” but then when you actually see their file, they’re out of work and as soon as they get a job, the company find out, and they’re sacked. They get another job as soon as they’re fired and they’re sacked again. We’ve been talking not just to the workers but their wives and their partners. Kids aren’t getting new trainers, kids aren’t going on school trips. People have lost their houses over this. Quite a few people, their relationships have broken up. This isn’t just about numbers, it’s about the fact they’ve taken food off our tables and that’s why we’ve taken it so personally.

One of the main reasons workers were added to the blacklist was for raising health and safety concerns. What kind of impact does this have on building sites?
Well everybody knew there was a blacklist. It wasn’t a secret, although the employers always denied it whenever the politicians asked them. Management used to say, “If you carry on like that we’ll make sure you never work again in the building industry” and it wasn’t an idle threat—it was true. The impact on health and safety is, if somebody moans about a bit of scaffolding or the toilets overflowing and gets sacked for it, then next time when the toilets are overflowing or there’s asbestos, people just keep their head down and don’t say anything, which is one of the reasons why constructions got such a terrible health and safety record. Blacklisting people who complain about safety causes deaths on building sites. It’s as simple as that.

The promotional video for ‘Blacklisted.’

The blacklist was mainly a list of construction workers, but not entirely. What other kind of people were on the list, and why?
Phil Chamberlain: It started off as a construction blacklist and—I think it’s the nature of the surveillance—once you start compiling it takes in more and more people. People who the companies are concerned about suddenly get drawn in. If we look at the road protests [anti-road building activism] that grew up around the 1990s, they affected construction companies. The environmental protesters who took part in roads protests aren’t union members but they’re people the companies want to keep tabs on. That coincides with the kind of people which the state are interested in keeping tabs on as well. That’s when you start to see that kind of cross over. We’ve got academics and journalists on the list as well. People who start to cause worry to the companies started to be added in.

So you’re talking about a cross over between the construction companies and the state. Was the list compiled with the active collusion of the police?
It appears there were links between construction companies and the police. The question is about how systematized that contact was. In some cases it would have been personal contacts developed up over a number of years or inherited. We’ve spoken to industrial relations officers from the companies who have freely acknowledged meeting Special Branch people and we know the industrial desk at Special Branch was tasked with looking at trade unions and maintaining contact with corporations. We know those links existed and have done for a number of years. In some cases it would have been done on a fairly informal basis and in other cases perhaps more systemically done.

The files are quite clear in that some of the files contain information that could only have come from the police. That not just us saying that, the Information Commissioner’s Office looked at the files and came to the same conclusion independently to ourselves.

It’s quite clear this is much wider than construction and much wider than the UK but that’s because it’s the nature of the economic system which can’t deal with that kind of dissent, which is ultimately about preserving some profit margin at the expense of democratic, legitimate forms of protest.

In the book you draw a lot of parallels between the blacklisting scandal and the the phone hacking scandal. Why is that?
I think it’s fascinating in the sense that when Rob Evans and I wrote the article for the Guardian in March 2009 and in the summer Nick Davies writes that superb piece showing the breadth of phone hacking. The numbers are relatively similar.

But phone hacking victims are getting some sense of justice, whereas blacklisting victims are having to fight to be listened to.
The differences is who they are. The celebrities have got a lot more access to mechanisms to make their voice heard. They can employ better lawyers, they can apply pressure in a number of different ways.

The willingness to address the issue of phone hacking is in stark contrast and I think it’s because they’ve treated it as a corruption issue, but with blacklisting this was the normal mode of operation. That says something fundamental about the way we handle industrial relations in this country, the way we handle dissent in this country, which is far more frightening and needs to be resisted.

The book ends by putting blacklisting in its global and historical context. How widespread is the practice, and similar tactics?
One of the guys who ran the Economic League [predecessor in many ways to The Consulting Association] said to Parliament: “it’s gone on since the pyramids,” as if it’s part of your hazard of working. I think there’s a danger of accepting it because then we don’t get to challenge it and say that fundamentally this is wrong.

It’s quite clear in this country it’s operating in the NHS. There was a story published two weeks ago about keeping files on people involved in airline disputes with British Airways. We’ve looked at cases that have taken place in Canada where migrant workers from Mexico have been monitored and refused visas to go and work in Canada. There was a case in France in 2013 where Ikea used access to police files to monitor people in their stores. We’ve got evidence of a company based in Ireland which recruits migrant workers keeping files on workers in Europe who might be causing problems.

It’s quite clear this is much wider than construction and much wider than the UK but that’s because it’s the nature of the economic system which can’t deal with that kind of dissent, which is ultimately about preserving some profit margin at the expense of democratic, legitimate forms of protest. Most of these people are simply just raising health and safety issues. There was a case in Indonesia where people were upset about conditions at an Adidas company and they reached for the blacklist. It’s a tool for managing, but it doesn’t mean it’s right.

Blacklisted: The Secret War Between Big Business and Union Activists is available from New Internationalist Books

March 16, 2015
by James Poulter

Find this story at 16 March 2015

Copyright Vice.com

Home Office to blacklist extremists to protect public sector

Theresa May says new extremism analysis unit is compiling list of legal but unacceptable individuals and groups to prevent another Trojan horse scandal

The Home Office is drawing up a blacklist of extremist individuals and organisations with whom the government and public sector should not engage, Theresa May has revealed.

The list of legal but unacceptable organisations is being compiled by a new Home Office “extremism analysis unit”, which is also to develop a counter-entryism strategy to tackle Islamist radicalisation and ensure there is no repeat of the Trojan horse affair in Birmingham schools across the public sector.

In a speech outlining a wishlist of measures and powers to tackle extremism in Britain, the home secretary acknowledged that the work of the new unit had received only cabinet approval so far.

May was put in charge of developing a cross-government extremism strategy last October, but she has so far failed to resolve outstanding problems raised by at least four Conservative cabinet colleagues.

“Chris Grayling wants more clarity on its impact on prisons. Theresa Villiers wants more consultation with Northern Ireland, where extremism is obviously historically a big issue. Eric Pickles wants work to be done on the impact on communities and faiths and Nicky Morgan wants more work done on the role of Ofsted,” said a Westminster source.

Instead, the home secretary outlined a list of measures a majority Conservative government would introduce, including closure orders for premises being used by extremists, banning orders, and a review of the impact of sharia law in Britain. The package would include a positive campaign to promote British values.

May said the new extremism analysis unit “will help us to develop a new engagement policy – which will set out clearly for the first time with which individuals and organisations the government and public sector should engage and should not engage”.

She added: “This will make sure nobody unwittingly lends legitimacy or credibility to extremists or extremist organisations, and will make it very clear that government should engage with people directly and through their elected representatives – not just through often self-appointed and unrepresentative community leaders.”

She said it was known from the Trojan horse affair in Birmingham schools that extremists use entryist tactics to infiltrate legitimate organisations to promote their own agendas.

“The counter-entryism strategy will ensure that government, the public sector and civil society as a whole will be more resilient against this danger,” the home secretary said in a speech in Westminster.

The move goes far beyond current powers to ban violent extremist and terrorist organisations and paves the way for a range of non-violent legal organisations to be put on a blacklist and boycotted by the government.

David Cameron, for example, has promised for the last five years to ban the non-violent radical Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir but it has failed to meet the legal criteria to be banned.

The Home Office defines extremism as “vocal or active opposition to fundamental British values including democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance of different faiths and beliefs. We also include in our definition of extremism calls for the death of members of armed forces whether in this country or overseas”.

A recent Home Office consultation produced many comments that a much tighter definition was needed and such vague terms could catch a wide range of organisations. Those blacklisted would be likely to mount legal challenges to the decision.

In outlining her list of possible new measures that a majority Conservative government would introduce, May revived the idea of closing down “extremist” mosques, new “extremism officers” in prisons, a review of how Sharia courts impact in England and Wales, a review of citizenship laws to ensure respect for British values, and a review of unregulated “supplementary” schools.

The home secretary called for a new partnership to defeat the extremists. “To those who do not want to join this new partnership, to those who choose consciously to reject our values and the basic principles of our society, the message is equally clear: the game is up. We will no longer tolerate your behaviour.”

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “Everyone other than the extremists agree that we should robustly defend and actively promote the pluralistic values our society rightly holds in esteem.

“But it isn’t enough for the home secretary to say it, she needs to act.

“We need to work in as many communities as possible, throughout the UK, to support civil society and defeat extremism.

“And we should never tie the hands of our agencies and the police in confronting dangerous, violent extremists. The government’s record is one of making that harder, not easier.”

Alan Travis Home affairs editor
Monday 23 March 2015 15.28 GMT Last modified on Tuesday 24 March 2015 08.21 GMT

Find this story at 23 March 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Blacklisted: The secret war between big business and union activists

Demo outside parliament, TUC Day of Action on Blacklisting in 2012
Demo outside parliament, TUC Day of Action on Blacklisting in 2012
REVIEW: The communications revolution of the past 40 years has transformed our capacity to hold and use information about large numbers of people. As databases grow from hundreds to thousands and then tens of thousands of people, our fear grows that much of this information may have been gathered wrongly: that the information itself is incorrect, or that it has been gathered without our consent or knowledge.

We all suspect that our personal data is being shared behind our backs, whether by utilities companies eager to trade on vulnerable pensioners, or by parts of the secret state who are monitoring emails on an industrial scale in the hope of catching extremists. Very rarely do we find out for definite who has been harmed or how.

In the conventional press story that usually follows, attention is paid to the whistleblowers, self-sacrificing individuals such as Edward Snowden or Bradley Manning who once played a part in a system of malicious data collection but threw their position away in order to expose the corrupt practises of giant organisations.

Blacklisted: The Secret War between Big Business and Union Activists by Dave Smith and Phil Chamberlain is published by New Internationalist on 22 March
You can read Dave Smith on www.thejusticegap.com (Six years and still waiting: the legal implications of blacklisting)
The story of the construction industry blacklist, brought to light in this extraordinary book, corresponds in many ways but not in others to our conventional fears about the manipulation of data. One difference from the usual story is that Dave Smith, the secretary of the Blacklist Support Group, and Phil Chamberlain, the freelancer who originally broke the story of the blacklist in the Guardian, are able to show in much more graphic detail than is usual just how much harm was caused to the victims.

They have interviewed several hundred building workers and their family members, union officials, construction managers, former policemen, environmental activists, blacklisted academics or journalists, and blacklisters.

From the accounts of the first group, they are able to describe what it is like to be a skilled worker, and to find yourself suddenly unemployable, like Frank Morris who describes going home to empty cupboards during the recent Olympic building boom because he had supported a dismissed colleague and been placed on the blacklist, or Dave Ayre who said: ‘I’d been sacked so many times at Christmas that my kids that my kids thought it was part of the Father Christmas story.’

A second difference is that the champions of the story are the building workers who have been fighting for decades to secure trade union and healthy safety rights in their workplaces, rather than the whistleblowers.

There were indeed managers within the blacklisting process who became disenchanted with their employers and belatedly blew the whistle on this practice – such as Alan Wainwright, whose evidence at an early Tribunal hearing led to Chamberlain’s report and the subsequent raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office of the blacklisting company, the Consulting Association.

But Wainwright is an equivocal figure in the story, seemingly trusted neither by the employers nor the construction workers. And much the same can be said of Ian Kerr, the man who kept the blacklist going, very profitably, for decades. Kerr’s widow Mary spoke to the authors and described how he died of a heart attack shortly after giving evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee. Only two of Kerr’s colleagues within the TCA, staffed as it was by the personnel directors of all the main construction companies, even sent her their condolences. Not one attended his funeral.

If there are heroes to Smith and Chamberlain’s story it is rather individuals such as Mick Dooley and Chris Clark, founders of the Join Sites Committee, a rank-and-file union group of the early 1990s.

One of Dooley’s best-known actions was a strike at Vascroft in 1992, when he occupied a tower crane for 10 days in protest at the dismissal of union stewards, effectively preventing an entire site from working.

That tactics of this militancy were required is evident from the other passages of the book which describe the worsening conditions on sites over the last twenty years as union organisation has decayed. One of their sources Robert Smith describes working on the huge and vastly profitable Channel Tunnel extension to St Pancras, among rats, without toilets or other basic safety requirements.

While there was much that the employers might truthfully have told each other about the tactics of certain individuals, blacklisting went far beyond the sort of open, honest record of occasional unofficial militancy that might be justifiable. It extended to the private lives of those who were being spied on, their relationships, the employment of their relatives, the private opinions of their partners.

The names on the blacklist which cause the greatest distress are those who were rumoured to have worked at a site where the union had called a strike or who were said once to have purchased a copy of a left-wing newspaper, and found themselves subject to a simple data-trawl, often years and sometimes decades later. And where their name was on the blacklist, for any reason, they simply were not employed.
A large portion of the narrative is given over to the accounts of the legal battles which have led to the discovery of the blacklist and to the partial attempts to obtain redress for its victims. I have acted as a barrister for two of the litigants, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on these parts of the narrative. In any event, a previous article by Dave Smith for this website explains that part of the story.

Was blacklisting specific to construction, or has it become part of the ordinary way in which industrial relations are conducted in this country? I have sat in court and listened to employers in radically different industries from construction admit to all sorts of practices which differ only in scale from the picture in this book.

Has blacklisting ended? The authors term it ‘a global phenomenon which has been going on for centuries’. Kerr’s files were constructed out of the technology of a previous industrial era. His data was held on paper cards in drawers. New technology makes it easier to spy on large numbers of workers and to hide the fruits of this industrial espionage, but no less destructive in terms of their consequences for those about whom false data is being held.

The authors, and the whole campaign whose voices they have recorded, deserve our thanks for bringing this secret conspiracy into public focus.

Posted by David Renton on March 12, 2015.

Find this story at 12 March 2015

© 2015, ↑ The Justice Gap

Police continued spying on Labour activists after their election as MPs

Ex-minister Peter Hain says whistleblower’s disclosure of spying operations during 1990s raises questions about parliamentary sovereignty

Police conducted spying operations on a string of Labour politicians during the 1990s, covertly monitoring them even after they had been elected to the House of Commons, a whistleblower has revealed.

Peter Francis, a former undercover police officer, said he read secret files on 10 MPs during his 11 years working for the Metropolitan police’s special branch. They include Labour’s current deputy leader, Harriet Harman, the former cabinet minister Peter Hain and the former home secretary Jack Straw.

Francis said he personally collected information on three MPs – Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn and the late Bernie Grant – while he was deployed undercover infiltrating anti-racist groups. He also named Ken Livingstone, the late Tony Benn, Joan Ruddock and Dennis Skinner as having been subjected to special branch intelligence-gathering. The files on all 10 were held by Scotland Yard.

The whistleblower said special branch files were often “very extensive” and typically described the subject’s political beliefs, personal background such as parents, school and finances, and demonstrations they attended. Some contained “some personal and private matters”, Francis added.

Hain called for the home secretary, Theresa May, to ensure that an existing judge-led public inquiry into undercover policing examines the extent of the surveillance of members of parliament.

Why were special branch watching me even when I was an MP?
Peter Hain
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In an article for the Guardian, he wrote: “That the special branch had a file on me dating back 40 years ago to anti-apartheid and anti-Nazi League activist days is hardly revelatory. That these files were still active for at least 10 years while I was an MP certainly is and raises fundamental questions about parliamentary sovereignty.”

The Met’s special branch has been responsible for monitoring political groups considered to pose a threat to public order. Francis worked for special branch between 1990 and 2001. For four of those years he went undercover to spy on anti-racist groups as part of a covert unit, the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which was controlled by special branch.

In recent years Francis has publicly detailed many aspects of this covert work, disclosing, for instance, that the SDS collected information on the relatives of murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence and other families seeking justice over alleged police misconduct.

Francis approached Hain and described how he had read the pink special branch files – known as personal registry files – on the MPs while he was working for the police. He said some of the information in the files dated from the subjects’ days as political campaigners before they entered parliament, but special branch continued to store details of their political activities after they were elected to the Commons. “When you become an MP, the files don’t stop,” he said.

He said that while he was undercover pretending to be an anti-racist campaigner in north-east London, Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, often talked at meetings and demonstrations he attended. He reported back details of her activities to his special branch superiors.

To a lesser extent he collected information about Corbyn, the Islington North MP, and Grant, who represented Tottenham from 1987 until his death in 2000. “They were in meetings and I was there and they were talking about things and that is what I reported on,” he said. His superiors were “certainly very grateful” if he passed on information involving MPs, he added.

Last year the Metropolitan police said it did not know how many elected politicians it was currently monitoring, after it was revealed that it had logged the political activities of Jenny Jones, the Green party’s sole peer, and a Green party councillor in Kent on a secretive database.

May ordered the public inquiry after a string of revelations about the conduct of undercover officers who infiltrated political groups for more than 40 years. The officers routinely formed sexual relationships with women they had been sent to spy on. The remit of the inquiry, which is to be led by Lord Justice Pitchford, has yet to be defined.

Livingstone, former MP for Brent East and former mayor of London, said he backed the idea of an inquiry covering surveillance of MPs but said this would probably only be serious under an Ed Miliband government.

He said: “I wish I could have been a threat when I was an MP but I was completely powerless. My phone was being bugged in the 80s when I was on the Greater London Council. MI5 always denied it was them. So this was done by special branch?

“Did they think we were a threat to the western system? If only this were true. What a load of crap. What’s so ridiculous is that we were being subjected to IRA bombings right the way through that period and they were wasting officers spying on me and Tony Benn. It’s a complete waste of police resources. People like me and Tony Benn were sadly never a threat to capitalism because we never had the powers. I’d love to see the files. My kids would love to see the files. They’re most likely full of rubbish.”

Hain said the public should know whether covert surveillance hindered the MPs’ ability to represent their constituents and speak confidentially with them.

He said that when he was Northern Ireland secretary between 2005 and 2007, undercover operations to defeat terrorism and serious crime were vital. “But conflating serious crime with political dissent unpopular with the state at the time means travelling down a road that endangers the liberty of us all.”

Ruddock, the MP for Lewisham Deptford, described the news as “utterly appalling” and and “affront to parliament”.

She said: “It is a surprise and I think it is absolutely outrageous. The MI5 surveillance of me in the 80s had no justification whatsoever, was found to be illegal. The idea that it could carry on without even the pretext that I was involved in CND when I was a member of parliament is completely and utterly outrageous.”

Ruddock said she has written to May today demanding answers and would write again to whoever was the new home secretary after the election. She has also submitted a request to the police to see the file held on her and wants to know whether the Conservative political leadership of the day authorised the operation.

May has promised that the remit of the public inquiry will be drawn up in consultation with people who were spied upon.

Francis said: “My question is: how can people help formulate this public inquiry if they didn’t actually know they were spied upon? By me revealing that these MPs were also spied upon the same as many trade union members, countless law-abiding political activists and demonstrators also were, they can all demand to be included in the inquiry.”

A Met police spokesman said an internal police inquiry, Operation Herne, was unable to fully investigate claims by Francis as he has been unwilling to speak to the inquiry.

The spokesman said the Met had not shied away from issues raised by Operation Herne and another inquiry. “Whilst talking openly about undercover policing is challenging because of its very nature, the upcoming inquiry represents a real opportunity to provide the public with as complete a picture as possible of what has taken place,” he added.

Two SDS undercover officers previously spied on Hain in the 1960s and 1970s when he campaigned against apartheid and racism before becoming the MP for Neath in 1991.

Rob Evans and Rowena Mason
Wednesday 25 March 2015 18.13 GMT Last modified on Thursday 26 March 2015 00.40 GMT

Find this story at 25 March 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

FBI Spied ‘Beyond Its Authority’ on Keystone XL Opponents

New investigation reveals agency’s actions amounted to ‘substantial non-compliance’ with its own rules

The FBI violated its internal rules while spying on Tar Sands Blockade activists in Texas protesting the Keystone XL pipeline, a new report shows. (Photo: Tar Sands Blockade/flickr/cc)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) broke its own internal rules when it spied on Keystone XL opponents in Texas, violating guidelines designed to prevent the agency from becoming overly involved in complex political issues, a new report by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal published Tuesday has revealed.

Internal documents acquired by the outlets through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show how the FBI failed to get approval for launching investigations into Houston-based protesters, whom the agency labeled “environmental extremists,” and held a bias in favor of the controversial tar sands pipeline—currently awaiting federal approval—extolling its supposed economic benefits in one document which outlined reasons for spying on its opponents.

“Many of these extremists believe the debates over pollution, protection of wildlife, safety, and property rights have been overshadowed by the promise of jobs and cheaper oil prices,” the file states. “The Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.”

The Guardian reports:

Between November 2012 and June 2014, the documents show, the FBI collated inside knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinised police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.

….However, the partially redacted documents reveal the investigation into anti-Keystone activists occurred without prior approval of the top lawyer and senior agent in the Houston field office, a stipulation laid down in rules provided by the attorney general.

Additionally, the FBI appeared to have opened its file on the Keystone XL opponents in 2013 following a meeting between officials from the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.

“For a period of time—possibly as long as eight months—agents acting beyond their authority were monitoring activists aligned with [direct action climate group] Tar Sands Blockade,” the Guardian writes.

Dozens of activists were arrested in Texas in late 2012, although none were accused of violent crime or property damage, according to key Tar Sands Blockade organizer, Ron Seifert.

“Less than a month after TransCanada showed the FBI a PowerPoint claiming that people opposed to [Keystone XL] need to be watched, Houston’s FBI office cuts corners to start an investigation; it’s not surprising but it is revealing of who they really work for,” Seifert told Common Dreams on Monday. “The FBI has been harassing and actively repressing communities of organizers for decades.”

Yet more records show that the FBI associated the Tar Sands Blockade, which organizes peaceful protests, with other “domestic terrorism issues.”

Other documents suggest that the Houston-based investigation was only one of a larger probe, possibly monitoring other anti-Keystone XL activists around the country.

“We’re not surprised,” Seifert continued. “We’re also not deterred. Movements for climate and environmental justice are activating people from diverse political backgrounds to take direct action to defend themselves from threats like [Keystone XL]. People are stepping out of the blind alleys of electoral politics and building grassroots power, and that’s scary for people who want a monopoly on power.”

Tuesday, May 12, 2015
byCommon Dreams
byNadia Prupis, staff writer

Find this story at 12 May 2015

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

As Internal Docs Show Major Overreach, Why Is FBI Spying on Opponents of Keystone XL Pipeline?

A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Documents from the FBI reveal it failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document “substantial non-compliance” with Department of Justice rules. The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in that report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston office also told TransCanada they would share “pertinent intelligence regarding any threats” to the company in advance of protests. We are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal and co-author of the new investigation published by The Guardian, “Revealed: FBI violated its own rules while spying on Keystone XL opponents.” In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for “little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations.”

TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: A new report confirms for the first time that the FBI spied on activists in Texas who tried to stop the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report is based on FBI documents obtained by The Guardian and the Earth Island Journal. The documents also reveal that the FBI failed to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened its investigation, which was run from its Houston field office. The files document, quote, “substantial non-compliance” with Department of Justice rules. Much of the FBI’s surveillance took place between November of 2012 and June 2014.

AMY GOODMAN: The Tar Sands Blockade mentioned in the report was one of the main groups targeted by the FBI. Agents in Houston also told TransCanada they would share, quote, “pertinent intelligence regarding any threats” to the company in advance of protests.

For more, we are joined by Adam Federman, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal, co-author of this new investigation that was published by The Guardian. It’s headlined “Revealed: FBI Violated Its Own Rules While Spying on Keystone XL Opponents.” In February, he also revealed how the FBI has recently pursued environmental activists in Texas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Washington and Idaho for, quote, “little more than taking photographs of oil and gas industry installations.”

Adam Federman, thank you so much for joining us from Burlington, Vermont. Talk about this most recent exposé. How do you know the FBI was spying on those who are opposed to the Keystone XL?

ADAM FEDERMAN: Yeah, the recent investigation is based on more than 80 pages of documents that we obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. And the most striking thing about them is that they demonstrated for the first time that the FBI opened an investigation into anti-Keystone pipeline campaigners in Texas in 2012, late 2012, and that investigation continued through 2013, despite the fact that it was opened without proper approval from within the FBI. And what’s interesting about them is that they show extensive interest in Tar Sands Blockade and activists organizing in Houston, particularly in, yeah, neighborhoods in East Houston, where tar sands oil would eventually end up at the refineries that are based there.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the most surprising revelations that you found in these documents, could you talk about that?

ADAM FEDERMAN: Yeah, there are several. I mean, the fact that the investigation was opened without proper approval is probably most noteworthy. The FBI requires approval from legal counsel and a senior agent for investigations that are described as sensitive, and those include investigations into political or religious organizations, media institutions, academic institutions, and basically they set a higher threshold for opening an investigation. So, the fact that the Houston domain failed to do that obviously violates agency protocol.

But I think, more broadly, the documents also sort of illuminate the FBI’s characterization of environmental organizations and activism in the country. You know, the sort of opening salvo in the investigation is a synopsis of what they call environmental extremism, and that sort of undergirds the entire investigation and has also—you know, we’ve seen the same sort of language used in other contexts, not just surrounding Keystone pipeline.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam, many of the—looking at the quotes in the FBI documents, they talk about, as you said, the environmental extremists and say, quote, “Many of these extremists believe the debates over pollution, protection of wildlife, safety, and property rights have been overshadowed by the promise of jobs and cheaper oil prices. The Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.” Can you explain these documents?

ADAM FEDERMAN: Yeah, I mean, that quote is really quite amazing for a number of reasons. Mike German, a former FBI agent who’s now at the Brennan Center and who we worked with on this story, you know, said that that characterization would include just about anyone who watches the evening news. I mean, it’s such a broad brush to tar—to describe environmental activists as extremists simply for being concerned about things like pollution, wildlife and property rights.

And then the FBI also goes on to claim that the Keystone pipeline is vital to the national security and economy of the United States, which of course is highly controversial and contested. And as I’m sure your viewers know, the State Department is still deliberating over whether to approve the northern leg of the pipeline itself. So that question remains open; however, it seems that the FBI has taken it upon its own to suggest that the pipeline is crucial to U.S. national security and financial security.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you about the 2010 intelligence bulletin from the FBI Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit that you obtained. It warned that, even though the industry had encountered only low-level vandalism and trespassing, recent “criminal incidents” suggested environmental extremism was on the rise. The FBI concluded, quote, “Environmental extremism will become a greater threat to the energy industry owing to our historical understanding that some environmental extremists have progressed from committing low-level crimes against targets to more significant crimes over time in an effort to further the environmental extremism cause.”

ADAM FEDERMAN: Yeah, it’s a fascinating document. And the story behind how I obtained it is because of the fact that that very document was used by the Pennsylvania Department of Homeland Security to justify surveillance of anti-fracking groups in the state. And it essentially captures the FBI’s thinking on, you know, the threat of environmental extremism to—specifically to the energy industry. And this is laid out, as you say, in 2010, so I think that this is sort of the foundation for the FBI’s approach to the environmental movement more broadly. And I think, with these more recent documents, we’re seeing that sort of carried out in real time. And we also know that the FBI has had high-level meetings with TransCanada and that local and state law enforcement along the pipeline route and in Pennsylvania and elsewhere has actively investigated and spied on environmental activists of, you know, all stripes. And it’s quite systematic, and I do think that the FBI is in many ways leading the charge.

AMY GOODMAN: You report the FBI’s monitoring of Tar Sands Blockade activists failed to follow proper protocols for more than eight months. I want to read the FBI’s response: quote, “While the FBI approval levels required by internal policy were not initially obtained, once discovered, corrective action was taken, non-compliance was remedied, and the oversight was properly reported through the FBI’s internal oversight mechanism.” That’s what the FBI said, acknowledging they didn’t initially get approval. Adam, as we wrap up right now, if you can talk about what—the legality of what the FBI did, in what you released today in the Earth Island Journal and The Guardian, and also in your past reporting on FBI spying on activists?

ADAM FEDERMAN: Well, I think, unfortunately, it’s perhaps not the exception that the FBI has opened an investigation without proper approval. In 2011, the inspector general issued a report showing widespread cheating on a test that was designed to prevent this very kind of thing from happening. So it essentially demonstrates a lack of internal control. But more broadly speaking, the question that I think we need to be asking is whether the investigation, opened properly or not, should have been conducted to begin with. I mean, Tar Sands Blockade is committed to nonviolent civil disobedience. They’ve been very open and transparent about their activism and work. And I think the question is whether this investigation should have been opened to begin with, and, quite frankly, if the FBI is actively investigating other anti-Keystone pipeline activists or anti-fracking activists in other states.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Federman, we want to thank you for being with us, contributing editor to Earth Island Journal, where he covers the intersection between law enforcement and the environment. He co-authored the new investigation published by The Guardian, “Revealed: FBI Violated Its Own Rules While Spying on Keystone XL Opponents.” We’ll link to that story at democracynow.org. When we come back, it’s the 30th anniversary of the MOVE bombing, when the Philadelphia police bombed a neighborhood. Stay with us.

WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2015

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Keystone protesters tracked at border after FBI spied on ‘extremists’

More than 18 months after federal investigation violated internal rules, activists say they were still watchlisted at the airport, visited at home by a terrorism task force and detained for hours because they ‘seemed like protesters’

An activist was placed on a US government watchlist for domestic flights after being swept up in an FBI investigation into protests of the Keystone XL pipeline, linking a breach of intelligence protocol with accounts of continued tracking that environmentalists fear could follow them for life.

Revealed: FBI violated its own rules while spying on Keystone XL opponents
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Twenty-five-year-old Bradley Stroot is one of several campaigners to go public, after the Guardian revealed an FBI investigation that labeled them “environmental extremists”, with new allegations of a continued crackdown. From an hours-long detention at the US border to a home visit by a terrorism task force and an encounter with police searching for bombs, the activists say law enforcement has tracked them from a peaceful Texas protest of the highly contentious oil project in 2012 and 2013 to the tony suburbs of Indianapolis as recently as the end of last year.

Stroot told the Guardian that when he flew back to Texas to visit a friend last December, he learned that he was on a watchlist – known as a “Secondary Security Screening Selection” – and was subjected to more invasive airport security measures.

The FBI’s investigation into anti-Keystone activists was closed in June 2014 due to a lack of credible intelligence regarding threats to the pipeline and extremist activity.

According to internal agency documents obtained by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal, it was discovered in August 2013 that the FBI’s investigation had been opened without proper approval from the chief legal counsel of the agency’s Houston division and a senior agent, resulting in a report of “substantial non-compliance” with rules set out by the US Justice Department.

But before the internal violations were discovered, information on Stroot and several other activists was included in FBI files. Now, interviews with Stroot, who was held up at Chicago’s O’Hare airport six months after the investigation was closed, and other protesters indicate that they are still being monitored by law enforcement.

Stroot and two other people involved in the protests were described in the files as having separate, larger “Subject” files in the FBI’s Guardian Threat Tracking System, a repository for suspicious activity reports and counterterrorism threat assessments that can be searched by all FBI employees.

How the US’s terrorism watchlists work – and how you could end up on one
Read more
Hugh Handeyside, an attorney with the ACLU in New York, said the government’s suspicious activity reporting program is often tied to placement on a watchlist.

“Both label people as suspicious according to low standards that inevitably include innocent conduct,” he said. “And this case shows that the two may be linked.”

According to a long-withheld US watchlist guidance document published last year by the Intercept, people who do not meet the criteria for inclusion on the no-fly list but who are associated with “terrorist activity” may be placed on a selectee list like the one Bradley Stroot found himself on. Some 16,000 people – 1,200 of them US citizens – have been identified as so called “selectees” who must undergo heightened screenings at border crossings or airports.

From photos at the pipeline to a pat-down at the airport
fbi stroot
Bradley Stroot was one of three people detained by Houston police for taking photographs of an endpoint for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Four days later, a terrorism unit of the FBI reviewed the incident. Information on Stroot and other ‘suspicious individuals’ was kept in the agency’s ‘Guardian’ repository for tracking suspicious activity and terrorism-involved activities.
On 13 December 2014, Stroot said, he prepared to board a flight from Chicago to Dallas to see an old friend – his first air travel since his 10-month involvement in a campaign in the Houston area against the proposed Keystone project.

While in Texas the first time, he had been arrested once for trespassing after taking part in a widely publicized occupation of part of the pipeline route that included a “tree village”.

And on 15 November 2012, Stroot and two other activists were stopped by the Houston police department while taking photos of the Valero refinery, one of the endpoints for tar sands oil. Although they were not charged with any crime, details of the incident ended up in an FBI file – part of more than 80 pages of internal FBI documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request – that described the activists as “suspicious individuals”. Four days later, the police officers met with members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force to discuss the incident.

The encounter with the Houston police left Stroot somewhat shaken but determined to continue protesting. He says he had flown once to Europe – before the Keystone campaign began in Texas in 2012 – and had no issues.

But when he printed his American Airlines plane ticket in December, he noticed four S’s in large black letters in the top left corner. So-called “Secondary Security Screening Selection” helps Transportation Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security officers single out travelers, with no explanation, for heightened screening at airports.

bradley stroot pass
Secondary Security Screening Selection (SSSS) led Bradley Stroot to a more invasive pat-down on both legs of his return trip to Texas. Photograph: Courtesy of Bradley Stroot
When Stroot arrived at Chicago O’Hare, he said, he was subjected to heightened security screening – removed from the main passenger line and taken to a separate holding area where another airline security official was waiting. His bags, Stroot alleged, were carefully searched and he was subjected to a more invasive pat-down. He said the same thing happened on his return flight to Chicago.

“They pull you out of line, swab down all of your shit with tongue depressor-like things, and check for bomb-making materials,” Stroot said.

TSA’s failures start long before screeners fail to detect bombs in security tests
Jason Edward Harrington
Read more
But there were signs that Stroot had become a subject of interest to law enforcement even before he learned he was on a watchlist.

One night in spring 2013, just a few months after he had returned home to Indiana from Texas, Stroot said he was helping out at a makeshift homeless shelter in Bloomington, sleeping in a friend’s truck, when a police officer knocked on the window and asked for identification.

When the officer returned from running his ID, Stroot claims that he was aggressively questioned and that the officer asked if he could look in the truck, which had an open cab. “You could see there was nothing in it,” Stroot said.

After what he recalls as minutes more of questioning, Stroot said the officer finally asked if he had “any bomb-making materials”.

From video in the trees to detention at the border – and at home
Tar Sands Blockade occupy the corporate offices of TransCanada on 7 January 2013 Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Andrew Neef took part in a January 2013 protest at the Houston offices of TransCanada, the Canadian oil giant that would oversee the Keystone XL pipeline. Internal FBI documents show the agency willing to share ‘any pertinent intelligence regarding any threats’ with the company; the documents also show Neef included in files describing ‘Threats to Keystone XL Pipeline Projects’. Photograph: Tar Sands Blockade
Stroot is not the only anti-Keystone XL activist who has been targeted since the Texas protest campaign and parallel FBI investigation.

Elizabeth Arce, a 27-year-old independent journalist, traveled to Texas with a friend in October 2012 to help document the tree sit-in that ended in Stroot’s arrest. After spending a week in the trees live-streaming video of the protest, she said, they ran out of batteries and descended, hoping that as journalists they might avoid arrest from the police waiting underfoot.

I think the storyline of TransCanada and authorities communicating further than we think is plausible
Elizabeth Arce
Arce and her friend, Lorenzo Serna, were arrested for trespassing but all the charges were dropped.

In April 2013, Arce was on her way to Canada for an Earth Day event hosted by an indigenous group in Ontario. At the border crossing in Minnesota, Arce said, Canadian border agents asked her about the arrest in Texas, searched her car and eventually let her pass.

But this past August, Arce said she, Serna and another friend were driving to Canada to document the aftermath of the Mount Polley mine disaster in British Columbia and were denied entry.

At the crossing in Sweetgrass, Montana, Arce said agents at the border asked her detailed questions about her arrest in Texas. They searched the car for “hours”, she said, going through every piece of luggage and scrap of paper, even referring to her trombone as a “noisemaker”. After being detained for five hours, she said she and her friends were told that they could not cross into Canada because, she remembered an agent telling her, they “seemed like protesters”.

In the FBI files, the agency’s Houston office said it would share “any pertinent intelligence regarding any threats” with TransCanada, the Canadian oil giant that has been lobbying for years to oversee the transport of tar sands oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf coast. The project is still awaiting approval from the Obama administration.

“I think the storyline of TransCanada and authorities communicating further than we think is plausible,” Arce said.

(In a statement, TransCanada said the company does not “direct law enforcement” but that “law enforcement officials have asked us on a number of occasions about our experience along the Gulf Coast Pipeline so they can determine what they may expect when Keystone XL construction begins”.)

Andrew Neef, a 31-year-old data archivist from Minnesota, also spent time in Texas in 2012 and 2013. He was part of a mass action on 7 January 2013, at the Houston offices of TransCanada, and was arrested for trespassing along with another activist, Alec Johnson. Because he did not have a permanent address at the time and was not living in Texas, Neef entered his parents’ address on the police report. Neef and Johnson are both referred to in the FBI files obtained by the Guardian, which detail that the FBI had advance knowledge of the TransCanada sit-in and debriefed an informant on the event after it happened.

stroot fbi
An internal FBI document detailing the January 2013 arrest of Andrew Neef and Alec Johnson labeled them as ‘Threats to Keystone XL Pipeline Projects’. Neef said the peaceful protest haunted him, with authorities later showing up at his parents’ front door.
About a month after the Houston arrest, Neef said his parents were visited by members of the Indiana division of the FBI’s joint terrorism task force at their home in Carmel, an upscale Indianapolis suburb.

According to Neef, who also works as an independent-media journalist, the agents asked his parents several questions about the people he knew, whom he was working with, and where his funding came from. They also wanted to know, Neef said, if he was involved in anti-fracking campaigns.

“They wanted me to contact them,” Neef said, “and probably become some kind of snitch.”

(The FBI’s Houston field office did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this article.)

More than a year later, the FBI investigation into anti-Keystone pipeline campaigners in Texas was formally closed due to a “lack of reporting and/or extremist activity”. But the FBI retains data on individuals even if the purported threat turns out to be non-existent.

For young activists like Bradley Stroot, the stigma of being on a government watchlist can last for years. Stroot said he was resigned to the “new reality” that he may be on the list for “the rest of my life or a very long period”.

Once an individual has been placed on the selective screening watchlist, there is very little he or she can do to get removed from it, said Handeyside of the ACLU, or even find out why he or she was put on it in the first place.

“There’s no due process for these people,” he said.

Adam Federman is a contributing editor of Earth Island Journal.
Monday 8 June 2015 13.30 BST Last modified on Wednesday 17 June 2015 21.30 BST

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© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Revealed: FBI violated its own rules while spying on Keystone XL opponents

Houston investigation amounted to ‘substantial non-compliance’ of rules
Internal memo labels pipeline opponents as ‘environmental extremists’
FBI failed to get approval before it opened files on protesters in Texas

The FBI breached its own internal rules when it spied on campaigners against the Keystone XL pipeline, failing to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened files on individuals protesting against the construction of the pipeline in Texas, documents reveal.

Internal agency documents show for the first time how FBI agents have been closely monitoring anti-Keystone activists, in violation of guidelines designed to prevent the agency from becoming unduly involved in sensitive political issues.

The hugely contentious Keystone XL pipeline, which is awaiting approval from the Obama administration, would transport tar sands oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf coast.

It has been strongly opposed for years by a coalition of environmental groups, including some involved in nonviolent civil disobedience who have been monitored by federal law enforcement agencies.

The documents reveal that one FBI investigation, run from its Houston field office, amounted to “substantial non-compliance” of Department of Justice rules that govern how the agency should handle sensitive matters.

One FBI memo, which set out the rationale for investigating campaigners in the Houston area, touted the economic advantages of the pipeline while labelling its opponents “environmental extremists”.

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An FBI memo labels opponents of the controversial pipeline as ‘environmental extremists’. Photograph: Guardian
FBI Keystone memo Facebook Twitter Pinterest
An FBI memo detailing ‘non-compliance’ by the Houston field office. Photograph: Guardian
“Many of these extremists believe the debates over pollution, protection of wildlife, safety, and property rights have been overshadowed by the promise of jobs and cheaper oil prices,” the FBI document states. “The Keystone pipeline, as part of the oil and natural gas industry, is vital to the security and economy of the United States.”

The documents are among more than 80 pages of previously confidential FBI files obtained by the Guardian and Earth Island Journal after a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

Between November 2012 and June 2014, the documents show, the FBI collated inside knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinised police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.

It is unclear whether the source or sources were protesters-turned-informants, private investigators or hackers. One source is referred to in the documents as having had “good access and a history of reliable reporting”.

The FBI investigation targeted Tar Sands Blockade, a direct action group that was at the time campaigning in southern Texas.

However, the partially redacted documents reveal the investigation into anti-Keystone activists occurred without prior approval of the top lawyer and senior agent in the Houston field office, a stipulation laid down in rules provided by the attorney general.

Confronted by evidence contained in the cache of documents, the agency admitted that “FBI approval levels required by internal policy were not initially obtained” for the investigation, but said the failure was remedied and later reported internally.

The FBI files appear to suggest the Houston branch of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.

For a period of time – possibly as long as eight months – agents acting beyond their authority were monitoring activists aligned with Tar Sands Blockade.

Tar Sands Blockade appeared on the FBI’s radar in late 2012, not long after the group began organising in east Houston, the end destination for Keystone’s 1,660-mile pipeline.

Environmental activists affiliated with the group were committed to peaceful civil disobedience that can involve minor infractions of law, such as trespass. But they had no history of violent or serious crime.

Ron Seifert, a key organiser at Tar Sands Blockade, said dozens of campaigners were arrested in Texas for protest-related activity around that time, but not one of them was accused of violent crime or property destruction.

The group focused on Houston’s heavily industrialised neighbourhood of Manchester, where the Valero Energy Corporation has a massive refinery capable of processing heavy crude oil.

Between early November 2012 and June 2014, the documents show, the FBI collated inside-knowledge about forthcoming protests, documented the identities of individuals photographing oil-related infrastructure, scrutinised police intelligence and cultivated at least one informant.

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‘The Houston Division had identified an emerging threat from environmental extremists targeting construction projects of the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline within the Houston Domain.’ Photograph: Guardian
It is unclear whether the source or sources were protesters-turned-informants, private investigators or hackers. One source is referred to in the documents as having had “good access, and a history of reliable reporting”.

At one point, the FBI’s Houston office said it would share with TransCanada “any pertinent intelligence regarding any threats” to the company in advance of a forthcoming protest.

One of the files refers to Houston police officers who stopped two men and a woman taking photographs near the city’s industrial port, noting they were using a “large and sophisticated looking” camera.

Two of the individuals were described as having larger subject files in the FBI’s Guardian Threat Tracking System.

In another incident, the license plate belonging to a Silver Dodge was dutifully entered into the FBI’s database, after a “source” spotted the driver and another man photographing a building associated with TransCanada.

Sensitive matters
The FBI rules, laid out in the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide, dictate that special care should be taken over sensitive investigations such as those targeting elected officials, journalists and political organisations.

FBI work on “sensitive investigative matters” requires prior approval of both the chief division counsel (CDC), the top lawyer in the field office, and the special agent in charge (SAC).

Both are supposed to consider the severity of the threat and the consequences of “adverse impact on civil liberties and public confidence” should the investigation be made public.

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Tar Sands Blockade occupy the corporate offices of TransCanada in January 2013. Photograph: Laura Borealis/Tar Sands Blockade
However, neither Houston’s CDC or SAC were consulted in relation to the FBI’s monitoring of Tar Sands Blockade activists, the documents show.

Explaining the breach of protocols, the FBI said in a statement that it was committed to “act properly under the law”.

“While the FBI approval levels required by internal policy were not initially obtained, once discovered, corrective action was taken, non-compliance was remedied, and the oversight was properly reported through the FBI’s internal oversight mechanism,” it said.

The FBI did not deny opening an investigation into anti-Keystone campaigners, and said it was compelled to “take the initiative to secure and protect activities and entities which may be targeted for terrorism or espionage”.

But the precise nature of the FBI’s investigation, which continued for almost a year after the Houston Division acknowledged it had violated protocol, remains unclear.

The documents appear to suggest the investigation was one branch of a wider set of investigations, possibly including anti-Keystone activists elsewhere in the country.

The documents connect the investigation into anti-Keystone activists to other “domestic terrorism issues” in the agency and show there was some liaison with the local FBI “assistant weapons of mass destruction coordinator”.

Mike German, a former FBI agent, who assisted the Guardian in deciphering the bureau’s documentation, said they indicated the agency had opened a category of investigation that is known in agency parlance as an “assessment”.

Introduced as part of an expansion of FBI powers after 9/11, assessments allow agents to open intrusive investigations into individuals or groups, even if they have no reason to believe they are breaking the law.

German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, said the documents also raised questions over collusion between law enforcement and TransCanada.

“It is clearly troubling that these documents suggest the FBI interprets its national security mandate as protecting private industry from political criticism,” he said.

According to the FBI documents, the FBI concluded there were “no adverse consequences” emanating from its failure to seek approval for the sensitive investigation, noting the mistake was later “remedied”.

The investigation continued for 11 months after the mistake was spotted. It was closed after the FBI’s Houston division acknowledged its failure to find sufficient evidence of “extremist activity”.

Before closing the case, however, agents noted the existence of a file that was to be used as a repository for future intelligence “regarding the Keystone XL pipeline”.

Since then, at least a dozen anti-tar sands campaigners in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho have been contacted by the FBI. The agency has said they are not under investigation.

Adam Federman is a contributing editor of Earth Island Journal
Paul Lewis in Washington and Adam Federman
Tuesday 12 May 2015 11.59 BST Last modified on Tuesday 12 May 2015 23.11 BST

Find this story at 12 May 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

F.B.I. Says It Broke Its Rules in Inquiry of Keystone Pipeline Opponents

WASHINGTON — The Federal Bureau of Investigation violated its own guidelines in 2013 when it investigated environmental advocates who opposed the Keystone XL pipeline, the F.B.I. acknowledged on Tuesday.

The bureau had received information about plots to damage part of the existing Keystone pipeline, which moves oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, according to federal law enforcement officials. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would create a shortcut for a significant section of the system.

As part of the investigation, agents at the F.B.I.’s field office in Houston communicated with sources, who gathered information from environmental advocates. The agents also conducted database searches on the advocates and reviewed local law enforcement reports about them. But the agents had not received approval from the head of their office and from its chief lawyer.

Continue reading the main story
RELATED COVERAGE

Paula Antoine at a “spirit camp” set up by the Rosebud Sioux tribe near the planned route of Keystone XL in South Dakota.Grass-Roots Push in the Plains to Block the Keystone Pipeline’s PathMAY 5, 2015
That authorization was required under F.B.I. investigative guidelines intended to prevent agents from abusing powers that are most often used in national security and criminal investigations.

After an audit led by the bureau’s headquarters in Washington revealed that the agents had not received authorization, the agents asked for permission and got it. The investigation ultimately found no evidence that the protesters were plotting to damage the pipeline, and it was closed.

The Guardian first reported the investigation on Tuesday.

As the F.B.I. changed its focus to national security after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it began building closer relationships with the nation’s largest companies as it worked to protect the country’s critical infrastructure. Many of those companies — like TransCanada, which owns the pipeline — are frequently targets of environmental protests, and issues of free speech and national security can become intertwined.

The F.B.I. said on Tuesday that it had not conducted a full investigation into the protesters — only an assessment, its least invasive inquiry. The bureau said it had looked into the accusations because the threats were against “the oil and gas industry, and the energy sector is considered a part of the critical infrastructure of the United States.”

It characterized the mistake by the agents as an “administrative error” that “was discovered by the F.B.I.’s internal oversight mechanisms.”

“While the F.B.I. approval levels required by internal policy were not initially obtained, once discovered, corrective action was taken, noncompliance was remedied, and the oversight was properly reported through the F.B.I.’s internal oversight mechanism,” the bureau said. “At no time did the review find that the initial justification for the assessment was improper.”

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTMAY 12, 2015

Find this story at 12 May 2015

© 2015 The New York Times Company

FBI’s Plan to Expand Hacking Power Advances Despite Privacy Fears

Google had warned that the rule change represents a “monumental” constitutional concern.

March 16, 2015 A judicial advisory panel Monday quietly approved a rule change that will broaden the FBI’s hacking authority despite fears raised by Google that the amended language represents a “monumental” constitutional concern.

The Judicial Conference Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules voted 11-1 to modify an arcane federal rule to allow judges more flexibility in how they approve search warrants for electronic data, according to a Justice Department spokesman.

(RELATED: Republicans Have Less Faith in the NSA than Democrats)

Known as Rule 41, the existing provision generally allows judges to approve search warrants only for material within the geographic bounds of their judicial district.

But the rule change, as requested by the department, would allow judges to grant warrants for remote searches of computers located outside their district or when the location is unknown.

The government has defended the maneuver as a necessary update of protocol intended to modernize criminal procedure to address the increasingly complex digital realities of the 21st century. The FBI wants the expanded authority, which would allow it to more easily infiltrate computer networks to install malicious tracking software. This way, investigators can better monitor suspected criminals who use technology to conceal their identity.

But the plan has been widely opposed by privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as some technologists, who say it amounts to a substantial rewriting of the rule and not just a procedural tweak. Such a change could threaten the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable search and seizures, they warn, and possibly allow the FBI to violate the sovereignty of foreign nations. The rule change also could let the agency simultaneously target millions of computers at once, even potentially those belonging to users who aren’t suspected of any wrongdoing.

(RELATED: The CIA Is Trying to Hack Your iPhone)

Google weighed in last month with public comments that warned that the tweak “raises a number of monumental and highly complex constitutional, legal and geopolitical concerns that should be left to Congress to decide.”

In an unusual move, Justice Department lawyers rebutted Google’s concerns, saying the search giant was misreading the proposal and that it would not result in any search or seizures not “already permitted under current law.”

The judicial advisory committee’s vote is only the first of several stamps of approval required within the federal judicial branch before the the rule change can formally take place—a process that will likely take over a year. The proposal is now subject to review by the Standing Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure, which normally can approve amendments at its June meeting. The Judicial Conference is next in line to approve the rule, a move that would likely occur in September.

The Supreme Court would have until May 1, 2016 to review and accept the amendment, which Congress would then have seven months to reject, modify or defer. Absent any congressional action, the rule would take place on Dec. 1, 2016.

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Privacy groups vowed to continue fighting the rule change as it winds its way through the additional layers of review.

“Although presented as a minor procedural update, the proposal threatens to expand the government’s ability to use malware and so-called ‘zero-day exploits’ without imposing necessary protections,” said ACLU attorney Nathan Freed Wessler in a statement. “The current proposal fails to strike the right balance between safeguarding privacy and Internet security and allowing the government to investigate crimes.”

Drew Mitnick, policy counsel with digital rights group Access, said the policy “should only be considered through an open and accountable legislative process.”

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

BY DUSTIN VOLZ

Find this story at 16 March 2015

Copyright © 2015 by National Journal Group Inc.

How the CIA made Google

Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet—

INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.

This exclusive is being released for free in the public interest, and was enabled by crowdfunding. I’d like to thank my amazing community of patrons for their support, which gave me the opportunity to work on this in-depth investigation. Please support independent, investigative journalism for the global commons.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, western governments are moving fast to legitimize expanded powers of mass surveillance and controls on the internet, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

US and European politicians have called to protect NSA-style snooping, and to advance the capacity to intrude on internet privacy by outlawing encryption. One idea is to establish a telecoms partnership that would unilaterally delete content deemed to “fuel hatred and violence” in situations considered “appropriate.” Heated discussions are going on at government and parliamentary level to explore cracking down on lawyer-client confidentiality.

What any of this would have done to prevent the Charlie Hebdo attacks remains a mystery, especially given that we already know the terrorists were on the radar of French intelligence for up to a decade.

There is little new in this story. The 9/11 atrocity was the first of many terrorist attacks, each succeeded by the dramatic extension of draconian state powers at the expense of civil liberties, backed up with the projection of military force in regions identified as hotspots harbouring terrorists. Yet there is little indication that this tried and tested formula has done anything to reduce the danger. If anything, we appear to be locked into a deepening cycle of violence with no clear end in sight.

As our governments push to increase their powers, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE can now reveal the vast extent to which the US intelligence community is implicated in nurturing the web platforms we know today, for the precise purpose of utilizing the technology as a mechanism to fight global ‘information war’ — a war to legitimize the power of the few over the rest of us. The lynchpin of this story is the corporation that in many ways defines the 21st century with its unobtrusive omnipresence: Google.

Google styles itself as a friendly, funky, user-friendly tech firm that rose to prominence through a combination of skill, luck, and genuine innovation. This is true. But it is a mere fragment of the story. In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.

The inside story of Google’s rise, revealed here for the first time, opens a can of worms that goes far beyond Google, unexpectedly shining a light on the existence of a parasitical network driving the evolution of the US national security apparatus, and profiting obscenely from its operation.

The shadow network
For the last two decades, US foreign and intelligence strategies have resulted in a global ‘war on terror’ consisting of prolonged military invasions in the Muslim world and comprehensive surveillance of civilian populations. These strategies have been incubated, if not dictated, by a secret network inside and beyond the Pentagon.

Established under the Clinton administration, consolidated under Bush, and firmly entrenched under Obama, this bipartisan network of mostly neoconservative ideologues sealed its dominion inside the US Department of Defense (DoD) by the dawn of 2015, through the operation of an obscure corporate entity outside the Pentagon, but run by the Pentagon.

In 1999, the CIA created its own venture capital investment firm, In-Q-Tel, to fund promising start-ups that might create technologies useful for intelligence agencies. But the inspiration for In-Q-Tel came earlier, when the Pentagon set up its own private sector outfit.

Known as the ‘Highlands Forum,’ this private network has operated as a bridge between the Pentagon and powerful American elites outside the military since the mid-1990s. Despite changes in civilian administrations, the network around the Highlands Forum has become increasingly successful in dominating US defense policy.

Giant defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton and Science Applications International Corporation are sometimes referred to as the ‘shadow intelligence community’ due to the revolving doors between them and government, and their capacity to simultaneously influence and profit from defense policy. But while these contractors compete for power and money, they also collaborate where it counts. The Highlands Forum has for 20 years provided an off the record space for some of the most prominent members of the shadow intelligence community to convene with senior US government officials, alongside other leaders in relevant industries.

I first stumbled upon the existence of this network in November 2014, when I reported for VICE’s Motherboard that US defense secretary Chuck Hagel’s newly announced ‘Defense Innovation Initiative’ was really about building Skynet — or something like it, essentially to dominate an emerging era of automated robotic warfare.

That story was based on a little-known Pentagon-funded ‘white paper’ published two months earlier by the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington DC, a leading US military-run institution that, among other things, generates research to develop US defense policy at the highest levels. The white paper clarified the thinking behind the new initiative, and the revolutionary scientific and technological developments it hoped to capitalize on.

The Highlands Forum
The co-author of that NDU white paper is Linton Wells, a 51-year veteran US defense official who served in the Bush administration as the Pentagon’s chief information officer, overseeing the National Security Agency (NSA) and other spy agencies. He still holds active top-secret security clearances, and according to a report by Government Executive magazine in 2006 he chaired the ‘Highlands Forum’, founded by the Pentagon in 1994.

Linton Wells II (right) former Pentagon chief information officer and assistant secretary of defense for networks, at a recent Pentagon Highlands Forum session. Rosemary Wenchel, a senior official in the US Department of Homeland Security, is sitting next to him
New Scientist magazine (paywall) has compared the Highlands Forum to elite meetings like “Davos, Ditchley and Aspen,” describing it as “far less well known, yet… arguably just as influential a talking shop.” Regular Forum meetings bring together “innovative people to consider interactions between policy and technology. Its biggest successes have been in the development of high-tech network-based warfare.”

Given Wells’ role in such a Forum, perhaps it was not surprising that his defense transformation white paper was able to have such a profound impact on actual Pentagon policy. But if that was the case, why had no one noticed?

Despite being sponsored by the Pentagon, I could find no official page on the DoD website about the Forum. Active and former US military and intelligence sources had never heard of it, and neither did national security journalists. I was baffled.

The Pentagon’s intellectual capital venture firm
In the prologue to his 2007 book, A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity, John Clippinger, an MIT scientist of the Media Lab Human Dynamics Group, described how he participated in a “Highlands Forum” gathering, an “invitation-only meeting funded by the Department of Defense and chaired by the assistant for networks and information integration.” This was a senior DoD post overseeing operations and policies for the Pentagon’s most powerful spy agencies including the NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), among others. Starting from 2003, the position was transitioned into what is now the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. The Highlands Forum, Clippinger wrote, was founded by a retired US Navy captain named Dick O’Neill. Delegates include senior US military officials across numerous agencies and divisions — “captains, rear admirals, generals, colonels, majors and commanders” as well as “members of the DoD leadership.”

What at first appeared to be the Forum’s main website describes Highlands as “an informal cross-disciplinary network sponsored by Federal Government,” focusing on “information, science and technology.” Explanation is sparse, beyond a single ‘Department of Defense’ logo.

But Highlands also has another website describing itself as an “intellectual capital venture firm” with “extensive experience assisting corporations, organizations, and government leaders.” The firm provides a “wide range of services, including: strategic planning, scenario creation and gaming for expanding global markets,” as well as “working with clients to build strategies for execution.” ‘The Highlands Group Inc.,’ the website says, organizes a whole range of Forums on these issue.

For instance, in addition to the Highlands Forum, since 9/11 the Group runs the ‘Island Forum,’ an international event held in association with Singapore’s Ministry of Defense, which O’Neill oversees as “lead consultant.” The Singapore Ministry of Defense website describes the Island Forum as “patterned after the Highlands Forum organized for the US Department of Defense.” Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that Singapore played a key role in permitting the US and Australia to tap undersea cables to spy on Asian powers like Indonesia and Malaysia.

The Highlands Group website also reveals that Highlands is partnered with one of the most powerful defense contractors in the United States. Highlands is “supported by a network of companies and independent researchers,” including “our Highlands Forum partners for the past ten years at SAIC; and the vast Highlands network of participants in the Highlands Forum.”

SAIC stands for the US defense firm, Science Applications International Corporation, which changed its name to Leidos in 2013, operating SAIC as a subsidiary. SAIC/Leidos is among the top 10 largest defense contractors in the US, and works closely with the US intelligence community, especially the NSA. According to investigative journalist Tim Shorrock, the first to disclose the vast extent of the privatization of US intelligence with his seminal book Spies for Hire, SAIC has a “symbiotic relationship with the NSA: the agency is the company’s largest single customer and SAIC is the NSA’s largest contractor.”

Richard ‘Dick’ Patrick O’Neill, founding president of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum
The full name of Captain “Dick” O’Neill, the founding president of the Highlands Forum, is Richard Patrick O’Neill, who after his work in the Navy joined the DoD. He served his last post as deputy for strategy and policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence, before setting up Highlands.

The Club of Yoda
But Clippinger also referred to another mysterious individual revered by Forum attendees:

“He sat at the back of the room, expressionless behind thick, black-rimmed glasses. I never heard him utter a word… Andrew (Andy) Marshall is an icon within DoD. Some call him Yoda, indicative of his mythical inscrutable status… He had served many administrations and was widely regarded as above partisan politics. He was a supporter of the Highlands Forum and a regular fixture from its beginning.”
Since 1973, Marshall has headed up one of the Pentagon’s most powerful agencies, the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), the US defense secretary’s internal ‘think tank’ which conducts highly classified research on future planning for defense policy across the US military and intelligence community. The ONA has played a key role in major Pentagon strategy initiatives, including Maritime Strategy, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Competitive Strategies Initiative, and the Revolution in Military Affairs.

Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall, head of the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment (ONA) and co-chair of the Highlands Forum, at an early Highlands event in 1996 at the Santa Fe Institute. Marshall is retiring as of January 2015
In a rare 2002 profile in Wired, reporter Douglas McGray described Andrew Marshall, now 93 years old, as “the DoD’s most elusive” but “one of its most influential” officials. McGray added that “Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz” — widely considered the hawks of the neoconservative movement in American politics — were among Marshall’s “star protégés.”

Speaking at a low-key Harvard University seminar a few months after 9/11, Highlands Forum founding president Richard O’Neill said that Marshall was much more than a “regular fixture” at the Forum. “Andy Marshall is our co-chair, so indirectly everything that we do goes back into Andy’s system,” he told the audience. “Directly, people who are in the Forum meetings may be going back to give briefings to Andy on a variety of topics and to synthesize things.” He also said that the Forum had a third co-chair: the director of the Defense Advanced Research and Projects Agency (DARPA), which at that time was a Rumsfeld appointee, Anthony J. Tether. Before joining DARPA, Tether was vice president of SAIC’s Advanced Technology Sector.

Anthony J. Tether, director of DARPA and co-chair of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum from June 2001 to February 2009
The Highlands Forum’s influence on US defense policy has thus operated through three main channels: its sponsorship by the Office of the Secretary of Defense (around the middle of last decade this was transitioned specifically to the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, which is in charge of the main surveillance agencies); its direct link to Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall’s ONA; and its direct link to DARPA.

A slide from Richard O’Neill’s presentation at Harvard University in 2001
According to Clippinger in A Crowd of One, “what happens at informal gatherings such as the Highlands Forum could, over time and through unforeseen curious paths of influence, have enormous impact, not just within the DoD but throughout the world.” He wrote that the Forum’s ideas have “moved from being heretical to mainstream. Ideas that were anathema in 1999 had been adopted as policy just three years later.”

Although the Forum does not produce “consensus recommendations,” its impact is deeper than a traditional government advisory committee. “The ideas that emerge from meetings are available for use by decision-makers as well as by people from the think tanks,” according to O’Neill:

“We’ll include people from Booz, SAIC, RAND, or others at our meetings… We welcome that kind of cooperation, because, truthfully, they have the gravitas. They are there for the long haul and are able to influence government policies with real scholarly work… We produce ideas and interaction and networks for these people to take and use as they need them.”
My repeated requests to O’Neill for information on his work at the Highlands Forum were ignored. The Department of Defense also did not respond to multiple requests for information and comment on the Forum.

Information warfare
The Highlands Forum has served as a two-way ‘influence bridge’: on the one hand, for the shadow network of private contractors to influence the formulation of information operations policy across US military intelligence; and on the other, for the Pentagon to influence what is going on in the private sector. There is no clearer evidence of this than the truly instrumental role of the Forum in incubating the idea of mass surveillance as a mechanism to dominate information on a global scale.

In 1989, Richard O’Neill, then a US Navy cryptologist, wrote a paper for the US Naval War College, ‘Toward a methodology for perception management.’ In his book, Future Wars, Col. John Alexander, then a senior officer in the US Army’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), records that O’Neill’s paper for the first time outlined a strategy for “perception management” as part of information warfare (IW). O’Neill’s proposed strategy identified three categories of targets for IW: adversaries, so they believe they are vulnerable; potential partners, “so they perceive the cause [of war] as just”; and finally, civilian populations and the political leadership so they “perceive the cost as worth the effort.” A secret briefing based on O’Neill’s work “made its way to the top leadership” at DoD. “They acknowledged that O’Neill was right and told him to bury it.

Except the DoD didn’t bury it. Around 1994, the Highlands Group was founded by O’Neill as an official Pentagon project at the appointment of Bill Clinton’s then defense secretary William Perry — who went on to join SAIC’s board of directors after retiring from government in 2003.

In O’Neill’s own words, the group would function as the Pentagon’s ‘ideas lab’. According to Government Executive, military and information technology experts gathered at the first Forum meeting “to consider the impacts of IT and globalization on the United States and on warfare. How would the Internet and other emerging technologies change the world?” The meeting helped plant the idea of “network-centric warfare” in the minds of “the nation’s top military thinkers.”

Excluding the public
Official Pentagon records confirm that the Highlands Forum’s primary goal was to support DoD policies on O’Neill’s specialism: information warfare. According to the Pentagon’s 1997 Annual Report to the President and the Congress under a section titled ‘Information Operations,’ (IO) the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) had authorized the “establishment of the Highlands Group of key DoD, industry, and academic IO experts” to coordinate IO across federal military intelligence agencies.

The following year’s DoD annual report reiterated the Forum’s centrality to information operations: “To examine IO issues, DoD sponsors the Highlands Forum, which brings together government, industry, and academic professionals from various fields.”

Notice that in 1998, the Highlands ‘Group’ became a ‘Forum.’ According to O’Neill, this was to avoid subjecting Highlands Forums meetings to “bureaucratic restrictions.” What he was alluding to was the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), which regulates the way the US government can formally solicit the advice of special interests.

Known as the ‘open government’ law, FACA requires that US government officials cannot hold closed-door or secret consultations with people outside government to develop policy. All such consultations should take place via federal advisory committees that permit public scrutiny. FACA requires that meetings be held in public, announced via the Federal Register, that advisory groups are registered with an office at the General Services Administration, among other requirements intended to maintain accountability to the public interest.

But Government Executive reported that “O’Neill and others believed” such regulatory issues “would quell the free flow of ideas and no-holds-barred discussions they sought.” Pentagon lawyers had warned that the word ‘group’ might necessitate certain obligations and advised running the whole thing privately: “So O’Neill renamed it the Highlands Forum and moved into the private sector to manage it as a consultant to the Pentagon.” The Pentagon Highlands Forum thus runs under the mantle of O’Neill’s ‘intellectual capital venture firm,’ ‘Highlands Group Inc.’

In 1995, a year after William Perry appointed O’Neill to head up the Highlands Forum, SAIC — the Forum’s “partner” organization — launched a new Center for Information Strategy and Policy under the direction of “Jeffrey Cooper, a member of the Highlands Group who advises senior Defense Department officials on information warfare issues.” The Center had precisely the same objective as the Forum, to function as “a clearinghouse to bring together the best and brightest minds in information warfare by sponsoring a continuing series of seminars, papers and symposia which explore the implications of information warfare in depth.” The aim was to “enable leaders and policymakers from government, industry, and academia to address key issues surrounding information warfare to ensure that the United States retains its edge over any and all potential enemies.”

Despite FACA regulations, federal advisory committees are already heavily influenced, if not captured, by corporate power. So in bypassing FACA, the Pentagon overrode even the loose restrictions of FACA, by permanently excluding any possibility of public engagement.

O’Neill’s claim that there are no reports or recommendations is disingenuous. By his own admission, the secret Pentagon consultations with industry that have taken place through the Highlands Forum since 1994 have been accompanied by regular presentations of academic and policy papers, recordings and notes of meetings, and other forms of documentation that are locked behind a login only accessible by Forum delegates. This violates the spirit, if not the letter, of FACA — in a way that is patently intended to circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law.

The Highlands Forum doesn’t need to produce consensus recommendations. Its purpose is to provide the Pentagon a shadow social networking mechanism to cement lasting relationships with corporate power, and to identify new talent, that can be used to fine-tune information warfare strategies in absolute secrecy.

Total participants in the DoD’s Highlands Forum number over a thousand, although sessions largely consist of small closed workshop style gatherings of maximum 25–30 people, bringing together experts and officials depending on the subject. Delegates have included senior personnel from SAIC and Booz Allen Hamilton, RAND Corp., Cisco, Human Genome Sciences, eBay, PayPal, IBM, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, the BBC, Disney, General Electric, Enron, among innumerable others; Democrat and Republican members of Congress and the Senate; senior executives from the US energy industry such as Daniel Yergin of IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; and key people involved in both sides of presidential campaigns.

Other participants have included senior media professionals: David Ignatius, associate editor of the Washington Post and at the time the executive editor of the International Herald Tribune; Thomas Friedman, long-time New York Times columnist; Arnaud de Borchgrave, an editor at Washington Times and United Press International; Steven Levy, a former Newsweek editor, senior writer for Wired and now chief tech editor at Medium; Lawrence Wright, staff writer at the New Yorker; Noah Shachtmann, executive editor at the Daily Beast; Rebecca McKinnon, co-founder of Global Voices Online; Nik Gowing of the BBC; and John Markoff of the New York Times.

Due to its current sponsorship by the OSD’s undersecretary of defense for intelligence, the Forum has inside access to the chiefs of the main US surveillance and reconnaissance agencies, as well as the directors and their assistants at DoD research agencies, from DARPA, to the ONA. This also means that the Forum is deeply plugged into the Pentagon’s policy research task forces.

Google: seeded by the Pentagon
In 1994 — the same year the Highlands Forum was founded under the stewardship of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the ONA, and DARPA — two young PhD students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, made their breakthrough on the first automated web crawling and page ranking application. That application remains the core component of what eventually became Google’s search service. Brin and Page had performed their work with funding from the Digital Library Initiative (DLI), a multi-agency programme of the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA and DARPA.

But that’s just one side of the story.

Throughout the development of the search engine, Sergey Brin reported regularly and directly to two people who were not Stanford faculty at all: Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham and Dr. Rick Steinheiser. Both were representatives of a sensitive US intelligence community research programme on information security and data-mining.

Thuraisingham is currently the Louis A. Beecherl distinguished professor and executive director of the Cyber Security Research Institute at the University of Texas, Dallas, and a sought-after expert on data-mining, data management and information security issues. But in the 1990s, she worked for the MITRE Corp., a leading US defense contractor, where she managed the Massive Digital Data Systems initiative, a project sponsored by the NSA, CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence, to foster innovative research in information technology.

“We funded Stanford University through the computer scientist Jeffrey Ullman, who had several promising graduate students working on many exciting areas,” Prof. Thuraisingham told me. “One of them was Sergey Brin, the founder of Google. The intelligence community’s MDDS program essentially provided Brin seed-funding, which was supplemented by many other sources, including the private sector.”

This sort of funding is certainly not unusual, and Sergey Brin’s being able to receive it by being a graduate student at Stanford appears to have been incidental. The Pentagon was all over computer science research at this time. But it illustrates how deeply entrenched the culture of Silicon Valley is in the values of the US intelligence community.

In an extraordinary document hosted by the website of the University of Texas, Thuraisingham recounts that from 1993 to 1999, “the Intelligence Community [IC] started a program called Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) that I was managing for the Intelligence Community when I was at the MITRE Corporation.” The program funded 15 research efforts at various universities, including Stanford. Its goal was developing “data management technologies to manage several terabytes to petabytes of data,” including for “query processing, transaction management, metadata management, storage management, and data integration.”

At the time, Thuraisingham was chief scientist for data and information management at MITRE, where she led team research and development efforts for the NSA, CIA, US Air Force Research Laboratory, as well as the US Army’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR) and Communications and Electronic Command (CECOM). She went on to teach courses for US government officials and defense contractors on data-mining in counter-terrorism.

In her University of Texas article, she attaches the copy of an abstract of the US intelligence community’s MDDS program that had been presented to the “Annual Intelligence Community Symposium” in 1995. The abstract reveals that the primary sponsors of the MDDS programme were three agencies: the NSA, the CIA’s Office of Research & Development, and the intelligence community’s Community Management Staff (CMS) which operates under the Director of Central Intelligence. Administrators of the program, which provided funding of around 3–4 million dollars per year for 3–4 years, were identified as Hal Curran (NSA), Robert Kluttz (CMS), Dr. Claudia Pierce (NSA), Dr. Rick Steinheiser (ORD — standing for the CIA’s Office of Research and Devepment), and Dr. Thuraisingham herself.

Thuraisingham goes on in her article to reiterate that this joint CIA-NSA program partly funded Sergey Brin to develop the core of Google, through a grant to Stanford managed by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Jeffrey D. Ullman:

“In fact, the Google founder Mr. Sergey Brin was partly funded by this program while he was a PhD student at Stanford. He together with his advisor Prof. Jeffrey Ullman and my colleague at MITRE, Dr. Chris Clifton [Mitre’s chief scientist in IT], developed the Query Flocks System which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. In fact the last time we met in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which became Google soon after.”
Brin and Page officially incorporated Google as a company in September 1998, the very month they last reported to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser. ‘Query Flocks’ was also part of Google’s patented ‘PageRank’ search system, which Brin developed at Stanford under the CIA-NSA-MDDS programme, as well as with funding from the NSF, IBM and Hitachi. That year, MITRE’s Dr. Chris Clifton, who worked under Thuraisingham to develop the ‘Query Flocks’ system, co-authored a paper with Brin’s superviser, Prof. Ullman, and the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser. Titled ‘Knowledge Discovery in Text,’ the paper was presented at an academic conference.

“The MDDS funding that supported Brin was significant as far as seed-funding goes, but it was probably outweighed by the other funding streams,” said Thuraisingham. “The duration of Brin’s funding was around two years or so. In that period, I and my colleagues from the MDDS would visit Stanford to see Brin and monitor his progress every three months or so. We didn’t supervise exactly, but we did want to check progress, point out potential problems and suggest ideas. In those briefings, Brin did present to us on the query flocks research, and also demonstrated to us versions of the Google search engine.”

Brin thus reported to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser regularly about his work developing Google.

==

UPDATE 2.05PM GMT [2nd Feb 2015]:

Since publication of this article, Prof. Thuraisingham has amended her article referenced above. The amended version includes a new modified statement, followed by a copy of the original version of her account of the MDDS. In this amended version, Thuraisingham rejects the idea that CIA funded Google, and says instead:

“In fact Prof. Jeffrey Ullman (at Stanford) and my colleague at MITRE Dr. Chris Clifton together with some others developed the Query Flocks System, as part of MDDS, which produced solutions for mining large amounts of data stored in databases. Also, Mr. Sergey Brin, the cofounder of Google, was part of Prof. Ullman’s research group at that time. I remember visiting Stanford with Dr. Rick Steinheiser from the Intelligence Community periodically and Mr. Brin would rush in on roller blades, give his presentation and rush out. During our last visit to Stanford in September 1998, Mr. Brin demonstrated to us his search engine which I believe became Google soon after…
There are also several inaccuracies in Dr. Ahmed’s article (dated January 22, 2015). For example, the MDDS program was not a ‘sensitive’ program as stated by Dr. Ahmed; it was an Unclassified program that funded universities in the US. Furthermore, Sergey Brin never reported to me or to Dr. Rick Steinheiser; he only gave presentations to us during our visits to the Department of Computer Science at Stanford during the 1990s. Also, MDDS never funded Google; it funded Stanford University.”
Here, there is no substantive factual difference in Thuraisingham’s accounts, other than to assert that her statement associating Sergey Brin with the development of ‘query flocks’ is mistaken. Notably, this acknowledgement is derived not from her own knowledge, but from this very article quoting a comment from a Google spokesperson.

However, the bizarre attempt to disassociate Google from the MDDS program misses the mark. Firstly, the MDDS never funded Google, because during the development of the core components of the Google search engine, there was no company incorporated with that name. The grant was instead provided to Stanford University through Prof. Ullman, through whom some MDDS funding was used to support Brin who was co-developing Google at the time. Secondly, Thuraisingham then adds that Brin never “reported” to her or the CIA’s Steinheiser, but admits he “gave presentations to us during our visits to the Department of Computer Science at Stanford during the 1990s.” It is unclear, though, what the distinction is here between reporting, and delivering a detailed presentation — either way, Thuraisingham confirms that she and the CIA had taken a keen interest in Brin’s development of Google. Thirdly, Thuraisingham describes the MDDS program as “unclassified,” but this does not contradict its “sensitive” nature. As someone who has worked for decades as an intelligence contractor and advisor, Thuraisingham is surely aware that there are many ways of categorizing intelligence, including ‘sensitive but unclassified.’ A number of former US intelligence officials I spoke to said that the almost total lack of public information on the CIA and NSA’s MDDS initiative suggests that although the progam was not classified, it is likely instead that its contents was considered sensitive, which would explain efforts to minimise transparency about the program and the way it fed back into developing tools for the US intelligence community. Fourthly, and finally, it is important to point out that the MDDS abstract which Thuraisingham includes in her University of Texas document states clearly not only that the Director of Central Intelligence’s CMS, CIA and NSA were the overseers of the MDDS initiative, but that the intended customers of the project were “DoD, IC, and other government organizations”: the Pentagon, the US intelligence community, and other relevant US government agencies.

In other words, the provision of MDDS funding to Brin through Ullman, under the oversight of Thuraisingham and Steinheiser, was fundamentally because they recognized the potential utility of Brin’s work developing Google to the Pentagon, intelligence community, and the federal government at large.

==

The MDDS programme is actually referenced in several papers co-authored by Brin and Page while at Stanford, specifically highlighting its role in financially sponsoring Brin in the development of Google. In their 1998 paper published in the Bulletin of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committeee on Data Engineering, they describe the automation of methods to extract information from the web via “Dual Iterative Pattern Relation Extraction,” the development of “a global ranking of Web pages called PageRank,” and the use of PageRank “to develop a novel search engine called Google.” Through an opening footnote, Sergey Brin confirms he was “Partially supported by the Community Management Staff’s Massive Digital Data Systems Program, NSF grant IRI-96–31952” — confirming that Brin’s work developing Google was indeed partly-funded by the CIA-NSA-MDDS program.

This NSF grant identified alongside the MDDS, whose project report lists Brin among the students supported (without mentioning the MDDS), was different to the NSF grant to Larry Page that included funding from DARPA and NASA. The project report, authored by Brin’s supervisor Prof. Ullman, goes on to say under the section ‘Indications of Success’ that “there are some new stories of startups based on NSF-supported research.” Under ‘Project Impact,’ the report remarks: “Finally, the google project has also gone commercial as Google.com.”

Thuraisingham’s account, including her new amended version, therefore demonstrates that the CIA-NSA-MDDS program was not only partly funding Brin throughout his work with Larry Page developing Google, but that senior US intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded. Google, then, had been enabled with a “significant” amount of seed-funding and oversight from the Pentagon: namely, the CIA, NSA, and DARPA.

The DoD could not be reached for comment.

When I asked Prof. Ullman to confirm whether or not Brin was partly funded under the intelligence community’s MDDS program, and whether Ullman was aware that Brin was regularly briefing the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser on his progress in developing the Google search engine, Ullman’s responses were evasive: “May I know whom you represent and why you are interested in these issues? Who are your ‘sources’?” He also denied that Brin played a significant role in developing the ‘query flocks’ system, although it is clear from Brin’s papers that he did draw on that work in co-developing the PageRank system with Page.

When I asked Ullman whether he was denying the US intelligence community’s role in supporting Brin during the development of Google, he said: “I am not going to dignify this nonsense with a denial. If you won’t explain what your theory is, and what point you are trying to make, I am not going to help you in the slightest.”

The MDDS abstract published online at the University of Texas confirms that the rationale for the CIA-NSA project was to “provide seed money to develop data management technologies which are of high-risk and high-pay-off,” including techniques for “querying, browsing, and filtering; transaction processing; accesses methods and indexing; metadata management and data modelling; and integrating heterogeneous databases; as well as developing appropriate architectures.” The ultimate vision of the program was to “provide for the seamless access and fusion of massive amounts of data, information and knowledge in a heterogeneous, real-time environment” for use by the Pentagon, intelligence community and potentially across government.

These revelations corroborate the claims of Robert Steele, former senior CIA officer and a founding civilian deputy director of the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, whom I interviewed for The Guardian last year on open source intelligence. Citing sources at the CIA, Steele had said in 2006 that Steinheiser, an old colleague of his, was the CIA’s main liaison at Google and had arranged early funding for the pioneering IT firm. At the time, Wired founder John Batelle managed to get this official denial from a Google spokesperson in response to Steele’s assertions:

“The statements related to Google are completely untrue.”
This time round, despite multiple requests and conversations, a Google spokesperson declined to comment.

UPDATE: As of 5.41PM GMT [22nd Jan 2015], Google’s director of corporate communication got in touch and asked me to include the following statement:

“Sergey Brin was not part of the Query Flocks Program at Stanford, nor were any of his projects funded by US Intelligence bodies.”
This is what I wrote back:

My response to that statement would be as follows: Brin himself in his own paper acknowledges funding from the Community Management Staff of the Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) initiative, which was supplied through the NSF. The MDDS was an intelligence community program set up by the CIA and NSA. I also have it on record, as noted in the piece, from Prof. Thuraisingham of University of Texas that she managed the MDDS program on behalf of the US intelligence community, and that her and the CIA’s Rick Steinheiser met Brin every three months or so for two years to be briefed on his progress developing Google and PageRank. Whether Brin worked on query flocks or not is neither here nor there.
In that context, you might want to consider the following questions:
1) Does Google deny that Brin’s work was part-funded by the MDDS via an NSF grant?
2) Does Google deny that Brin reported regularly to Thuraisingham and Steinheiser from around 1996 to 1998 until September that year when he presented the Google search engine to them?
Total Information Awareness
A call for papers for the MDDS was sent out via email list on November 3rd 1993 from senior US intelligence official David Charvonia, director of the research and development coordination office of the intelligence community’s CMS. The reaction from Tatu Ylonen (celebrated inventor of the widely used secure shell [SSH] data protection protocol) to his colleagues on the email list is telling: “Crypto relevance? Makes you think whether you should protect your data.” The email also confirms that defense contractor and Highlands Forum partner, SAIC, was managing the MDDS submission process, with abstracts to be sent to Jackie Booth of the CIA’s Office of Research and Development via a SAIC email address.

By 1997, Thuraisingham reveals, shortly before Google became incorporated and while she was still overseeing the development of its search engine software at Stanford, her thoughts turned to the national security applications of the MDDS program. In the acknowledgements to her book, Web Data Mining and Applications in Business Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism (2003), Thuraisingham writes that she and “Dr. Rick Steinheiser of the CIA, began discussions with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on applying data-mining for counter-terrorism,” an idea that resulted directly from the MDDS program which partly funded Google. “These discussions eventually developed into the current EELD (Evidence Extraction and Link Detection) program at DARPA.”

So the very same senior CIA official and CIA-NSA contractor involved in providing the seed-funding for Google were simultaneously contemplating the role of data-mining for counter-terrorism purposes, and were developing ideas for tools actually advanced by DARPA.

Today, as illustrated by her recent oped in the New York Times, Thuraisingham remains a staunch advocate of data-mining for counter-terrorism purposes, but also insists that these methods must be developed by government in cooperation with civil liberties lawyers and privacy advocates to ensure that robust procedures are in place to prevent potential abuse. She points out, damningly, that with the quantity of information being collected, there is a high risk of false positives.

In 1993, when the MDDS program was launched and managed by MITRE Corp. on behalf of the US intelligence community, University of Virginia computer scientist Dr. Anita K. Jones — a MITRE trustee — landed the job of DARPA director and head of research and engineering across the Pentagon. She had been on the board of MITRE since 1988. From 1987 to 1993, Jones simultaneously served on SAIC’s board of directors. As the new head of DARPA from 1993 to 1997, she also co-chaired the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum during the period of Google’s pre-launch development at Stanford under the MDSS.

Thus, when Thuraisingham and Steinheiser were talking to DARPA about the counter-terrorism applications of MDDS research, Jones was DARPA director and Highlands Forum co-chair. That year, Jones left DARPA to return to her post at the University of Virgina. The following year, she joined the board of the National Science Foundation, which of course had also just funded Brin and Page, and also returned to the board of SAIC. When she left DoD, Senator Chuck Robb paid Jones the following tribute : “She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century.”

Dr. Anita Jones, head of DARPA from 1993–1997, and co-chair of the Pentagon Highlands Forum from 1995–1997, during which officials in charge of the CIA-NSA-MDSS program were funding Google, and in communication with DARPA about data-mining for counterterrorism
On the board of the National Science Foundation from 1992 to 1998 (including a stint as chairman from 1996) was Richard N. Zare. This was the period in which the NSF sponsored Sergey Brin and Larry Page in association with DARPA. In June 1994, Prof. Zare, a chemist at Stanford, participated with Prof. Jeffrey Ullman (who supervised Sergey Brin’s research), on a panel sponsored by Stanford and the National Research Council discussing the need for scientists to show how their work “ties to national needs.” The panel brought together scientists and policymakers, including “Washington insiders.”

