29.7.07

I Helped MI5. My Reward: Brutality and Prison

"I Helped MI5. My Reward: Brutality and Prison"
By David Rose
The Observer UK

Sunday 29 July 2007

When Bisher al-Rawi agreed to work for the British government, he thought he was doing the right thing. He spent four gruelling years at Guantanamo Bay for his efforts. In this remarkable interview he breaks his silence and tells his extraordinary story to David Rose.

James Bond used to interview informants in nightclubs and luxury hotels. Le Carré's George Smiley preferred park benches, or safe houses in Belgravia. But when Bisher al-Rawi met the men from MI5, they chose somewhere more prosaic: a table in the basement of the Kensington High Street McDonald's, just to the left of the stairs. 'I always had a Filet-o-Fish,' al-Rawi says drily. 'They would only drink. One supposes they didn't like the food.'

It wasn't the only difference between Britain's real and fictional spies. Having risked his life and reputation to tell MI5 about Islamic radicalism in London in the months after 9/11, al-Rawi has told The Observer the sensational story of his betrayal.

A secret telegram was sent from the British Security Service to the CIA, in which they told the Americans that al-Rawi was carrying a timing device for a bomb - in reality, an innocuous battery charger from Argos - on a business trip to Gambia. Al-Rawi, the telegram added, was an 'Iraqi extremist' associate of the preacher Abu Qatada, later described as Osama bin Laden's ambassador to Europe and now in a British jail

It did not, however, mention the fact that al-Rawi had been seeing Qatada at the request of MI5.

Only a few months earlier, in the spring of 2002, while Qatada was wanted and supposedly in hiding, al-Rawi had visited him numerous times with MI5's knowledge, in the hope of arranging a meeting between him and his handlers. In addition, he had told MI5 all about his life and tried to provide an insight into Britain's Islamic scene.

All of it was thrown in his face. Arrested on arrival in Gambia and interrogated, a month later, al-Rawi was flown on an illegal CIA 'rendition' flight halfway across the world and spent four and a half years detained without charge in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. From the beginning, he says, the basis of his hundreds of interrogations was the information he had already freely given to MI5.

Last week, in two days of interviews, al-Rawi told his story for the first time. He was speaking out for one reason - to help his friend, Jamil el-Banna, who was arrested in Gambia with him and shared his ordeal. Like al-Rawi, he has now been deemed to pose no threat by the Americans. But el-Banna, a refugee from Jordan long settled in Britain who has five British children, is still in his cell in Guantanamo - because the UK government has refused to allow his return.

Now 39, al-Rawi looks older and thinner than in photos from before his arrest. Clean-shaven, in designer jeans and a sweatshirt, he remains animated and articulate, punctuating even the grimmest episodes with an expansive, mischievous laugh.

His family came to Britain when al-Rawi was 16 after his father, a wealthy businessman, was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. For a time he went to Millfield, the public school in Somerset, and later studied engineering at London's Queen Mary and Westfield College. His father died in 1992 and the rest of his family - his mother, brother and sister - acquired UK citizenship. al-Rawi remained an Iraqi, in the hope that this would one day make it easier to retrieve property left behind.

During the 1990s he ran his own engineering business and learned to fly helicopters. He rarely drove a car, preferring big motorbikes. It was through his business that al-Rawi got to know el-Banna.

Al-Rawi recollects that he met Qatada at a mosque in London and gradually they became friends. 'I got to know his kids. My relationship with Abu Qatada wasn't much different from with a lot of people in the community,' said al-Rawi.

Several times before 9/11, he was asked to be an interpreter at meetings between MI5 and Arabic-speakers, including Qatada. 'On two occasions I asked the officers in private, "Is it OK to have a relationship with Abu Qatada? Is this a problem?" And they always said, "No, it's fine, it's OK."' Phase two of his relationship began a few weeks after the 11 September attacks in 2001, when two MI5 men came to his home, introducing themselves as Alex and Matt. 'The family was freaking out, so I took them in the conservatory and closed the door. They'd done their homework very well, they knew a lot about me. It was like an interview.'

They came back a week later but because his family felt uncomfortable, al-Rawi says they began to meet outside - first in a pub at Victoria, and later at the McDonald's. 'In those early days they were always offering me money. I was very clear with them. I told them I wasn't going to be paid. I agreed to talk to MI5 because I believed it would do some good.' Even before 9/11, al-Rawi says, he could see that tension was rising between Muslims and the authorities in Britain. 'I wanted to bring the two