DARPA’s EELD program, inspired by the work of Thuraisingham and Steinheiser under Jones’ watch, was rapidly adapted and integrated with a suite of tools to conduct comprehensive surveillance under the Bush administration.

According to DARPA official Ted Senator, who led the EELD program for the agency’s short-lived Information Awareness Office, EELD was among a range of “promising techniques” being prepared for integration “into the prototype TIA system.” TIA stood for Total Information Awareness, and was the main global electronic eavesdropping and data-mining program deployed by the Bush administration after 9/11. TIA had been set up by Iran-Contra conspirator Admiral John Poindexter, who was appointed in 2002 by Bush to lead DARPA’s new Information Awareness Office.

The Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) was another contractor among 26 companies (also including SAIC) that received million dollar contracts from DARPA (the specific quantities remained classified) under Poindexter, to push forward the TIA surveillance program in 2002 onwards. The research included “behaviour-based profiling,” “automated detection, identification and tracking” of terrorist activity, among other data-analyzing projects. At this time, PARC’s director and chief scientist was John Seely Brown. Both Brown and Poindexter were Pentagon Highlands Forum participants — Brown on a regular basis until recently.

TIA was purportedly shut down in 2003 due to public opposition after the program was exposed in the media, but the following year Poindexter participated in a Pentagon Highlands Group session in Singapore, alongside defense and security officials from around the world. Meanwhile, Ted Senator continued to manage the EELD program among other data-mining and analysis projects at DARPA until 2006, when he left to become a vice president at SAIC. He is now a SAIC/Leidos technical fellow.

Google, DARPA and the money trail
Long before the appearance of Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Stanford University’s computer science department had a close working relationship with US military intelligence. A letter dated November 5th 1984 from the office of renowned artificial intelligence (AI) expert, Prof Edward Feigenbaum, addressed to Rick Steinheiser, gives the latter directions to Stanford’s Heuristic Programming Project, addressing Steinheiser as a member of the “AI Steering Committee.” A list of attendees at a contractor conference around that time, sponsored by the Pentagon’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), includes Steinheiser as a delegate under the designation “OPNAV Op-115” — which refers to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations’ program on operational readiness, which played a major role in advancing digital systems for the military.

From the 1970s, Prof. Feigenbaum and his colleagues had been running Stanford’s Heuristic Programming Project under contract with DARPA, continuing through to the 1990s. Feigenbaum alone had received around over $7 million in this period for his work from DARPA, along with other funding from the NSF, NASA, and ONR.

Brin’s supervisor at Stanford, Prof. Jeffrey Ullman, was in 1996 part of a joint funding project of DARPA’s Intelligent Integration of Information program. That year, Ullman co-chaired DARPA-sponsored meetings on data exchange between multiple systems.

In September 1998, the same month that Sergey Brin briefed US intelligence representatives Steinheiser and Thuraisingham, tech entrepreneurs Andreas Bechtolsheim and David Cheriton invested $100,000 each in Google. Both investors were connected to DARPA.

As a Stanford PhD student in electrical engineering in the 1980s, Bechtolsheim’s pioneering SUN workstation project had been funded by DARPA and the Stanford computer science department — this research was the foundation of Bechtolsheim’s establishment of Sun Microsystems, which he co-founded with William Joy.

As for Bechtolsheim’s co-investor in Google, David Cheriton, the latter is a long-time Stanford computer science professor who has an even more entrenched relationship with DARPA. His bio at the University of Alberta, which in November 2014 awarded him an honorary science doctorate, says that Cheriton’s “research has received the support of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for over 20 years.”

In the meantime, Bechtolsheim left Sun Microsystems in 1995, co-founding Granite Systems with his fellow Google investor Cheriton as a partner. They sold Granite to Cisco Systems in 1996, retaining significant ownership of Granite, and becoming senior Cisco executives.

An email obtained from the Enron Corpus (a database of 600,000 emails acquired by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and later released to the public) from Richard O’Neill, inviting Enron executives to participate in the Highlands Forum, shows that Cisco and Granite executives are intimately connected to the Pentagon. The email reveals that in May 2000, Bechtolsheim’s partner and Sun Microsystems co-founder, William Joy — who was then chief scientist and corporate executive officer there — had attended the Forum to discuss nanotechnology and molecular computing.

In 1999, Joy had also co-chaired the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, overseeing a report acknowledging that DARPA had:

“… revised its priorities in the 90’s so that all information technology funding was judged in terms of its benefit to the warfighter.”
Throughout the 1990s, then, DARPA’s funding to Stanford, including Google, was explicitly about developing technologies that could augment the Pentagon’s military intelligence operations in war theatres.

The Joy report recommended more federal government funding from the Pentagon, NASA, and other agencies to the IT sector. Greg Papadopoulos, another of Bechtolsheim’s colleagues as then Sun Microsystems chief technology officer, also attended a Pentagon Highlands’ Forum meeting in September 2000.

In November, the Pentagon Highlands Forum hosted Sue Bostrom, who was vice president for the internet at Cisco, sitting on the company’s board alongside Google co-investors Bechtolsheim and Cheriton. The Forum also hosted Lawrence Zuriff, then a managing partner of Granite, which Bechtolsheim and Cheriton had sold to Cisco. Zuriff had previously been an SAIC contractor from 1993 to 1994, working with the Pentagon on national security issues, specifically for Marshall’s Office of Net Assessment. In 1994, both the SAIC and the ONA were, of course, involved in co-establishing the Pentagon Highlands Forum. Among Zuriff’s output during his SAIC tenure was a paper titled ‘Understanding Information War’, delivered at a SAIC-sponsored US Army Roundtable on the Revolution in Military Affairs.

After Google’s incorporation, the company received $25 million in equity funding in 1999 led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. According to Homeland Security Today, “A number of Sequoia-bankrolled start-ups have contracted with the Department of Defense, especially after 9/11 when Sequoia’s Mark Kvamme met with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss the application of emerging technologies to warfighting and intelligence collection.” Similarly, Kleiner Perkins had developed “a close relationship” with In-Q-Tel, the CIA venture capitalist firm that funds start-ups “to advance ‘priority’ technologies of value” to the intelligence community.

John Doerr, who led the Kleiner Perkins investment in Google obtaining a board position, was a major early investor in Becholshtein’s Sun Microsystems at its launch. He and his wife Anne are the main funders behind Rice University’s Center for Engineering Leadership (RCEL), which in 2009 received $16 million from DARPA for its platform-aware-compilation-environment (PACE) ubiquitous computing R&D program. Doerr also has a close relationship with the Obama administration, which he advised shortly after it took power to ramp up Pentagon funding to the tech industry. In 2013, at the Fortune Brainstorm TECH conference, Doerr applauded “how the DoD’s DARPA funded GPS, CAD, most of the major computer science departments, and of course, the Internet.”

From inception, in other words, Google was incubated, nurtured and financed by interests that were directly affiliated or closely aligned with the US military intelligence community: many of whom were embedded in the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

Google captures the Pentagon
In 2003, Google began customizing its search engine under special contract with the CIA for its Intelink Management Office, “overseeing top-secret, secret and sensitive but unclassified intranets for CIA and other IC agencies,” according to Homeland Security Today. That year, CIA funding was also being “quietly” funneled through the National Science Foundation to projects that might help create “new capabilities to combat terrorism through advanced technology.”

The following year, Google bought the firm Keyhole, which had originally been funded by In-Q-Tel. Using Keyhole, Google began developing the advanced satellite mapping software behind Google Earth. Former DARPA director and Highlands Forum co-chair Anita Jones had been on the board of In-Q-Tel at this time, and remains so today.

Then in November 2005, In-Q-Tel issued notices to sell $2.2 million of Google stocks. Google’s relationship with US intelligence was further brought to light when an IT contractor told a closed Washington DC conference of intelligence professionals on a not-for-attribution basis that at least one US intelligence agency was working to “leverage Google’s [user] data monitoring” capability as part of an effort to acquire data of “national security intelligence interest.”

A photo on Flickr dated March 2007 reveals that Google research director and AI expert Peter Norvig attended a Pentagon Highlands Forum meeting that year in Carmel, California. Norvig’s intimate connection to the Forum as of that year is also corroborated by his role in guest editing the 2007 Forum reading list.

The photo below shows Norvig in conversation with Lewis Shepherd, who at that time was senior technology officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency, responsible for investigating, approving, and architecting “all new hardware/software systems and acquisitions for the Global Defense Intelligence IT Enterprise,” including “big data technologies.” Shepherd now works at Microsoft. Norvig was a computer research scientist at Stanford University in 1991 before joining Bechtolsheim’s Sun Microsystems as senior scientist until 1994, and going on to head up NASA’s computer science division.

Lewis Shepherd (left), then a senior technology officer at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, talking to Peter Norvig (right), renowned expert in artificial intelligence expert and director of research at Google. This photo is from a Highlands Forum meeting in 2007.
Norvig shows up on O’Neill’s Google Plus profile as one of his close connections. Scoping the rest of O’Neill’s Google Plus connections illustrates that he is directly connected not just to a wide range of Google executives, but also to some of the biggest names in the US tech community.

Those connections include Michele Weslander Quaid, an ex-CIA contractor and former senior Pentagon intelligence official who is now Google’s chief technology officer where she is developing programs to “best fit government agencies’ needs”; Elizabeth Churchill, Google director of user experience; James Kuffner, a humanoid robotics expert who now heads up Google’s robotics division and who introduced the term ‘cloud robotics’; Mark Drapeau, director of innovation engagement for Microsoft’s public sector business; Lili Cheng, general manager of Microsoft’s Future Social Experiences (FUSE) Labs; Jon Udell, Microsoft ‘evangelist’; Cory Ondrejka, vice president of engineering at Facebook; to name just a few.

In 2010, Google signed a multi-billion dollar no-bid contract with the NSA’s sister agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). The contract was to use Google Earth for visualization services for the NGA. Google had developed the software behind Google Earth by purchasing Keyhole from the CIA venture firm In-Q-Tel.

Then a year after, in 2011, another of O’Neill’s Google Plus connections, Michele Quaid — who had served in executive positions at the NGA, National Reconnaissance Office and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — left her government role to become Google ‘innovation evangelist’ and the point-person for seeking government contracts. Quaid’s last role before her move to Google was as a senior representative of the Director of National Intelligence to the Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Task Force, and a senior advisor to the undersecretary of defense for intelligence’s director of Joint and Coalition Warfighter Support (J&CWS). Both roles involved information operations at their core. Before her Google move, in other words, Quaid worked closely with the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, to which the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum is subordinate. Quaid has herself attended the Forum, though precisely when and how often I could not confirm.

In March 2012, then DARPA director Regina Dugan — who in that capacity was also co-chair of the Pentagon Highlands Forum — followed her colleague Quaid into Google to lead the company’s new Advanced Technology and Projects Group. During her Pentagon tenure, Dugan led on strategic cyber security and social media, among other initiatives. She was responsible for focusing “an increasing portion” of DARPA’s work “on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs,” securing $500 million of government funding for DARPA cyber research from 2012 to 2017.

Regina Dugan, former head of DARPA and Highlands Forum co-chair, now a senior Google executive — trying her best to look the part
By November 2014, Google’s chief AI and robotics expert James Kuffner was a delegate alongside O’Neill at the Highlands Island Forum 2014 in Singapore, to explore ‘Advancement in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Society, Security and Conflict.’ The event included 26 delegates from Austria, Israel, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, Britain and the US, from both industry and government. Kuffner’s association with the Pentagon, however, began much earlier. In 1997, Kuffner was a researcher during his Stanford PhD for a Pentagon-funded project on networked autonomous mobile robots, sponsored by DARPA and the US Navy.

Rumsfeld and persistent surveillance
In sum, many of Google’s most senior executives are affiliated with the Pentagon Highlands Forum, which throughout the period of Google’s growth over the last decade, has surfaced repeatedly as a connecting and convening force. The US intelligence community’s incubation of Google from inception occurred through a combination of direct sponsorship and informal networks of financial influence, themselves closely aligned with Pentagon interests.

The Highlands Forum itself has used the informal relationship building of such private networks to bring together defense and industry sectors, enabling the fusion of corporate and military interests in expanding the covert surveillance apparatus in the name of national security. The power wielded by the shadow network represented in the Forum can, however, be gauged most clearly from its impact during the Bush administration, when it played a direct role in literally writing the strategies and doctrines behind US efforts to achieve ‘information superiority.’

In December 2001, O’Neill confirmed that strategic discussions at the Highlands Forum were feeding directly into Andrew Marshall’s DoD-wide strategic review ordered by President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld to upgrade the military, including the Quadrennial Defense Review — and that some of the earliest Forum meetings “resulted in the writing of a group of DoD policies, strategies, and doctrine for the services on information warfare.” That process of “writing” the Pentagon’s information warfare policies “was done in conjunction with people who understood the environment differently — not only US citizens, but also foreign citizens, and people who were developing corporate IT.”

The Pentagon’s post-9/11 information warfare doctrines were, then, written not just by national security officials from the US and abroad: but also by powerful corporate entities in the defense and technology sectors.

In April that year, Gen. James McCarthy had completed his defense transformation review ordered by Rumsfeld. His report repeatedly highlighted mass surveillance as integral to DoD transformation. As for Marshall, his follow-up report for Rumsfeld was going to develop a blueprint determining the Pentagon’s future in the ‘information age.’

O’Neill also affirmed that to develop information warfare doctrine, the Forum had held extensive discussions on electronic surveillance and “what constitutes an act of war in an information environment.” Papers feeding into US defense policy written through the late 1990s by RAND consultants John Arquilla and David Rondfeldt, both longstanding Highlands Forum members, were produced “as a result of those meetings,” exploring policy dilemmas on how far to take the goal of ‘Information Superiority.’ “One of the things that was shocking to the American public was that we weren’t pilfering Milosevic’s accounts electronically when we in fact could,” commented O’Neill.

Although the R&D process around the Pentagon transformation strategy remains classified, a hint at the DoD discussions going on in this period can be gleaned from a 2005 US Army School of Advanced Military Studies research monograph in the DoD journal, Military Review, authored by an active Army intelligence officer.

“The idea of Persistent Surveillance as a transformational capability has circulated within the national Intelligence Community (IC) and the Department of Defense (DoD) for at least three years,” the paper said, referencing the Rumsfeld-commissioned transformation study.

The Army paper went on to review a range of high-level official military documents, including one from the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, showing that “Persistent Surveillance” was a fundamental theme of the information-centric vision for defense policy across the Pentagon.

We now know that just two months before O’Neill’s address at Harvard in 2001, under the TIA program, President Bush had secretly authorized the NSA’s domestic surveillance of Americans without court-approved warrants, in what appears to have been an illegal modification of the ThinThread data-mining project — as later exposed by NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake.

The surveillance-startup nexus
From here on, Highlands Forum partner SAIC played a key role in the NSA roll out from inception. Shortly after 9/11, Brian Sharkey, chief technology officer of SAIC’s ELS3 Sector (focusing on IT systems for emergency responders), teamed up with John Poindexter to propose the TIA surveillance program. SAIC’s Sharkey had previously been deputy director of the Information Systems Office at DARPA through the 1990s.

Meanwhile, around the same time, SAIC vice president for corporate development, Samuel Visner, became head of the NSA’s signals-intelligence programs. SAIC was then among a consortium receiving a $280 million contract to develop one of the NSA’s secret eavesdropping systems. By 2003, Visner returned to SAIC to become director of strategic planning and business development of the firm’s intelligence group.

That year, the NSA consolidated its TIA programme of warrantless electronic surveillance, to keep “track of individuals” and understand “how they fit into models” through risk profiles of American citizens and foreigners. TIA was doing this by integrating databases on finance, travel, medical, educational and other records into a “virtual, centralized grand database.”

This was also the year that the Bush administration drew up its notorious Information Operations Roadmap. Describing the internet as a “vulnerable weapons system,” Rumsfeld’s IO roadmap had advocated that Pentagon strategy “should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will ‘fight the net’ as it would an enemy weapons system.” The US should seek “maximum control” of the “full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems,” advocated the document.

The following year, John Poindexter, who had proposed and run the TIA surveillance program via his post at DARPA, was in Singapore participating in the Highlands 2004 Island Forum. Other delegates included then Highlands Forum co-chair and Pentagon CIO Linton Wells; president of notorious Pentagon information warfare contractor, John Rendon; Karl Lowe, director of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Joint Advanced Warfighting Division; Air Vice Marshall Stephen Dalton, capability manager for information superiority at the UK Ministry of Defense; Lt. Gen. Johan Kihl, Swedish army Supreme Commander HQ’s chief of staff; among others.

As of 2006, SAIC had been awarded a multi-million dollar NSA contract to develop a big data-mining project called ExecuteLocus, despite the colossal $1 billion failure of its preceding contract, known as ‘Trailblazer.’ Core components of TIA were being “quietly continued” under “new code names,” according to Foreign Policy’s Shane Harris, but had been concealed “behind the veil of the classified intelligence budget.” The new surveillance program had by then been fully transitioned from DARPA’s jurisdiction to the NSA.

This was also the year of yet another Singapore Island Forum led by Richard O’Neill on behalf of the Pentagon, which included senior defense and industry officials from the US, UK, Australia, France, India and Israel. Participants also included senior technologists from Microsoft, IBM, as well as Gilman Louie, partner at technology investment firm Alsop Louie Partners.

Gilman Louie is a former CEO of In-Q-Tel — the CIA firm investing especially in start-ups developing data mining technology. In-Q-Tel was founded in 1999 by the CIA’s Directorate of Science and Technology, under which the Office of Research and Development (ORD) — which was part of the Google-funding MDSS program — had operated. The idea was to essentially replace the functions once performed by the ORD, by mobilizing the private sector to develop information technology solutions for the entire intelligence community.

Louie had led In-Q-Tel from 1999 until January 2006 — including when Google bought Keyhole, the In-Q-Tel-funded satellite mapping software. Among his colleagues on In-Q-Tel’s board in this period were former DARPA director and Highlands Forum co-chair Anita Jones (who is still there), as well as founding board member William Perry: the man who had appointed O’Neill to set-up the Highlands Forum in the first place. Joining Perry as a founding In-Q-Tel board member was John Seely Brown, then chief scientist at Xerox Corp and director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) from 1990 to 2002, who is also a long-time senior Highlands Forum member since inception.

In addition to the CIA, In-Q-Tel has also been backed by the FBI, NGA, and Defense Intelligence Agency, among other agencies. More than 60 percent of In-Q-Tel’s investments under Louie’s watch were “in companies that specialize in automatically collecting, sifting through and understanding oceans of information,” according to Medill School of Journalism’s News21, which also noted that Louie himself had acknowledged it was not clear “whether privacy and civil liberties will be protected” by government’s use of these technologies “for national security.”

The transcript of Richard O’Neill’s late 2001 seminar at Harvard shows that the Pentagon Highlands Forum had first engaged Gilman Louie long before the Island Forum, in fact, shortly after 9/11 to explore “what’s going on with In-Q-Tel.” That Forum session focused on how to “take advantage of the speed of the commercial market that wasn’t present inside the science and technology community of Washington” and to understand “the implications for the DoD in terms of the strategic review, the QDR, Hill action, and the stakeholders.” Participants of the meeting included “senior military people,” combatant commanders, “several of the senior flag officers,” some “defense industry people” and various US representatives including Republican Congressman William Mac Thornberry and Democrat Senator Joseph Lieberman.

Both Thornberry and Lieberman are staunch supporters of NSA surveillance, and have consistently acted to rally support for pro-war, pro-surveillance legislation. O’Neill’s comments indicate that the Forum’s role is not just to enable corporate contractors to write Pentagon policy, but to rally political support for government policies adopted through the Forum’s informal brand of shadow networking.

Repeatedly, O’Neill told his Harvard audience that his job as Forum president was to scope case studies from real companies across the private sector, like eBay and Human Genome Sciences, to figure out the basis of US ‘Information Superiority’ — “how to dominate” the information market — and leverage this for “what the president and the secretary of defense wanted to do with regard to transformation of the DoD and the strategic review.”

By 2007, a year after the Island Forum meeting that included Gilman Louie, Facebook received its second round of $12.7 million worth of funding from Accel Partners. Accel was headed up by James Breyer, former chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) where Louie also served on the board while still CEO of In-Q-Tel. Both Louie and Breyer had previously served together on the board of BBN Technologies — which had recruited ex-DARPA chief and In-Q-Tel trustee Anita Jones.

Facebook’s 2008 round of funding was led by Greylock Venture Capital, which invested $27.5 million. The firm’s senior partners include Howard Cox, another former NVCA chair who also sits on the board of In-Q-Tel. Apart from Breyer and Zuckerberg, Facebook’s only other board member is Peter Thiel, co-founder of defense contractor Palantir which provides all sorts of data-mining and visualization technologies to US government, military and intelligence agencies, including the NSA and FBI, and which itself was nurtured to financial viability by Highlands Forum members.

Palantir co-founders Thiel and Alex Karp met with John Poindexter in 2004, according to Wired, the same year Poindexter had attended the Highlands Island Forum in Singapore. They met at the home of Richard Perle, another Andrew Marshall acolyte. Poindexter helped Palantir open doors, and to assemble “a legion of advocates from the most influential strata of government.” Thiel had also met with Gilman Louie of In-Q-Tel, securing the backing of the CIA in this early phase.

And so we come full circle. Data-mining programs like ExecuteLocus and projects linked to it, which were developed throughout this period, apparently laid the groundwork for the new NSA programmes eventually disclosed by Edward Snowden. By 2008, as Facebook received its next funding round from Greylock Venture Capital, documents and whistleblower testimony confirmed that the NSA was effectively resurrecting the TIA project with a focus on Internet data-mining via comprehensive monitoring of e-mail, text messages, and Web browsing.

We also now know thanks to Snowden that the NSA’s XKeyscore ‘Digital Network Intelligence’ exploitation system was designed to allow analysts to search not just Internet databases like emails, online chats and browsing history, but also telephone services, mobile phone audio, financial transactions and global air transport communications — essentially the entire global telecommunications grid. Highlands Forum partner SAIC played a key role, among other contractors, in producing and administering the NSA’s XKeyscore, and was recently implicated in NSA hacking of the privacy network Tor.

The Pentagon Highlands Forum was therefore intimately involved in all this as a convening network—but also quite directly. Confirming his pivotal role in the expansion of the US-led global surveillance apparatus, then Forum co-chair, Pentagon CIO Linton Wells, told FedTech magazine in 2009 that he had overseen the NSA’s roll out of “an impressive long-term architecture last summer that will provide increasingly sophisticated security until 2015 or so.”

The Goldman Sachs connection
When I asked Wells about the Forum’s role in influencing US mass surveillance, he responded only to say he would prefer not to comment and that he no longer leads the group.

As Wells is no longer in government, this is to be expected — but he is still connected to Highlands. As of September 2014, after delivering his influential white paper on Pentagon transformation, he joined the Monterey Institute for International Studies (MIIS) Cyber Security Initiative (CySec) as a distinguished senior fellow.

Sadly, this was not a form of trying to keep busy in retirement. Wells’ move underscored that the Pentagon’s conception of information warfare is not just about surveillance, but about the exploitation of surveillance to influence both government and public opinion.

The MIIS CySec initiative is now formally partnered with the Pentagon Highlands Forum through a Memorandum of Understanding signed with MIIS provost Dr Amy Sands, who sits on the Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board. The MIIS CySec website states that the MoU signed with Richard O’Neill:

“… paves the way for future joint MIIS CySec-Highlands Group sessions that will explore the impact of technology on security, peace and information engagement. For nearly 20 years the Highlands Group has engaged private sector and government leaders, including the Director of National Intelligence, DARPA, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Singaporean Minister of Defence, in creative conversations to frame policy and technology research areas.”
Who is the financial benefactor of the new Pentagon Highlands-partnered MIIS CySec initiative? According to the MIIS CySec site, the initiative was launched “through a generous donation of seed funding from George Lee.” George C. Lee is a senior partner at Goldman Sachs, where he is chief information officer of the investment banking division, and chairman of the Global Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Group.

But here’s the kicker. In 2011, it was Lee who engineered Facebook’s $50 billion valuation, and previously handled deals for other Highlands-connected tech giants like Google, Microsoft and eBay. Lee’s then boss, Stephen Friedman, a former CEO and chairman of Goldman Sachs, and later senior partner on the firm’s executive board, was a also founding board member of In-Q-Tel alongside Highlands Forum overlord William Perry and Forum member John Seely Brown.

In 2001, Bush appointed Stephen Friedman to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and then to chair that board from 2005 to 2009. Friedman previously served alongside Paul Wolfowitz and others on the 1995–6 presidential commission of inquiry into US intelligence capabilities, and in 1996 on the Jeremiah Panel that produced a report to the Director of the National Reconnaisance Office (NRO) — one of the surveillance agencies plugged into the Highlands Forum. Friedman was on the Jeremiah Panel with Martin Faga, then senior vice president and general manager of MITRE Corp’s Center for Integrated Intelligence Systems — where Thuraisingham, who managed the CIA-NSA-MDDS program that inspired DARPA counter-terrorist data-mining, was also a lead engineer.

In the footnotes to a chapter for the book, Cyberspace and National Security (Georgetown University Press), SAIC/Leidos executive Jeff Cooper reveals that another Goldman Sachs senior partner Philip J. Venables — who as chief information risk officer leads the firm’s programs on information security — delivered a Highlands Forum presentation in 2008 at what was called an ‘Enrichment Session on Deterrence.’ Cooper’s chapter draws on Venables’ presentation at Highlands “with permission.” In 2010, Venables participated with his then boss Friedman at an Aspen Institute meeting on the world economy. For the last few years, Venables has also sat on various NSA cybersecurity award review boards.

In sum, the investment firm responsible for creating the billion dollar fortunes of the tech sensations of the 21st century, from Google to Facebook, is intimately linked to the US military intelligence community; with Venables, Lee and Friedman either directly connected to the Pentagon Highlands Forum, or to senior members of the Forum.

Fighting terror with terror
The convergence of these powerful financial and military interests around the Highlands Forum, through George Lee’s sponsorship of the Forum’s new partner, the MIIS Cysec initiative, is revealing in itself.

MIIS Cysec’s director, Dr, Itamara Lochard, has long been embedded in Highlands. She regularly “presents current research on non-state groups, governance, technology and conflict to the US Office of the Secretary of Defense Highlands Forum,” according to her Tufts University bio. She also, “regularly advises US combatant commanders” and specializes in studying the use of information technology by “violent and non-violent sub-state groups.”

Dr Itamara Lochard is a senior Highlands Forum member and Pentagon information operations expert. She directs the MIIS CyberSec initiative that now supports the Pentagon Highlands Forum with funding from Goldman Sachs partner George Lee, who led the valuations of Facebook and Google.
Dr Lochard maintains a comprehensive database of 1,700 non-state groups including “insurgents, militias, terrorists, complex criminal organizations, organized gangs, malicious cyber actors and strategic non-violent actors,” to analyze their “organizational patterns, areas of cooperation, strategies and tactics.” Notice, here, the mention of “strategic non-violent actors” — which perhaps covers NGOs and other groups or organizations engaged in social political activity or campaigning, judging by the focus of other DoD research programs.

As of 2008, Lochard has been an adjunct professor at the US Joint Special Operations University where she teaches a top secret advanced course in ‘Irregular Warfare’ that she designed for senior US special forces officers. She has previously taught courses on ‘Internal War’ for senior “political-military officers” of various Gulf regimes.

Her views thus disclose much about what the Highlands Forum has been advocating all these years. In 2004, Lochard was co-author of a study for the US Air Force’s Institute for National Security Studies on US strategy toward ‘non-state armed groups.’ The study on the one hand argued that non-state armed groups should be urgently recognized as a ‘tier one security priority,’ and on the other that the proliferation of armed groups “provide strategic opportunities that can be exploited to help achieve policy goals. There have and will be instances where the United States may find collaborating with armed group is in its strategic interests.” But “sophisticated tools” must be developed to differentiate between different groups and understand their dynamics, to determine which groups should be countered, and which could be exploited for US interests. “Armed group profiles can likewise be employed to identify ways in which the United States may assist certain armed groups whose success will be advantageous to US foreign policy objectives.”

In 2008, Wikileaks published a leaked restricted US Army Special Operations field manual, which demonstrated that the sort of thinking advocated by the likes of Highlands expert Lochard had been explicitly adopted by US special forces.

Lochard’s work thus demonstrates that the Highlands Forum sat at the intersection of advanced Pentagon strategy on surveillance, covert operations and irregular warfare: mobilizing mass surveillance to develop detailed information on violent and non-violent groups perceived as potentially threatening to US interests, or offering opportunities for exploitation, thus feeding directly into US covert operations.

That, ultimately, is why the CIA, the NSA, the Pentagon, spawned Google. So they could run their secret dirty wars with even greater efficiency than ever before.

Mass surveillance is about control. It’s promulgators may well claim, and even believe, that it is about control for the greater good, a control that is needed to keep a cap on disorder, to be fully vigilant to the next threat. But in a context of rampant political corruption, widening economic inequalities, and escalating resource stress due to climate change and energy volatility, mass surveillance can become a tool of power to merely perpetuate itself, at the public’s expense.

A major function of mass surveillance that is often overlooked is that of knowing the adversary to such an extent that they can be manipulated into defeat. The problem is that the adversary is not just terrorists. It’s you and me. To this day, the role of information warfare as propaganda has been in full swing, though systematically ignored by much of the media.

Here, INSURGE INTELLIGENCE exposes how the Pentagon Highlands Forum’s co-optation of tech giants like Google to pursue mass surveillance, has played a key role in secret efforts to manipulate the media as part of an information war against the American government, the American people, and the rest of the world: to justify endless war, and ceaseless military expansionism.

The war machine
In September 2013, the website of the Montery Institute for International Studies’ Cyber Security Initiative (MIIS CySec) posted a final version of a paper on ‘cyber-deterrence’ by CIA consultant Jeffrey Cooper, vice president of the US defense contractor SAIC and a founding member of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum. The paper was presented to then NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander at a Highlands Forum session titled ‘Cyber Commons, Engagement and Deterrence’ in 2010.

Gen. Keith Alexander (middle), who served as director of the NSA and chief of the Central Security Service from 2005 to 2014, as well as commander of the US Cyber Command from 2010 to 2014, at the 2010 Highlands Forum session on cyber-deterrence
MIIS CySec is formally partnered with the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum through an MoU signed between the provost and Forum president Richard O’Neill, while the initiative itself is funded by George C. Lee: the Goldman Sachs executive who led the billion dollar valuations of Facebook, Google, eBay, and other tech companies.

Cooper’s eye-opening paper is no longer available at the MIIS site, but a final version of it is available via the logs of a public national security conference hosted by the American Bar Association. Currently, Cooper is chief innovation officer at SAIC/Leidos, which is among a consortium of defense technology firms including Booz Allen Hamilton and others contracted to develop NSA surveillance capabilities.

The Highlands Forum briefing for the NSA chief was commissioned under contract by the undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and based on concepts developed at previous Forum meetings. It was presented to Gen. Alexander at a “closed session” of the Highlands Forum moderated by MIIS Cysec director, Dr. Itamara Lochard, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington DC.

SAIC/Leidos’ Jeffrey Cooper (middle), a founding member of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum, listening to Phil Venables (right), senior partner at Goldman Sachs, at the 2010 Forum session on cyber-deterrence at the CSIS
Like Rumsfeld’s IO roadmap, Cooper’s NSA briefing described “digital information systems” as both a “great source of vulnerability” and “powerful tools and weapons” for “national security.” He advocated the need for US cyber intelligence to maximize “in-depth knowledge” of potential and actual adversaries, so they can identify “every potential leverage point” that can be exploited for deterrence or retaliation. “Networked deterrence” requires the US intelligence community to develop “deep understanding and specific knowledge about the particular networks involved and their patterns of linkages, including types and strengths of bonds,” as well as using cognitive and behavioural science to help predict patterns. His paper went on to essentially set out a theoretical architecture for modelling data obtained from surveillance and social media mining on potential “adversaries” and “counterparties.”

A year after this briefing with the NSA chief, Michele Weslander Quaid — another Highlands Forum delegate — joined Google to become chief technology officer, leaving her senior role in the Pentagon advising the undersecretary of defense for intelligence. Two months earlier, the Defense Science Board (DSB) Task Force on Defense Intelligence published its report on Counterinsurgency (COIN), Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (IRS) Operations. Quaid was among the government intelligence experts who advised and briefed the Defense Science Board Task Force in preparing the report. Another expert who briefed the Task Force was Highlands Forum veteran Linton Wells. The DSB report itself had been commissioned by Bush appointee James Clapper, then undersecretary of defense for intelligence — who had also commissioned Cooper’s Highlands Forum briefing to Gen. Alexander. Clapper is now Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, in which capacity he lied under oath to Congress by claiming in March 2013 that the NSA does not collect any data at all on American citizens.

Michele Quaid’s track record across the US military intelligence community was to transition agencies into using web tools and cloud technology. The imprint of her ideas are evident in key parts of the DSB Task Force report, which described its purpose as being to “influence investment decisions” at the Pentagon “by recommending appropriate intelligence capabilities to assess insurgencies, understand a population in their environment, and support COIN operations.”

The report named 24 countries in South and Southeast Asia, North and West Africa, the Middle East and South America, which would pose “possible COIN challenges” for the US military in coming years. These included Pakistan, Mexico, Yemen, Nigeria, Guatemala, Gaza/West Bank, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, among other “autocratic regimes.” The report argued that “economic crises, climate change, demographic pressures, resource scarcity, or poor governance could cause these states (or others) to fail or become so weak that they become targets for aggressors/insurgents.” From there, the “global information infrastructure” and “social media” can rapidly “amplify the speed, intensity, and momentum of events” with regional implications. “Such areas could become sanctuaries from which to launch attacks on the US homeland, recruit personnel, and finance, train, and supply operations.”

The imperative in this context is to increase the military’s capacity for “left of bang” operations — before the need for a major armed forces commitment — to avoid insurgencies, or pre-empt them while still in incipient phase. The report goes on to conclude that “the Internet and social media are critical sources of social network analysis data in societies that are not only literate, but also connected to the Internet.” This requires “monitoring the blogosphere and other social media across many different cultures and languages” to prepare for “population-centric operations.”

The Pentagon must also increase its capacity for “behavioral modeling and simulation” to “better understand and anticipate the actions of a population” based on “foundation data on populations, human networks, geography, and other economic and social characteristics.” Such “population-centric operations” will also “increasingly” be needed in “nascent resource conflicts, whether based on water-crises, agricultural stress, environmental stress, or rents” from mineral resources. This must include monitoring “population demographics as an organic part of the natural resource framework.”

Other areas for augmentation are “overhead video surveillance,” “high resolution terrain data,” “cloud computing capability,” “data fusion” for all forms of intelligence in a “consistent spatio-temporal framework for organizing and indexing the data,” developing “social science frameworks” that can “support spatio-temporal encoding and analysis,” “distributing multi-form biometric authentication technologies [“such as fingerprints, retina scans and DNA samples”] to the point of service of the most basic administrative processes” in order to “tie identity to all an individual’s transactions.” In addition, the academy must be brought in to help the Pentagon develop “anthropological, socio-cultural, historical, human geographical, educational, public health, and many other types of social and behavioral science data and information” to develop “a deep understanding of populations.”

A few months after joining Google, Quaid represented the company in August 2011 at the Pentagon’s Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) Customer and Industry Forum. The forum would provide “the Services, Combatant Commands, Agencies, coalition forces” the “opportunity to directly engage with industry on innovative technologies to enable and ensure capabilities in support of our Warfighters.” Participants in the event have been integral to efforts to create a “defense enterprise information environment,” defined as “an integrated platform which includes the network, computing, environment, services, information assurance, and NetOps capabilities,” enabling warfighters to “connect, identify themselves, discover and share information, and collaborate across the full spectrum of military operations.” Most of the forum panelists were DoD officials, except for just four industry panelists including Google’s Quaid.

DISA officials have attended the Highlands Forum, too — such as Paul Friedrichs, a technical director and chief engineer of DISA’s Office of the Chief Information Assurance Executive.

Knowledge is Power
Given all this it is hardly surprising that in 2012, a few months after Highlands Forum co-chair Regina Dugan left DARPA to join Google as a senior executive, then NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander was emailing Google’s founding executive Sergey Brin to discuss information sharing for national security. In those emails, obtained under Freedom of Information by investigative journalist Jason Leopold, Gen. Alexander described Google as a “key member of [the US military’s] Defense Industrial Base,” a position Michele Quaid was apparently consolidating. Brin’s jovial relationship with the former NSA chief now makes perfect sense given that Brin had been in contact with representatives of the CIA and NSA, who partly funded and oversaw his creation of the Google search engine, since the mid-1990s.

In July 2014, Quaid spoke at a US Army panel on the creation of a “rapid acquisition cell” to advance the US Army’s “cyber capabilities” as part of the Force 2025 transformation initiative. She told Pentagon officials that “many of the Army’s 2025 technology goals can be realized with commercial technology available or in development today,” re-affirming that “industry is ready to partner with the Army in supporting the new paradigm.” Around the same time, most of the media was trumpeting the idea that Google was trying to distance itself from Pentagon funding, but in reality, Google has switched tactics to independently develop commercial technologies which would have military applications the Pentagon’s transformation goals.

Yet Quaid is hardly the only point-person in Google’s relationship with the US military intelligence community.

One year after Google bought the satellite mapping software Keyhole from CIA venture capital firm In-Q-Tel in 2004, In-Q-Tel’s director of technical assessment Rob Painter — who played a key role in In-Q-Tel’s Keyhole investment in the first place — moved to Google. At In-Q-Tel, Painter’s work focused on identifying, researching and evaluating “new start-up technology firms that were believed to offer tremendous value to the CIA, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.” Indeed, the NGA had confirmed that its intelligence obtained via Keyhole was used by the NSA to support US operations in Iraq from 2003 onwards.

A former US Army special operations intelligence officer, Painter’s new job at Google as of July 2005 was federal manager of what Keyhole was to become: Google Earth Enterprise. By 2007, Painter had become Google’s federal chief technologist.

That year, Painter told the Washington Post that Google was “in the beginning stages” of selling advanced secret versions of its products to the US government. “Google has ramped up its sales force in the Washington area in the past year to adapt its technology products to the needs of the military, civilian agencies and the intelligence community,” the Post reported. The Pentagon was already using a version of Google Earth developed in partnership with Lockheed Martin to “display information for the military on the ground in Iraq,” including “mapping out displays of key regions of the country” and outlining “Sunni and Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, as well as US and Iraqi military bases in the city. Neither Lockheed nor Google would say how the geospatial agency uses the data.” Google aimed to sell the government new “enhanced versions of Google Earth” and “search engines that can be used internally by agencies.”

White House records leaked in 2010 showed that Google executives had held several meetings with senior US National Security Council officials. Alan Davidson, Google’s government affairs director, had at least three meetings with officials of the National Security Council in 2009, including White House senior director for Russian affairs Mike McFaul and Middle East advisor Daniel Shapiro. It also emerged from a Google patent application that the company had deliberately been collecting ‘payload’ data from private wifi networks that would enable the identification of “geolocations.” In the same year, we now know, Google had signed an agreement with the NSA giving the agency open-ended access to the personal information of its users, and its hardware and software, in the name of cyber security — agreements that Gen. Alexander was busy replicating with hundreds of telecoms CEOs around the country.

Thus, it is not just Google that is a key contributor and foundation of the US military-industrial complex: it is the entire Internet, and the wide range of private sector companies — many nurtured and funded under the mantle of the US intelligence community (or powerful financiers embedded in that community) — which sustain the Internet and the telecoms infrastructure; it is also the myriad of start-ups selling cutting edge technologies to the CIA’s venture firm In-Q-Tel, where they can then be adapted and advanced for applications across the military intelligence community. Ultimately, the global surveillance apparatus and the classified tools used by agencies like the NSA to administer it, have been almost entirely made by external researchers and private contractors like Google, which operate outside the Pentagon.

This structure, mirrored in the workings of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum, allows the Pentagon to rapidly capitalize on technological innovations it would otherwise miss, while also keeping the private sector at arms length, at least ostensibly, to avoid uncomfortable questions about what such technology is actually being used for.

But isn’t it obvious, really? The Pentagon is about war, whether overt or covert. By helping build the technological surveillance infrastructure of the NSA, firms like Google are complicit in what the military-industrial complex does best: kill for cash.

As the nature of mass surveillance suggests, its target is not merely terrorists, but by extension, ‘terrorism suspects’ and ‘potential terrorists,’ the upshot being that entire populations — especially political activists — must be targeted by US intelligence surveillance to identify active and future threats, and to be vigilant against hypothetical populist insurgencies both at home and abroad. Predictive analytics and behavioural profiles play a pivotal role here.

Mass surveillance and data-mining also now has a distinctive operational purpose in assisting with the lethal execution of special operations, selecting targets for the CIA’s drone strike kill lists via dubious algorithms, for instance, along with providing geospatial and other information for combatant commanders on land, air and sea, among many other functions. A single social media post on Twitter or Facebook is enough to trigger being placed on secret terrorism watch-lists solely due to a vaguely defined hunch or suspicion; and can potentially even land a suspect on a kill list.

The push for indiscriminate, comprehensive mass surveillance by the military-industrial complex — encompassing the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, defense contractors, and supposedly friendly tech giants like Google and Facebook — is therefore not an end in itself, but an instrument of power, whose goal is self-perpetuation. But there is also a self-rationalizing justification for this goal: while being great for the military-industrial complex, it is also, supposedly, great for everyone else.

The ‘long war’
No better illustration of the truly chauvinistic, narcissistic, and self-congratulatory ideology of power at the heart of the military-industrial complex is a book by long-time Highlands Forum delegate, Dr. Thomas Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map. Barnett was assistant for strategic futures in the Pentagon’s Office of Force Transformation from 2001 to 2003, and had been recommended to Richard O’Neill by his boss Vice Admiral Arthur Cebrowski. Apart from becoming a New York Times bestseller, Barnett’s book had been read far and wide in the US military, by senior defense officials in Washington and combatant commanders operating on the ground in the Middle East.

Barnett first attended the Pentagon Highlands Forum in 1998, then was invited to deliver a briefing about his work at the Forum on December 7th 2004, which was attended by senior Pentagon officials, energy experts, internet entrepreneurs, and journalists. Barnett received a glowing review in the Washington Post from his Highlands Forum buddy David Ignatius a week later, and an endorsement from another Forum friend, Thomas Friedman, both of which helped massively boost his credibility and readership.

Barnett’s vision is neoconservative to the root. He sees the world as divided into essentially two realms: The Core, which consists of advanced countries playing by the rules of economic globalization (the US, Canada, UK, Europe and Japan) along with developing countries committed to getting there (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and some others); and the rest of the world, which is The Gap, a disparate wilderness of dangerous and lawless countries defined fundamentally by being “disconnected” from the wonders of globalization. This includes most of the Middle East and Africa, large swathes of South America, as well as much of Central Asia and Eastern Europe. It is the task of the United States to “shrink The Gap,” by spreading the cultural and economic “rule-set” of globalization that characterizes The Core, and by enforcing security worldwide to enable that “rule-set” to spread.

These two functions of US power are captured by Barnett’s concepts of “Leviathan” and “System Administrator.” The former is about rule-setting to facilitate the spread of capitalist markets, regulated via military and civilian law. The latter is about projecting military force into The Gap in an open-ended global mission to enforce security and engage in nation-building. Not “rebuilding,” he is keen to emphasize, but building “new nations.”

For Barnett, the Bush administration’s 2002 introduction of the Patriot Act at home, with its crushing of habeas corpus, and the National Security Strategy abroad, with its opening up of unilateral, pre-emptive war, represented the beginning of the necessary re-writing of rule-sets in The Core to embark on this noble mission. This is the only way for the US to achieve security, writes Barnett, because as long as The Gap exists, it will always be a source of lawless violence and disorder. One paragraph in particular sums up his vision:

“America as global cop creates security. Security creates common rules. Rules attract foreign investment. Investment creates infrastructure. Infrastructure creates access to natural resources. Resources create economic growth. Growth creates stability. Stability creates markets. And once you’re a growing, stable part of the global market, you’re part of the Core. Mission accomplished.”
Much of what Barnett predicted would need to happen to fulfill this vision, despite its neoconservative bent, is still being pursued under Obama. In the near future, Barnett had predicted, US military forces will be dispatched beyond Iraq and Afghanistan to places like Uzbekistan, Djibouti, Azerbaijan, Northwest Africa, Southern Africa and South America.

Barnett’s Pentagon briefing was greeted with near universal enthusiasm. The Forum had even purchased copies of his book and had them distributed to all Forum delegates, and in May 2005, Barnett was invited back to participate in an entire Forum themed around his “SysAdmin” concept.

The Highlands Forum has thus played a leading role in defining the Pentagon’s entire conceptualization of the ‘war on terror.’ Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a retired IMB vice president who co-chaired the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee from 1997 to 2001, described his experience of one 2007 Forum meeting in telling terms:

“Then there is the War on Terror, which DoD has started to refer to as the Long War, a term that I first heard at the Forum. It seems very appropriate to describe the overall conflict in which we now find ourselves. This is a truly global conflict… the conflicts we are now in have much more of the feel of a battle of civilizations or cultures trying to destroy our very way of life and impose their own.”
The problem is that outside this powerful Pentagon-hosted clique, not everyone else agrees. “I’m not convinced that Barnett’s cure would be any better than the disease,” wrote Dr. Karen Kwiatowski, a former senior Pentagon analyst in the Near East and South Asia section, who blew the whistle on how her department deliberately manufactured false information in the run-up to the Iraq War. “It would surely cost far more in American liberty, constitutional democracy and blood than it would be worth.”

Yet the equation of “shrinking The Gap” with sustaining the national security of The Core leads to a slippery slope. It means that if the US is prevented from playing this leadership role as “global cop,” The Gap will widen, The Core will shrink, and the entire global order could unravel. By this logic, the US simply cannot afford government or public opinion to reject the legitimacy of its mission. If it did so, it would allow The Gap to grow out of control, undermining The Core, and potentially destroying it, along with The Core’s protector, America. Therefore, “shrinking The Gap” is not just a security imperative: it is such an existential priority, that it must be backed up with information war to demonstrate to the world the legitimacy of the entire project.

Based on O’Neill’s principles of information warfare as articulated in his 1989 US Navy brief, the targets of information war are not just populations in The Gap, but domestic populations in The Core, and their governments: including the US government. That secret brief, which according to former senior US intelligence official John Alexander was read by the Pentagon’s top leadership, argued that information war must be targeted at: adversaries to convince them of their vulnerability; potential partners around the world so they accept “the cause as just”; and finally, civilian populations and the political leadership so they believe that “the cost” in blood and treasure is worth it.

Barnett’s work was plugged by the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum because it fit the bill, in providing a compelling ‘feel good’ ideology for the US military-industrial complex.

But neoconservative ideology, of course, hardly originated with Barnett, himself a relatively small player, even though his work was extremely influential throughout the Pentagon. The regressive thinking of senior officials involved in the Highlands Forum is visible from long before 9/11, which was ceased upon by actors linked to the Forum as a powerful enabling force that legitimized the increasingly aggressive direction of US foreign and intelligence policies.

Yoda and the Soviets
The ideology represented by the Highlands Forum can be gleaned from long before its establishment in 1994, at a time when Andrew ‘Yoda’ Marshall’s ONA was the primary locus of Pentagon activity on future planning.

A widely-held myth promulgated by national security journalists over the years is that the ONA’s reputation as the Pentagon’s resident oracle machine was down to the uncanny analytical foresight of its director Marshall. Supposedly, he was among the few who made the prescient recognition that the Soviet threat had been overblown by the US intelligence community. He had, the story goes, been a lone, but relentless voice inside the Pentagon, calling on policymakers to re-evaluate their projections of the USSR’s military might.

Except the story is not true. The ONA was not about sober threat analysis, but about paranoid threat projection justifying military expansionism. Foreign Policy’s Jeffrey Lewis points out that far from offering a voice of reason calling for a more balanced assessment of Soviet military capabilities, Marshall tried to downplay ONA findings that rejected the hype around an imminent Soviet threat. Having commissioned a study concluding that the US had overestimated Soviet aggressiveness, Marshall circulated it with a cover note declaring himself “unpersuaded” by its findings. Lewis charts how Marshall’s threat projection mind-set extended to commissioning absurd research supporting staple neocon narratives about the (non-existent) Saddam-al-Qaeda link, and even the notorious report by a RAND consultant calling for re-drawing the map of the Middle East, presented to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board on the invitation of Richard Perle in 2002.

Investigative journalist Jason Vest similarly found from Pentagon sources that during the Cold War, Marshall had long hyped the Soviet threat, and played a key role in giving the neoconservative pressure group, the Committee on the Present Danger, access to classified CIA intelligence data to re-write the National Intelligence Estimate on Soviet Military Intentions. This was a precursor to the manipulation of intelligence after 9/11 to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Former ONA staffers confirmed that Marshall had been belligerent about an imminent Soviet threat “until the very end.” Ex-CIA sovietologist Melvin Goodman, for instance, recalled that Marshall was also instrumental in pushing for the Afghan mujahideen to be provided with Stinger missiles — a move which made the war even more brutal, encouraging the Russians to use scorched earth tactics.

Enron, the Taliban and Iraq
The post-Cold War period saw the Pentagon’s creation of the Highlands Forum in 1994 under the wing of former defense secretary William Perry — a former CIA director and early advocate of neocon ideas like preventive war. Surprisingly, the Forum’s dubious role as a government-industry bridge can be clearly discerned in relation to Enron’s flirtations with the US government. Just as the Forum had crafted the Pentagon’s intensifying policies on mass surveillance, it simultaneously fed directly into the strategic thinking that culminating in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On November 7th 2000, George W. Bush ‘won’ the US presidential elections. Enron and its employees had given over $1 million to the Bush campaign in total. That included contributing $10,500 to Bush’s Florida recount committee, and a further $300,000 for the inaugural celebrations afterwards. Enron also provided corporate jets to shuttle Republican lawyers around Florida and Washington lobbying on behalf of Bush for the December recount. Federal election documents later showed that since 1989, Enron had made a total of $5.8 million in campaign donations, 73 percent to Republicans and 27 percent to Democrats — with as many as 15 senior Bush administration officials owning stock in Enron, including defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, senior advisor Karl Rove, and army secretary Thomas White.

Yet just one day before that controversial election, Pentagon Highlands Forum founding president Richard O’Neill wrote to Enron CEO, Kenneth Lay, inviting him to give a presentation at the Forum on modernizing the Pentagon and the Army. The email from O’Neill to Lay was released as part of the Enron Corpus, the emails obtained by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but has remained unknown until now.

The email began “On behalf of Assistant Secretary of Defense (C3I) and DoD CIO Arthur Money,” and invited Lay “to participate in the Secretary of Defense’s Highlands Forum,” which O’Neill described as “a cross-disciplinary group of eminent scholars, researchers, CEO’s/CIO’s/CTO’s from industry, and leaders from the media, the arts and the professions, who have met over the past six years to examine areas of emerging interest to all of us.” He added that Forum sessions include “seniors from the White House, Defense, and other agencies of government (we limit government participation to about 25%).”

Here, O’Neill reveals that the Pentagon Highlands Forum was, fundamentally, about exploring not just the goals of government, but the interests of participating industry leaders like Enron. The Pentagon, O’Neill went on, wanted Lay to feed into “the search for information/ transformation strategies for the Department of Defense (and government in general),” particularly “from a business perspective (transformation, productivity, competitive advantage).” He offered high praise of Enron as “a remarkable example of transformation in a highly rigid, regulated industry, that has created a new model and new markets.”

O’Neill made clear that the Pentagon wanted Enron to play a pivotal role in the DoD’s future, not just in the creation of “an operational strategy which has information superiority,” but also in relation to the DoD’s “enormous global business enterprise which can benefit from many of the best practices and ideas from industry.”

“ENRON is of great interest to us,” he reaffirmed. “What we learn from you may help the Department of Defense a great deal as it works to build a new strategy. I hope that you have time on your busy schedule to join us for as much of the Highlands Forum as you can attend and speak with the group.”

That Highlands Forum meeting was attended by senior White House and US intelligence officials, including CIA deputy director Joan A. Dempsey, who had previously served as assistant defense secretary for intelligence, and in 2003 was appointed by Bush as executive director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, in which capacity she praised extensive information sharing by the NSA and NGA after 9/11. She went on to become executive vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, a major Pentagon contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan that, among other things, created the Coalition Provisional Authority’s database to track what we now know were highly corrupt reconstruction projects in Iraq.

Enron’s relationship with the Pentagon had already been in full swing the previous year. Thomas White, then vice chair of Enron energy services, had used his extensive US military connections to secure a prototype deal at Fort Hamilton to privatize the power supply of army bases. Enron was the only bidder for the deal. The following year, after Enron’s CEO was invited to the Highlands Forum, White gave his first speech in June just “two weeks after he became secretary of the Army,” where he “vowed to speed up the awarding of such contracts,” along with further “rapid privatization” of the Army’s energy services. “Potentially, Enron could benefit from the speedup in awarding contracts, as could others seeking the business,” observed USA Today.

That month, on the authority of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld — who himself held significant shares in Enron — Bush’s Pentagon invited another Enron executive and one of Enron’s senior external financial advisors to attend a further secret Highlands Forum session.

An email from Richard O’Neill dated June 22nd, obtained via the Enron Corpus, showed that Steven Kean, then executive vice president and chief of staff of Enron, was due to give another Highlands presentation on Monday 25th. “We are approaching the Secretary of Defense-sponsored Highlands Forum and very much looking forward to your participation,” wrote O’Neill, promising Kean that he would be “the centerpiece of discussion. Enron’s experience is quite important to us as we seriously consider transformative change in the Department of Defense.”

Steven Kean is now president and COO (and incoming CEO) of Kinder Morgan, one of the largest energy companies in North America, and a major supporter of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline project.

Due to attend the same Highlands Forum session with Kean was Richard Foster, then a senior partner at the financial consultancy McKinsey. “I have given copies of Dick Foster’s new book, Creative Destruction, to the Deputy Secretary of Defense as well as the Assistant Secretary,” said O’Neill in his email, “and the Enron case that he outlines makes for important discussion. We intend to hand out copies to the participants at the Forum.”

Foster’s firm, McKinsey, had provided strategic financial advice to Enron since the mid-1980s. Joe Skilling, who in February 2001 became Enron CEO while Kenneth Lay moved to chair, had been head of McKinsey’s energy consulting business before joining Enron in 1990.

McKinsey and then partner Richard Foster were intimately involved in crafting the core Enron financial management strategies responsible for the company’s rapid, but fraudulent, growth. While McKinsey has always denied being aware of the dodgy accounting that led to Enron’s demise, internal company documents showed that Foster had attended an Enron finance committee meeting a month before the Highlands Forum session to discuss the “need for outside private partnerships to help drive the company’s explosive growth” — the very investment partnerships responsible for the collapse of Enron.

McKinsey documents showed that the firm was “fully aware of Enron’s extensive use of off-balance-sheet funds.” As The Independent’s economics editor Ben Chu remarks, “McKinsey fully endorsed the dubious accounting methods,” which led to the inflation of Enron’s market valuation and “that caused the company to implode in 2001.”

Indeed, Foster himself had personally attended six Enron board meetings from October 2000 to October 2001. That period roughly coincided with Enron’s growing influence on the Bush administration’s energy policies, and the Pentagon’s planning for Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Foster was also a regular attendee at the Pentagon Highlands Forum — his LinkedIn profile describes him as member of the Forum since 2000, the year he ramped up engagement with Enron. He also delivered a presentation at the inaugural Island Forum in Singapore in 2002.

Enron’s involvement in the Cheney Energy Task Force appears to have been linked to the Bush administration’s 2001 planning for both the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, motivated by control of oil. As noted by Prof. Richard Falk, a former board member of Human Rights Watch and ex-UN investigator, Enron’s Kenneth Lay “was the main confidential consultant relied upon by Vice President Dick Cheney during the highly secretive process of drafting a report outlining a national energy policy, widely regarded as a key element in the US approach to foreign policy generally and the Arab world in particular.”

The intimate secret meetings between senior Enron executives and high-level US government officials via the Pentagon Highlands Forum, from November 2000 to June 2001, played a central role in establishing and cementing the increasingly symbiotic link between Enron and Pentagon planning. The Forum’s role was, as O’Neill has always said, to function as an ideas lab to explore the mutual interests of industry and government.

Enron and Pentagon war planning
In February 2001, when Enron executives including Kenneth Lay began participating concertedly in the Cheney Energy Task Force, a classified National Security Council document instructed NSC staffers to work with the task force in “melding” previously separate issues: “operational policies towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”

According to Bush’s treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, as quoted by Ron Suskind in The Price of Loyalty (2004), cabinet officials discussed an invasion of Iraq in their first NSC meeting, and had even prepared a map for a post-war occupation marking the carve-up of Iraq’s oil fields. The message at that time from President Bush was that officials must “find a way to do this.”

Cheney Energy Task Force documents obtained by Judicial Watch under Freedom of Information revealed that by March, with extensive industry input, the task force had prepared maps of Gulf state and especially Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, and refineries, along with a list titled ‘Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.’ By April, a think-tank report commissioned by Cheney, overseen by former secretary of state James Baker, and put together by a committee of energy industry and national security experts, urged the US government “to conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments,” to deal with Iraq’s “destabilizing influence” on oil flows to global markets. The report included recommendations from Highlands Forum delegate and Enron chair, Kenneth Lay.

But Cheney’s Energy Task Force was also busily pushing forward plans for Afghanistan involving Enron, that had been in motion under Clinton. Through the late 1990s, Enron was working with California-based US energy company Unocal to develop an oil and gas pipeline that would tap Caspian basin reserves, and carry oil and gas across Afghanistan, supplying Pakistan, India and potentially other markets. The endeavor had the official blessing of the Clinton administration, and later the Bush administration, which held several meetings with Taliban representatives to negotiate terms for the pipeline deal throughout 2001. The Taliban, whose conquest of Afghanistan had received covert assistance under Clinton, was to receive formal recognition as the legitimate government of Afghanistan in return for permitting the installation of the pipeline. Enron paid $400 million for a feasibility study for the pipeline, a large portion of which was siphoned off as bribes to Taliban leaders, and even hired CIA agents to help facilitate.

Then in summer 2001, while Enron officials were liaising with senior Pentagon officials at the Highlands Forum, the White House’s National Security Council was running a cross-departmental ‘working group’ led by Rumsfeld and Cheney to help complete an ongoing Enron project in India, a $3 billion power plant in Dabhol. The plant was slated to receive its energy from the Trans-Afghan pipeline. The NSC’s ‘Dabhol Working Group,’ chaired by Bush’s national security adviser Condoleeza Rice, generated a range of tactics to enhance US government pressure on India to complete the Dabhol plant — pressure that continued all the way to early November. The Dabhol project, and the Trans-Afghan pipeline, was by far Enron’s most lucrative overseas deal.

Throughout 2001, Enron officials, including Ken Lay, participated in Cheney’s Energy Task Force, along with representatives across the US energy industry. Starting from February, shortly after the Bush administration took office, Enron was involved in about half a dozen of these Energy Task Force meetings. After one of these secret meetings, a draft energy proposal was amended to include a new provision proposing to dramatically boost oil and natural gas production in India in a way that would apply only to Enron’s Dabhol power plant. In other words, ensuring the flow of cheap gas to India via the Trans-Afghan pipeline was now a matter of US ‘national security.’

A month or two after this, the Bush administration gave the Taliban $43 million, justified by its crackdown on opium production, despite US-imposed UN sanctions preventing aid to the group for not handing over Osama bin Laden.

Then in June 2001, the same month that Enron’s executive vice president Steve Kean attended the Pentagon Highlands Forum, the company’s hopes for the Dabhol project were dashed when the Trans-Afghan pipeline failed to materialize, and as a consequence, construction on the Dabhol power plant was shut down. The failure of the $3 billion project contributed to Enron’s bankruptcy in December. That month, Enron officials met with Bush’s commerce secretary, Donald Evans, about the plant, and Cheney lobbied India’s main opposition party about the Dhabol project. Ken Lay had also reportedly contacted the Bush administration around this time to inform officials about the firm’s financial troubles.

By August, desperate to pull off the deal, US officials threatened Taliban representatives with war if they refused to accept American terms: namely, to cease fighting and join in a federal alliance with the opposition Northern Alliance; and to give up demands for local consumption of the gas. On the 15th of that month, Enron lobbyist Pat Shortridge told then White House economic advisor Robert McNally that Enron was heading for a financial meltdown that could cripple the country’s energy markets.

The Bush administration must have anticipated the Taliban’s rejection of the deal, because they had planned a war on Afghanistan from as early as July. According to then Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Naik, who had participated in the US-Taliban negotiations, US officials told him they planned to invade Afghanistan in mid-October 2001. No sooner had the war commenced, Bush’s ambassador to Pakistan, Wendy Chamberlain, called Pakistani’s oil minister Usman Aminuddin to discuss “the proposed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline project,” according to the Frontier Post, a Pakistani English-language broadsheet. They reportedly agreed that the “project opens up new avenues of multi-dimensional regional cooperation particularly in view of the recent geo-political developments in the region.”

Two days before 9/11, Condoleeza Rice received the draft of a formal National Security Presidential Directive that Bush was expected to sign immediately. The directive contained a comprehensive plan to launch a global war on al-Qaeda, including an “imminent” invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. The directive was approved by the highest levels of the White House and officials of the National Security Council, including of course Rice and Rumsfeld. The same NSC officials were simultaneously running the Dhabol Working Group to secure the Indian power plant deal for Enron’s Trans-Afghan pipeline project. The next day, one day before 9/11, the Bush administration formally agreed on the plan to attack the Taliban.

The Pentagon Highlands Forum’s background link with the interests involved in all this, show they were not unique to the Bush administration — which is why, as Obama was preparing to pull troops out of Afghanistan, he re-affirmed his government’s support for the Trans-Afghan pipeline project, and his desire for a US firm to construct it.

The Pentagon’s propaganda fixer
Throughout this period, information war played a central role in drumming up public support for war — and the Highlands Forum led the way.

In December 2000, just under a year before 9/11 and shortly after George W. Bush’s election victory, key Forum members participated in an event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to explore “the impact of the information revolution, globalization, and the end of the Cold War on the US foreign policy making process.” Rather than proposing “incremental reforms,” the meeting was for participants to “build from scratch a new model that is optimized to the specific properties of the new global environment.”

Among the issues flagged up in the meeting was the ‘Global Control Revolution’: the “distributed” nature of the information revolution was altering “key dynamics of world politics by challenging the primacy of states and inter-state relations.” This was “creating new challenges to national security, reducing the ability of leading states to control global policy debates, challenging the efficacy of national economic policies, etc.”

In other words, how can the Pentagon find a way to exploit the information revolution to “control global policy debates,” particularly on “national economic policies”?

The meeting was co-hosted by Jamie Metzl, who at the time served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council, where he had just led the drafting of Clinton’s Presidential Decision Directive 68 on International Public Information (IPI), a new multiagency plan to coordinate US public information dissemination abroad. Metzl went on to coordinate IPI at the State Department.

The preceding year, a senior Clinton official revealed to the Washington Times that Metz’s IPI was really aimed at “spinning the American public,” and had “emerged out of concern that the US public has refused to back President Clinton’s foreign policy.” The IPI would plant news stories favorable to US interests via TV, press, radio and other media based abroad, in hopes it would get picked up in American media. The pretext was that “news coverage is distorted at home and they need to fight it at all costs by using resources that are aimed at spinning the news.” Metzl ran the IPI’s overseas propaganda operations for Iraq and Kosovo.

Other participants of the Carnegie meeting in December 2000, included two founding members of the Highlands Forum, Richard O’Neill and SAIC’s Jeff Cooper — along with Paul Wolfowitz, another Andrew Marshall acolyte who was about to join the incoming Bush administration as Rumsfelds’ deputy defense secretary. Also present was a figure who soon became particularly notorious in the propaganda around Afghanistan and Iraq War 2003: John W. Rendon, Jr., founding president of The Rendon Group (TRG) and another longtime Pentagon Highlands Forum member.

John Rendon (right) at the Highlands Forum, accompanied by BBC anchor Nik Gowing (left) and Jeff Jonas, IBM Entity Analytics chief engineer (middle)
TRG is a notorious communications firm that has been a US government contractor for decades. Rendon played a pivotal role in running the State Department’s propaganda campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo under Clinton and Metzl. That included receiving a Pentagon grant to run a news website, the Balkans Information Exchange, and a US Agency for International Development (USAID) contract to promote “privatization.”

Rendon’s central role in helping the Bush administration hype up the non-existent threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to justify a US military invasion is now well-known. As James Bamford famously exposed in his seminal Rolling Stone investigation, Rendon played an instrumental role on behalf of the Bush administration in deploying “perception management” to “create the conditions for the removal of Hussein from power” under multi-million dollar CIA and Pentagon contracts.

Among Rendon’s activities was the creation of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) on behalf of the CIA, a group of Iraqi exiles tasked with disseminating propaganda, including much of the false intelligence about WMD. That process had begun concertedly under the administration of George H W. Bush, then rumbled along under Clinton with little fanfare, before escalating after 9/11 under George W. Bush. Rendon thus played a large role in the manufacture of inaccurate and false news stories relating to Iraq under lucrative CIA and Pentagon contracts — and he did so in the period running up to the 2003 invasion as an advisor to Bush’s National Security Council: the same NSC, of course, that planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, achieved with input from Enron executives who were simultaneously engaging the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

But that is the tip of iceberg. Declassified documents show that the Highlands Forum was intimately involved in the covert processes by which key officials engineered the road to war on Iraq, based on information warfare.

A redacted 2007 report by the DoD’s Inspector General reveals that one of the contractors used extensively by the Pentagon Highlands Forum during and after the Iraq War was none other than The Rendon Group. TRG was contracted by the Pentagon to organize Forum sessions, determine subjects for discussion, as well as to convene and coordinate Forum meetings. The Inspector General investigation had been prompted by accusations raised in Congress about Rendon’s role in manipulating information to justify the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq. According to the Inspector General report:

“… the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration/Chief Information Officer employed TRG to conduct forums that would appeal to a cross-disciplinary group of nationally regarded leaders. The forums were in small groups discussing information and technologies and their effects on science, organizational and business processes, international relations, economics, and national security. TRG also conducted a research program and interviews to formulate and develop topics for the Highlands Forum focus group. The Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration would approve the subjects, and TRG would facilitate the meetings.”
TRG, the Pentagon’s private propaganda arm, thus played a central role in literally running the Pentagon Highlands Forum process that brought together senior government officials with industry executives to generate DoD information warfare strategy.

The Pentagon’s internal investigation absolved Rendon of any wrongdoing. But this is not surprising, given the conflict of interest at stake: the Inspector General at the time was Claude M. Kicklighter, a Bush nominee who had directly overseen the administration’s key military operations. In 2003, he was director of the Pentagon’s Iraq Transition Team, and the following year he was appointed to the State Department as special advisor on stabilization and security operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The surveillance-propaganda nexus
Even more telling, Pentagon documents obtained by Bamford for his Rolling Stone story revealed that Rendon had been given access to the NSA’s top-secret surveillance data to carry out its work on behalf of the Pentagon. TRG, the DoD documents said, is authorized “to research and analyze information classified up to Top Secret/SCI/SI/TK/G/HCS.”

‘SCI’ means Sensitive Compartmented Information, data classified higher than Top Secret, while ‘SI’ designates Special Intelligence, that is, highly secret communications intercepted by the NSA. ‘TK’ refers to Talent/Keyhole, code names for imagery from reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites, while ‘G’ stands for Gamma, encompassing communications intercepts from extremely sensitive sources, and ‘HCS’ means Humint Control System — information from a very sensitive human source. In Bamford’s words:

“Taken together, the acronyms indicate that Rendon enjoys access to the most secret information from all three forms of intelligence collection: eavesdropping, imaging satellites and human spies.”
So the Pentagon had:

1. contracted Rendon, a propaganda firm;

2. given Rendon access to the intelligence community’s most classified information including data from NSA surveillance;

3. tasked Rendon to facilitating the DoD’s development of information operations strategy by running the Highlands Forum process;

4. and further, tasked Rendon with overseeing the concrete execution of this strategy developed through the Highlands Forum process, in actual information operations around the world in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.

TRG chief executive John Rendon remains closely involved in the Pentagon Highlands Forum, and ongoing DoD information operations in the Muslim world. His November 2014 biography for the Harvard Kennedy School ‘Emerging Leaders’ course describes him as “a participant in forward-thinking organizations such as the Highlands Forum,” “one of the first thought-leaders to harness the power of emerging technologies in support of real time information management,” and an expert on “the impact of emerging information technologies on the way populations think and behave.” Rendon’s Harvard bio also credits him with designing and executing “strategic communications initiatives and information programs related to operations, Odyssey Dawn (Libya), Unified Protector (Libya), Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), Iraqi Freedom, Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan), Allied Force and Joint Guardian (Kosovo), Desert Shield, Desert Storm (Kuwait), Desert Fox (Iraq) and Just Cause (Panama), among others.”

Rendon’s work on perception management and information operations has also “assisted a number of US military interventions” elsewhere, as well as running US information operations in Argentina, Colombia, Haiti, and Zimbabwe — in fact, a total of 99 countries. As a former executive director and national political director of the Democratic Party, John Rendon remains a powerful figure in Washington under the Obama administration.

Pentagon records show that TRG has received over $100 million from the DoD since 2000. In 2009, the US government cancelled a ‘strategic communications’ contract with TRG after revelations it was being used to weed out reporters who might write negative stories about the US military in Afghanistan, and to solely promote journalists supportive of US policy. Yet in 2010, the Obama administration re-contracted Rendon to supply services for “military deception” in Iraq.

Since then, TRG has provided advice to the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command, the Special Operations Command, and is still contracted to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the US Army’s Communications Electronic Command, as well as providing “communications support” to the Pentagon and US embassies on counter-narcotics operations.

TRG also boasts on its website that it provides “Irregular Warfare Support,” including “operational and planning support” that “assists our government and military clients in developing new approaches to countering and eroding an adversary’s power, influence and will.” Much of this support has itself been fine-tuned over the last decade or more inside the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

Irregular war and pseudo-terrorism
The Pentagon Highlands Forum’s intimate link, via Rendon, to the propaganda operations pursued under Bush and Obama in support of the ‘Long War,’ demonstrate the integral role of mass surveillance in both irregular warfare and ‘strategic communications.’

One of the major proponents of both is Prof John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School, the renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept of ‘netwar,’ who today openly advocates the need for mass surveillance and big data mining to support pre-emptive operations to thwart terrorist plots. It so happens that Arquilla is another “founding member” of the Pentagon’s Highlands Forum.

Much of his work on the idea of ‘networked warfare,’ ‘networked deterrence,’ ‘information warfare,’ and ‘swarming,’ largely produced for RAND under Pentagon contract, was incubated by the Forum during its early years and thus became integral to Pentagon strategy. For instance, in Arquilla’s 1999 RAND study, The Emergence of Noopolitik: Toward an American Information Strategy, he and his co-author David Ronfeldt express their gratitude to Richard O’Neill “for his interest, support and guidance,” and to “members of the Highlands Forum” for their advance comments on the study. Most of his RAND work credits the Highlands Forum and O’Neill for their support.

Prof. John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School, and a founding member of the Pentagon Highlands Forum
Arquilla’s work was cited in a 2006 National Academy of Sciences study on the future of network science commissioned by the US Army, which found based on his research that: “Advances in computer-based technologies and telecommunications are enabling social networks that facilitate group affiliations, including terrorist networks.” The study conflated risks from terror and activist groups: “The implications of this fact for criminal, terror, protest and insurgency networks has been explored by Arquilla and Ronfeldt (2001) and are a common topic of discussion by groups like the Highlands Forum, which perceive that the United States is highly vulnerable to the interruption of critical networks.” Arquilla went on to help develop information warfare strategies “for the military campaigns in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq,” according to military historian Benjamin Shearer in his biographical dictionary, Home Front Heroes (2007) — once again illustrating the direct role played by certain key Forum members in executing Pentagon information operations in war theatres.

In his 2005 New Yorker investigation, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Seymour Hersh referred to a series of articles by Arquilla elaborating on a new strategy of “countering terror” with pseudo-terror. “It takes a network to fight a network,” said Arquilla, drawing on the thesis he had been promoting in the Pentagon through the Highlands Forum since its founding:

“When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These ‘pseudo gangs’, as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps.”
Arquilla went on to advocate that western intelligence services should use the British case as a model for creating new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups, as a way of undermining “real” terror networks:

“What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.”
Essentially, Arquilla’s argument was that as only networks can fight networks, the only way to defeat enemies conducting irregular warfare is to use techniques of irregular warfare against them. Ultimately, the determining factor in victory is not conventional military defeat per se, but the extent to which the direction of the conflict can be calibrated to influence the population and rally their opposition to the adversary. Arquilla’s ‘pseudo-gang’ strategy was, Hersh reported, already being implemented by the Pentagon:

“Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists…
The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls ‘action teams’ in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. ‘Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?’ the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. ‘We founded them and we financed them,’ he said. ‘The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.’ A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, ‘We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.’”
Official corroboration that this strategy is now operational came with the leak of a 2008 US Army special operations field manual. The US military, the manual said, can conduct irregular and unconventional warfare by using surrogate non-state groups such as “paramilitary forces, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistant or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political ‘undesirables.’” Shockingly, the manual specifically acknowledged that US special operations can involve both counterterrorism and “Terrorism,” as well as: “Transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms-dealing, and illegal financial transactions.” The purpose of such covert operations is, essentially, population control — they are “specifically focused on leveraging some portion of the indigenous population to accept the status quo,” or to accept “whatever political outcome” is being imposed or negotiated.

By this twisted logic, terrorism can in some cases be defined as a legitimate tool of US statecraft by which to influence populations into accepting a particular “political outcome” — all in the name fighting terrorism.

Is this what the Pentagon was doing by coordinating the nearly $1 billion of funding from Gulf regimes to anti-Assad rebels, most of which according to the CIA’s own classified assessments ended up in the coffers of violent Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda, who went on to spawn the ‘Islamic State’?

The rationale for the new strategy was first officially set out in an August 2002 briefing for the Pentagon’s Defense Science Board, which advocated the creation of a ‘Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group’ (P2OG) within the National Security Council. P2OG, the Board proposed, must conduct clandestine operations to infiltrate and “stimulate reactions” among terrorist networks to provoke them into action, and thus facilitate targeting them.

The Defense Science Board is, like other Pentagon agencies, intimately related with the Highlands Forum, whose work feeds into the Board’s research, which in turn is regularly presented at the Forum.

According to the US intelligence sources who spoke to Hersh, Rumsfeld had ensured that the new brand of black operations would be conducted entirely under Pentagon jurisdiction, firewalled off from the CIA and regional US military commanders, and executed by its own secret special operations command. That chain of command would include, apart from the defense secretary himself, two of his deputies including the undersecretary of defense for intelligence: the position overseeing the Highlands Forum.

Strategic communications: war propaganda at home and abroad
Within the Highlands Forum, the special operations techniques explored by Arquilla have been taken up by several others in directions focused increasingly on propaganda — among them, Dr. Lochard, as seen previously, and also Dr. Amy Zalman, who focuses particularly on the idea of the US military using ‘strategic narratives’ to influence public opinion and win wars.

Like her colleague, Highlands Forum founding member Jeff Cooper, Zalman was schooled in the bowels of SAIC/Leidos. From 2007 to 2012, she was a senior SAIC strategist, before becoming Department of Defense Information Integration Chair at the US Army’s National War College, where she focused on how to fine-tune propaganda to elicit the precise responses desired from target groups, based on complete understanding of those groups. As of summer last year, she became CEO of the World Futures Society.

Dr. Amy Zalman, an ex-SAIC strategist, is CEO of the World Futures Society, and a long-time Pentagon Highlands Forum delegate consulting for the US government on strategic communications in irregular warfare
In 2005, the same year Hersh reported that the Pentagon strategy of “stimulating reactions” among terrorists by provoking them was underway, Zalman delivered a briefing to the Pentagon Highlands Forum titled, ‘In Support of a Narrative Theory Approach to US Strategic Communication.’ Since then, Zalman has been a long-time Highlands Forum delegate, and has presented her work on strategic communications to a range of US government agencies, NATO forums, as well as teaching courses in irregular warfare to soldiers at the US Joint Special Operations University.

Her 2005 Highlands Forum briefing is not publicly available, but the thrust of Zalman’s input into the information component of Pentagon special operations strategies can be gleaned from some of her published work. In 2010, when she was still attached to SAIC, her NATO paper noted that a key component of irregular war is “winning some degree of emotional support from the population by influencing their subjective perceptions.” She advocated that the best way of achieving such influence goes far further than traditional propaganda and messaging techniques. Rather, analysts must “place themselves in the skins of the people under observation.”

Zalman released another paper the same year via the IO Journal, published by the Information Operations Institute, which describes itself as a “special interest group” of the Associaton of Old Crows. The latter is a professional association for theorists and practitioners of electronic warfare and information operations, chaired by Kenneth Israel, vice president of Lockheed Martin, and vice chaired by David Himes, who retired last year from his position as senior advisor in electronic warfare at the US Air Force Research Laboratory.

In this paper, titled ‘Narrative as an Influence Factor in Information Operations,’ Zalman laments that the US military has “found it difficult to create compelling narratives — or stories — either to express its strategic aims, or to communicate in discrete situations, such as civilian deaths.” By the end, she concludes that “the complex issue of civilian deaths” should be approached not just by “apologies and compensation” — which barely occurs anyway — but by propagating narratives that portray characters with whom the audience connects (in this case, ‘the audience’ being ‘populations in war zones’). This is to facilitate the audience resolving struggles in a “positive way,” defined, of course, by US military interests. Engaging emotionally in this way with “survivors of those dead” from US military action might “prove to be an empathetic form of influence.” Throughout, Zalman is incapable of questioning the legitimacy of US strategic aims, or acknowledging that the impact of those aims in the accumulation of civilian deaths, is precisely the problem that needs to change — as opposed to the way they are ideologically framed for populations subjected to military action.

‘Empathy,’ here, is merely an instrument by which to manipulate.

In 2012, Zalman wrote an article for The Globalist seeking to demonstrate how the rigid delineation of ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’ needed to be overcome, to recognize that the use of force requires the right symbolic and cultural effect to guarantee success:

“As long as defense and economic diplomacy remain in a box labeled ‘hard power,’ we fail to see how much their success relies on their symbolic effects as well as their material ones. As long as diplomatic and cultural efforts are stored in a box marked ‘soft power,’ we fail to see the ways in which they can be used coercively or produce effects that are like those produced by violence.”
Given SAIC’s deep involvement in the Pentagon Highlands Forum, and through it the development of information strategies on surveillance, irregular warfare, and propaganda, it is hardly surprising that SAIC was the other key private defense firm contracted to generate propaganda in the run up to Iraq War 2003, alongside TRG.

“SAIC executives have been involved at every stage… of the war in Iraq,” reported Vanity Fair, ironically, in terms of deliberately disseminating false claims about WMD, and then investigating the ‘intelligence failure’ around false WMD claims. David Kay, for instance, who had been hired by the CIA in 2003 to hunt for Saddam’s WMD as head of the Iraq Survey Group, was until October 2002 a senior SAIC vice president hammering away “at the threat posed by Iraq” under Pentagon contract. When WMD failed to emerge, President Bush’s commission to investigate this US ‘intelligence failure’ included three SAIC executives, among them Highlands Forum founding member Jeffrey Cooper. The very year of Kay’s appointment to the Iraq Survey Group, Clinton’s defense secretary William Perry — the man under whose orders the Highlands Forum was set-up — joined the board of SAIC. The investigation by Cooper and all let the Bush administration off the hook for manufacturing propaganda to legitimize war — unsurprisingly, given Cooper’s integral role in the very Pentagon network that manufactured that propaganda.

SAIC was also among the many contractors that profited handsomely from Iraqi reconstruction deals, and was re-contracted after the war to promote pro-US narratives abroad. In the same vein as Rendon’s work, the idea was that stories planted abroad would be picked up by US media for domestic consumption.

Delegates at the Pentagon’s 46th Highlands Forum in December 2011, from right to left: John Seely Brown, chief scientist/director at Xerox PARC from 1990–2002 and an early board member of In-Q-Tel; Ann Pendleton-Jullian, co-author with Brown of a manuscript, Design Unbound; Antonio and Hanna Damasio, a neurologist and neurobiologist respectively who are part of a DARPA-funded project on propaganda
But the Pentagon Highlands Forum’s promotion of advanced propaganda techniques is not exclusive to core, longstanding delegates like Rendon and Zalman. In 2011, the Forum hosted two DARPA-funded scientists, Antonio and Hanna Damasio, who are principal investigators in the ‘Neurobiology of Narrative Framing’ project at the University of Southern California. Evoking Zalman’s emphasis on the need for Pentagon psychological operations to deploy “empathetic influence,” the new DARPA-backed project aims to investigate how narratives often appeal “to strong, sacred values in order to evoke an emotional response,” but in different ways across different cultures. The most disturbing element of the research is its focus on trying to understand how to increase the Pentagon’s capacity to deploy narratives that influence listeners in a way that overrides conventional reasoning in the context of morally-questionable actions.

The project description explains that the psychological reaction to narrated events is “influenced by how the narrator frames the events, appealing to different values, knowledge, and experiences of the listener.” Narrative framing that “targets the sacred values of the listener, including core personal, nationalistic, and/or religious values, is particularly effective at influencing the listener’s interpretation of narrated events,” because such “sacred values” are closely tied with “the psychology of identity, emotion, moral decision making, and social cognition.” By applying sacred framing to even mundane issues, such issues “can gain properties of sacred values and result in a strong aversion to using conventional reasoning to interpret them.” The two Damasios and their team are exploring what role “linguistic and neuropsychological mechanisms” play in determining “the effectiveness of narrative framing using sacred values in influencing a listener’s interpretation of events.”

The research is based on extracting narratives from millions of American, Iranian and Chinese weblogs, and subjecting them to automated discourse analysis to compare them quantitatively across the three languages. The investigators then follow up using behavioral experiments with readers/listeners from different cultures to gauge their reaction different narratives “where each story makes an appeal to a sacred value to explain or justify a morally-questionable behavior of the author.” Finally, the scientists apply neurobiological fMRI scanning to correlate the reactions and personal characteristics of subjects with their brain responses.

Why is the Pentagon funding research investigating how to exploit people’s “sacred values” to extinguish their capacity for logical reasoning, and enhance their emotional openness to “morally-questionable behavior”?

The focus on English, Farsi and Chinese may also reveal that the Pentagon’s current concerns are overwhelmingly about developing information operations against two key adversaries, Iran and China, which fits into longstanding ambitions to project strategic influence in the Middle East, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. Equally, the emphasis on English language, specifically from American weblogs, further suggests the Pentagon is concerned about projecting propaganda to influence public opinion at home.

Rosemary Wenchel (left) of the US Department of Homeland Security with Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, a former musician and now US defense consultant who has worked for contractors like SAIC and Northrup Grumman. SAIC/Leidos executive Jeff Cooper is behind them
Lest one presume that DARPA’s desire to mine millions of American weblogs as part of its ‘neurobiology of narrative framing’ research is a mere case of random selection, an additional co-chair of the Pentagon Highlands Forum in recent years is Rosemary Wenchel, former director of cyber capabilities and operations support at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Since 2012, Wenchel has been deputy assistant secretary for strategy and policy in the Department of Homeland Security.

As the Pentagon’s extensive funding of propaganda on Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates, population influence and propaganda is critical not just in far-flung theatres abroad in strategic regions, but also at home, to quell the risk of domestic public opinion undermining the legitimacy of Pentagon policy. In the photo above, Wenchel is talking to Jeff Baxter, a long-time US defense and intelligence consultant. In September 2005, Baxter was part of a supposedly “independent” study group (chaired by NSA-contractor Booz Allen Hamilton) commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security, which recommended a greater role for US spy satellites in monitoring the domestic population.

Meanwhile, Zalman and Rendon, while both remaining closely involved in the Pentagon Highlands Forum, continue to be courted by the US military for their expertise on information operations. In October 2014, both participated in a major Strategic Multi-Layer Assessment conference sponsored by the US Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, titled ‘A New Information Paradigm? From Genes to “Big Data” and Instagram to Persistent Surveillance… Implications for National Security.’ Other delegates represented senior US military officials, defense industry executives, intelligence community officials, Washington think-tanks, and academics.

John Rendon, CEO of The Rendon Group, at a Highlands Forum session in 2010
Rendon and SAIC/Leidos, two firms that have been central to the very evolution of Pentagon information operations strategy through their pivotal involvement in the Highlands Forum, continue to be contracted for key operations under the Obama administration. A US General Services Administration document, for instance, shows that Rendon was granted a major 2010–2015 contract providing general media and communications support services across federal agencies. Similarly, SAIC/Leidos has a $400 million 2010–2015 contract with the US Army Research Laboratory for “Expeditionary Warfare; Irregular Warfare; Special Operations; Stabilization and Reconstruction Operations” — a contract which is “being prepared now for recomplete.”

The empire strikes back
Under Obama, the nexus of corporate, industry, and financial power represented by the interests that participate in the Pentagon Highlands Forum has consolidated itself to an unprecedented degree.

Coincidentally, the very day Obama announced Hagel’s resignation, the DoD issued a media release highlighting how Robert O. Work, Hagel’s deputy defense secretary appointed by Obama in 2013, planned to take forward the Defense Innovation Initiative that Hagel had just announced a week earlier. The new initiative was focused on ensuring that the Pentagon would undergo a long-term transformation to keep up with leading edge disruptive technologies across information operations.

Whatever the real reasons for Hagel’s ejection, this was a symbolic and tangible victory for Marshall and the Highlands Forum vision. Highlands Forum co-chair Andrew Marshall, head of the ONA, may indeed be retiring. But the post-Hagel Pentagon is now staffed with his followers.

Robert Work, who now presides over the new DoD transformation scheme, is a loyal Marshall acolyte who had previously directed and analyzed war games for the Office of Net Assessment. Like Marshall, Wells, O’Neill and other Highlands Forum members, Work is also a robot fantasist who lead authored the study, Preparing for War in the Robotic Age, published early last year by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

Work is also pitched to determine the future of the ONA, assisted by his strategist Tom Ehrhard and DoD undersecretary for intelligence Michael G. Vickers, under whose authority the Highlands Forum currently runs. Ehrard, an advocate of “integrating disruptive technologies in DoD,” previously served as Marshall’s military assistant in the ONA, while Mike Vickers — who oversees surveillance agencies like the NSA — was also previously hired by Marshall to consult for the Pentagon.

Vickers is also a leading proponent of irregular warfare. As assistant defense secretary for special operations and low intensity conflict under former defense secretary Robert Gates in both the Bush and Obama administrations, Vickers’s irregular warfare vision pushed for “distributed operations across the world,” including “in scores of countries with which the US is not at war,” as part of a program of “counter network warfare” using a “network to fight a network” — a strategy which of course has the Highlands Forum all over it. In his previous role under Gates, Vickers increased the budget for special operations including psychological operations, stealth transport, Predator drone deployment and “using high-tech surveillance and reconnaissance to track and target terrorists and insurgents.”

To replace Hagel, Obama nominated Ashton Carter, former deputy defense secretary from 2009 to 2013, whose expertise in budgets and procurement according to the Wall Street Journal is “expected to boost some of the initiatives championed by the current Pentagon deputy, Robert Work, including an effort to develop new strategies and technologies to preserve the US advantage on the battlefield.”

Back in 1999, after three years as Clinton’s assistant defense secretary, Carter co-authored a study with former defense secretary William J. Perry advocating a new form of ‘war by remote control’ facilitated by “digital technology and the constant flow of information.” One of Carter’s colleagues in the Pentagon during his tenure at that time was Highlands Forum co-chair Linton Wells; and it was Perry of course that as then-defense secretary appointed Richard O’Neill to set-up the Highlands Forum as the Pentagon’s IO think-tank back in 1994.

Highlands Forum overlord Perry went on to join the board of SAIC, before eventually becoming chairman of another giant defense contractor, Global Technology Partners (GTP). And Ashton Carter was on GTP’s board under Perry, before being nominated to defense secretary by Obama. During Carter’s previous Pentagon stint under Obama, he worked closely with Work and current undersecretary of defense Frank Kendall. Defense industry sources rejoice that the new Pentagon team will “dramatically improve” chances to “push major reform projects” at the Pentagon “across the finish line.”

Indeed, Carter’s priority as defense chief nominee is identifying and acquiring new commercial “disruptive technology” to enhance US military strategy — in other words, executing the DoD Skynet plan.

The origins of the Pentagon’s new innovation initiative can thus be traced back to ideas that were widely circulated inside the Pentagon decades ago, but which failed to take root fully until now. Between 2006 and 2010, the same period in which such ideas were being developed by Highlands Forum experts like Lochard, Zalman and Rendon, among many others, the Office of Net Assessment provided a direct mechanism to channel these ideas into concrete strategy and policy development through the Quadrennial Defense Reviews, where Marshall’s input was primarily responsible for the expansion of the “black” world: “special operations,” “electronic warfare” and “information operations.”

Andrew Marshall, now retired head of the DoD’s Office of Net Assessment and Highlands Forum co-chair, at a Forum session in 2008
Marshall’s pre-9/11 vision of a fully networked and automated military system found its fruition in the Pentagon’s Skynet study released by the National Defense University in September 2014, which was co-authored by Marshall’s colleague at the Highlands Forum, Linton Wells. Many of Wells’ recommendations are now to be executed via the new Defense Innovation Initiative by veterans and affiliates of the ONA and Highlands Forum.

Given that Wells’ white paper highlighted the Pentagon’s keen interest in monopolizing AI research to monopolize autonomous networked robot warfare, it is not entirely surprising that the Forum’s sponsoring partners at SAIC/Leidos display a bizarre sensitivity about public use of the word ‘Skynet.’

On a Wikipedia entry titled ‘Skynet (fictional)’, people using SAIC computers deleted several paragraphs under the ‘Trivia’ section pointing out real-world ‘Skynets’, such as the British military satellite system, and various information technology projects.

Hagel’s departure paved the way for Pentagon officials linked to the Highlands Forum to consolidate government influence. These officials are embedded in a longstanding shadow network of political, industry, media and corporate officials that sit invisibly behind the seat of government, yet literally write its foreign and domestic national security policies whether the administration is Democrat of Republican, by contributing ‘ideas’ and forging government-industry relationships.

It is this sort of closed-door networking that has rendered the American vote pointless. Far from protecting the public interest or helping to combat terrorism, the comprehensive monitoring of electronic communications has been systematically abused to empower vested interests in the energy, defense, and IT industries.

The state of permanent global warfare that has resulted from the Pentagon’s alliances with private contractors and unaccountable harnessing of information expertise, is not making anyone safer, but has spawned a new generation of terrorists in the form of the so-called ‘Islamic State’ — itself a Frankenstein by-product of the putrid combination of Assad’s brutality and longstanding US covert operations in the region. This Frankenstein’s existence is now being cynically exploited by private contractors seeking to profit exponentially from expanding the national security apparatus, at a time when economic volatility has pressured governments to slash defense spending.

According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, from 2008 to 2013, the five largest US defense contractors lost 14 percent of their employees, as the winding down of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to lack of business and squeezed revenues. The continuation of the ‘Long War’ triggered by ISIS has, for now, reversed their fortunes. Companies profiting from the new war include many connected to the Highlands Forum, such as Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Boeing. War is, indeed, a racket.

No more shadows
Yet in the long-run, the information imperialists have already failed. This investigation is based entirely on open source techniques, made viable largely in the context of the same information revolution that enabled Google. The investigation has been funded entirely by members of the public, through crowd-funding. And the investigation has been published and distributed outside the circuits of traditional media, precisely to make the point that in this new digital age, centralized top-down concentrations of power cannot overcome the power of people, their love of truth and justice, and their desire to share.

What are the lessons of this irony? Simple, really: The information revolution is inherently decentralized, and decentralizing. It cannot be controlled and co-opted by Big Brother. Efforts to do so will in the end invariably fail, in a way that is ultimately self-defeating.

The latest mad-cap Pentagon initiative to dominate the world through control of information and information technologies, is not a sign of the all-powerful nature of the shadow network, but rather a symptom of its deluded desperation as it attempts to ward off the acceleration of its hegemonic decline.

But the decline is well on its way. And this story, like so many before it, is one small sign that the opportunities to mobilize the information revolution for the benefit of all, despite the efforts of power to hide in the shadows, are stronger than ever.

By Nafeez Ahmed
Published on Jan 22.

Find this story at 22 January 2015
Copyright Nafeez Ahmed

Het verwrongen wereldbeeld van de NCTV (kort)(nationaal)

Dick Schoof, coördinator van de NCTV, oogt al geruime tijd paranoia. In zijn DTN’s zoekt hij onder iedere steen naar het jihadistische gevaar.

De coördinator terrorismebestrijding stelt in het tweede dreigingsbeeld [DTN-2, september 2005] dat ‘het tegengaan van zelfmoordaanslagen moeilijk, zo niet onmogelijk is.’ Deze conclusie, die wordt getrokken naar aanleiding van de aanslagen in Londen van juli 2005, is tekenend voor de rest van het dreigingsbeeld van de afgelopen tien jaar. Eigenlijk is de NCTb niet verantwoordelijk, maar zij waarschuwt wel, al lijkt het erop dat steeds naar het verkeerde gevaar wordt gekeken.

De traumatische gebeurtenissen van het afgelopen decennium in dit land (Alphen a/d Rijn 2011, Apeldoorn 2009, Amsterdam 2004) zijn niet jihadistisch van aard, maar volgens de Nationaal Coördinator Terrorisme en Veiligheid (NCTV) schuilt het grote gevaar wel degelijk in de jihadistische moskeeën, stichtingen, organisaties, netwerken, predikers, ronselaars, jihadgangers, terugkeerders, de niet-afgereisden en anderen die worden ingedeeld als vijanden van het westen.

Ongekende netwerken

De bipolaire wereld die door de NCTV wordt geschetst, begint in het eerste dreigingsbeeld van 2004 met een direct verband tussen Nederlandse jongeren en groepen als al-Qaida. In de jaren die volgen wordt de beschrijving van het jihadistische gevaar niet minder maar meer, terwijl er niets gebeurt van jihadistische zijde. Uiteindelijk is de dienst aan het wachten op de aanslag en stelt terreurambtenaar Schoof na de aanslagen op de redactie van Charlie Hebdo dat men alert moet zijn, maar niet paranoïde.

De link tussen Nederlandse jongeren en de grote terrorismewereld van al-Qaida en andere notoire groepen, kwam in de eerste jaren van het DTN voort uit de moord op Theo van Gogh, de Hofstadgroep (naamgeving door de AIVD) en de mensen rondom Samir A. In de loop der jaren zijn deze groepen gedefinieerd als jihadistische netwerken. De laatste jaren moet de coördinator toegeven dat deze netwerken stuurloos, doelloos en zonder leider zijn, maar dat heeft hun gevaar sinds de moord op Van Gogh niet verminderd.

Uiteindelijk valt uit de dreigingsbeelden niet te concluderen of er daadwerkelijk een uitgebreid netwerk van jihadisten bestaat. In 2006 komt de term ‘ongekende netwerken’ op, die de dreiging omvattender en complexer maakt. Ongekende netwerken zijn netwerken waar de terreurdienst geen weet van heeft, maar die volgens de coördinator wel bestaan. Het is als de unknown unknowns van voormalig minister van Defensie van de VS Donald Rumsfeld, onbekende gevaren die we niet kennen. De ongekende netwerken zijn in dit geval de unknown knows.

De coördinator gaat er vanuit dat deze netwerken een gevaar vormen, maar weet niet of ze er zijn. AEL, Sharia4Holland, Behind Bars en Hizb-ut Tahrir (HuT) worden genoemd als ‘belangrijke’ groepen die een centrale rol in de jihadistische netwerken zouden spelen, maar veel onderbouwing voor deze stelling levert de NCTV niet.

Daarbij is opvallend te noemen dat zodra een groep als Sharia4Holland nog maar net is opgericht de overheid met haar volle gewicht zich op de club heeft gestort en al snel labelt als zijnde extremistisch, jihadistisch of terroristisch. Of de groepen ondergronds verder zullen gaan, is moeilijk te zeggen, want vergaderen, samenkomen en discussiëren zijn grondwettelijke rechten en geen terroristische activiteiten als de groepen zelf niet terroristisch zijn.

Gaza-protesten

De zomer van 2014 vormde voor de NCTV tot nu toe het jihadistische hoogtepunt, met een demonstratie op 24 juli ten tijde van de Israëlische militaire belegering van Gaza in het kader van de operatie Operation Protective Edge. Tijdens deze demonstratie in de Haagse Schilderswijk werden IS-vlaggen meegedragen hetgeen tot een tegendemonstratie leidde op 10 augustus 2014. Die zomer was überhaupt gevuld met protesten in het hele land naar aanleiding van het conflict tussen Israël en Palestina waarbij 72 Israëli’s en rond de 2100 Palestijnen om het leven kwamen.

De ophef rond de demonstratie van 24 juli 2014 staat in schril contrast met een vergelijkbare demonstratie op 21 december 2013. Groot verschil met 2014 was dat er eind 2013 geen alles vernietigende operatie van het Israëlische leger gaande was. Dit laatste zorgde voor een heftig debat over leuzen, spandoeken en demonstraties, waardoor het leek alsof de Schilderswijk in brand stond.

Voor de NCTV maakte dat geen verschil, de dreiging bleef substantieel, de aanslag reëel. Protesten en demonstraties worden door de dienst altijd in verband gebracht met radicalisering en polarisatie, de laatste jaren consequent onder het kopje geweld, ook al is er niets of weinig gebeurd. Hierbij kan het om allerlei vormen van protest gaan. Graffiti, een tentenkamp van vluchtelingen, een protest tegen een moskee, een verstoring van een debat; alles wordt in de hokjes polarisatie, radicalisering, extremisme, terrorisme geplaatst.

De mensen die protesteerden werden eigenlijk standaard extremisten genoemd en incidenten direct gekoppeld aan extremisme, met verharding als resultaat. Waarbij consequent het jihadisme het grootste gevaar vormt. De tolerantie van de overheid ten aanzien van protest en anderssoortige meningen is in tien jaar sterk afgenomen. De taal van de repressieve tolerantie om burgers in het gareel te houden, wordt in de loop der jaren steeds indringender. Het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk dat de protesten tegen de gaswinning in Groningen in het terrorismebeeld van coördinator Schoof terecht komt.

Verbreding

Om radicalisering en polarisatie aan te pakken, zet de NCTV steeds vaker ‘professionals’ in. In tien jaar DTN’s worden, naast de medewerkers van inlichtingen- en opsporingsdiensten, steeds meer mensen uit zorg en onderwijs aan de lijst van terrorismebestrijders toegevoegd. Eerst ging het hierbij nog om leraren, jeugdwerkers en medewerkers van het Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen. Zodra Dick Schoof de zetel van coördinator bezette, werden daar ook vertrouwenspersonen aan toegevoegd.

Deze tendens, iedereen medeverantwoordelijk maken voor het anti-terrorismebeleid, houdt gelijke tred met de verbreding naar terreinen als migratie, internet, media en financiën. Daarbij wordt in eerste instantie terrorisme als argument voor stringentere wetgeving gebruikt, vervolgens criminaliteit, voetbalsupporters en tot slot dissidente geluiden.

Zo komt het onderwerp van de Passenger Name Records (PNR) in DTN-11 (2011) op de agenda. In DTN-15 (2008) en DTN-17 (2009) wordt expliciet terrorismebestrijding vermeld. In DTN-21 (2010) spreekt de Nederlandse overheid nog over ‘doelbinding, proportionaliteit en privacy van de reiziger.’ In DTN-25 (2011) is het argument al opgerekt tot ‘het voorkomen, opsporen, onderzoeken en vervolgen van terroristische misdrijven en zware criminaliteit (EU PNR).’ In 2013, DTN-33 is een bredere behoefte het uitgangspunt geworden. ‘De behoefte om passagiers- en reserveringsgegevens te gebruiken voor het tegengaan van jihadgang, maakt deel uit van een bredere behoefte aan het gebruik hiervan in de strijd tegen zware criminaliteit, zoals mensenhandel en terrorisme.’

Of die behoefte reëel is, de passagiersgegevens ook daadwerkelijk nut hebben, is niet van belang. Ratio en feiten zijn niet aan de NCTV besteed. Eerst zijn de salafisten het grote kwaad en zouden ze al twintig jaar lang de moskeeën in Nederland langzaamaan overnemen, om vervolgens in 2010 plotseling partners van de overheid te zijn geworden in de bestrijding van de jihad. In 2011 komen de salafisten zelfs in het geheel niet voor in het dreigingsbeeld. Vanaf 2012 zijn de salafisten weer terug maar vormen in Nederland geen gevaar, terwijl zij in het buitenland wel degelijk een bedreiging vormen.

Onwaarheden

De NCTV slingert regelmatig wetenswaardigheden de wereld in die vervolgens weer even snel verdwijnen. Zo wordt in DTN-22 (2010) gesteld dat verschillende bevolkingsgroepen (Koerdische, Pakistaanse, Molukse, Somalische) een voedingsbodem zouden zijn voor radicalisering. De NCTV presenteerde een literatuurstudie en een niet representatieve steekproef als wetenschappelijk onderzoek. De Molukkers vallen al na drie maanden af als blijkt dat zij het slachtoffer zijn geworden van brandstichting, bekladding en schoten.

De Somalische brandhaard smeult nog even verder, ook omdat de CBS de ‘wetenschappelijke’ studie zou hebben bevestigd. De NCTV lijkt tevens gelijk te krijgen als eind 2010 twaalf Somaliërs worden aangehouden in het kader van een terroristische Kerst plot. De Somalische Nederlanders blijken echter niets te hebben misdaan. Wat de overheid uiteindelijk achterlaat is een aantal gestigmatiseerde landgenoten met het label terrorist en veel vernielde eigendommen. Vervolgens zijn de Somalisch-Nederlandse extremisten van de terreurkaart van de coördinator verdwenen.

De onwaarheden van de NCTV vallen niet alleen op bij de arrestaties, zoals die van de twaalf Somalische Nederlanders in 2010 of de zeven Marokkaanse Nederlanders in 2009 tijdens het IKEA plot. Zo worden CBRN-incidenten (chemische, biologische, radiologische of nucleaire middelen) gepresenteerd als aanstaand gevaar, terwijl het de grote vraag is of radicalen in Nederland daar überhaupt naar op zoek waren of zijn. In tien jaar tijd noemt de NCTV slechts één voorbeeld van een aanslag met chloor in Irak. Of chloor daadwerkelijk het middel van de aanslag was of dat het toeval was dat de vrachtwagen met chloor werd gebruikt, is onduidelijk.

Ook bij de zelfgemaakte explosieven stelt de NCTV keer op keer dat bij veel aanslagen in Europa huis, tuin en keuken bommen zijn gebruikt. Bij de aanslagen in Madrid echter werd gebruik gemaakt van regulier dynamiet, geleverd door een informant van de overheid. In Londen werden, volgens de minimale informatie die er over de aanslagen beschikbaar is, ook reguliere explosieven gebruikt. Daarnaast was er sprake van allerlei exotische pogingen die mislukten. Enkel Anders Breivik was in staat om genoeg kunstmest met nitraatzouten en benzine te verzamelen waarmee een bom kon worden gebouwd. Maar alleen al die hoeveelheid kunstmest met nitraatzouten roept allerlei vragen op.

Verwarde mannen

Breivik was overigens niet de aanleiding van de pilot ‘solistische dreigers’ van het KLPD, maar het rapport ‘Individuele bedreigers van publieke personen in Nederland’ (COT, Verwey-Jonker Instituut en Zorg Consult Nederland). Dit rapport behandelt overigens wel de problematiek rondom het bedreigen van politici en Breivik had het met het doodschieten van 77 socialistische jongeren in Noorwegen in 2011 duidelijk gemunt op de politiek.

Het onderzoek en de pilot van de KLPD volgden op de handelwijze en motieven van Karst Tates, die op 30 april 2009 met een auto een mislukte aanslag pleegde op het koninklijk gezelschap in Apeldoorn. Tates definiëren als verwarde gek komt zowel de onderzoeksinstituten als de overheid goed uit. NCTV-coördinator Akerboom van dat moment schreef in het voorwoord van het rapport dat ‘onderzoek als dit letterlijk van levensbelang is.’ Hij sprak juli 2010 over ‘inzet’ en ‘effectieve maatregelen’ en vervolgens schoot Tristan van de Vlis op 9 april 2011 wild om zich heen in een winkelcentrum in Alphen aan de Rijn.

Zowel de gebeurtenissen op 30 april 2009 als op 9 april 2011 vonden hun weg niet in het dreigingsbeeld van de NCTV, zij passen namelijk niet in het jihadistische wereldbeeld van de dienst. Of de NCTV medeverantwoordelijk was voor deze aanslagen valt moeilijk vast te stellen. De NCTV stelde wel steeds in de DTN’s voorafgaande de aanslagen dat een aanslag op handen is, dus de daden van Tates en Van de Vlis, en later de neergeschoten MH-17, kunnen in dat licht worden gezien. De dienst had de samenleving gewaarschuwd, alleen bedoelde de coördinator daarmee geen aanslag uitgevoerd door een ‘niet-jihadist.’

De jihadist is terrorist in de ogen van de NCTV, alles wordt in dat vertoog gepropt. Twee niet-werkende bomkoffers in Duitsland zijn een aanslag, drie keer een aanslag met metalen platen op een hoge snelheidstrein incidenten. De laatste aanslagen worden niet vermeld in het DTN. In het eerste geval werden twee moslims aangehouden en dus is er het jihadistische terreur.

Een groep mensen die een Oezbeekse verzetsgroep IMU steunde, werd gearresteerd en door de NCTV geportretteerd als zijnde facilitators van de jihad. Geen woord over Oezbekistan, de mensenrechten aldaar en het feit dat IMU voor 2001 nog wel op enige positieve aandacht in het westen kon rekenen. Nu zijn het jihadisten en dienen zij het schrikbeeld van de terreurdienst.

Ongenuanceerd

De film van Wilders, Fitna, beheerste het dreigingsbeeld van 2008, maar waar die dreiging uit bestond kon de NCTV niet duidelijk maken. De moslimgemeenschap reageerde namelijk nogal cool op de film die zeker geen bijzondere productie bleek. Voormalig NCTV-coördinator Joustra kon het niet uitstaan dat er geen grote rellen waren uitgebroken en Nederlandse ambassades waren afgebrand.

Niet alleen rondom arrestaties en aanslagen rapporteert de NCTV ongenuanceerd. Ook ten aanzien van het internet en blogposts heeft de een jihadistische bril opgezet. De dienst spreekt al van het jihadistische internet en blaast berichten van reageerders op tot oneindige proporties.

In 2012 gaat de NCTV nader in op een oud gerucht uit 2008 dat ‘Nederland zou toestaan dat er een erotische film over de vrouwen van profeet Mohammed zou worden gepubliceerd’ omdat het gerucht tot ‘een bedreiging tegen Amsterdam, tegen Nederlandse diplomatieke vertegenwoordigingen en tot vier demonstraties bij de ambassade in Tripoli’ zou hebben geleid. Voor het vaststellen van de ernst is er meer informatie nodig, maar die geeft de coördinator niet.

De demonstraties in Tripoli waren niet al te groot en hebben de internationale media niet gehaald vanwege de beginnende burgeroorlog in Libië. Het is daarom ook niet vast te stellen of ze plaats hebben gevonden. Over de aard van de dreigementen valt niets te zeggen, want de inhoud wordt door de dienst niet vrijgegeven. Dreigementen via sociale media vinden echter dagelijks in groten getale plaats. Alleen al op Twitter worden volgens de politie per dag 35.000 dreigementen geuit, waarvan er 200 serieus worden genomen.

Jihadgangers

En dan zijn er natuurlijk de ‘jihadgangers’ of Syrië-gangers. Deze Nederlandse staatsburgers hebben in ieder geval de linguïstieke strijd verloren. Jihad, jihadisering, jihadisme, het zijn allemaal synoniemen geworden voor terroristen, terroristisch, terrorisme. Aan de andere kant hebben zij winst geboekt doordat de NCTV de j-reizigers niet alleen ziet als een constante vorm van zorg, maar ook als een constante vorm van statistisch goochelwerk.

Wie de berichten in de dreigingsbeelden van de afgelopen jaren doorneemt, krijgt de indruk dat er sprake is van honderden, zo niet duizenden reizigers en terugkeerders. Dit terwijl het eigenlijk om een handvol mensen gaat. Mensen die naar de jihadistische strijdgebieden trekken, wordt al gemeld in het eerste dreigingsbeeld uit 2004: Samir Azzouz onderweg naar Tsjetsjenië.

Voormalig coördinator Akerboom schetst een beeld van meerdere signalen, groei, enkele uitreizen, maar ook dat het vaststellen van het aantal lastig is. ‘Hoewel er in 2011 wel meer signalen zijn over jihadreizigers uit Nederland, is het lastig vast te stellen of het aantal jihadreizigers daadwerkelijk stijgt [DTN-27, 2011].’ ‘Het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied is in de afgelopen jaren gegroeid.’ [DTN-28, 2012] ‘Ook in de afgelopen periode zijn weer enkele uitreizen naar jihadistische strijdgebieden vastgesteld.’ [DTN-30, 2012]

Coördinator Schoof probeert die aantallen wel te noemen. In DTN-32 (2013) zijn het ’tientallen personen in Nederland die alleen of in kleine groepjes naar landen als Egypte en Syrië reisden.’ In DTN-33 zijn het er tussen de vijftig en de honderd. ‘In augustus het aantal jihadistische uitreizen van Nederland naar Syrië weer toe nam in vergelijking met de maanden hiervoor’ (DTN-34, 2013).

In de inleiding van DTN-35 stelt Schoof dat ‘het aantal uitreizigers vanuit Nederland nog steeds stijgt.’ In DTN-36 ging het om ‘een continue aanwas van uitreizigers.’ In DTN-37 heeft die ‘gestage toename van uitreizigers zich voortgezet zodat inmiddels in de afgelopen twee jaar rond de 160 personen zijn uitgereisd (cijfers per 1 november 2014).’ Alle aandacht van de afgelopen jaren gaat uit naar de 160 Nederlandse jongeren waarvan volgens de NCTV er ‘rond de honderd Nederlanders nog in het strijdgebied aanwezig zijn, onder wie zo’n dertig vrouwen.’

Stempel terrorist

De uitreizigers, terugkeerders, de mensen die willen uitreizen en degen die niet kunnen uitreizen zijn in feite in de ogen van de NCTV al terrorist. Dit terwijl de coördinator moet toegeven dat ‘de strafrechtelijke aanpak van vermoedelijke rekruteurs en van terugkeerders die zich hebben aangesloten bij een terroristische organisatie en/of betrokken zijn geweest bij (oorlogs)misdaden te kampen heeft met problemen met betrekking tot de bewijsgaring.’

Let op het taalgebruik, er is al vastgesteld dat er sprake is van deelname aan een terroristische organisatie, maar de bewijsgaring is moeilijk. Hoe Schoof tot die conclusie komt, is niet duidelijk. In DTN-34 [eind 2013] waren ze nog waarschijnlijk allemaal bij Jabhat al Nusra terecht gekomen. In DTN-35 [begin 2014] is de coördinator er zeker van dat alle Nederlanders ‘bij JaN (Jabhat al Nusra) zijn terecht gekomen.’ Een half jaar later ‘bij minimaal drie jihadistische strijdgroepen; de meerderheid valt onder Jabhat al Nusra (JaN) en ISIS, een minderheid bevindt zich bij Jund al-Aqsa (JaA).’ [DTN-37]

De NCTV heeft dit allemaal vastgesteld terwijl er problemen zijn bij de bewijsgaring. Begin 2014 is de dienst ook in juridische zin overtuigd van het feit dat de terugkeerders terroristen zijn: ‘Duidelijk is verder dat de meeste jihadstrijders in Syrië strijdervaring opdoen, gruwelijkheden plegen en door radicaliseren.’ Op basis waarvan de coördinator tot deze conclusie komt is onduidelijk, de dienst claimt dat ‘de Nederlandse jihadgangers op dit moment voetsoldaten zijn voor deze strijd.’

Het zijn ‘voetsoldaten’ in de oorlog die de NCTV graag wil voeren. De notie dat in Syrië een dictator al decennialang aan de macht is en een deel van het volk zich wil bevrijden van deze dictatuur, is in de dreigingsbeelden niet terug te vinden. Het woord burgeroorlog ten aanzien van Syrië komt in 2011 en 2012 niet voor in het vocabulaire van de dienst. In 2013 en 2014 wordt de burgeroorlog in Syrië in vier van de zes dreigingsbeelden vermeld. In slechts één van alle dreigingsbeelden van de afgelopen tien jaar wordt melding gemaakt van tienduizenden doden. [DTN-33] De miljoenen vluchtelingen en de ontwrichting van een hele regio, de dienst maalt er niet om.

Oorlogsretoriek

Alles dient de oorlogsretoriek van de NCTV. Het vermelden van burgers, burgerslachtoffers en vluchtelingen is daarom niet interessant. In de drang om te scoren werkt de dienst samen op zowel bilateraal als multilateraal vlak met landen als Marokko, Algerije, Saoedi-Arabië, Egypte, Jordanië, Pakistan en andere landen die het niet zo nauw nemen met de mensenrechten.

Twee dictaturen waren zelfs uitverkoren als sparringpartners in het contraterrorisme beleid: Algerije en Saoedi Arabië. De coördinator was enigszins teleurgesteld dat er wat verschillen zijn ‘in historische, culturele, religieuze en politieke context.’ De Algerijnse dictatuur doet ook nog mee aan een instituut ter bevordering van de rule of law.

Of het beleid van de NCTV effect heeft, is eigenlijk niet meer belangrijk. Analyses betreffende het eigen functioneren behoren niet tot het repertoire van de coördinator. Deze jihadistische oorlog van de NCTV heeft niets met veiligheid te maken, de neergeschoten vlucht MH-17 is daarvan het bewijs. Waarom de dienst de basisveiligheid van de burgerluchtvaart niet op orde heeft, is niet interessant. Er moet op jihadi’s worden gejaagd waarvoor het schetsen van een zo noodlottig mogelijk beeld van de moslimgemeenschap de belangrijkste voorwaarde is.

Buro Jansen & Janssen, 25 maart 2015

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Het verwrongen wereldbeeld van de NCTV (I analyse Nederland)

In de internationale analyse gaat het vooral over de directe link tussen internationale gebeurtenissen en het mogelijke gevaar in Nederland. Nu blijft dat natuurlijk koffiedik kijken. Hypothetisch kan iedereen die gaat deelnemen aan de gewapende strijd in bijvoorbeeld Syrië een tegenstander worden en bij terugkeer, hier willen toeslaan. Die gedachtegang vloeit voort uit de realiteit van de oorlog tegen de terreur, waar Nederland aan deelneemt. Wij zijn in oorlog met een fictieve tegenstander, terreur. Iedereen kan daartoe worden gerekend en hoewel definities van terrorisme gepresenteerd worden als objectieve gegevens, is terreur altijd politiek en de oorlog tegen de terreur ook.

In dat licht moet niet alleen de internationale component van het Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland (DTN) worden bekeken, maar ook de nationale component. De schutter(s) van Toulouse, Brussel, Parijs of andere plaatsen zijn niet exemplarisch voor iedere terugkeerder uit een van de zogenoemde jihadistische strijdgebieden. Dat is een versimpeling van een terrorisme plotten en als het zo zou zijn, zouden er veel vaker aanslagen worden gepleegd. Ook zijn de schutters geen voorbeelden van de haat tegen Joden of een aanval op de vrijheid van meningsuiting, ook dat zou een veel te simpele analyse zijn van de aanslagen. De schietpartijen zijn vooral een voorbeeld van een complexe samenhang van politieke groepen en individuen, inlichtingen- en opsporingsdiensten, militaire interventies in burgeroorlogen in de wereld en een polarisering van de politiek ten aanzien van de radicale islam. Europa, het westen, en Nederland presenteren zich als een redelijke entiteit, een objectieve politiek alsof zij niets misdaan heeft en het kwaad over zich is gekomen. Bij de internationale analyse wordt de analogie met de Hobbit gebruikt, met ‘Middle Earth’ uit ‘In de ban van de Ring’, het paradijs tegen het kwaad. Paradijs, ten koste van wat en wie eigenlijk, want het ‘westen’ is niet ‘Middle Earth’ in een vacuüm. En daar zit de complexiteit, helemaal in een geglobaliseerde wereld. Oorlogen in Afghanistan, Irak, Somalië, Syrië en in andere landen hebben alles met Europa en Nederland te maken, ‘ons’ handelen heeft consequenties op de lange termijn. Eerst Saddam Hoessein decennia lang steunen, vervolgens afzetten en het land aan zijn lot over laten en polariseren door bepaalde groepen te bevoordelen en anderen achter te stellen. Hetzelfde recept wordt keer op keer herhaald, in Afghanistan, Libië, Somalië, Jemen, Egypte en vervolgens speelt het westen alsof het onschuldig is. Complexiteit zit ook in de rol van inlichtingendiensten. Werkte Mohammed Merah voor de Direction centrale du renseignement intérieur (DCRI, de Franse AIVD)? Hij vroeg naar zijn contactpersoon (runner) op de laatste dag van de belegering van het appartement waar hij zich had verschanst. De observatie van Mehdi Nemmouche werd kort voor de aanslag afgebroken en de dader wist enige tijd uit handen van de politie te blijven en werd in het zuiden van Frankrijk gearresteerd. Die complexiteit is niet alleen aanwezig in Frankrijk of in de zogenoemde jihadistische gebieden, ook in Nederland. Zie de moord op Theo van Gogh en de onduidelijkheden ten aanzien van Mohammed Bouyeri. Is hij benaderd? Hoe close werd de hofstad groep geobserveerd, wat is er fout gegaan of is het niet verkeerd gegaan? Gezien de betrokkenheid van de AIVD bij de Antheunisstraat waar twee leden van de hofstad groep werden aangehouden, zat de geheime dienst dichter op de huid van de verdachten dan uit allerlei rapportages is gebleken. Terreur is politiek en terrorismebestrijding ook. Dit tekent tien jaar dreigingsbeelden. Dreiging die vooral jihadistisch wordt geportretteerd, angst die niet wordt weggenomen, maar keer op keer reëler wordt voorgesteld alsof Toulouse, Brussel, Boston, Ottawa in Nederland liggen en de verdachten/daders Nederlanders zijn of naar Nederland onderweg zijn. Probleem is dat door verhalen plat te presenteren, de dreiging niet meer imaginair is, maar werkelijkheid wordt, terwijl niet alleen fysiek veel plaatsen niet in Nederland liggen, ook de werkelijkheid van elke verdachte/dader meer lagen heeft dan de simpele terugkeerder, uitreiziger, niet-uitgereisde jihadist, het nieuwe woord voor terrorist, doet vermoeden. De wereld wordt plat voorgesteld alsof er twee partijen zijn, goed en slecht, maar de wereld, mensen ook verdachten en daders zijn complexer dan zwart-wit tekeningen. De wereld wordt in de dreigingsbeelden voorgesteld als een cartoon, een zwart-wit representatie die alleen maar kan leiden tot meer mensen die het gevoel hebben partij te moeten kiezen, tot meer polarisatie, meer dreiging, meer geweld. Tien jaar dreigingsbeeld, maar ook 14 jaar ‘War on Terror’ laten dat dagelijks zien in een zich langzaam ontwikkelende mondiale oorlog, tegen wat? Tegen terreur, maar terreur van wie, de terreur van het dreigingsbeeld. Hier vooral aandacht in vogelvlucht voor het nationale gevaar in de vorm van verdachte/daders, polariserende mensen, radicaliserende burgers en een steeds extremistischer wordende overheid en politiek. Jaar in jaar uit, van DTN op DTN is in ieder geval opvallend dat in tien jaar terreurbeleid van de NCTV weinig woorden over fatale missers van arrestaties en terreuralarmen op onder andere 22 juli 2005, 12 maart 2009, 24 december 2010, 29 augustus 2014 en over fatale aanslagen op 2 november 2004, 30 april 2009, 9 april 2011 en 17 juli 2014 worden vuil gemaakt.

2005 Met een gestrekt been erin
DTN-0 / 24 januari 2005
DTN-1 / 10 juni 2005
DTN-2 / 29 september 2005
DTN-3 / 5 december 2005
Conclusie DTN 2005

2006 jihadistische managementtraining voor de NCTb
DTN-4 / 2 maart 2006
DTN-5 / 7 juni 2006
DTN-6 / 16 oktober 2006
DTN-7 / 20 december 2006
Conclusie DTN 2006

2007 de ongekende dreiging, Joustra goes Rumsfeld
DTN-8 / 25 april 2007
DTN-9 / 4 juni 2007
DTN-10 / 9 oktober 2007
DTN-11 / 27 november 2007
Conclusie DTN 2007

2008 NCTB lijdt aan het ‘sudden jihad syndrom’
DTN-12 / 5 maart 2008
DTN-13 / 9 juni 2008
DTN-14 / 9 september 2008
DTN-15 / 19 december 2008
Conclusie DTN 2008

2009 het theater van de dreiging
DTN-16 / 6 april 2009
DTN-17 / 19 juni 2009
DTN-18 / 11 september 2009
DTN-19 / 15 december 2009
Conclusie DTN 2009

2010 de solistische dreigende dienst weet wel raad met eenlingen
DTN-20 / 7 april 2010
DTN-21 / 18 juni 2010
DTN-22 / 13 september 2010
DTN-23 / 17 december 2010
Conclusie DTN 2010

2011 Alphen aan de Rijn ligt niet in Nederland
DTN-24 / 18 maart 2011
DTN-25 / 17 juni 2011
DTN-26 / 3 oktober 2011
DTN-27 / 12 december 2011
Conclusie DTN 2011

2012 burgers, burgerslachtoffers doen er niet toe in de oorlog tegen de terreur
DTN-28 / 26 maart 2012
DTN-29 / 22 juni 2012
DTN-30 / 8 oktober 2012
DTN-31 / 17 december 2012
Conclusie DTN 2012

2013 de coördinator wil wat meer actie en geen gebrekkige extremistische activiteiten
DTN-32 / 13 maart 2013
DTN-33 / 1 juli 2013
DTN-34 / 7 november 2013
Conclusie DTN 2013

2014 welkom bij de oorlog van de terreur
DTN-35 / 24 februari 2014
DTN-36 / 30 juni 2014
DTN-37 / 12 november 2014
Conclusie DTN 2014

2005 Met een gestrekt been erin

DTN-0 / 24 januari 2005

De coördinator opent 2005, het eerste jaar dat de DTN’s verschijnen, met de moord op Theo van Gogh. Over de moord en de vele vraagtekens met betrekking tot de verdachte Mohammed Bouyeri en de rol van de AIVD geen letter. Ook rond de verwonding van politieagenten in het Laakkwartier in Den Haag bij de bestorming van een AIVD huis aan de Antheunisstraat waar twee verdachten zich ophielden. “Na de moord op de heer Van Gogh is naast de verdachte van die moord, Mohammed B, een aantal andere personen aangehouden. In het totaal gaat het om 12 personen, waar onder ook de twee mannen die op 10 november 2004 in het Laakkwartier in Den Haag zijn aangehouden.” Naast de moord op van Gogh komen de verdachten van een voorbereiding op een aanslag in het DTN aan bod. Een van de verdachten wordt genoemd, Samir Azzouz. Zijn naam komt in veel DTN’s terug, in DTN-7, 8, 11, 15, 28 en 31. De naam van Samir A. wordt zo vaak genoemd alsof de NCTb een knuffel terrorist nodig heeft voor haar bestaansrecht. Aan de andere kant wordt de naam van een stichting die vervolgd wordt, wordt niet vermeld. Volgens de NCTb wordt de stichting al Haramain Humanitarian Aid vervolgd door het OM omdat “deze stichting in verband wordt gebracht met terroristische activiteiten.” Ook vermeldt de coördinator niet dat een ambtsbericht van de AIVD aanleiding is voor de vervolging. De inhoud van dit bericht is later van belang bij de verslaglegging over de geheimzinnige stichting. De kop is eraf voor de terreurstichting en het tij zit mee. De AIVD krijgt meer geld dus de coördinator zal op termijn ook een deel van de koek krijgen.

De moord op Theo van Gogh is net als de aanslagen van 11 september 2001 op het WTC in New York een aanjager voor onderzoek en wet- en regelgeving. Terrorismebestrijding gaat hand in hand met migratie maatregelen (vreemdelingentoezicht en grensbewaking), controle op reisbewegingen (databanken van passagiersgegevens), maar ook internet surveillance (in directe relatie met de bestrijding van kinderporno), de bestrijding van de georganiseerde criminaliteit (wapenhandel) en financiële controle (witwassen). In het nulnummer van het Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland (DTN) tekent zich deze ontwikkeling meteen al af met veel overleg met de Amerikanen en op Europees niveau. Naast de ontwikkeling van veel van deze repressieve maatregelen is het aanpakken van polarisatie en radicalisering een terugkerend onderwerp. DTN-0 pakt meteen flink uit. “Radicalisering beperkt zich namelijk niet tot de islamitische gemeenschappen. Nederland is de afgelopen jaren ook geconfronteerd met gewelddadig dierenrecht activisme, rechts-extremistisch geweld en radicaal anti-globalisme.” De coördinator noemt geen details zodat onduidelijk is wat voor gevaar die radicalisering voor Nederland heeft gezorgd. De dienst wil echter onderstrepen dat deze onbekende radicalisering ook strafrechtelijk zal worden aangepakt. De NCTV heeft een onderzoek aangekondigd naar “de bruikbaarheid van het strafrechtelijk instrumentarium bij het beschermen van democratische waarden en normen, met het oog op het huidige verschijnsel van radicalisme.”

Om duidelijk te maken waar de dienst toe in staat is wordt een geheimzinnige casus beschreven. “De NCTb concludeert dat de organisatie waarom het in de pilot ging, een voorbeeld is van een organisatie waarop de in die brief uitgelegde wijze van verstoren kan worden toegepast.” Bij de ‘pilot’ gaat het om een organisatie die men wil verstoren, of lastig vallen, overheidsterreur, vergelijkbaar met de Bibob. Strafrechtelijk is er niets aan de hand, maar een bedrijf, stichting, vereniging krijgt geen vergunning vanwege ‘samengebrachte’ informatie. De coördinator omschrijft dit als volgt: “Er is evenwel onvoldoende grond voor strafrechtelijk, bestuursrechtelijk dan wel civielrechtelijk ingrijpen.” In DTN-0 is voor onvoldoende het woord vooralsnog toegevoegd, want de dienst vindt de organisatie ‘fout’. De ‘organisatie’ is een stichting en een aan deze stichting gelieerde moskee, waarschijnlijk gaat het om de Stichting As-Soennah. Volgende de NCTb “vinden activiteiten plaats onder de vlag van deze organisatie die als anti-integratief zouden kunnen worden beschouwd, leent de organisatie zich mogelijk als een broedplaats voor radicalisering, is er sprake van een potentieel aantrekkelijke omgeving voor rekruteurs en is de financiële huishouding is niet transparant.” Let op de woorden “zouden kunnen worden” in het kader van de activiteiten, “mogelijk” in het kader van broedplaats en “potentieel” bij rekruteurs. Alleen over de financiën lijkt de dienst een duidelijke positie in te nemen, die zijn “niet transparant”. Wat dat inhoudt maakt de coördinator echter niet duidelijk, het zou ook kunnen betekenen dat de dienst daar geen inzage in heeft en waarom zou zij daar inzage in moeten hebben?

De dienst schetst vervolgens een beeld van het ‘verstoren’, waaruit moet blijken dat de NCTb haar tanden kan laten zien. In ambtenarentaal stelt de dienst: “Door de NCTb is een pakket maatregelen ontwikkeld dat de overheid ter beschikking staat om zeer gericht op deze casus (“maatwerk”) te interveniëren in het radicaliseringsproces.” Vervolgens schetst de coördinator dat hij diverse andere diensten op de niet strafbare organisatie kan afsturen: “Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken en de IND bij specifieke evenementen in de moskee en gerichte, risico gestuurde controles (binnenlands vreemdelingentoezicht, buitengrensbewaking en Mobiel Toezicht Vreemdelingen (MTV)) ten tijde van zo’n evenement.” Het blijft niet bij migratie maatregelen ook financiële controleurs wordt op de stichting en de moskee afgestuurd. “Het ministerie van Financiën kan relevante kredietinstellingen attenderen op een stichting in verband met het geconstateerde verhoogde risico van directe of indirecte betrokkenheid bij terrorisme/extremisme. De Belastingdienst controleert de stichting met als doel meer inzicht te verkrijgen in financiële geldstromen en huishouding van de stichting.” En de dienst laat het daar niet bij, want de ‘organisatie’ moet op de knieën worden gedwongen: “De wijkagent wordt ingezet bij preventief toezicht op wijkniveau en de lokale overheid wordt geïnformeerd over de radicaliseringsproblematiek zodat op lokaal niveau bijvoorbeeld de voorwaarden voor de vestrekking van subsidies/vergunningen verscherpt worden toegepast.” Gaat dit om Al Qa’ida? Nee, dit gaat om een ‘organisatie’ waarbij “onvoldoende grond is voor strafrechtelijk, bestuursrechtelijk dan wel civielrechtelijk ingrijpen.” Onschuldige burgers dus. In landen als Rusland en China en andere repressieve regimes gebeurt dit ook, blijkbaar ziet de dienst die landen als haar grote voorbeelden.

DTN-1 / 10 juni 2005

In het eerste ‘echte’ DTN stroopt de coördinator de mouwen verder op. In internationaal opzicht lijkt de dienst zich te willen meten met Al Qa’ida. “De islamistische-terroristische dreiging voor Nederland gaat nog steeds in belangrijke mate uit van islamistische netwerken. De grootste huidige dreiging uitgaande van het Al Qa’ida netwerk voor Nederland ligt besloten in de proliferatie van zijn gedachtegoed.” Proliferatie is een woord dat niet snel gebruikt wordt en meestal is het gebruik in samenhang met massavernietigingswapens zoals ook in DTN-5 en DTN-7. Het gebruik van proliferatie in relatie tot Al Qa’ida lijkt iets te willen aangeven. De eerste coördinator is er snel van afgestapt, de laatste coördinator heeft het in ere hersteld vooral in de laatste DTN-37 van 2014. Het is onduidelijk of er binnen de NCTb een discussie over het woord is geweest, maar proliferatie gebruiken in relatie tot radicale moslim jongeren die dan gelijk worden gesteld aan massavernietigingswapens gaat nogal ver.

Net als radicale moslim jongeren in verband brengen met proliferatie is verstoren ook een stigmatiserende maatregel, maar behoort volgens de dienst tot haar instrumentarium en past in een rechtsstaat. Dat Al Qa’ida al doorgedrongen is in de Hollandse polder blijkt volgens de coördinator uit “het ontstaan van lokale terroristische netwerken van in Nederland geboren moslims.” De coördinator geeft niet aan om hoeveel netwerken het gaat, ook niet wat de overheid met deze blijkbaar terroristische netwerken doet, want als ze al terroristisch zijn, waarom zijn er geen netwerken opgerold, behalve de al opgerolde hofstad groepen en de groep rond Samir A.? De enige arrestatie waar de coördinator wel over bericht is de “aanhouding van betrokkene verijdelde geval van ‘zelfontbranding’” wat eigenlijk in tegenspraak is met de genoemde ‘terroristische netwerken’. Op deze arrestatie wordt in de internationale analyse van de DTN’s dieper op ingegaan.

‘Zelfontbranding’ heeft alles te maken met radicalisering en die radicalisering moet verstoord worden zoals al duidelijk werd bij de geheimzinnige ‘organisatie’. Volgens de coördinator zijn de motieven voor jongeren om te radicaliseren sinds de moord op van Gogh veranderd. “In het recente verleden werden deze motieven ontleend aan de strijdgebieden waar een nationalistische of islamistische strijd plaatsvond of plaatsvindt (zoals het Midden-Oosten, Afghanistan tijdens de Sovjetbezetting, Bosnië en Tsjetsjenië). Nu lijkt de afkeer zich steeds sterker te richten tegen het Westen in zijn algemeenheid dat wordt gezien als de ‘onrechtvaardige’ macht tegenover moslims. Het recente optreden van het Westen in Afghanistan en Irak vormt een extra impuls, waarbij de afkeer zich ook specifiek tegen Nederland richt.” Het is interessant hoe de dienst doet alsof de coördinator boven de strijdende partijen staat en zelf geen onderdeel uitmaakt van de ‘War on Terror.’

Verhoudingen in het Midden-Oosten zijn in de loop der jaren niet echt veranderd. Veel landen worden geleid door dictators met steun van het ‘vrije’ westen. Afghanistan was in eerste instantie geen moslimstrijd zoals de NCTb dat tracht te definiëren. De Afghanen hebben diverse keren tegen de Engelsen gevochten, vervolgens tegen de Russen en daarna tegen de Amerikanen en hun bondgenoten. Het zou ook als antikoloniale oorlog kunnen worden gedefinieerd, een zelfbeschikkingsoorlog. De platte analyse van de verschuiving van ‘een nationalistische of islamistische strijd’ naar een ‘anti-westerse strijd’ ontbeert enige analyse van tevens zeer verschillende landen en hun geschiedenis. De tweedeling past wel in de framing van radicale moslims als tegenstanders van “het optreden van het Westen in Afghanistan en Irak.” Dit bipolaire denken versterkt zichzelf in de loop van de DTN’s.

De coördinator legt nog wel een link met het klimaat in Nederland: “Radicaliseringsprocessen binnen moslimgemeenschappen worden ook gevoed door de xenofobe soms racistische houding en gewelddaden van rechtsdenkende jongeren.” Het woord xenofoob wordt drie keer gebruikt in de DTN’s, de laatste keer in DTN-10 in 2007. Daarna lijkt het westen niet meer xenofoob, maar zijn de rollen omgedraaid, want is er “vermeende discriminatie van moslims.” In de internationale analyse van de DTN’s wordt nader op deze opmerking van de coördinator ingegaan. Het gebruik van het woord xenofoob bij Nederland sluit ook meer aan bij “een niet te onderschatten belasting voor de verhoudingen tussen bevolkingsgroepen in Nederland,” zoals de NCTb schrijft. Bij vermeende discriminatie is er niets aan de hand in Nederland en ligt het aan de moslims zelf. En dat brengt de coördinator weer terug bij zijn favoriete topic, polarisatie en radicalisering.

In de afgelopen tien jaar is niet duidelijk wie de aanjagende factor is bij meer repressie, zijn het moties van politiek partijen of zijn het de ambtenaren zelf? Bij de “aanpak gebruik internet en satellietzenders voor radicale en terroristische doeleinden,” lijkt het op aandringen van politieke partijen, maar in de loop der jaren is de dienst maar al te enthousiast om een website neer te halen. Onderscheid tussen radicaal en terroristisch is bij de omschrijving van de maatregelen weggevallen en voor de NCTb gaat het al lang niet meer over uitingen, maar ook communicatie over die uitingen. “De aanpak beperkt zich overigens niet tot de bestrijding van radicale uitingen; ook communicatie die anderszins dreigend kan zijn, wordt in de totaalaanpak betrokken.” En ook al wordt er nu misschien alleen aandacht aan radicale moslim jongeren besteed, doel is dat de aanpak het hele politiek spectrum bestrijkt: “Tenslotte is het van belang dat de aanpak zich richt op uitingen vanuit zowel radicaal-islamistische, als links- en rechtsextremistische hoek.”

DTN-2 / 29 september 2005

Soms is het belangrijk te beseffen dat er weinig is gebeurd in Nederland. Dit is belangrijk omdat bij de drie maandelijkse productie van het Dreigingsbeeld de indruk bestaat dat Nederland elke keer door het oog van de naald is gekropen. Zo ook de tweede DTN. In DTN-2 worden dreigementen genoemd. Ten eerste is er de “veronderstelde dreiging” tegen Sail in Amsterdam. Op de dreigingsanalyse rond Sail wordt in het internationale deel uitvoeriger ingegaan. Joustra schrijft dat er “een tijdelijke verhoging van de dreiging was, die te maken had met het proces tegen de Hofstadverdachten.” Daarnaast schrijft hij dat er “op grond van informatie van de inlichtingendiensten, rond enkele personen beveiligingsmaatregelen worden genomen.” Bij de tweede dreiging, de rechtszaak, waren er geen inlichtingen maar is de dreiging verhoogd. In het derde geval was er informatie van geheime diensten waardoor de dreiging rond personen is verhoogd. Hoe realistisch die inlichtingen waren en of het niet allemaal met de angst voor aanslagen zoals in Londen te maken had, wordt niet duidelijk.

Het gebeurde wel allemaal in juli 2005 en het lijkt allemaal in direct verband te staan met die aanslagen. Wie de dreigingsanalyse van de coördinator leest moet ook tot die conclusie komen. Hij schrijft namelijk dat “Nederland onverminderd in de belangstelling van potentiële terroristen staat.” De dienst gaat nog even verder: “Radicaliseringsprocessen, zoals de verdachten van de aanslagen in Londen die hebben doorgemaakt, blijven ook in Nederland onveranderd een punt van grote zorg.” Twee maanden na de aanslagen in London weet de coördinator alles over de mogelijke daders en hoe zij tot hun daad kwamen. En Joustra is niet meer te stuiten: “De Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding (NCTb) heeft een fenomeenbeschrijving van zelfmoordterrorisme opgesteld en een quick scan uitgevoerd naar mogelijkheden om barrières op te werpen tegen zelfmoordterroristen. De conclusie daarvan is dat het tegengaan van zelfmoordaanslagen moeilijk, zo niet onmogelijk is.”

Let wel: de dienst die de dreiging voor Nederland moet analyseren, schrijft in het tweede dreigingsbeeld dat “het tegengaan van zelfmoordaanslagen moeilijk, zo niet onmogelijk is.” Als dat zo is, is het dan misschien geen idee om de organisatie maar meteen op te heffen, want wat betekenen alle mogelijk bedreigingen dan door en voor een rechtszaak en personen? Wat voor inlichtingen en/of informatie zijn die bedreigingen gebaseerd? Dat is volstrekt onduidelijk. En dat is ook het beeld dat over het internationale deel van de DTN’s ontstaat. Er wordt niets geduid, niets geanalyseerd en vooral weinig losgelaten over de informatie achter de dreigingen. Het resultaat is een verband tussen “een toenemende polarisatie tussen moslims en niet-moslims”, “deze polarisatie blijft een voortdurende bron van zorg”, “uitval en ontsporing van met name jongeren” naar “polarisatie kan bijdragen aan radicalisering” en “de recente ontwikkelingen maken opnieuw het belang duidelijk van een kabinetsbreed beleid gericht op tegengaan van radicaliseringsprocessen.”

De coördinator noemt de aanslagen in London niet, maar recente ontwikkelingen lijken daar op te hinten. Aan de andere kant weet de coördinator niets van radicalisering want er kunnen geen barrières worden gevonden om het ontwikkelingsproces van de zelfmoordterrorist tegen te gaan. Er is een cirkelredenering ontstaan, die uiteindelijk tot meer vaagheid en minder analyse leidt. Blijkbaar is het gevaarlijk en mogen we blij zijn dat we nog niet zijn opgeblazen. En dat is ook het gevoel van veel Nederlanders omdat “ongeveer de helft van alle Nederlanders (55%) de kans «zeer groot» tot «tamelijk groot» acht dat in Nederland binnen afzienbare tijd een terroristische aanslag zal plaatsvinden.” Veel van deze burgers hebben ook behoefte aan informatie over terrorisme en het aantal mensen dat vindt dat “de overheid onvoldoende informatie verstrekt is gegroeid van 47% naar 60%” en “het vertrouwen in die informatievoorziening is gedaald.” Of daar vage berichtgeving over Sail en andere bedreigingen behulpzaam bij zijn is de grote vraag. De NCTb start daarom in 2006 een campagne ‘Nederland tegen terrorisme’ en bericht in de DTN’s 5, 7, 11, 13, 15 en 17 over die campagne.

DTN-3 / 5 december 2005

Bij gebrek aan echte dreiging lijkt de coördinator verder af te dwalen in de theoretische dreigingsanalyses. Het is pas het derde dreigingsbeeld en de dienst weet het zeker. “Wat betreft de binnenlandse factoren vallen de afgelopen periode enkele ontwikkelingen op die alleen in de context van mondiale radicaliseringsprocessen goed kunnen worden geduid. Dit houdt in dat de ontwikkelingen in Nederland onderdeel zijn van globale maatschappelijke processen die in veel westerse landen vergelijkbare patronen vertonen en slechts een zeer klein deel van de allochtonen en autochtonen betreffen.” In de internationale analyse van de DTN’s wordt meer ingegaan op de veronderstellingen dat in alle westerse landen dezelfde “globale maatschappelijke processen” plaatsvinden. Welke dat precies zijn maakt de coördinator niet helemaal duidelijk, want het zijn “vergelijkbare patronen” die “slechts een zeer klein deel van de allochtonen en autochtonen betreffen.” Waar de dienst die kennis vandaan heeft is niet duidelijk, maar het gaat natuurlijk over radicalisering en terrorismevorming.

Volgens de NCTb gaat het als volgt: “Allereerst bevinden zich in toenemende mate autochtone bekeerlingen in een overwegend individueel radicaliseringsproces. Sommigen raken zelfs betrokken bij de ondersteuning van terroristische activiteiten. De toegenomen geweldsbereidheid van dergelijke bekeerlingen is een zorgwekkende ontwikkeling. Verder ontvangt de politie inmiddels veelvuldig meldingen over personen die zich in een radicaliseringsproces lijken te bevinden. Dit heeft overigens voor een deel te maken met de toegenomen maatschappelijke alertheid ten aanzien van eventuele radicaliseringsprocessen. Veel van deze personen blijken criminele antecedenten te hebben.” Het is onduidelijk of de coördinator het in deze hier over Nederland heeft als het gaat over autochtonen die zich bekeren en individueel radicaliseren en ook nog aan terrorisme ondersteunen doen. Als dit bericht op Nederland zou slaan, zou deze zin worden gevolgd door een arrestatie, waarmee de dienst duidelijk zou maken ook daadwerkelijk alert te zijn.

In de eerste regel van de acute dreiging schrijft de coördinator dat “met de recente aanhoudingen weliswaar een acute specifieke terroristische dreiging aanzienlijk is verminderd, maar dat dit geen aanleiding is het algemene dreigingsniveau te verlagen.” De arrestatie zou ook de dreiging verminderen want de bekeerlingen zouden een “toegenomen geweldsbereidheid” hebben en met de arrestatie wordt verondersteld dat dit allemaal is afgenomen. Blijkbaar is dat niet het geval, waarom wordt niet duidelijk. De politie krijgt tevens veel radicaliseringssignalen en die radicaliserende mede-Nederlander is meestal ook nog crimineel. Nederland staat op exploderen zou je zeggen en dat blijkt ook want alle Nederlanders zijn alert en zijn de bron van die “eventuele radicaliseringsprocessen.” Twee alinea’s van analyse van het terrorisme gevaar komen uiteindelijk samen bij een angstig volk dat allerlei mensen aangeeft bij de politie. De coördinator duidt niet, lijkt de alertheid van het land geweldig te vinden en het gevaar lijkt alleen maar groter te worden dus de medelanders nog alerter. De spiraal van gevaar is eindeloos, want de radicale moslims zijn ook loverboys, trouwen en die meiden zijn ook extremistisch. De ‘loverboy’-achtige processen blijven in 2006 nog actief, dan verdwijnt die analyse van de coördinator uit de latere DTN’s.

Onderdeel van de “globale maatschappelijke processen” zijn ook de “geconstateerde toename van het aantal hoger opgeleiden onder rekruten” en “radicaliseringsprocessen binnen het onderwijs.” Of die kennis van globale processen werkelijk zijn, wordt niet duidelijk, de dienst schrijft een paar regels boven de radicalisering van het onderwijs dat er “vooralsnog geen informatie beschikbaar is over van buitenaf geregisseerde radicaliseringsprocessen in het Nederlands hoger onderwijs.” Dreigingsbeeld als middel om polarisering aan te wakkeren lijkt het recept. Datzelfde geldt voor die “recente aanhoudingen.” De coördinator licht de aanhoudingen niet toe en het zou om de volgende kunnen gaan. “In december 2005 worden twee jongens Remi D. en Melvin R. gearresteerd in Dauwendaele. De jongens zijn een film aan het opnemen waarbij een van de twee een bivakmuts draagt, een mes trekt en de ander aanvalt. De jongens staan duidelijk te filmen. Buurtbewoners bellen de politie die groots uitrukt. De jongens belanden in de cel en krijgen een taakstraf.” Of “Amal A. die op 3 november 2005 wordt gearresteerd in Rijswijk wegens mogelijke betrokkenheid bij terroristische activiteiten. Op 9 november 2005 wordt zij vrijgelaten wegens gebrek aan bewijs.” Man gearresteerd op 28 oktober 2005 die wordt vrijgelaten wegens gebrek aan bewijs. Of een man die bij de Schipholbrand in de nacht van 25 en 26 oktober 2005 om het leven komt. Of de arrestatie op 14 oktober 2005 van een groep rond Samir A., maar als dat zo was dan had de coördinator zijn naam genoemd, want hij is de knuffelterrorist van de dienst. Blijft de vraag open welke aanhouding de coördinator bedoelt.

Ditzelfde geldt voor het gedeelte over het verstoren van zogenoemde radicaliseringshaarden. De coördinator komt niet meer terug op de geheimzinnige ‘organisatie’ uit DTN-0 waar eigenlijk niets mee mis was, maar mogelijk iets mis was en daarom dienden die stichting en moskee verstoord te worden. De dienst schrijft: “Een radicaliseringshaard is een organisatie of stichting die als voedingsbodem fungeert voor radicaliseringsprocessen.” Of er dergelijke organisaties bestaan is onduidelijk. Dezelfde passage komt in DTN-9 (2007) terug, daar is de zin bijgevoegd: dat “om operationele redenen geen openbare mededeling kan worden gedaan over de betreffende organisaties en de maatregelen die reeds zijn en nog worden getroffen.” Radicaliseringshaarden komen in de eerste twee jaar van de NCTb veel voor, daarna veel sporadischer. De coördinator wil nog wel even kwijt dat “de verstoringsacties uiteraard plaats vinden binnen de grenzen van de wet,” alsof hij eigenlijk ook wel beseft dat het verstoren weinig rechtsstatelijk is.

Dit wordt duidelijk uit de passage “vreemdelingrechtelijke aanpak” bij het verstoren van organisaties en mensen. De coördinator schrijft dat “de betrokken vreemdelingen veelal gebruik blijken te maken van rechtsmiddelen, zoals een verzoek om opheffing van vreemdelingenbewaring en het instellen van bezwaar en beroep tegen de beëindiging van verblijf of tegen de ongewenst verklaring.” Die vreemdelingen blijken zelfs kennis te hebben van het Europese Verdrag van de Rechten van de Mens (EVRM) en dit zorgt er alleen maar voor dat deze vreemdelingen niet mogen worden uitgezet. “Dit alles leidt er toe dat de effectuering van de vreemdelingrechtelijke maatregelen vertraging oploopt,” besluit hij. Het feit dat de coördinator zelf niet naar artikel 3 van het EVRM heeft gekeken, maakt misschien de radicalisering van de coördinator zelf duidelijk.

Conclusie DTN 2005

In het nulnummer van het DTN maakt Joustra duidelijk dat terrorisme, extremisme, radicalisering, polarisatie één en hetzelfde is en dat er geen verschil is tussen de radicale islamitische, extreemrechtse of anti-globalisme gemeenschap. Verdachten worden het liefst al als veroordeelden gepresenteerd en concrete feiten wordem niet vermeld. Het lijkt alsof het allemaal vooral heel mistig moet blijven, zo vaag mogelijk als inlichtingen jaarverslagen. Het strafrecht moet worden ingezet tegen radicale stemmen en de integrale aanpak van terrorisme strekt zich uit in alle facetten van de samenleving. Geen analyse, context, onderzoek van wat er fout ging bij de moord op van Gogh, nee doorpakken nu het kan op een repressieve manier. De dienst trakteert de lezers op een spannend verhaal over een organisatie die fout is. Lees: “het Kwaad” met een hoofdletter K. Probleem is dat er niets strafrechtelijks, bestuursrechtelijks danwel civielrechtelijks mankeert aan de ‘organisatie’. De organisatie is onschuldig, maar niet voor de dienst. De coördinator stelt dat er verstoord moet worden, want de ‘organisatie’ is fout. Zie hier in het nul nummer van het DTN waar tien jaar ondermijning van de rechtsstaat mee begint. Bij DTN-1 zijn de radicale islamitische jongeren aan de beurt die vergeleken worden met massavernietigingswapens en is discriminatie van moslims alleen “vermeend”, in de hoofden van diezelfde moslims dus. In DTN-2 wordt de dreiging opgeschroefd door London, al is onduidelijk of er echt aanwijzingen zijn en het vooral een schrikreactie op de aanslagen in London is. De coördinator weet echter alles al van die aanslag en stelt dat “het tegengaan van zelfmoordaanslagen moeilijk, zo niet onmogelijk is.” Let wel de dienst die de dreiging voor Nederland moet analyseren, schrijft in het tweede dreigingsbeeld dat “het tegengaan van zelfmoordaanslagen moeilijk, zo niet onmogelijk is.” Als dat zo is, is het misschien een idee om de organisatie maar meteen op te heffen, want wat betekenen alle mogelijk bedreigingen dan van een rechtszaak en voor personen? Wat voor inlichtingen en/of informatie zijn die bedreigingen gebaseerd? Dat is volstrekt onduidelijk. Het jaar wordt afgesloten met DTN-3 en globale maatschappelijke processen, mondiale radicaliseringsprocessen, niet vast te stellen geregisseerde radicaliseringsprocessen in het Nederlands hoger onderwijs en een stel arrestaties waarover de dienst niets vermeld, waardoor onduidelijk blijft wat dat voor het gevaar voor Nederland betekent. Het eerste jaar DTN van de NCTb, een dienst die met een gestrekt been de rechtsstaat intrapt. Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland, de terreur van de dienst die zegt terrorisme te bestrijden, maar die vooral op allerlei fronten bezig is de rechtsorde uit te hollen. De terreur van de NCTb.

2006 jihadistische managementtraining voor de NCTb

DTN-4 / 2 maart 2006

Het eerste DTN van 2006 is een opmerkelijk document. De toon is anders, de dreiging echter hetzelfde. Het is het eerste DTN waarin het over de kans op een zelfmoordaanslag in Nederland wordt gespeculeerd: “Dit betekent dat de kans reëel is dat er in Nederland een aanslag zal plaatsvinden. Daarbij moet er rekening mee worden gehouden dat een dergelijke aanslag ook de vorm van een zelfmoordaanslag kan aannemen.” In DTN-2 kwam de zelfmoordaanslag voor als een aanslag die niet voorkomen kan worden, maar niet als een mogelijke aanslag in Nederland. Waarom de coördinator nu zelfmoordaanslag als dreiging gebruikt is onduidelijk. De dienst heeft geen aanwijzingen voor een op handen zijnde aanslag. De dienst beschrijft netwerken van radicale jongeren, die in de gaten worden gehouden en tevens worden er verdachten gearresteerd. De dreiging verandert niet, niet door de arrestaties, niet door het zicht op de netwerken. “Gelukkig hebben in het verleden diverse aanhoudingen in verband met terroristische activiteiten een acute dreiging kunnen wegnemen of op zijn minst tijdelijk kunnen verminderen. Tot een duurzame verlaging van het algemene dreigingsniveau hebben de aanhoudingen echter niet geleid.”

De Hofstad groep wordt specifiek genoemd: “In Nederland doen veiligheidsautoriteiten onderzoek naar diverse terroristische netwerken. Het Hofstad-netwerk is een spraakmakend voorbeeld van een van de netwerken. De publieke aandacht voor de activiteiten van de leden van dit specifieke netwerk is begrijpelijk, maar dat mag er niet toe leiden dat het gevaar van andere netwerken genegeerd of onderschat wordt.” Gewone stervelingen begrijpen er volgens de NCTb niets van want “de dreiging voor Nederland is namelijk veel complexer en omvattender dan de dreiging die in enkele concrete zaken de afgelopen tijd een rol heeft gespeeld.” De dreiging is complexer en omvattender, er staat een zelfmoordaanslagpleger op de stoep, en dat is geen concrete zaak. Nee, het gevaar is onzichtbaar en de coördinator is de enige die het ziet en er voor waarschuwt. De toon is gezet. Wie de inleiding van DTN-4 heeft gelezen stopt met alles wat hij of zij aan het doen is en rent naar de bunker, niet alleen is er een zelfmoordaanslag in aantocht, er is potentieel iets veel ergers aan de hand, alleen niemand weet het behalve de dienst.

Wie vervolgens toch doorleest raakt verstrikt in een doolhof van rekrutering, training en ideologie. Volgens de coördinator vinden de trainingen niet meer fysiek plaats maar in de vorm van studeren op afstand met de NCOI bijvoorbeeld. “Met het verdwijnen van het gros van de fysieke trainingskampen in Afghanistan en Pakistan zijn veel jihadisten inmiddels aangewezen op deze virtuele trainingsmogelijkheden op het internet. Van de laagdrempelige beschikbaarheid van gedetailleerd en in aanleg professioneel trainingsmateriaal gaat een aanzienlijk risico uit.” Deelname aan deze online jihadistische universiteit is door zelfrekrutering. De bijpassende ideologie is de klassieke gewelddadige takfir-ideologie, een gemuteerde takfir-ideologie of de neo-takfir-ideologie. Volgens de coördinator verschuift de ideologie van de cursisten aan het virtuele jihadistencollege en door de laagdrempeligheid groeit de beweging als kool: “Hier komt bij dat radicaliseringsprocessen onder een deel van de totale moslimbevolking en sommige bekeerlingen in Nederland onverminderd voortschrijden. Tot de aanhangers behoort inmiddels een snel groeiende groep geradicaliseerde jongeren.”

De combinatie van “een deel van de totale moslimbevolking”, onduidelijke netwerken en zelfmoordaanslagen suggereert een ophanden zijnde explosie. De coördinator vist daar ook naar: “Een en ander impliceert dat het soms felle publieke debat in Nederland over de islam het risico met zich meebrengt dat ook ons land op enig moment het mikpunt kan worden van radicaal-islamitische agitatie,” schrijft hij over de boosheid onder moslims over de spotprenten van Kurt Westergaard. “Radicaal-islamitische agitatie” klinkt toch even anders dan de dreiging van een zelfmoordaanslag en lijkt dichter bij de waarheid dan ronkende berichten over onzichtbare netwerken en virtuele jihadistische soldaten. Dat de coördinator het begin 2006 niet helemaal helder meer zag blijkt uit de laatste twee zinnen van ‘ontwikkelingen in Nederland’. “Niet alleen confrontaties tussen bevolkingsgroepen maar ook een uit onzekerheid of antipathie gegroeide scheiding in de Nederlandse samenleving zou op termijn de dreiging negatief kunnen beïnvloeden. Hoewel het daar geen rassenrellen betrof, gaat van de heftigheid van de recente onlusten in Frankrijk een waarschuwing uit voor onderschatting of ontkenning van risicovolle processen die in afgescheiden groepen of door de afscheiding van groepen plaatsvinden.” Het lijkt alsof de coördinator teleurgesteld is over het gemis aan rassenrellen want “hoewel het daar geen rassenrellen” zijn, “gaat van de heftigheid een waarschuwing uit voor onderschatting of ontkenning van risicovolle processen” in groepen, lees netwerken. In de internationale analyse van de DTN’s komt Donald Rumsfeld regelmatig terug met zijn ‘unknown unknowns’, Joustra wilde heel graag in zijn voetsporen treden.

DTN-5 / 7 juni 2006

De dreiging blijft substantieel en het deel van de moslimgemeenschap dat radicaliseert, lijkt explosief toe te nemen. De redenering is als volgt: “Controversiële debatten of artistieke uitingen over de islam, … zijn een vermeende aanval op de islam.” Alleen de radicale moslims ergeren zich hieraan en zij winnen “zowel op het internet als in een steeds groter wordend aantal moskeeën snel aan invloed”. Waarom winnen zij aan invloed? Zij maken “bij voorkeur gebruik van de Nederlandse taal, waardoor een steeds grotere groep jonge moslims wordt bereikt met alle radicaliseringsrisico’s van dien.” Zie hier de potentiële netwerken. Ze zijn er nog niet, maar komen er aan. De Nederlandse taal baart de coördinator zorgen: “Op het internet speelt zich een vergelijkbare ontwikkeling af. Zowel het naar het Nederlands vertaald jihadistisch materiaal als ook het aantal Nederlandstalige websites met radicale inslag is in de afgelopen periode in aantal toegenomen.” De dienst is bang voor “de salafistische krachten die hun antiwesterse en anti-integratieve retoriek aan een breder publiek” zouden kunnen overbrengen. Wel in de Nederlandse taal, want zo gedesintegreerd zijn deze mensen ook weer niet.

Voortbordurend op die netwerken spint de coördinator een complex verhaal van nationale en internationale netwerken, agenda’s, doelwitten en professionaliteit. “Hierbij valt op dat dergelijke binnenlandse netwerken een meer internationaal georiënteerde agenda ontwikkelen. De aandacht voor potentiële doelwitten zou van het binnenland kunnen verschuiven naar het buitenland. Meer voor de hand liggend is echter, dat de internationale agenda op de korte termijn naast de nationale agenda komt te staan. Een veiligheidsrisico vormt de naar verwachting verhoogde professionaliteit van diverse netwerken door inbreng van internationaal beschikbare expertise.” Wie denkt dat dit jihadistische managementtaal is vergist zich. De coördinator ziet al een zelfmoordaanslag met een vuile bom. “Het risico dat terroristen zich in de toekomst zullen gaan bedienen van niet-conventionele wapens (chemisch, biologisch, radiologisch of nucleair, CBRN) wordt voor Nederland voor de korte termijn ingeschat als klein maar reëel.” Klein zou gering zijn, reëel een inschatting, maar reëel is werkelijk, dus waar de coördinator de aanwijzingen vandaan heeft is onduidelijk, er is potentie hoewel gering, maar hoe reëel is onduidelijk.

De dienst gaat iets dieper in op de virtuele rekrutering, training en netwerken. In tegenstelling tot maart 2006 lijkt het mee te vallen. Het zou slechts gaan om het ontwikkelen van netwerken en nog niet bestaande netwerken. “Het internet biedt ook mogelijkheden om virtuele netwerken te vormen waarbij geen of nauwelijks fysiek contact vereist is,” denk hierbij aan sociale media. “In dat geval zouden niet alleen totaal nieuwe netwerken kunnen ontstaan, maar ook interacties tussen diverse typen fysieke en virtuele netwerken kunnen toenemen.” De coördinator heeft het nu slechts over mogelijkheden, maar blijkbaar staat alles in de kinderschoenen. “Vooralsnog kent het ontstaan van zuiver virtuele netwerken echter zijn beperkingen. Leden van virtuele netwerken zullen in de regel pas tot het ontplooien van gezamenlijke activiteiten overgaan wanneer er sprake is van daadwerkelijk onderling vertrouwen.” Dit in tegenstelling tot de eerste zin van ‘Terrorisme en rekrutering’: “De aanzienlijke dreiging van binnenlandse netwerken beïnvloedt onverminderd het dreigingsbeeld.”

Waar die dreiging vandaan komt is onduidelijk, tevens of de coördinator ergens zicht op heeft. Hij schrijft: “Het aantal meldingen van de politie over personen die een radicaliseringsproces door zouden maken blijft stabiel.” Dit suggereert alsof er zicht is op aantallen, ernst, netwerkvorming en andere aspecten. Niets is minder waar want, “hierbij dient te worden opgemerkt dat het om niet nader geanalyseerde signalen gaat.” Er is geen zicht op de radicalisering, maar er is wel radicalisering. Vervolgens gaat de dienst nader in op het leger, toch niet een plek waar je een zelfmoord terrorist los wilt laten. Alsof er niets aan de hand is schrijft de NCTb: “Het aantal meldingen over mogelijke radicalisering onder personeel binnen de krijgsmacht neemt geleidelijk toe. Ook zijn er aanwijzingen dat defensiepersoneel in contact staat met radicale groeperingen en instanties, zoals enkele islamitische stichtingen en moskeeën, dan wel daarin participeren.” Netwerken, zelfmoordaanslagen, vuile bom: alles komt dichterbij en dan: “De signalering van radicalisering binnen de krijgsmacht kan overigens ook het gevolg zijn van een toenemende alertheid binnen de krijgsmacht en hoeft niet noodzakelijkerwijs het gevolg te zijn van een toename van radicalisering.” De coördinator biedt geen uitsluitsel en wil nog wel even kwijt dat hij bij het armpje drukken met de geradicaliseerde netwerken een punt heeft gescoord, al lijkt het leger al in handen van de radicale moslims. “Het vonnis inzake het Hofstadnetwerk is een tegenslag voor het netwerk, omdat leden tot celstraf zijn veroordeeld voor terroristische misdrijven.”

Het Nederlandse publiek waardeert de coördinator. Volgens de NCTb lijkt de campagne “«Nederland tegen terrorisme» gunstig uit te pakken.” Er worden meer meldingen gedaan bij Meld Misdaad Anoniem en men is niet banger geworden. Waar die meldingen over gaan, schrijft de coördinator niet, maar of dit meldingen zijn over toename van radicalisering in het leger of de onbekende radicalisering waar de politie geen zicht op heeft is onduidelijk. De coördinator is tevreden over het Nederlandse publiek. Die tevredenheid vertaalt zich ook in een leger nieuwe rekruten voor het terreurbeleid van de NCTb. “Bestuurders, gemeenten, scholen en instellingen binnen de justitiële (jeugd)keten,” in de loop der jaren worden steeds meer mensen betrokken bij het beleid van de coördinator om radicalisering op te sporen, dreiging in te schatten en allerlei andere veiligheidstaken op zicht te nemen.

Deze ontwikkeling van het terroriseren van de samenleving heeft grote gevolgen zoals de toekomstige dreigingsbeelden laten zien. De oorlog tegen de terreur vindt zijn weg in allerlei beleidsterreinen en onderdelen van de samenleving zoals internet (“monitoring, surveillance, opsporing”), media (“zenders die zich mogelijk schuldig maken aan het uitzenden van antisemitische uitspraken en/of andere radicale uitingen”), dieper in de politie-haarvaten (“taakuitbreiding van het KLPD omvat onder andere het opstellen van een criminaliteitsbeeldanalyse (CBA) terrorisme, opsporingsonderzoeken terrorisme, structureel produceren van kwalitatief goede dreigingsmeldingen, dreigingsinschattingen en dreigingsanalyses en persoonsbeveiliging”), migratie (“Grensbewaking en identiteitscontrole”/ “Internationale samenwerking bij grensbewaking”), militarisering van de veiligheid (“het project «Intensivering Civiel-Militaire Samenwerking» (ICMS)”) en financiën. Of dat nog iets met de werkelijkheid te maken heeft, lijkt niet meer de vraag.

Een volgens de dienst in DTN-0 duistere stichting, Al Haramain Humanitarian Aid, werd vervolgd voor “terroristische activiteiten” en is op 5 januari 2006 vrijgesproken door het Hof Amsterdam omdat de “werkzaamheden of het doel van deze stichting niet in strijd zijn met de openbare orde.” De wens om terreur te oogsten lijkt onderdeel van de DTN’s geworden. De coördinator is blij met een veroordeling en gaat persoonlijk de strijd aan met de leden van de Hofstad groep of andere netwerken. “Bilal L. werd ten eerste schuldig bevonden aan voorbereidingshandelingen en bevordering van terroristische misdrijven en ten tweede aan rekrutering voor de gewapende strijd.” Bilal Lamrani was duidelijk boos op de samenleving. Hij had eerder vastgezeten voor het bedreigen van Geert Wilders en “in de gevangenis had Bilal gevraagd hoe hij aan semtex kon komen en op zijn usb-stick waren handleidingen gevonden voor het maken explosieven” (NRC Handelsblad 8 september 2007). Zie ook de internationale analyse van de DTN’s.

DTN-6 / 16 oktober 2006

Dreigingsbeelden worden gepresenteerd als afwegingen. De balans tussen dreigingen, aanwijzingen en weerstand vormen de basis van een ‘complexe’ formule waaruit dan het dreigingsniveau rolt, groen, geel, oranje of rood. DTN-6 geeft aan dat een “afweging van de nationale en internationale dimensie van de dreiging afgezet tegen de weerstand op basis van de bij de NCTb aangeleverde dreigingsinformatie tot deze conclusie leidt.” De coördinator schrijft dat “dit beeld de resultante is van een aantal uiteenlopende ontwikkelingen,” alsof het om een algoritme gaat van dreigingssoftware. Conclusie is dat: “de kans op een aanslag in Nederland reëel blijft.” Wat deze dreigingsexercitie voor meerwaarde heeft is onduidelijk. Als burger moet ik rekening houden met een aanslag op mijn trein, is in wezen wat de coördinator zegt. ‘Veiliger kunnen we het niet maken, angstiger wel,’ lijkt het devies. Hoewel de kans op een aanslag reëel is en blijkbaar blijft voor een bepaalde ongedefinieerde periode, schrijft de coördinator ook dat er “geen concrete dreiging” is.

Niets aan de hand zou je zeggen, maar de dienst heeft het hier over “gekende terroristische netwerken in Nederland”. Hoewel de coördinator het niet zegt impliceert “gekende netwerken” dat er ook ongekende of onbekende netwerken zijn die omschreven worden als “onvoorspelbaar en dynamisch” met een “aanzienlijke transnationale dimensie”. Is er nu niets aan de hand, kan vandaag een bom ontploffen of weet de coördinator het eigenlijk helemaal niet en goochelt hij wat met zijn dreigingsvocabulaire? De woordkeuze is ook explosief. Er zijn “kleine kringen van radicale moslims die bijzonder licht ontvlambaar zijn” en er moet rekening worden gehouden met “spontane uitbarstingen van individuen en groepjes.” Dit explosieve mengsel wordt nog verergerd door een “steeds toenemende radicalisering onder moslims in Nederland”. Eigenlijk is het verbazingwekkend dat niet al het halve land in vlammen is opgegaan, gezien het brandbare taalgebruik van de NCTb.

De nationale dreiging is in een alinea samen te vatten volgens de dienst, met woorden als “gekende terroristische netwerken”, “licht ontvlambaar”, “spontane gewelddadige uitbarstingen” en een verwijzing naar twee bomkoffers die eind juli 2006 in Duitse treinen waren geplaatst. Twee Libanezen werden voor het bomkoffercomplot veroordeeld tot twaalf jaar en levenslang. De beide mannen zeiden dat zij met opzet de koffers hadden gebouwd om niet te ontploffen. De coördinator verwees niet naar een ‘aanslag’ met een metalen plaat op een internationale trein van Amsterdam naar Frankfurt op 29 januari 2006 of twee aanslagen in april en juni 2004 met vier metalen platen op een sneltrein bij Castrop-Rauxel. Het Duitse voorbeeld laat zien dat de relatie tussen moslims en een poging om schade toe te brengen aan een trein een aanslag is en een ongedefinieerde aanslag op een trein als incident niet de moeite van het publiceren waard is. Het jihadistische vocabulaire is alom aanwezig zodat het zelfs niet-jihadistische dreiging definieert. Voor Anders Breivik stelt de coördinator terreur in twee zinnen: “De aanhouding van 17 extreemrechtse potentiële terroristen in België laat zien dat een escalatie van politiek geweld uit niet-jihadistische hoek als risico serieus moet worden genomen.” Veel van de arrestanten kwamen kort na de aanhouding weer vrij.

Het niet-jihadistisch gevaar heeft wel degelijk iets met het jihadistisch gevaar te maken. Bij polarisatie schrijft de coördinator: “In de afgelopen periode was er sprake van diverse gevallen van interetnisch geweld. In meer dan de helft van die gevallen is duidelijk sprake van extreemrechts geweld door Lonsdale jongeren, Skinheads en de Nationale Alliantie.” Of het hierbij is gekomen tot een confrontatie tussen de jihadisten en de niet-jihadisten is onduidelijk, ook laat de dienst in het midden om hoeveel en wat voor gevallen het ging. De radicalisering vindt dus blijkbaar aan beide kanten van de medaille plaats, maar eigenlijk is het allemaal jihadisering: “Waar in het verleden incidenteel personen met een Turkse achtergrond opdoken in lokale jihadistische netwerken met vooral een Noord-Afrikaans karakter, duiken nu kleine groepen jongeren op die als geheel lijken te jihadiseren.” De coördinator is blij om weer terug te zijn bij zijn jihadistisch vijandbeeld, want in een tweepolige wereld, past niet-jihadistische dreiging alleen als moslims ook gejihadiseerd zijn. De moslims zijn een gevaar: “De aanhoudende radicalisering onder een deel van de moslimjongeren in Nederland is een zorgwekkende ontwikkeling die de dreiging ook op langere termijn aanzienlijk blijft beïnvloeden.”

DTN-7 / 20 december 2006

DTN-7 borduurt voort op DTN-5 als het om de al dan niet reële dreiging gaat. Ten eerste zijn “er geen concrete aanwijzingen dat nationale netwerken aanslagen voorbereiden,” maar het gevaar is wel reëel. Dat komt door “de voortdurende radicalisering” die zelfs ondanks de weerstand doorzet, waardoor je de indruk hebt dat half Nederland aan het radicaliseren is. Hoe dat komt verklaart de coördinator door islamitische radicalisering door jongerenpredikers die lezingen verzorgen. Daarnaast vormen de “«informele islamitische huwelijken», waardoor vrouwen onder invloed komen van radicaal-islamitische netwerken” volgens de dienst een groot gevaar. Het is volgens de NCTb namelijk “gebleken dat deze huwelijksvorm breder verspreid is binnen moslimkringen dan voorheen werd aangenomen.” Vervolgens stelt de coördinator dat “geen aanwijzingen” en “toenemende radicalisering” wel degelijk leiden tot “enkele risicovolle internationale ontwikkelingen” die uitmonden in “een materialisering van de ongekende dreiging.” Bij de internationale analyse van de DTN’s wordt aandacht besteedt aan de ‘unknown unknowns’ van Donald Rumsfeld.

De coördinator doelt op “gelijkgezinde individuen die elkaar makkelijk weten te vinden en aan de ontplooiing van terroristische activiteiten werken. Jongeren kunnen in een tijdsbestek van enkele maanden zelf een dergelijke operationele cel vormen. Dergelijke processen lijken deels buiten de tot nu toe bekende patronen van terroristische netwerken te vallen, en kunnen in potentie ook in Nederland plaatsvinden.” Of dit allemaal ook echt is, of door de coördinator uit zijn duim gezogen, blijft onduidelijk. Alles is natuurlijk mogelijk, maar om dreiging te baseren op alles wat mogelijk is, lijkt niet een beeld maar een schrikbeeld te willen opwekken. Ditzelfde lijkt ten grondslag te liggen aan de Marokkaanse netwerken die kunnen zorgen voor de “mogelijke import van jihadistische elementen.” “Niet uit te sluiten valt dat er contacten zijn tussen dergelijke Marokkaanse netwerken en geestverwanten in Nederland.” De gedachtegang lijkt te zijn: In Marokko worden verdachten aangehouden in het kader van terrorisme onderzoek. In Nederland wonen Marokkaanse Nederlanders, die hebben vast familie en vrienden daar. Misschien is een van de verdachten bevriend met iemand in Nederland, die kan ook deel zijn van het netwerk en zo is het allemaal bedreigend.

In deze wereld van onbekend gevaar en totale oorlog, ziet de coördinator ook een toenemende polarisatie en valt het hem op dat “ten opzichte van de vorige rapportageperiode meer gewelddadige interetnische incidenten bij de politie bekend zijn geworden. Bij meldingen over rechts-extremisme is vaak sprake van geweld. Ook het online rechtsradicalisme baart zorgen. Tevens bestaan er zorgen over het verschijnsel van onverdraagzaam isolationisme bij sommige groepen moslims in Nederland. In deze kringen worden intolerante opvattingen gehuldigd over andersdenkenden en andersgelovigen.” Of de dienst het nu over zichzelf heeft is onduidelijk. Worden er diverse incidenten op een hoop gegooid? Of is er werkelijk iets aan de hand. Het wordt niet duidelijk, er lijken zelfs “parallelle machtsstructuren” te zijn of te ontstaan.

Bij het tegengaan van radicalisering lijkt de coördinator de oorzaken te willen bestrijden zoals discriminatie op de arbeidsmarkt, maar tegelijkertijd blijft de inzet vooral repressief zoals bijvoorbeeld het inzetten van het maatschappelijk middenveld als anti-terreur brigades: “Hierbij valt te denken aan het opzetten van een gebiedsgerichte aanpak, het activeren en ondersteunen van professionals (agenten, leraren, jeugdwerkers, medewerkers van het Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen e.d.).” Deze multidisciplinaire verstoring van de overheid wordt ook toegepast op zogenoemde ‘radicaliseringshaarden’. In DTN-0 was de coördinator nog openhartig over de weinig rechtsstatelijke Bibob middelen om een ‘organisatie’ op de knieën te krijgen, nu kan de dienst daar niet meer zo openhartig over zijn. “Om operationele redenen kan geen openbare mededeling worden gedaan over de organisaties die als radicaliseringshaard zijn aangemerkt en de maatregelen die worden getroffen.”

Het gebrek aan respect voor de rechtsstaat bij de coördinator is ook af te lezen uit de wijze van rapportage over gerechtelijke uitspraken. De coördinator beschrijft een uitspraak van de rechtbank in de zaak van ex-verdachten uit de zogenaamde Arles-zaak. “De rechtbank heeft, evenals in een eerdere schadevergoedingszaak van een ex-verdachte van een terroristisch misdrijf, besloten tot een veel hogere schadevergoeding dan standaard wordt toegekend.” De coördinator is daar ongelukkig mee want “het risico is aanwezig dat uitgekeerde gelden gebruikt zullen worden voor ondersteuning van terroristische activiteiten.” Waar deze mening van Joustra op is gebaseerd, is onduidelijk. De verdachten zijn namelijk onschuldig en hebben onschuldig in de gevangenis gezeten en eisen daarom een schadevergoeding. Joustra steunt daarom ideeën van zijn VVD-partijgenoot Frans Weekers, later staatssecretaris van Financiën in het eerste en tweede kabinet Rutte, die een “algemene en wettelijke schadevergoedingsregeling voor ex-verdachten van terrorisme” wilde.

Conclusie DTN 2006

Dreigingsanalyse is niet eenvoudig. Hoe moeten signalen worden beoordeeld en wat kan er nu wel of niet gebeuren? Achteraf gezien, als er iets al dan niet gebeurd is, is het makkelijk praten over het al dan niet zwaar aangezette dreigingsbeeld. De dienst heeft dus een moeilijke taak, maar is dat in werkelijkheid ook zo. De coördinator krijgt informatie van verschillende opsporings- en inlichtingendiensten. Op basis van die informatie, meestal verwoordt in ontwikkelingen en aanwijzingen, wordt een inschatting van het gevaar gemaakt. Aan de andere kant van het spectrum van de enigszins concrete informatie zijn er de veronderstellingen, de mogelijkheden, de fantasieën van de dienst zelf. En die waandenkbeelden zijn eindeloos, want in een bipolaire wereld, waarbij de andere partij is verworden tot de as van het kwaad, zijn het demonen waar tegen gevochten moet worden. En demonen zijn duivels, schimmen in een verder vredige wereld. Om niet het verwijt te krijgen dat de dienst niet had gewaarschuwd is de dreiging altijd reëel en is het niveau substantieel. Zo ontstaan ook gedachten over zelfmoordaanslagen die niet alleen niet voorkomen kunnen worden (DTN-2), maar die ook echt kunnen plaatsvinden (DTN-4). We moeten voorbereid zijn en of de dienst er zicht op heeft is onduidelijk. Er zijn allerlei netwerken waar wij geen zicht op hebben, wij, het Nederlandse publiek. “De dreiging is complexer en omvattender” en alleen de coördinator is bij machte om de terroristische netwerken te doorgronden. Toch is onduidelijk of de NCTb er daadwerkelijk zicht op heeft, want veel van de netwerken zijn virtueel en niet gekend, de woorden complex en omvattender zijn daarom verhullend. Ondanks deze onduidelijkheid over de kennis van de coördinator is voor de NCTb één ding wel duidelijk. De dreiging is alleen jihadistisch, want voor een ander beeld is geen plaats in de schrikbeelden van de dienst. Twee niet werkende bomkoffers zijn een aanslag en drie keer een aanslag met metalen platen op een hoge snelheidstrein zijn incidenten, zonder noemenswaardige vermelding in het DTN. In het eerste geval zijn twee moslims aangehouden en dus is het jihadistische terreur, in het tweede geval is er misschien niet eens onderzoek gedaan, de coördinator is er niet in geïnteresseerd. Het tweede jaar van het DTN, 2006, markeert de opkomst van de ongekende netwerken die in 2007 volledig tot ontplooiing komen. Ook de terrorisering van de samenleving in zijn geheel krijgt steeds meer vorm in 2006. Iedereen wordt ingezet op zoek naar het gevaar, naast agenten worden leraren, jeugdwerkers, medewerkers van het Centrum voor Werk en Inkomen e.d. ingezet in de speurtocht naar de radicalisering. Later worden daar ook vertrouwenspersonen en anderen aan toegevoegd. En terreurbeleid wordt toegepast op steeds meer geledingen van de samenleving zoals internet, media, migratie, militarisering van de veiligheid en financiën. De dienst heeft in het derde jaar van haar bestaan haar vleugels uitgeslagen, niemand kan meer om de schrikbeelden heen.

2007 de ongekende dreiging, Joustra goes Rumsfeld

DTN-8 / 25 april 2007

Na twee jaar gespannen te hebben gewacht op de aanslag, moet Joustra bekennen dat het toch allemaal wat overdreven was. Het eerste jaar DTN’s werd gekenmerkt door de nasleep van de moord op Theo van Gogh en de spanning rond Samir A. Toch bepaalden deze twee elementen slechts een klein deel van de dreiging voor Nederland volgens de dienst. De toenemende radicalisering, rekrutering en training hadden de overhand. Begin 2007 blijkt er plots toch een ander inzicht. De coördinator stelt dat “sinds dreigingsbeelden uit oktober 2006 er sprake leek van een afname van de concrete dreiging in Nederland die zich doorzette.” Waarom hij de tekst in de verleden tijd schrijft is onduidelijk, want zijn conclusie is dat de dreiging ook echt is afgenomen, maar blijkbaar twijfelt hij zelf nog. “Naast deze afname van de concrete binnenlandse dreiging, die vermoedelijk van langere duur zou zijn, bleken potentiële dreigingen zich niet te concretiseren,” vervolgt hij alsof er een lange periode van rust aan zal komen, maar dat zal niet langer dan een jaar zijn. Hij stelt dat bij het besluit om van substantieel naar beperkt te gaan “het zwaartepunt van de dreigingsafweging naar de potentiële dreiging, onder andere vanuit de aanwezige radicalisering in Nederland, alsmede naar de internationale context en het internationaal profiel van Nederland.”

Dreiging is geen wetenschap, maar wie DTN’s van 2005 en 2006 doorneemt krijgt het idee dat de boel op ontploffen staat, terug naar beperkt lijkt een anticlimax. “De situatie rond de gekende jihadistische netwerken in Nederland is opnieuw als vrij rustig te omschrijven,” stelt de NCTb in april 2007 terwijl een paar maanden eerder nog de gehele radicale moslimgemeenschap aan het radicaliseren was. In een paar maanden blijkt het overheidsbeleid effectief in het bestrijden van het jihadisme, “bij nog bestaande netwerken is sprake van een kloof tussen het jihadistische ideaal en de praktijk.” Tevens zou er geen leiderschap zijn bij de toekomstige aanslagplegers, alsof de dienst zit te wachten op een goed geoliede bende die dood en verderf zaait.

Het is onduidelijk wat de dienst nu wil zeggen, want hoewel er geen leiderschap is, neemt het salafisme hand over hand toe in Nederland. “Het salafistische gedachtegoed heeft in 2005 en 2006 sterk aan invloed gewonnen in Nederland.” Salafisme lijkt ook hot te zijn: “Los van de verbreiding van het salafisme is er sprake van een levendige jeugd- en internetcultuur waarin vooral de polemiek tussen sympathisanten van de gewelddadige en niet-gewelddadige jihad opvalt.” Eigenlijk is er niets veranderd na 2006. Ook qua polarisatie is er niets veranderd stelt de coördinator, misschien is het zelfs verslechterd: “Het aantal interetnische conflicten is wederom toegenomen. De omvang van ongeorganiseerd extreemrechts is in deze rapportageperiode toegenomen.” Om de polarisatie nog even kracht bij te zetten stelt de coördinator dat er ook “confrontaties met antifascisten zijn”, soms zelfs heimelijk. Heimelijk is ook het optreden van de overheid in het kader van de zogenoemde ‘radicaliseringshaarden’: “In het afgelopen jaar zijn in het kader van de aanpak van enkele radicale salafistische moskeeën op zowel nationaal als lokaal niveau diverse maatregelen uitgevoerd.” Of deze weinig rechtsstatelijk druk van de overheid zin heeft gehad is onduidelijk want “Ondanks de druk op de salafistische moskeeën is in het afgelopen jaar het zelfvertrouwen van de salafistische centra en de ideologische beïnvloeding vanuit de moskeeën onverminderd toegenomen.”

DTN-9 / 4 juni 2007

Het tweede dreigingsbeeld met beperkt niveau begint met een geruststellende alinea: “De concrete dreiging is inmiddels gestabiliseerd op het niveau zoals beschreven in het vorige dreigingsbeeld.” Al was het geschetste beeld in DTN-8 niet helder, het is natuurlijk prettig dat de dreiging in werkelijkheid beperkt is, de dienst heeft niet gelogen. De alinea die volgt verstoort dit beeld volledig. Dacht Nederland net dat er niets aan de hand is, moet er wel rekening worden gehouden met een vuile bom. “De kans dat bij een eventuele aanslag in Nederland chemische, biologische, radiologische of nucleaire middelen (CBRN) worden gebruikt is net als in 2006 klein maar reëel.” Wat de coördinator met deze CBRN-dreiging wil zeggen is onduidelijk, de massavernietigingswapens komen sinds DTN-5 in de oneven DTN’s elke keer terug (DTN-5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, meestal een DTN met een voortgangsrapportage terrorismebestrijding). Om de dreiging kracht bij te zetten stelt de NCTb dat “er dit jaar weer enkele CBRN-incidenten in het buitenland te noteren vallen, zoals het gebruik van chloor als middel voor aanslagen in Irak.” Wat dit bijdraagt aan de weging van het dreigingsniveau is onduidelijk, maar later zal blijken dat Joustra naar een substantieel niveau moet schrijven, dus kan een CBRN-dreiging daar wel een functie in vervullen.

Naast CBRN besteedt de dienst ook veel aandacht aan “explosieven”. In DTN-7 schrijft de dienst dat “op de korte termijn van zelfgemaakte explosieven een grotere dreiging uit gaat dan van CBRN-middelen”. Volgens de NCTb komt dit omdat “jonge, lokaal geradicaliseerde jihadisten in het westen roekelozer zijn en meer vanuit emotie zijn gericht op onmiddellijke gewelddadige actie.” In DTN-13 stelt de coördinator dat “het Nederlandse project zelfgemaakte explosieven is opgezet naar aanleiding van de observatie dat het merendeel van alle (pogingen tot) aanslagen in Europa plaatsvindt met explosieven op basis van vrij verkrijgbare chemicaliën.” De coördinator schrijft niet om welke aanslagen het zou gaan, maar de aanslagen in Madrid waren gepleegd met dynamiet die door een informant van de politie aan de daders was geleverd en de London metro en bus bommen zou misschien wel van huis- tuin en keuken materiaal zijn gemaakt, maar gezien de kracht stellen bomexperts dat een getrainde chemicus de bommen moet hebben geassembleerd. Het hele programma om een systeem op te zetten in het kader van verdachte chemicaliën transacties, gaat hand in hand met de CBRN-dreiging om het dreigingsniveau op te krikken.

Ditzelfde geldt voor de opmerking dat jihadisten via het internet communiceren in relatie tot een man die zich in een internetcafé in Casablanca, Marokko, heeft opgeblazen. Of dit een actie tegen het internet was, of dat de man ter plekke een bomgordel in elkaar aan het knutselen was, het blijft onduidelijk, want volgens de coördinator zou de persoon: “voor zover nu bekend, daar instructies hebben willen ‘ophalen’.” Het verhaal van het opgeblazen internetcafé, de bomgordel en de instructies is van een zelfde soort als de strijd tussen de soennieten en sjiieten. “Ook op Nederlandstalige webfora zijn vanuit soennitische hoek negatieve geluiden te horen over sji’ieten. Een verdere escalatie van het conflict tussen soennieten en sji’ieten in Irak, gecombineerd met een voortdurende agitatie uit salafistische hoek, kan op den duur negatieve gevolgen hebben voor de interreligieuze en interetnische harmonie binnen de islamitische gemeenschappen in Nederland.” Tot DTN-9 is met geen woord gerept over het al eeuwen bestaand conflict tussen de twee belangrijkste stromingen binnen de islam, nu kan het plots op den duur negatieve gevolgen hebben. Na DTN-9 komt het pas in DTN-30 weer terug, op den duur kan blijkbaar heel lang zijn bij de dienst.

Op het polarisatiefront is er ook toename, groeiend zelfbewustzijn, vergroting, confrontaties. Deze behoefte aan meer spanning leidt tot een verwrongen manier van omgaan met “moskeeën die hun orthodoxe signatuur niet ontkennen maar tegelijkertijd benadrukken niets met radicalisme te doen willen hebben.” Vanuit het perspectief van een veiliger samenleving kan de conclusie worden getrokken dat dit positief is. De moskeeën kunnen echter geen goed doen want “het risico bestaat dat de sense of urgency in de samenleving ten aanzien van de veiligheidsrisico’s die uitgaan van de salafistische geloofsleer afneemt.” Al in DTN-8 hing de coördinator op deze manier de gedachtenpolitie uit: niet radicalisering of jihadisering is gevaarlijk, de leer zelf moet verboden worden. En de coördinator wordt door de rechter op zijn wenken bediend: “Op 27 april heeft de Raad van State verklaard dat een Eindhovense imam terecht ongewenst is verklaard door de toenmalige Minister voor Vreemdelingenzaken en Integratie. Deze ervaring zou andere predikers kunnen ontmoedigen en nog voorzichtiger kunnen maken in het publiekelijk doen van antiwesterse of anti-integratieve uitspraken.” Een half jaar eerder had de rechtbank in Amsterdam imam Eisha Bersham nog “geen gevaar voor nationale veiligheid” genoemd. De imam was ongewenst verklaard, een manier van de overheid om van lastige mensen af te komen die geen permanente verblijfstitel hebben.

Het heet eufemistisch een bestuurlijke maatregel, maar in wezen is het een straf waar in eerste instantie geen rechter aan te pas komt. Dit geldt ook voor de geheimzinnige maatregelen tegen zogenoemde radicaliseringshaarden die ook in DTN-9 doorgaan: “Om operationele redenen kan geen openbare mededeling worden gedaan over de betreffende organisaties en de maatregelen die reeds zijn en nog worden getroffen.” De maatregelen zijn vergelijkbaar met het plaatsen van organisaties op een terreurlijst. Het Europese Hof oordeelde in december 2006 dat “de procedures voor de totstandkoming van de EU-lijst van personen en organisaties met banden met terrorisme onvoldoende beantwoorden aan de vereisten van effectieve rechtsbescherming, de motiveringsplicht en de rechten van verdediging (hoor en wederhoor).” Van de radicaliseringshaarden bestaan geen openbare lijsten en is het onduidelijk hoe organisaties zich te weer kunnen stellen tegen overheidsterreur.

Hetzelfde geldt voor het fenomeen van verstoren: “Sinds het voorjaar 2005 is een wisselend aantal subjecten (in totaliteit circa 15) persoonlijk aangepakt c.q. verstoord.” Dit verstoren vindt zijn weg ook op het internet want de coördinator is geschrokken van “de invloed van het internet op radicalisering, de rol die het speelt ter ondersteuning van terroristische activiteiten en de dreiging die hiervan uitgaat.” In het voorjaar van 2006 is er daarom een Meldpunt Cybercrime (nu opgegaan in politie.nl) gestart. Het meldpunt is er voor “radicale en terroristische uitingen” volgens de coördinator, maar of de conclusie dat het echt zo ernstig gesteld is op het internet gerechtvaardigd is, weet de dienst zelf nog niet. De meldingen moeten namelijk “het zicht van de betrokken instanties op de problematiek verbeteren.”

DTN-10 / 9 oktober 2007

In het najaar van 2007 is een aanslag op Nederland voorstelbaar, maar de dreiging beperkt en “aanwijzingen dat ook Nederland kans loopt geconfronteerd te worden met een aanslag zijn er niet.” Iets of niets aan de hand, helemaal als de dienst schrijft dat “er wel extra reden is voor oplettendheid,” hoewel er geen aanwijzingen zijn. Niet zomaar oplettendheid, maar er is blijkbaar ook echt reden voor oplettendheid. En toch zijn er geen aanwijzingen en is er een beperkt dreigingsbeeld. In de internationale analyse van de DTN’s wordt ingegaan op enkele arrestaties. Volgens de coördinator terreur van de overheid kan “de voortschrijdende internationalisering van de gewapende jihad in Afghanistan negatieve gevolgen hebben voor het internationale profiel van Nederland.” Het kan zo zijn, maar de coördinator wil het graag even gemeld hebben want wat is er aan de hand. Buitenlandse jihadisten gaan naar Afghanistan. Volgens de NCTb kan dit te maken hebben met “de hernieuwde oriëntering van kern Al Qa’ida op Afghanistan” maar zeker weet de dienst het niet. En ook andere kwesties zijn profielverhogend. Al met al een explosieve mix van mogelijkheden, fantasieën en aaneengeregen internationale en nationale gebeurtenissen.

Want nationaal draait het om toe- en afname van radicalisering en polarisatie. Daar is echter geen verandering. Hoewel de coördinator “een lichte daling in het aantal meldingen over mogelijke islamitische radicalisering” vermeldt, blijkt uit onderzoek naar de laatste twaalf maanden “dat het beeld stabiel is.” Dit in tegenstelling tot de nogal alarmerende radicaliseringsberichten van de dienst in de drie voorgaande DTN’s. Volgens het overheidsorgaan voor terreur is “het aantal meldingen van rechtsextremisme in vergelijking met de vorige rapportageperiode toegenomen.” Dit zou verontrustend kunnen zijn, maar de coördinator legt niet uit wat voor meldingen het zijn. Tegelijkertijd is er niets aan de hand want “het gebruik van geweld is redelijk stabiel gebleven.” Wat voor geweld en in wat voor omstandigheden wordt niet nader uitgelegd, het enige dat de NCTb meldt is dat de dienst het opvallend vindt dat het geweld tussen jongeren plaats vindt. Vraag is of de dienst zover van de samenleving is afgedreven dat het extremistische trekken heeft aangenomen.

DTN-11 / 27 november 2007

DTN-11 is het enige dreigingsbeeld dat begint met weerstand of weerbaarheid. Het is ook opvallend dat de coördinator een volle pagina aan het onderwerp besteedt. Hij lijkt ook inhoudelijk een onderscheid te maken tussen “moslimgemeenschappen in Duitsland, Denemarken en Oostenrijk” die in stevige bewoordingen afstand nemen van gearresteerde moslims in hun landen en moslimgemeenschappen elders die blijkbaar geen afstand nemen. Waarom de coördinator aandacht besteedt aan de reactie van moslims in de drie landen is niet duidelijk, want zij “waarschuwen er tegelijk voor alle moslims over één kam te scheren.” De zin over de moslims elders zou verkeerd geïnterpreteerd kunnen worden, vandaar dat de dienst stelt dat “overigens ook in Nederland moslims na de moord op Theo van Gogh nadrukkelijker afstand namen.” De dienst laat zich er niet over uit, maar de moor dop van Gogh is toch al weer twee jaar geleden dus zou het ook als kritiek op de moslimgemeenschap kunnen worden opgevat. Het wordt bijna een dreigingsbeeld over de NCTb zelf, de tekst van de dienst kan mogelijk worden opgevat als kritiek.

Op het vreemdelingenrechtelijke vlak boekt de coördinator succes. “De rechter oordeelde op 10 oktober 2007 dat het eind 2005 uitgebrachte ambtsbericht van de AIVD inzake de Keniaanse imam (Mohamed Mahmoud van de Al Fourqaan moskee) op inhoudelijk juiste gronden is gebaseerd.” Daarnaast heeft een burgerinitiatief ervoor gezorgd dat “ruim veertig jihadistische websites door hun hostbedrijven uit de lucht zijn gehaald.” En tot slot haalt de coördinator verder een onderzoek aan van PEW Global Attitudes over het toegenomen verzet tegen zelfmoordaanslagen. Al die positieve geluiden leiden drie maanden later, begin 2008, tot een verhoging van het dreigingsniveau, niet in verband met de economische crisis, maar natuurlijk in verband met onze jihadisten.

Dat de dreiging eind 2007 gaat stijgen, wordt voelbaar bij de radicalisering en polarisatie. In DTN-10 was er op basis van de politiecijfers niet echt een toename van radicalisering in 2006 en 2007. Omdat de gegevens van de politie over radicalisering volgens de NCTb blijkbaar niet kloppen, beschrijft de coördinator het salafistische lezingencircuit in de Nederlandse moskeeën en de ‘politiek nationale’ kleur van de gebedshuizen. “Nederland telt ongeveer 550 moskeeën, waarvan ongeveer veertig procent als Marokkaans gekwalificeerd kan worden. Thans bereiken de salafisten zo’n dertig Marokkaanse moskeeën. Dit betekent dat in ten minste een kleine vijftien procent van de Marokkaanse moskeeën in Nederland salafistische predikers optreden.” De coördinator had ook kunnen schrijven dat in zes procent van de moskeeën er wel eens lezingen worden gehouden. Dat past echter niet in het dreigingsstraatje en dus schrijft de dienst alarmerend dat “het niet ongebruikelijk is dat rond de honderd jonge Nederlandse Marokkanen een dergelijke lezing bijwonen.” Allemaal potentiële terroristen lijkt de dienst te willen suggereren, ook door de jongeren neer te zetten als buitenlanders, “Nederlandse Marokkanen”, in plaats van Marokkaanse Nederlanders wat ze naar alle waarschijnlijkheid allemaal zijn.

Ook ten aanzien van extreemrechts en interetnische conflicten, lijkt de coördinator vooral de spanning te willen aandikken in tegenstelling tot het gematigde geluid in DTN-10. Dergelijke kwesties reflecteren “de zorg die momenteel leeft omtrent extreemrechts,” schrijft de coördinator naar aanleiding van een veroordeling van een groep van vijf jonge nationalistische jongens voor brandstichting en pogingen daartoe. Of er andere incidenten, aanslagen of gewelddadigheden hebben plaatsgevonden schrijft de coördinator niet. Deze scherpe veroordeling van de dienst ten aanzien van jongeren die radicaal zijn, staat in schril contrast met haar eigen enthousiasme om samen te werken met landen die op zijn zachtst gezegd de mensenrechten schenden.

Die samenwerking van Nederland met diverse landen op het terrein van terrorisme, vindt over het algemeen binnen de verbanden van de Verenigde Naties en de Europese Unie plaats. Naast deze multinationale organisaties werkt Nederland ook op multi- of bilateraal vlak samen met bepaalde landen. In december 2006 wordt er nog geheimzinnig over gedaan met welke landen Nederland nu samenwerkt: “Om hieraan verder inhoud te geven is onder meer overleg gaande met een aantal landen in Noord Afrika.” In DTN-11 is de dienst helder over haar ambities ten aanzien van samenwerken: “Marokko vormt één van de prioriteitslanden voor de samenwerking op het gebied van terrorismebestrijding. Ook met Algerije wordt samenwerking in gang gezet.” Amnesty International schrijft al diverse jaren over Marokko dat de vrijheid van meningsuiting wordt onderdrukt, dat de situatie in de Westelijke Sahara zorgwekkend is en over het ’wijdverspreide’ gebruik van marteling en andere zorgwekkende zaken ten aanzien van de mensenrechten. Hetzelfde geldt voor de mensenrechtensituatie in Algerije. De dienst is echter nog niet tevreden met twee landen die de mensenrechten met voeten treden, en organiseert in 2007 een conferentie waar ook Egypte (onder dictator Mubarak), Koeweit (als het gaat over vrouwenrechten, rechten van migranten en de War on Terror), Pakistan (onder andere verdwijningen, doodseskaders) en andere landen mogen deelnemen. Nederland zal in de jaren die volgen blijven samenwerken met landen als Marokko, Algerije en andere landen met een zeer twijfelachtige mensenrechtenreputatie.

Conclusie DTN 2007

Begin 2007 schroeft de dienst de dreiging terug van substantieel naar beperkt. Waarom blijft onduidelijk, want de taal van de dienst is niet wezenlijk veranderd. Nieuw in 2007 is de aandacht voor het salafisme, het steekt op als een storm en gaat na enige jaren liggen. Eerst lijkt de coördinator moord en brand te schreeuwen over de radicale salafistische moskeeën, centra en predikers die aan ideologische beïnvloeding doen, zelfvertrouwen kweken onder de jongeren, Nederlands spreken en radicaliseringshaarden zijn. In de loop der jaren kantelt dat beeld. In 2007 echter nog niet. In het juni-nummer van de terreurbode werd nog een doorlopende lijn getrokken van radicalisering, jihadisering naar bijna salafistisering van het gevaar. Die radicaliseringshaarden, waar zelfs in 2006 het leger onder werd geschaard, gekoppeld aan CBRN-bommen (chemische, biologische, radiologische of nucleaire middelen) en huis-, tuin- en keukenexplosieven, geeft niet de indruk van een laag dreigingsniveau, maar eerder van terroristen met geïmproviseerde massavernietigingsbommen. De dienst blijft er nuchter onder, maar de taalkundige schrikexpeditie is verbazingwekkend. Wat is het doel van de vergelijking tussen een aanslag met chloor in Irak en de mogelijkheid van een aanslag met chemische stoffen in Nederland? Het één op één vergelijken van Irak met Nederland is een duidelijk teken van een totaal gebrek aan analyse en verdieping van de dienst. De ontwikkeling van het aandikken van de dreiging, het creëren van schrikbeelden en het insinueren van gevaar van bepaalde groepen, gaat hand in hand met een contraterrorismebeleid waarbij er niet geschuwd wordt om samen te werken met landen die de mensenrechten met voeten treden. Die radicalisering van de dienst is eigenlijk logisch, want het gebrek aan analyse en achtergrond van lokale, nationale en internationale ontwikkelingen gaat hand in hand met het bestempelen van andersdenkenden als radicaal, extremist, terrorist of een ander evil, terwijl de dienst zelf extremistische trekken vertoont in haar hang naar samenwerking met landen als Algerije.

2008 NCTB lijdt aan het ‘sudden jihad syndrom’

DTN-12 / 5 maart 2008

Bij terrorisme kopt de coördinator, dat er “toegenomen internationale jihadistische invloeden” zijn. Dit is een deel van zijn onderbouwing voor de verhoging van de dreiging van beperkt naar substantieel in DTN-12. Een deel van de buitenlandse arrestaties zijn beschreven in de internationale analyse van de DTN’s. Voor het terrorismedeel in DTN-12 gaat een korte introductie vooraf. De coördinator schrijft dat de “dreiging hoofdzakelijk uitgaat van door de kern van Al Qa’ida aangestuurde of beïnvloede groepen uit Pakistan en Afghanistan.” Deze dreiging hangt al drie jaar boven de markt en is dus geen verklaring voor de verhoging van het risicogehalte van Nederland. De coördinator stelt dat er ook sprake is van een toename van de ongekende dreiging, dit is dreiging die de coördinator niet kent maar blijkbaar al verhoogd inschat. De coördinator schrijft ook dat het hierbij gaat om “personen of groepen die (nog) niet in beeld zijn” of die “pas op het allerlaatste moment in beeld” komen.

Volgens de coördinator heeft het gevaar van de ongekende dreiging zich sinds DTN-10 tot begin 2008 doorgezet. In 2007 is de ongekende dreiging echter niet ter sprake gekomen in de rapporten van de dienst. Eind 2006 heeft de dienst het over “een materialisering van de ongekende dreiging”, maar die materialisering leidde tot een verlaging van de gevarencode. De coördinator probeert het nog even door te wijzen op de “radicalisering, netwerkvorming en training” die in het buitenland zou plaatsvinden, terwijl de dienst zoveel aandacht had besteed aan de online jihadi-cursussen. Een ander aspect dat de dienst aanwijst is dat de “onzichtbaarheid daarmee ook (tijdelijk) kan blijven bestaan na binnenkomst van buitenlandse terroristen en verder beïnvloed worden doordat jihadisten over het algemeen veiligheidsbewuster zijn geworden en meer vaardigheden hebben ontwikkeld om opsporing te voorkomen.”

Als voorbeeld noemt de coördinator de arrestatie van drie mannen op 31 december 2007. “Verder werden eind 2007 drie personen aangehouden in Rotterdam, waarmee voornemens voor aanslagen werden verstoord. Gezien de kenmerken van genoemde casussen kan hieruit worden opgemaakt dat ook Nederland te maken heeft met een ongekende dreiging.” De mannen zouden een “ontploffing met een terroristisch oogmerk” voor ogen hebben, maar de bewijslast is blijkbaar zo klein dat zelfs het voorarrest niet wordt verlengd. Wat de ongekende dreiging dus is, blijft onduidelijk, helemaal als de bewijslast bij mogelijke verdachten minimaal is en er geen concrete aanwijzingen zijn. De aanwijzingen die de coördinator opnoemt zijn reacties van reaguurders op “vooraanstaande internationale jihadistische webfora”, waarvan onduidelijk is wat de waarde, het waarheidsgehalte en serieusheidsindex zijn. De NCTb moet erkennen dat zelfs de anti-islamfilms van Wilders en Jami niet worden genoemd door Al Qa’ida. Blijkbaar zijn het ongekende gevaar en het “«sudden jihad syndrom»” nodig om de dreiging te verhogen, maar is er in vergelijking met 2007 niets veranderd. Het sudden jihad syndrom is volgens de coördinator een al dan niet gestoorde enkeling die voor een bedreiging zorgt. Het is onduidelijk of de enkeling ook een aanslag pleegt, want gezien de angst van de NCTb is dat niet meer nodig.

DTN-13 / 9 juni 2008

DTN-13 staat in het teken van de film van Geert Wilders, Fitna. Volgens de coördinator was het “profiel van Nederland verhoogd vanwege de aangekondigde film van de PVV-fractievoorzitter over de Koran.” In DTN-12 staat echter dat vooral de ongekende dreigementen de verhoging bepaalden en naast de film van Wilders waren er ook de film van Jami, een tentoonstelling en enkele andere zaken. DTN-13 wijt het gevaar volledig aan Wilders, de andere dreigementen zijn verdwenen, maar waarom is onduidelijk. Het is bijna alsof de coördinator teleurgesteld is dat Osama Bin Laden en al Zawahiri niets over Fitna zeggen: “Internationaal heeft de verschijning van de film van de PVV-fractievoorzitter over de Koran veel aandacht gekregen hoewel Nederland niet expliciet genoemd is in de recente verklaringen van leiders Al Qa’ida.” De coördinator heeft ook een verklaring. “Mogelijk dateren deze verklaringen echter van (vlak) voor de publicatie van Fitna.”

Er zijn wat schermutselingen, maar de reactie in de wereld op de film van Wilders is nogal lauw, iets dat de NCTb niet kan verkroppen. “Tot slot moet opgemerkt worden dat het internationale profiel ook op langere termijn kan worden beïnvloed door de film Fitna, vooral ook daar waar het mogelijke reacties betreft: de reeds in DTN12 gemelde plannen in Denemarken voor een aanslag op een van de tekenaars van de Mohammed-cartoons, twee jaar na dato, toont aan dat de dreiging lang kan blijven bestaan.” Joustra analyseert de internationale reacties niet, ook niet het verschil met de cartoons in de Deense media en de verspreiding van de cartoons in de wereld. Hij stelt dat “Nederland (film Fitna) en Denemarken (Mohammed cartoons) in sommige islamitische landen met elkaar worden verward. Voor velen in de islamitische wereld geldt dat onderscheid tussen Europese landen minder relevant is.” Welke landen dit zijn, staat niet vermeld. Toch spreekt de coördinator al twaalf dreigingsbeelden over het profiel Nederland, een profiel van mensen uit moslimlanden. Ook dit legt de coördinator niet verder uit.

In Afghanistan is het onderscheid tussen Nederland en Denemarken blijkbaar wel bekend want volgens de dienst “werden door de Taliban enkele aanslagen op Nederlandse militairen in Afghanistan geclaimd als een reactie op de film van de PVV-voorzitter.” Opvallend is dat de coördinator aangeeft dat “motivatieclaims soms aantoonbaar onjuist zijn.” Dit is de eerste en enige keer dat de NCTb twijfelt aan een claim. Of dit met de film van Wilders te maken heeft, blijft onduidelijk. Aan de andere kant twijfelt de dienst niet aan de rol van het internet bij de verspreiding van het “radicaal-islamitische gedachtegoed”. De coördinator heeft Paltalk ontdekt en stelt dat daar gepreekt zou worden. In DTN-12 vond het preken nog allemaal fysiek plaats en alleen buiten de Randstad. De dienst schrijft in DTN-12 dat de dienst “door uitlatingen op internet, waar geklaagd wordt dat er in de grote steden niets meer gebeurt aan prediking,” tot die conclusie is gekomen.

Drie maanden later zijn de jongeren voorzien van digitale predikers en op straat lijkt er niets aan de hand. Geen extreemrechts geweld, geen massale demonstraties van moslims, gewoon mensen die op het internet hun verontwaardiging tonen. Internet en de controle op radicaal dan wel terroristisch gebruik van het internet keert ook steeds terug in de DTN’s. Naast het meldpunt cybercrime is er het project surveillance op het internet, is er een “Notice-and-Take-Down-systematiek” ontwikkeld en wordt er internationaal gewerkt aan “de aanpak van het gebruik van internet voor terroristische doeleinden.” Bij al deze internet maatregelen heeft de coördinator het over “publieke en private partijen”, “internetmonitoring” door organisaties en andere vage constructies, maar niet over een rechtsstatelijke aanpak of rechtsstatelijke waarborgen waarbij zoals bij de terreurlijsten correcte procedures bestaan voor strafmaatregelen en niet ondoorzichtige bestuurlijke maatregelen worden toegepast. Bestuurlijke en vreemdelingenrechtelijke maatregelen liggen naast elkaar, zeker als het gaat om het gebrek aan toetsing door een onafhankelijk rechter.

Terrorismemaatregelen en migratiebeperking gaan vaak hand in hand. Aan grensbewaking wordt al uitgebreid gewerkt, maar nu heeft de coördinator ook de kennismigrant ontdekt. Volgens de coördinator onderstreept de verhoging van het gevaargehalte, “van beperkt naar substantieel, de noodzaak om gepaste maatregelen te treffen.” De dienst stelt dat er “aspecten van radicalisering, terrorismebestrijding en nationale veiligheid” kleven aan kennismigranten en daarom wordt er ingezet op “informatie-uitwisseling over dit onderwerp binnen en buiten de rijksoverheid.” Het onderwijsveld is in alle lagen van de terreurbestrijding betrokken, met detectie, inlichtingen verzameling, deradicalisering en andere terreurmaatregelen. En terwijl de coördinator druk bezig is met CBRN, explosieven en kennismigranten wandelt Alberto Stegeman (SBS 6-programma ‘Undercover in Nederland’) rustig de luchthaven Schiphol over en weet een imitatie semtexbom aan boord van een vliegtuig te plaatsen. Wat doet de coördinator ook alweer ten aanzien van de veiligheid en de burgerluchtvaart? In 2008 gaat het nog om journalisten die terreurgrappen uithalen. Vanaf 2009 gebeuren er incidenten waar slachtoffers bij vallen, vraag is en blijft wat de dienst nu vooral doet, schrikbeelden verspreiden over radicale moslimjongeren of werken aan een veiliger en minder angstige samenleving.

DTN-14 / 9 september 2008

Bij de internationale analyse wordt aandacht besteed aan het woord voorkeursdoelwit. In DTN-14 wordt het woord voor de eerste keer gebruikt. Het staat in de inleidende alinea van DTN-14. Het volgt op de constatering dat “de al langer gesignaleerde internationale terroristische dreiging richting Nederland, als gevolg van de film Fitna,” in dit dreigingsbeeld (DTN-14) wordt bevestigd. De film van Wilders ettert al sinds DTN-12 door, maar de moslimwereld heeft er koel op gereageerd. Joustra probeert zo goed en zo kwaad de film te koppelen aan de cartoons van Kurt Westergaard, consequent bestempeld als Deense cartoons alsof de regering van het land ze getekend had. Die koele reactie lijkt niet te passen in het denkkader van een dienst dus moet de spanning opgevoerd blijven. De NCTb erkent wel dat “de film Fitna veel minder in de publieke opinie in islamitische landen” speelt, maar blijft benadrukken dat “juist in jihadistische kringen internationaal het beeld is bevestigd dat ons land, net als bijvoorbeeld Denemarken, een actieve speler” is in de War on Terror. Het is bijna alsof de coördinator eindeloos heeft gezocht naar een blogpost van een moslim die Nederland bedreigd want “lokale autonome netwerken in Nederland zijn de afgelopen periode wederom rustig gebleven.”

Die rustige reactie in de moslimwereld staat in schril contrast met de soms extremistische reacties van de NCTb. Heel scherp is de dienst niet want na een felle campagne tegen het salafisme is deze leer plotseling de bondgenoot: “ook onder Nederlandse politieke salafisten lijkt er meer weerstand te komen tegen al te radicale standpunten.” Die salafisten moeten het echter weer bij weerbaarheid ontgelden want volgens de dienst winnen “gematigde moskeeën steeds meer terrein terug dat ze de afgelopen 20 jaar geleidelijk zijn kwijtgeraakt aan salafisten.” Ze zijn dan niet meer de bondgenoot. Dit is het vierde jaar dat de NCTb dreigingsbeelden schrijft, niet eerder is de historie van de islam in Nederland naar voren gekomen, waar het getal twintig vandaan komt is daarom onduidelijk. Ditzelfde geldt voor de totale verwarring ten aanzien van de echte en de digitale wereld.

In DTN-12 werd er live gepreekt in de provincie en niet in de Randstad. In DTN-13 waren er digitale preken en in DTN-14 is er “sprake van een heropleving van islamistisch radicalisme op het internet, waar eerder een verminderde activiteit werd geconstateerd,” terwijl drie maanden eerder al een opleving op het internet plaatsvond. Misschien is de opmerking van de coördinator te plaatsen in het licht van de NCTb-ontdekking van een “nieuwe radicaal-islamitische website die tweetalig is (Engels en Nederlands).” Helaas is niet te controleren welke website de coördinator heeft bekeken om te zien hoe strafbaar deze site al dan niet is.

Strafbaar werd Irfan Demirtas wel bevonden door Franse rechters. Volgens de NCTb was een internationaal netwerk “gericht op het ondersteunen van de jihad in de traditionele strijdgebieden” opgerold. Het zou gaan om de “Europa-brede faciliteringscel ten behoeve van de Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).” IMU stamt uit 1998 en vocht tegen dictator Karimov van Oezbekistan, een man die in 2005 honderden vreedzame demonstranten liet doodschieten, martelt en het land met harde hand overheerst. Na 11 september 2001 werd Karimov belangrijk in de oorlog tegen de terreur en zijn vijanden werden terroristen, zo ook IMU en zijn aanhangers. Irfan Demirtas met acht anderen kreeg tien jaar voor het steunen van IMU met driehonderdduizend euro, zijn advocaten stelden dat het geld voor humanitaire doeleinden was. Voor de coördinator is er weer een slag gewonnen in de oorlog tegen de terreur, welke slag blijft onduidelijk, maar in ieder geval niet een slag tegen onderdrukkende regimes.

DTN-15 / 19 december 2008

DTN-15 laat hetzelfde beeld zien als de voorgaande dreigingsbeelden: “Binnen de meeste netwerken blijft er sprake van een relatieve rust maar enkele individuen tonen nog steeds interesse voor deelname aan de internationale jihad.” Waarom het dreigingsniveau niet wordt verlaagd is onduidelijk. Natuurlijk is er het voorkeursprofiel, maar de dienst lijkt redelijk beheerst te reageren op de arrestatie van Irfan Demirtas in mei 2008 en ook een arrestatie van een 27-jarige Turkse Nederlander in Den Haag. De man had een vuurwapen, twee volle patroonhouders en een geluidsdemper. Ook de vader en moeder van de man worden gearresteerd. De vader had een Tsjechisch halfautomatisch pistool met een zakje munitie onder zijn matras liggen. De NCTb schrijft dat de “persoon was aangehouden in verband met een ambtsbericht van de AIVD, omdat hij in zeer korte tijd was geradicaliseerd en over twee vuurwapens en een geluidsdemper beschikte.”

‘Rechtsgeleerde’ Afshin Ellian brulde in Elsevier van 23 december 2008 dat een Jihadist was opgepakt en dat de Kamer doorslaapt. Zonder de rechtszaak af te wachten weet ‘rechtsgeleerde’ Ellian alles van de verdachten en de zaak. Later worden de verdachten door de rechter voor illegaal wapenbezit veroordeeld. De NCTb schrijft dat “vooralsnog onbekend is wat deze persoon met het wapen wilde doen.” Het klopt dat deze Turkse Nederlander misschien naar Somalië wilde vertrekken, maar het lijkt erop dat de verdachte en zijn groepje van vier andere jongeren bekend was bij alle instanties in Den Haag. Deze genuanceerde berichtgeving over arrestaties is ook terug te vinden ten aanzien van gerechtelijke uitspraken in de Piranhazaak. De coördinator vermeldt netjes de uitspraak en tevens dat “daarmee er nog geen definitief oordeel is gegeven over de uitleg van de daarop betrekking hebbende wetgeving (artikel 140/140a Wetboek van Strafrecht) omdat nog cassatie kan volgen door de advocaten. In een andere zaak, tegen de zogenaamde Hofstadgroep, loopt cassatie van de zijde van het OM.” Hetzelfde geldt voor de nietigverklaring van het “bevriezen van de tegoeden van een persoon en een organisatie die verdacht worden van terrorisme” door de Europese Unie.

De beheerste manier van beschrijven van de arrestaties staat in schril contrast met het roepen over voorkeursdoelwitten, internationaal opererende jihadistische netwerken en andere zaken dat de werkelijke dreiging oppompt zodat de angst gevaarlijker wordt dan de werkelijkheid zelf. Zo schrijft de coördinator in de vierde dreigingsanalyse op rij over Fitna, maar nu alleen over de jihadisten: “De film Fitna, die door jihadisten wordt gezien als een belediging en provocatie, blijft daarvoor de belangrijkste legitimatie.” Dat een groot deel van de moslimwereld de film eigenlijk niet interessant vindt, wordt niet vermeld waardoor de context verdwijnt. Opmerkelijk is ook de opmerking dat “recent op internetsites in islamitische landen ook aandacht is voor de film over de profeet Mohammed, van de lokale politicus Jami.” Waarom Joustra dit vermeldt is onduidelijk, ook de aard van de vermelding, recensie, blogpost of bedreiging wordt niet aangegeven.

De berichtgeving over de films van Wilders en Jami zijn vergelijkbaar met de verhalen over het salafisme in Nederlandse moskeeën. In DTN-14 lijkt het tij na twintig jaar gekeerd, in DTN-15 zijn we weer terug bij af: “Ook zijn soms vanuit deze centra, waar normaal gesproken de afgelopen jaren actief extremistische geluiden worden geweerd, weer radicale geluiden te horen via bijvoorbeeld uitgezonden preken van salafistische predikers in Noord-Afrika.” Aan de andere kant stelt dezelfde coördinator dat “steeds vaker radicale jongeren met jihadistische ideeën de toegang worden geweigerd.” Wat er werkelijk aan de hand is in de radicaliseringskrochten van de Nederlandse samenleving blijft gissen. Volgens de coördinator heeft het weren van radicale jongeren te maken met het beleid van de overheid want door “de uitgebreide aandacht vanuit de overheid zijn de radicaliseringshaarden hun toon gaan matigen.” Aan de andere kant klinken er blijkbaar weer extremistische preken. Die uitgebreide aandacht van de overheid formuleert de coördinator als volgt: “De betrokken overheidsorganisaties zijn: de NCTb, AIVD, Onderwijsinspectie, IND, Belastingdienst, FIOD, het OM, politie en de besturen van de gemeenten waar de haarden zich bevinden.” Let wel: er is hier geen sprake van een overtreding of een strafbaar feit van deze zogenoemde radicaliseringshaarden en in het lijstje van de dienst komt de rechtbank niet voor.

Dezelfde bestuurlijke druk vindt plaats op het internet en op het financiële vlak. De terroristenlijsten en de Oezbeekse connectie van Irfan Demirtas maken dat duidelijk. Geld inzamelen kan niet zomaar. De coördinator schrijft dat ook andere stichtingen eraan moeten geloven: “In 2005 heeft het Kabinet aangekondigd de transparantie van stichtingen te willen verbeteren.” En de controle gaat verder. Sinds DTN-11 staan de “«Passenger Name Records» (PNR)” op de agenda. Eerst waren het de Duitsers en de Amerikanen die de PNR wilden doordrukken. In DTN-15 en toekomstige DTN’s zijn het de Fransen die de druk om tot PNR over te gaan opvoeren. Na de aanslagen op de redactielokalen van Charlie Hebdo in 2015 staan de PNR weer bovenaan de agenda.

Wat PNR precies doen aan de bestrijding van terrorisme is niet meer interessant, door het maar vaak genoeg te herhalen komt de maatregel toch van de grond. Zie hier hetzelfde recept dat gebruikt wordt bij “het programma Cameratoezicht in het openbaar vervoer (CTOV) want dat zou “een impuls aan de beveiliging van de voor terroristische aanslagen meest kwetsbare sector, de openbaar vervoerssector” geven. Iets dat ook een impuls geeft aan de bestrijding is het innig samenwerken met twijfelachtige regimes zoals Marokko en Algerije. Joustra is zo enthousiast over de dictatuur in Algerije dat hij “op 28 en 29 oktober 2008 een bezoek heeft gebracht aan de Raadsadviseur Terrorismebestrijding van de President van Algerije.” De dienst lijkt geen genoeg te krijgen van de samenwerking met dictaturen want in DTN-17 wordt hetzelfde verhaaltje herhaald.

Conclusie DTN 2008

De film van Wilders, Fitna, beheerst de dreiging van 2008, maar welke dreiging kan de coördinator niet duidelijk maken. De moslimgemeenschap reageert namelijk nogal cool op de film die zeker geen bijzondere productie is. Joustra kan het niet uitstaan dat er grote rellen zijn geweest en Nederlandse ambassade s zijn afgebrand. Zijn obsessie met de dreiging gaat zover dat hij bijna teleurgesteld is dat de kern van Al Qa’ida geen speciale aandacht aan Fitna heeft besteed. Opnieuw wordt weer duidelijk dat door het gebrek aan achtergrond en analyse het koppelen van de film van Wilders aan de cartoons van Kurt Westergaard bijna lachwekkend is. Qua medium zijn beide uitingsvormen totaal verschillend en ze hebben ook een andere impact. Zeker in landen van het Midden-Oosten waar een groot deel van de bevolking nog geen internet heeft, is een cartoon een beter propaganda middel dan een film. De koele reactie zal grotendeels met toegang te maken hebben. De coördinator is niet overtuigd en probeert de dreiging nog op te krikken door te stellen dat Nederland en Denemarken regelmatig door elkaar worden gehaald. Dat de Taliban in Afghanistan een aanval hebben uitgevoerd op Nederlandse militairen vanwege de film van Wilders wuift de dienst weg. Het is de enige keer dat de coördinator een claim van een opstandige groep als twijfelachtig bestempeld. De claim past niet in het dreigingsbeeld dus zal die waarschijnlijk niet kloppen. Zo wordt de werkelijkheid aan het schrikbeeld van de dienst aangepast. Een groep mensen die een Oezbeekse verzetsgroep steunden worden gearresteerd en geportretteerd als facilitators van de jihad. Geen woord over Oezbekistan, de mensenrechten daar en het feit dat IMU voor 2001 nog wel op enige positieve aandacht in het westen kon rekenen. Nu zijn het jihadisten en dienen zij het schrikbeeld van de dienst. Bij de arrestaties van mensen die IMU ondersteunen, stelt de dienst zich echter wel beheerster op. Ook al noemt de NCTb niet de situatie in Oezbekistan, de groep wordt niet meteen tot internationaal jihadistisch centrum verheven. Ook de arrestatie van de Turkse Nederlander en zijn ouders wordt beheerst beschreven. Nuance is de dienst blijkbaar niet vreemd, maar als dan bijvoorbeeld de salafisten om de hoek komen kijken, weet de dienst zich geen raad en ontstaat er een verwarrend verhaal van schrikbeelden, dreigementen, toename en afname van invloed van de jihadi’s en blijft het beeld hangen van een angstige wereld.

2009 het theater van de dreiging

DTN-16 / 6 april 2009

Een nieuwe coördinator, maar geen nieuwe analyse. DTN-16 drijft voort op de voorgaande DTN’s, netwerken, voorkeursprofielen, jihadi’s, het palet blijft hetzelfde. De netwerken zijn hetzelfde, al probeert de nieuwe Akerboom zijn eigen accent toe te voegen door te schrijven dat er “een nieuwe ontwikkeling is dat leden van lokale autonome netwerken meer internationale jihadistische contacten aangaan.” Helaas had zijn voorganger Joustra dit ook al een aantal keer gemeld, zelfs drie maanden eerder, alleen in andere bewoordingen: “enkele individuen tonen nog steeds interesse voor deelname aan de internationale jihad.” Om de ontwikkeling als nieuw te bestempelen is ook enigszins vreemd gezien het gehamer van de dienst op een directe link tussen de lokale Nederlandse polderjihadisten en de kern van Al Qa’ida of de internationale jihadisten.

Onder het kopje netwerken wordt ook melding gemaakt van het Ikea complot van 11 maart 2009. Buro Jansen & Janssen schreef over deze politieoperatie het artikel: ‘Meer dan 200.000 professionals doen maar wat tegen terrorisme’. Ondertitel van het artikel is “gebrek aan zelfreflectie leidt tot ondoordacht handelen van politie en inlichtingendiensten met de kans op noodlottige gevolgen.” De nieuwe Akerboom zal niet meer terugkomen op zijn alinea over een zogenaamd voorkomen terrorisme plot. “Ook heeft de politie zeven personen in Amsterdam gearresteerd op verdenking van betrokkenheid bij terroristische activiteiten. Deze personen werden op 13 maart 2009 vrijgelaten. Er zijn geen aanwijzingen dat zij betrokken waren bij een mogelijke terroristische aanslag.

De vermelding van het Ikea-complot en de gebrekkige gevaren analyse van de NCTb tonen veel gelijkenis met de berichtgeving over de demonstraties tegen Israël ten tijde van de operatie Cast Lead in het Palestijnse Gaza. Tijdens deze Israëlische aanval werden tussen de 1,166 en 1,417 Palestijnen gedood en kwamen dertien Israëli (vier door eigen kogels) om het leven. De coördinator schrijft dat “niet kan worden uitgesloten dat de schokkende beelden in de media uit Gaza een extra prikkel kunnen geven aan vooral jonge moslims om te radicaliseren.” Gezien de protesten en de woedende reacties tijdens de demonstratie waren al verschillende mensen heel boos. Toch concludeert de coördinator dat er “geen daaraan gerelateerde gevallen van radicalisering zijn geconstateerd.”

Waarom wordt dit in een dreigingsanalyse opgenomen? Is dat omdat Akerboom als nieuwe coördinator ook “nieuwe ontwikkelingen” moet stimuleren? Hij stelt namelijk dat die radicalisering niet zichtbaar is omdat radicalisering “een langere incubatietijd” heeft. Mensen die leiden aan een angstpsychose zullen altijd een reden vinden om een bedreiging te ontwaren ook als er helemaal niets aan de hand is. Demonstraties en protesten zijn onderdeel van een democratie, de dienst lijkt dat niet te accepteren. Misschien gaat de coördinator te veel om met regimes die wel raad weten met publiek protest?

DTN-17 / 19 juni 2009

Voor publiek protest kan beter het internet worden opgezocht. Iedereen die een leuke clip in elkaar knutselt zal in een DTN terecht komen, want dreigen loont. Zo presenteert de nieuwe Akerboom as-Sahab, de PR-afdeling van Al Qa’ida. De NCTb beschrijft een video waarin “een jihadist aan het woord komt die in het Duits een dreiging uit aan het adres van met name Nederland en Denemarken.” Hoe serieus deze video genomen moet worden of hoe waardevol het verhaal van de Duits sprekende persoon is, wordt niet duidelijk. Volgens de dienst is het gevaar groot want Nederland wordt ook in “andere ‘postings’ op het internet” genoemd. Ziedaar het profiel of beter gezegd het voorkeursprofiel van Nederland, maar “er zijn in de afgelopen rapportageperiode echter geen concrete aanwijzingen voor aanslagen tegen (belangen van) Nederland geconstateerd.” Ook niet in het buitenland dus.

Geen aanwijzingen toch gevaar zit hem in het feit dat Nederland deelneemt aan een oorlog in Afghanistan. Bij oorlog horen slachtoffers, meestal burgers, maar incidenteel ook militairen, Nederlandse militairen. Soms dringt een zekere mate van nuancering door in de dreigingsbeelden. Niet als het gaat over de dreiging zelf, maar eerder over ‘onze tegenstanders’, zoals bij IMU in DTN-14. Bij radicalisering en polarisatie wordt al sinds DTN-5 strijdt geleverd met de salafisten. Zij zouden al twintig jaar moskeeën infiltreren en de moslimwereld overnemen. In DTN-14 probeerde Joustra aan te geven dat niet de salafisten het gevaar zijn maar de ‘radicale jongeren’. Akerboom lijkt de weg van de nuance ten aanzien van salafisme door te zetten: “Dit onderzoek, waarvan de resultaten in maart 2009 zijn verschenen, laat zien dat de meeste bezoekers in meerdere of mindere mate orthodoxe denkbeelden koesteren en de strikte leef- en denktrant aan hun dagelijks bestaan aanpassen. Dit roept het beeld op van differentiatie in de salafistische beweging in Nederland, waar naast onverdraagzame puristen ook veel gelovigen zijn die de leer aanpassen aan hun dagelijks leven in een westerse samenleving.” Aan de andere kant haalt de coördinator om onduidelijke redenen uit naar Hizb ut-Tahrir. Misschien is de organisatie radicaal islamitisch, maar om de club te beschuldigen van polarisatie in het gehele Nederlandse hoger onderwijs klinkt als smaad en opruiing van de dienst. “Dat de studentenvereniging een platform biedt aan de HuT betekent dat deze laatste in potentie de gelegenheid heeft om haar polariserende en activistische boodschap ook in het Nederlandse hoger onderwijs te verspreiden.”

Over de bestrijding van grondwettelijke activiteiten van groepen en mensen schrijft Akerboom net als zijn voorganger Joustra onder de kopjes radicaliseringshaarden (komt vanaf DTN-0 regelmatig ter sprake), CBRN en zelfgemaakte explosieven (zie daarvoor het commentaar bij DTN-9 / 4 juni 2007) en migratie in de breedste zin van het woord. Controle op het internet, migratie, de verkoop van chemicaliën, passagiersgegevens en andere zaken werden gekoppeld aan terrorisme. Bij de internet monitoring is die verbreding goed zichtbaar. De dienst stelt dat “investeringen die zijn gepleegd ter blokkering van radicale uitingen en andere terroristische informatie hebben geleid tot de ontwikkeling van een Notice-and-Take-Down-systematiek op basis van een gedragscode.” Radicale uitingen zijn al verworden tot terrorisme en de notice-and-take-down is al een gedragscode, want “aanbieders van een (telecommunicatie)dienst op internet kunnen een melding voortaan altijd afdoen en zorgen dat onrechtmatige en strafbare content van internet verwijderd wordt.” Blijkbaar bepaalt de dienst wat strafbaar is, want aan een juridische procedure wordt geen woord vuil gemaakt.

Dit schimmige rechtsstatelijk optreden van de coördinator gekoppeld aan zijn nauwe samenwerking met onder andere de Algerijnse dictatuur en samenwerking op Europees niveau met weinig democratische landen als Egypte, Russische Federatie (RF) en Saoedi-Arabië lijkt in schril contrast met “de inzet van Nederland ten behoeve van een resolutie ‘Mensenrechten en het tegengaan van terrorisme’.” Het lijkt over mensenrechten te gaan, maar het gaat om terreurbestrijding als mensenrecht. Dit in combinatie met dictaturen, roept vragen op over het Nederlandse beleid. De radicaal is echter al lang terrorist geworden en de coördinator wil een dissidente tegenstem op welk front dan ook de kop indrukken. Frankrijk gaat de dienst voor. “Frankrijk heeft zijn uiterste best gedaan om het actieplan ook toe te snijden op het tegengaan van radicalisering in andere kringen, bijvoorbeeld: rechtsextremisme, dierenrechtenextremisme, linksradicalisme, of nationalistisch getint extremisme. Op Nederlands aandringen zal in de toekomst extra aandacht worden besteed aan onderzoek naar processen van deradicalisering en, indien mogelijk, aan mogelijk overheidsbeleid om deze processen te doen versnellen.”

En de coördinator kan meteen een succes melden want “de afgelopen rapportageperiode zijn enkele personen aangehouden in verband met de vrijlating van 2.500 nertsen op 15 maart 2009. De arrestaties zijn het eerste resultaat van de geïntensiveerde opsporing en vervolging van dierenrechtenextremisten; een onderdeel van de integrale aanpak zoals die wordt voorgestaan door de ministers van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties en Justitie.” Opmerkelijk dat het incident of de aanslag op 30 april 2009 niet door de coördinator wordt genoemd in de eerste dreigingsanalyse na het drama. Blijkbaar was er volgens de dienst op 30 april 2009 niets aan de hand, althans geen radicalisering, extremisme, jihadisme of terrorisme. Voor Nederlandse begrippen was het ‘incident’ van 30 april 2009 met zeven doden en een dode dader en tevens twaalf gewonden fors, en ook al label je het geen terrorisme, met dreiging heeft het ‘incident’ alles te maken, zeker op een evenement als Koninginnedag.

DTN-18 / 11 september 2009

Zoek de tien verschillen met DTN-17 zou een goede opdracht zijn, want opnieuw zijn er voorkeursdoelwitten, netwerken en andere bedreigingen, maar er is iets geks aan de hand. De coördinator werkt aan een verlaging van het dreigingsniveau, maar hoe doe je dat in een omgeving waar alleen maar reële kansen op aanslagen bestaan? Dit betekent aan de ene kant de dreiging flink oppompen, de voorstelbaarheid van een aanslag neemt dan toe. “Het afgelopen jaar zijn ontwikkelingen gesignaleerd die de voorstelbaarheid van een aanslag in Europa, en daarmee ook in Nederland, bevestigen. Zoals in DTN17 is gemeld, kunnen uit deze gebieden terugkerende jihadisten opdracht krijgen om aanslagen in Europese landen uit te voeren. De voorstelbaarheid van aanslagen op doelen in Europa wordt verder gevoed door arrestaties van jihadisten in andere Europese landen die in het afgelopen jaar hebben plaatsgevonden.”

Voorstelbaarheid, arrestaties die niet nader worden geanalyseerd en de bevestiging dat “internationale jihadistische groeperingen nog steeds aanslagplannen op doelen in Europa beramen.” Van deze teruggekeerde jihadisten zijn ook voorbeelden: “Eerder in deze samenvatting werd bericht dat Somalië jihadisten aantrekt uit het Westen. Dit lijkt ook te gelden voor Nederlandse jihadisten. Op 24 juli 2009 werden in Kenia vier personen aan de grens met Somalië aangehouden, omdat zij op weg zouden zijn geweest naar een jihadistisch trainingskamp in Somalië. Inmiddels zijn de jongeren vrijgelaten.” Het is allemaal reëel en het lijkt een kwestie van tijd. Aan de andere kant moet de dienst DTN op DTN bevestigen dat er “echter geen concrete aanwijzingen zijn die duiden op mogelijke voorbereidingen voor een aanslag door internationaal opererende jihadistische groeperingen tegen (belangen van) Nederland zijn.” Ook “zijn er momenteel geen indicaties dat lokale autonome netwerken een concrete bedreiging vormen voor Nederland en Nederlandse belangen.” Niets aan de hand dus en om de dreiging daadwerkelijk langzaam te kunnen afbouwen worden de salafisten van stal gehaald, de mannen die de moskeeën in Nederland overnamen de afgelopen twintig jaar. “In mei 2005 (DTN1) werd gemeld dat er signalen waren die duidden op een groeiende salafistische beïnvloeding in Nederland. Deze groei heeft zich enkele jaren doorgezet. Nu lijkt de groei van de salafistische stroming in Nederland te stagneren. De aanwas van lokale jihadistische netwerken lijkt te zijn afgenomen.” Het beleid van de dienst lijkt geen rol van betekenis te hebben gespeeld bij deze ontwikkelingen.

Een passage in DTN-18 is echter niet te plaatsen in de strategie om de dreiging naar beneden bij te stellen in het volgende dreigingsbeeld. De coördinator ziet het bekladden van het gebouw van de Wageningen Universiteit en Researchcentrum (WUR) als terreurdreiging. Bij Radicalisering en Polarisatie stelt de dienst dat de “Wageningen Universiteit en Researchcentrum (WUR) wederom doelwit is geweest. Ditmaal zijn bekladdingen op het gebouw aangetroffen die op de aanwezigheid van een bom duidden. De melding is opgeëist door het Animal Liberation Front (ALF), die in een eerder communiqué in maart 2009 dreigde met een grote bom als de WUR haar verantwoordelijkheid niet zou nemen.” De dreiging is volgens de NCTb zo groot dat ook “andere illegale dierenrechtenacties bij supermarkten en een vestiging van McDonald’s” moeten worden vermeld in de terreur uitgave. De coördinator vervolgt zelfs met “incidenten van een legaal karakter, waarbij een enkele keer een schermutseling is ontstaan tussen demonstrerende dierenrechtenactivisten van links- en rechtsextremistische signatuur.” Met moeite krijgt de dienst de woorden manifestatie, demonstratie, legaal protest uit de mond. Toch moet Akerboom erkennen dat de “acties van de dierenrechtenextremisten niet als terroristisch zijn te bestempelen.”

DTN-19 / 15 december 2009

En dan verlaagt Akerboom de dreiging van substantieel naar beperkt. Volgens de dienst heeft deze verlaging twee redenen, een internationale en een nationale. Over de internationale dreiging wordt iets meer gezegd in de internationale analyse, hier de vraag of de nationale dreiging minder is. Wie de DTN’s van de voorgaande jaren doorloopt moet tot de conclusie komen dat er al jaren geen aanwijzingen zijn. Normaal weidt de NCTb niet uit over deze aanwijzingen, maar in DTN-19 stelt zij dat er “bij deze netwerken sprake is van een afgenomen taakgerichtheid.” Met taken bedoelt de dienst “activiteiten die samenhangen met de gewelddadige jihad.” Het vreemde is dat het gebrek aan aanwijzingen, de relatieve rust en de weinige activiteiten al veel langer gaande zijn dan het afgelopen half jaar. Na de Hofstadgroep en de Samir A. groep vertoonden de netwerken al jaren een relatieve rust. Akerboom is een man van de gematigde weg, al zal het taalgebruik van zijn ambtenaren niet veranderen. Bij hem is de dreiging beperkt.

Joustra en Akerboom’s opvolger Schoof zijn rechtse hardliners die van zware dreiging leven. Akerboom lijkt qua dreigingsniveau een softe koers te varen. Hij stelt dat een deel van de verlaging van de dreiging te maken heeft met het feit dat het vijf jaar geleden is dat van Gogh werd vermoord. De coördinator opent daar zijn DTN mee. De moord op van Gogh wordt gepresenteerd als de Nederlandse elf september: “Het besef drong door dat ook Nederland zich niet veilig kon wanen van terroristische dreiging en dat bijzondere inspanningen vereist waren om nieuwe aanslagen te voorkomen.” Daar waar de Amerikanen de Patriot Act aannamen werd in Nederland de Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding (NCTb) opgericht en het gehele land ingeschakeld als terrorismebestrijder. “Vele andere diensten en organisaties, maar ook door de oplettendheid van gewone burgers kon nieuw terroristisch onheil tot op heden afgewend worden.”

Probleem is wat alles dat de dienst in vijf jaar beschreef ten aanzien van mensen en groepen die mogelijk een gevaar voor Nederland vormden niet bijster veel is geweest. Knuffelterrorist Samir A. kwam veelvuldig aan bod in de DTN’s, maar na de Hofstadgroep was er eigenlijk geen serieuze dreiging meer. De claim dat “terrorismebestrijding in Nederland dus daadwerkelijk effect heeft gehad,” is nogal overtrokken. Vraag is eerder of de samenleving nog wel kan ontspannen, ademen en ruimte bieden aan een radicaal geluid. Wie vijf jaar later de reactie ziet op een handvol demonstranten met Sjahada-vlaggen, de Zwarte Pietdiscussie en de wijze waarop met demonstraties wordt omgesprongen en tevens de door de dienst weggemoffelde ‘incidenten’ van 30 april 2009, 9 april 2011, en 17 juli 2014 in ogenschouw neemt, kan alleen maar concluderen dat de dreiging en angst zijn vergroot en de analyse en de context nog minder is geworden.

De rest van DTN-19 bestaat uit een herhaling van de argumentatie ten aanzien van de verlaging van het dreigingsniveau en de vertrouwde onderwerpen ten aanzien van een grote verscheidenheid van terreurvelden. Zo passeren het beleid ten aanzien van radicale dan wel terroristische uitingen op het internet, dat door de coördinator het jihadistische internet is gedoopt, migratie maatregelen als grenstoezicht en toezicht op kennismigratie, CBRN-middelen, zelfgemaakte explosieven, cameratoezicht in het openbaar vervoer (CTOV) en de bodyscanners in het kader van de beveiliging van de burgerluchtvaart de revue. De coördinator noemt de aanpak radicaliseringshaarden, de stalking door de overheid van organisaties, niet specifiek, sinds DTN-17 is dit van het menu verdwenen en komt alleen nog even ter sprake in DTN-29.

Nieuw is een speciale paragraaf over “reisbewegingen naar trainingskampen en strijdgebieden.” In voorgaande DTN’s was dit onderdeel van of het internationale deel of het Nederlandse profiel. De aandacht heeft te maken met de arrestatie van vier Nederlandse jongeren in Kenia die waarschijnlijk naar Somalië wilden vertrekken en de arrestatie van een Somaliër op 8 november 2009 op verzoek van de Verenigde Staten. De man, Mahamud Said Omar wordt in 2011 aan de VS uitgeleverd en in 2013 veroordeeld voor ondersteuning van al-Shabaab. Mahamud’s broer twijfelt aan de schuld van zijn broer en denkt dat hij er is ingeluisd. Somalische clanstructuren bieden weinig helderheid ten aanzien van wat er precies is gebeurd, iets dat eind 2010 ook in Nederland duidelijk wordt bij een grote arrestatiegolf van onschuldige burgers.

En dan komt de dienst met de mensenrechtenparagraaf. In DTN-17 waren mensenrechten en terrorisme ook al ter sprake gekomen, maar toen was de illusie nog dat het om het beschermen van mensenrechten ging bij terrorismebestrijding. In DTN-19 maakt de coördinator aan die droom een eind. De dienst rept nog wel iets over de bescherming van mensenrechten bij terreurbestrijding maar het is vooral dat “het bestrijden van terrorisme noodzakelijk is ter bescherming van mensenrechten.” In dezelfde alinea schrijft de coördinator dat Nederland en de dictatuur Algerije een gedeelde visie hebben op radicalisering en dat beide landen werken aan de “integratie van mensenrechten in antiterrorismestrategieën.” Welk standpunt de NCTb heeft ten aanzien van mensenrechten wordt niet duidelijk uit de tekst, maar de samenwerking met de dictatuur Algerije zegt misschien genoeg over dat standpunt.

Conclusie DTN 2009

Een nieuwe coördinator een nieuwe wind? Helaas, met de komst van Akerboom worden er wel nieuwe accenten gesignaleerd, maar in wezen gaat het oude wijn in nieuwe zakken. Akerboom breekt niet met het vertoog van Joustra, ook al heeft Akerboom een andere ambtelijke carrière doorlopen. Zo volgt de beschrijving van het IKEA complot de lijnen van vier jaar dienst. We zijn door het oog van de naald gekropen, een bus vol explosieven was op weg naar Amsterdam, zeven brute arrestaties, Amsterdam Zuidoost ontruimd en afgesloten en niets aan de hand, een telefoontje uit Brussel was genoeg voor een mediahype en zeven getraumatiseerde en gestigmatiseerde terreurslachtoffers. Akerboom heeft zijn plek veroverd in zijn eerste DTN. Toch is duidelijk dat Akerboom een andere coördinator is. Hij zet dan wel de samenwerking met foute regimes voort en timmert verder aan het buiten rechtsstatelijk optreden van de NCTb en zijn aanverwante diensten, Akerboom is wel een politieman die meer gewend is dan de ambtenaren Joustra en Schoof. Enig gevaar is hem niet vreemd en hij komt niet uit de Haagse stolp dus daar waar zijn voorganger en opvolger reële aanslagen en grote spanningen zagen, probeert de nieuwe coördinator langzaam toe te werken naar een verlaging van de dreiging. Dit bereikt Akerboom door in DTN-17 en DTN-18 het gevaar aan te dikken en tegelijkertijd het salafistische gevaar te ontmaskeren. Alleen de dierenrechtenactivisten gooien roet in het eten, ook al worden enkele gearresteerd. Andere mensen blijven actie voeren en demonstreren. Toch gaat het te ver om de dreiging substantieel te houden met een verwijzing naar demonstrerende dierenrechtenactivisten. Akerboom verlaagt dan ook het niveau in het laatste dreigingsbeeld van 2009. Die verlaging is cosmetisch, want de taal zal in de jaren die volgen niet veranderen.

2010 de solistische dreigende dienst weet wel raad met eenlingen

DTN-20 / 7 april 2010

Na de storm van de substantiële dreigingsjaren zou je verwachten dat in de beperkte jaren de toon anders is. Voor een deel is dat zo, maar een vergelijking tussen een substantieel geschreven dreigingsanalyse en een beperkte laat een indruk van eenzelfde angst gevoel achter. De inleiding van DTN-20 draagt de titel kern-DTN20, alsof ook Akerboom zich wil meten aan de kern Al Qa’ida zoals de dienst haar tegenstander pleegt te labelen. In deze inleiding stelt de coördinator dat “de kans op een aanslag tegen Nederlandse belangen wel groter is in enkele landen en regio’s waar aan Al Qa’ida gerelateerde groeperingen opereren.” Nu is dit op twee manieren op te vatten, of het is groter dan in de vorige DTN of het is groter dan elders, bijvoorbeeld Nederland. Dit laatste is een nogal open deur, want geweld is in landen als Pakistan, Afghanistan en Irak veel meer voor de hand liggend dan in Nederland.

Rule of law is in de meeste van die landen geen staande praktijk en westerse inmenging heeft daar ofwel geen verandering in aangebracht ofwel de zaak verergert. Tuurlijk dreiging analyseren is een lastige afweging, maar feiten helpen in ieder geval om inzicht te geven in wat er werkelijk aan de hand is. Een zin als “op internationaal niveau heeft het incident ‘Detroit’ het zicht vergroot op kwetsbaarheden van de complexe keten van terrorismebestrijding en daarmee gepaard gaande beperkingen,” geeft niet alleen geen inzicht in de aard van de dreiging, maar wakkert angst juist aan. Wat is de complexe keten, en hoezo beperkingen van de terreurbestrijding van de dienst? In de internationale analyse wordt het incident ‘Detroit’ verder geanalyseerd. Naast het ‘Detroit-complot’ is er het ‘Deense spotprentencomplot’, wat ook verder geanalyseerd wordt in het internationale deel. De coördinator schrijft er wel over dat het complot de “vasthoudendheid van jihadisten” onderstreept. Hij stelt dat het complot “na een periode van relatieve rust de dreiging vrij ‘onverwacht’” opspeelde, terwijl de Denen al lang op de hoogte waren van de positie en het denken van de dader.

Ook hebben jihadisten “voor westerse begrippen een lange tijdshorizon” en “dit perspectief kan ook voor Nederland relevant zijn.” Wat de relevantie is, schrijft de coördinator niet. De dienst lijkt te willen stellen dat we altijd en overal alert moeten zijn. In wezen stelt Akerboom dat we in een oorlogsgebied leven, met bijbehorende spanning en angst. Hoe dit gekeerd gaat worden, is blijkbaar niet onderdeel van de bestrijding, want het is een complexe keten. Een keten waar Detroit, Denemarken en Nederland direct aan elkaar gekoppeld zijn. De coördinator schrijft dat “na de neergang van terrorisme van eigen bodem in Nederland, er inmiddels sprake is van een toename van home grown-terrorisme van Amerikaanse bodem.” Of de coördinator bedoelt dat de onderbroeken terrorist in Amsterdam is doorgelaten is onduidelijk.

Welk terrorisme in Nederland en de VS de coördinator bedoelt, is ook niet helder. Naast de zelfontbrander en de lone-wolf is er nu de home growner, maar hoe dit te duiden wordt ook niet helder. Akerboom stelt dat “deze verschuiving ook voor Nederland onderstreept dat er ondanks een onveranderd dreigingsniveau wel degelijk belangrijke ontwikkelingen met vergaande implicaties plaatsvinden. Tegelijkertijd gaat hiervan het signaal uit dat dergelijke accentverschuivingen in een voor sociale processen vrij korte periode ook op het dreigingsbeeld kunnen doorwerken.” Belangrijke ontwikkeling, vergaande implicaties, korte periode, de bom staat op ontploffen. En ja hoor, “de laatste tijd is er sprake geweest van een reeks – van elkaar losstaande – incidenten rondom potentiële jihadisten.” Toch is het dreigingsbeeld beperkt. Wat wil de dienst met deze driemaandelijkse prozaïsche dreigingsexercitie?

DTN-21 / 18 juni 2010

Na de complexe keten van terrorisme lijkt de coördinator te begrijpen dat een beperkt dreigingsniveau ook echt beperkt is, hoewel de ambtenaren van de dienst misschien wel vastzitten in hun taalgebruik van de afgelopen jaren. DTN-21 opent met de stelling dat er niets aan de hand is: “Ook ten tijde van dit DTN zijn geen concrete aanwijzingen voor aanslagen tegen Nederland bekend geworden.” Toch moeten we angstig blijven want er zijn “transnationale netwerken” en de dreiging “zou zich vooral kunnen manifesteren via uit trainingskampen of strijdgebieden terugkerende Nederlandse of Europese jihadisten.” Terugkeerders waren er al in 2010 en de dreiging heeft allerlei slagen om de arm, het “zou kunnen” omdat “het risico bestaat dat dreigingen uit deze hoek lang onzichtbaar zijn voor inlichtingen- & veiligheidsdiensten.” Het is eigenlijk vreemd dat de dienst al twee DTN’s stelt dat “lokale netwerken in Nederland zwak en leiderloos” zijn, er geen aanwijzingen zijn dat er aanslagen op de rol staan en dat de dreiging beperkt is, maar wel een dreigingsanalyse schrijven waarbij de indruk ontstaat dat er elk moment een bom kan ontploffen of een gewapende man al schietend de supermarkt in kan rennen.

Zo ontstaan zinnen als: “Er is wel sprake van contacten tussen Nederlandse jihadisten en professionele transnationale jihadistische netwerken elders in de wereld. Op deze wijze kunnen die transnationale netwerken voet aan de grond krijgen in Nederland.” Transnationale netwerken willen voet aan de grond krijgen in Nederland, maar de ‘Nederlandse jihadisten’ willen vooral naar “Afghanistan, Pakistan en Somalië.” Een Nederlander, de in Duitsland opgegroeide Danny R. wordt in Waziristan gedood door Pakistaanse troepen. De coördinator meldt: “Onlangs nog is een jihadist met de Nederlandse nationaliteit, die in Duitsland opgroeide, omgekomen tijdens een vuurgevecht met Pakistaanse troepen in Pakistan.” Verder geen uitleg, want in de oorlog tegen de terreur is er geen wens meer om te begrijpen wat er aan de hand is. Het verhaal van Danny R. lijkt simpel, hij is de tegenstander en nu is hij dood. Hetzelfde simplisme klinkt door in de zin over “de wens van Al Qa’ida in Irak om tijdens het WK Nederlandse en Deense teams of supporters te treffen.”

Dit zou in een niet nader omschreven document staan. Is dit echt of hoe moet dit geanalyseerd worden? Wat is de waarde, wat betekent dit? In een paragraaf boven de Nederlandse dreiging is er veel meer nuance in het verhaal aangebracht: “Op het jihadistische internet werden in de afgelopen periode diverse postings aangetroffen waaruit de belangstelling blijkt van jihadisten om een aanslag te plegen op het WK voetbal 2010 in Zuid-Afrika. Het is niet ongebruikelijk dat jihadisten speculeren over aanslagen op grote Westerse (sport)evenementen. Zo kunnen (sport-)delegaties en supporters van specifieke nationaliteiten worden getroffen en kan de media-aandacht en live-uitzending de impact van een aanslag vergroten. Dergelijke speculaties betekenen niet automatisch dat ook daadwerkelijk aanslagen te verwachten zijn. De inschatting is dat de zelfstandige slagkracht van Al Qa’ida in Irak voor een complexe aanslag in Zuid-Afrika gering is.” Het is als dreigen, trollen, soms zelfs uitgeprint en offline verspreid, maar wat betekent het in werkelijkheid? En wat is die werkelijkheid dan? Van een dienst die een dreigingsbeeld produceert verwacht je een analyse niet een veronderstelling dat er iets kan gebeuren.

De dienst ziet een verstoring van een lezing “van de Nederlandse dichter Benno Barnard” als een daad van terrorisme en vreest tevens voor besmettingsgevaar. “Gebleken is dat Nederlandstalige Belgische salafisten op het internet contact onderhouden met salafisten in Nederland. Dat contact kan in de toekomst mogelijk leiden tot een meer georganiseerd verband van activistisch-salafistische jongeren in Nederland, zoals Sharia4Belgium in België is.” Wat is het gevaar eigenlijk van deze radicale jongeren. Is hun provocatie meteen terrorisme? Vraag is of die hyper aandacht voor verstoringen, veronderstellingen, internetpostings, geruchten, het “project Illegal use of the Internet”, andere wensen/verlangens van mogelijke jihadistische groeperingen van de dienst wel enig nut heeft als basale veiligheidsmaatregelen niet in acht worden genomen. Het drama op 30 april 2009 maakt dit duidelijk en het is ook opvallend dat dit in het eerste DTN na het incident/de aanslag niet genoemd wordt.

In de laatste DTN van 2009 schrijft de dienst: “Zelfs individuen kunnen komen tot blind geweld tegen ons politieke en maatschappelijke bestel, zoals op Koninginnedag maar al te pijnlijk duidelijk is geworden. Er is dus alle reden om waakzaam te blijven.” Tot een diepere analyse komt de coördinator niet, uiteindelijk zal er een eenlingenbeleid worden ontwikkeld, maar dat zal eerder dreigingsverhogend zijn dan daadwerkelijk iets oplossen. In DTN-21 meldt de NCTb dat de viering in 2010 goed is verlopen en dat de “Coördinator Bewaken en Beveiligen aan het lokaal bevoegd gezag advies heeft gegeven.” De indruk bestaat dat de NCTb na het drama van 2009 is benaderd om het allemaal beter te coördineren want dat is haar taak.

Dit is echter vreemd aangezien vanaf DTN-0, het nulnummer van de dreigingsbode van de dienst, de coördinator het al over bewaken en beveiligen heeft. Het onderwerp komt terug in DTN-0, DTN-1, DTN-5, DTN-7, DTN-9, DTN-11, DTN-13, DTN-15, DTN-17, DTN-19 (alle voortgangsrapportages terrorismebestrijding), alsof de dienst wil zeggen dat papier geduldig is. Resultaat van dit ‘bewaken en beveiligen’ van de dienst is dat tijdens de Nationale Dodenherdenking op de Dam op 4 mei 2010 iemand met een schreeuw een nationale paniek kan ontketenen, om vervolgens behandeld te worden als de grootste terrorist met bijgaand lang voorarrest en straf. En ondanks alle dreigingstaal en grote gevaren in de wereld van de jihad wandelt Alberto Stegeman opnieuw met een fles explosieve vloeistof Schiphol binnen. Twee jaar eerder had hij dat ook al gedaan en opnieuw houdt de dienst de “procedures voor de beveiliging op Schiphol tegen het licht.” Wie alleen naar de jihadisten kijkt en die groter maakt dan zij in werkelijkheid zijn, creëert angst voor de duivel en minacht basale veiligheid van burgers.

DTN-22 / 13 september 2010

De constructie van het dreigingsbeeld is een ideologische onderneming die twee elementen omvat. Ten eerste is er het bestempelen van bepaalde zaken als dreiging en andere niet en daarnaast is het een taalkundige exercitie. De dienst presenteert dreiging als een wetenschappelijke afweging, maar keuze van onderwerpen, woorden en het constante gebruik van de voorstelbaarheidsthese erodeert waarheid en vervormt de DTN’s tot oorlogspropaganda. DTN-22 stelt bijvoorbeeld in de derde zin dat “het profiel van Nederland nog steeds blijft passen in het internationale jihadistische vijandbeeld,” alsof Nederland een neutrale, onpartijdige entiteit is. De vijfde zin schakelt over op de creatie van een onzekere wereld, met onzekere dreiging en onzekere afloop: “Het gist steeds meer in een breed scala aan landen, waardoor het dreigingsbeeld diffuser is geworden.” Er is zelfs geen specifiek land te noemen. De inleiding vervolgt met de ideologie van Al Qa’ida en de belangen van het westen, als zou de ideologische strijd eenzijdig zijn. Heel langzaam zijn we de wereld van Tolkien in gewandeld waar de Hobbit (Nederland) strijdt tegen binnenlandse netwerken die helaas “leiderloos en weinig doelgericht zijn” waardoor ze geen bedreiging vormen en “transnationale netwerken” die Nederland “een aantrekkelijk en legitiem doelwit” vinden, maar onbestendig en diffuus zijn waardoor er ook niets gebeurd.

Regelmatig worden in de DTN’s de nar van de vrijheid van meningsuiting, Geert Wilders, opgevoerd. Ook nu weer met onder andere zijn voornemen “om Jordanië voortaan Palestina te noemen” en zijn voornemen om “op 11 september 2010 tegen de vestiging van een islamitisch cultureel centrum en moskee nabij «Ground Zero» in New York” te spreken. De wereld wordt geportretteerd als het rijk tussen goed en kwaad. De Nederlandse werkelijkheid met haar nar en de jihadistische wereld van massa’s die “op een bekende jihadistische website” Wilders bespreken zonder “concrete bedreigingen tegen Nederland of tegen de PVV-leider.” Er klinkt enige teleurstelling in de tekst door, maar “de PVV-leider en Hirsi Ali worden wel genoemd in een «hitlist» van personen in het jihadistische internetmagazine Inspire met de kop «The dust will never settle down», vergezeld van de afbeelding van een pistool.” Het intro van de nieuwe eindeloze serie van Peter Jackson eindigt een beetje onverwacht in een genuanceerde scene waarbij een ‘terugkeerder’ toch niet aan alle verwachtingen voldoet: “Tot nu toe zijn er in Nederland slechts in zeer beperkte mate «terugkeerders» gesignaleerd. Daarnaast is het niet zo dat iedere terugkeerder ook een dreiging vormt.” De spanning daalt verder naar een dieptepunt als “twee nieuwe Nederlandse jihadistische sites qua inhoud en vorm niet veel af wijken van reeds bestaande.” Opnieuw trachten ze “de jihadistische ideologie te verspreiden” en gaat het om “klassieke strijdgebieden” en niet om “Nederland (of België),” schijnbaar de stille hoop van de coördinator.

Gelukkig kan de coördinator onder het kopje ‘gewelddadige radicalisering en polarisatie’ enkele alarmerende rapporten aanhalen over de voedingsbodem die onder “Somalische, Pakistaanse, Koerdische en Molukse bevolkingsgroepen in Nederland voor radicalisering bestaat, wat bij enkelen zou kunnen uitmonden in extremisme.” Een van de onderzoeken die de coördinator als basis gebruikt voor deze stelling is een verkennend onderzoek, ‘Voedingsbodem voor radicalisering bij kleine etnische minderheden in Nederland’, dat tot conclusies is gekomen via een literatuurstudie en een niet representatieve steekproef “om zogezegd het percentage geradicaliseerde personen vast te stellen.” De dienst presenteert het onderzoek als wetenschappelijk. Tot DTN-22 werd er gesproken van “radicalisering en polarisatie”, vanaf september 2010 is het “gewelddadige radicalisering en polarisatie.” Volgens de NCTb kan een “potentieel »trigger event»” voor die gewelddadige radicalisering en polarisatie “de Israëlische militaire actie tegen een Turks schip met goederen voor Gaza” zijn. De dienst is beducht voor een aanslag want dit “leidde tot heftige reacties op het internet, maar “nog niet tot geweld.” Akerboom vergat te vermelden dat Israël het Turkse schip Mavi Marmara in internationale wateren enterde en dat daarbij negen opvarenden door de Israëlische militairen werden vermoord. Gewelddadige radicalisering in de eigen Hobbit wereld. Het extremisme heeft zich bij de dienst verdiept.

DTN-23 / 17 december 2010

In de internationale analyse wordt dieper ingegaan op het Stockholm plot, de bompakketten en andere volgens de coördinator “jihadistische intenties of voornemens om westerse doelen te treffen.” De dienst spreekt ook over een “decor van diverse, soms verwarrende berichten over terroristische dreiging tegen diverse Europese landen.” Een decor waar de NCTb blijkbaar figurant in is of deels meeschrijft aan dreigingsscenario’s, want volgens de dienst zorgen die verwarrende berichten ervoor dat “het Nederlandse dreigingsbeeld zorgelijk is.” Dit lijkt vooral door “de herfsteditie” van Inspire te komen, “het Engelstalige jihadistische webmagazine” waarin “Nederland enkele malen is genoemd als potentieel doelwit van een aanslag, door de leiders van zowel de Pakistaanse als de Afghaanse Tabilan.” Waarschijnlijk bedoelt de coördinator de Taliban, maar in het licht van de Hobbit is het een mooie verschrijving.

Inspire interviewt Wali ur Rehman, een leider van de Pakistaanse Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, TTP), die zegt Nederland “met prioriteit ‘een lesje te leren’” waarbij prioriteit niet tussen aanhalingstekens is geplaatst en lesje leren wel. Dat Wali ur Rehman niet echt haast maakt met het lesje leren blijkt uit het feit dat er “geen aanwijzingen zijn dat de TTP voorbereidingen treft voor een aanslag tegen Nederland of Nederlandse belangen.” Waarom de coördinator het Nederlandse publiek op dit interview wijst is onduidelijk. Ook een interview met een woordvoerder van de Afghaanse Taliban, Zabiullah Mujahid, in de Volkskrant passeert de revue. In de inleiding van het DTN was Inspire nog de bron, bij dreiging tegen Nederland is de Volkskrant de bron. Zabiullah Mujahid waarschuwt Nederland en “indien Wilders erin zou slagen het parlement te manipuleren tot het aannemen van “meer anti-islamitische wetgeving” zou Nederland in aanmerking komen voor een aanslag,” zou de woordvoerder hebben gezegd.

Het blijkt allemaal wat minder spontaan dan in eerste instantie is gepresenteerd, want “Mujahid werd expliciet naar zijn mening over Nederland gevraagd en kwam dus niet spontaan tot zijn waarschuwing.” Vraag is ook of de woordvoerder weet waar Nederland ligt, daar was in het verleden verwarring over, en tevens zijn er “geen indicaties die wijzen op voorbereidingen van een aanslag tegen Nederland of zijn belangen in het buitenland.” Deze twee interviews vullen de paragraaf ‘Nederland als doelwit genoemd’. Of beide heren ook daadwerkelijk enigszins belangrijk zijn in beide bewegingen en in het verleden uitspraken hebben gedaan die van belang waren, wordt niet geanalyseerd. Waarom de Taliban wordt opgevoerd als mogelijke bedreiging terwijl Nederland zich juist heeft teruggetrokken uit Afghanistan is een bewijs voor de “voor westerse begrippen lange tijdshorizon” van de jihadisten zoals door Akerboom in DTN-20 is uitgelegd.

De horizon van de dienst is niet al te lang. Drie maanden eerder schreef hij over het gevaar van radicalisering bij Molukse gemeenschappen, maar of die degenen zijn die terroriseren is de grote vraag. In DTN-23 beschrijft de dienst “bekladding, vernieling, brandstichting en met een vuurwapen op een moskeedeur schieten bij diverse gebedshuizen in Nederland (Molukse kerken, enkele moskeeën) waarbij niet kan worden vastgesteld of ideologische overwegingen een rol spelen.” En dit vernauwde bewustzijn van de NCTb herhaalt zich bij de paragraaf weerstand. Plots omarmen de dienst en haar evenknie de AIVD het Salafisme. “De studie bevestigt de visie van AIVD en NCTb, dat de salafistische gemeenschap in Nederland geen voedingsbodem voor jihadistisch terrorisme vormt,” terwijl de dienst tot zeker DTN-17 moord en brand schreeuwde en overal salafisten zag die moskeeën overnamen en radicaliseerden.

Zonder de salafisten en de leiderloze nationale netwerken moet de coördinator op zoek naar nieuwe bronnen van polarisatie en de rechter bedient hem op zijn wenken. “Verder werd de Arabisch-Europese Liga (AEL) in augustus 2010 in hoger beroep veroordeeld voor het publiceren van een cartoon die suggereert dat de Holocaust een joods verzinsel is. De veroordeling leidde tot verongelijkte reacties bij onder andere AEL zelf en de Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT). In dezelfde periode besliste het Openbaar Ministerie om niet over te gaan tot vervolging van de cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot wegens discriminatie. AEL en HuT, maar ook veel anderen, getuige reacties op internet, zien hierin ongelijke behandeling en discriminatie van moslims.” Verongelijkte reacties en opmerkingen over discriminatie zijn geen polarisatie, ook al wil de dienst dit graag zo labelen. Het zijn eerder tekenen van een groeiend extremisme bij de dienst, een onvrede over mensen die zich kritisch opstellen ten aanzien van de Nederlandse staat.

Bij gebrek aan ‘echte terroristen en terreurgroepen’ die allemaal worden vrijgesproken (de Irakese Nederlander Wesam al Delaema, de jongeren die op weg waren naar Somalië, Stichting Al Aqsa), richt de dienst zich op de eenlingen. Die krachtmeting kan de coördinator gemakkelijk aan. Na 30 april 2009 en 4 mei 2010 volgde nog de waxinelichthoudergooier Erwin Lensink tijdens Prinsjesdag op 21 september 2010. Los van de zeer zware maatregelen van voorarrest, psychiatrisch onderzoek en andere justitiële medische maatregelen die de eenlingterroristen te verduren kregen, tuigen de coördinator en aanverwante diensten een scala van maatregelen op. “Derhalve is onlangs het project Solistische Dreigers gestart. Zo zal ten eerste vóór 1 januari 2011 binnen het KLPD een pilotteam Solistische Dreigers zijn opgestart. Er wordt wetenschappelijk onderzoek geïnitieerd naar de wijze waarop ongekende dreigers aanslagen plegen en de mogelijkheden van vroege signalering. En er wordt onderzocht of het mogelijk is de zogenaamde – vaak jongere – ‘straattaaldreigers’ door middel van een voorlichtings- en bewustwordings-campagne te ontmoedigen.”

In DTN-24 wordt het solistische dreigers-frame meteen toegepast in het terreurbeeld. Nadat in Tuscon (Arizona, de Verenigde Staten) op 8 januari 2011 een schietpartij plaats vindt, “waarbij een 22-jarige man een congreslid door het hoofd schoot, zes omstanders doodde en nog eens dertien mensen verwondde, zijn ook de Verenigde Staten weer eens pijnlijk geconfronteerd met het verschijnsel van de ‘solistische dreiger’. De dienst weet wel raad met deze eenlingterroristen en stelt dat “systeemhaat, in combinatie met een geloof in samenzweringingstheorieën, persoonlijke stoornissen of traumatische ervaringen” de oorzaken zijn. Amerika kent echter een traditie van al dan niet willekeurige schietpartijen waarvan het bloedbad op de Columbine High School van 20 april 1999 misschien wel de bekendste is.

Met de focus van de terreurdienst zelf is het vervolgens zelf slecht gesteld want, na Koninginnedag, dodenherdenking en Prinsjesdag, volgt de winkelcentrumslachting van een solistische dreiger op 9 april 2011 in Alphen aan de Rijn. De dienst rept er met geen woord over. In het eerste DTN na het drama in Alphen aan de Rijn schrijft de coördinator dat “Koninginnedag dit jaar weer veilig en bovenal feestelijk is verlopen” en dat de dienst alleen maar “personen van de limitatieve lijst” beschermd. “Nationale evenementen zijn evenementen die worden bezocht door personen van de limitatieve lijst én waarbij het nationale belang centraal staat én het karakter van het evenement een specifieke of verhoogde druk op de bewaking en beveiliging kan geven” oftewel “Koninginnedag (daar waar de koning is), de Nationale Herdenking, Veteranendag en Prinsjesdag.” De mensen die werden vermoord bij het drama van Alphen aan de Rijn stonden niet op de “limitatieve lijst” en waren dus niet belangrijk genoeg voor de dienst NCTb.

Conclusie DTN 2010

Een verlaagd dreigingsniveau wil niet zeggen een rustiger vaarwater. De elementen van een gespannen dienst blijven in het DTN hangen. Kern Al Qa’ida is er nog steeds en ook de complexe keten van terrorismebestrijding. Welke gevaarlijker is maakt de coördinator niet duidelijk, maar de complexe keten heeft in DTN-20 meer ellende aangericht dan de kern. Detroit, de onderbroekenbommenman, zou een voorbeeld zijn van de kwetsbaarheden van de keten, maar wie het spoor van Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab volgt kan alleen maar concluderen dat de man een knalrood T-shirt aan had met de tekst: ‘Ik ben een terrorist en ga zo een aanslag plegen.’ Ditzelfde geldt voor de heer Geele in Denemarken gezien de uitgebreide voorkennis van de Deense inlichtingendienst. Vraag is dan of het om kwetsbaarheden gaat of om het in gevaar brengen van de bevolking. En dat brengt weer 30 april 2009 in herinnering, een ‘incident’ dat in de dreigingsbode niet ter sprake komt, al worden Karst Tates en later de Alphense schutter, de theelicht houdergooier en de damschreeuwer wel gebruikt voor een nieuw programma ten aanzien van de solistische dreigers waar natuurlijk bierflessengooier jakhals Erik van DWDD niet bij hoort. En die eenlingterroristen of solistische dreigers moeten worden aangepakt door een “pilotteam solistische dreigers” dat “vóór 1 januari 2011” moet zijn opgestart. Drie maanden later slaat Tristan van der Vlis hard toe in Alphen aan de Rijn en toont eens te meer aan dat mensen indelen in eenlingterroristen, jihadistische netwerken en radicale moslims uitmondt in meer dreiging, meer angst en meer gevaar en niet in meer veiligheid. Basale procedures en meer transparantie hadden meer voor de veiligheid gedaan in Alphen dan een dienst. De eenlingen, netwerken, moslims en anderen zijn voorbeelden van de drang van de NCTb om de wereld in te delen in een goed en slecht deel. De dienst gaat zo ver in die bipolaire benadering dat zelfs ‘wetenschappelijk’ onderzoek wordt gepresenteerd over vermeende radicalisering van diverse bevolkingsgroepen zoals Somalische, Pakistaanse, Koerdische en Molukse Nederlanders (DTN-22). Onderzoek dat gebaseerd is op een literatuurstudie en een niet representatieve steekproef. Uiteindelijk blijft van het onderzoek weinig heel, maar het leed dat de diverse bevolkingsgroepen is aangedaan is al geschied. Dit leed is tweeledig, ten eerste wordt geïnsinueerd dat de bevolkingsgroepen aan het radicaliseren zijn en daar blijkbaar niets tegen doen. Ten tweede werd de Molukse gemeenschap in DTN-23 getroffen door “bekladding, vernieling, brandstichting en schoten op de deur.” Die ‘incidenten’ passen weer in het frame van de polarisatie van de dienst en bevestigen indirect de radicalisering van de Molukse gemeenschap. Zo draagt de terreurcoördinator bij aan de ontwrichting van de samenleving, terwijl zowel het ‘wetenschappelijk’ onderzoek als de terreurbode twijfelachtige documenten zijn. De dienst lijkt er niet om te malen. Zorgvuldig afgewogen analyse is niet aan de terreurdienst besteed.

2011 ambtenaartje in lala dreigingsland

DTN-24 / 18 maart 2011

Door alle oorlogstaal van de dienst sneeuwt het dreigingsniveau onder. Het lijkt substantieel, maar dat is alleen de gevoelsdreiging, in werkelijkheid houdt de coördinator het op beperkt. Zo start de coördinator DTN-24 met “die zorgelijke ontwikkelingen.” Dit zijn berichten op het internet en arrestaties in Europa want er is “geringe dreiging van binnenlandse jihadistische netwerken.” Het is elke keer onduidelijk of die netwerken er überhaupt zijn. Op de Europese arrestaties wordt in de internationale analyse ingegaan. Of Nederland nu actief is in Afghanistan of niet, “afnemende militaire betrokkenheid in Afghanistan en de politiemissie in Afghanistan dragen bij aan het internationale profiel van Nederland.” Dit komt tot uitdrukking in het media optreden van bijvoorbeeld de woordvoerder van de Afghaanse Taliban, die zou zich “in december en januari driemaal tot Nederland gericht” hebben. Dit is waarschijnlijk Zabiullah Mujahid die door de Volkskrant is geïnterviewd. Wat de woordvoerder naast het Volkskrant interview heeft gezegd is onduidelijk. Daarnaast haalt de dienst twee niet nadere genoemde individuen aan die op “een prominente Arabischtalige jihadistische website een posting hebben geplaatst waarin onder andere Nederland wordt genoemd als legitiem doelwit voor jihadisten.” Een analyse van de waarde van de postings geeft de coördinator niet en hij vertelt ook niet hoe serieus de dreigementen genomen moeten worden.

Die postings en de jihadisering van het internet baren de coördinator al jaren zorg. In DTN-24 stelt hij: “De rol van het internet vormt al jaren een belangrijke dimensie van de jihadistische dreiging. Het internet is immers een cruciaal middel voor jihadisten.” Accounts bij Facebook, Youtube en andere internetmultinationals worden door de coördinator gekoppeld aan “de geest van het jihadistische discours op het internet.” Die jihadisering was ook geconstateerd bij Somalische Nederlanders in DTN-22 (september 2010) en wordt in DTN-24 bevestigd door een rapport van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek: “De uitkomsten bevestigen het beeld van een voedingsbodem voor radicalisering.” Het lijkt even of de Somalische gemeenschap op ontploffen staat als op 24 december 2010 “twaalf personen van Somalische afkomst” worden gearresteerd. De eigenaar van een belwinkel ziet voor zijn ogen dat zijn winkel door het arrestatieteam aan stukken wordt geslagen alsof het hooligans van de overheid zijn. Volgens de coördinator zouden er aanwijzingen zijn dat er op 24 of 25 december 2010 een aanslag gepleegd zou gaan worden.

De AIVD had op basis van een anonieme tip een ambtsbericht getypt en het openbaar ministerie en politie arresteerden vervolgens mensen die werden verdacht van terrorisme. Het doet allemaal denken aan vele voorgaande voorbeelden zoals het Ikea plot op 12 maart 2009 (zeven mensen gearresteerd, een dag cel) of het Rotterdamse complot van juli 2005 (vijf volwassenen en een kind gearresteerd, zes dagen cel). De Somalisch Nederlandse hype die begon met een verkennend onderzoek, een zorgelijk rapport, een brute inval en arrestaties eindigde in DTN-26. Daarna keerden de geradicaliseerde Somalische Nederlanders niet meer terug in de dreigingsanalyses, de hype was over. De dienst drijft op hypes zoals de hedendaagse journalistiek van een flinke hype houdt.

En Wilders en andere parlementariërs bedienen de coördinator op zijn wenken. “Het publieke en politieke debat over kwesties als integratie, immigratie en islam kende ook in de afgelopen periode op verschillende momenten scherpe kanten. Een terugkerend thema daarbij is het verbod op gelaatsbedekkende kleding, in de volksmond het ‘boerkaverbod’ genoemd.” Volgens de NCTb is het een “gevoelig thema”. Niet voor politici, opiniemakers of de dienst zelf, maar voor “jihadistische personen en organisaties.” Volgens de coördinator schuwden jihadisten in Frankrijk “foutieve voorstellingen, manipulatie en opruiing niet.” Politici, opiniemakers of de dienst zelf maakten zich daar natuurlijk niet schuldig aan. Zoals bij de groep Shariah4Holland. De groep is nog maar net opgericht of de coördinator neemt ze op in zijn terreurbode: “Op 13 december 2010 werd op het internet ‘Shariah4Holland’ gelanceerd.” Zeker geen “foutieve voorstellingen, manipulatie en opruiing” van de dienst, alleen roept de “groep niet op tot gewelddadige activiteiten.” Waarom wordt de groep dan toch aangemerkt als terroristische organisatie?

DTN-25 / 17 juni 2011

Na ruim zes jaar dreigingsbeelden is er geen weg meer terug. Nu plots schrijven dat het beeld groen is en dat er geen dreiging meer bestaat, is ongeloofwaardig. Het is vooral ongeloofwaardig omdat de coördinator zelf de dreiging keer op keer opkrikt, terwijl de gepresenteerde feiten slechts aangeven dat er in wezen niets aan de hand is. Want keer op keer is de dreiging van de al dan niet bestaande jihadistische netwerken in Nederland gering. Wat overblijft, is een soort lala dreigingsland, waar het natuurlijk altijd gevaarlijker kan zijn en er meer maatregelen moeten worden genomen, maar waar teruggaan niet meer mogelijk is. Nederland is in DTN-25 daarom niet meer een ‘voorkeursdoelwit’ maar een “gelegenheidsdoelwit.” “Het besluit om een politiemissie naar de Afghaanse provincie Kunduz te sturen zou ertoe kunnen leiden dat in ieder geval Nederlandse belangen in Afghanistan explicieter in beeld komen als gelegenheidsdoelwit.” Wat precies de definitie van gelegenheidsdoelwit is, maakt de coördinator niet duidelijk, maar het klinkt als een drive-by shooting. De aanslagpleger is onderweg naar Parijs en pakt terloops Rotterdam er nog even bij. Of dit een positieve ontwikkeling is, wordt niet duidelijk. Voorkeursdoelwit lijkt beter omdat de gelegenheid zich altijd voor kan doen en de voorkeur waarschijnlijk niet, maar de dienst gaat verder niet in op het onderscheid. Voorkeur of gelegenheid, beide doelen zijn blijkbaar legitiem voor de jihadisten.

Voorkeursdoelwit van de dienst was lange tijd het salafisme, maar sinds DTN-23 niet meer. In DTN-25 is de Moslimbroederschap het gelegenheidsdoelwit: “Op langere termijn vormt de broederschap mogelijk wel een bedreiging van de democratische rechtsorde.” Na DTN-25 komt de Moslimbroederschap niet meer terug tot in DTN-37. De coördinator houdt ook van gelegenheidsargumenten met als voorkeursdoelwit meer controle en registratie, vandaar dat hij sinds DTN-23 naast terroristen ook criminelen noemt bij “de (zelfgemaakte) explosieven”(haakjes van de overheid). De coördinator stelt dat dat “terroristische en andere criminele organisaties de potentie en onverminderde intentie hebben om explosieven in te zetten. Bij vrijwel alle terroristische aanslagen in West-Europa is gebruik gemaakt van zelfgemaakte explosieven.” Bij de Madridaanslagen werd echter regulier dynamiet gebruikt, geleverd door een informant van de overheid. Bij London werden volgens de minimale informatie die er over de aanslagen beschikbaar is ook reguliere explosieven gebruikt. Daarnaast waren er allerlei exotische pogingen die mislukten, maar alleen Anders Breivik was in staat om genoeg kunstmest met nitraatzouten en benzine te verzamelen om een effectieve bom te bouwen. Bij veel maatregelen vindt dezelfde stoelendans rond het voorkeursdoelwit van de dienst plaats. Of het nu gaat om (zelfgemaakte) explosieven, financiën/witwassen, internetsurveillance en afsluiting (Notice and Takedown), of registratie van passagiersgegevens keer op keer wordt eerst gesteld dat de maatregelen nodig zijn voor de bestrijding van terrorisme maar gaandeweg gaat het niet meer om terrorisme maar om criminaliteit en weer later om geweldplegers en of radicale of dissidente groepen. Zo kwam het onderwerp van de Passenger Name Records (PNR) in DTN-11 op de agenda. In DTN-15 en DTN-17 werd expliciet terrorismebestrijding vermeld. In DTN21 sprak de Nederlandse overheid nog over “doelbinding, proportionaliteit en privacy van de reiziger.” In DTN-25 is het al opgerekt tot “het voorkomen, opsporen, onderzoeken en vervolgen van terroristische misdrijven en zware criminaliteit (EU PNR).”

DTN-26 / 3 oktober 2011

De obsessie van de dienst met radicalisme, extremisme en vooral jihadisme leidt tot bizarre dreigingsbeelden. In DTN-26 van 3 oktober 2011 stelt de coördinator dat “de aanslagen in Noorwegen laten zien dat de binnenlandse terroristische dreiging in westerse landen niet alleen wordt bepaald door jihadistisch terrorisme.” Alles wordt langs de jihadistische meetlat gelegd. Er is jihadistisch terrorisme en “niet-jihadistisch terrorisme,” zoals Akerboom Breivik definieert. En dan is er Alphen aan de Rijn, iets dat de coördinator over het hoofd heeft gezien en niet in zijn dreigingsbeeld heeft opgenomen, want dat past blijkbaar niet in het volledig gedichotomiseerde samenlevingsbeeld van de dienst. Bij die tweedeling is Breivik ook een lastige persoon want in principe is er de jihadistische wereld en ‘onze wereld’. Gelukkig kan Breivik wordt gedetermineerd als een “geradicaliseerde eenling”, een “verwarde eenling” of een persoon die uit is op “zijn’15 minutes of fame’.” Dader Tristan van der Vlis past zeker niet in deze wereld van de NCTV, dus wordt hij weggelaten en keert slechts een keer terug als een soort voetnoot in DTN-28.

Akerboom beert de jihadistische wereld en de Breivik wereld te laten versmelten. De jihadi’s willen naar jihadistische terreinen om te trainen. Zij zijn al radicaal en terrorist. “Nederlandse jihadisten of in Nederland wonende jihadisten blijven pogingen doen uit te reizen naar jihadistische strijdgebieden. Slechts een enkeling slaagt erin het gewenste strijdgebied te bereiken en aansluiting te vinden bij jihadistische structuren.” Zij zien Nederland als een “legitiem doelwit”. De coördinator is wel anders over de vele postings gaan denken: “Hoewel deze postings het profiel in jihadistische kringen van Nederland als vijand van de islam versterken, moeten zij vooral gezien worden als een manier om angst aan te jagen bij westerlingen.” Akerboom is echter wel blij want “de postings versterken het profiel van Nederland in het algemeen en de PVV-fractievoorzitter in het bijzonder als vijanden van de islam,” de oorlog tegen de terreur woedt gelukkig verder. Breivik onderstreept voor de dienst “ook nog eens de dreiging die kan uitgaan van geradicaliseerde eenlingen.” De dienst gebruikt niet de term extreemrechts voor Breivik, “overigens kan Breivik niet worden gekarakteriseerd als een ‘klassieke’ rechtsextremist,” ook geen woord over de toenemende polarisatie die ook door de dienst wordt aangewakkerd. Nee, de woordenschat bestaat uit “geradicaliseerde”, “verwarde”, en de analyse is simpel. “De terroristische aanslagen in Noorwegen leidden in Nederland, maar ook daarbuiten, tot een debat over in hoeverre het maatschappelijk klimaat heeft bijgedragen aan de daden van Breivik,” schrijft de coördinator als analyse en dat op “dit moment in Nederland geen concrete aanwijzingen” zijn maar het “kan echter niet worden uitgesloten dat de ideeën en daden van Breivik een inspiratie kunnen zijn voor gefixeerde dan wel verwarde eenlingen.”

Naast de jihadisten en de niet-jihadisten als Breivik heb je mensen die gebruik maken van hun democratisch recht op vrijheid van meningsuiting, manifestatie en vergadering. Zo zijn er mensen die zich inzetten voor dierenrechten, door de dienst gelabeld als “dierenrechtenextremisten”. Zij hebben de “aandacht getrokken met acties tegen de KLM, omdat deze volgens de dierenrechtenextremisten samen met partner Air France betrokken zou zijn bij het vervoeren van apen ten behoeve van de dierproefindustrie.” Niet de dienst wil aandacht, maar de dierenrechtenactivisten, en er is volgens de NCTV helemaal niets mis met proefdieren want volgens extremisten vervoeren KLM en Air France proefdieren, en extremisten zijn per definitie fout en KLM en Air France zijn gewoon goed bezig. Ook vindt de coördinator het schandalig dat er “videobeelden, die heimelijk zijn gemaakt, zijn gepubliceerd van vermeende misstanden in Nederlandse varkenshouderijen.” De misstanden zijn “vermeend” en de videobeelden “heimelijk,” allemaal zeer terroristisch volgens het denken van de dienst.

Naast de mensen die zich inzetten voor dierenrechten zijn er ook de mensen die zich inzetten voor vluchtelingen. Zij zijn de “asielrechtenactivisten en –extremisten” die “zich wederom richtten op bouwbedrijf BAM.” BAM bouwt gevangenissen voor vluchtelingen en in het verleden hebben mensen gedemonstreerd tegen BAM en zijn er enkele vernielingen aan bouwplaatsen geweest. Volgens de coördinator zijn die vernielingen door “asielrechtenactivisten en –extremisten” gepleegd, want zij gebruiken “extremistische methoden, zoals vernielingen.” In DTN-27 zijn die “extremistische methoden” al uitgebreid tot “incidenten met een extremistisch karakter, zoals (kleinschalige) brandstichtingen” die de dienst noemt in het kader van “bijeenkomsten en openbare uitingen zoals (lawaai-)demonstraties.” Tot slot zijn er nog mensen die demonstreren en volgens de politie “verharden” die demonstraties. De dienst wijdt er niet verder over uit, maar “het KLPD constateert dat de tegendemonstraties van linksextremistische actievoerders tegen rechtsextremistische demonstraties verharden en een toenemend gewelddadig karakter krijgen.” Iedereen die aandacht trekt, protesteert, zaken aan de schandpaal nagelt ofdemonstreert is extremist in de ogen van de dienst. De woorden grondwettelijke rechten en mensenrechten staan niet in het vocabulaire van de extremistische dienst NCTV.

DTN-27 / 12 december 2011

Postings op het internet zijn een voortdurende bron van radicalisering en terrorisme voor de dienst. Na alle verhandelingen over Youtube films waarin Nederland werd genoemd als voorkeursdoelwit, gelegenheidsdoelwit of in ieder geval legitiem doelwit, bleek in DTN-26 plotseling dat die postings er vooral op waren gericht ons angst aan te jagen. Dat was aardig gelukt sinds 2005, want de dienst lijkt zonder de onthoofdingsvideo’s geen angstverhaal in elkaar te kunnen zetten. In DTN-27 doet de coördinator een boekje open over de wijze waarop de vermeldingen op het “jihadistische internet” moeten worden bekeken. “Niet alleen het aantal vermeldingen, maar ook de inhoud daarvan en de invloed die de plaatser van het bericht heeft binnen de jihadistische gemeenschap wegen mee,” zo analyseert de coördinator de jihadistische GeenStijl. De dienst heeft “het jihadistisch internet” aan een grondig onderzoek onderworpen want in navolging van DTN-26 stelt de dienst dat “in algemene zin geldt dat dergelijke berichten vooral moeten worden gezien als een poging van jihadisten om angst aan te jagen bij hun vijanden, en om jihadistische medestanders te mobiliseren.”

Akerboom gaat nader in op een herhaald “ dreigement tegen de PVV-leider.” Inhoud van het dreigement maakt de coördinator niet bekend ook niet of het precies dezelfde dreiging was van enige tijd geleden. Wel stelt de dienst dat er “ten aanzien van het hierboven genoemde dreigement geen informatie is dat de plaatser daarvan kan leunen op een specifieke autoriteit of inspirerende invloed op andere jihadisten.” Onduidelijk is of dit goed of slecht nieuws is voor de heer Wilders. Of de identiteit van de “plaatser” bekend is is ook niet duidelijk en of de “plaatser” in het verleden dreigementen heeft geplaatst die werden uitgevoerd is ook niet onderzocht door de NCTV. Op dezelfde jihadistische GeenStijl vond de dienst “andere berichten over Nederland, zoals over sommige voorstellen van Nederlandse parlementariërs, die waren feitelijk van aard en bevatten geen dreigementen.” Of deze berichten van dezelfde “plaatser” kwamen wordt niet vermeld en waarover de mededelingen gingen evenmin.

De korte verhandeling over de postings, voor de dienst een serieuze analyse, beëindigt de NCTV met de opmerking dat “uit voorgaande echter (nog) niet kan worden opgemaakt dat Nederland als doelwit minder prominent in beeld komt dan voorheen.” De ‘analyse’ van de postings wordt gevolgd door een korte mijmering over de jihadreizen. Al jaren stelt de coördinator dat “jihadistische netwerken in Nederland beperkt in aantal zijn, los georganiseerd, en dat zij geen sterke leiders of duidelijke doelen hebben.” Om toch een constant gevoel van terreur in stand te houden, wordt verwezen naar jihadreizen en de terugkeerders. “Hoewel er in 2011 wel meer signalen zijn over jihadreizigers uit Nederland (soms Nederlanders woonachtig in het buitenland), is het lastig vast te stellen of het aantal jihadreizigers daadwerkelijk stijgt,” schrijft de coördinator over die mensen die afreizen naar landen in Noord-Afrika en het Midden-Oosten. In het verleden noemde de coördinator nog specifieke bestemmingen als Afghanistan en Irak, maar met de intrede van de Arabische Lente is de gehele Arabische wereld bestemmingsgebied voor jihadreizen. “Onder deze reisdoelen scharen zich, sinds de opstanden aldaar, ook Noord-Afrikaanse landen en landen in het Midden-Oosten.”

De dienst is niet blij dat de dictators ter plaatse allemaal aan het wankelen worden gebracht, want dit zou extremisme in de hand werken. In de internationale analyse wordt daar meer op ingegaan. De NCTV ziet zich in haar denken bevestigd omdat “de onrust in de Arabische wereld tot op heden niet heeft geleid tot massale steunbetuigingen vanuit de diverse migrantengemeenschappen in Nederland (DTN-25),” Er zouden slechts “op kleinschalig niveau overwegend vreedzame demonstraties hebben plaatsgevonden van Tunesiërs, Egyptenaren, Libiërs en Syriërs.” De aanduiding ‘Arabische Lente’ komt pas in 2014 in het vocabulaire van de coördinator voor. De Lente was toen al op veel plaatsen onderdrukt of ontspoord. Die analyse van maatschappelijke onvrede als extremistisch of op zijn minst als ‘kans op extremisme’ is ook zichtbaar bij de analyse van de economische crisis van 2008.

Voor DTN-27 (eind 2011) komt de benaming economische crisis niet voor in de terreurbode, terwijl de rampspoed dan al ruim drie jaar door het land en de wereld jaagt. Het gaat de dienst goed voor de wind, hoe meer terreuraandikking hoe dikker de portemonnee van de dienst. Was het verzet tegen de toenemende ongelijkheid en de graaicultuur van de financiële wereld tot 2011 erg klein, in navolging van de Arabische Lente steekt in de ‘westerse’ wereld het verzet ook de kop op. De dienst legt elk protest meteen naast de jihadistische, extremistische terroristische meetlat: “In andere Europese landen laten gebeurtenissen zien dat een verergerende economische crisis maatschappelijke instabiliteit kan veroorzaken en de kans op ideologisch geïnspireerd geweld kan doen toenemen.” In de zin na dit protest tegen het neoliberale beleid volgt in één adem extreemrechts extremisme: “Ook worden sommige Europese landen geconfronteerd met geweldsdaden die worden toegeschreven aan extreemrechts.”

Protesteren tegen de wijze waarop politiek en bedrijfsleven de economische crisis van 2008 hebben veroorzaakt zit meteen in de extremistische hoek: “Het verdere verloop van de financieel-economische crisis kan de komende tijd van invloed zijn op vooral de links-extremistische hoek. In landen als Griekenland en Italië zijn door de schuldencrisis maatschappelijke spanningen en gewelddadigheden waarneembaar, waarbij anarchisten een belangrijke rol spelen.” Financieel economisch protest wordt direct gekoppeld aan “sabotageacties op het spoornet (Berlijn), uit kritiek op de Duitse militaire presentie in Afghanistan” en aan de “links-extremistische hoek.” Al is het in Nederland “wezenlijk anders dan in Italië en Griekenland,” het kan elk moment uit de hand lopen want er “vinden vooralsnog alleen vreedzame protestacties plaats.” Alles staat in het licht van Breivik die aantoont dat “waakzaamheid is geboden voor terroristisch geweld uit andere overwegingen dan jihadistische.” Graaiende bankiers en anderen uit de financiële wereld en wegkijkende en miskleunende politici komen niet in het vertoog van de dienst voor. In de bipolaire wereld behoren zij tot de ‘goeden’ en degenen die protesteren tegen ongelijkheid tot de extremisten, lees de slechteriken.

Conclusie DTN 2011

DTN-24, het eerste dreigingsbeeld van 2011, is het schoolvoorbeeld van de manier waarop de dienst zich langzaam heeft ontwikkeld tot een extremistische organisatie die polarisatie in de hand werkt. De dienst drijft op hypes en die werken simpel. Een literatuurstudie met een niet representatieve steekproef over radicalisering van verschillende bevolkingsgroepen in Nederland waaronder de Somalische Nederlanders, wordt gepresenteerd als ‘wetenschappelijk’ (DTN-22). Vervolgens verschijnt er een rapport van het CBS, Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, dat het beeld zou bevestigen dat de Somalische gemeenschap een “voedingsbodem voor radicalisering” is. Ook bij dat onderzoek, moeten vraagtekens worden gezet ten aanzien van het wetenschappelijke karakter, want wat is de definitie van een voedingsbodem en van radicalisering? Vervolgens wordt de dienst op zijn wenken bediend met de arrestatie van twaalf Somalische Nederlanders die een Kerstplot zouden beramen. Uiteindelijk verdwijnt het Somalisch Nederlandse Kerstplot als sneeuw voor de zon, want alle verdachten worden vrijgelaten bij gebrek aan bewijs. Ook de Somalisch Nederlandse radicaliseringshaard eindigt in DTN-26, van een explosie wordt niets meer vernomen. Het enige dat overblijft, is fysieke en emotionele schade voor de slachtoffers, stigmatisering van de arrestanten en de bevolkingsgroep en een afgenomen vertrouwen in de overheid en haar diensten. In 2015 worden twee Somalische Nederlanders verdacht van het plegen van een aanslag in Mogadishu, Somalië. De dienst zal dat zien als een bewijs van haar gelijk ten aanzien van radicalisering. Het omgekeerde kan evengoed, jihadisten hoeven niet meer te rekruteren, het brute optreden van de overheid is genoeg om mensen aan te zetten tot deelname aan de bipolaire oorlog. Slecht onderzoek leidt niet alleen tot stigmatisering en terrorisering van mensen, maar holt ook de rechtsstaat uit. Zo worden maatregelen in eerste instantie gepresenteerd als terrorisme bestrijdingsmaatregelen en lijkt er discussie over proportionaliteit en het doel-binding principe, maar gaandeweg is het niet terrorisme bestrijding, maar gewone criminaliteitsbestrijding waar de maatregelen voor zouden dienen. De volgende stap in de argumentatie ten aanzien van de noodzaak van de maatregelen zijn meestal gewelddadige voetbalsupporters en demonstranten en daarna radicale en dissidente groepen. Die verschuiving van denken is al zichtbaar in DTN-26 als het gaat om de beschrijving van mensen die protesteren tegen onrecht tegen dieren en vluchtelingen, tegen ongelijkheid, dictaturen of andere misstanden in de samenleving. Deze mensen die protesteren worden eigenlijk standaard extremisten genoemd en incidenten worden direct gekoppeld aan die extremisten die dan ook verharden. Bewijs is er meestal niet, maar dat is in de bipolaire wereld van de extremistische dienst NCTV niet nodig: ‘Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.’

2012 burgers, burgerslachtoffers doen er niet toe in de oorlog tegen de terreur

DTN-28 / 26 maart 2012

Akerboom’s laatste jaar als coördinator kabbelt rustig verder op de jihadistische netwerken in Nederland, die eigenlijk al lange tijd geen gevaar vormen of misschien zelfs niet bestaan, het “Nederlandse profiel onder jihadisten dat onverminderd hoog is”, de jihadreizen en het jihadistische internet. De dienst gebruikt niet de termen ‘niet-jihadistische netwerken’, spreekt ook niet over een profiel onder ‘niet-jihadisten’, ook het ‘niet-jihadistische internet’ komt ter sprake of de ‘niet-jihadisten’ die op reis gaan. In voorgaande DTN’s schreef de dienst over de postings en dat die meldingen op het jihadistische GeenStijl meer angst aanjagen dan dat er daadwerkelijk een dreiging vanuit gaat. In DTN-28 geeft de dienst een voorbeeld. Eerst stelt de NCTV dat de aandacht voor Nederland geluwd zou zijn, hoewel de coördinator dit niet met zoveel woorden aangeeft.

Vervolgens spreekt de coördinator over een gerucht, niet over een melding of posting. Het gerucht zou ook al eerder hebben gespeeld, maar dat was de dienst niet opgevallen: “In de afgelopen periode leefde die echter kortstondig op toen een gerucht, ontstaan in 2008, nieuw leven werd ingeblazen: Nederland zou toestaan dat er een erotische film over de vrouwen van profeet Mohammed zou worden gepubliceerd.” Wie de “plaatser” van het gerucht, melding of posting is, wordt niet vermeld door de NCTV, ook niet zijn status. Volgens de coördinator leidde het gerucht in december 2011 “tot een bedreiging tegen Amsterdam op een belangrijk jihadistisch forum, tot dreigementen op Facebook tegen Nederlandse diplomatieke vertegenwoordigingen en tot vier demonstraties bij de ambassade in Tripoli.” In een adem met het gerucht noemt de coördinator een ontvoering in Mali en een in de Filippijnen. Andere geruchten beschrijft de coördinator niet ook niet, van niet-jihadistische fora.

Op de jihadistische fora gaat het volgens de coördinator vaak over “de vermeende discriminatie van moslims en de gepercipieerde beledigingen van de islam en de profeet Mohammed in ons land.” De vermeende discriminatie kwam voor het eerst voor in DTN-23, daarna in DTN-24 en twee andere DTN paren DTN-28/DTN-29 en DTN-33/DTN-34. Of de coördinator ooit onderzoek heeft gedaan naar zowel de discriminatie van moslims of de belediging van islam is niet duidelijk, de coördinator heeft er nooit over geschreven. Naast verhalen op het jihadistische internet zijn er de jihadreizigers. “Het is zorgwekkend dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied in de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid en dat zij vaker hun doel weten te bereiken.” Over mogelijke niet-jihadisten die elders gaan strijden bericht de dienst niet. Hoewel de jihadistische netwerken eigenlijk niet echt bestaan, is “het jihadisme de voornaamste bron van terroristische dreiging tegen Nederland.” Hoe de coördinator dit zo zeker weet een jaar na de niet-jihadistische schietpartij in een winkelcentrum in Alphen aan de Rijn is onduidelijk. Niet-jihadistische netwerken zijn er volgens de dienst namelijk niet en vormen geen onderwerp van de terreurbode.

De NCTV beschrijft deze niet-jihadistische netwerken als “andere vormen van ideologisch gemotiveerd geweld” en stelt dat “radicale groeperingen grotendeels handelen binnen de grenzen van de wet.” “Grotendeels” betekent echter ook dat ze er “extremistische uitingen” op nahouden en “in het laatste kwartaal van 2011 werden diverse incidenten gemeld van islamistische radicalen, links-, rechts-, dierenrechten- en asielrechtenextremisten.” Ze waren echter “grotendeels legaal” en “niet van zeer ernstige aard”, waardoor de reden voor vermelding in het dreigingsbeeld onduidelijk is, maar agent Akerboom wil maar even zeggen dat er uitgekeken moet worden want “bij een Noord-Hollandse rechts-extremistische groep (Vanguard/Ulfhednar) werden wapens aangetroffen.” Het analyse niveau van de NCTV is opgeschaald, een grotendeels legaal protest kan zomaar verzanden in wapens, al kunnen die wapens gelukkig ook “voor de verkoop zijn en niet voor een aanslag.” En legaal of semilegaal, misschien zelfs ludiek kunnen de jihadisten ook zijn. Het incident van de “islamistische radicalen” is een verstoring door “Sharia4Holland, de activistische radicale islamistische groep,” van een lezing in «De Balie» te Amsterdam in november 2011.Als het jihadi’s zijn kan het niet een gewone verstoring zijn dus schrijft de dienst dat de groep “op intimiderende wijze verstoorde”, maar eigenlijk is onduidelijk waarom een verstoring in een terreuranalyse moet verschijnen. Bij Akerboom kan echter alles uit de hand lopen vooral het dreigingsbeeld zelf.

DTN-29 / 22 juni 2012

Bij een niet bestaande dreiging ontstaat zowel een taalkundige dreiging als een vermeende dreiging, de mogelijkheid van een dreiging. DTN-29 laat dat heel mooi zien door de zinnen in een andere volgorde te plaatsen. Als begonnen was met de volgende twee zinnen: “Er zijn geen aanwijzingen dat jihadisten binnen of buiten Nederland voorbereidingen voor aanslagen tegen Nederland treffen.” En: “er zijn geen aanwijzingen voor een terroristische dreiging uit andere ideologische hoeken dan vanuit het jihadisme tegen Nederland.” Dan was het dreigingsbeeld overbodig geweest. De coördinator besluit echter tot een moeilijke taalkundige dreigingsexercitie. Hij stelt dat het “zorgwekkend blijft dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid, dat sommigen daarvan hun doel weten te bereiken en dat enkelen daar belangrijke posities weten in te nemen. Verder is niet uit te sluiten dat individuele personen in Nederland doorradicaliseren en tot geweld in Nederland overgaan. Relatief nieuw is dat de grenzen tussen jihadistische en radicaal islami(s)tische groepen soms poreus zijn door onderlinge contacten.”

“Al met al wordt de dreiging van binnenuit (endogene dreiging) diffuser.” Exogene dreiging had de coördinator al in DTN-15 gebruikt, maar endogene dreiging was nieuw. Het begrip diffuus had Akerboom een keer eerder gebruikt in DTN-22 om aan te geven dat hij niet meer wist in welke oorlogsgebieden Nederland niet werd bedreigd. Nu wordt het begrip diffuus gebruikt om aan te geven welke personen nu wel of niet gaan doorradicaliseren. Akerboom weet dat niet, maar suggereert wel dat het allemaal gevaarlijker is. Als voorbeeld van de endogene dreiging noemt de dienst de arrestatie van Omar H. in maart 2012. Hij werd door de rechtbank in Rotterdam tot een jaar celstraf veroordeeld en in hoger beroep tot anderhalf jaar voorbereidingshandelingen voor een terroristisch misdrijf, opruiing en het voorbereiden van een ontploffing en brandstichting. Voor de uitspraak in hoger beroep was Omar H. vertrokken. In zijn huis waren 10 meter ontstekingslont, 1 kilo aluminium en 151 jihadistische films aangetroffen. Wat Omar H. daadwerkelijk van plan was, is nooit helemaal duidelijk geworden. Hij leek niet bezig te zijn met het plegen van een aanslag, maar eerder met geweldsporno en een jihadreis.

Voor de dienst is de zaak Omar H. in 2012 blijkbaar geen goed moment voor dreigingspropaganda, de NCTV besteedt twee gelijkluidende zinnen aan zijn arrestatie. “In maart 2012 hebben de Nederlandse autoriteiten door in te grijpen mogelijke jihadistische activiteiten weten te voorkomen.” Bij jihadisten is de woordenschat aan dreiging groter dan bij de niet-jihadisten. Daar lijkt het allemaal eenvoudig: “De combinatie van het rechts-extremistische gedachtegoed en wapenbezit kan leiden tot ideologisch geweld,” schrijft de dienst bij oplettendheid ten aanzien van radicale en extremistische bewegingen. Bij jihadisten is het woord wapen niet nodig om aan te geven hoe gevaarlijk zij zijn, zij zijn al terroristen. Bijna prozaïsch stelt de dienst dat “het risico bestaat dat aanhangers uit de vaste kern of sympathisanten van Sharia4Holland de grens naar geweld oversteken.” Dit is de laatste zin van de drie over Sharia4Holland. De eerste toont verbazing van de dienst over de groep. “Opvallend is dat Sharia4Holland, de meest actieve radicale islamitische groep, zich nadrukkelijker in de openbaarheid is gaan manifesteren.” Gewoon een radicale groep die niet precies doet wat de dienst wil dus is de analyse van de NCTV dat “deze kleine groep de aanhang probeert te vergroten met een meer provocerende houding.” Volgens de dienst doet de groep “dubbelzinnige uitlatingen” ten aanzien van geweld, maar de dienst geeft hier geen voorbeelden van.

Dat de handelingen van de jihadistische bewegingen niet alleen live, maar ook op het internet intensief in de gaten worden gehouden, maakt de coördinator in de bijlage duidelijk. In de “strategische prioriteiten uit de Nationale CT-strategie” die bij DTN-29 als bijlage zit wordt door de dienst uit de doeken gedaan wat de AIVD en de MIVD zoal aan informatie en inlichtingen verzamelen. De oogst is mager want de dreiging is beperkt, maar de vraag is ook of het verzamelde materiaal in een terreurdreigingsanalyse thuis hoort. Zo verhaalt de terreurbode van “vooral feitelijke, aandacht van mainstream-media in moslimlanden voor de verschijning van het boek van Geert Wilders.” Iemand op een site noemt in “zowel februari als in april Mohammed B. een held voor moslims,” en er is “enige aandacht in Arabischtalige mainstream-media en op internationale islamistische en jihadistische websites voor een kabinetsvoorstel voor een verbod op gelaatsbedekkende kleding.” De coördinator legt niet uit wat deze berichten zeggen over de dreiging voor Nederland. Naast de AIVD komt ook de MIVD nog ter sprake. “De missie Unified Protector (de mislukte internationale missie in Libië) heeft aangetoond dat de MIVD te allen tijde de informatiepositie moet waarborgen in diverse regio’s, ook indien op dat moment geen sprake is van (in de nabije toekomst verwachte) Nederlandse militaire inzet.”

De coördinator gaat niet in op het helikopterfiasco van 28 februari 2011 in het Libische Sirte. Onduidelijk blijft of daar gebrekkige inlichtingen een rol speelden. ‘Inlichtingen en informatie’ vallen onder de pijler ‘internationaal jihadisme’ van het Contra-Terrorisme beleid. De dienst legt uit dat “de Nationale CT-strategie uit vier elementen bestaat namelijk het internationaal jihadisme, migratie en reisbewegingen, technologie en innovatie en doorontwikkeling van het stelsel bewaken en beveiligen.” Het migratiebeleid wordt steeds meer binnen het terrorismebeleid geplaatst: “Dit vraagt om verbetering van de grensbewaking, een optimaal functionerende migratieketen, veiligheidsbewustzijn bij contactfunctionarissen in binnen- en buitenland en een adequate informatiepositie van gemeenten en inlichtingendiensten over lokale ontwikkelingen.” Er worden termen gebruikt als “lokale detectie” en “internationale detectie”, een grotere rol van inlichtingendiensten bij het vreemdelingenbeleid is de rode draad bij migratie. Het terroriseren van migratie staat in schril contrast met de eigen constatering van de dienst in DTN-28: “Verder hebben personen, die zich in Nederland bezig houden met extremistische of terroristische activiteiten, meestal de Nederlandse of mede de Nederlandse nationaliteit.” Migratie en terrorisme hebben minder met elkaar te maken dan internationale en lokale detectie en verscherpte grensbewaking doen vermoeden.

Bij ‘technologie en innovatie’ gaat de coördinator in op de controle op het internet, de detectie van stoffen of personen, kennisvergaring en –uitwisseling, bewaken en beveiligen, CBRN en zelfgemaakte explosieven. Wat opvalt is de vermenging van publieke en private partijen waar de NCTV op aanstuurt. Iedereen terreurbestrijder lijkt de achterliggende gedachte. De dienst injecteert zo angst en dreiging direct in de samenleving. In principe lijkt Akerboom het goed te bedoelen, maar waar is dan de analyse van het eigen functioneren ten aanzien van Koninginnedag, Dodenherdenking en vooral Alphen aan de Rijn? Agent Akerboom kan alleen maar stellen dat “solistische dreigers personen zijn die (zonder medewerking van anderen) door middel van gedrag of woord, als gevolg van een individueel doorlopen proces richting geweld, een dreiging vormen,” alsof het een waarachtige wetenschappelijke definitie is. En hij is nog niet klaar want “geradicaliseerde eenlingen zijn eenlingen die handelen vanuit een duidelijke politieke of religieuze motivatie. Hun daden vallen onder de noemer «terrorisme».” Geen woord over Alphen aan de Rijn, waarover de coördinator in DTN-28 nog opmerkte dat “Van der Vlis niets naliet waaruit een helder motief bleek.” Hij zou dus zowel een geradicaliseerde eenling kunnen zijn als een solistische dreiger, de eigen rol van het veiligheidsapparaat is allang geen onderwerp meer. In het verlengde van de eenlingen en de dreigers wordt “bedreigingen tegen lokale politieke ambtsdragers” door de coördinator bij het stelsel bewaken en beveiligen onder de loep genomen. Natuurlijk gaat het over de “agressie en geweld” die de bestuurders tegen kunnen komen, maar zoals de casus van oud-burgemeester Jacobs van Helmond laat zien, is de werkelijkheid altijd complexer dan burgers die ambtenaren lastig vallen. De burgemeester was ten tijde van de bedreiging zelf onderwerp van een corruptie onderzoek en rond zijn zoon speelden er hardnekkige geruchten dat hij betrokken was bij de drugswereld.

Ook op internationaal terrein is de NCTV actief. Binnen EU verband, VN verband en multilateraal en bilateraal. Aan het illustere rijtje Pakistan, Marokko en Algerije voegt de NCTV nu als partner Turkije op. “Terrorismebestrijding vormde één van de gespreksthema’s tijdens de jaarlijkse bilaterale Wittenburgconferentie met Turkije.” Het Turkse leger vermoord regelmatig burgers in het oosten van het land, zo ook in december 2011 toen een Turks militair vliegtuig 38 mannen met hun ezels bombardeerden. Voor de dienst is een land dat zijn burgers bombardeert blijkbaar een goede partner in contraterrorismebeleid.

DTN-30 / 8 oktober 2012

Zo is het terreurbeleid 11 jaar na 11 september 2001 belandt op het punt dat een groep als Sharia4Holland (S4H) in korte tijd in de terrorisme top drie is doorgestoten naar plaats één in de terreurbode DTN-30. Eigenlijk is er nog niets gebeurd, maar de groep kan de “binnenlandse veiligheidssituatie verder ook negatief kan beïnvloeden door het gevaar van doorradicalisering naar geweld van personen betrokken bij” de club. Al moet de dienst zelf toegeven dat er niets aan de hand is: “Op dit moment zijn hiervoor geen aanwijzingen.” In het buitenland, de coördinator noemt later België en Duitsland, is volgens de coördinator “zichtbaar dat gelijkgestemden van S4H steeds militanter worden en zelfs in verband worden gebracht met gewelddadige incidenten.” Concreter wordt de coördinator niet, al stelt hij dat alles ook tot meer polarisatie zou kunnen leiden. Ook dat is loos alarm want er zijn “geen aanwijzingen voor een terroristische dreiging uit andere ideologische hoeken dan vanuit het jihadisme tegen Nederland.” Hoewel er ook geen gevaar uit jihadistische hoek is want er zijn “geen aanwijzingen dat teruggekeerde jihadreizigers de intentie hebben in Nederland aanslagen te plegen.” Zelfs bij de levensgevaarlijke doorradicaliserende S4H leden “zijn op dit moment geen aanwijzingen dat S4H de meer militante tactieken van gelijkgestemden in België en Duitsland wil toepassen in Nederland.” De provocerende acties van Sharia4Holland hebben volgens de dienst de nodige aandacht getrokken, in ieder geval van de NCTV zelf, maar of dat iets te maken heeft met serieuze dreigingsanalyse is de grote vraag.

Een constante bij al het jihadistisch gevaar is het “kunnen hebben.” De altijd aanwezige mogelijkheid dat er iets kan gebeuren. Volgens de coördinator is de “scheidslijn tussen niet-gewelddadig islamistisch activisme en jihadisme (volgens de NCTV: terrorisme) namelijk fluïde. Er bestaat dan ook het gevaar van doorradicalisering naar geweld.” Het punt is dat groepen als S4H niet hoeven door te radicaliseren, de dienst zelf benadert ze extremistisch, de groepen zijn al terreur voordat ze iets gedaan hebben. Elke provocatie kan omslaan in geweld al is er niets aan de hand. Dit extremistische recept van de NCTV past de dienst ook steeds meer toe op andere groepen. Breivik als de pleitbezorger voor het doorradicaliseren van extreemrechts in Nederland, Griekenland en Italië voor het extremer worden van radicaal links. Terwijl er eigenlijk niets gebeurt. “Op het terrein van dierenrechtenextremisme en links en rechts georiënteerd extremisme was het de afgelopen maanden op enkele incidenten na rustig. Radicale asielrechtengroeperingen hebben verder het ‘No border-netwerk’ opgericht, met als doel de samenwerking en coördinatie te bevorderen tussen actoren in het asielrechtenveld. De rust in Nederland op links en rechts georiënteerd extremisme staat in schril contrast met het politieke geweld in Griekenland (zowel links als rechts) en Italië (links).” Achtergrond, oorzaken, gevolgen en verdieping zijn niet aan de extremistische dienst besteed. Alles wordt in de radicaal extremistische terreurbode aaneengeregen tot een langzaam exploderende samenleving, ook al gebeurt er niets en moet de coördinator toegeven dat de dreiging beperkt is.

DTN-31 / 17 december 2012

Die exploderende samenleving kwam op 21 september 2012 tot uitdrukking bij Project X Haren. De kloof tussen ambtenaren en een bepaalde groep burgers kon niet groter zijn dan bij dit verjaardagsfeest. De NCTV maakt er geen woorden aan vuil, kenmerkend voor een organisatie die ook veiligheid in haar naam heeft opgenomen. De naamsverandering volgde op de schietpartij in een winkelcentrum in Alphen aan de Rijn en daarom besteed de coördinator ook daar maar geen aandacht aan. Akerboom heeft belangrijkere zaken aan zijn hoofd, zoals zijn toekomstig vertrek naar defensie en natuurlijk de eindeloze jihadistische netwerken die al dan niet bestaan. Voor een coördinator die al vier jaar Risk en Stratego in de oorlog tegen de terreur speelt zijn slachtoffers in Alphen aan de Rijn en Haren niet interessant en dat is tekenend voor het terreurbeleid in Nederland. Burgers, burgerslachtoffers zijn in deze derde wereldoorlog niet belangrijk, niet in Nederland en ook niet in de ongedefinieerde jihadistische strijdgebieden. Wat telt zijn “binnenlandse netwerken in Nederland” die nog steeds “relatief zwak” zijn. Relatief omdat het altijd mis kan gaan.

Relatief is ook de tekst van de dienst. In december 2011 schrijft de coördinator: “Hoewel er in 2011 wel meer signalen zijn over jihadreizigers uit Nederland (soms Nederlanders woonachtig in het buitenland), is het lastig vast te stellen of het aantal jihadreizigers daadwerkelijk stijgt.” Drie maanden later in maart 2012 is het “zorgwekkend dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied in de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid en dat zij vaker hun doel weten te bereiken.” In juni 2012 herhaalt Akerboom deze zin: “Het blijft zorgwekkend dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid, dat sommigen daarvan hun doel weten te bereiken en dat enkelen daar belangrijke posities weten in te nemen.” In oktober 2012 zijn de zorg en de groei verdwenen: “Ook in de afgelopen periode zijn weer enkele uitreizen naar jihadistische strijdgebieden vastgesteld.” En in december zijn zowel de groei als de zorg verdwenen. “Op dit moment zijn er echter geen aanwijzingen voor een concrete dreiging van gekende teruggekeerde jihadgangers,” schrijft de coördinator in DTN-31, iets dat ook in alle voorgaande DTN’s werd gemeld.

Bij een lage dreigingsgraad lijkt de dienst alles aan te klampen dat maar enig gevaar zou kunnen opleveren. Als zelfs Sharia4Holland geen voer voor terreur oplevert moet de coördinator naar onorthodoxe middelen grijpen. “De verminderde aandacht voor islamthema’s in politiek en media wil niet zeggen dat de weerstand bij sommige burgers tegen publieke manifestaties van de religie minder wordt. De bouw van nieuwe moskeeën bijvoorbeeld blijkt op lokaal niveau geregeld gevoelig te liggen, zoals recent bleek in onder meer Groningen, Veghel en Zoetermeer.” Knuffelterrorist Samir A. wordt in zijn cel aangehouden op “verdenking van het voorbereiden van een aanslag” en de dienst heeft het meteen over een “potentiële toekomstige dreiging” die voorkomen is. En met de moed der wanhoop neemt Akerboom graffiti op in zijn terreur analyse: “Het bekladden van het huis van de bewindspersoon verantwoordelijk voor immigratie, integratie en asiel is uitdrukking van de verbreding en radicalisering van de extremistische asielrechtenbeweging en moet ook in het licht van de tentenkampen van uitgeprocedeerde asielzoekers in Nederland worden gezien.” Verbreding, radicalisering en extremisme, het terrorisme druipt van de dienst af.

Conclusie DTN 2012

Het eerste DTN van 2012 borduurt voort op het relaas over de postings op het jihadistische internet. De dienst gaat dieper in op een gerucht. Het zou een oud gerucht zijn dat al eerder in 2008 was opgedoken. De NCTV heeft daar toen geen aandacht aan besteed. De dienst gaat nu wel in op het gerucht dat “Nederland zou toestaan dat er een erotische film over de vrouwen van profeet Mohammed zou worden gepubliceerd” omdat het gerucht tot “een bedreiging tegen Amsterdam, tegen Nederlandse diplomatieke vertegenwoordigingen en tot vier demonstraties bij de ambassade in Tripoli” zou hebben geleid. Voor het vaststellen van de ernst is er meer informatie nodig, maar die geeft de coördinator niet. De demonstraties in Tripoli waren niet al te groot en hebben de internationale media niet gehaald door de beginnende burgeroorlog in Libië. Over de bedreigingen valt niets te zeggen, want de inhoud wordt door de dienst niet vrijgegeven. Bedreigingen via sociale media vinden echter elke dag in groten getale plaats. Alleen al op Twitter worden volgens de politie 35.000 bedreigingen geuit, waarvan er 200 serieus worden genomen. Op andere sociale media websites zal dat een veelvoud zijn. Wat de Facebook bedreigingen ten aanzien van de seksfilm over Mohammed’s vrouwen zo belangrijk maakte om deze te vermelden in het DTN wordt niet duidelijk uit de tekst, maar voedt in ieder geval het idee van moslims die niet tolerant zouden zijn en ook nog eens jihadistisch. Die wijzende vinger naar de jhadisten staat in schril contrast met de analyse van haar eigen werk. Neem de solistische dreigers, de eenlingterroristen: de dienst maakt geen woord vuil aan het afschuwelijke schietincident in Alphen aan de Rijn. Het leek even of niet de jihadistische oorlog naar Nederland kwam maar de regelmatig terugkerende willekeurige schietpartijen in de Verenigde Staten. De coördinator maakt er geen woorden aan vuil. Het stelsel bewaken en beveiligen gaat over een limitatief aantal mensen en dat zijn niet de Nederlandse burgers. Dat zouden bijvoorbeeld mensen als oud burgemeester Jacobs van Helmond zijn, iemand die bedreigd is, maar waarover de coördinator opnieuw niet het hele verhaal vertelt. Terreur is gedecimeerd tot een verhaal over jihadi’s in oorlogszones en dreigtweets. Zonder analyse en achtergrond verwordt dreiging echter tot angst aanjagen, helemaal als er niets aan de hand is. De groep Sharia4Holland is al een terroristische organisatie voordat de groep iets gedaan heeft en alles wat de groep doet wordt langs de jihadistische meetlat gelegd. Zelfs iets niet doen is dan een teken dat er iets staat te gebeuren. Tentenkampen voor vluchtelingen staan zo in direct verband met graffiti op “het huis van de bewindspersoon verantwoordelijk voor immigratie, integratie en asiel.” Protesten tegen de bouw van moskeeën zijn tekenen van een polariserende samenleving. De coördinator kan niet meer normaal omgaan met de samenleving. Dit is het scherpst te zien bij de jihadgangers en de passages in vier DTN’s over de toe- of afname van deze reizigers en hun gevaar. DTN-27: “Hoewel er in 2011 wel meer signalen zijn over jihadreizigers uit Nederland, is het lastig vast te stellen of het aantal jihadreizigers daadwerkelijk stijgt.” Drie maanden later in maart 2012 (DTN-28) is het “zorgwekkend dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied in de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid en dat zij vaker hun doel weten te bereiken.” In DTN-29 (juni 2012) herhaalt Akerboom deze zin: “Het blijft zorgwekkend dat het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied de afgelopen jaren is gegroeid, dat sommigen daarvan hun doel weten te bereiken en dat enkelen daar belangrijke posities weten in te nemen.” In oktober 2012 (DTN-30) zijn de zorg en de groei verdwenen: “Ook in de afgelopen periode zijn weer enkele uitreizen naar jihadistische strijdgebieden vastgesteld.” En in DTN-31 (december 2012) zijn zowel de groei als de zorg verdwenen. “Op dit moment zijn er echter geen aanwijzingen voor een concrete dreiging van gekende teruggekeerde jihadgangers.” In heel 2012 (DTN-27 tot en met DTN-31) was er geen enkele aanwijzing voor een concrete dreiging. De dreiging is beperkt, maar de taalkundige en vermeende dreiging van de extremistische dienst is levensgroot.

2013 De coördinator wil wat meer actie en geen gebrekkige extremistische activiteiten

DTN-32 / 13 maart 2013

Een nieuwe coördinator een nieuwe terreurgraad. Met het aantreden van Schoof als coördinator werd de dreiging verhoogd van beperkt naar substantieel. Alle redenen om de dreiging beperkt te houden die Akerboom gebruikte worden door Schoof hergebruikt om de dreiging te verhogen. Volgens terreurcoördinator Schoof is “er een reële kans dat een aanslag in Nederland zal plaatsvinden.” Reëel in de zin dat de boel op springen staat. De dienst ziet drie zorgelijke ontwikkelingen. Het woord zorgelijk kwam in DTN-31 niet voor, maar in DTN-30 evenals DTN-28 één keer en in de periode van DTN-29 was de situatie zo zorgelijk (vijf keer) dat die de zorgelijkheid van DTN-32 overstijgt. Na DTN-32 is er geen dreigingsbeeld meer dat niet zorgelijk is. De aanslag komt er aan. Wat is er aan de hand?

Volgens Schoof is er een “substantiële stijging van het aantal jihadreizigers naar diverse landen in Afrika en het Midden-Oosten, met name naar Syrië.” Hij stelt verder dat “sinds eind 2012 het aantal jihadreizigers plotseling zeer snel steeg,” alsof hij het belang van zijn benoeming tot coördinator wil onderstrepen. De groei van J-reizen (Jihad-reizen) was echter al diverse keren door Akerboom op de agenda gezet, maar blijkbaar is het moeilijk om steeds maar groei aan te geven zonder getallen te noemen. Schoof doet dat anders, hij opent met “tientallen personen in Nederland reisden alleen of in kleine groepjes naar landen als Egypte en Syrië.” Tientallen is niet echt specifiek waardoor zijn claim niet te onderzoeken is. Ook het noemen van zowel Syrië waar een totale burgeroorlog woedt als Egypte waar een prille democratie probeert zijn weg te vinden, schept geen enkele duidelijkheid over aantallen en gevaar. Schoof rept met geen woord over aanwijzingen die er zouden zijn.

De coördinator filosofeert er vrolijk op los over wat allemaal kan gebeuren met die zogenaamde jihadgangers. Ze vormen mogelijk “een gevaar voor westerse belangen in de gebieden waar ze actief zijn.” Die J-reizigers kunnen “weer nieuwe jihadreizen stimuleren.” Als zij terugkeren bestaat “het gevaar dat zij met hun strijdervaring en ‘street credibility’ invloed uitoefenen op voor radicalisering vatbare jongeren.” De J-reizigers kunnen “zich richten op doelen in Nederland.” De jihad reizigers verhogen de “ongekende dreiging,” namelijk de dreiging van de mogelijkheid, van het kunnen, van de kans op mogelijk iets. Al moet Schoof onderkennen dat “niet alle terugkeerders voor dreiging zorgen.”

De derde ontwikkeling komt in de internationale analyse aan bod. De tweede ontwikkeling is de “toegenomen islamistische radicalisering van kleine groepen jongeren in Nederland.” De dienst schrijft even verderop dat “groepen als Sharia4Holland en Behind Bars in de afgelopen periode nauwelijks openlijke activiteit toonden.” Om het gevaar toch aan te dikken stelt de coördinator dat “sommige van hun leden in verband werden gebracht met jihadreizen,” maar veel duidelijker wordt het niet. Het lijkt eerder dat het radicaal jihadistisch extremistisch terrorisme minder gevaarlijk is dan de Koerden en de Turken. “De spanning tussen Turken en Koerden in Nederland steeg begin 2013,” maar helaas voor de dienst gebeurde daar ook niets.

Helemaal niets aan de hand dan? Als jihadisten zich koest houden en er geen interetnische conflicten zijn kan de NCTV altijd terugvallen op “diverse activistische en extremistische groepen in Nederland.” Er werden jachthutten kapot gemaakt, graffiti gespoten bij niet nader genoemde farmaceutische bedrijven, een tentenkamp georganiseerd voor vluchtelingen in Amsterdam en Den Haag en de extreemrechtse politieke partij de NVU demonstreerde tegen ‘kinderverkrachters en pedofielen’. Over deze laatste demonstratie schrijft Schoof dat het “een gebrekkige activiteit” is omdat in Duitsland “de dreiging van extreemrechts hoog op de politieke agenda” staat. De dienst moet het doen met wat berichten over de “vermeend discriminerende of beledigende uitspraken en acties jegens moslims in Nederland.”

Schoof treedt iets meer in detail dan Akerboom en Joustra. “Zo werd Nederland in november 2012 genoemd als voorbeeld van een islamvijandig westers land door een Somalische Al Shabaab-leider, sheikh Fu’ad Shongole, en was er in januari 2013 negatieve aandacht voor PVV-leider Wilders in Arabischtalige media.” Het glossy Inspire dat dood verklaard was na de aanslag op de hoofdredacteur bracht op 1 maart 2013 de tiende editie uit met een dodenlijst waarop onder andere Geert Wilders en Ayaan Hirsi Ali staan. Niet echt een explosieve mix om een werkelijke aanslag te voorspellen, maar terror Dick, zoals Schoof door zijn mede-ambtenaren wordt genoemd, laat zich niet uit het veld slaan. Het gevaar zit in de snelheid: “Er zijn ook aanwijzingen dat de doorradicalisering naar geweldsbereidheid soms zeer snel kan verlopen.”

Ondanks alle doorgeradicaliseerde woorden van de coördinator blijk het uiteindelijk alleen maar om geld te gaan. “Tegen die achtergrond is het zorgwekkend dat de aandacht van politiek, bestuur en samenleving voor radicalisering in de afgelopen jaren is afgenomen.” En geld is er nodig want terrorismebestrijding is van iedereen. De verbreding die onder Joustra en Akerboom was ingezet, neemt vastere vorm aan: “De partners in de nationale contraterrorisme strategie zijn NCTV, Openbaar Ministerie (OM), Immigratie en Naturalisatiedienst (IND), Nationale Politie, AIVD, Koninklijke Marechaussee en de Ministeries van Buitenlandse Zaken, van Sociale Zaken en Werkgelegenheid (SZW) en van Defensie).” Jeugdzorg, maatschappelijk werk en onderwijs worden door Schoof nog niet genoemd, maar de docent was door Akerboom al benoemd tot terrorismebestrijder. De breedte van de overheidsterreur vertaalt zich ook in de maatregelen. Naast inlichtingen, onderzoek, opsporing en vervolging was er al de gehele migratietak van terrorismebestrijding. Daarnaast heeft Schoof de bestuurlijke aanpak van Joustra weer uit de kast gehaald; het verstoren, drukmiddelen, ontmoedigen en andere buitenstaatsrechtelijke maatregelen.

DTN-33 / 1 juli 2013

Wie in zijn eerste dreigingsbeeld stelt dat de aanslag er aankomt kan niet meer terug. Schoof zit echter in een moeilijk parket, want er heeft nog geen aanslag plaatsgevonden in zijn eerste half jaar bij de dienst. Vandaar dat het reële gevaar wordt opgetuigd als “de meest in het oog springende potentiële dreiging voor Nederland” en die “gaat uit van de potentiële terugkeer van jihadgangers naar Syrië.” De mogelijke dreiging is de potentiële terugkeer van iemand uit Syrië. Schoof is duidelijk op een cursus fundraising geweest, want aantallen van die mogelijke terroristen die mogelijk terugkomen moeten het werk doen. “Begin juni was er sprake van een jihadgang van tussen de vijftig en honderd personen” schrijft de dienst na de alarmerende berichten in DTN-32 van de tientallen J-reizigers. Al twee jaar reizen er mensen naar zogenoemde jihadgebieden zoals Egypte en Syrië. Begin 2012 en 2013 was er explosieve toename. Volgens de coördinator zijn het tussen de vijftig en de honderd (juni 2013) en het is onduidelijk of hier sprake is van een explosieve groei. Hij stelt zelf: “Begin juni is met een jihadgang van tussen de vijftig en honderd jihadreizigers voorlopig van een stagnatie van de groei uit te gaan.”

Naast de potentiële J-reizigers die potentieel een gevaar zijn omdat ze in potentie terug kunnen keren, is er eigenlijk niets aan de hand. De coördinator probeert het nog wel met een lijstje van groepen als “Sharia4Holland, Behind Bars, Hizb ut-Tahrir en Millatu Ibrahim (MI, Het Geloof van Abraham)”, maar kan daar niet veel over melden, hooguit dat de “Duitse tak van IM in 2012 werd verboden” en dat er in Duitsland “vrees bestaat voor een escalatie tussen extreemrechts en salafisten.” Hetzelfde probeert de coördinator met “het verzet van extreemlinkse groeperingen en individuen tegen het asielbeleid in Nederland.” Zonder namen van groepen te noemen, ook zonder een enkel concreet incident of gebeurtenis aan te duiden stelt de dienst “dat er sprake lijkt te zijn van een verharding onder het extremistische deel van de asielrechtenbeweging.” Dit zou “gepaard gaan met een gegroeide kritische aandacht voor het Nederlandse asielbeleid.” De oud-IND-ambtenaar Schoof laat even zien dat burgers niet aan het migratiebeleid van de Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst moeten komen.

De roep om meer extremisme in de politiek in DTN-32 is niet voor niets geweest, want “de aandacht voor vraagstukken rondom radicalisering en terrorisme in de Nederlandse samenleving is de afgelopen tijd toegenomen.” Geld is ook iets dat doorklinkt in de “tweede voortgangsrapportage contraterrorisme en –extremisme.” Na een terugblik op een jaar DTN’s passeren de vier strategische prioriteiten de revue. Migratie en internationale jihad zijn nu één prioriteit geworden, naast technologie en innovatie en bewaken en beveiligen. De prioriteit jihadistische migratie is onderverdeeld in “detectie van internationaal jihadisme en jihadistische reisbewegingen, interventie bij internationaal jihadisme en jihadistische reisbewegingen, voorkomen en voorbereiden, strafrechtelijke aanpak en aanpak Jihadistisch discours/propaganda en Internet.” Bent u er nog? Onder detectie valt ook “intensivering van de detectie van jihadgangers, reisgegevens en interventie.” Bij detectie gaat het om wat de AIVD, MIVD, Kmar en politie doen. Dit zijn reguliere taken van opsporings- en inlichtingendiensten. Bij reisgegevens gaat het vooral om de Passenger Name Record (PNR), maar ook om reisbewegingen in brede zin. De NCTV stelt dat “de diensten het nodig achten te kunnen beschikken over deze reisgegevens.” Hierbij gaat het niet alleen om terrorismebestrijding. “De behoefte om passagiers- en reserveringsgegevens te gebruiken voor het tegengaan van jihadgang, maakt deel uit van een bredere behoefte aan het gebruik hiervan in de strijd tegen zware criminaliteit, zoals mensenhandel en terrorisme.”

Al langere tijd probeert de NCTV terrorismebestrijding te koppelen aan andere criminele activiteiten, vandaar de naamsverandering in 2011 van NCTb naar NCTV. Naast de detectie is er natuurlijk de interventie (De tweede pijler) waarbij het vooral gaat om de internationale aanpak en om de terrorismefinanciering. De derde pijler van de jihadistische migratie is “voorkomen en voorbereiden” waarbij het vooral om een bestuurlijke aanpak gaat, er is strafrechtelijk nog niets gebeurd, en het maatschappelijk middenveld wordt ingezet als terrorismebestrijder. Al langer wordt het terreurbeleid in de samenleving geïnjecteerd. Bij Schoof gaan alle remmen los want “professionals werkzaam bij onder meer politie (basisteams en wijkagenten), onderwijs (decanen, mentoren, vertrouwenspersonen), jeugd- en welzijnswerk en GGZ-instellingen (psychologen)” worden aan het lijstje bestrijders van radicalisme en extremisme toegevoegd. Schoof is de eerste die ook vertrouwenspersonen toevoegt aan de lijst, zover wilden zijn voorgangers Joustra en Akerboom niet gaan. Dit tekent Schoof, de harde lijn past bij hem, hoe extremistischer hoe beter.

Ook bij de vijfde pijler van de jihadistische migratie wordt het maatschappelijk middenveld ingezet. De Dienst heeft het al jaren over het jihadistische internet en stelt in DTN-33 dat terrorisme voor een groot deel uit propaganda bestaat. Volgens de NCTV is “het aanjagen en in stand houden van angst een wezenlijk onderdeel van de jihadistische strategie.” De vraag of de coördinator zelf daar een belangrijke rol bij speelt komt niet aan de orde. Wel spreekt de dienst nu van terrorisme op het internet terwijl het in het verleden radicalisme of extremistische uitingen waren. Voor de dienst is het allemaal hetzelfde en moet de bestrijding door iedereen gedaan worden. Bij “het project Clean IT kwamen overheden, NGO’s en private partijen uit de internet industrie tot een gezamenlijk voorstel over hoe terrorisme via internet beter bestreden kan worden.” Of dit succesvol was en wat het nut was van het injecteren van bestuurlijke maatregelen zonder strafrechtelijke verdenking en tussenkomst van de rechter in het schoonmaken van het internet, legt de coördinator niet uit. Hij stelt wel dat “hoewel de verwijdering van extremistische boodschappen van het internet belangrijk blijft, de effectiviteit uiteindelijk beperkt is omdat de content snel weer opnieuw opduikt.”

De voortgangsrapportages zijn een brij aan maatregelen, initiatieven en projecten. In het licht van dramatische gebeurtenissen in 2014 zijn enkele passages interessant. Bij “technologische innovatie” staat dat de NCTV “bijzondere aandacht heeft bij technologische trends in de (burger-)luchtvaart.” Daarbij gaat het om “luchtvrachtbeveiliging, vloeistoffenregelgeving en communicatie en voorlichting.” DTN-33 stelt dat “vanuit de NCTV er doorlopend gewerkt wordt aan het ontsluiten van nuttige informatie voor professionals, bijvoorbeeld via een kennisbank, factsheets en whitepapers, alsmede aan het bieden van concreet handelingsperspectief, zoals via e-learningmodules. Het vergroten van veiligheidsbewustzijn van maatschappelijke actoren is daarbinnen een belangrijke speerpunt.” Wat het een en ander heeft opgeleverd is de grote vraag. Misschien ligt het antwoord besloten in de denkwijze van de dienst. Zij heeft het Instituut Clingendael gevraagd onderzoek te doen naar maatregelen binnen het contraterrorismebeleid in andere landen. Naast Indonesië heeft de coördinator twee dictaturen uitgekozen als sparringpartners in het contraterrorismebeleid, Algerije en Saoedi Arabië. De coördinator was enigszins teleurgesteld dat er wat verschillen zijn “in historische, culturele, religieuze en politieke context.” Een dienst die denkt dat een dictatuur bruikbare middelen kan opleveren voor terreurbeleid, is zelf een gevaar voor de rechtsorde.

DTN-34 / 7 november 2013

Bij een substantiële dreiging hoort een reëel gevaar, maar hoe ver kun je de dreiging oprekken? Schoof schuwt niet het gevaar op te blazen tot het een keer moet knappen. Hij stelt in DTN-34 dat “in sommige gevallen de situatie op dit vlak de afgelopen periode zelfs is verslechterd.” In de viermaandelijkse dreigingsbode wordt echter niet duidelijk waar die verslechtering in zit en wat de precieze afbakening van de vlakken is. Volgens de dienst zitten er vier aspecten aan de dreiging, waarvan één aspect internationaal is en in de internationale analyse aan bod komt. De drie andere aspecten zijn het profiel van Nederland, de jongeren die naar oorlogsgebieden reizen en terugkeren en de vermeende radicalisering. Het profiel heeft volgens de coördinator te maken met de “militaire missies in diverse islamitische landen, alsmede de vermeende discriminatie van moslims in ons land en de gepercipieerde beledigingen van de islam en de profeet Mohammed.” In veel van de DTN’s van de afgelopen tien jaar wordt deze stelling geponeerd, maar verder onderzoek naar achtergrond, aard of hoe de profiling van Nederland door de jihadisten werkt is niet terug te vinden in de stukken van de NCTV.

Opvallend is de constante groei van het gebruik van het woord jihadistisch, waardoor het profiel maar ook de vermeende en gepercipieerde aspecten niet meer interessant worden, want jihadistisch is synoniem aan terroristisch. Schoof wil zich graag meten met de groten der aarde en stelt teleurgesteld vast dat “ons land niet een even prominent doelwit is als landen als de VS, Israël en het Verenigd Koninkrijk.” Waarom hij die vergelijking maakt is niet duidelijk, maar de zin die volgt op deze these van de dienst laat zien dat de NCTV werkt aan het verkrijgen van een prominente rol. Toch kunnen relatief kleine incidenten snel jihadistische aandacht en zelfs bedreigingen opleveren.” Vooral het woord “toch” in deze context is interessant, wat is er namelijk aan de hand? Op 17 juli 2013 wordt “de Zoetermeerse Shukri F. (alias «Oum Usama») op verdenking van ronselen voor de jihad” gearresteerd. De dienst stelt dat “in reactie hierop op jihadistische websites werd opgeroepen aanslagen te plegen in Nederland.” Op sociale media en internetfora vinden er geregeld scheldpartijen, verwensingen en verbale exercities plaats, maar hoe serieus moeten we deze oproepen tot aanslagen nemen, wat is er precies geschreven en op welke sites? In de inleiding zijn het “internationale jihadistische websites”, bij de “dreiging tegen Nederland” gaat het om “jihadistische websites.” Blijkbaar stelde het niet veel voor want toen Shukri F. werd vrijgelaten “verstomden de online-oproepen echter weer snel.”

Vanwaar die opgeklopte gevaren analyse, wat voor dreiging zat in dat gescheld op internet? Uit de tekst van de coördinator valt niets te halen wat hier licht op werpt. Volgens de coördinator zijn die uitlatingen wel degelijk gevaarlijk. De hunkering naar een prominente rol is duidelijk te merken, want de postings “kunnen in potentie ook nadelige gevolgen hebben voor de Nederlanders die in het buitenland nog steeds door jihadisten gegijzeld worden.” Nu klopt het dat Nederland deelneemt aan een totale oorlog tegen de terreur, maar voor het verbinden van gijzelaars in de Filippijnen en Mali met Shukri F. is meer nodig dan vage opmerkingen over geroep op al dan niet jihadistische websites over aanslagen in Nederland. Angst is eenvoudig gecreëerd, daar zijn zelfs de zogenoemde jihadisten niet meer voor nodig en daar heeft Nederland zelfs een dienst voor in het leven geroepen, maar die angst wegnemen is een stuk moeilijker. Onvoorzichtigheid en oneliners die nietszeggend zijn, zonder duidelijke analyse van de dreiging, brengt mensen juist in gevaar.

De coördinator had ook in plaats van Shukri F. de strafrechtelijke procedure van Mohammed G. en Omar H. kunnen opnemen in zijn dreigingsbeeld. Dit plaatst hij echter in de beleidsopvolging. De zaken zijn minder sexy en misschien ook lastig om er allerlei bedreigingen bij te plakken, maar het blijft gissen naar de beweegredenen van de dienst. Mohammed G. werd veroordeeld, omdat hij van plan was om naar Syrië te reizen, maar hij werd “wegens ontoerekeningsvatbaarheid ontslagen van alle rechtsvervolging” en opgenomen in een psychiatrisch ziekenhuis. Mohammed G. was eigenlijk een verwarde man die reliëf geeft aan zogenaamde ‘jihadgangers’ en Syrië-reizigers. Bij Omar H. gaat het om de man die in maart 2012 is aangehouden (zie uitgebreider verhaal bij DTN-29) met 10 meter ontstekingslont, 1 kilo aluminium en 151 jihadistische films. Hij werd veroordeeld tot 12 maanden cel “voor het voorbereiden van brandstichting en verspreiden van opruiende teksten.” Mohammed G. en Omar H. staan in de beleidsopvolging en niet in het eigenlijke dreigingsbeeld.

Shukri F. en de reaguurders op het jihadistische internet bepalen de dreiging die er heerst en de opgeklopte sfeer is van dezelfde orde als de “ontwikkelingen rond de jihadistische Syriëgangers.” De coördinator stelt dat “in augustus het aantal jihadistische uitreizen van Nederland naar Syrië weer toenam in vergelijking met de maanden hiervoor” (DTN-34). Om hoeveel mensen gaat het nu werkelijk? Enkelingen, tientallen, honderdtallen, duizenden? De indruk is dat het om een explosief getal gaat, maar dat lijkt keer op keer wel en niet het geval. “Hoewel er in 2011 wel meer signalen zijn over jihadreizigers uit Nederland, is het lastig vast te stellen of het aantal jihadreizigers daadwerkelijk stijgt (DTN-27, 2011).” “Het aantal jihadisten dat uitreist naar een jihadistisch strijdgebied is in de afgelopen jaren gegroeid (DTN-28, 2012).” In DTN-29 (2012) herhaalt voormalig coördinator Akerboom deze zin. “Ook in de afgelopen periode zijn weer enkele uitreizen naar jihadistische strijdgebieden vastgesteld (DTN-30, 2012).” Im DTN-31 (2012) is er geen melding van toename of bestendiging. In DTN-32 (2013) zijn het “tientallen personen in Nederland die alleen of in kleine groepjes naar landen als Egypte en Syrië reisden.” In DTN-33 zijn het tussen de vijftig en de honderd. In DTN-34 neemt het aantal weer toe. Weet u nog om hoeveel mensen het gaat en vooral wat het gevaar is?

Waar die jongens en meiden heengaan is ook onduidelijk, want de dienst schrijft in de inleiding dat ze “waarschijnlijk onder de vlag van het aan Al Qa’ida gelieerde Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN) strijden.” Bij de Nederlandse dreiging gaat het alleen over JaN want “meer Nederlandse strijders hebben zich waarschijnlijk bij JaN aangesloten.” Volgens de dienst “lijken enkele Nederlanders niet terug te deinzen voor extreem geweld.” Informatie-inwinning in Syrië is nogal lastig want daar woedt een alles verwoestende burgeroorlog, een woord dat Schoof in DTN-34 niet gebruikt. In DTN32, DTN-33, DTN-35 en DTN-37 woedde die burgeroorlog wel al was er alleen in DTN-33 sprake van tienduizenden burgerdoden. Volgens de dienst biedt de burgeroorlog jihadisten de kans om meer terrein te winnen. De coördinator stelt dat de terugkeerders “nauwlettend in de gaten worden gehouden.” Hoe nauwlettend dat is beschrijft de NCTV in de beleidsopvolging: “Na terugkomst in Nederland wordt elke terugkeerder benaderd door het veiligheidshuis of de politie. Ook probeert de politie contact te krijgen met de familie en/of sociale omgeving van de betrokkene. Per geval worden, naast mogelijk strafrechtelijk onderzoek, op dit moment ook bestuurlijke maatregelen overwogen, zoals het stopzetten van uitkeringen en maatwerktrajecten.”

Strafrechtelijke maatregelen komen natuurlijk voort uit mogelijke strafbare feiten die door de mensen zijn begaan. Dit blijkt geen eenvoudige zaak zoals procedures rond 1F vluchtelingen (mensen verdacht van oorlogsmisdadigers) laten zien. “De strafrechtelijke aanpak van vermoedelijke rekruteurs en van terugkeerders die zich hebben aangesloten bij een terroristische organisatie en/of betrokken zijn geweest bij (oorlogs)misdaden heeft te kampen met problemen met betrekking tot de bewijsgaring.” Bestuurlijke maatregelen en het lastigvallen van familie, vrienden, kennissen en omgeving zijn natuurlijk veel gemakkelijker en van een andere orde. Bij bestuurlijke maatregelen kan de overheid veel doen en is er geen rechter die toetst of die straf wel rechtmatig is opgelegd, een ondermijning van de rechtsorde die de dienst zegt te beveiligen. Volgens de coördinator kwamen “voor het eerst Nederlandse jihadisten met strijdervaring uit Syrië terug naar Nederland.” Op basis waarvan de coördinator stelt dat zij “strijdervaring” hebben, is onduidelijk. De bewijslast is voor de dienst blijkbaar eenvoudig: een jihadist komt uit Syrië, heeft dus bij Al Qa’ida gezeten en heeft gevochten, klaar.

De NCTV is beducht voor de “jihadistische propaganda,” “via websites en sociale media voor participatie in het conflict,” maar schuwt zelf ook geen propagandistische middelen. Hierboven ging het al over de propaganda van de getallen, maar ook ten aanzien van radicalisering gebruikt de dienst angst als propagandamiddel. In deze DTN waarschuwt de dienst voor de “toenemende radicalisering van kleine groepen islamitische jongeren in Nederland, waarop in DTN32 al werd gewezen.” In DTN-32 gaat het nog om “signalen die duiden op een toegenomen islamistische radicalisering van kleine groepen jongeren in Nederland,” maar de dienst moest tevens toegeven dat “groepen als Sharia4Holland en Behind Bars in de afgelopen periode nauwelijks openlijke activiteit toonden in Nederland.” In DTN-34 zijn er plotseling wel openlijke activiteiten, want de NCTV ziet als “voorbeeld hiervan in de openbare ruimte de bijeenkomsten op sportvelden waarbij jihadvlaggen worden vertoond.” Dit is volgens de dienst “Ook verheerlijking van de jihadgang.” Over hoeveel openbare vergaderingen (een grondwettelijk recht) het hier gaat in 2013 is onduidelijk. Tevens is het onduidelijk of mensen strafrechtelijk zijn vervolgd voor het zwaaien met jihadvlaggen in 2013. In DTN-31 werd ook geen virtuele radicalisering vastgesteld door de dienst, en eind 2013 schrijft de dienst dat de “openlijke propaganda via internet en sociale media uit jihadistische kringen voor deelname aan de strijd in Syrië sterk is gestegen.” Hoe deze propaganda eruit ziet en of dit Nederlandse jongeren zijn, de dienst houdt het allemaal vaag. Vaagheid die de dreiging alleen maar aanzwengelt.

Conclusie DTN 2013

Begin 2013 treedt er een nieuwe coördinator aan. Dick Schoof is een hardliner die meteen vol inzet en zonder blikken of blozen het terreurniveau verhoogt. Daarmee haalt hij ook de media. Onduidelijk is echter of de omstandigheden in vergelijking met de periode daarvoor ook daadwerkelijk zo angstaanjagend zijn. Schoof vindt van wel, want vooral de zogenaamde ‘jihadgangers’ zijn een ongekend gevaar. Door mensen te labelen als jihadgangers zijn het al daders, voordat ze iets gedaan hebben. Jihad, jihadisering, jihadisme, het zijn allemaal synoniemen geworden voor terroristen, terroristisch, terrorisme in de totale oorlog tegen de terreur. Zelfs het woord Syrië-ganger staat al gelijk aan terrorist terwijl mensen in een land in burgeroorlog ook als arts, verpleegkundige of op een andere wijze burgers kunnen helpen. En die J-reizigers zijn niet alleen een constante vorm van zorg. maar ook een constante vorm van statistisch goochelwerk. Wie de berichten in de dreigingsbeelden van de afgelopen jaren doorneemt, krijgt de indruk dat er honderden zo niet duizenden reizigers en terugkeerders zijn. Vaak neemt het aantal toe en is er naast tientallen sprake van aantallen tussen de vijftig en honderd. Of dit het vaste aantal is, blijft onduidelijk. Wie de cijfers op een rijtje zet ziet misschien een lichte stijgende trend, maar het gaat vooral om enkele reizigers of groepjes en niet hele vliegtuigen vol. Voor Terror Dick zijn naast de J-reizigers ook de terugkeerders een groot gevaar, maar wie zijn eerste dreigingsbeeld leest, ziet geen verontrustender ontwikkelingen dan de jaren ervoor. De oorlogen in Afghanistan en Irak hebben misschien niet uitgepakt zoals het westen wilde, maar dat is al jaren duidelijk. Libië was een avontuur dat als een boemerang naar Europa terugkomt in de jaren na een mislukte NATO interventie van Unified Protector. Syrië ontwricht in enkele jaren langzaam en destabiliseert de rest van de regio, iets dat ook geldt voor Mali in Noordelijk Afrika. Wapens zijn nooit een oplossing al is Schoof dol op legergroen in de straat. Schoof bouwt ook verder aan het leger terreurbestrijders en maatregelen om mensen die anders denken lastig te vallen. In 2013 zal de dienst ook vertrouwenspersonen aan haar terrorismebestrijders toevoegen en naast de gebruikelijke repressieve maatregelen ook het bestuurlijk instrumentarium van voormalig coördinator Joustra weer uit de kast halen. Waar dat allemaal voor nodig is, is niet duidelijk. Strafrechtelijke procedures lopen spaak omdat de bewijslast van jongens en meiden die uit Syrië terugkomen lastig is. De dienst lijkt zelfs niet te weten waar de jongeren nu echt belanden, “is het waarschijnlijk JaN, of zeker Al Qa’ida.” Als dit de bewijsvoering is, voorspelt het niets goeds voor jongeren die terugkomen. Wie nog niet door had dat Terror Dick er vol ingaat wat terreurbestrijding betreft, wordt fijntjes duidelijk gemaakt dat het vernielen van jachthutten, graffiti, demonstraties en een tentenkamp extremistische middelen zijn die in een dreigingsbeeld terrorisme thuis horen. Eigenlijk gebeurt er niets in Nederland. Gelukkig zijn er nog mensen die hun stemmen durven te laten horen in een klimaat waar elk geluid als extremistisch wordt bestempeld. Groepen jongeren die zich actief bezig houden met de radicale islam moeten helemaal oppassen. Zij staan volgens de dienst in een directe verband met terrorisme, maar doen eigenlijk niets, hooguit in het openbaar vergaderen, een bijeenkomst verstoren en wat dreigementen uiten. Een aantal jaren geleden was er de AEL, de Arabisch-Europese Liga. Haar plek is ingenomen door groepen als Sharia4Holland en Behind Bars, die net als hun voorganger openlijke activiteiten organiseren of niet actief zijn. Voor de dienst is dit allemaal verdacht en is er geen bereidheid om deze groepen normaal tegemoet te treden. Zij zijn al terroristische organisaties, al is daar geen bewijs voor. Die denkwijze vertaalt zich in een beleid waar maatregelen worden gestapeld ten aanzien van potentiële verdachte groepen en mensen en de inzet van grote groepen van de samenleving wordt gemobiliseerd. Zo injecteert de dienst niet alleen terrorismebestrijding in de maatschappij maar ook dreiging, angst en schrikbeelden. Uitingen op het internet zijn al doorontwikkeld van radicale naar extremistische en nu terroristische uitingen. De dienst radicaliseert onder Schoof verder tot een extremistisch bolwerk dat vooral angst aanjaagt en op zoek is naar meer subsidie voor dat dreigingsbeleid.

2014 welkom bij de oorlog van de terreur

DTN-35 / 24 februari 2014

De dreigingspropaganda van de dienst NCTV vervolgt in 2014 rustig zijn weg. In DTN-34 was de “strafrechtelijke aanpak van vermoedelijke rekruteurs en van terugkeerders die zich hebben aangesloten bij een terroristische organisatie en/of betrokken zijn geweest bij (oorlogs)misdaden” nog lastig omdat er weinig bewijs was te vinden. In DTN-35 is het “duidelijk dat de meeste jihadstrijders in Syrië strijdervaring opdoen, gruwelijkheden plegen en doorradicaliseren.” Op basis waarvan de coördinator dit concludeert is onduidelijk, zeker als de bewijsgaring problematisch is. Inde beleidsopvolging bij DTN-35 stelt de coördinator dat “de Nederlandse jihadgangers op dit moment voetsoldaten zijn voor de strijd.” Hoe de dienst weet dat iedereen die daar naartoe reist ook meteen voetsoldaat wordt is ook niet helder. “Voetsoldaat” zou nog kunnen worden gezien als kanonnenvoer en dus enigszins een geste van de NCTV om de jongeren een handreiking te bieden, want uiteindelijk is het merendeel niet getraind en zal het ook daadwerkelijk kanonnenvoer zijn.

De coördinator wil echter geen redelijkheid, zijn propaganda is gericht op gevaar en dreiging. Hij beeldt de jongeren af als moordenaars met voorbedachten rade en zij zouden “al voor vertrek kortere of langere periode in jihadistische kringen verkeren, zowel in de offline als de online werkelijkheid.” Terwijl de dienst aan de andere kant stelt dat de jihadisten in Syrië niets voorstellen, hoewel de dienst al ruim een jaar het grote gevaar van die ‘jihadgangers’ verkondigt. “Het gros van de gewapende oppositiegroepen streeft niet een jihadistische agenda na. Jihadistische strijdgroepen vormen een kleine minderheid,” citeert de dienst de minister van Buitenlandse Zaken. Met de opkomst van IS in de zomer van 2014 in het achterhoofd, lijkt het inlichtingen verzamelen van het overheidsapparaat ook niet veel over. Wie de oorlog in Syrië zelfs minimaal had gevolgd, was tot de conclusie gekomen dat de beter georganiseerde, getrainde en gemotiveerde radicale groepen wel degelijk met minder menskracht, meer successen boekten. Het voorbeeld voor deze groepen kwam uit de jaren negentig, Afghanistan. En het voort etteren van de burgeroorlog in Syrië, met een leider die na 11 september 2001 ruim werd gesteund door het westen en een graag geziene handelspartner was, heeft tot een humanitaire ramp van grote omvang geleid. Dat dit tot grote destabilisering leidt, is geen moeilijke conclusie.

Nederlandse jongeren die daar gaan vechten, vormen een kleine te verwaarlozen groep. Deze groter maken is geen dreigingsanalyse, maar gevaren propaganda. In de inleiding van DTN-35 stelt Schoof dat “het aantal uitreizigers vanuit Nederland nog steeds stijgt.” Ook is er een groeiend “aantal terugkeerders dat strijdervaring in Syrië heeft opgedaan,” hoewel de coördinator daar niet bij vertelt wat voor ervaring dat is. De cijferoorlog van Schoof begint met de vaststelling dat “begin februari 2014 het totaal aantal uitreizigers sinds de zomer van 2012 uit kwam op ruim honderd, waarvan er ruim zeventig zich nog steeds in Syrië bevinden. Zeker tien personen zijn inmiddels om het leven gekomen. Verder is het aantal terugkeerders sinds oktober 2013 toegenomen tot ruim twintig.” In DTN-33 was het aantal al tussen de vijftig en honderd en in DTN-34 nam dat aantal ook al toe. In DTN-34 waren ze nog waarschijnlijk allemaal bij JaN terecht gekomen nu in 2014 is dat volgens de dienst zeker.

Sommige terugkeerders zouden volgens de NCTV “een radicaliserende en rekruterende rol spelen op jihadistische fora en sociale media.” Maar “de aanhoudende openlijke jihadistische manifestatie in Nederland” vindt niet alleen plaats op het internet ook op straat. In DTN-34 waren het nog “bijeenkomsten op sportvelden waarbij jihadvlaggen worden vertoond,” in DTN-35 beschrijft de coördinator een manifestatie van veertig mensen bij de Belgische en de Marokkaanse ambassade in Den Haag. De dienst stelt dat “in werkelijkheid bij deze demonstratie het betuigen van steun en het tonen van loyaliteit aan de ISIL en JaN centraal stond. De openheid waarmee de demonstranten hun leuzen uitten, duidt erop dat zij zich weinig gelegen laten liggen aan mogelijke negatieve consequenties van hun extremistische opvattingen.” Er was weinig aandacht in de media voor de manifestatie. In 2013 werd nog veel ophef gemaakt ook door de coördinator over Sharia4Holland een van de organisatoren van de demonstratie. De NCTV rept niet over vervolging van deelnemers aan de demonstratie in verband met opruiende teksten. Blijkbaar viel het opruien tegen want “de deelnemers aan de demonstratie zetten niet direct aan tot geweld in Nederland.”

Een enkel trapveldje bijeenkomst van enkele moslims, een demonstratie van veertig mensen waaronder enkele kinderen, een tiental jongeren ergens in Syrië en twintig die terugkeerden naar Nederland, “de jihadistische dreiging blijft de dominante factor in het dreigingsbeeld,” schrijft Schoof aan de vooravond van de neergeschoten MH-17. En die ongeveer zeventig nog levende radicaal islamitische jongeren in andere landen of in Nederland en enkele jongeren die willen uitreizen krijgen de volledige macht van de Nederlandse staat over zich heen in de vorm van wetgeving (verruiming van de mogelijkheid tot ontneming en de gronden voor verlies van het Nederlanderschap), bestuurlijke maatregelen ( het paspoort vervallen verklaren, bevriezen van de financiële tegoeden van mensen (reeds in vier gevallen toegepast), uitkeringen en toelagen korten of stopzetten), strafrechtelijke maatregelen (op basis van het jeugdrecht zijn kinderen onder toezicht gesteld en/of in gesloten jeugdinrichtingen geplaatst, operationele politieonderzoeken naar ronselaars) en toezicht tot in de haarvaten van hun leven. En voor de coördinator is het nog niet genoeg.

In DTN-34 schreef de NCTV al dat “de huidige situatie eens te meer duidelijk maakt dat álle operationele diensten beter zicht moeten krijgen op de reisbewegingen van jihadisten en vooral van terugkeerders naar Europa.” Passenger Name Record (PNR) komt sinds DTN-11 (2007) elk jaar ministens een keer voor in de terreurboden van de NCTV. De dienst stelt dat “het dan ook noodzakelijk is om op korte termijn de mogelijkheden om reisgegevens te kunnen gebruiken uit te breiden en de internationale samenwerking hierop te intensiveren. Op dit moment is dat op Europees niveau niet te realiseren. Daarom ga ik het gebruik van reisgegevens nationaal mogelijk maken.” De ik-vorm slaat op minister Opstelten, maar de dienst zit duidelijk aan de knoppen. Naast die Europese samenwerking werkt de coördinator ook samen met landen als Turkije, Marokko en natuurlijk de Algerijnse dictatuur waar in juni 2013 “de Verenigde Naties, met Nederlandse steun, een driedaagse bijeenkomst in Algiers” organiseerde.

DTN-36 / 30 juni 2014

DTN-36 loopt opnieuw over van reële aanslagen en zorgelijke ontwikkelingen. Schoof roept al anderhalf jaar dat de kans reëel is en in juli wordt hij op zijn wenken bediend. In juni is de situatie echter nog hetzelfde als zijn gehele periode als coördinator. Het enige verschil met DTN-34 en DTN-35 is dat de dienst geen cijfers meer verschaft maar alleen maar alarmerende berichten. De coördinator herhaalt zich om volume te produceren in het DTN. “Intussen blijven de uitreizen van Nederlanders naar jihadistische groeperingen in Syrië doorgaan,” gaat vooraf aan “het is zorgelijk dat de uitreizen naar Syrië, twee jaar nadat deze trek begon, nog steeds plaatsvinden.” De propaganda van J-reizen werkt volgens de NCTV want “op deze wijze wordt tot op heden een continue aanwas van uitreizigers gegenereerd.” Schoof geeft geen cijfers van deze “continue aanwas.”

Nederlandse vrouwen doen volgens de coördinator niet mee aan “gevechtshandelingen” maar ook daarvan is onduidelijk hoe de dienst bij een gebrekkige bewijsgaring tot deze conclusie is gekomen even als de vaststelling die eerder waarschijnlijk was van “Nederlandse jihadisten die in Syrië betrokken waren bij ernstige gewelddaden.” Net als de aanwas van de uitreizigers en de terugkeerders, is er de “jihadistische propaganda.” Propaganda van die ‘jihadisten’ wordt “via sociale media door Nederlandse jihadisten verspreid en is daardoor openlijk en laagdrempelig beschikbaar.” De dienst wil die ‘propaganda’ bestrijden “door Flagging, Notice & Take Action procedures, Notice & Take Down, counternarratives en door het versterken van de online weerbaarheid.” De coördinator noemt als voorbeeld “radiostation Ghurabaa” en “de website dewarereligie.nl” waarbij de NCTV zonder onafhankelijke rechterlijke toetsing de hosters van de radio en de website heeft benaderd. De dienst heeft ook geen aangifte gedaan tegen de radio en/of de website.

Bij een oorlog, ook een oorlog tegen de imaginaire terreur hoort propaganda. Tegenover de propaganda van de dienst over het gevaar dat in alle uithoeken van de Nederlandse samenleving zou schuilen, is er de propaganda van de jongeren die op avontuur gaan naar Syrië en waarvan er waarschijnlijk slechts enkelen levend terugkomen. Volgens de NCTV gaat “van teruggekeerde jihadisten niet alleen een potentiële aanslagdreiging en een radicaliserende werking uit, maar zij kunnen zich in Nederland tevens op gewelddadige wijze inlaten met fondsenwerving voor de jihad.” Die gewelddadige fondswerving zou blijken uit een zwaarbewapende man Mohamed A. die gearresteerd werd, terwijl hij volgens justitie onderweg was om een overval te plegen op 15 mei 2014. Volgens het Openbaar Ministerie had Mohamed A. een half jaar gevochten in Syrië, volgens zijn advocaat is hij daar niet geweest.

Of groepen in Syrië zitten te wachten op geld uit Nederland is onduidelijk, gezien de controle van groepen als IS en JaN over de delen van de natuurlijke hulpbronnen van Syrië en de verkoop van archeologische stukken aan vooral Europeanen. Naast de 21-jarige man die op 15 mei 2014 werd gearresteerd, werd ook nog 18-jarige Haagse jongen Oussama C. aangehouden in de Brusselstraat op 24 juni 2014 voor ronselen en opruien. Ook zouden twee mannen voor het beramen van een aanslag op Geert Wilders zijn gearresteerd. Dit laatste wil coördinator noch bevestigen noch ontkennen, en het bericht komt van Geert Wilders zelf. Het Openbaar Ministerie ontkent dat er iemand vast zat voor het voorbereiden van een aanslag op Wilders. “Er zit niemand vast voor het voorbereiden van een aanslag op Wilders. Ook heeft er niemand in het verleden vastgezeten”, aldus een woordvoerder van het OM volgens RTL Nieuws. Om dreiging te kunnen inschatten zijn ten eerste feiten van belang en daarnaast kan een vergelijking met identieke dreiging uit het verleden inzicht geven in het gevaar. De coördinator laat echter niets los over het bestaan van de twee verdachten van een mogelijke aanslag op Wilders. Als ze al bestaan, lijken ze dan op Bilal Lamrani of andere mensen die Wilders iets wilden aandoen. Zijn ze daadwerkelijk in Syrië geweest, zijn ze ‘getraind’, maakten zij in het verleden deel uit van het criminele circuit en hoe serieus moeten ze worden genomen? Om op basis van enkele verdachten te stellen dat terugkeerders een gevaar zijn, waarbij het misschien niet eens om terugkeerders gaat of de verdachten niet aanwezig zijn, lijkt eerder op wensdenken dan een duidelijke analyse van het aanwezige gevaar.

Ditzelfde geldt voor de stelling in DTN-35, het eerste dreigingsbeeld van 2014, dat “de weerbaarheid binnen moslimgemeenschappen in toenemende mate onder druk komt te staan.” In DTN-35 wordt de schuld gelegd bij “het intimiderende optreden van pro-jihadistische jongeren dat hier debet aan is.” De dienst lijkt in gesprek met “salafistische voormannen” (het salafisme werd enige tijd geleden nog als het grote gevaar gezien) want die “stellen dat er sprake is van een «gevaarlijke polarisatie» binnen moslimgemeenschappen.” De coördinator verhaalt verder dat “debatten over islam en democratie en de strijd in Syrië nauwelijks meer zonder beveiliging georganiseerd zouden kunnen worden.” Details staan niet vermeld in het DTN van het voorjaar van 2014. In DTN-36 borduurt de coördinator verder op dit fenomeen. “Er zijn echter zorgen over de weerbaarheid onder de moslimbevolking over langere termijn.” De NCTV stelt dat de intimidaties van de jihadisten hebben plaatsgevonden rond de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van maart 2014: “Nederlandse jihadisten voerden fel actie tegen de deelname van moslims aan de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen.” Waarom de weerstand van de moslimgemeenschap onder druk zou staan wordt niet duidelijk want de coördinator moet ook constateren dat ze geen invloed hebben gehad op deelname aan de verkiezingen. In DTN-37 is deze dreigingsstorm plots verdwenen terwijl het de boel voor “lange termijn” op stelten zou kunnen brengen.

Voor analyse van het ‘jihadistische gevaar’, maakt de coördinator gebruik van het woord sekte-achtig. In DTN-2 kwam dit woord al eerder voor in een poging radicalisering te beschrijven. In DTN-36 lijkt het een vast onderdeel van het dreigingsvocabulaire van de NCTV te worden want in DTN-37 is het gebruik van het woord sekte explosief toegenomen. En naast de jihadistische sekte zijn er ook andere radicale of extremistische bewegingen die volgens de dienst “minder zichtbaar in de media, maar relevant zijn voor de terroristische dreiging” zijn. Het niet-jihadisme heeft volgens de dienst het karakter van “asielrechtenextremisme, dierenrechtenextremisme en rechts-extremisme.”

In het kader van de terrorisme dreiging vermeldt de dienst in DTN-34 dat er “binnen het kader van asielrechtenextremisme vernielingen en bekladdingen plaats vonden, vooral in de aanloop naar en tijdens het internationale No Border Camp (NBC), dat van 2 tot en met 10 augustus 2013 in Rotterdam werd gehouden.” De NCTV verschaft geen details zodat moeilijk is vast te stellen of het hier om strafbare feiten of overtredingen gaat. Ook is onduidelijk of er proces-verbaal is opgemaakt, onderzoek gepleegd, vervolging ingesteld en andere strafrechtelijke procedures zijn georganiseerd die de claim van de dienst kunnen ondersteunen. In DTN-35 gaat het over een mislukte bezetting van “het Huis van Europa in Den Haag (december 2013),” waarna “het eilandje in de Hofvijver kort werd bezet.” Dit laatste was zeker het vermelden waard in het Dreigingsbeeld Terrorisme Nederland.

Ook “milieu-extremisten vernielden opnieuw een proefveld met genetisch gemodificeerde gewassen. Ook van belang om op te nemen in het dreigingsbeeld. Sinds 2003 gebeurde dit gemiddeld drie keer per jaar,” schrijft de coördinator in DTN-34 als steun voor bedrijven als Monsanto. Ook Groningen wordt door de coördinator genoemd in het kader van milieu terrorisme (DTN-36): “De afgelopen periode zijn de acties tegen de gaswinning in Groningen geïntensiveerd. De inmenging van de landelijk opererende, radicale milieugroepering GroenFront! in het radicale verzet tegen gaswinning zorgt vanaf januari 2014 voor een professionalisering en verharding van de acties.” In terreurbode DTN-34 wordt de oprichting van 269Life Nederland “een opvallende gebeurtenis” genoemd. Internationaal zou de beweging “buitenwettelijke acties” op zijn naam hebben staan “zoals insluipacties bij stallen en het «bevrijden» van dieren.” De coördinator treedt niet verder in details.

Van de extreemrechtse terreur vermeldt de NCTV in DTN-35 het feit dat de “rechts-extremistische (politieke red.) partij Nederlandse Volks-Unie (NVU) in drie gemeenten aan de gemeenteraadsverkiezingen van 19 maart 2014 deelneemt.” Waarom een politieke partij in het terrorisme beeld belandt, verklaart de coördinator niet. Bij verschillende rechtse-extremistische incidenten is die vraag überhaupt gerechtvaardigd want volgens de NCTV hebben die groepen “nauwelijks nog organisatie- en wervingskracht.” Eigenlijk is hun situatie te vergelijken met de leiderloze al dan niet bestaande jihadistische netwerken. Toch stelt de coördinator dat de groepen inspelen op “maatschappelijke polarisatie” zoals bij de “gebeurtenissen in Deurne en de voorwaardelijke invrijheidstelling van Volkert van der G.” De dienst stelt dat het de groepen gaat om “media-aandacht, waar het de initiatiefnemers mede om te doen is,” maar groei zit er blijkbaar niet in. Media aandacht, polariserende teksten kan ook gemakkelijk gezegd worden van linkse groepen, politieke partijen, de dienst zelf en andere maatschappelijke spelers.

Zeventien dagen voor de neergeschoten vlucht MH-17 schrijft de dienst in de beleidsopvolging vooral over de “integrale aanpak” van het jihadisme. De niet-jihadisten spelen bij de integrale aanpak geen rol, al kunnen maatregelen natuurlijk voor iedereen gebruikt worden. Zonder dat er sprake is van strafbare feiten stelt de coördinator, dat “het onacceptabel is dat Nederlandse ingezetenen deelnemen aan deze jihadistische beweging en de gewelddadige jihadistische strijd ongeacht waar ze plaatsvindt of gaat plaatsvinden. Alle beschikbare middelen worden daarom aangewend om uitreis met dit doel te verhinderen, risico’s van elke terugkeerder weg te nemen en het werven van nieuwe aanhang tegen te gaan.” Ten aanzien van mensen die aan een andere gewapende strijd in hetzelfde gebied of op een andere plaats meedoen, staat in de beleidsopvolging geen woord.

Alles wordt uit de kast gehaald zowel op nationaal als Europees niveau. Op inlichtingengebied gaat het om het SIS, Schengen Informatie Systeem, reisgegevens, Europol, en informatie uitwisseling. “Het delen van gegevens en ervaringen op de domeinen preventie en repressie wordt verder geïntensiveerd.” Naast risicoreducties zijn er interventies als het “uitschrijven uit de Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie (dertig keer), paspoortmaatregel (29 keer), onder toezicht en/of in een gesloten jeugdinrichting te plaatsen (zes keer), stopzetten uitkeringen en studiefinanciering (30 keer) en het bevriezen financiële tegoeden (12 keer).” Al deze maatregelen zijn bestuurlijke maatregelen en zijn voor het merendeel niet getoetst door een onafhankelijke rechter, iets dat in de lijn ligt van de verschillende landen waar de coördinator graag mee samenwerkt. Na Marokko, Algerije, Saoedi-Arabië en Turkije heeft de dienst Jordanië aan haar partners toegevoegd. Amnesty International en Human Rights Watch berichten over martelingen, slechte behandelingen in gevangenissen, oneerlijke processen, doodsstraf, onderdrukking van de vrijheid van meningsuiting en andere mensenrechten schendingen in het land waar de coördinator graag mee samenwerkt.

DTN-37 / 12 november 2014

De roep om een aanslag zet zich ook in het laatste dreigingsbeeld van 2014 voort. “De tendens van een niet te onderschatten langdurige jihadistische dreiging zet door en neemt met de aanslagen in andere westerse landen steeds concretere vormen aan.” En “de recente ontwikkelingen in de wereld en in ons eigen land laten een steeds reëlere dreiging van terroristische aanslagen door jihadisten zien.” Aanslagen die concreter vorm krijgen, dreiging die diffuus wordt (net als in DTN-7 en DTN-29) en een veranderend beeld net als in DTN-36, de dienst staat in het centrum van de storm. Volgens de coördinator zijn ‘we’ klaar voor een aanslag: “De Nationale Politie is goed geprepareerd voor het direct en adequaat handelen bij een terroristische aanslag.” Gelukkig overschaduwt IS het neergeschoten vliegtuig MH-17 en kan de NCTV doorpakken met “de huidige dreiging die een mondiaal probleem is,” en een “ bestrijding die (volgens de dienst) dan ook een gedeelde internationale verantwoordelijkheid is.”

Nederland doet op alle fronten mee met de coördinator op de voorplecht. Bij “de EU Kopgroep Foreign Fighters, in het Global Counter Terrorism Forum én door de deelname aan de militaire coalitie in Irak,” Schoof wil erbij zijn. De NCTV stelt namelijk dat “niet eerder de Nederlandse deelname aan een internationale militaire missie zo direct verbonden geweest met veiligheid in ons eigen land.” Volgens de dienst bestrijden wij “groeperingen die het op ons gemunt hebben op” en komt de Nederlandse deelname aan die strijd “direct onze nationale veiligheid ten goede.” Wat de bombardementen aan menselijk leed in de zogenoemde jihadistische strijdgebieden aanrichten, daar spreekt de coördinator niet over. Ook niet over lange termijn effecten van die interventies, want ervaringen met die interventies zouden en we niet hebben in de oorlog tegen de terreur. Afghanistan (2001), Irak (2003), Libië (2011) en diverse andere avonturen zijn alweer vergeten. Nederland volgt de Verenigde Staten met oogkleppen op in een wereld die steeds meer aan het ontvlammen is.

En om hoeveel Nederlandse tegenstanders in de oorlog tegen de terreur gaat het dan? In DTN-36 ging het om “een continue aanwas van uitreizigers.” In DTN-37 heeft die “gestage toename van uitreizigers zich voortgezet zodat inmiddels in de afgelopen twee jaar rond de 160 personen zijn uitgereisd (cijfers per 1 november).”In hoeverre deze cijfers te vergelijken zijn met de cijfers uit DTN-35 is onduidelijk. In DTN-36 worden geen cijfers vermeld. In DTN-35 stelt de dienst dat “begin februari 2014 het totaal aantal uitreizigers sinds de zomer van 2012 uit kwam op ruim honderd.” Daaronder waren ruim twintig terugkeerders, zeker tien personen die zijn gestorven (zonder vermelding van de oorzaak van die sterfte) en ruim zeventig mensen die zich daar nog zouden bevinden.” Hoe het woord “ruim” moet worden geïnterpreteerd, is onduidelijk. Soms wordt zelfs een marge van dertig aangehouden bij “ruim honderd” zodat het om honderddertig mensen zou kunnen gaan. De coördinator stelt nu dat het aantal uitreizigers rond de 160 is, waarvan “zover bekend achttien zijn omgekomen,” dertig zijn teruggekeerd en “rond de honderd Nederlanders nog in het strijdgebied aanwezig zijn, onder wie zo’n dertig vrouwen.”

Over de slachtoffers stelt de dienst dat die zijn omgekomen door “luchtaanvallen door de internationale coalitie, door onderling geweld tussen jihadisten en anderszins.” De coördinator beschrijft niet of de mensen verdacht waren van een strafbaar feit, aan vijandige handelingen hebben deelgenomen, lid waren van een terroristische organisatie en de doodstraf verdienden. Daar waar de NCTV in DTN-35 er nog zeker van was dat alle Nederlanders (ruim zeventig wat dus honderd zou kunnen zijn) “bij JaN (Jabhat al Nusra) zijn terecht gekomen”, zijn de Nederlandse jihadisten (rond de honderd in DTN-37) “op dit moment actief bij minimaal drie jihadistische strijdgroepen; de meerderheid valt onder Jabhat al Nusra (JaN) en ISIS, een minderheid bevindt zich bij Jund al-Aqsa (JaA).”

En welk gevaar schuilt er dan daadwerkelijk in Nederland zelf? De dienst spreekt van “risico’s die uitgaan van jihadisten en jihadgangers,” waarbij het om uitgereisden, terugkeerders, niet-uitgereisden en verder onbekenden gaat. Maar het zijn vooral de emoties van de jihadist volgens de dienst NCTV: “De emoties van Nederlandse jihadisten in Syrië of van hun sympathisanten in Nederland over het Amerikaanse offensief en de Nederlandse deelname daaraan, kunnen zich tot een dreiging ontwikkelen tegen Nederland of Nederlandse belangen in het buitenland.” Om te onderstrepen dat het alom aanwezige jihadistische gevaar ook echt op de loer ligt schrijft de coördinator: “De arrestatie van een Marokkaanse staatsburger in Amsterdam op 15 oktober, die door ISIS geïnspireerde terroristische intenties zou hebben tegen politiemensen, bevestigt het grensoverschrijdende karakter van de jihadistische dreiging.” Het openbaar ministerie schrijft zelf: “Na de aanhouding van de man en de doorzoeking van zijn woning zijn geen wapens of concrete plannen voor aanslagen gevonden.”

Volgens de NCTV zijn daarnaast “door adequaat optreden van politie en justitie recent verschillende personen gearresteerd en zijn meerdere pogingen tot uitreis verijdeld. Op dit moment lopen er in Nederland in totaal ruim dertig ‘jihadgerelateerde’ strafrechtelijke onderzoeken naar circa zestig personen.” Hoeveel van deze zestig mensen in Nederland bevinden is onduidelijk. Hoe gevaarlijk deze mensen zijn, is ook niet vast te stellen op basis van de informatie. De dienst stelt dat het “over verdenkingen van samenspanning tot deelname aan de gewapende strijd (uitreizen), voorbereiden terroristische handelingen (onduidelijk of dat hier of ergens anders is), opruiing, bezitten en verspreiden van jihadteksten, faciliteren en bevorderen jihadgang en het voorbereiden van terroristisch handelen (ook onduidelijk hier of ergens anders is).” Voor de directe dreiging en de inschatting of personen in Nederland echt gevaar lopen zijn de voorbereidingen op terroristische handelingen en het terroristisch handelen van belang. Het feit dat de coördinator zowel handelingen als handelen gebruikt is opvallend. Handeling is een juridische term, handelen wat platter, een daad, iets dat hier en nu gaat plaatsvinden.

Wie echter de beleidsbevindingen bij DTN-37 doorneemt zal slechts “gerichte aanpak van de jihadistische beweging,” “scherp repressief en preventief optreden”, “repressieve en preventieve maatregelen,” “interventiestrategieën,” “absolute noodzaak,” “sekteachtige mechanismen,” “extra impuls,” vinden en geen duidelijke analyse, context, beschrijving van die zestig mensen die als verdachte al dan niet gearresteerd zijn. Bij de “integrale aanpak” staat dat “er in Den Haag twaalf personen zijn aangehouden die in verband kunnen worden gebracht met jihadistische activiteiten.” Wat voor “jihadistische activiteiten” en of deze jihadistische activiteiten al in het wetboek van strafrecht zijn gekomen, maakt de dienst niet duidelijk. Dat veel vervolging niet te maken heeft met het handelend optreden van de verdachten geeft de dienst ook toe: “Het OM vordert met het intensiveren en coördineren van de strafrechtelijke aanpak van (dreigend) terrorisme.” “Dreigend terrorisme”, is eigenlijk de drie-vier maandelijkse terreurbode van de NCTV, maar bij dreigend terrorisme lijkt er geen sprake van überhaupt het verzamelen van wapens en/of explosieven, iets dat voorbereidingshandelingen heet en niet dreigend terrorisme.

Wel stelt de coördinator dat “personen die zijn aangehouden of veroordeeld voor terroristische misdrijven, zijn geplaatst op de speciale terrorismeafdeling (TA).” Of dit positief is of niet, bijdraagt aan een vreedzame samenleving, het wordt niet duidelijk uit de integrale aanpak. De dienst stelt nog dat “de capaciteit op de terroristenafdelingen van de Penitentiaire Inrichting Vught is uitgebreid,” maar of dit positief moet worden opgevat of juist een teken is dat het allemaal gevaarlijker wordt in Nederland, het blijft gissen. Wie alle maatregelen die de overheid heeft genomen op een rij zet, komt tot de conclusie dat het bij alle bestuurlijke maatregelen gaat om verdachten van uitreizen of uitgereisden. Slechts een keer schrijft de dienst dat er “een uitgereisde Nederlandse jihadganger in een filmpje op Facebook opriep tot ‘een sterke, stevige daad tegen de Nederlandse overheid’.” De coördinator terreur impliceert dat de persoon een aanslag bedoelt, maar uit de stukken is niet te achterhalen of er nader onderzoek naar de persoon is gedaan.

Net als in DTN-36 volgt in DTN-37 een trots overzicht van alle bestuurlijke maatregelen die de coördinator voor elkaar heeft weten te boksen. “Van alle gekende uitreizigers zijn de sociale uitkeringen en toelagen stopgezet. Dit is inmiddels in ruim vijftig gevallen gebeurd. Tevens zijn veel uitreizigers uitgeschreven als ingezetenen in de Basisregistratie Personen (BRP). Sinds december 2013 heeft de minister van Buitenlandse Zaken in overeenstemming met de ministers van Financiën en Veiligheid en Justitie besloten om elf personen op de nationale terrorismelijst te plaatsen. Van deze elf personen zijn er vijf sinds de aanbieding van het Actieprogramma op 28 augustus op de nationale terrorismelijst geplaatst. Onderkende jihadistische reizigers worden voor Europese signalering opgevoerd in het SIS II. Zo worden personalia van onderkende uitreizigers verstrekt aan INTERPOL die deze informatie verder internationaal verspreidt.”

Ook grondwettelijke rechten als de vrijheid van meningsuiting en manifestatie worden in het terreur vertoog getrokken. De verschillende schermutselingen, vlaggen, spandoeken en leuzen tijdens demonstraties in de Schilderswijk in de zomer van 2014 zijn onderwerp van “strafrechtelijke onderzoeken inzake haatzaaien en opruiing.” De reactie van de dienst op de demonstraties in de zomer in vergelijking met de demonstratie uit DTN-35 laat zien hoe de overheid verder radicaliseert. Dit standrechtelijk optreden van de overheid ten aanzien van verdachten en demonstraties breidt zich als een inktvlek uit ook naar terreinen als de “bestrijding van radicalisering” en “jihadistische content” op het internet. “Binnen de politieorganisatie treedt dit team signalerend en coördinerend op bij de bestrijding van de verspreiding van radicaliserende, haatzaaiende jihadistische content. Producenten en verspreiders van online jihadistische propaganda en de digitale platforms die zij misbruiken, worden geïdentificeerd en aangepakt.” De woorden rechterlijke toetsing en rechtsstaat komen ten aanzien van het internet helemaal niet meer ter sprake.

Naast deze maatregelen wordt het korps terreurbestrijders opgeschaald en ‘geprofessionaliseerd’ met kennisbanken en apps. “Ook wordt de Kennisbank Terrorisme uitgebreid met een applicatie (app) waarmee eerstelijnsprofessionals (zoals wijkagenten en jongerenwerkers) vanaf hun mobiele telefoon toegang tot informatie over terroristische organisaties krijgen.” Al deze controlerende, semi-strafrechtelijke en bestuurlijke maatregelen tegen verdachten, niet veroordeelden staan in schril contrast met de “brede maatregelen die nodig zijn om de rechtsstaat te versterken,” zoals de dienst beweerd. Wat die maatregelen precies zijn, blijft gissen, het gebruik van bestuurlijke maatregelen zonder tussenkomst van een onafhankelijke rechter, tast de rechtsstaat in haar fundamenten aan, namelijk dat iedereen onschuldig is tenzij het tegendeel is bewezen. Het gebruikte instrumentarium en “brede maatregelen voor de rechtsstaat” klinken allemaal als “terrorismebestrijding ter bescherming van mensenrechten”, de “rule of law” en het samenwerken met dictaturen, regimes (zoals Marokko in het kader van het Global Counterterrorism Forum) en groepen die de mensenrechten met voeten treden. Welkom in de oorlog van de terreur.

Het dreigingsbeeld van 2014 verschilt niet van de negen voorgaande jaren. De kans op een aanslag is reëel en de dienst krijgt die ook voor zijn kiezen. Elke coördinator heeft zo zijn elf september 2001 moment gecreëerd. Joustra was nog niet begonnen aan het schrijven van de terreurbode of Theo van Gogh werd vermoord. Akerboom was net aangetreden of 30 april 2009 hakte er in. Akerboom moest ook omgaan met de schietpartij in Alphen aan de Rijn. Schoof had het in het eerste jaar iets gemakkelijker, hij verhoogde de dreiging, maar er waren geen aanwijzingen. In zijn tweede jaar als coördinator wordt een Boeing uit de lucht geschoten. Keer op keer reageert de dienst ontwijkend op deze evidente menselijke drama’s. Zelfs de moord op Van Gogh, die past in het jihadistische wereldbeeld van de dienst, is niet uitgebreid aan bod gekomen. Aan deze Nederlandse drama’s wordt geen aandacht besteed en dat is zorgwekkend voor een dienst die beweert te staan voor terrorisme bestrijding en veiligheid. Analyses van het eigen functioneren behoren dan ook niet tot het repertoire van de coördinator. Er moet op jihadi’s worden gejaagd en daarvoor is het schetsen van een zo noodlottig mogelijk beeld van de moslimgemeenschap de belangrijkste voorwaarde. De Terugkeerders en J-reizigers zijn in zijn tweede jaar als coördinator al oorlogsmisdadigers pur sang. Ook al is de bewijslast lastig de dienst weet dat de ‘jihadgangers’ “strijdervaring opdoen, gruwelijkheden plegen en doorradicaliseren.” Het zijn “voetsoldaten” in de oorlog die de NCTV graag wil voeren. De notie dat in Syrië een dictator al decennia aan de macht is en een deel van het volk zich wil bevrijden van deze dictatuur is in de dreigingsbeelden niet terug te vinden. Het woord burgeroorlog ten aanzien van Syrië komt in 2011 en 2012 niet voor in het vocabulaire van de dienst. In 2013 en 2014 komt burgeroorlog in Syrië in vier van de zes dreigingsbeelden voor. In slechts een van alle dreigingsbeelden van de afgelopen tien jaar wordt melding gemaakt van tienduizenden doden (DTN-33). De miljoenen vluchtelingen en de ontwrichting van een hele regio, de dienst maalt er niet om. Alles dient de oorlogsretoriek van de dienst. Burgers, burgerslachtoffers, vluchtelingen zijn daarom niet interessant. De terugkeerders hebben een propagandistische, radicaliserende en rekruterende en met openbare bijeenkomsten wordt volgens de NCTV een stille oorlog gevoerd om de ‘hearts and minds’ van moslims te winnen. Voorbeelden te over zou je zeggen, maar de dienst komt maar met twee magere exemplaren. Een samenloop op een sportveldje en demonstratie van veertig mannen, vrouwen en kinderen van Sahria4Holland. Het overdrijven van het gevaar zit in de genen van de dienst want In DTN-35 alarmeerde de NCTV plotseling de wereld omdat “pro-jihadistische jongeren” de moslimgemeenschappen in hun greep zouden hebben door intimidatie. Deze intimidatie hype van de coördinator duurt twee dreigingsbeelden en is vervolgens verdwenen. Hypes, de coördinator leeft er van. De ‘jihadgangers’ hype met onduidelijke aantallen en alarmerende stijgingen herhaalt zich elk dreigingsbeeld. Steeds lijkt het aantal J-reizigers explosief toe te nemen, maar wie de cijfers op een rij zet ziet steeds een lichte stijging. Dat die stijging misschien iets met het beleid van de dienst te maken heeft dringt niet door in Den Haag. De jonge Nederlandse tegenstanders van het Westen krijgen de volle sterkte van de staat over zich heen. Alles wordt uit de kast getrokken om jonge mannen en vrouwen van rond de twintig en ook minderjarigen aan te pakken. Of het beleid effect heeft, blijft onduidelijk. In de haast om een handvol sympathisanten van groepen in Syrië, Irak en andere zogenaamde jihadistische strijdgebieden onder controle te krijgen wordt samengewerkt met dictaturen en regimes die de mensenrechten op grote schaal schenden. De dienst NCTV lijkt die landen langzaam als voorbeelden van effectief beleid te zien en de rechtsstaat lijkt voor de dienst een gepasseerd station. Dat deze jihadistische oorlog van de dienst niets met veiligheid te maken heeft, blijkt uit de neergeschoten vlucht MH-17. Waarom de dienst de basisveiligheid van de burgerluchtvaart niet op orde heeft, is niet interessant. Dezelfde reflex was zichtbaar na de dodelijke schietpartij in Alphen aan de Rijn. En dat terwijl de coördinator in haar takenpakket de “zorg voor de beveiliging van de burgerluchtvaart tegen met name terrorisme” en “het toezicht op de inrichting van de keten van de beveiliging van de burgerluchtvaart” heeft zitten. Daarnaast schrijft de dienst zelf in bijlagen bij DTN-33 “vanuit de NCTV wordt doorlopend gewerkt aan het ontsluiten van nuttige informatie voor professionals, bijvoorbeeld via een kennisbank, factsheets en whitepapers, alsmede aan het bieden van concreet handelingsperspectief, zoals via e-learningmodules. Het vergroten van veiligheidsbewustzijn van maatschappelijke actoren is daarbinnen een belangrijke speerpunt.” De dienst spreekt van het “vergroten van veiligheidsbewustzijn”, maar lijkt vooral geobsedeerd door een kleine groep jongeren, die wil uitreizen naar een plek die zo langzamerhand veranderd is in het inferno van Dante en daar misschien van willen terugkeren, en een oorlog tegen de terreur die de wereld alleen maar meer in brand zet. Welkom in de oorlog van de terreur.

Buro Jansen & Janssen, 25 maart 2015

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New report claims al-Qaeda-Benghazi link known day after attack

One day after the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded the assault had been planned 10 days earlier by an al-Qaeda affiliate, according to documents released Monday by conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch.

“The attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was planned and executed by The Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman,” said a preliminary intelligence report by the Defense Intelligence Agency, obtained through a lawsuit following a Freedom of Information Act request.

The group, which also conducted attacks against the Red Cross in Benghazi, was established by Abdul Baset Azuz, a “violent radical” sent by al-Qaeda to set up bases in Libya, the defense agency report said.

The attack was planned on Sept. 1, 2012, with the intent “to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge” for the killing of a militant in Pakistan and to memorialize the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the report said.

Four Americans were killed in the Benghazi attack, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.

The incident became politically controversial because the White House initially described the attack as the result of a spontaneous protest. Republican critics said the White House intentionally played down that it was a terrorist attack, because it occurred so close to President Obama’s re-election.

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s now seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, was to appear this week before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, but the hearing was canceled after Clinton and the committee chairman, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., failed to agree on whether all the documents Gowdy requested had been given to the panel.

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Other documents released by Judicial Watch show that U.S. personnel in Libya had been monitoring weapons transfers from Benghazi to opposition forces in Syria, where al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood had taken the lead against Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war. In late August 2012, the weapons included 500 sniper rifles, 300 rocket-propelled grenades and 400 howitzer missiles sent to small Syrian ports that handle little cargo, according to one of the reports.

The documents also predicted “dire consequences” of the Syrian civil war: that al-Qaeda’s well-established network in Syria, together with the ongoing conflict there and the influx of weapons and fighters, would lead to a resurgence for al-Qaeda in Iraq. That group, which had been defeated in Iraq by U.S. forces allied with Sunni tribes, did make a resurgence last year, when it broke with al-Qaeda, changed its name to the Islamic State and conquered huge swaths of Iraq and Syria.

“These documents are jaw-dropping,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton. “If the American people had known the truth – that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top administration officials knew that the Benghazi attack was an al-Qaeda terrorist attack from the get-go – and yet lied and covered this fact up – Mitt Romney might very well be president.”

Messages to the White House, the State Department and Clinton’s campaign spokesman were not immediately answered.

Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack.Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack. (Photo: Mohammad Hannon, AP)
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Salwa Bugaighis carries a wreath with a photo of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens as she and others pay their respects to the victims of an attack on the U.S. consulate, on Sept. 17, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11 during the attack. Libyan military guards check a burned-out building at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 14, 2012. Glass, debris and overturned furniture are strewn inside a room at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 12, 2012, a day after the attack. A man walks through a damaged room. A man investigates the inside of the U.S. consulate. A person looks at a destroyed vehicle at the entrance of the American consulate building. An empty bullet casing lies on the ground near a destroyed vehicle. A man looks at documents at the U.S. consulate. People inspect the destroyed consulate. A man walks past the U.S. consulate. A building was burned during the attack. A destroyed car rests outside a burned building at the U.S. consulate. Vehicles belonging to Libyan investigators’ cars are parked in front of the U.S. consulate on Sept. 15, 2012.
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The Benghazi attack occurred less than two months before Obama’s bid for reelection in a tight race against Romney. The White House and State Department at first blamed the attack on protests to an anti-Islam film that sparked protests across the Muslim world, but later admitted there was no protest in Benghazi before the attack.

Administration officials later said conflicting information, including false media accounts, caused a delay of more than a week to identify the attack as pre-planned act of terrorism. Conservative critics have charged that information was withheld to preserve Obama’s claims at campaign events that al-Qaeda was “on the run.”

“These documents show that the Benghazi cover-up has continued for years and is only unraveling through our independent lawsuits,” Fitton said. “The Benghazi scandal just got a whole lot worse for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.”

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee said in January 2014 that talking points used by then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice in Sunday talk shows after the attack contained erroneous information, although they reflected what the intelligence community believed at the time.

Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 8:26 a.m. EDT May 19, 2015

Find this story at 19 May 2015

Copyright usatoday.com

Military intel predicted rise of ISIS in 2012, detailed arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria

Seventeen months before President Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a “JV team,” a Defense Intelligence Agency report predicted the rise of the terror group and likely establishment of a caliphate if its momentum was not reversed.

While the report was circulated to the CIA, State Department and senior military leaders, among others, it’s not known whether Obama was ever briefed on the document.

The DIA report, which was reviewed by Fox News, was obtained through a federal lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. Documents from the lawsuit also reveal a host of new details about events leading up to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack — and how the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria fueled the violence there.

The report on the growing threat posed by what is now known as the Islamic State was sent on Aug. 5, 2012.

The report warned the continued deterioration of security conditions would have “dire consequences on the Iraqi situation,” and huge benefits for ISIS — which grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

“This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi,” the document states, adding “ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory.”

ISIS would, in June 2014, go on to declare a caliphate in territory spanning Iraq and Syria, in turn drawing more foreign fighters to their cause from around the world.

CLICK TO READ THE DOCUMENTS GIVEN TO JUDICIAL WATCH FROM THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT AND STATE DEPARTMENT.

Also among the documents is a heavily redacted DIA report that details weapons operations inside Libya before the 2012 terror attack in Benghazi. The Oct. 5, 2012 report leaves no doubt that U.S. intelligence agencies were fully aware that lethal weapons were being shipped from Benghazi to Syrian ports.

The report said: “Weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles were shipped from the Port of Benghazi, Libya to the Port of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria. The weapons shipped during late-August 2012 were Sniper rifles, RPG’s, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzers missiles.”

Current and former intelligence and administration officials have consistently skirted questions about weapons shipments, and what role the movement played in arming extremist groups the U.S. government is now trying to defeat in Syria and Iraq.

In an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier broadcast May 11, former Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, deflected questions:

Baier: Were CIA officers tracking the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria?

Morell: I can’t talk about that.

Baier: You can’t talk about it?

Morell: I can’t talk about it.

Baier: Even if they weren’t moving the weapons themselves, are you saying categorically that the U.S. government and the CIA played no role whatsoever in the movement of weapons from Libya …

Morell: Yes.

Baier: — to Syria?

Morell: We played no role. Now whether we were watching other people do it, I can’t talk about it.

While the DIA report was not a finished intelligence assessment, such Intelligence Information Reports (IIRs) are vetted before distribution, a former Pentagon official said.

The October 2012 report may also be problematic for Hillary Clinton, who likewise skirted the weapons issue during her only congressional testimony on Benghazi in January 2013. In an exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who is now a Republican candidate for president, the former secretary of state said, “I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody’s ever raised that with me.”

Referring to Fox News’ ongoing reporting that a weapons ship, Al Entisar, had moved weapons from Libya to Turkey with a final destination of Syria in September 2012, Paul responded, “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that they may have weapons.” He asked whether the CIA annex which came under attack on Sept. 11, 2012 was involved in those shipments.

Clinton answered: “Well, senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available.”

In a follow-up letter, the State Department Office of Legislative Affairs provided a narrow response to the senator’s question, and did not speak to the larger issue of weapons moving from Libya to Syria.

“The United States is not involved in any transfer of weapons to Turkey,” the February 2013 letter from Thomas B. Gibbons, acting assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, said.

Heavily redacted congressional testimony, declassified after the House intelligence committee Benghazi investigation concluded, shows conflicting accounts were apparently given to lawmakers.

On Nov. 15 2012, Morell and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified “Yes” on whether the U.S. intelligence community was aware arms were moving from Libya to Syria. This line of questioning by Republican Rep. Devin Nunes, who is now the intelligence committee chairman, was shut down by his predecessor Mike Rogers, R-Mich., who said not everyone in the classified hearing was “cleared” to hear the testimony, which means they did not have a high enough security clearance.

An outside analyst told Fox News that Rogers’ comments suggest intelligence related to the movement of weapons was a “read on,” and limited to a very small number of recipients.

Six months later, on May 22, 2013, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, now chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, asked if the CIA was “monitoring arms that others were sending into Syria.” Morell said, “No, sir.”

The Judicial Watch documents also contain a DIA report from Sept. 12, 2012. It indicates that within 24 hours of the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty at the CIA annex, there were strong indicators that the attack was planned at least a week in advance, and was retaliation for a June 2012 drone strike that killed an Al Qaeda strategist — there is no discussion of a demonstration or an anti-Islam video, which were initially cited by the Obama administration as contributing factors.

“The attack was planned ten or more days prior to approximately 01 September 2012. The intention was to attack the consulate and to kill as many Americans as possible to seek revenge for the US killing of Aboyahiye (Alaliby) in Pakistan and in memorial of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.”

The DIA report also states a little-known group, “Brigades of the Captive Omar Abdul Rahman,” claimed responsibility, though the group has not figured prominently in previous congressional investigations. The document goes on to say the group’s leader is Abdul Baset, known by the name Azuz, “sent by (Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri) to set up Al Qaeda bases in Libya.”

“The Obama administration says it was a coincidence that it occurred on 9/11. In fact, their intelligence said it wasn’t a coincidence and in fact specifically the attack occurred because it was 9/11,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Fox News.

Catherine Herridge is an award-winning Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel (FNC) based in Washington, D.C. She covers intelligence, the Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security. Herridge joined FNC in 1996 as a London-based correspondent.

By Catherine HerridgePublished May 18, 2015FoxNews.com

Find this story at 18 May 2015

©2015 FOX News Network, LLC.

Canadian military predicted Libya would descend into civil war if foreign countries helped overthrow Gaddafi (2015)

Canadian military intelligence officers predicted in 2011 that Libya could descend into a lengthy civil war if foreign countries provided assistance to rebels opposing the country’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The warning, made just days before several countries, including Canada, began their March 2011 bombing campaign against Gaddafi’s regime, has unfolded as predicted.

Libya has descended into chaos as rival tribes and militias continue to battle each other for control of the country.

Last week, Libyan Foreign Minister Mohamed Dayri warned that warring factions were pushing his country into a full-scale civil war. Italy has also raised concerns that Islamic extremists who now occupy parts of the country pose a threat to the region and Europe.

The Canadian government and military played key roles in overthrowing Gaddafi and highlighted those efforts as a significant victory both for Libya and Canadians.

At the time, then-foreign affairs minister John Baird reinforced Canada’s support for the rebel groups fighting Gaddafi, pointing out they had a well-developed plan that would transform the country into a democracy. “The one thing we can say categorically is that they couldn’t be any worse than Col. Gaddafi,” said Mr. Baird.

But when Gaddafi was overthrown in the fall of 2011, the various rebel groups refused to surrender their weapons and instead began fighting each other.

The uprising against Gaddafi began in February 2011. But it was NATO warplanes that destroyed large parts of Libya’s military and are now credited with allowing rag-tag militias and assorted armed groups to eventually seize control of the country.

Various nations began the military intervention in Libya on March 19, 2011. Canadian CF-18 fighter jets started their bombing runs on March 23.

Just days before, however, Canadian intelligence specialists sent a briefing report shared with senior officers. “There is the increasing possibility that the situation in Libya will transform into a long-term tribal/civil war,” they wrote in their March 15, 2011 assessment. “This is particularly probable if opposition forces received military assistance for foreign militaries.”

Some officers in the Canadian Forces tried to raise concerns early on in the war that removing Gaddafi would play into the hands of Islamic extremists, but military sources say those warnings went unheeded. Later, military members would privately joke about Canada’s CF-18s being part of “Al-Qaeda’s air force,” since their bombing runs helped to pave the way for rebel groups aligned with the terrorist group.

The Royal Canadian Air Force flew 10% of the missions during NATO’s campaign.

One can quarrel with it or not quarrel with it, but the mission was we would provide air cover for those that were initially subject to Gaddafi’s attacks and ultimately became his overthrowers

At the time of the Libyan uprising, U.S. Adm. James Stavridis, the NATO leader, acknowledged that some of the rebels benefiting from the air strikes could be linked to Islamic extremists. But he said that, overall, the opposition forces were made up of “responsible men and women.”

In September 2014, Prime Minister Stephen Harper defended Canada’s role in Libya, suggesting that neither it nor NATO can be held responsible for the chaos that has since engulfed that country. “One can quarrel with it or not quarrel with it, but the mission was we would provide air cover for those that were initially subject to Gaddafi’s attacks and ultimately became his overthrowers,” Mr. Harper explained shortly before meeting NATO leaders.

“The decision was made at the outset that we were not going to go into Libya (on the ground) per se. It was going to be up to the Libyans to then make the best of the situation.”

Gaddafi was considered a brutal dictator, but in later years he was embraced by Western leaders, who provided his forces with military training and weapons.

Analysts with the Department of National Defence also noted Gaddafi was a staunch ally of the West in the war against Al-Qaeda and Islamic extremism.

His efforts against Al-Qaeda-backed forces and his co-operation with the U.S. in providing information on terrorist networks were highlighted in a number of DND reports from 2002, 2003 and 2006 obtained by the Ottawa Citizen using the Access to Information law.

Gaddafi had his own reasons for helping the U.S. and Western nations in fighting Islamic extremists, since they also represented a threat to his own power.

POSTMEDIA NEWS 03.01.2015

Find this story at 3 January 2015

© 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.

The circus: How British intelligence primed both sides of the ‘terror war’ (2015)

‘Jihadi John’ was able to join IS for one simple reason: from Quilliam to al-Muhajiroun, Britain’s loudest extremists have been groomed by the security services
Every time there’s a terrorist attack that makes national headlines, the same talking heads seem to pop up like an obscene game of “whack-a-mole”. Often they appear one after the other across the media circuit, bobbing from celebrity television pundit to erudite newspaper outlet.

A few years ago, BBC Newsnight proudly hosted a “debate” between Maajid Nawaz, director of counter-extremism think-tank, the Quilliam Foundation, and Anjem Choudary, head of the banned Islamist group formerly known as al-Muhajiroun, which has, since its proscription, repeatedly reincarnated itself. One of its more well-known recent incarnations was “Islam4UK”.

Both Nawaz and Choudary have received huge mainstream media attention, generating press headlines, and contributing to major TV news and current affairs shows. But unbeknown to most, they have one thing in common: Britain’s security services. And believe it or not, that bizarre fact explains why the Islamic State’s (IS) celebrity beheader, former west Londoner Mohammed Emwazi – aka “Jihadi John” – got to where he is now.

A tale of two extremists

After renouncing his affiliation with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT), Maajid Nawaz co-founded the Quilliam Foundation with his fellow ex-Hizb member, Ed Husain.

The Quilliam Foundation was set-up by Husain and Nawaz in 2008 with significant British government financial support. Its establishment received a massive PR boost from the release of Ed Husain’s memoirs, The Islamist, which rapidly became an international bestseller, generating hundreds of reviews, interviews and articles.

In Ed Husain’s book – much like Maajid Nawaz’s tome Radical released more recently to similar fanfare – Husain recounts his journey from aggrieved young Muslim into Islamist activist, and eventually his total rejection of Islamist ideology.

Both accounts of their journeys of transformation offer provocative and genuine insights. But the British government has played a much more direct role in crafting those accounts than either they, or the government, officially admit.

Government ghostwriters

In late 2013, I interviewed a former senior researcher at the Home Office who revealed that Husain’s The Islamist was “effectively ghostwritten in Whitehall”.

The official told me that in 2006, he was informed by a government colleague “with close ties” to Jack Straw and Gordon Brown that “the draft was written by Ed but then ‘peppered’ by government input”. The civil servant told him “he had seen ‘at least five drafts of the book, and the last one was dramatically different from the first.’”

The draft had, the source said, been manipulated in an explicitly political, pro-government manner. The committee that had input into Ed Husain’s manuscript prior to its official publication included senior government officials from No. 10 Downing Street, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, the intelligence services, Foreign & Commonwealth Office and the Home Office.

When I put the question, repeatedly, to Ed Husain as to the veracity of these allegations, he did not respond. I also asked Nawaz whether he was aware of the government’s role in “ghostwriting” Husain’s prose, and whether he underwent a similar experience in the production of Radical. He did not respond either.

While Husain was liaising with British government and intelligence officials over The Islamist from 2006 until the book’s publication in May 2007, his friend Nawaz was at first in prison in Egypt. Nawaz was eventually released in March 2006, declaring his departure from HT just a month before the publication of Husain’s book. Husain took credit for being the prime influence on Nawaz’s decision, and by November 2007, had joined with him becoming Quilliam’s director with Husain as his deputy.

Yet according to Husain, Nawaz played a role in determining parts of the text of The Islamist in the same year it was being edited by government officials. “Before publication, I discussed with my friend and brother-in-faith Maajid the passages in the book,” wrote Husain about the need to verify details of their time in HT.

This is where the chronology of Husain’s and Nawaz’s accounts begin to break down. In Radical, and repeatedly in interviews about his own deradicalisation process, Nawaz says that he firmly and decisively rejected HT’s Islamist ideology while in prison in Egypt. Yet upon his release and return to Britain, Nawaz showed no sign of having reached that decision. Instead, he did the opposite. In April 2006, Nawaz told Sarah Montague on BBC Hardtalk that his detention in Egypt had “convinced [him] even more… that there is a need to establish this Caliphate as soon as possible.” From then on, Nawaz, who was now on HT’s executive committee, participated in dozens of talks and interviews in which he vehemently promoted the Hizb.

I first met Nawaz at a conference on 2 December 2006 organised by the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC) on the theme of “reclaiming our rights”. I had spoken on a panel about the findings of my book, The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry, on how British state collusion with Islamist extremists had facilitated the 7/7 attacks. Nawaz had attended the event as an audience member with two other senior HT activists, and in our brief conversation, he spoke of his ongoing work with HT in glowing terms.

By January 2007, Nawaz was at the front of a HT protest at the US embassy in London, condemning US military operations in Iraq and Somalia. He delivered a rousing speech at the protest, demanding an end to “colonial intervention in the Muslim world,” and calling for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate to stand up to such imperialism and end Western support for dictators.

Yet by his own account, throughout this very public agitation on behalf of HT from mid-2006 onwards, Nawaz had in fact rejected the very ideology he was preaching so adamantly. Indeed, in the same period, he was liaising with his friend, Ed Husain – who at that time was still in Jeddah – and helping him with the text of his anti-HT manifesto, The Islamist, which was also being vetted at the highest levels of government.

The British government’s intimate, and secret, relationship with Husain in the year before the publication of his book in 2007 shows that, contrary to his official biography, the Quilliam Foundation founder was embedded in Whitehall long before he was on the public radar. How did he establish connections at this level?

MI5’s Islamist

According to Dr Noman Hanif, a lecturer in international terrorism and political Islam at Birkbeck College, University of London, and an expert on Hizb ut-Tahrir, the group’s presence in Britain likely provided many opportunities for Western intelligence to “penetrate or influence” the movement.

Dr Hanif, whose doctoral thesis was about the group, points out that Husain’s tenure inside HT by his own account occurred “under the leadership of Omar Bakri Mohammed,” the controversial cleric who left the group in 1996 to found al-Muhajiroun, a militant network which to this day has been linked to every major terrorist plot in Britain.

Bakri’s leadership of HT, said Dr Hanif, formed “the most conceptually deviant period of HT’s existence in the UK, diverting quite sharply away from its core ideas,” due to Bakri’s advocacy of violence and his focus on establishing an Islamic state in the UK, goals contrary to HT doctrines.

When Bakri left HT and set-up al-Muhajiroun in 1996, according to John Loftus, a former US Army intelligence officer and Justice Department prosecutor, Bakri was immediately recruited by MI6 to facilitate Islamist activities in the Balkans. And not just Bakri, but also Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was recently convicted in the US on terrorism charges.

When Bakri founded al-Muhajiroun in 1996 with the blessings of Britain’s security services, his co-founder was Anjem Choudary. Choudary was intimately involved in the programme to train and send Britons to fight abroad, and three years later, would boast to the Sunday Telegraph that “some of the training does involve guns and live ammunition”.

Historian Mark Curtis, in his seminal work, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, documents how under this arrangement, Bakri trained hundreds of Britons at camps in the UK and the US, and dispatched them to join al-Qaeda affiliated fighters in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya.

Shortly before the 2005 London bombings, Ron Suskind, a Wall Street Journal Pulitizer Prize winning investigative reporter, was told by a senior MI5 official that Bakri was a longtime informant for the secret service who “had helped MI5 on several of its investigations”. Bakri, Suskind adds in his book, The Way of the World, reluctantly conceded the relationship in an interview in Beirut – but Suskind gives no indication that the relationship ever ended.

A senior terrorism lawyer in London who has represented clients in several high-profile terrorism cases told me that both Bakri and Choudary had regular meetings with MI5 officers in the 1990s. The lawyer, who works for a leading firm of solicitors and has regularly liaised with MI5 in the administration of closed court hearings involving secret evidence, said: “Omar Bakri had well over 20 meetings with MI5 from around 1993 to the late 1990s. Anjem Choudary apparently participated in such meetings toward the latter part of the decade. This was actually well-known amongst several senior Islamist leaders in Britain at the time.”

According to Dr Hanif of Birkbeck College, Bakri’s relationship with the intelligence services likely began during his “six-year reign as HT leader in Britain,” which would have “provided British intelligence ample opportunity” to “widely infiltrate the group”. HT had already been a subject of MI6 surveillance abroad “because of its core level of support in Jordan and the consistent level of activity in other areas of the Middle East for over five decades.”

At least some HT members appear to have been aware of Bakri’s intelligence connections, including, it seems, Ed Husain himself. In one passage in The Islamist (p. 116), Husain recounts: “We were also concerned about Omar’s application for political asylum… I raised this with Bernie [another HT member] too. ‘Oh no’, he said, ‘On the contrary. The British are like snakes; they manoeuvre carefully. They need Omar in Britain. More likely, Omar will be the ambassador for the khilafah here or leave to reside in the Islamic state. The kuffar know that – allowing Omar to stay in Britain will give them a good start, a diplomatic advantage, when they have to deal with the Islamic state. Having Omar serves them well for the future. MI5 knows exactly what we’re doing, what we’re about, and yet they have in effect, given us the green light to operate in Britain.”

Husain left HT after Bakri in August 1997. According to Faisal Haque, a British government civil servant and former HT member who knew Ed Husain during his time in the group, Husain had a strong “personal relationship” with Bakri. He did not leave HT for “ideological reasons,” said Haque. “It was more to do with his close personal relationship with Omar Bakri (he left when Bakri was kicked out), pressure from his father and other personal reasons which I don’t want to mention.”

Husain later went on to work for the British Council in the Middle East. From 2003 to 2005, he was in Damascus. During that period, by his own admission, he informed on other British members of HT for agitating against Bashar al-Assad’s regime, resulting in them being deported by Syrian authorities back to Britain. At this time, the CIA and MI6 routinely cooperated with Assad on extraordinary rendition programmes.

Husain then worked for the British Council in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from late 2005 to the end of 2006.

Throughout that year, according to the former Home Office official I spoke to, Husain was in direct contact with senior Whitehall officials who were vetting his manuscript for The Islamist. By November, Husain posted on DeenPort, an online discussion forum, a now deleted comment referring off-hand to the work of “the secret services” inside HT: “Even within HT in Britain today, there is a huge division between modernisers and more radical elements. The secret services are hopeful that the modernisers can tame the radicals… I foresee another split. And God knows best. I have said more than I should on this subject! Henceforth, my lips are sealed!”

Shortly after, Maajid Nawaz would declare his departure from HT, and would eventually be joined at Quilliam by several others from the group, many of whom according to Nawaz had worked with him and Husain as “a team” behind the scenes at this time.

The ‘ex-jihadists’ who weren’t

Perhaps the biggest problem with Husain’s and Nawaz’s claim to expertise on terrorism was that they were never jihadists. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a non-violent movement for the establishment of a global “caliphate” through social struggle, focusing on the need for political activism in the Muslim world. Whatever the demerits of this rigid political ideology, it had no relationship to the phenomenon of al-Qaeda terrorism.

Nevertheless, Husain and Nawaz, along with their government benefactors, were convinced that those personal experiences of “radicalisation” and “deradicalisation” could by transplanted into the ongoing “war on terror” – even though, in reality neither of them had any idea about the dynamics of an actual terrorist network, and the radicalisation process leading to violent extremism. The result was an utterly misguided and evidence-devoid obsession with rejecting non-violent extremist ideologies as the primary means to prevent terrorism.

Through the Quilliam Foundation, Husain’s and Nawaz’s fundamentalist ideas about non-violent extremism went on to heavily influence official counter-terrorism discourses across the Western world. This was thanks to its million pounds worth of government seed-funding, intensive media coverage, as well as the government pushing Quilliam’s directors and staff to provide “deradicalisation training” to government and security officials in the US and Europe.

In the UK, Quilliam’s approach was taken up by various centre-right and right-wing think-tanks, such as the Centre for Social Cohesion (CCS) and Policy Exchange, all of which played a big role in influencing the government’s Preventing Violent Extremism programme (Prevent).

Exactly how bankrupt this approach is, however, can be determined from Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts to express his understanding of the risk from non-violent extremism, a major feature of the coalition government’s Orwellian new Counter-Terrorism and Security Act. The latter establishes unprecedented powers of electronic surveillance and the basis for the “Prevent duty,” which calls for all public sector institutions to develop “risk-assessment” profiles of individuals deemed to be “at-risk” of being drawn into non-violent extremism.

In his speech at the UN last year, Cameron explained that counter-terrorism measures must target people who may not “encourage violence, but whose worldview can be used as a justification for it.” As examples of dangerous ideas at the “root cause” of terrorism, Cameron pinpointed “conspiracy theories,” and most outrageously, “The idea that Muslims are persecuted all over the world as a deliberate act of Western policy.”

In other words, if you believe, for instance, that US and British forces have deliberately conducted brutal military operations across the Muslim world resulting in the foreseeable deaths of countless innocent civilians, you are a non-violent extremist.

In an eye-opening academic paper published last year, French terrorism expert and Interior Ministry policy officer Dr Claire Arenes, noted that: “By definition, one may know if radicalisation has been violent only once the point of violence has been reached, at the end of the process. Therefore, since the end-term of radicalisation cannot be determined in advance, a policy intended to fight violent radicalisation entails a structural tendency to fight any form of radicalisation.”

It is precisely this moronic obsession with trying to detect and stop “any form of radicalisation,” however non-violent, that is hampering police and security investigations and overloading them with nonsense “risks”.

Double game

At this point, the memorable vision of Nawaz and Choudary facing off on BBC Newsnight appears not just farcical, but emblematic of how today’s national security crisis has been fuelled and exploited by the bowels of the British secret state.

Over the last decade or so – the very same period that the British state was grooming the “former jihadists who weren’t” so they could be paraded around the media-security-industrial complex bigging up the non-threat of “non-violent extremism” – the CIA and MI6 were coordinating Saudi-led funding to al-Qaeda affiliated extremists across the Middle East and Central Asia to counter Iranian Shiite influence.

From 2005 onwards, US and British intelligence services encouraged a range of covert operations to support Islamist opposition groups, including militants linked to al-Qaeda, to undermine regional Iranian and Syrian influence. By 2009, the focus of these operations shifted to Syria.

As I documented in written evidence to a UK Parliamentary inquiry into Prevent in 2010, one of the recipients of such funding was none other than Omar Bakri, who at the time told one journalist: “Today, angry Lebanese Sunnis ask me to organise their jihad against the Shiites… Al-Qaeda in Lebanon… are the only ones who can defeat Hezbollah.” Simultaneously, Bakri was regularly in touch with his deputy, Anjem Choudary, over the internet and even delivered online speeches to his followers in Britain instructing them to join IS and murder civilians. He has now been detained and charged by Lebanese authorities for establishing terror cells in the country.

Bakri was also deeply involved “with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side.” The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters,” including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon. Was Mohammed Emwazi among them? Last year, Bakri disciple Mizanur Rahman confirmed that at least five European Muslims who had died fighting under IS in Syria had been Bakri acolytes.

Nevertheless in 2013, it was David Cameron who lifted the arms embargo to support Syria’s rebels. We now know that most of our military aid went to al-Qaeda affiliated Islamists, many with links to extremists at home. The British government itself acknowledged that a “substantial number” of Britons were fighting in Syria, who “will seek to carry out attacks against Western interests… or in Western states”.

Yet according to former British counterterrorism intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge, despite this risk, authorities “turned a blind eye to the travelling of its own jihadists to Syria, notwithstanding ample video etc. evidence of their crimes there,” because it “suited the US and UK’s anti-Assad foreign policy”.

This terror-funnel is what enabled people like Emwazi to travel to Syria and join up with IS – despite being on an MI5 terror watch-list. He had been blocked by the security services from traveling to Kuwait in 2010: why not Syria? Shoebridge, who was a British Army officer before joining the Metropolitan Police, told me that although such overseas terrorism has been illegal in the UK since 2006, “it’s notable that only towards the end of 2013 when IS turned against the West’s preferred rebels, and perhaps also when the tipping point between foreign policy usefulness and MI5 fears of domestic terrorist blowback was reached, did the UK authorities begin to take serious steps to tackle the flow of UK jihadists.”

The US-UK direct and tacit support for jihadists, Shoebridge said, had made Syria the safest place for regional terrorists fearing drone strikes “for more than two years”. Syria was “the only place British jihadists could fight without fear of US drones or arrest back home… likely because, unlike if similar numbers of UK jihadists had been travelling to for example Yemen or Afghanistan, this suited the anti-Assad policy.”

Having watched its own self-fulfilling prophecy unfold with horrifying precision in a string of IS-linked terrorist atrocities against Western hostages and targets, the government now exploits the resulting mayhem to vindicate its bankrupt “counter-extremism” narrative, promoted by hand-picked state-groomed “experts” like Husain and Nawaz.

Their prescription, predictably, is to expand the powers of the police state to identify and “deradicalise” anyone who thinks British foreign policy in the Muslim world is callous, self-serving and indifferent to civilian deaths. Government sources confirm that Nawaz’s input played a key role in David Cameron’s thinking on non-violent extremism, and the latest incarnation of the Prevent strategy; while last year, Husain was, ironically, appointed to the Foreign Office advisory group on freedom of religion or belief.

Meanwhile, Bakri’s deputy Choudary continues to inexplicably run around as Britain’s resident “terror cleric” media darling. His passport belatedly confiscated after a recent pointless police arrest that avoided charging him, he remains free to radicalise thick-headed British Muslims into joining IS, in the comfort that his hate speech will be broadcast widely, no doubt fueling widespread generic suspicion of British Muslims.

If only we could round up the Quilliam and al-Muhajiroun fanatics together, shove them onto a boat, and send them all off cruising to the middle of nowhere, they could have all the fun they want “radicalising” and “deradicalising” each other to their hearts content. And we might get a little peace. And perhaps we could send their handlers with them, too.

– Nafeez Ahmed PhD, is an investigative journalist, international security scholar and bestselling author who tracks what he calls the ‘crisis of civilization.’ He is a winner of the Project Censored Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism for his Guardian reporting on the intersection of global ecological, energy and economic crises with regional geopolitics and conflicts. He has also written for The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, The Scotsman, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, Quartz, Prospect, New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, New Internationalist. His work on the root causes and covert operations linked to international terrorism officially contributed to the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Nafeez Ahmed
Friday 27 February 2015 14:35 GMT

Find this story at 27 February 2015

© Middle East Eye 2014

MI5 says rendition of Libyan opposition leaders strengthened al-Qaida

Intelligence assessment concludes abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi allowed dissident group to be taken over by exponents of al-Qaida
Abdel Hakim Belhaj

A secret UK-Libyan rendition programme in which two Libyan opposition leaders were kidnapped and flown to Tripoli along with their families had the effect of strengthening al-Qaida, according to an assessment by the UK security service, MI5.

Prior to their kidnap, Abdel Hakim Belhaj and Sami al-Saadi had ensured that their organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), focused on the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi, the classified assessment says. Once handed over to the Gaddafi regime, their places at the head of the LIFG were taken by others who wanted to bring the group closer to al-Qaida.

The two men were seized in Thailand and Hong Kong in March 2004 with the assistance of the UK’s intelligence service MI6, and were “rendered” to Tripoli along with Belhaj’s pregnant wife and Saadi’s wife and four children, the youngest a girl aged six.

In an assessment made 11 months later, MI5 concluded that the capture of the pair had cast the group “into a state of disarray”, adding: “While these senior-ranking members have always jealously guarded the independence of the LIFG, providing it with a clear command structure and set goals, the group is now coming under pressure from outside influences.

“In particular, reporting indicates that members including Abu Laith al-Libi and Abdallah al-Ghaffar may be pushing the group towards a more pan-Islamic agenda inspired by AQ [al-Qaida].”

Two years after MI5 made this assessment, Libi announced the LIFG had formally joined forces with al-Qaida. He became a leading member of the merged organisation and is believed to have orchestrated a series of suicide bomb attacks across Afghanistan, including one in 2007 that killed 23 people at Bagram airfield north of Kabul during a visit by then US vice-president Dick Cheney. Libi was killed in a drone strike the following year.

The classified MI5 intelligence assessment was among hundreds of highly sensitive Libyan and British files that were discovered in official buildings that had been abandoned during the 2011 revolution that led to the overthrow and death of Muammar Gaddafi.

The end of his 42-year dictatorship was hastened by Nato air strikes, and was followed by a period of brief and heady optimism. At a rally in Benghazi in the east of the country in September 2011, the British prime minister, David Cameron, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, addressed enormous crowds waving their countries’ flags. “It’s great to be here in free Benghazi and in free Libya,” Cameron told them.

But Libya’s new leadership was already struggling to impose its authority on the country. And since then, the country has descended into violence and economic instability, with rival militias shelling residential areas and destroying infrastructure in their fight for supremacy.

Fears that Islamist militants would fill the yawning power vacuum appeared to be realised on Tuesday when gunmen claiming allegiance to Islamic State said that they were responsible for an attack on a Tripoli hotel in which at least five guards and five foreigners were killed.

The papers that were recovered during the revolution show that Britain’s intelligence agencies engaged in a series of joint operations with Gaddafi’s government and that some of the information extracted from victims of rendition was used as evidence during control-order and deportation proceedings in UK courts.

They also show that in 2006, Libyan intelligence agents were invited to operate on British soil, where they worked alongside MI5 and allegedly intimidated a number of Gaddafi opponents who had been granted asylum in the UK.

Another of the recovered documents is a letter that Tony Blair wrote to Gaddafi in April 2007, and whose existence publicly emerged last week. Addressed “Dear Mu’ammar”, Blair expressed his regret that the British government had failed in its attempts to have a number of Gaddafi’s opponents deported from the UK, and thanked the dictator for his intelligence agencies’ “excellent co-operation” with their British counterparts.

The classified MI5 document was prepared in advance of a five-day visit to Tripoli by senior agency staff in February 2005. Marked “UK/Libya Eyes Only – Secret”, it explains that members of the LIFG had been permitted to settle in the UK in the 1990s. This was at a time when Gaddafi, whom the group was plotting to overthrow, was considered to be an enemy of Britain.

The document adds that MI5 reassessed the LIFG’s UK-based members following the change in the group’s leadership that resulted from the detention of Belhaj and Saadi.

“We are actively investigating key individuals in the UK and are seeking to disrupt their activities,” the document says. This action was part of a new strategy “for countering the threat from the LIFG to the UK and its allies” – allies which, by 2005, included the Libyan dictatorship.

Accompanying the document was a list of questions that MI5 wanted Libyan interrogators to put to Belhaj and Saadi. A total of more than 1,600 questions were sent from the UK to Tripoli, in four batches, with MI6 at one point thanking the Libyan intelligence agents for “kindly agreeing” to pass the questions to their “interview team”.

Belhaj and Saadi both say they were beaten, whipped, subjected to electric shocks, deprived of sleep and threatened while being held at Tajoura prison outside Tripoli.

They say they were also interrogated by British intelligence officers, and Belhaj says he made it clear, by sign language, that he was being tortured.

After one of these encounters, he says, he agreed to sign a statement about his associates in the UK to avoid being subjected to a form of torture called the Honda, which involved being locked in a box-like structure whose ceiling and walls could be shrunk.

The discovery of the documents that exposed the existence of the UK-Libyan rendition operations had caused widespread dismay in Westminster, even before the emergence of the latest report, which makes clear that one consequence of these operations was that the terrorist organisation that posed the greatest threat to the UK at that time was strengthened.

A criminal investigation into the affair was opened in January 2012 after Dominic Grieve, the then attorney general, wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe. After a three-year investigation codenamed Operation Lydd, detectives handed their report to the Crown Prosecution Service last month.

Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time, is among the people who have been questioned by police. His office says he was interviewed as a witness.

The rendition operations also led to damages claims being brought by Saadi – who received £2.2m in compensation from the British government – and by Belhaj. Belhaj is claiming damages on behalf of himself and his wife. She was four-and-a-half months pregnant when the couple were kidnapped, and Belhaj says she was taped, head to foot, to a stretcher for the 17-hour flight to Tripoli, before being jailed for several months.

Belhaj says he would settle his claim for just £3, as long as he and his wife also receive an apology. With the CPS currently considering the police file, this is unlikely to happen.

Ian Cobain
Thursday 29 January 2015 11.27 GMT Last modified on Friday 30 January 2015 00.05 GMT

Find this story at 29 January 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Britain hid secret MI6 plan to break up Libya from US, Hillary Clinton told by confidant (2015)

Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time friend of the Clintons, claimed David Cameron backed a French plot to create a break away zone eastern Libya

Britain acted deceitfully in Libya and David Cameron authorised an MI6 plan to “break up” the country, a close confidante of Hillary Clinton claimed in a series of secret reports sent to the then-secretary of state.
Sidney Blumenthal, a long-time friend of the Clintons, emailed Mrs Clinton on her personal account to warn her that Britain was “game playing” in Libya.
Mr Blumenthal had no formal role in the US State Department and his memos to Mrs Clinton were sourced to his own personal contacts in the Middle East and Europe.
Nevertheless, Mrs Clinton seems to have taken some of his reports seriously and forwarded them on to senior diplomats working at the highest levels of American foreign policy.
The first of Mr Blumenthal’s Libya memos – which were leaked to the New York Times – was sent on April 8, 2011, as rebel forces struggled to make gains against Gaddafi’s troops, and had “UK game playing” in the subject line.
The memo warned that British diplomats and MI6 officers were maintaining secret back channels with the Gaddafi regime “in an effort to protect the British position in the event that the rebellion settles into a stalemate”.

Mr Blumenthal claimed that MI6 spies were in discussions with Saif Gaddafi, the dictator’s son, “regarding future relations between the two countries if he takes over power from his father and implements reforms”.
The memo also claims that the Libyan rebels were deeply suspicious of Britain and suspected that the UK would be “satisfied with a stalemate” in which Gaddafi or his family stayed in power in part of the country.
Their suspicions were stoked when Gaddafi’s foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, defected to Britain in March 2011, Mr Blumenthal claimed. The rebels apparently saw the defection as evidence that Britain had secret lines of communication with the highest ranks of the Gaddafi regime.
Extract from the email:

Eight minutes after receiving Mr Blumenthal’s email, Mrs Clinton forwarded it on to one of her most senior aides. She did not comment on the allegations about Britain. A week later, she met with William Hague, the then-foreign secretary at a Nato summit in Berlin.
Perhaps unbeknownst to Mr Blumenthal, who was working for Bill Clinton’s global charity at the time and not privy to classified information, the CIA was maintaining its own back channels to Gaddafi.
Michael Morell, the CIA’s deputy director, spoke regularly to Abdullah Senussi, the head of Gaddafi’s internal intelligence service, even as US aircraft were bombing regime forces on the battlefield.
Mr Blumenthal emailed Mrs Clinton about Britain again on March 8, 2012 with the subject: “France & UK behind Libya breakup”.
By this time Gaddafi was dead and his regime had collapsed and a provisional government, the Libyan National Transitional Council, was trying to assert its authority across the country.
Mr Blumenthal told Mrs Clinton that MI6 and its French counterpart, the DGSE, were secretly encouraging rebels in eastern Libya to establish “a semi-autonomous zone” outside the control of the new government.
The plot was allegedly instigated by advisors to the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who believed that the new Libyan government was not “rewarding” French businesses for France’s role in overthrowing Gaddafi.
He alleged that MI6 joined in the plan “at the instruction of the office of Prime Minister David Cameron”.
“The French and British intelligence officials believe that the semi-autonomous regime in the eastern city of Benghazi will be able to organise business opportunities in that region,” he wrote.
Extract from the email:

Mrs Clinton seems to have been sceptical about the report and forwarded it on to her aide Jake Sullivan with the comment: “This one strains credulity. What do you think?”
Mrs Clinton’s aides appear unimpressed with the stream of emails coming from Mr Blumenthal and Mr Sullivan replied that the MI6 allegations sounded like “like a thin conspiracy theory”.
Mrs Clinton was asked about the emails during a campaign appearance in Iowa on Tuesday and said Mr Blumenthal had been “a friend of mine for a very long time”.
“He sent unsolicited emails which I passed on in some instances. That’s just part of the give and take,” she said.
On Thursday, a new batch of leaked emails showed that Mr Blumenthal had passed on allegations that MI6 was involved in talks to broker a ceasefire and install Saif Gaddafi in his father’s place.
Saif was one of the most Western of Gaddafi’s children and had strong links to Britain. He studied at the London School of Economics (LSE) and was hosted at Buckingham Palace.

A June 3 email from said the Libyan regime had “opened extremely complicated negotiations with the government of the United Kingdom” over a deal that would allow the Gaddafis “to maintain some level of control” in Libya.
Under the regime’s proposal Saif Gaddafi could take his father’s role as head of state but share power with a cabinet made up partly of representatives from the opposition.
Gaddafi himself would be allowed to go into exile without facing war crimes or corruption charges by the new government.
The initial conversations were apparently carried out by MI6 officers and it is not clear if the talks ever progressed to senior levels of government.
Mrs Clinton did not dismiss the claims and forwarded them on to a senior aide while asking her personal assistant to print them out.
Extract from the email:

The email claims Saif and his circle knew there was “little chance” that the rebels would agree to the offer and suspected MI6 may have engaged in the talks only “as a means of collecting intelligence while protecting British interests in Libya” and had no real interest in a deal.
In any event the plan was never carried out and Saif, was captured by rebel forces in November 2011, a few weeks after his father’s death.
He is now facing trial in Libya on charges that he orchestrated a campaign of terror against civilian populations during the uprising against his father.
The Foreign Office did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr Blumenthal memos have aroused interest in the US because they appear to show a blurring of the lines between Mrs Clinton’s State Department and the Clinton Foundation set up by her husband.
Although he had no role in the State Department, he was working for the Clinton Foundation and various political groups allied with Mrs Clinton, according to the New York Times.
Mr Blumenthal worked in Bill Clinton’s White House and was known for fierce loyalty to both the Clintons and for aggressively confronting their critics.
Aides to Barack Obama prevented Mrs Clinton from bringing him into the State Department in 2009, believing that he would only stir up trouble after the bitterly-fought election battle between Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton.

Raf Sanchez By Raf Sanchez, Washington4:30PM BST 21 May 2015

Find this story at 21 May 2015
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015

Cooperation between British spies and Gaddafi’s Libya revealed in official papers (2015)

Links between MI5 and Gaddafi’s intelligence during Tony Blair’s government more extensive than previously thought, according to documents
Blair visit to Africa

Britain’s intelligence agencies engaged in a series of previously unknown joint operations with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s government and used the information extracted from rendition victims as evidence during partially secret court proceedings in London, according to an analysis of official documents recovered in Tripoli since the Libyan revolution.

The exhaustive study of the papers from the Libyan government archives shows the links between MI5, MI6 and Gaddafi’s security agencies were far more extensive than previously thought and involved a number of joint operations in which Libyan dissidents were unlawfully detained and allegedly tortured.

At one point, Libyan intelligence agents were invited to operate on British soil, where they worked alongside MI5 and allegedly intimidated a number of Gaddafi opponents who had been granted asylum in the UK.

Previously, MI6 was known to have assisted the dictatorship with the kidnap of two Libyan opposition leaders, who were flown to Tripoli along with their families – including a six-year-old girl and a pregnant woman – in 2004.

However, the research suggests that the fruits of a series of joint clandestine operations also underpinned a significant number of court hearings in London between 2002 and 2007, during which the last Labour government unsuccessfully sought to deport Gaddafi’s opponents on the basis of information extracted from people who had been “rendered” to his jails.

Libyan Islamic Fighting Group. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
UK intelligence agencies sent more 1,600 questions to be put to the two opposition leaders.
In addition, the documents show that four men were subjected to control orders in the UK – a form of curfew – on the basis of information extracted from victims of rendition who had been handed over to the Gaddafi regime.

The papers recovered from the dictatorship’s archives include secret correspondence from MI6, MI5 reports on Libyans living in the UK, a British intelligence assessment marked “UK/Libya Eyes Only – Secret” and official Libyan minutes of meetings between the two countries’ intelligence agencies.

They show that:

• UK intelligence agencies sent more than 1,600 questions to be put to the two opposition leaders, Sami al-Saadi and Abdul Hakim Belhaj, despite having reason to suspect they were being tortured.

• British government lawyers allegedly drew upon the answers to those questions when seeking the deportation of Libyans living in the UK

• Five men were subjected to control orders in the UK, allegedly on the basis of information extracted from two rendition victims.

• Gaddafi’s agents recorded MI5 as warning in September 2006 that the two countries’ agencies should take steps to ensure that their joint operations would never be “discovered by lawyers or human rights organisations and the media”.

In fact, papers that detail the joint UK-Libyan rendition operations were discovered by the New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch in September 2011, at the height of the Libyan revolution, in an abandoned government office building in Tripoli.

Since then, hundreds more documents have been discovered in government files in Tripoli. A team of London-based lawyers has assembled them into an archive that is forming the basis of a claim for damages on behalf of 12 men who were allegedly kidnapped, tortured, subject to control orders or tricked into travelling to Libya where they were detained and mistreated.

An attempt by government lawyers to have that claim struck out was rejected by the high court in London on Thursday , with the judge, Mr Justice Irwin, ruling that the allegations “are of real potential public concern” and should be heard and dealt with by the courts.

The litigation follows earlier proceedings brought on behalf of the two families who were kidnapped in the far east and flown to Tripoli. One claim was settled when the government paid £2.23m in compensation to al-Saadi and his family; the second is ongoing, despite attempts by government lawyers to have it thrown out of court, with Belhaj suing not only the British government, but also Sir Mark Allen, former head of counter-terrorism at MI6, and Jack Straw, who was foreign secretary at the time of his kidnap.

Abdel Hakim Belhaj is suing the British government. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Abdel Hakim Belhaj is suing the British government.
Belhaj has offered to settle for just £3, providing he and his wife also receive an unreserved apology. This is highly unlikely to happen, however, as the two rendition operations are also the subject of a three-year Scotland Yard investigation code-named Operation Lydd. Straw has been questioned by detectives: his spokesman says he was interviewed “as a witness”.

Last month, detectives passed a final file to the Crown Prosecution Service. No charges are imminent, however. The CPS said: “The police investigation has lasted almost three years and has produced a large amount of material. These are complex allegations that will require careful consideration, but we will aim to complete our decision-making as soon as is practicably possible.”

The volte-face in UK-Libyan relations was always going to be contentious: the Gaddafi regime had not only helped to arm the IRA, bombed Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie with the loss of 270 lives in 1988, and harboured the man who murdered a London policewoman, Yvonne Fletcher, four years earlier; it had been responsible for the bombing of a French airliner and a Berlin nightclub, and for several decades had been sending assassins around the world to murder its opponents.

The Tripoli archives show that the rapprochement, which began with the restoration of diplomatic ties in 1999, gathered pace within weeks of the al-Qaida attacks of 9/11. Sir Richard Dearlove, who was head of MI6 at the time, has said that these links were always authorised by government ministers.

The week after the attacks, British intelligence officers met with Moussa Koussa, the head of Libyan intelligence, who offered to provide intelligence from Islamists held in the regime’s jails.

Two months later, British intelligence officers held a three-day conference with their Libyan counterparts at a hotel at a European airport. German and Austrian intelligence officers also attended.

According to the Libyan minutes, the British explained that they could not arrest anyone in the UK – only the police could do that – and that there could be difficulty in obtaining authorisation for Gaddafi’s intelligence officers to operate in the UK. They also added that impending changes to UK law would give them “more leeway” in the near future.

Other documents released under the Freedom of Information Act detail the way in which diplomatic contacts between London and Tripoli developed, with a British trade minister, Mike O’Brien, visiting Tripoli in August 2002, the same month that the dictator’s son, Saif, was admitted as a post-graduate student at the London School of Economics. Blair and Gaddafi spoke by telephone for the first time, chatting for 30 minutes, and in December 2003 the dictator announced publicly that he was abandoning his programme for the development of weapons of mass destruction.

With the war in Iraq going badly, London and Washington were able to suggest that an invasion that had been justified by a need to dismantle a WMD programme that was subsequently found not to exist had at least resulted in another country’s weapons programme being dismantled.

Three months later, in March 2004, the new relationship was sealed by a meeting between Gaddafi and Blair, during which the British prime minister announced that the two countries had found common cause in the fight against terrorism, and the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell announced that it had signed a £110m deal for gas exploration rights off the Libyan coast.

However, the Tripoli archive shows that beneath the surface of the new alliance, the Blair government was encouraging ever-closer co-operation between the UK’s intelligence agencies and the intelligence agencies of a dictatorship which had been widely condemned for committing the most serious human rights abuses; MI5 and MI6, and the CIA, would begin to work hand-in-glove with the Libyan External Security Organisation.

Eliza Manningham-Buller, who was head of MI5 during most of the period that the UK’s intelligence agencies were working closely with the Libyan dictatorship, has defended the decision to open talks with Gaddafi on the grounds that it helped to deter him from pursuing his WMD programme. However, when delivering the 2011 Reith Lecture, she added: “There are questions to be answered about the various relationships that developed afterwards and whether the UK supped with a sufficiently long spoon.”

The archive clearly shows that Gaddafi hoped that this intelligence co-operation would result in British assistance in his attempts to round up and imprison Libyans who were living in exile in the UK, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Mali. All of these men were members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), an Islamist organisation that had attempted to assassinate him three times since its foundation in the early 90s. A largely spent force since the late 90s, many of the members of the LIFG had been living peacefully in the UK for more than a decade, having arrived as refugees. Some had been granted British citizenship. Koussa’s agency asked British intelligence to investigate 79 of these men, whom they described as “Libyan heretics”.

Two weeks before Blair’s visit to Libya, Belhaj and his four-and-a-half-months pregnant wife, Fatima Bouchar, were kidnapped in Thailand and flown to Tripoli. Bouchar says she was taped, head to foot, to a stretcher, for the 17-hour flight.

In a follow-up letter to Koussa, Allen claimed credit for the rendition of Belhaj – referring to him as Abu Abd Allah Sadiq, the name by which he is better known in the jihadi world – saying that although “I did not pay for the air cargo”, the intelligence that led to the couple’s capture was British.

Three days after Blair’s visit, al-Saadi was rendered from Hong Kong to Tripoli, along with his wife and four children, the youngest a girl aged six.

Libya’s foreign minister Moussa Koussa was head of Libyan intelligence. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Libya’s foreign minister Moussa Koussa was head of Libyan intelligence.
Both men say that while being held at Tajoura prison outside Tripoli they were beaten, whipped, subjected to electric shocks, deprived of sleep and threatened.

Belhaj says he was twice interrogated at Tajoura by British intelligence officers. After gesturing that the session was being recorded, Belhaj says he made a number of gestures to show that he was being beaten and suspended by his arms. One of the British officers, a man, is said to have given a thumbs-up signal, while the second, a woman, is said to have nodded.

Belhaj alleges that following one of these encounters he agreed to sign a statement about his associates in the UK after being threatened with a form of torture called the Honda, which involved being locked in a box-like structure whose ceiling and walls could be shrunk, provoking extreme claustrophobia and fear as well as discomfort.

According to the claim being brought against the British government, the attempt to track down other leading members of the LIFG resulted in the intelligence agencies of Libya and the UK throwing their net still wider.

In late 2005, a British citizen of Somali origin and a Libyan living in Ireland were arrested in Saudi Arabia and allegedly tortured while being questioned by Saudi intelligence officers about associates who were members of the LIFG. The men say they were shackled and beaten. The British citizen says he was also interrogated by two British men who declined to identify themselves and who appeared uninterested in his complaints of mistreatment.

Many of the questions put to the two men concerned the whereabouts of Othman Saleh Khalifa, a long-standing member of the LIFG. Khalifa was detained in Mali a few months later and rendered to Libya. The Tripoli archive shows that summaries of his interrogations were sent to British intelligence, and that both MI5 and MI6 submitted questions that they wished to be put to him. A memorandum from MI6 to Koussa’s deputy, Sadegh Krema, was accompanied by questions “which you kindly agreed to pass to your interview team”.

Khalifa says that he was beaten during interrogations for around six months during the second half of 2006 and that he did not see daylight.

The Tripoli archive shows that during the same week that Khalifa was being rendered to Libya, MI5 and MI6 officers met Libyan intelligence officers in Tripoli and informed them that they were to be invited to the UK to conduct joint intelligence operations. The Libyan minutes of the meeting say that MI5 informed them that “London and Manchester are the two hottest spots” for LIFG activity in the country. The aim was to recruit informants within the Libyan community in the UK.

The Libyan minutes of the meeting also say that the British told them: “With your co-operation we should be able to target specific individuals.” The Libyans, meanwhile, said that potential recruits could be “intimidated” through threats to arrest relatives in Libya.

The following August, senior MI5 and MI6 officers and two Libyan intelligence officers met at MI5’s headquarters in London. According to the Libyan minutes, MI5 warned the Libyans that individuals could complain to the police if they believed they were being harassed by MI5, and could also expose the British-Libyan joint operations to the media.

The minutes also state that the British suggested that Libyan intelligence officers should approach potential recruits in the UK, and that if they refused to cooperate, arrangements could be made for the targets to be arrested under anti-terrorism legislation, accused of associating with those same Libyan intelligence officers, and threatened with deportation.

Sami al-Saadi has been paid £2.23m in compensation. Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Sami al-Saadi has been paid £2.23m in compensation.
One of the targets was a 32-year-old Libyan, associated with the LIFG, who had lived in the UK for 10 years and had been a British citizen for six years. The Libyan intelligence officers repeatedly telephoned him, claiming to be consular officials, and he eventually agreed to meet them at the Landmark hotel in Marylebone, London, on 2 September 2006. According to the Libyan notes of this meeting, the British insisted that two MI5 officers, one calling herself Caroline, should be present, so that the target should know that he was the subject of a joint UK-Libyan approach.

The target was told that he was to be given time to think about the approach. In Libya, meanwhile, the target’s brothers, sisters and mother say they were each detained in turn and told that they should persuade him to return to the country.

The Libyan intelligence officers also visited Manchester, calling at the home of another man targeted for recruitment. According to their notes, MI5 warned them not to enter the house but to persuade him to go with them to a public place where they could be photographed together. As he was not at home, the Libyan spies went instead to a mosque in the Didsbury district, where they told the imam that they were importing and exporting books.

On 5 September, shortly before the two Libyan intelligence officers returned home, they had another meeting with their British counterparts. Their notes show that the British warned that steps should be taken jointly to “avoid being trapped in any sort of legal problem [and] to avoid also that those joint plans be discovered by lawyers or human rights organisations and the media”. The Libyans assured MI5 and MI6: “We have effectively reassured them that we will stick by the joint plan to avoid any blame if the operation fails.”

The target says he was approached by “Caroline” and a second MI5 officer on a number of other occasions, but declined to travel to Libya and still lives in west London.

Six Libyan men, the widow of a seventh, and five British citizens of Libyan and Somali origin are bringing a number of claims, which include allegations of false imprisonment, blackmail, misfeasance in public office and conspiracy to assault.

The case is being brought against MI5 and MI6 as well as the Home Office and Foreign Office. Government departments declined to comment on the grounds that the litigation is ongoing.

When making their unsuccessful bid to have the case struck out, government lawyers admitted no liability. They argued that the five claimants who were subjected to control orders were properly considered to pose a threat to the UK’s national security, and denied that the government relied on information from prisoners held in Libya in making that assessment. They also argued that the LIFG had been a threat to the UK. They are expected to appeal Thursday’s high court decision.

Allen has declined to comment on the rendition operations, while Straw says: “At all times I was scrupulous in seeking to carry out my duties in accordance with the law, and I hope to be able to say more about this at an appropriate stage in the future.”

Ian Cobain
Thursday 22 January 2015 14.24 GMT Last modified on Monday 26 January 2015 14.03 GMT

Find this story at 22 January 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

MI5 spied on Libyan torture victims, documents reveal (2011)

BRITAIN’S security service MI5 asked Muammar Gaddafi’s secret services for regular updates on what terrorist suspects were revealing under interrogation in Libyan prisons, where torture was routine.

MI5 also agreed to trade information with Libyan spymasters on 50 British-based Libyans judged to be a threat to Gaddafi’s regime.

The disclosures come from secret intelligence documents left lying around in the ruins of the British embassy in Tripoli for anyone to find.

They include an MI5 paper marked “UK/Libya Eyes Only Secret”, which shows that the service provided Gaddafi’s spies with a trove of intelligence about Libyan dissidents in London, Cardiff, Birmingham and Manchester.

Other documents seen by The Sunday Times in the abandoned offices of British and Libyan officials reveal that:

– The Ministry of Defence invited the dictator’s sons Saadi and Khamis Gaddafi, whose forces have massacred civilians during Libya’s revolution, to a combat display at SAS headquarters in Hereford and a dinner at the Cavalry and Guards Club in Mayfair;

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– Tony Blair helped another son, Saif Gaddafi, with his PhD thesis, beginning a personal letter with the words “Dear Engineer Saif”;

– The Foreign Office planned to use Prince Andrew in a secret strategy to secure the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, from prison in Scotland and offset the risk of retaliation if he died in jail. In fact, Megrahi was released anyway.

The cache of documents shows how close the British governments of both Blair and Gordon Brown were to a brutal regime that was overthrown last month when pro-democracy rebels seized Tripoli.

Nowhere is this closeness more evident than in the intelligence sphere. The MI5 paper for Gaddafi’s security services contains detailed information about members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant dissident outfit with cells in Britain.

The document, prepared ahead of an MI5 visit to Tripoli in 2005, formally requested that Libyan intelligence should provide access to detainees held by secret police and to “timely debriefs” of interrogations.

It added: “The more timely (the) information the better … Such intelligence is most valuable when it is current. It is notable that LIFG members in the UK become aware of the detention of members overseas within a relatively short period.”

The request was made despite widespread evidence of torture in Libyan prisons and assassinations of dissidents in other countries, including Britain. Torture practices identified by the US State Department included “clubbing, setting dogs on prisoners, electric shocks, suffocation by plastic bags and pouring lemon juice into open wounds”.

The disclosures will reignite the debate on the alleged complicity of British security services in the torture of terrorist suspects abroad. Last year David Cameron announced a judge-led inquiry into separate claims that M15 and MI6 were complicit in the torture of British citizens by foreign interrogators.

Some of those named in the documents found in Tripoli are thought to have been arrested subsequently in Britain and placed on control orders, a form of house arrest that is due to be debated in parliament this week.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights group Liberty, said: “These chilling revelations show just how cosy British authorities became with a regime known for torture. How on earth did they think these timely detainee debriefs were going to be obtained?

“The thought that people [who were] discussed with Gadaffi’s henchmen may have been placed on control orders as a result of ‘detainee debriefs’ should prey on the mind of every MP who votes on the new control order regime tomorrow.”

Other documents that have emerged show how America’s CIA sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya. One letter from an MI6 officer to his Libyan counterpart reported the release from detention in Britain of a key LIFG member.

The MI5 document makes clear the key area of mutual interest to both countries was the LIFG, the most powerful radical faction waging war against Gadaffi’s regime. The group aimed to replace his dictatorship with a hardline Islamist state. Its main external base was in Britain, where 50 members lived.

MI5 believed the group had growing links to al-Qa’ida. It was suspected of supplying a “pipeline” of finance and false documents for the group’s international operations and of facilitating trips by jihadists from Britain to fight against western forces in Iraq.

MI5 also feared the LIFG might be planning terrorist attacks against the West.

A rider to the report says the information is being sent to the Libyans “for research and analysis purposes only and should not be used for overt, covert or executive action” – an apparent reference to kidnapping or execution.

A senior Whitehall official declined to discuss details of the agreement to share intelligence. He said: “We do not engage in, or encourage others to engage in, or contract out in situations where we knowingly, or have a very strong reason to believe that someone is being maltreated or is at risk of, maltreatment.”

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said intelligence documents emerging in Tripoli “relate to a period under the previous government, so I have no knowledge of those, of what was happening behind the scenes at that time”.

A document found in the office of Saadi Gaddafi, head of Libya’s special forces, showed the Ministry of Defence made elaborate plans for him to visit Britain in 2006 with his brother Khamis, whose commandos killed dozens of detainees before retreating from Tripoli as the regime fell.

The Sunday Times
MILES AMOORE AND DAVID LEPPARD THE SUNDAY TIMES SEPTEMBER 04, 2011 1:13PM

Find this story at 4 September 2011

Copyright http://www.theaustralian.com.au

Libya rebel commander wants MI6 and CIA apologies (2011)

The commander of anti-government forces in Tripoli has told the BBC he wants an apology from Britain and America for the way he was transferred to a prison in Libya in 2004.
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who was then a terror suspect, says he was tortured after being arrested in Bangkok and taken to the Libyan capital in an operation organised by the CIA and MI6.
Details of his case are included in messages sent to the Gaddafi regime by the two intelligence services.
Jeremy Bowen reports from Tripoli.

4 September 2011 Last updated at 22:39 BST

Find this story at 4 September 2011

Copyright © 2015 BBC

Libya: Gaddafi regime’s US-UK spy links revealed (2011)

US and UK spy agencies built close ties with their Libyan counterparts during the so-called War on Terror, according to documents discovered at the office of Col Gaddafi’s former spy chief.
The papers suggest the CIA abducted several suspected militants from 2002 to 2004 and handed them to Tripoli.
The UK’s MI6 also apparently gave the Gaddafi regime details of dissidents.
The documents, found by Human Rights Watch workers, have not been seen by the BBC or independently verified.
Meanwhile, the head of Libya’s interim governing body, the National Transitional Council, said its soldiers were laying siege to towns still held by Col Gaddafi’s forces.
Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Sirte, Bani Walid, Jufra and Sabha were being given humanitarian aid, but had one week to surrender.
The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Benghazi says there have been unconfirmed reports that Bani Walid has now been taken by anti-Gaddafi forces.
But witnesses on the edge of Bani Walid say the opposition fighters are still on the outskirts although our correspondent adds that it appears as if Gaddafi loyalists have abandoned many of their outlying positions.
‘Protecting Americans’
Thousands of pieces of correspondence from US and UK officials were uncovered by reporters and activists in an office apparently used by Moussa Koussa, who served for years as Col Gaddafi’s spy chief before becoming foreign minister.
Prime Minister Tony Blair embraces Colonel Muammar Gaddafi after a meeting on May 29, 2007 in Sirte, Libya

He defected in the early part of the rebellion, flying to the UK and then on to Qatar.
Rights groups have long accused him of involvement in atrocities, and had called on the UK to arrest him at the time.
The BBC’s Kevin Connolly in Tripoli says the documents illuminate a short period when the Libyan intelligence agency was a trusted and valued ally of both MI6 and the CIA, with the tone of exchanges between agents breezy and bordering on the chummy.
Human Rights Watch accused the CIA of condoning torture.
“It wasn’t just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence. The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it’s very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves,” said Peter Bouckaert of HRW.
The papers outline the rendition of several suspects, including one that Human Rights Watch has identified as Abdel Hakim Belhaj, known in the documents as Abdullah al-Sadiq, who is now the military commander of the anti-Gaddafi forces in Tripoli.
Alleged CIA letter

Text of letter
Dear Musa
I am glad to propose that our services take an additional step in cooperation with the establishment of a permanent CIA presence in Libya. We have talked about this move for quite some time and Libya’s cooperation on WMD and other issues, as well as our recent intelligence cooperation, mean that now is the right moment to move ahead. I am prepared to send [XXX] to Libya to introduce two of my officers to you and your service, arriving in Tripoli on 20 March. These two officers, both of whom are experienced and can speak Arabic, will initially staff our station in Libya. [XXX] will communicate the details via fax. I will call to confirm this with you.
We are also eager to work with you in the questioning of the terrorist we recently rendered to your country. I would like to send to Libya an additional two officers and I would appreciate if they could have direct access to question this individual. Should you agree I would like to send these two officers to Libya on 25 March. Again [XXX] will communicate the details to you.
Steve
The Americans snatched him in South East Asia before flying him to Tripoli in 2004, the documents claim.
Mr Belhaj, who was involved in an Islamist group attempting to overthrow Col Gaddafi in the early 2000s, had told the Associated Press news agency earlier this week that he had been rendered by the Americans, but held no grudge.
The CIA would not comment on the specifics of the allegations.
Spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood said: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”
The documents also reveal details about the UK’s relationship with the Gaddafi regime.
One memo, dated 18 March 2004 and with the address “London SE1”, congratulates Libya on the arrival of Mr Belhaj.
It states “for the urgent personal attention of Musa Kusa” and is headed “following message to Musa in Tripoli from Mark in London”, according to the Financial Times. Its authenticity could not be independently verified.
The UK intelligence agency apparently helped to write a speech for Col Gaddafi in 2004, when the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair was encouraging the colonel to give up his weapons programme.
And British officials also insisted that Mr Blair’s famous 2004 meeting with Col Gaddafi should be in his Bedouin tent, according to the UK’s Independent newspaper, whose journalists also discovered the documents.
“[The prime minister’s office is] keen that the prime minister meet the leader in his tent,” the paper quotes a memo from an MI6 agent as saying.
“I don’t know why the English are fascinated by tents. The plain fact is the journalists would love it.”
In another memo, also seen by the Independent, UK intelligence appeared to give Tripoli details of a Libyan dissident who had been freed from jail in Britain.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague played down the revelations, telling Sky News that they “relate to a period under the previous government so I have no knowledge of those, of what was happening behind the scenes at that time”.
Mr Blair and US President George W Bush lobbied hard to bring Col Gaddafi out of international isolation in the years after the 9/11 attacks, as Libya moved to normalise relations with former enemies in the West.
Bani Walid
In a press conference in Benghazi, Mr Jalil said four Gaddafi-held towns had one week to surrender “to avoid further bloodshed”.
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Media caption
UN envoy Ian Martin on measuring the “expectations” of Libya
But our correspondent, Jon Leyne, says there are reports Bani Walid has now fallen without a fight, with Gaddafi loyalists either melting away or regrouping further south. However, these reports have not been confirmed.
One anti-Gaddafi commander, Abdulrazzak Naduri, had earlier told AFP that Bani Walid had until just 08:00 on Sunday or face military action.
Col Gaddafi’s whereabouts remain unconfirmed. It was believed that two sons, Saadi and Saif al-Islam, had been in Bani Walid recently.
The NTC is stepping up its efforts at reconstruction, setting up a supreme security council to protect Tripoli.
Ian Martin, a special adviser to the UN secretary general, arrived in Libya’s capital on Saturday to try to boost international efforts in the country’s redevelopment.
The NTC has also said its leadership will not now move from Benghazi to Tripoli until next week, with Mr Jalil the last to go.
Our correspondent says this could mean a delay in the opposition formally assuming the role of the new government and raise fears of a power vacuum in the capital.

4 September 2011

Find this story at 4 September 2011

Copyright © 2015 BBC.

Gaddafi blames al-Qaeda for revolt (2011)

Embattled Libyan leader says protesters being manipulated as pro- and anti-government forces clash across the country.

Muammar Gaddafi, Libya’s leader, has said that al-Qaeda is responsible for the uprising against him, amid attacks by pro-Gaddafi forces against anti-government protesters in several cities.
On Friday, tens of thousands gathered at cities in the country’s east controlled by anti-Gaddafi forces for Friday prayers, expressing their desire for Gaddafi to leave office.
In a speech made via telephone and aired on state television on Thursday, Gaddafi claimed that the protesters were young people who had been manipulated by Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda’s leader, and were acting under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

As he spoke, troops loyal to Gaddafi launched a counter-offensive on Thursday against anti-government protesters, striking at two cities near the capital, Tripoli.
The worst violence was seen in the town of Az Zawiyah, about 50km west of Tripoli, where troops opened fire with automatic weapons and an anti-aircraft gun on a mosque where protesters had been taking shelter.
On Friday, witnesses in the city told Al Jazeera that anti-government protesters had seized four tanks and weapons from a military barracks, and that they were prepared to fight to hold on to the city.
In his speech on Thursday, Gaddafi argued that he was a purely “symbolic” leader with no real political power, and that citizens had “no reason to complain whatsoever”. He hinted that he would be prepared to raise salaries, but warned that protesters would be tried in the country’s courts. [The entire speech is available here.]
On Friday, state television announced that every family in Libya would receive 500 dinars ($400), and that wages for some categories of public sector workers would increase by 150 per cent.
Our correspondent in eastern Libya reported on Friday that army commanders who had renounced Gaddafi’s leadership had told her that military commanders in the country’s west, which Gaddafi still largely maintains control over, were beginning to turn against him.
They warned, however, that the Khamis Brigade, an army special forces brigade that is loyal to the Gaddafi family and is equipped with sophisticated weaponry, is currently still fighting anti-government forces.
Pro-democracy protesters attacked
On Friday morning, our correspondents reported that the town of Zuwarah was, according to witnesses, abandoned by security forces and completely in the hands of anti-Gaddafi protesters. Checkpoints in the country’s west on roads leading to the Tunisian border, however, were still being controlled by Gaddafi loyalists.
In the east, similar checkpoints were manned by anti-Gaddafi forces, who had set up a “humanitarian aid corridor” as well as a communications corridor to the Egyptian border, our correspondent reported.
Fierce clashes were reported from various cities in the country on Thursday. Some residents of Az Zawiyah fought back against army troops with hunting rifles. A doctor at a field clinic set up at the mosque that came under attack there told the Associated Press news agency that he saw the bodies of 10 people, in addition to around 150 injured people.
Witnesses told Al Jazeera the deatht toll in the violence there estimated to be close to 100.

Follow more of Al Jazeera’s special coverage here
Thousands massed in Az Zawiyah’s Martyr’s Square after the attack, calling on Gaddafi to leave office, and on Friday morning, explosions were heard in the city. Witnesses say pro-Gaddafi forces were blowing up arms caches, in order to prevent anti-government forces from acquiring those weapons.
Clashes were also reported in the city of Misurata, located 200km east of Tripoli, where witnesses said a pro-Gaddafi army brigade attacked the city’s airport with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
They told Al Jazeera that pro-democracy protesters had managed to fight off that attack. “Revolutionaries have driven out the security forces,” they said, adding that “heavy machine guns and anti-aircraft guns” had been used against them.
Mohamed Senussi, a resident of Misurata, said calm had returned to the city after the “fierce battle” near the airport.
“The people’s spirits here are high, they are celebrating and chanting ‘God is Greatest’,” he told the Reuters news agency by telephone.
Another witness warned, however, that protesters in Misurata felt “isolated” as they were surrounded by nearby towns still in Gaddafi’s control.
Protesters and air force personnel who have renounced Gaddafi’s leadership also overwhelmed a nearby military base where Gaddafi loyalists were taking refuge, according to a medical official at the base. They disabled air force fighter jets at the base so that they could not be used against protesters.
Similar clashes between pro- and anti-government forces were also reported on Thursday in the towns of Sabha in the south and Sabratha, near Tripoli.
In Tripoli itself, witnesses said security forces had fired upon residents of the Tajoura neighbourhood.
Protesters control east
Pro-democracy protesters appear to remain in control of much of the country’s eastern coastline, running from the Egyptian border, through to the cities of Tobruk and Benghazi, the country’s second largest city.
They also say they are in control of the western cities of Misurata and Zuwarah. Libyan army forces in many cities in the country’s east say that they stand with the anti-government forces against Gaddafi.

Protesters in Benghazi have held people they claim are mercenaries contracted by Gaddafi [Reuters]
Pro-democracy protesters say they have established committees to manage the affairs of the cities they are in control of.
Our correspondent reported that army commanders had told her that there were “cracks [appearing] in the whole system that Gaddafi has put in place and his whole grip in power is melting away by the hour”.
She said that pro-democracy protesters in the east had overrun military barracks and now had access to heavy weaponry.
On Thursday, about a dozen people were held in Benghazi by pro-democracy protesters on charges of behind mercenaries working for Gaddafi.
Tripoli, the capital, meanwhile, remains under lockdown, amid reports that protesters have called for anti-government forces to march on the city after Friday prayers.
Libya has been in the grip of turmoil since anti-Gaddafi protests began on February 15. Two days later, the government launched a violent crackdown on protesters, with witnesses reporting that mercenaries had been hired to patrol the streets and fire on citizens indiscriminately with machine guns and heavy weapons.
The use of air attacks against civilian targets has also been reported by witnesses and air force personnel who have refused to carry out those orders.
Security forces have also been launching raids on homes and firing into the air on the streets of Tripoli. A witness told Reuters that security forces had also raided a hospital, searching for injured anti-government protesters.
Violence has ramped up after Gaddafi appeared on state television on Tuesday calling on his supporters to take back the streets and “cleanse” Libya.
Gaddafi increasingly isolated
Gaddafi, who has ruled Libya for 41 years, is growing increasingly isolated both from foreign governments, but also from elements within his government and military.
On Thursday Ahmed Gadhaf al-Dam, a cousin who is one of Gaddafi’s closest aides, announced that he was renouncing Gaddafi’s leadership in protest against “grave violations to human rights and human and international laws”.
Al-Dam is one of the highest level renouncals to hit the regime, with many ambassadors, as well as the justice and interior ministers, either resigning or announcing that they are standing with protesters. The country’s chief prosecutor and chief judicial investigator have also resigned.
Mustafa Abdel Galil, who earlier resigned as justice minister, spoke to Al Jazeera at a meeting of tribal leaders and representatives of eastern Libya in the city of Al Baida. That meeting was also attended by military commanders who refused orders to fire on protesters.
“We want one country. There is no Islamic emirate or al-Qaeda anywhere. Our only aim is to liberate Libya from this regime and then people choose the government they want.” Abdel Galil said.
He warned that Gaddafi has biological and chemical weapons, and will not hesitate to use them.
UN meeting planned
The United Nations Security Council was to hold a meeting on the situation in Libya on Friday, with sanctions the possible imposition of a no-fly zone over the country under Article 7 of the UN charter on the table.
The UN’s highest human-rights body was also holding a special session to discuss what it’s chief had earlier described as possible “crimes against humanity” by the Gaddafi government.
The Swiss government, meanwhile, has ordered a freeze of any assets belonging to Gaddafi in the country. Libya’s foreign ministry has denied that any such assets exist, and said that it would “sue” Switzerland.
The death toll since violence began remains unclear, though on Thursday Francois Zimeray, France’s top human rights official, said it could be as high as 2,000 people killed.
Earlier, Franco Frattini, Italy’s foreign minister, said a number of 1,000 was “credible”. The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights put the figure at 640 as of Wednesday.
Foreign governments are continuing to evacuate their citizens from the country, with thousands flooding to the country’s land borders with Tunisia and Egypt.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
25 Feb 2011 12:30 GMT

Find this story at 25 February 2011

Copyright www.aljazeera.com

Files Note Close C.I.A. Ties to Qaddafi Spy Unit (2011)

TRIPOLI, Libya — Documents found at the abandoned office of Libya’s former spymaster appear to provide new details of the close relations the Central Intelligence Agency shared with the Libyan intelligence service — most notably suggesting that the Americans sent terrorism suspects at least eight times for questioning in Libya despite that country’s reputation for torture.

Although it has been known that Western intelligence services began cooperating with Libya after it abandoned its program to build unconventional weapons in 2004, the files left behind as Tripoli fell to rebels show that the cooperation was much more extensive than generally known with both the C.I.A. and its British equivalent, MI-6.

Some documents indicate that the British agency was even willing to trace phone numbers for the Libyans, and another appears to be a proposed speech written by the Americans for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi about renouncing unconventional weapons.

The documents were discovered Friday by journalists and Human Rights Watch. There were at least three binders of English-language documents, one marked C.I.A. and the other two marked MI-6, among a larger stash of documents in Arabic.

It was impossible to verify their authenticity, and none of them were written on letterhead. But the binders included some documents that made specific reference to the C.I.A., and their details seem consistent with what is known about the transfer of terrorism suspects abroad for interrogation and with other agency practices.

And although the scope of prisoner transfers to Libya has not been made public, news media reports have sometimes mentioned it as one country that the United States used as part of its much criticized rendition program for terrorism suspects.

A C.I.A. spokeswoman, Jennifer Youngblood, declined to comment on Friday on the documents. But she added: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”

The British Foreign Office said, “It is the longstanding policy of the government not to comment on intelligence matters.”

While most of the renditions referred to in the documents appear to have been C.I.A. operations, at least one was claimed to have been carried out by MI-6.

“The rendition program was all about handing over these significant figures related to Al Qaeda so they could torture them and get the information they wanted,” said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, who studied the documents in the intelligence headquarters in downtown Tripoli.

The documents cover 2002 to 2007, with many of them concentrated in late 2003 and 2004, when Moussa Koussa was head of the External Security Organization. (Mr. Koussa was most recently Libya’s foreign minister.)

The speech that appears to have been drafted for Colonel Qaddafi was found in the C.I.A. folder and appears to have been sent just before Christmas in 2003. The one-page speech seems intended to depict the Libyan dictator in a positive light. It concluded, using the revolutionary name for the Libyan government: “At a time when the world is celebrating the birth of Jesus, and as a token of our contributions towards a world full of peace, security, stability and compassion, the Great Jamhariya presents its honest call for a W.M.D.-free zone in the Middle East,” referring to weapons of mass destruction.

The flurry of communications about renditions are dated after Libya’s renouncement of its weapons program. In several of the cases, the documents explicitly talked about having a friendly country arrest a suspect, and then suggested aircraft would be sent to pick the suspect up and deliver him to the Libyans for questioning. One document included a list of 89 questions for the Libyans to ask a suspect.

While some of the documents warned Libyan authorities to respect such detainees’ human rights, the C.I.A. nonetheless turned them over for interrogation to a Libyan service with a well-known history of brutality.

One document in the C.I.A. binder said operatives were “in a position to deliver Shaykh Musa to your physical custody, similar to what we have done with other senior L.I.F.G. members in the recent past.” The reference was to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was dedicated to the overthrow of Colonel Qaddafi, and which American officials believed had ties to Al Qaeda.

When Libyans asked to be sent Abu Abdullah al-Sadiq, another member of the group, a case officer wrote back on March 4, 2004, that “we are committed to developing this relationship for the benefit of both our services,” and promised to do their best to locate him, according to a document in the C.I.A. binder.

Two days later, an officer faxed the Libyans to say that Mr. Sadiq and his pregnant wife were planning to fly into Malaysia, and the authorities there agreed to put them on a British Airways flight to London that would stop in Bangkok. “We are planning to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” the case officer wrote.

Mr. Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch said he had learned from the documents that Sadiq was a nom de guerre for Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who is now a military leader for the rebels.

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Belhaj gave a detailed description of his incarceration that matched many of those in the documents. He also said that when he was held in Bangkok he was tortured by two people from the C.I.A.

On one occasion, the Libyans tried to send their own plane to extradite a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Abu Munthir, and his wife and children, who were being held in Hong Kong because of passport irregularities.

The Libyan aircraft, however, was turned back, apparently because Hong Kong authorities were reluctant to let Libyan planes land. In a document labeled “Secret/ U.S. Only/ Except Libya,” the Libyans were advised to charter an aircraft from a third country. “If payment of a charter aircraft is an issue, our service would be willing to assist financially,” the document said.

While questioning alleged terror group members plainly had value to Western intelligence, the cooperation went beyond that. In one case, for example, the Libyans asked operatives to trace a phone number for them, and a document that was in the MI-6 binder replied that it belonged to the Arab News Network in London. It is unclear why the Libyans sought who the phone number belonged to.

The document also suggested signs of agency rivalries over Libya. In the MI-6 binder, a document boasted of having turned over someone named Abu Abd Alla to the Libyans. “This was the least we could do for you to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years,” an unsigned fax in 2004 said. “Amusingly, we got a request from the Americans to channel requests for information from Abu Abd through the Americans. I have no intention of doing any such thing.”

By ROD NORDLANDSEPT. 2, 2011

Find this story at 2 September 2011

© 2015 The New York Times Company HomeSearch

Documents show ties between Libyan spy head, CIA (2011)

Associated Press= TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) — The CIA and other Western intelligence agencies worked closely with the ousted regime of Moammar Gadhafi, sharing tips and cooperating in handing over terror suspects for interrogation to a regime known to use torture, according to a trove of security documents discovered after the fall of Tripoli.

The revelations provide new details on the West’s efforts to turn Libya’s mercurial leader from foe to ally and provide an embarrassing example of the U.S. administration’s collaboration with authoritarian regimes in the war on terror.

The documents, among tens of thousands found in an External Security building in Tripoli, show an increasingly warm relationship, with CIA agents proposing to set up a permanent Tripoli office, addressing their Libyan counterparts by their first names and giving them advice. In one memo, a British agent even sends Christmas greetings.

The agencies were known to cooperate as the longtime Libyan ruler worked to overcome his pariah status by stopping his quest for weapons of mass destruction and renouncing support for terrorism. But the new details show a more extensive relationship than was previously known, with Western agencies offering lists of questions for specific detainees and apparently the text for a Gadhafi speech.

They also offer a glimpse into the inner workings of the now-defunct CIA program of extraordinary rendition, through which terror suspects were secretly detained, sent to third countries and sometimes underwent the so-called enhanced interrogation tactics like waterboarding.

The documents mention a half dozen names of people targeted for rendition, including Tripoli’s new rebel military commander, Abdel-Hakim Belhaj.

Peter Bouckaert of Human Rights Watch, which helped find the documents, called the ties between Washington and Gadhafi’s regime “A very dark chapter in American intelligence history.”

“It remains a stain on the record of the American intelligence services that they cooperated with these very abusive intelligence services,” he said Saturday.

The findings could cloud relations between the West and Libya’s new leaders, although Belhaj said he holds no grudge. NATO airstrikes have helped the rebels advance throughout the six-month civil war and continue to target regime forces as rebels hunt for Gadhafi.

Belhaj is the former leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a now-dissolved militant organization that sought to assassinate Gadhafi.

Belhaj says CIA agents tortured him in a secret prison in Thailand before he was returned to Libya and locked in the notorious Abu Salim prison. He insists he was never a terrorist and believes his arrest was in reaction to what he called the “tragic events of 9/11.”

Two documents from March 2004 show American and Libyan officials arranging Belhaj’s rendition.

Referring to him by his nom de guerre, Abdullah al-Sadiq, the documents said he and his pregnant wife were due to travel to Thailand, where they would be detained.

“We are planning to arrange to take control of the pair in Bangkok and place them on our aircraft for a flight to your country,” they tell the Libyans. The memo also requested that Libya, a country known for decades for torture and ill-treatment of prisoners: “Please be advised that we must be assured that al-Sadiq will be treated humanely and that his human rights will be respected.”

The documents coincide with efforts by the Gadhafi regime over the last decade to emerge from international isolation, even agreeing to pay compensation to relatives of each of the 270 victims of the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am jumbo jet over Lockerbie, Scotland.

The documents show the CIA and MI6 advising the regime on how to work to rescind its designation as a state sponsor of terror — a move the Bush administration made in 2006. Both agencies received intelligence benefits in return.

The validity of the documents, not written on official letterhead, could not be independently verified, but their content seems consistent with what has been previously reported about intelligence activities during the period.

Later correspondence deals with technical visits to Libya to track the regime’s progress in dismantling its weapons programs.

In one undated memo, the CIA proposes establishing a permanent presence in Libya.

“I propose that our services take an additional step in cooperation with the establishment of a permanent CIA presence in Libya,” it says. It is signed by hand “Steve.”

Another memo is a follow-up query to an apparent Libyan warning of terror plots against American interests abroad.

One document is a draft statement for Gadhafi about his country’s decision to give up weapons of mass destruction.

“Our belief is that an arms race does not serve the security of Libya or the security of the region and contradicts Libya’s great keenness for world peace and security,” it suggests as wording.

But much of the correspondence deals with arrangements to render terror suspects to Libya from South Africa, Hong Kong and elsewhere. One CIA memo from April 2004 tells Libyan authorities that the agency can deliver a suspect known as “Shaykh Musa.”

“We respectfully request an expression of interest from your service regarding taking custody of Musa,” the memo says.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood declined to comment Saturday on specific allegations related to the documents.

“It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats,” Youngblood said. “That is exactly what we are expected to do.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague also declined to comment on intelligence matters.

In Tripoli, Anes Sherif, an aide to Belhaj, said the documents provided little new information: “We have known for a long time that (the British and U.S. governments) had very close relations with Gadhafi’s regime.”

Amid the shared intelligence and names of terror suspects are traces of personal relationships.

In one letter from Dec. 24, 2003, a British official thanks Gadhafi’s spy chief Moussa Koussa — who later became foreign minister and defected early in the uprising — for a “very large quantity of dates and oranges” and encourages him to continue with reforms.

“Your achievement realizing the Leader’s initiative has been enormous and of huge importance,” the British official says. “At this time sacred to peace, I offer you my admiration and every congratulation.

AP foreign, Saturday September 3 2011
BEN HUBBARD

Find this story at 3 September 2011

© 2015 Guardian News

“I couldn’t help but be surprised”: These Vietnam-era dirty tricks will shock you

The true story of how CIA infiltrated the National Student Association is even worse than we thought. Here’s why

At this point in our history, most Americans are quite familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency’s habit of being creative with (or, depending on your ideological leanings, outright contemptuous of) the rule of law. But although it was certainly the case by the late 1960s that Americans were beginning to look askance on their government like never before, a bombshell report from Ramparts Magazine in 1967, which found that the CIA had infiltrated and co-opted the National Student Association (NSA), still came to many as a shock. In a post-”enhanced interrogation” world, that might seem a little quaint; but a better angle might be to see it as a warning, unheeded, of worse things to come.

The CIA’s relationship with the NSA has not been as widely remembered as other government scandals of the era, but in her new book “Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism,” political scientist and the American Prospect contributing editor Karen Paget shows that there’s much about the CIA’s meddling with the NSA that we still don’t fully grasp. Moreover, what Paget found after years of meticulous research is that much of what we’ve been told about the controversy in the decades since has been incomplete — or outright untrue.

Recently, Salon spoke over the phone with Paget to discuss the NSA, the CIA’s involvement, and how the relationship between the two organizations evolved with and reflected the changing currents of the Cold War. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the USNSA was and what kind of work they did? What kind of person was drawn to that organization?

It was founded in 1947 and it was structured so that student governments belonged to the National Student Association, not individual students on campus. That was very deliberate in its founding because anti-Communist attitudes were very crucial in the formation of the NSA. It claimed, however, to speak for all American students. Probably between 400 and 1,000 of any given year attended huge NSA congresses which mimicked political party conventions and where both domestic and international issues were debated, where the officers were elected.

NSA presented itself as kind of an exemplar of student self-government, which was sort of new after the war. There were many colleges and universities that didn’t have a student government, including Yale, as a matter of fact. I think from ’47 to ’67, one thing that was true for just about all generations is how exciting it was to meet people from other parts of the country. Remember, no social media, no cell phones; most people didn’t read the New York Times; you didn’t really have access to other American students and very few people had access to foreign students. You find people talking about how exciting it was.

This was also a period of time in which very smart people were attracted to student government. Many of the people that I listened to in the mid-60s were unbelievable orators; if you made a list of the people that came out of NSA, many of them would be familiar to younger generations even today — Barney Frank, or the journalist Jeff Greenfield — so these annual gatherings were a real induction into political debate on the issues of one’s time. The composition of the delegations changed over time. One fact very salient to the unfolding of this story is that just after World War 2, 50 percent of all students on campus were returned veterans, so that made it a very unique student population.

What was it about this organization that also drew the CIA’s attention?

The very simple answer is that the Soviets were interested in students. In fact, the National Student Association was really created in response to an international event, which was the 1946 founding of the International Union of Students based in Prague. At that point, IUS represented about 70 countries and it was very broadly based. Most European unions joined and there was a big debate over whether it was Communist-dominated because of the location— although Czechoslovakia was not then a Communist country.

There was an American delegation that attended in 1946 but it was ad-hoc, drawn from both campuses and other student and youth groups. They were very diverse, politically, from the left to the center to even some of the conservative Catholics, but the one thing that they could agree on was that if American students were to have any influence in this organization they had to found a national student organization of their own.

So the story really starts well before the actual founding of the USNSA?

I tried for almost five years to start the story in 1947 — I thought it was logical because that’s when the Constitutional Convention was held and that’s when the CIA was founded— but I kept seeing all these hidden hands. At that point, I knew I had to knit everything backwards, which I did do. To foreshadow a much more complicated story, I think the sheer number of agencies and organizations behind the scenes prior to the formation of the NSA is stunning: it ranges from the American Catholic Bishops to the Vatican to the State Department to multiple intelligence agencies.

I would also distinguish this early period from the covert operation that was run through and with NSA. Initially, the CIA had determined that covert actions were outside the charter that Congress had granted them. The first covert office was not really up and running until 1948, and then over the next few years the relationship with NSA became more and more clandestine; more and more secret; more and more formal, and then it grows and morphs into many different operations.

How much did the student members of the NSA know that they were working with the CIA?

There were absolutely two distinct groups of NSA students. The people who worked consciously, knowingly, with the CIA were made witting. Students who were going to fill the roles that the CIA wanted filled within the NSA were recruited through different means and each person underwent this ritual where any person who had passed the security background examination was either taken out to some posh place, usually with a former NSA person who had gone inside the agency to be a career staff, often helping to oversee the relationship.

Let’s just say they were an elected officer; they were told that there were aspects of their new position that were important to the United States government and the older NSA person would say, I’d like to tell you about those aspects. Neither I nor most of the students who entered this way knew why the US government was interested, didn’t know what they were going to learn, but after they signed, they learned that the CIA funded and ran the international program of the United States National Student Association. Anyone who crossed that boundary not only knew but reported to a CIA case officer, had code names, reporting requirements, and ops meetings.

Could you be a higher-up in the NSA and not be brought into the fold?

There were such people; I can’t say for sure but it looks like most of the people had something in their background that made the agency balk at making them witting. The president was always made witting and the international affairs vice-president was always made witting. In 1967, as part of the constructed cover-up, the agency tried to say they only made two officials witting but that is misleading. The word “officials” means elected officials, because by then there was a large international staff and there were overseas NSA representatives.

You were made witting if you were those elected positions but you could be recruited by several other mechanisms. One was in 1953, a six-week seminar called the International Student Relations Seminar. People were very carefully selected for that seminar and while they were learning about international student politics in eye-glazing detail they were undergoing background security investigations.

At the end of the summer, a number of the students would be offered jobs on the international side of NSA, which is what happened with my husband; he did not know anything about the CIA or the U.S. government when he took the job. To my surprise, there were also career agents— particularly in the 60s— that came out of Langley headquarters and became NSA overseas representatives. Part of the explanation for that is that NSA was operating on so many continents and so many countries in the 60s, and it was such a time of seething anti-colonial sentiment that they were just desperate for students who could operate.

Some of the officers were only involved for the one year that they were elected officials of the NSA. Others spent five years with the agency because if you did that, apart from basic training, you got an exemption from the draft. That had great meaning during the Korean War, as several former participants explained to me. They said, look, it kept me out of Korea! Others still stayed far longer and became career officers.

Is there any truth to the various explanations given by the government of the CIA’s operations within the NSA?

The cover story that was constructed in 1967, which has four crucial elements. One of them is essentially a denial that these were operations. The claim people still try to stick to is that the CIA just gave NSA “a few travel grants” but I don’t think you can read this book and conclude that that was the case. A lot of the agents argued that they never exercised any control over the students, but that’s a complicated question. Most participants were hardened Cold Warriors who, once they learned of it, were true believers in the anti-Communist cause.

In terms of the construction of a cover-up in ’67, the third was that they never compromised the independence of NSA; again, I don’t think you can read this book and come to that conclusion. They always claimed that there was Presidential approval of these operations but the evidence is mixed and I now have declassified documents that show how the State Department, the CIA, and the White House all scrambled to find that Presidential authority in 1967 — and they could not find specific authority in any of their files. The then-Senator from New York, Robert F. Kennedy, saved them by coming out and saying that all the past presidents had approved, but he had no way of knowing that, really. He himself was an advocate of these kinds of operations so he did have first-hand information about NSA and had met, in fact, with some of their officers during that time.

What I’m trying to say is that the critical elements of the cover story are absolutely refuted by this book.

Why has it been so difficult for you to find information from this time period? Why is there still a desire to sweep this under the rug?

There are two different answers. One is this claim that the documents would reveal sources and methods, which is a generic national security claim. I found three 1948 reports that had been reclassified in 2001 and it took nine years to get two of the three declassified. There was just nothing in them… The two that got declassified were about what the “bad boys” were doing to us and the one that didn’t get declassified a second time I think was about what we were doing to the bad guys. In that broad-brush national security claim, there is a lot of instinct to protect people or to not be embarrassed.

There is also a grey area, as one of the career people said to me; it’s not clear these were legal operations. His first reaction was, how can they possible be legal? since the agency was forbidden to operate domestically. He found people inside the agency defensive about the question and finally concluded that it was definitely a grey area.

What criticism did you hear about the CIA’s operations from NSA members?

The early Cold Warriors, up to the mid- to late 50′s are pretty unambiguous about still supporting what they did, but they don’t particularly look at the strategies. When you get into the time between ’58 and ’67, these are the participants who offer a much more nuanced and often devastatingly critical analysis of the strategies they used, even if they might defend their attempt. It’s a distinction between motivation and consequences.

For example, one of the people who surprised me the most was one of the two people that was involved in making me witting: Robert Kiley. However much he might have believed in the Algerian revolutionaries’ right to self-determination, he said specifically that none of those people amounted to a hill of beans. He also criticized the policy of not having any contact with the Communist international organization; he actually said that he felt it was a truly paranoid view within the agency.

There was a massive amount of intelligence reporting that came into the agency from specific countries or the International Student Conference, but who else in the agency besides the Covert Action Unit got to see all this reporting? Where did those reports go? That really bothers a lot of participants because nobody knows. It deeply troubles them.

Did you have assumptions about the program that became complicated by your research?

I didn’t really have too many assumptions because my knowledge was very rough-hewn. I knew it wasn’t what people said in 1967 who were defending the agency; I knew there was more to it, but I didn’t know what the more to it meant. Absolutely critical to my process is this ginormous collection of international NSA papers at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University…

I couldn’t help but be surprised at the high-level attention the CIA gave; there is a declassified memo that detailed the conservative influence in the National Student Association in the early 60s when the Young Americans for Freedom was formed. First they tried to take over NSA and then they tried to destroy it by having campus-by-campus disaffiliation votes. This was the highest levels of the CIA worrying about the conservatives, and the reason they were so concerned is that it was crucial for international credibility that NSA always be able to speak int he name of American students.

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When the Student Movement Was a CIA Front

The CIA’s manipulation of the National Student Association foreshadowed other forms of Cold War blowback that compromised democracy at home.

This book review appears in the Winter 2015 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism
By Karen M. Paget
552 pp. Yale University Press $35

In its March 1967 issue, Ramparts, a glossy West Coast muckraking periodical that expired in 1975, and that strongly opposed American involvement in the war in Vietnam, published an exposé of the close relationship between the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Student Association. This other NSA—not to be confused with the National Security Agency—was then the leading American organization representing college students, with branches on about 400 campuses. Its ties with the CIA were formed in the early years of both institutions following World War II, as the Cold War was getting under way.
According to Ramparts, the CIA had been providing much of the funding for the NSA through various “conduits.” NSA officers, many of them wittingly, had served the interests of the CIA by participating actively in international youth and student movements. The NSA’s activities were financed by the Agency both to counter communist influence and also to provide information on people from other countries with whom they came in contact. The disclosures about the CIA’s ties to the NSA were the most sensational of a number of revelations in that era that exposed the Agency’s involvement in such institutions as the Congress for Cultural Freedom; the International Commission of Jurists; the AFL-CIO; Radio Free Europe; and various leading philanthropic foundations. Karen Paget’s new book, Patriotic Betrayal, is the most detailed account yet of the CIA’s use of the National Student Association as a vehicle for intelligence gathering and covert action. (See author’s endnote.)

With the passage of half a century, it may be difficult to understand why so many political and cultural organizations, led by individuals with a generally liberal or leftist outlook, covertly collaborated with the CIA in the 1950s and first half of the 1960s, before exposés in Ramparts and other publications put an end to most such arrangements. After all, many of the activities of the Agency in that era are among those that we now regard as particularly discreditable. These include the CIA’s cooperation with the British intelligence services in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953; its cooperation with the United Fruit Company in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954; and its cooperation with the Republic of the Congo’s former colonial rulers, the Belgians, in overthrowing the country’s newly elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, in 1960.

Several factors seem to me to have played a part. Press reporting on these events in that era tended not to focus on the role of the CIA. It was only years later, after the Senate’s 1975-1976 Church Committee investigations, after long-after-the-fact investigations by journalists and scholars, and after the mid-1980s development of the National Security Archive and its extensive and effective use of the Freedom of Information Act, that many otherwise well-informed Americans grasped the role of the CIA in these events.

It was a struggle that had to be won, not only on the military battlefield, but also in intellectual and ideological combat with the communists.
Also during the 1950s and the 1960s, the CIA, paradoxically, was the federal agency that seemed most ready to enlist liberals and leftists in its activities. In contrast, the State Department, which had been the main target of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on those he accused of being communist sympathizers, probably would not have risked involvement with many of the young people who collaborated with the CIA. Above all, there was the atmosphere created by the Cold War. It was a struggle that had to be won, not only on the military battlefield, but also in intellectual and ideological combat with the communists.

Finally, it may be that covert activities had their own appeal. Those who were in on the secret were an elite, deriving satisfaction comparable to that provided by membership in an exclusive club.

This was also a period in which many other Americans with similar views collaborated with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the CIA’s counterpart in the domestic intelligence field. In this era, the Bureau relied extensively on informers to accumulate its vast dossiers on the political associations and personal lives of millions of Americans. When I was executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1970s, we discovered through documents we obtained under the Freedom of Information Act that three officials of the ACLU in the 1950s had given the FBI information on others within the ACLU they suspected of being communists. They seem to have rationalized their conduct, at least in part, on the basis that cooperation with the FBI would help protect the ACLU against irresponsible congressional investigative bodies such as the House Un-American Activities Committee. The FBI’s COINTELPRO, a program the Bureau established secretly in 1956 to foster jealousies and feuds in organizations whose activities the Bureau wished to disrupt, depended in part on its ability to collect personal data from informers within those organizations. The atmosphere created by the Cold War, in which the FBI and its allies in Congress and the media portrayed domestic subversives allied with foreign enemies as being the greatest threat to the United States, probably played a large part in persuading so many Americans to act as informers.

A number of young CIA collaborators who figure in Paget’s story later achieved prominence. One of the book’s virtues is that we get a clear picture of how well-educated and successful young Americans got involved in clandestine activities, and how they conducted themselves. But a frustrating aspect of the book is that, in most cases, Paget does not mention their subsequent careers. At least one leading academic figure’s undisclosed youthful relationship with the CIA could be considered relevant to his later published work.

One of those collaborators Paget discusses is Allard Lowenstein, president of the NSA from 1950 to 1951, who became a leading civil rights and anti-war activist, a one-term member of Congress, and the organizer of the “Dump Johnson” movement that helped deter President Lyndon Johnson from running for re-election in 1968. A charismatic figure, he inspired many others to become activists in the causes that mattered to him. In 1980, Lowenstein was assassinated in his office by a deranged gunman who had become obsessed with him. Though some have previously speculated that Lowenstein initiated the NSA relationship with the CIA, Paget’s research does not support this view. She finds that he may have obstructed such a relationship, and, if it took place when he was a leader of the NSA, he was probably not aware. Following the Ramparts disclosures, when 12 former presidents of the NSA issued a press release defending the covert relationship with the Agency, Lowenstein did not sign. Among those rumored or confirmed to have covertly collaborated with the CIA, Lowenstein stands out in Paget’s book as the principal figure whom she clears of suspicion.

In discussing Robert Kiley, who was vice president of the NSA from 1957 to 1958, Paget never mentions that he eventually became a leading figure in urban transit, heading New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and then, on the other side of the Atlantic, heading London Regional Transport. Paget discusses only how Kiley as a student leader cooperated closely with the CIA and subsequently went to work directly for the Agency, playing a leading role in identifying Africans who might collaborate with it. During his tenure on the CIA staff, in which he rose to become an aide to Director Richard Helms, Kiley helped manage the relationship with the student organization of which he had previously been an officer, sometimes in what seems a heavy-handed way.

Of those mentioned by Paget as knowing participants in the relationship between the NSA and the CIA, the most lustrous name is that of Gloria Steinem. Her connection has long been known. She acknowledged it following the disclosures by Ramparts. Steinem then told Newsweek: “In the CIA, I finally found a group of people who understood how important it was to represent the diversity of our government’s ideas at Communist festivals. If I had the choice, I would do it again.” Operating through a CIA front organization, established in cooperation with former NSA officers, Steinem recruited young Americans to participate in the 1959 communist-organized World Youth Festival in Vienna, and did the same a couple of years later when another such festival was held in Helsinki. Apparently, she did her job well, choosing American participants who were very effective in countering the communists. To her credit, Steinem, unlike several others, was candid; and this history hardly implicates the CIA in the rise of feminism.

Paul Sigmund, a longtime professor of politics at Princeton, died last April at the age of 85. He was particularly known for his many books and articles on Latin America, especially Chile. Sigmund wrote extensively about the overthrow of the Salvador Allende regime in Chile, which brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. In a lengthy article in the January 1974 Foreign Affairs, he attributed the September 1973 coup to Allende’s misdeeds. He argued: “What [the Allende government] cannot do is blame all its problems on foreign imperialists and their domestic allies, and ignore elementary principles of economic rationality and effective political legitimacy in its internal policies. No amount of foreign assistance can be a substitute for these, and no amount of foreign subversion or economic pressure can destroy them if they exist.”

According to Paget, Sigmund collaborated with the CIA over a period of several years. His role included drafting a plan for a six-week summer seminar conducted by a front group through which the Agency could screen other students who might be enlisted in its activities. (Sigmund’s relationship to the CIA had come to light in the wake of the Ramparts exposé, but he did not cite it years later when he wrote about these events in which the CIA played a leading role.) Paget, though, does not mention Sigmund’s subsequent career. She interviewed him and says, “He explained his willingness to cooperate with the CIA in pragmatic terms: ‘It kept me out of Korea.’” Whatever his motivations, the question arises whether Sigmund’s relationship to the Agency in the 1950s affected his subsequent scholarly work. We learned a long time ago that the Nixon administration primarily relied on the CIA to promote the overthrow of Allende. Should the professor of politics at Princeton have acknowledged his own past relationship with the CIA in an essay rebutting allegations of a central U.S. role in what happened in Chile? How would such a disclosure have affected reader assessment of his Foreign Affairs essay and his other writing on the subject?

Among the other NSA leaders named by Paget who subsequently became prominent are James P. Grant, the longtime and widely admired executive director of UNICEF who died in 1995; James Scott, professor of political science and anthropology at Yale who is highly regarded for his writing on Southeast Asia; Crawford Young, professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin and well-known scholar of African studies; Luigi Einaudi, an American diplomat who served as acting secretary general of the Organization of American States; and Duncan Kennedy, professor of law at Harvard, whose emergence as a leading critical theorist is mentioned by Paget and who has been open about his onetime association with the CIA.

Should disclosure of such relationships be considered obligatory for those who present themselves as independent scholars? Certainly, it should be incumbent on someone like Sigmund to disclose his covert connection to the CIA. Even if that relationship was long past, writing an essay exculpating that agency from a charge of subversion without such disclosure raises ethical issues.

Aside from whether such persons should subsequently disclose that they once had a covert connection to the CIA, there is the question of whether it was appropriate to enter into such a relationship in the first place. Certainly, there was an idealistic component. Countering communism, I believed at the time and still do today, was the right thing to do. Yet doing so by covertly manipulating domestic organizations compromised American freedom of association. This contradiction, as more and more students came to oppose the Vietnam War, led to the eventual rupture of the NSA and its CIA patrons.

We don’t know how the constituents of the NSA would have felt about their officers’ secret relationship with the CIA. What we can surmise, however, is that some would have been strongly opposed. The NSA’s members could not debate whether to enter into the relationship, and those opposed could not express their views because they were not in on the secret. Disclosure would have killed the program. Whatever one thinks about the importance of having had such means to wage the battles of the Cold War, it seems difficult to justify the deception that was central to its operation.

Author’s Note: I was not shocked by the disclosures in Ramparts. Though I lacked definite information, I had been generally aware that there was a relationship between the CIA and the NSA. In 1957, as a student at Cornell, I became national president of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, a small organization with a social democratic bent that had chapters on several college campuses. Paget describes SLID as “fiercely anticommunist.” Yes, but we were also civil libertarians and vigorously opposed the college bans on communist speakers prevalent in that era. In 1959, I took the lead in relaunching SLID as Students for a Democratic Society, but I soon lost influence in SDS to Tom Hayden and others, who took it in a more radical direction. These activities put me in contact with some leaders of the NSA named by Paget. Though I did not know who wittingly collaborated with the Agency, I recall being quite sure that the Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs, the main source of funding for the NSA, was a CIA front.

As Karen Paget notes in her “Acknowledgments,” her early work on this book was supported by a fellowship from the Open Society Institute when I was its president.

ARYEH NEIER APRIL 14, 2015

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A Friend of the Devil Inside a famous Cold War deception.

Consider the following strategic dilemma. You are a superpower that hopes to convert other nations to principles you hold vital—these might be individual liberty, private property, and free markets. There is another superpower out there that is hoping to do the same thing, to persuade other nations to embrace its principles—for example, social equality, state ownership, and centralized planning.

One day, you realize that this rival superpower has been busy creating international organizations and staging world congresses and festivals in the name of peace and democracy, and inviting people from other nations to participate.

These organizations and festivals are fronts. Their membership, their programs, and the political positions they enthusiastically adopt are all clandestinely orchestrated by the rival superpower, which is pumping large amounts of money into them. What’s more, in your view that rival superpower is not a peace-loving democracy at all. It’s a totalitarian regime. Yet its slogans attract unwary writers and artists, intellectuals, students, organized labor—people who believe in world peace and international coöperation.

You believe in those things, too. But you think that the slogans are being used to advance your rival’s interests, one of which is to rob you of your superpowers. What do you do? Doing nothing is not an option. Remember, you are a superpower.

The obvious response is to create your own international organizations and sponsor your own world congresses and festivals, and use them to promote your interests. Sadly, however, you cannot do this in a public and transparent way. For it happens that your citizens are not all that taken with the ideals of world peace and international coöperation, and they would not be pleased to see you spend their tax dollars to support the kind of people who advance that agenda. They would prefer to see their tax dollars spent on defense. In fact, they would prefer for there to be no tax dollars at all.

There is also the problem that one of your principles as a superpower is the belief that governments should not interfere with the activities of voluntary associations, such as writers’ congresses and student groups. You don’t believe in fronts. This is a key point of difference between you and your rival superpower. So your hands appear to be tied.

Unless you could do it all in secret. Suppose you directed taxpayer dollars through back channels, disguised as gifts from private benefactors and foundations, to organizations that operated internationally, and that reached out to groups in other countries in the name of the principles you believe in. You would want to be sure that the people running those organizations either didn’t know where the money was coming from or could be trusted to keep it a secret. You might need to pull strings occasionally to get the right people in charge and the right positions enthusiastically adopted.

Wouldn’t that be like creating fronts? Sort of. But here’s the thing: fundamentally, everyone would be on the same page. They just might not be knowingly on the same page. No one would be forced to do or say anything. After you succeeded in stripping your rival of its superpowers, there would no longer be a need for secrecy. Until that day arrived, however, national security might demand this tiny bite out of the principle of transparency. The only people who could object would be people who were already on the wrong side.

After the Second World War, our superpower solved this dilemma in exactly this way and on exactly this line of reasoning. From the more or less official start of the Cold War, Harry Truman’s speech to Congress in March, 1947, announcing his policy “to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures”—that is, Communist aggression—the United States created fronts and secretly infiltrated existing nongovernmental organizations in order to advance American interests abroad.

Almost exactly twenty years after Truman’s speech, in February, 1967, the government’s cover was spectacularly blown by a college dropout. The dropout’s name was Michael Wood, and the operation he exposed was the C.I.A.’s covert use of an organization called the National Student Association. The revelation had a cascading effect, and helped to mark the end of the first phase of the Cold War.

The C.I.A. had its eye on the N.S.A. from the start—both were born in 1947, a few months after Truman’s speech—and the relationship gained steadily in strength and intimacy until the day the secret became public. Its story is now told in detail for the first time, in Karen M. Paget’s “Patriotic Betrayal” (Yale).

“Patriotic Betrayal” is an amazing piece of research. Paget has industriously combed the archives and interviewed many of the surviving players, including former C.I.A. officials. And Paget herself is part of the story she tells. In 1965, her husband, a student-body president at the University of Colorado, became an officer in the N.S.A., and, as a spouse, she was informed of the covert relationship by two former N.S.A. officials who had become C.I.A. agents.

She was sworn to secrecy. The penalty for violating the agreement was twenty years. Paget describes herself back then as “an apolitical twenty-year-old from a small town in Iowa,” and she says that she was terrified. Fifty years later, she is still angry. She has channelled her outrage into as scrupulous an investigation of the covert relationship as the circumstances allow.

One circumstance is the fact that a good deal of material is classified. Paget was able to fish up bits and pieces using the Freedom of Information Act. But most of the iceberg is still underwater, and will probably remain there. So there is sometimes an aura of vagueness around who was calling the tune and why.

The vagueness was also there by design. It was baked into the covert relationship. There was a lot of winking and nodding; that’s what helped people believe they were on the same page. But it means that much of the history of what passed between the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. is irrecoverable. Still, “Patriotic Betrayal” is a conscientious attempt to take the full measure of an iconic piece of Cold War subterfuge.

It’s a dense book. Readers will be glad for the three-page guide in the back to abbreviations and acronyms. (There are also nearly ninety pages of endnotes, with more references accessible online.) Organizationally, the N.S.A.-C.I.A. affair was quite complex. There were a number of quasi-independent parts—another reason, besides the secrecy, that it was hard to see what was really going on.

The parts included the World Federation of Democratic Youth, or W.F.D.Y., a Soviet front organization created right after the war; the International Union of Students, or I.U.S., formed at a world congress of students in Prague in 1946, with a Czech Communist elected president; and the N.S.A. itself, which was founded at a student convention in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1947, in order to represent the United States in the I.U.S.

The Madison convention also created an N.S.A. subcommittee on international affairs and gave it authority to deal with international issues. The key move was the separation of the main N.S.A. office, which was in Madison, from the international division, which was housed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It was the Cambridge branch of the N.S.A. that received most of the C.I.A.’s funding and did most of the C.I.A.’s bidding. Madison was kept out of the loop.

In 1948, there was a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, a crucial event in the hardening of postwar relations. When the I.U.S. refused to condemn the coup, the N.S.A. withdrew and set about forming a rival group, the International Student Conference, or I.S.C. These two organizations, the I.U.S. and the I.S.C., became superpower proxies in the looking-glass war that was the Cold War. Through the N.S.A., the C.I.A. tried to orchestrate what happened in the I.S.C., just as the I.U.S. was responsive to the demands of the Kremlin.

The N.S.A. was never a virgin. Paget reveals that, even before Prague, American students were subject to surveillance and scheming by three groups of grownups: the State Department, the F.B.I., and the Catholic Church. It can be forgotten how influential a role the Church’s highly disciplined anti-Communism played in Cold War affairs. The Holy Father took a personal interest in the danger of Communist infiltration of youth organizations, including the N.S.A.; the bishops kept a close eye on Catholic student leaders; and Catholics usually voted as a bloc in N.S.A. and I.S.C. meetings.

The Pope’s anti-Communism was too rigid for the C.I.A. The agency also had little use for J. Edgar Hoover, with whom the Church collaborated in investigating students’ backgrounds, or for Senator Joseph McCarthy and his hunt for Communists in the government. Agency politics—or, rather, the politics of agency policies—were farther to the left.

The N.S.A., for example, was a forthrightly liberal organization. Civil rights was part of the agenda early on. The N.S.A.’s second president (1948-49), James (Ted) Harris, was an African-American (and a Catholic). Its fourth president (1950-51) was the future civil-rights and antiwar activist Allard Lowenstein (not a Catholic). The N.S.A. helped found the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a principal organizer of the march from Selma that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act, in 1965. And the N.S.A.’s politics were typical of most of the organizations in the C.I.A.’s covert network: they were socially progressive, anti-colonialist, and sometimes even socialist.

One customary explanation is that the people who ran covert operations at the C.I.A. from 1947 to 1967 were not right-wing jingoists. They were liberal anti-Communists, veterans of Roosevelt’s Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the C.I.A. They were good guys who despised the Soviet Union as a traitor to progressive principles.

If people held this belief about the C.I.A., the agency exploited it. C.I.A. officials used to tell N.S.A. students who were in the know—the agency’s term for them was “witting” (or “witty”)—that, while the State Department supported authoritarian dictatorships, the C.I.A. supported foreign students who were involved in democratic resistance and national liberation movements. This was supposed to make the N.S.A. students feel that they had bargained with the right devil.

The students were being misled. The C.I.A. is part of the executive branch. Its director reports to the President; its operations and expenditures are subject to congressional oversight. The director of the C.I.A. during the nineteen-fifties, Allen Dulles, was the Secretary of State’s brother. The notion that the C.I.A. was running its own foreign policy, or that it was a “rogue elephant,” as one senator later called it, is absurd.

After the revelations of the nineteen-sixties and seventies, when many of the C.I.A.’s undercover operations were exposed, people began talking about the agency as though it were some kind of underground cell, an organization with no accountability, up to its own dirty tricks. But a report on the C.I.A.’s covert operations made immediately after the 1967 revelations concluded that the agency “did not act on its own initiative.” In 1976, a more critical congressional report, which was never officially released, stated, “All evidence in hand suggests that the CIA, far from being out of control, has been utterly responsive to the instructions of the President and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.”

It’s true that the C.I.A. did not always fully inform Administrations about what it was up to, but the agency had reason to believe that there were some things Administrations preferred not to know. Deniability is a crucial ingredient of covert operations. The C.I.A. used the N.S.A. to further the policies of the American government. If it had been found doing anything contrary to the wishes of the President, its plug would have been pulled very fast.

So what, exactly, was the N.S.A. useful for? This is where things get murky. According to Paget’s account, the N.S.A. was apparently not used for what the C.I.A. called “political warfare.” The agency did create a front organization called the Independent Research Service (inventing titles that are as meaningless as possible is part of the spy game) for the purpose of recruiting American students to disrupt Soviet-controlled World Youth Festivals in Vienna, in 1959, and Helsinki, in 1962. The person in charge was the future feminist Gloria Steinem, who knew perfectly well where the money was coming from and never regretted taking it. “If I had a choice I would do it again,” she later said.

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But that operation did not involve the N.S.A. Nor was the N.S.A. used only to promote American principles abroad, although that was part of the reason for funding it. The C.I.A. embedded agents in the N.S.A., and it worked behind the scenes to insure that pliable students got elected to run the association and that the desired policy positions got adopted. It took the extra precaution of starting up a covertly funded summer program, called the International Student Relations Seminar, and using it to groom future N.S.A. leaders. A number of N.S.A. members who went through the seminar went on to have careers at the agency.

Essentially, the N.S.A. functioned as a glove that concealed the American government’s hand and allowed it to do business with people who would never knowingly have done business with the American government. These people thought that they were dealing with a student group that was independent of the government. They had no idea that the N.S.A. was a front.

And what did this permit the C.I.A. to do? First, the N.S.A. was used as a cutout. The C.I.A. funnelled financial support to favored foreign-student groups by means of grants ostensibly coming from the N.S.A. Second, the N.S.A. was a recruitment device. It enabled the agency to identify potential intelligence sources among student leaders in other countries. And, third, N.S.A. members who attended international conferences filed written reports or were debriefed afterward, giving the C.I.A. a huge database of information.

The C.I.A. did not buy into the adage that the student leader of today is the student leader of tomorrow. It calculated that the heads of national student organizations were likely some day to become important figures in their countries’ governments. When that happened (and it often did), the American government had a file on them. “Over time, witting staff reported on thousands of foreign students’ political tendencies, personality traits, and future aspirations,” Paget writes. “They submitted detailed analyses of political dynamics within foreign student unions and countries.”

This may seem benign enough, but there was a problem. It had to do with the “State Department bad guys, C.I.A. good guys” routine. The State Department deals with nations with which the United States has diplomatic relations. Having diplomatic relations with a foreign government prohibits you from negotiating with, or acknowledging the legitimacy of, groups committed to that government’s overthrow. This is why it’s convenient to have an agency that operates clandestinely. The C.I.A. could cultivate relations with opposition groups secretly, and this permitted the American government to work both sides of the street.

Paget thinks that, in some cases, the information the C.I.A. gathered about students who were political opponents of a regime may have ended up in the hands of that regime, which could then have used the information to arrest and execute its enemies. She suspects that this may have happened in several countries where the American government was involved in regime change, including Iraq, Iran, and South Africa.

But it’s all speculation. There are no smoking guns in Paget’s book—no specific cases in which the C.I.A. made students’ names available to a foreign government. And the reason, of course, has to do with the classified material. No intelligence agency will ever release documents that reveal the identities of people with whom it had contacts. That information is at the very bottom of the iceberg.

It’s odd that the relationship remained secret as long as it did. The N.S.A. was one of many organizations covertly funded by the C.I.A. Over the life of those relationships, hundreds of people must have been in the know. But until Michael Wood spilled the beans no one ever spoke up publicly. This is a testament to something: in the case of the N.S.A., the naïveté of the students; the arrogance of the grownups (at the C.I.A., N.S.A. students were referred to as “the kiddies”); the power of anti-Communism to trump every scruple.

One thing it is not a testament to is the C.I.A.’s tradecraft. The evidence of the agency’s covert funding system was hidden in plain sight. The world got a peek in 1964, when a House of Representatives subcommittee ran an investigation into the tax-exempt status of philanthropic foundations. The committee had trouble getting information from the I.R.S. about a certain New York-based charitable foundation, the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The chair of the committee, a Texas congressman named Wright Patman, surmised that the reason the I.R.S. was not coöperating was that the C.I.A. was preventing it. Patman didn’t appreciate the disrespect; in retaliation, he made public a list of eight foundations that, between 1961 and 1963, had given almost a million dollars to the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

“PATMAN ATTACKS ‘SECRET’ C.I.A. LINK: Says Agency Gave Money to Private Group Acting as Its Sub-Rosa ‘Conduit’ ” was the headline in the Times, which published the names of the eight “conduit” foundations. After a closed-door meeting with representatives from the C.I.A. and the I.R.S., Patman emerged to announce that if there was a C.I.A. connection it was no longer of interest to his subcommittee, and that he was dropping the matter.

But the cat was partway out of the bag. As their transparently invented names suggest—the Gotham Foundation, the Borden Trust, the Andrew Hamilton Fund, and so on—these eight foundations were C.I.A. cutouts. The agency had approached wealthy people it knew to be sympathetic and asked them to head dummy foundations. Those people were then put on a masthead, a name for the foundation was invented, sometimes an office was rented to provide an address, and a conduit came into being. The members of the phony boards even held annual meetings, at which “business” was discussed, expenses paid by the agency.

The dummy foundations were used to channel money to groups the agency wanted to support. Sometimes the C.I.A. passed funds through the dummies to legitimate charitable foundations, like the Kaplan Fund, which in turn passed it along to groups like the National Student Association. Sometimes the cutouts existed solely to write checks to the C.I.A.’s beneficiaries.

The C.I.A.’s name did not appear anywhere. The giveaway was the dollar-for-dollar equivalence of the amount received from the dummy and the amount granted to the target group. If the expenses side of Kaplan’s books showed a two-hundred-thousand-dollar grant to the N.S.A., the income side would show a two-hundred-thousand-dollar donation from one of the agency’s dummy foundations.

The Times published an editorial saying that “the practice ought to stop. . . . The use of Government intelligence funds to get foundations to underwrite institutions, organizations, magazines and newspapers abroad is a distortion of C.I.A.’s mission on gathering and evaluating information.” In 1966, the paper ran a series of articles on the C.I.A.’s spying operations, in which it revealed that the C.I.A. was funding the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its many European-based magazines. The paper also reported that the agency had funded some American academics when they travelled abroad. The C.I.A. seems to have done nothing in response to these stories, and nothing came of them.

Then Michael Wood made his appearance. Wood was from Glendale, California. In 1964, he had dropped out of Pomona College to become a civil-rights organizer in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. His work there attracted the attention of the National Student Association, and it offered him a job.

By then, the N.S.A. represented about a million students from more than four hundred American colleges. It had just moved its offices (with help from the C.I.A.) to Washington, D.C., to adjoining four-story town houses near Dupont Circle. Wood was soon promoted to the position of director of development—fund-raising.

He discovered something strange. No one at the N.S.A. seemed terribly interested in raising money. Grant proposals were perfunctory, and Wood learned that the president of the N.S.A., Philip Sherburne, the man who had hired him, was negotiating for donations on his own. Wood confronted Sherburne and told him that unless he was given control of all fund-raising activities he would have to resign. Sherburne invited him to lunch. This was in March, 1966.

Sherburne had grown up on a dairy farm in Oregon. Wood liked him. They met in a restaurant on Connecticut Avenue called the Sirloin and Saddle, where Sherburne violated his secrecy agreement and told Wood about the C.I.A. He told Wood that he was desperately trying to terminate the relationship (which was true), and asked him to keep their conversation secret.

Wood knew that if he revealed the contents of the conversation Sherburne could go to jail. But he hated the thought that the C.I.A. had financial leverage over the N.S.A. That fall, Wood was fired from the N.S.A. Paget reports that he was not getting along with people at the office. But he had already decided to go public, and had begun surreptitiously making copies of N.S.A. financial records.

Paget doesn’t explain how Wood contacted the press. The story is that he met Marc Stone, a public-relations man who happened to be the brother of the investigative journalist I. F. Stone, and who represented a West Coast magazine called Ramparts. Though only four years old, Ramparts had become a slick muckraker with a New Left slant and a rapidly growing circulation under its young editor, Warren Hinckle.

The magazine began looking into Wood’s story, which seemed hard to believe and impossible to confirm. But its researchers discovered records showing that some of the eight dummy foundations named by Patman two years before were donors to the N.S.A. The C.I.A. had not even bothered to change their names. By February, 1967, the magazine had a story ready to go.

The C.I.A. got wind of the magazine’s investigation. It gathered past presidents of the N.S.A. and scheduled a news conference at which the presidents were to admit receiving C.I.A. money but swear that the C.I.A. had never influenced N.S.A. policy. They thought this would defuse any story that the magazine eventually published.

Ramparts, in turn, got wind of the C.I.A.’s plan to scoop its scoop. Hinckle bought ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post. These ran on February 14th, Valentine’s Day; they announced, “In its March issue, Ramparts magazine will document how the CIA has infiltrated and subverted the world of American student leaders.” Placing the ad tipped off the Times and the Post, and their reporters called the C.I.A. for comment. And so, on the same day the Ramparts ads appeared, both newspapers ran articles on the C.I.A.’s covert funding of the N.S.A.

This time, the story caught fire. Wood went on ABC’s “Issues and Answers,” where he was asked whether he thought that he had destroyed the C.I.A. as an effective instrument in the Cold War. CBS News broadcast an hour-long program, hosted by Mike Wallace, called “In the Pay of the CIA.” The major news magazines ran cover stories.

Once the N.S.A. thread had been pulled, the whole tapestry of C.I.A. covert operations started to unravel. Reporters discovered that the money trail wound through some eighteen dummy foundations and twenty-one legitimate foundations. The Los Angeles Times found more than fifty grantees. The agency gave money to the National Council of Churches, the United Auto Workers, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Marketing Institute, the American Friends of the Middle East, the Pan American Foundation, the American Newspaper Guild, the National Education Association, the Communications Workers of America, and the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church Outside Russia.

Some of the funded groups were creatures of the C.I.A. Radio Free Europe and the Free Russia Fund, which regularly appealed to the public for contributions, had actually been created by the government and were funded by the C.I.A. Other organizations had C.I.A. agents planted in them. A few groups had no idea about the real source of the funds they lived on. An organization headed by the socialist Norman Thomas got money from the C.I.A.

The Ramparts story effectively killed the covert-funding system. As Hinckle put it in his delightful memoir, “If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade,” “It is a rare thing in this business when you say bang and somebody says I’m dead.” More than that, the revelations meant that the whole covert-funding operation had backfired. An effort to curry the allegiance of foreign élites ended up alienating them almost completely. After 1967, every American venture in international cultural relations, official or unofficial, became suspect. The cultural Cold War came apart.

Paget struggles at the end of her book to find an upside to the story she tells, some case in which C.I.A. involvement in the N.S.A. helped the United States win the Cold War. The record, she concludes, “is mixed at best and frequently dismal.” There is no evidence, for example, that the N.S.A. ever persuaded anyone to renounce Communism. The most that can be said, she thinks, is that the Soviet Union did not get to have the field of international student affairs all to itself. There was another front in the game.

A Critic at Large MARCH 23, 2015 ISSUE
BY LOUIS MENAND

Find this story at 23 March 2015

Copyright newyorker.com

The CIA, the National Student Association, and the Cold War

Patriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against CommunismPatriotic Betrayal: The Inside Story of the CIA’s Secret Campaign to Enroll American Students in the Crusade Against Communism by Karen M Paget

When I was growing up in the 1960’s my parents used to tell me stories about their activities in the National Student Association in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Liberal Democrats, they would tell us about parliamentary tactics deployed by Communist members to try to take control of the organization (late night quorum calls, for instance) and the efforts of anti-Communist liberals to prevent the organization converted to one whose activities would be dictated by the Soviet Union. I haven’t seen his letters (one of my brothers has them) I believe my father was at the organization’s constitutional convention in Madison in 1947.

What I’m sure they didn’t know at the time was that, while the NSA was devoted to spreading democratic values around the world, and especially in nonaligned countries emerging from colonialism, and despite the fact that the NSA followed democratic forms and procedures for the elections of officers, the actual activities of the organization were determined and funded by the CIA, with help from the Catholic Church to promote its own conservative agenda. Each year the elected president would be taken to a mysterious and secret meeting in which they were brought into the fold, told to sign a security oath, and, in the parlance of the organization, made “witting”. It was only then that the president and other top officers of the organization would be taught that the CIA was making the decisions, funneling money for travel and other activities through pliable charities, and truly acquainted with the shadowy older men–former students–who seemed to have hung around the NSA far beyond the time that most people would be interested in working with an organization for college students.

The secret was maintained for twenty years, until a few courageous officers and a major investigative effort by Ramparts magazine revealed the extent of CIA domination of this allegedly democratic organization. During that time the NSA was used to provide scholarships for promising foreign student leaders to study in the United States and to disrupt conventions staged by a rival, Soviet-dominated international student organization for propaganda value.

The husband of the author of Patriotic Betrayal was elected vice-president and made witting, and the author followed within months. Consequently, the author has a wealth of personal information about the inner workings of the NSA, which she supplemented by over 150 interviews of other participants in the events recounted here and research documented in the 100+ pages of end notes.

In the pages of Patriotic Betrayal we meet characters familiar and unfamiliar and, in most cases, whether they were in on the CIA factor. For instance, my parents’ friend and former liberal Congressman Allard Lowenstein (they called him Al) was considered to be an obstacle to CIA domination when he was president in 1950-51, although it is not known whether he was witting. Tom Hayden, working with the SDS, also tried to push the NSA to the left, while Gloria Steinem was working for the CIA when she directed CIA-funded activities in the late 50’s and early 60’s. We also see appearances by people who would later become important nationally or internationally, including Fidel Castro, future Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, and notorious right-wingers Howie Phillips and Richard Viguerie.

Patriotic Betrayal goes into exhaustive detail of the inner workings of the NSA from year to year, and often from week to week. While this level of detail establishes the breadth and depth of the author’s knowledge, it could be debated whether she has trimmed enough of the details from what the author has told us was earlier even much longer. The author does successfully give us the final conflict as a real-life spy thriller, with insiders trying to wrest control from the CIA and expose the CIA’s role in the NSA, the CIA and its agents trying to block the effort and to punish the organization for these efforts, and a ragtag band of journalists and activists literally risking assassination to get the story into print.

At fifty years’ remove from most of these events it’s hard to imagine so much effort and money invested in an organization of student governments to make sure the Commies’ student organization didn’t gain the upper hand. It’s almost Spy v. Spy stuff. It’s also ironic, of course, that the CIA’s idea of promoting democracy in even this voluntary group was to install its own men into positions of power, fund them, and tell them what to do. Ultimately this is the most important lesson: the dangers of secret government setting up secret activities to subvert democratic institutions. When Ramparts broke the story the secret government and its allies in Congress cooperated to squelch or neutralize the revelations. Patriotic Betrayal is an important revelation of these Cold War events.

by: Jack McCullough
Sat May 02, 2015 at 10:28:15 AM EDT

Find this story at 2 May 2015

Copyright greenmountaindaily.com

The Killing of Osama bin Laden (2015)

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

‘When your version comes out – if you do it – people in Pakistan will be tremendously grateful,’ Durrani told me. ‘For a long time people have stopped trusting what comes out about bin Laden from the official mouths. There will be some negative political comment and some anger, but people like to be told the truth, and what you’ve told me is essentially what I have heard from former colleagues who have been on a fact-finding mission since this episode.’ As a former ISI head, he said, he had been told shortly after the raid by ‘people in the “strategic community” who would know’ that there had been an informant who had alerted the US to bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad, and that after his killing the US’s betrayed promises left Kayani and Pasha exposed.

The major US source for the account that follows is a retired senior intelligence official who was knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. He also was privy to many aspects of the Seals’ training for the raid, and to the various after-action reports. Two other US sources, who had access to corroborating information, have been longtime consultants to the Special Operations Command. I also received information from inside Pakistan about widespread dismay among the senior ISI and military leadership – echoed later by Durrani – over Obama’s decision to go public immediately with news of bin Laden’s death. The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

*

It began with a walk-in. In August 2010 a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer approached Jonathan Bank, then the CIA’s station chief at the US embassy in Islamabad. He offered to tell the CIA where to find bin Laden in return for the reward that Washington had offered in 2001. Walk-ins are assumed by the CIA to be unreliable, and the response from the agency’s headquarters was to fly in a polygraph team. The walk-in passed the test. ‘So now we’ve got a lead on bin Laden living in a compound in Abbottabad, but how do we really know who it is?’ was the CIA’s worry at the time, the retired senior US intelligence official told me.

The US initially kept what it knew from the Pakistanis. ‘The fear was that if the existence of the source was made known, the Pakistanis themselves would move bin Laden to another location. So only a very small number of people were read into the source and his story,’ the retired official said. ‘The CIA’s first goal was to check out the quality of the informant’s information.’ The compound was put under satellite surveillance. The CIA rented a house in Abbottabad to use as a forward observation base and staffed it with Pakistani employees and foreign nationals. Later on, the base would serve as a contact point with the ISI; it attracted little attention because Abbottabad is a holiday spot full of houses rented on short leases. A psychological profile of the informant was prepared. (The informant and his family were smuggled out of Pakistan and relocated in the Washington area. He is now a consultant for the CIA.)

‘By October the military and intelligence community were discussing the possible military options. Do we drop a bunker buster on the compound or take him out with a drone strike? Perhaps send someone to kill him, single assassin style? But then we’d have no proof of who he was,’ the retired official said. ‘We could see some guy is walking around at night, but we have no intercepts because there’s no commo coming from the compound.’

In October, Obama was briefed on the intelligence. His response was cautious, the retired official said. ‘It just made no sense that bin Laden was living in Abbottabad. It was just too crazy. The president’s position was emphatic: “Don’t talk to me about this any more unless you have proof that it really is bin Laden.”’ The immediate goal of the CIA leadership and the Joint Special Operations Command was to get Obama’s support. They believed they would get this if they got DNA evidence, and if they could assure him that a night assault of the compound would carry no risk. The only way to accomplish both things, the retired official said, ‘was to get the Pakistanis on board’.

During the late autumn of 2010, the US continued to keep quiet about the walk-in, and Kayani and Pasha continued to insist to their American counterparts that they had no information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. ‘The next step was to figure out how to ease Kayani and Pasha into it – to tell them that we’ve got intelligence showing that there is a high-value target in the compound, and to ask them what they know about the target,’ the retired official said. ‘The compound was not an armed enclave – no machine guns around, because it was under ISI control.’ The walk-in had told the US that bin Laden had lived undetected from 2001 to 2006 with some of his wives and children in the Hindu Kush mountains, and that ‘the ISI got to him by paying some of the local tribal people to betray him.’ (Reports after the raid placed him elsewhere in Pakistan during this period.) Bank was also told by the walk-in that bin Laden was very ill, and that early on in his confinement at Abbottabad, the ISI had ordered Amir Aziz, a doctor and a major in the Pakistani army, to move nearby to provide treatment. ‘The truth is that bin Laden was an invalid, but we cannot say that,’ the retired official said. ‘“You mean you guys shot a cripple? Who was about to grab his AK-47?”’

‘It didn’t take long to get the co-operation we needed, because the Pakistanis wanted to ensure the continued release of American military aid, a good percentage of which was anti-terrorism funding that finances personal security, such as bullet-proof limousines and security guards and housing for the ISI leadership,’ the retired official said. He added that there were also under-the-table personal ‘incentives’ that were financed by off-the-books Pentagon contingency funds. ‘The intelligence community knew what the Pakistanis needed to agree – there was the carrot. And they chose the carrot. It was a win-win. We also did a little blackmail. We told them we would leak the fact that you’ve got bin Laden in your backyard. We knew their friends and enemies’ – the Taliban and jihadist groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan – ‘would not like it.’

A worrying factor at this early point, according to the retired official, was Saudi Arabia, which had been financing bin Laden’s upkeep since his seizure by the Pakistanis. ‘The Saudis didn’t want bin Laden’s presence revealed to us because he was a Saudi, and so they told the Pakistanis to keep him out of the picture. The Saudis feared if we knew we would pressure the Pakistanis to let bin Laden start talking to us about what the Saudis had been doing with al-Qaida. And they were dropping money – lots of it. The Pakistanis, in turn, were concerned that the Saudis might spill the beans about their control of bin Laden. The fear was that if the US found out about bin Laden from Riyadh, all hell would break out. The Americans learning about bin Laden’s imprisonment from a walk-in was not the worst thing.’

Despite their constant public feuding, American and Pakistani military and intelligence services have worked together closely for decades on counterterrorism in South Asia. Both services often find it useful to engage in public feuds ‘to cover their asses’, as the retired official put it, but they continually share intelligence used for drone attacks, and co-operate on covert operations. At the same time, it’s understood in Washington that elements of the ISI believe that maintaining a relationship with the Taliban leadership inside Afghanistan is essential to national security. The ISI’s strategic aim is to balance Indian influence in Kabul; the Taliban is also seen in Pakistan as a source of jihadist shock troops who would back Pakistan against India in a confrontation over Kashmir.

Adding to the tension was the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, often depicted in the Western press as an ‘Islamic bomb’ that might be transferred by Pakistan to an embattled nation in the Middle East in the event of a crisis with Israel. The US looked the other way when Pakistan began building its weapons system in the 1970s and it’s widely believed it now has more than a hundred nuclear warheads. It’s understood in Washington that US security depends on the maintenance of strong military and intelligence ties to Pakistan. The belief is mirrored in Pakistan.

‘The Pakistani army sees itself as family,’ the retired official said. ‘Officers call soldiers their sons and all officers are “brothers”. The attitude is different in the American military. The senior Pakistani officers believe they are the elite and have got to look out for all of the people, as keepers of the flame against Muslim fundamentalism. The Pakistanis also know that their trump card against aggression from India is a strong relationship with the United States. They will never cut their person-to-person ties with us.’

Like all CIA station chiefs, Bank was working undercover, but that ended in early December 2010 when he was publicly accused of murder in a criminal complaint filed in Islamabad by Karim Khan, a Pakistani journalist whose son and brother, according to local news reports, had been killed by a US drone strike. Allowing Bank to be named was a violation of diplomatic protocol on the part of the Pakistani authorities, and it brought a wave of unwanted publicity. Bank was ordered to leave Pakistan by the CIA, whose officials subsequently told the Associated Press he was transferred because of concerns for his safety. The New York Times reported that there was ‘strong suspicion’ the ISI had played a role in leaking Bank’s name to Khan. There was speculation that he was outed as payback for the publication in a New York lawsuit a month earlier of the names of ISI chiefs in connection with the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008. But there was a collateral reason, the retired official said, for the CIA’s willingness to send Bank back to America. The Pakistanis needed cover in case their co-operation with the Americans in getting rid of bin Laden became known. The Pakistanis could say: “You’re talking about me? We just kicked out your station chief.”’

*

The bin Laden compound was less than two miles from the Pakistan Military Academy, and a Pakistani army combat battalion headquarters was another mile or so away. Abbottabad is less than 15 minutes by helicopter from Tarbela Ghazi, an important base for ISI covert operations and the facility where those who guard Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal are trained. ‘Ghazi is why the ISI put bin Laden in Abbottabad in the first place,’ the retired official said, ‘to keep him under constant supervision.’

The risks for Obama were high at this early stage, especially because there was a troubling precedent: the failed 1980 attempt to rescue the American hostages in Tehran. That failure was a factor in Jimmy Carter’s loss to Ronald Reagan. Obama’s worries were realistic, the retired official said. ‘Was bin Laden ever there? Was the whole story a product of Pakistani deception? What about political blowback in case of failure?’ After all, as the retired official said, ‘If the mission fails, Obama’s just a black Jimmy Carter and it’s all over for re-election.’

Obama was anxious for reassurance that the US was going to get the right man. The proof was to come in the form of bin Laden’s DNA. The planners turned for help to Kayani and Pasha, who asked Aziz to obtain the specimens. Soon after the raid the press found out that Aziz had been living in a house near the bin Laden compound: local reporters discovered his name in Urdu on a plate on the door. Pakistani officials denied that Aziz had any connection to bin Laden, but the retired official told me that Aziz had been rewarded with a share of the $25 million reward the US had put up because the DNA sample had showed conclusively that it was bin Laden in Abbottabad. (In his subsequent testimony to a Pakistani commission investigating the bin Laden raid, Aziz said that he had witnessed the attack on Abbottabad, but had no knowledge of who was living in the compound and had been ordered by a superior officer to stay away from the scene.)

Bargaining continued over the way the mission would be executed. ‘Kayani eventually tells us yes, but he says you can’t have a big strike force. You have to come in lean and mean. And you have to kill him, or there is no deal,’ the retired official said. The agreement was struck by the end of January 2011, and Joint Special Operations Command prepared a list of questions to be answered by the Pakistanis: ‘How can we be assured of no outside intervention? What are the defences inside the compound and its exact dimensions? Where are bin Laden’s rooms and exactly how big are they? How many steps in the stairway? Where are the doors to his rooms, and are they reinforced with steel? How thick?’ The Pakistanis agreed to permit a four-man American cell – a Navy Seal, a CIA case officer and two communications specialists – to set up a liaison office at Tarbela Ghazi for the coming assault. By then, the military had constructed a mock-up of the compound in Abbottabad at a secret former nuclear test site in Nevada, and an elite Seal team had begun rehearsing for the attack.

The US had begun to cut back on aid to Pakistan – to ‘turn off the spigot’, in the retired official’s words. The provision of 18 new F-16 fighter aircraft was delayed, and under-the-table cash payments to the senior leaders were suspended. In April 2011 Pasha met the CIA director, Leon Panetta, at agency headquarters. ‘Pasha got a commitment that the United States would turn the money back on, and we got a guarantee that there would be no Pakistani opposition during the mission,’ the retired official said. ‘Pasha also insisted that Washington stop complaining about Pakistan’s lack of co-operation with the American war on terrorism.’ At one point that spring, Pasha offered the Americans a blunt explanation of the reason Pakistan kept bin Laden’s capture a secret, and why it was imperative for the ISI role to remain secret: ‘We needed a hostage to keep tabs on al-Qaida and the Taliban,’ Pasha said, according to the retired official. ‘The ISI was using bin Laden as leverage against Taliban and al-Qaida activities inside Afghanistan and Pakistan. They let the Taliban and al-Qaida leadership know that if they ran operations that clashed with the interests of the ISI, they would turn bin Laden over to us. So if it became known that the Pakistanis had worked with us to get bin Laden at Abbottabad, there would be hell to pay.’

At one of his meetings with Panetta, according to the retired official and a source within the CIA, Pasha was asked by a senior CIA official whether he saw himself as acting in essence as an agent for al-Qaida and the Taliban. ‘He answered no, but said the ISI needed to have some control.’ The message, as the CIA saw it, according to the retired official, was that Kayani and Pasha viewed bin Laden ‘as a resource, and they were more interested in their [own] survival than they were in the United States’.

A Pakistani with close ties to the senior leadership of the ISI told me that ‘there was a deal with your top guys. We were very reluctant, but it had to be done – not because of personal enrichment, but because all of the American aid programmes would be cut off. Your guys said we will starve you out if you don’t do it, and the okay was given while Pasha was in Washington. The deal was not only to keep the taps open, but Pasha was told there would be more goodies for us.’ The Pakistani said that Pasha’s visit also resulted in a commitment from the US to give Pakistan ‘a freer hand’ in Afghanistan as it began its military draw-down there. ‘And so our top dogs justified the deal by saying this is for our country.’

*

Pasha and Kayani were responsible for ensuring that Pakistan’s army and air defence command would not track or engage with the US helicopters used on the mission. The American cell at Tarbela Ghazi was charged with co-ordinating communications between the ISI, the senior US officers at their command post in Afghanistan, and the two Black Hawk helicopters; the goal was to ensure that no stray Pakistani fighter plane on border patrol spotted the intruders and took action to stop them. The initial plan said that news of the raid shouldn’t be announced straightaway. All units in the Joint Special Operations Command operate under stringent secrecy and the JSOC leadership believed, as did Kayani and Pasha, that the killing of bin Laden would not be made public for as long as seven days, maybe longer. Then a carefully constructed cover story would be issued: Obama would announce that DNA analysis confirmed that bin Laden had been killed in a drone raid in the Hindu Kush, on Afghanistan’s side of the border. The Americans who planned the mission assured Kayani and Pasha that their co-operation would never be made public. It was understood by all that if the Pakistani role became known, there would be violent protests – bin Laden was considered a hero by many Pakistanis – and Pasha and Kayani and their families would be in danger, and the Pakistani army publicly disgraced.

It was clear to all by this point, the retired official said, that bin Laden would not survive: ‘Pasha told us at a meeting in April that he could not risk leaving bin Laden in the compound now that we know he’s there. Too many people in the Pakistani chain of command know about the mission. He and Kayani had to tell the whole story to the directors of the air defence command and to a few local commanders.

‘Of course the guys knew the target was bin Laden and he was there under Pakistani control,’ the retired official said. ‘Otherwise, they would not have done the mission without air cover. It was clearly and absolutely a premeditated murder.’ A former Seal commander, who has led and participated in dozens of similar missions over the past decade, assured me that ‘we were not going to keep bin Laden alive – to allow the terrorist to live. By law, we know what we’re doing inside Pakistan is a homicide. We’ve come to grips with that. Each one of us, when we do these missions, say to ourselves, “Let’s face it. We’re going to commit a murder.”’ The White House’s initial account claimed that bin Laden had been brandishing a weapon; the story was aimed at deflecting those who questioned the legality of the US administration’s targeted assassination programme. The US has consistently maintained, despite widely reported remarks by people involved with the mission, that bin Laden would have been taken alive if he had immediately surrendered.

*

At the Abbottabad compound ISI guards were posted around the clock to keep watch over bin Laden and his wives and children. They were under orders to leave as soon as they heard the rotors of the US helicopters. The town was dark: the electricity supply had been cut off on the orders of the ISI hours before the raid began. One of the Black Hawks crashed inside the walls of the compound, injuring many on board. ‘The guys knew the TOT [time on target] had to be tight because they would wake up the whole town going in,’ the retired official said. The cockpit of the crashed Black Hawk, with its communication and navigational gear, had to be destroyed by concussion grenades, and this would create a series of explosions and a fire visible for miles. Two Chinook helicopters had flown from Afghanistan to a nearby Pakistani intelligence base to provide logistical support, and one of them was immediately dispatched to Abbottabad. But because the helicopter had been equipped with a bladder loaded with extra fuel for the two Black Hawks, it first had to be reconfigured as a troop carrier. The crash of the Black Hawk and the need to fly in a replacement were nerve-wracking and time-consuming setbacks, but the Seals continued with their mission. There was no firefight as they moved into the compound; the ISI guards had gone. ‘Everyone in Pakistan has a gun and high-profile, wealthy folks like those who live in Abbottabad have armed bodyguards, and yet there were no weapons in the compound,’ the retired official pointed out. Had there been any opposition, the team would have been highly vulnerable. Instead, the retired official said, an ISI liaison officer flying with the Seals guided them into the darkened house and up a staircase to bin Laden’s quarters. The Seals had been warned by the Pakistanis that heavy steel doors blocked the stairwell on the first and second-floor landings; bin Laden’s rooms were on the third floor. The Seal squad used explosives to blow the doors open, without injuring anyone. One of bin Laden’s wives was screaming hysterically and a bullet – perhaps a stray round – struck her knee. Aside from those that hit bin Laden, no other shots were fired. (The Obama administration’s account would hold otherwise.)

‘They knew where the target was – third floor, second door on the right,’ the retired official said. ‘Go straight there. Osama was cowering and retreated into the bedroom. Two shooters followed him and opened up. Very simple, very straightforward, very professional hit.’ Some of the Seals were appalled later at the White House’s initial insistence that they had shot bin Laden in self-defence, the retired official said. ‘Six of the Seals’ finest, most experienced NCOs, faced with an unarmed elderly civilian, had to kill him in self-defence? The house was shabby and bin Laden was living in a cell with bars on the window and barbed wire on the roof. The rules of engagement were that if bin Laden put up any opposition they were authorised to take lethal action. But if they suspected he might have some means of opposition, like an explosive vest under his robe, they could also kill him. So here’s this guy in a mystery robe and they shot him. It’s not because he was reaching for a weapon. The rules gave them absolute authority to kill the guy.’ The later White House claim that only one or two bullets were fired into his head was ‘bullshit’, the retired official said. ‘The squad came through the door and obliterated him. As the Seals say, “We kicked his ass and took his gas.”’

After they killed bin Laden, ‘the Seals were just there, some with physical injuries from the crash, waiting for the relief chopper,’ the retired official said. ‘Twenty tense minutes. The Black Hawk is still burning. There are no city lights. No electricity. No police. No fire trucks. They have no prisoners.’ Bin Laden’s wives and children were left for the ISI to interrogate and relocate. ‘Despite all the talk,’ the retired official continued, there were ‘no garbage bags full of computers and storage devices. The guys just stuffed some books and papers they found in his room in their backpacks. The Seals weren’t there because they thought bin Laden was running a command centre for al-Qaida operations, as the White House would later tell the media. And they were not intelligence experts gathering information inside that house.’

On a normal assault mission, the retired official said, there would be no waiting around if a chopper went down. ‘The Seals would have finished the mission, thrown off their guns and gear, and jammed into the remaining Black Hawk and di-di-maued’ – Vietnamese slang for leaving in a rush – ‘out of there, with guys hanging out of the doors. They would not have blown the chopper – no commo gear is worth a dozen lives – unless they knew they were safe. Instead they stood around outside the compound, waiting for the bus to arrive.’ Pasha and Kayani had delivered on all their promises.

*

The backroom argument inside the White House began as soon as it was clear that the mission had succeeded. Bin Laden’s body was presumed to be on its way to Afghanistan. Should Obama stand by the agreement with Kayani and Pasha and pretend a week or so later that bin Laden had been killed in a drone attack in the mountains, or should he go public immediately? The downed helicopter made it easy for Obama’s political advisers to urge the latter plan. The explosion and fireball would be impossible to hide, and word of what had happened was bound to leak. Obama had to ‘get out in front of the story’ before someone in the Pentagon did: waiting would diminish the political impact.

Not everyone agreed. Robert Gates, the secretary of defence, was the most outspoken of those who insisted that the agreements with Pakistan had to be honoured. In his memoir, Duty, Gates did not mask his anger:

Before we broke up and the president headed upstairs to tell the American people what had just happened, I reminded everyone that the techniques, tactics and procedures the Seals had used in the bin Laden operation were used every night in Afghanistan … it was therefore essential that we agree not to release any operational details of the raid. That we killed him, I said, is all we needed to say. Everybody in that room agreed to keep mum on details. That commitment lasted about five hours. The initial leaks came from the White House and CIA. They just couldn’t wait to brag and to claim credit. The facts were often wrong … Nonetheless the information just kept pouring out. I was outraged and at one point, told [the national security adviser, Tom] Donilon, ‘Why doesn’t everybody just shut the fuck up?’ To no avail.

Obama’s speech was put together in a rush, the retired official said, and was viewed by his advisers as a political document, not a message that needed to be submitted for clearance to the national security bureaucracy. This series of self-serving and inaccurate statements would create chaos in the weeks following. Obama said that his administration had discovered that bin Laden was in Pakistan through ‘a possible lead’ the previous August; to many in the CIA the statement suggested a specific event, such as a walk-in. The remark led to a new cover story claiming that the CIA’s brilliant analysts had unmasked a courier network handling bin Laden’s continuing flow of operational orders to al-Qaida. Obama also praised ‘a small team of Americans’ for their care in avoiding civilian deaths and said: ‘After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.’ Two more details now had to be supplied for the cover story: a description of the firefight that never happened, and a story about what happened to the corpse. Obama went on to praise the Pakistanis: ‘It’s important to note that our counterterrorism co-operation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.’ That statement risked exposing Kayani and Pasha. The White House’s solution was to ignore what Obama had said and order anyone talking to the press to insist that the Pakistanis had played no role in killing bin Laden. Obama left the clear impression that he and his advisers hadn’t known for sure that bin Laden was in Abbottabad, but only had information ‘about the possibility’. This led first to the story that the Seals had determined they’d killed the right man by having a six-foot-tall Seal lie next to the corpse for comparison (bin Laden was known to be six foot four); and then to the claim that a DNA test had been performed on the corpse and demonstrated conclusively that the Seals had killed bin Laden. But, according to the retired official, it wasn’t clear from the Seals’ early reports whether all of bin Laden’s body, or any of it, made it back to Afghanistan.

Gates wasn’t the only official who was distressed by Obama’s decision to speak without clearing his remarks in advance, the retired official said, ‘but he was the only one protesting. Obama didn’t just double-cross Gates, he double-crossed everyone. This was not the fog of war. The fact that there was an agreement with the Pakistanis and no contingency analysis of what was to be disclosed if something went wrong – that wasn’t even discussed. And once it went wrong, they had to make up a new cover story on the fly.’ There was a legitimate reason for some deception: the role of the Pakistani walk-in had to be protected.

The White House press corps was told in a briefing shortly after Obama’s announcement that the death of bin Laden was ‘the culmination of years of careful and highly advanced intelligence work’ that focused on tracking a group of couriers, including one who was known to be close to bin Laden. Reporters were told that a team of specially assembled CIA and National Security Agency analysts had traced the courier to a highly secure million-dollar compound in Abbottabad. After months of observation, the American intelligence community had ‘high confidence’ that a high-value target was living in the compound, and it was ‘assessed that there was a strong probability that [it] was Osama bin Laden’. The US assault team ran into a firefight on entering the compound and three adult males – two of them believed to be the couriers – were slain, along with bin Laden. Asked if bin Laden had defended himself, one of the briefers said yes: ‘He did resist the assault force. And he was killed in a firefight.’

The next day John Brennan, then Obama’s senior adviser for counterterrorism, had the task of talking up Obama’s valour while trying to smooth over the misstatements in his speech. He provided a more detailed but equally misleading account of the raid and its planning. Speaking on the record, which he rarely does, Brennan said that the mission was carried out by a group of Navy Seals who had been instructed to take bin Laden alive, if possible. He said the US had no information suggesting that anyone in the Pakistani government or military knew bin Laden’s whereabouts: ‘We didn’t contact the Pakistanis until after all of our people, all of our aircraft were out of Pakistani airspace.’ He emphasised the courage of Obama’s decision to order the strike, and said that the White House had no information ‘that confirmed that bin Laden was at the compound’ before the raid began. Obama, he said, ‘made what I believe was one of the gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory’. Brennan increased the number killed by the Seals inside the compound to five: bin Laden, a courier, his brother, a bin Laden son, and one of the women said to be shielding bin Laden.

Asked whether bin Laden had fired on the Seals, as some reporters had been told, Brennan repeated what would become a White House mantra: ‘He was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know … Here is bin Laden, who has been calling for these attacks … living in an area that is far removed from the front, hiding behind women who were put in front of him as a shield … [It] just speaks to I think the nature of the individual he was.’

Gates also objected to the idea, pushed by Brennan and Leon Panetta, that US intelligence had learned of bin Laden’s whereabouts from information acquired by waterboarding and other forms of torture. ‘All of this is going on as the Seals are flying home from their mission. The agency guys know the whole story,’ the retired official said. ‘It was a group of annuitants who did it.’ (Annuitants are retired CIA officers who remain active on contract.) ‘They had been called in by some of the mission planners in the agency to help with the cover story. So the old-timers come in and say why not admit that we got some of the information about bin Laden from enhanced interrogation?’ At the time, there was still talk in Washington about the possible prosecution of CIA agents who had conducted torture.

‘Gates told them this was not going to work,’ the retired official said. ‘He was never on the team. He knew at the eleventh hour of his career not to be a party to this nonsense. But State, the agency and the Pentagon had bought in on the cover story. None of the Seals thought that Obama was going to get on national TV and announce the raid. The Special Forces command was apoplectic. They prided themselves on keeping operational security.’ There was fear in Special Operations, the retired official said, that ‘if the true story of the missions leaked out, the White House bureaucracy was going to blame it on the Seals.’

The White House’s solution was to silence the Seals. On 5 May, every member of the Seal hit team – they had returned to their base in southern Virginia – and some members of the Joint Special Operations Command leadership were presented with a nondisclosure form drafted by the White House’s legal office; it promised civil penalties and a lawsuit for anyone who discussed the mission, in public or private. ‘The Seals were not happy,’ the retired official said. But most of them kept quiet, as did Admiral William McRaven, who was then in charge of JSOC. ‘McRaven was apoplectic. He knew he was fucked by the White House, but he’s a dyed-in-the-wool Seal, and not then a political operator, and he knew there’s no glory in blowing the whistle on the president. When Obama went public with bin Laden’s death, everyone had to scramble around for a new story that made sense, and the planners were stuck holding the bag.’

Within days, some of the early exaggerations and distortions had become obvious and the Pentagon issued a series of clarifying statements. No, bin Laden was not armed when he was shot and killed. And no, bin Laden did not use one of his wives as a shield. The press by and large accepted the explanation that the errors were the inevitable by-product of the White House’s desire to accommodate reporters frantic for details of the mission.

One lie that has endured is that the Seals had to fight their way to their target. Only two Seals have made any public statement: No Easy Day, a first-hand account of the raid by Matt Bissonnette, was published in September 2012; and two years later Rob O’Neill was interviewed by Fox News. Both men had resigned from the navy; both had fired at bin Laden. Their accounts contradicted each other on many details, but their stories generally supported the White House version, especially when it came to the need to kill or be killed as the Seals fought their way to bin Laden. O’Neill even told Fox News that he and his fellow Seals thought ‘We were going to die.’ ‘The more we trained on it, the more we realised … this is going to be a one-way mission.’

But the retired official told me that in their initial debriefings the Seals made no mention of a firefight, or indeed of any opposition. The drama and danger portrayed by Bissonnette and O’Neill met a deep-seated need, the retired official said: ‘Seals cannot live with the fact that they killed bin Laden totally unopposed, and so there has to be an account of their courage in the face of danger. The guys are going to sit around the bar and say it was an easy day? That’s not going to happen.’

There was another reason to claim there had been a firefight inside the compound, the retired official said: to avoid the inevitable question that would arise from an uncontested assault. Where were bin Laden’s guards? Surely, the most sought-after terrorist in the world would have around-the-clock protection. ‘And one of those killed had to be the courier, because he didn’t exist and we couldn’t produce him. The Pakistanis had no choice but to play along with it.’ (Two days after the raid, Reuters published photographs of three dead men that it said it had purchased from an ISI official. Two of the men were later identified by an ISI spokesman as being the alleged courier and his brother.)

*

Five days after the raid the Pentagon press corps was provided with a series of videotapes that were said by US officials to have been taken from a large collection the Seals had removed from the compound, along with as many as 15 computers. Snippets from one of the videos showed a solitary bin Laden looking wan and wrapped in a blanket, watching what appeared to be a video of himself on television. An unnamed official told reporters that the raid produced a ‘treasure trove … the single largest collection of senior terrorist materials ever’, which would provide vital insights into al-Qaida’s plans. The official said the material showed that bin Laden ‘remained an active leader in al-Qaida, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group … He was far from a figurehead [and] continued to direct even tactical details of the group’s management and to encourage plotting’ from what was described as a command-and-control centre in Abbottabad. ‘He was an active player, making the recent operation even more essential for our nation’s security,’ the official said. The information was so vital, he added, that the administration was setting up an inter-agency task force to process it: ‘He was not simply someone who was penning al-Qaida strategy. He was throwing operational ideas out there and he was also specifically directing other al-Qaida members.’

These claims were fabrications: there wasn’t much activity for bin Laden to exercise command and control over. The retired intelligence official said that the CIA’s internal reporting shows that since bin Laden moved to Abbottabad in 2006 only a handful of terrorist attacks could be linked to the remnants of bin Laden’s al-Qaida. ‘We were told at first,’ the retired official said, ‘that the Seals produced garbage bags of stuff and that the community is generating daily intelligence reports out of this stuff. And then we were told that the community is gathering everything together and needs to translate it. But nothing has come of it. Every single thing they have created turns out not to be true. It’s a great hoax – like the Piltdown man.’ The retired official said that most of the materials from Abbottabad were turned over to the US by the Pakistanis, who later razed the building. The ISI took responsibility for the wives and children of bin Laden, none of whom was made available to the US for questioning.

‘Why create the treasure trove story?’ the retired official said. ‘The White House had to give the impression that bin Laden was still operationally important. Otherwise, why kill him? A cover story was created – that there was a network of couriers coming and going with memory sticks and instructions. All to show that bin Laden remained important.’

In July 2011, the Washington Post published what purported to be a summary of some of these materials. The story’s contradictions were glaring. It said the documents had resulted in more than four hundred intelligence reports within six weeks; it warned of unspecified al-Qaida plots; and it mentioned arrests of suspects ‘who are named or described in emails that bin Laden received’. The Post didn’t identify the suspects or reconcile that detail with the administration’s previous assertions that the Abbottabad compound had no internet connection. Despite their claims that the documents had produced hundreds of reports, the Post also quoted officials saying that their main value wasn’t the actionable intelligence they contained, but that they enabled ‘analysts to construct a more comprehensive portrait of al-Qaida’.

In May 2012, the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, a private research group, released translations it had made under a federal government contract of 175 pages of bin Laden documents. Reporters found none of the drama that had been touted in the days after the raid. Patrick Cockburn wrote about the contrast between the administration’s initial claims that bin Laden was the ‘spider at the centre of a conspiratorial web’ and what the translations actually showed: that bin Laden was ‘delusional’ and had ‘limited contact with the outside world outside his compound’.

The retired official disputed the authenticity of the West Point materials: ‘There is no linkage between these documents and the counterterrorism centre at the agency. No intelligence community analysis. When was the last time the CIA: 1) announced it had a significant intelligence find; 2) revealed the source; 3) described the method for processing the materials; 4) revealed the time-line for production; 5) described by whom and where the analysis was taking place, and 6) published the sensitive results before the information had been acted on? No agency professional would support this fairy tale.’

*

In June 2011, it was reported in the New York Times, the Washington Post and all over the Pakistani press that Amir Aziz had been held for questioning in Pakistan; he was, it was said, a CIA informant who had been spying on the comings and goings at the bin Laden compound. Aziz was released, but the retired official said that US intelligence was unable to learn who leaked the highly classified information about his involvement with the mission. Officials in Washington decided they ‘could not take a chance that Aziz’s role in obtaining bin Laden’s DNA also would become known’. A sacrificial lamb was needed, and the one chosen was Shakil Afridi, a 48-year-old Pakistani doctor and sometime CIA asset, who had been arrested by the Pakistanis in late May and accused of assisting the agency. ‘We went to the Pakistanis and said go after Afridi,’ the retired official said. ‘We had to cover the whole issue of how we got the DNA.’ It was soon reported that the CIA had organised a fake vaccination programme in Abbottabad with Afridi’s help in a failed attempt to obtain bin Laden’s DNA. Afridi’s legitimate medical operation was run independently of local health authorities, was well financed and offered free vaccinations against hepatitis B. Posters advertising the programme were displayed throughout the area. Afridi was later accused of treason and sentenced to 33 years in prison because of his ties to an extremist. News of the CIA-sponsored programme created widespread anger in Pakistan, and led to the cancellation of other international vaccination programmes that were now seen as cover for American spying.

The retired official said that Afridi had been recruited long before the bin Laden mission as part of a separate intelligence effort to get information about suspected terrorists in Abbottabad and the surrounding area. ‘The plan was to use vaccinations as a way to get the blood of terrorism suspects in the villages.’ Afridi made no attempt to obtain DNA from the residents of the bin Laden compound. The report that he did so was a hurriedly put together ‘CIA cover story creating “facts”’ in a clumsy attempt to protect Aziz and his real mission. ‘Now we have the consequences,’ the retired official said. ‘A great humanitarian project to do something meaningful for the peasants has been compromised as a cynical hoax.’ Afridi’s conviction was overturned, but he remains in prison on a murder charge.

*

In his address announcing the raid, Obama said that after killing bin Laden the Seals ‘took custody of his body’. The statement created a problem. In the initial plan it was to be announced a week or so after the fact that bin Laden was killed in a drone strike somewhere in the mountains on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border and that his remains had been identified by DNA testing. But with Obama’s announcement of his killing by the Seals everyone now expected a body to be produced. Instead, reporters were told that bin Laden’s body had been flown by the Seals to an American military airfield in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and then straight to the USS Carl Vinson, a supercarrier on routine patrol in the North Arabian Sea. Bin Laden had then been buried at sea, just hours after his death. The press corps’s only sceptical moments at John Brennan’s briefing on 2 May were to do with the burial. The questions were short, to the point, and rarely answered. ‘When was the decision made that he would be buried at sea if killed?’ ‘Was this part of the plan all along?’ ‘Can you just tell us why that was a good idea?’ ‘John, did you consult a Muslim expert on that?’ ‘Is there a visual recording of this burial?’ When this last question was asked, Jay Carney, Obama’s press secretary, came to Brennan’s rescue: ‘We’ve got to give other people a chance here.’

‘We thought the best way to ensure that his body was given an appropriate Islamic burial,’ Brennan said, ‘was to take those actions that would allow us to do that burial at sea.’ He said ‘appropriate specialists and experts’ were consulted, and that the US military was fully capable of carrying out the burial ‘consistent with Islamic law’. Brennan didn’t mention that Muslim law calls for the burial service to be conducted in the presence of an imam, and there was no suggestion that one happened to be on board the Carl Vinson.

In a reconstruction of the bin Laden operation for Vanity Fair, Mark Bowden, who spoke to many senior administration officials, wrote that bin Laden’s body was cleaned and photographed at Jalalabad. Further procedures necessary for a Muslim burial were performed on the carrier, he wrote, ‘with bin Laden’s body being washed again and wrapped in a white shroud. A navy photographer recorded the burial in full sunlight, Monday morning, May 2.’ Bowden described the photos:

One frame shows the body wrapped in a weighted shroud. The next shows it lying diagonally on a chute, feet overboard. In the next frame the body is hitting the water. In the next it is visible just below the surface, ripples spreading outward. In the last frame there are only circular ripples on the surface. The mortal remains of Osama bin Laden were gone for good.

Bowden was careful not to claim that he had actually seen the photographs he described, and he recently told me he hadn’t seen them: ‘I’m always disappointed when I can’t look at something myself, but I spoke with someone I trusted who said he had seen them himself and described them in detail.’ Bowden’s statement adds to the questions about the alleged burial at sea, which has provoked a flood of Freedom of Information Act requests, most of which produced no information. One of them sought access to the photographs. The Pentagon responded that a search of all available records had found no evidence that any photographs had been taken of the burial. Requests on other issues related to the raid were equally unproductive. The reason for the lack of response became clear after the Pentagon held an inquiry into allegations that the Obama administration had provided access to classified materials to the makers of the film Zero Dark Thirty. The Pentagon report, which was put online in June 2013, noted that Admiral McRaven had ordered the files on the raid to be deleted from all military computers and moved to the CIA, where they would be shielded from FOIA requests by the agency’s ‘operational exemption’.

McRaven’s action meant that outsiders could not get access to the Carl Vinson’s unclassified logs. Logs are sacrosanct in the navy, and separate ones are kept for air operations, the deck, the engineering department, the medical office, and for command information and control. They show the sequence of events day by day aboard the ship; if there has been a burial at sea aboard the Carl Vinson, it would have been recorded.

There wasn’t any gossip about a burial among the Carl Vinson’s sailors. The carrier concluded its six-month deployment in June 2011. When the ship docked at its home base in Coronado, California, Rear Admiral Samuel Perez, commander of the Carl Vinson carrier strike group, told reporters that the crew had been ordered not to talk about the burial. Captain Bruce Lindsey, skipper of the Carl Vinson, told reporters he was unable to discuss it. Cameron Short, one of the crew of the Carl Vinson, told the Commercial-News of Danville, Illinois, that the crew had not been told anything about the burial. ‘All he knows is what he’s seen on the news,’ the newspaper reported.

The Pentagon did release a series of emails to the Associated Press. In one of them, Rear Admiral Charles Gaouette reported that the service followed ‘traditional procedures for Islamic burial’, and said none of the sailors on board had been permitted to observe the proceedings. But there was no indication of who washed and wrapped the body, or of which Arabic speaker conducted the service.

Within weeks of the raid, I had been told by two longtime consultants to Special Operations Command, who have access to current intelligence, that the funeral aboard the Carl Vinson didn’t take place. One consultant told me that bin Laden’s remains were photographed and identified after being flown back to Afghanistan. The consultant added: ‘At that point, the CIA took control of the body. The cover story was that it had been flown to the Carl Vinson.’ The second consultant agreed that there had been ‘no burial at sea’. He added that ‘the killing of bin Laden was political theatre designed to burnish Obama’s military credentials … The Seals should have expected the political grandstanding. It’s irresistible to a politician. Bin Laden became a working asset.’ Early this year, speaking again to the second consultant, I returned to the burial at sea. The consultant laughed and said: ‘You mean, he didn’t make it to the water?’

The retired official said there had been another complication: some members of the Seal team had bragged to colleagues and others that they had torn bin Laden’s body to pieces with rifle fire. The remains, including his head, which had only a few bullet holes in it, were thrown into a body bag and, during the helicopter flight back to Jalalabad, some body parts were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains – or so the Seals claimed. At the time, the retired official said, the Seals did not think their mission would be made public by Obama within a few hours: ‘If the president had gone ahead with the cover story, there would have been no need to have a funeral within hours of the killing. Once the cover story was blown, and the death was made public, the White House had a serious “Where’s the body?” problem. The world knew US forces had killed bin Laden in Abbottabad. Panic city. What to do? We need a “functional body” because we have to be able to say we identified bin Laden via a DNA analysis. It would be navy officers who came up with the “burial at sea” idea. Perfect. No body. Honourable burial following sharia law. Burial is made public in great detail, but Freedom of Information documents confirming the burial are denied for reasons of “national security”. It’s the classic unravelling of a poorly constructed cover story – it solves an immediate problem but, given the slightest inspection, there is no back-up support. There never was a plan, initially, to take the body to sea, and no burial of bin Laden at sea took place.’ The retired official said that if the Seals’ first accounts are to be believed, there wouldn’t have been much left of bin Laden to put into the sea in any case.

*

It was inevitable that the Obama administration’s lies, misstatements and betrayals would create a backlash. ‘We’ve had a four-year lapse in co-operation,’ the retired official said. ‘It’s taken that long for the Pakistanis to trust us again in the military-to-military counterterrorism relationship – while terrorism was rising all over the world … They felt Obama sold them down the river. They’re just now coming back because the threat from Isis, which is now showing up there, is a lot greater and the bin Laden event is far enough away to enable someone like General Durrani to come out and talk about it.’ Generals Pasha and Kayani have retired and both are reported to be under investigation for corruption during their time in office.

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s long-delayed report on CIA torture, released last December, documented repeated instances of official lying, and suggested that the CIA’s knowledge of bin Laden’s courier was sketchy at best and predated its use of waterboarding and other forms of torture. The report led to international headlines about brutality and waterboarding, along with gruesome details about rectal feeding tubes, ice baths and threats to rape or murder family members of detainees who were believed to be withholding information. Despite the bad publicity, the report was a victory for the CIA. Its major finding – that the use of torture didn’t lead to discovering the truth – had already been the subject of public debate for more than a decade. Another key finding – that the torture conducted was more brutal than Congress had been told – was risible, given the extent of public reporting and published exposés by former interrogators and retired CIA officers. The report depicted tortures that were obviously contrary to international law as violations of rules or ‘inappropriate activities’ or, in some cases, ‘management failures’. Whether the actions described constitute war crimes was not discussed, and the report did not suggest that any of the CIA interrogators or their superiors should be investigated for criminal activity. The agency faced no meaningful consequences as a result of the report.

The retired official told me that the CIA leadership had become experts in derailing serious threats from Congress: ‘They create something that is horrible but not that bad. Give them something that sounds terrible. “Oh my God, we were shoving food up a prisoner’s ass!” Meanwhile, they’re not telling the committee about murders, other war crimes, and secret prisons like we still have in Diego Garcia. The goal also was to stall it as long as possible, which they did.’

The main theme of the committee’s 499-page executive summary is that the CIA lied systematically about the effectiveness of its torture programme in gaining intelligence that would stop future terrorist attacks in the US. The lies included some vital details about the uncovering of an al-Qaida operative called Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was said to be the key al-Qaida courier, and the subsequent tracking of him to Abbottabad in early 2011. The agency’s alleged intelligence, patience and skill in finding al-Kuwaiti became legend after it was dramatised in Zero Dark Thirty.

The Senate report repeatedly raised questions about the quality and reliability of the CIA’s intelligence about al-Kuwaiti. In 2005 an internal CIA report on the hunt for bin Laden noted that ‘detainees provide few actionable leads, and we have to consider the possibility that they are creating fictitious characters to distract us or to absolve themselves of direct knowledge about bin Ladin [sic].’ A CIA cable a year later stated that ‘we have had no success in eliciting actionable intelligence on bin Laden’s location from any detainees.’ The report also highlighted several instances of CIA officers, including Panetta, making false statements to Congress and the public about the value of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ in the search for bin Laden’s couriers.

Obama today is not facing re-election as he was in the spring of 2011. His principled stand on behalf of the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran says much, as does his decision to operate without the support of the conservative Republicans in Congress. High-level lying nevertheless remains the modus operandi of US policy, along with secret prisons, drone attacks, Special Forces night raids, bypassing the chain of command, and cutting out those who might say no.

Seymour M. Hersh
21 May 2015

Find this story at 21 May 2015

Copyright © LRB Limited 2015

Seymour Hersh’s 10,000-word bin Laden story — told four years ago in 640 words by Larry Johnson (2011 – 2015)

When Seymour Hersh releases each of his blockbuster reports, what supposedly makes his claims authoritative is, more than anything else, the mere fact that they come from Seymour Hersh.

The reader is meant to trust the word of retired intelligence officials, consultants, and other unnamed experts, because Hersh trusts them. And we are meant to trust Hersh because of his stature as a veteran investigative journalist.

We are being invited to join a circle of confidence. Which is to say, we are being hooked by a confidence trick. Hersh is the confidant of (mostly) anonymous sources of inside information of inestimable quality, and we then become confidants of Hersh when he lets us in on the secrets.

To say this is not to imply that everything Hersh reports should be doubted, but simply to note that his egotistical investment in his own work — the fact that Hersh’s stories invariably end up being in part stories about Hersh — inevitably clouds the picture.

As a result, ensuing debate about the credibility of Hersh’s reports tends to devolve into polarized contests of allegiance. Each side sees the other as having been duped — either duped by a conspiracy theorist (Hersh) or duped by government officials and the mainstream media.

*

A week after Osama bin Laden was killed, Larry Johnson wrote a blog post that reads like an outline draft of Hersh’s latest report. Johnson is a retired senior intelligence official who claims to be knowledgeable about the initial intelligence about bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad. Maybe he was the “major U.S. source” on whom Hersh relied.

On May 9, 2011, Johnson wrote:

I’ve learned some things from friends who are still active that dramatically alter the picture the White House is desperately trying to paint. Here is what really happened. The U.S. Government learned of Bin Laden’s whereabouts last August when a person walked into a U.S. Embassy and claimed that Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI) had Bin Laden under control in Abottabad, Pakistan. Naturally the CIA personnel who received this information were skeptical. That’s why the CIA set up a safehouse in Abottabad in September 2010 as reported yesterday in the Washington Post.

The claim that we found Bin Laden because of a courier and the use of enhanced interrogation is simply a cover story. It appears to be an effective cover story because it has many Bush supporters pressing the case that enhanced interrogation worked. The Obama operatives in the White House are quite content to let the Bushies share in this part of the “credit.” Why? It keeps most folks from looking at the claims that don’t add up.

Anyway, the intel collection at the safe house escalated and the CIA began pressing Pakistan’s ISI to come clean on Osama.

As Pakistan’s Dawn notes in an editorial, the Pakistani version of events — the Abbottabad Commission report — has yet to be officially released.

Buried after initial promises that it would be made public, one version of the report has already seen the light of day via a leaked copy to Al Jazeera. That version alone contains a deep, systematic, even fundamental critique of the manner in which the ISI operates.

Surely, it is morally and legally indefensible of the state to hide from the public the only systematic inquiry into the events surrounding perhaps the most humiliating incident in decades here. National security will not be undermined by the publication of a report; national security was undermined by the presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.

PAUL WOODWARD 05/12/2015

Find this story at 12 May 2015

Copyright © 2015

Bin Ladin’s Bookshelf

On May 20, 2015, the ODNI released a sizeable tranche of documents recovered during the raid on the compound used to hide Usama bin Ladin. The release, which followed a rigorous interagency review, aligns with the President’s call for increased transparency–consistent with national security prerogatives–and the 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act, which required the ODNI to conduct a review of the documents for release.

The release contains two sections. The first is a list of non-classified, English-language material found in and around the compound. The second is a selection of now-declassified documents.

The Intelligence Community will be reviewing hundreds more documents in the near future for possible declassification and release. An interagency taskforce under the auspices of the White House and with the agreement of the DNI is reviewing all documents which supported disseminated intelligence cables, as well as other relevant material found around the compound. All documents whose publication will not hurt ongoing operations against al-Qa‘ida or their affiliates will be released.

Pointer Now Declassified Material (103 items)

06 Ramadan (Arabic Language Version) *
A Letter to the Sunnah people in Syria (Arabic Language Version)
Afghani Opportunity (Arabic Language Version)
CALL FOR GUIDANCE AND REFORM 13 April 1994 (Arabic Language Version)
Despotism of Big Money (VIDEO: Arabic Language Version)
German Economy (Arabic Language Version)
Gist of conversation Oct 11 (Arabic Language Version) *
Ideas as discussion with the sons of the Peninsula (Arabic Language Version)
Instructions to Applicants (Arabic Language Version)
Jihad and Reform Front 22 May 2007 (Arabic Language Version)
Lessons learned following the fall of the Islamic Emirate (Arabic Language Version)
Letter about revolutions (Arabic Language Version)
Letter Addressed to Atiyah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter addressed to Shaykh (Arabic Language Version)
Letter Ansar Al-Sunnah Group (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd 07 August 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter dtd 09 August 2010 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd 13 Oct 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter dtd 16 December 2007 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd 18 JUL 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter dtd 21 May 2007 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd 30 October 2010 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd 5 April 2011 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter dtd March 2008 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter dtd November 24 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter from Abu Abdallah to his mother 2 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Abu Abdullah to his mother (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Al-Zawahiri dtd August 2003 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Hafiz (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Hamzah to father dtd July 2009 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Khalid to ‘Abd-al-Latif (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Khalid to Abdullah and Abu al-Harish (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Khalid to his son (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from Qari, early April (Arabic Language Version)
Letter from UBL to Atiyah (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter from Zamray dtd 07 August 2010 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter Implications of Climate Change (Arabic Language Version)
Letter re Fatwas of the Permanent Committee (Arabic Language Version)
Letter regarding Abu al-Hasan (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to ‘Abd Al-Latif dtd 29 December 2009 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Abdallah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to ‘Abd-al-Rahman (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Abu ‘Abdallah al-Hajj (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Abu Sulayman (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Aunt (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Aunt Umm-Khalid (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Badr Khan 3 Dec 2002 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Brother Fatimah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Brother from Abu Abdallah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to brother Hamzah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Brother Ilyas al- (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to brother Yahya (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to daughter Umm-Mu’adh (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Hakimullah Mahsud, Leader of the Taliban Movement (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Hamza (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Muhammad Aslam dtd 22 April 2011 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Mujahidin in Somalia dtd 28 December 2006 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to my beloved Brother (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh Abu Abdallah dtd 17 July 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter to Shaykh Abu Abdallah dtd 2 September 2009 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh Abu Yahya (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter to Shaykh Abu Yahya 2 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh Abu-al-Layth, Shaykh Abu-Yahya, Shaykh ‘Abdallah Sa’id (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh Azmaray dtd 4 February 2008 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh from Abu Abdallah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Shaykh Mahmud (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter to Shaykh Mahmud 26 September 2010 (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter to Shaykh Mahmud and Shaykh Abu Yahya (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to sister Um-‘Abd-al-Rahman (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to sons ‘Uthman, Muhammad, Hamzah, wife Um Hamzah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Special Committee of al-Jihad’s Qa’ida of the Mujahidin Affairs in Iraq and to the Ansar al-Sunnah Army (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to the American people (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to UBL from daughter Khadijah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Um ‘Abd-al-Rahman dtd 26 April 2011 (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Um Abid al-Rahman (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Um Sa’ad from aunt Um Khalid (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Umm Khalid from Sarah (Arabic Language Version)
Letter to Uthman (Arabic Language Version) *
Letter to wife (VIDEO: Arabic Language Version)
Message for all Muslims following US State of Union Address (Arabic Language Version)
Message for general Islamic nation (Arabic Language Version)
Message for Islamic Ummah in general (Arabic Language Version)
Message from Abu Hammam al-Ghurayb (Arabic Language Version)
Message to Muslim brothers in Iraq and to the Islamic nation (Arabic Language Version)
Report on External Operations (Arabic Language Version) *
Request for Documents from CTC (Arabic Language Version)
Spreadsheet (Arabic Language Version)
Study Paper about the Kampala Raid in Uganda (Arabic Language Version)
Suggestion to end the Yemen Revolution (Arabic Language Version)
Summary on situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Arabic Language Version)
Terror Franchise (No Arabic Version) *
Undated letter (Arabic Language Version)
Undated letter 2 (Arabic Language Version)
Undated Letter 3 (Arabic Language Version)
Undated letter from Khalid Habib (Arabic Language Version)
Undated letter re Afghanistan (Arabic Language Version)
Undated message re Egypt demonstrations (Arabic Language Version)
Undated statement (Arabic Language Version)
Undated statement 2 (Arabic Language Version)
Undated statement re American conversions to Islam (Arabic Language Version)
Verbally released document for the Naseer trial (Arabic Language Version) *
VIDEO: Capture of handwritten note
Zamrai (UBL) letter to Unis (Arabic Language Version) *
* Previously declassified for federal prosecutions.

| HIDE SECTION |

Pointer Publicly Available U.S. Government Documents (75 items)

Pointer English Language Books (39 items)

Pointer Material Published by Violent Extremists & Terror Groups (35 items)

Pointer Materials Regarding France (19 items)

Pointer Media Articles (33 items)

Pointer Other Religious Documents (11 items)

Pointer Think Tank & Other Studies (40 items)

Pointer Software & Technical Manuals (30 items)

Pointer Other Miscellaneous Documents (14 items)

Pointer Documents Probably Used by Other Compound Residents (10 items)

This list contains U.S. person information that is being released in accordance with the Fiscal Year 2014 Intelligence Authorization Act (section 309) requirement that the Director of National Intelligence conduct a declassification review of certain items collected during the mission that killed Usama bin Ladin on May 1, 2011, and make publicly available any information declassified as a result of such review.

All publications are unclassified and available commercially or in the public domain.

The U.S. Intelligence Community does not endorse any of the publications on this list.

Find this story at May 2015

Bin Laden Turned in by Informant — Courier Was Cover Story (2011)

Forget the cover story of waterboarding-leads-to-courier-leads-to bin Laden (not to deny the effectiveness of waterboarding, but it’s just not applicable in this case.) Sources in the intelligence community tell me that after years of trying and one bureaucratically insane near-miss in Yemen, the US government killed OBL because a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to collect the approximately $25 million reward from the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program.

The informant was a walk-in.

The ISI officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family. My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad, a city with such a high concentration of military that I’m told there’s no equivalent in the US.

The CIA and friends then set about proving that OBL was indeed there. And they did.

Next they approached the chiefs of the Pakistani military and the ISI. The US was going to come in with or without them. The CIA offered them a deal they couldn’t refuse: they would double what the Saudis were paying them to keep bin Laden if they cooperated with the US. Or they could refuse the deal and live with the consequences: the Saudis would stop paying and there would be the international embarassment…

The ISI and Pakistani military were cooperating with the US on the raid.

The cooperation was why there were no troops in Abottabad. They were all pulled out. It had always seemed very far-fetched to me that a helicopter could crash and later destroyed in an area with such high military concentration without the Pakistanis noticing. But then it seemed even wilder to believe that a US Navy SEAL (DEVGRU) actually shot a woman who rushed them in the leg. Yeah, right. I know these guys. They only way they’ll shoot a woman in the leg is if they are double tapping a head or chest and that leg got in the way.

DEVGRU shoots to kill.

The cover story was going to be a drone strike in Pakistan. Things went south when the helicopter crashed. The White House freaked and the cooperating Pakistanis were thrown under the bus.

Splat.

Obama Shaka

Although the White House really pissed off the intel and DEVGRU guys with their knee-jerk reaction that tossed the Pakistanis under the proverbial bus, ironically it did have the same outcome as the original CIA cover story: the way they were treated, no one believes Generals Kiyani and Pasha were cooperating with the US.

Big shaka for that, Barry!

August 07, 2011

by R J Hillhouse

Find this story at 7 August 2011

© Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008 by R J Hillhouse

Why Seymour Hersh’s story on Osama bin Laden’s death rings true (2015)

Adnan Khan explains why Hersh’s controversial story about the al Qaeda leader’s killing could be true—and demands our attention

This week, Seymour Hersh, America’s most famous and controversial investigative journalist, caused an uproar with his allegations that the U.S. government account of the 2011 killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was a lie. According to his version of events, published in the London Review of Books, bin Laden was not only living under the protection of the Pakistani military but the raid that nabbed him was planned and executed with Pakistani consent.

Critics, White House officials in particular, have strongly condemned the allegations, accusing Hersh of conspiratorial excess. Hersh relies on anonymous sources and unnamed insiders, they say, and builds a narrative of events that are impossible to verify. Nonetheless, based on my own experiences reporting in Pakistan, his story does ring true.

And here’s why:

In November 2009, one and half years before the Navy SEAL operation that killed him, I was told by a Pakistani militant that Osama bin Laden was in a safehouse in Abbottabad, a garrison city 100 km north of the Pakistani capital Islamabad. The militant, a former member of the Lashkar e Taiba (LeT), one of Pakistan’s most powerful jihadi groups with close ties to the Pakistani military, was absolutely certain.

“Osama bin Laden is here,” he told me while we were driving through the town on our way to the capital. “The ISI are protecting him. The senior LeT commanders are close with the ISI. They all know he’s here.”

I didn’t believe him. Abbottabad is one of Pakistan’s most important military cities, home to the Pakistan Military Academy, the equivalent of West Point. Much of its population is made up of retired military officers.

But nine months later, according to Hersh’s account, a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer would walk into the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad and tell the CIA station chief more or less the same thing: Osama bin Laden was in Abbottabad.

I’ve kept that bit of information to myself these past few years. Even while I was back in Abbottabad covering the killing of bin Laden in May 2011, I said nothing about it, partly because by then my source, the former LeT fighter, had disappeared.

So why am I revealing this now?

I think it’s important, after Seymour Hersh’s revelations, to revisit what happened in the lead-up to an event that possibly changed the course of history.

At the time, the event certainly felt like theatre. There was a great deal of circumstantial evidence that clashed with the official narrative being put forth. The Pakistani military denied they had any knowledge of bin Laden’s presence in Abbottabad; the Americans denied they had carried out the raid with Pakistani consent. According to President Barack Obama’s version of events, detailed in a press conference hours after the operation, this was a monumental act of derring-do, carried out by the world’s premier military using elite soldiers and top-secret technology. It was a Hollywood script (and would later become one, the 2013 Academy Award-nominated Zero Dark Thirty) complete with easily identifiable heroes and villains. None of it sat very well with me.

This is what I knew: a mid-level militant from a group with known ties to Pakistan’s intelligence services knew bin Laden was in Abbottabad. If he knew, it’s fair to say the Pakistani military knew. Locals I spoke to in the neighbourhood of the compound where bin Laden was staying all told me it was an ISI facility. The white Potohar jeeps they saw almost daily were a dead giveaway: “The ISI bought thousands of those cars in the late 1990s for its officers,” an ISI insider told me at the time. “It’s a running joke in Pakistan: if you see a white Potohar in your rearview mirror, be careful, the ISI is on your tail.”

Other ISI contacts were dumbfounded: how could a U.S. Navy Seal team manage to fly into one of the most heavily guarded garrison cities in Pakistan, carry out an assault lasting nearly an hour—in a quiet residential neighbourhood two kilometres from an elite military college—and then fly out without any response from the Pakistani military?

Someone had to have known, I was told repeatedly, and that someone had to be at the highest level of the military command. The U.S. had to have had Pakistani blessing for the operation.

What Hersh provides is more detail. More importantly, he offers us the opportunity to question the widening gap between what our leaders are doing and what they tell us they are doing. According to his view, we are living through an era of scripted events, engineered realities designed to achieve political goals. If his view is true – and there is mounting evidence that it is – then it deserves our attention.

Adnan R. Khan
May 15, 2015

Find this story at 15 May 2015

© 2001-2015 Rogers Media.

Osama bin Laden ‘protected by Pakistan in return for Saudi cash’ (2011)

Osama bin Laden was protected by elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash, according to a controversial new account of the operation to kill the world’s most wanted man.

Raelynn Hillhouse, an American security analyst, claims his whereabouts were finally revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the $25m (£15 million) bounty on the al-Qaeda leader’s head.
Her version, based on evidence from sources in what she calls the “intelligence community”, contradicts the official account that bin Laden was tracked down through his trusted courier.
Pakistani officials have always denied that bin Laden was sheltered or that Islamabad had any knowledge of the secret mission that killed him.
But Dr Hillhouse, who is known for her links to private military contractors that work extensively with the CIA, says Pakistan gave permission for a covert mission which would then be covered up by claiming bin Laden had been killed in a drone strike.
“The [Inter-Services Intelligence] officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family,” she writes on her intelligence blog, The Spy Who Billed Me.
Related Articles
Pakistan: 20 militants killed in drone strike 10 Aug 2011
Osama bin Laden raid: top 10 discoveries 24 Jun 2011
“My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad, a city with such a high concentration of military that I’m told there’s no equivalent in the US.” After confirming bin Laden’s presence in the military town, the US approached Pakistan’s military leaders securing their co-operation in return for cash and a chance to avoid public humiliation.
The theory, if true, would explain how American black hawk helicopters were then able to fly deep into Pakistan territory in May without encountering resistance.
The plan only unravelled when one of the helicopters crash-landed, blowing the cover story.
“The co-operation was why there were no troops in Abottabad,” writes Dr Hillhouse. “It had always seemed very far-fetched to me that a helicopter could crash and later be destroyed in an area with such high military concentration without the Pakistanis noticing.” In the immediate aftermath of the raid, some residents of Abbottabad, where bin Laden had lived for five years, said they had received mysterious visits a night earlier warning them to stay inside with their lights off.
However, a senior Pakistani security official denied that the ISI had sheltered bin Laden.
“We don’t use toilet paper – we wash,” he said. “But toilet paper is all this theory is good for.”
A spokesman for the US department of defense said: “We have no additional operational details, or comments on operational details, to make at this time.”

Rob Crilly By Rob Crilly, Islamabad12:35PM BST 10 Aug 2011

Find this story at 10 August 2011

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2015

Questions Raised by Real Story of How US Found Bin Laden (2011)

The real story of how the US found bin Laden raises some key questions, namely:

August 11, 2011

by R J Hillhouse

Find this story at 11 August 2011

© Copyright 2006, 2007, 2008 by R J Hillhouse

Pakistan ‘paid’ to protect bin Laden (2011)

OSAMA bin Laden was protected by elements of Pakistan’s security apparatus in return for millions of dollars of Saudi cash, according to an account of the operation to kill the world’s most wanted man.

Raelynn Hillhouse, an American security analyst, claimed that bin Laden’s whereabouts were revealed when a Pakistani intelligence officer came forward to claim the long-standing $US25 million ($A24.2 million) bounty on the al-Qaeda leader’s head.

Her version, based on information from ”intelligence community” sources, contradicts the official account that bin Laden was tracked down through surveillance of his courier.

Pakistani officials have always denied that bin Laden was sheltered in the country, or that Islamabad had any prior knowledge of the secret mission in which he was killed. ”The [Inter-Services Intelligence] officer came forward to claim the substantial reward and to broker US citizenship for his family,” she writes on her intelligence blog, The Spy Who Billed Me.

”My sources tell me that the informant claimed that the Saudis were paying off the Pakistani military and intelligence to essentially shelter and keep bin Laden under house arrest in Abbottabad.”

August 12, 2011

Find this story at 12 August 2011

Copyright © 2015 Fairfax Media

BND soll CIA angeblich Hinweis auf Bin­Laden­Versteckgegeben haben ­

Mitten in der BND­Affäre verbreitet sich diese Nachricht: Der Bundesnachrichtendienst soll
den Amerikanern einen entscheidenden Hinweis gegeben haben, der zur Ergreifung von
Osama Bin Laden führte. Ist das plausibel?
Hat der deutsche Geheimdienst BND den Amerikanern bei der Ergreifung von Osama Bin Laden
entscheidend geholfen? Das berichtet die “Bild am Sonntag” (BamS) unter Berufung auf USGeheimdienstkreise.
Demnach soll ein Agent des Bundesnachrichtendienstes angeblich den
Hinweis auf das Versteck des Terroristen in Pakistan gegeben haben.
Die Nachricht kommt zu einer Zeit, in der der BND erheblich in der Kritik steht: Der Dienst hat der
amerikanischen NSA beim massenhaften Ausspionieren von Zielen in Deutschland und Europa
geholfen, der Verdacht der Wirtschaftsspionage steht im Raum. Ausgerechnet jetzt verbreitet sich
die Nachricht von der angeblichen Heldentat des BND im Fall Bin Laden. Kann man das glauben?
Laut “BamS” gibt es einen Insider in US­Geheimdienstkreisen, der die “grundsätzliche Bedeutung”
des Bin­Laden­Hinweises der deutschen Kollegen betone und die Zusammenarbeit der Deutschen
und Amerikaner in dem Fall lobe. “Es gibt eine Menge zu kritisieren an der Zusammenarbeit
zwischen deutschen und US­Geheimdiensten”, schreibt die Zeitung in ihrer Online­Ausgabe. “Aber
es gab durchaus auch Erfolge im Kampf gegen den Terror.”
Bemerkenswert: Bislang war nie etwas von einer entscheidenden deutschen Rolle bei der
Ergreifung Bin Ladens bekannt geworden. Im Gegenteil: Experten halten den BND in Pakistan für
relativ ahnungslos, Erkenntnisse hat der Dienst dort fast nur über deutsche Dschihadisten.
Hinweis von pakistanisch­deutschem Doppelagenten?
Die offizielle Version der US­Regierung zur Tötung des Qaida­Chefs in der Nacht auf den 2. Mai
2011 besagt, dass ein Team von US­Navy­Seals per Hubschrauber von Afghanistan im Tiefflug
nach Abbottabad eilte, einer Bergstadt etwa 60 Kilometer nördlich der Hauptstadt Islamabad.
Dort seilten sich Soldaten ab und fanden Bin Laden in einer hoch ummauerten Villa.
Sie töteten den Terrorfürsten, nahmen den Leichnam mit und bestatteten den meistgesuchten
Mann der Welt noch am selben Tag von einem Flugzeugträger aus im Arabischen Meer. Die
pakistanische Regierung wurde ­ so die offizielle Version ­ über den Einsatz erst informiert, als die
Helikopter schon in pakistanischen Luftraum eingedrungen waren.
Den Hinweis auf das Versteck haben die Amerikaner nach eigenen Angaben von Bin Ladens Kurier
al­Kuwaiti bekommen. Die “BamS” hingegen berichtet nun: Der Hinweis zu Bin Ladens
Aufenthaltsort sei damals von einem Agenten des pakistanischen Geheimdienstes Inter­Services
Intelligence gekommen ­ und dieser Agent habe seit Jahren auch für den BND gearbeitet. Die
Information des Doppelagenten soll dann an die USA weitergeleitet worden sein und habe einen
­ ohnehin bereits bestehenden ­ Verdacht der CIA erhärtet.
Bleibt die Frage: Warum hat der Doppelagent nicht direkt die Amerikaner informiert? In diesem
Fall hätte er eine dicke Belohnung einstreichen können. Warum also sollte die Information erst an
den ­ eher trägen, nicht übermäßig zahlungswilligen ­ BND gegangen sein?
Zweifel an der offiziellen Version im Fall Bin Laden gibt es immer wieder. Erst in der vergangenen
Woche hatte Pulitzer­Preisträger Seymour M. Hersh die Darstellung des Weißen Hauses kritisiert ­
und eine eigene Theorie vorgelegt. In der “London Review of Books” schreibt Hersh, US­Präsident
Barack Obama habe gelogen. Washington habe Islamabad viel früher in die geplante Aktion
eingeweiht. Beweise legte er für seine Theorie nicht vor.

brk/kaz/wal

16. Mai 2015, 23:52 Uhr

Find this story at 16 May 2015

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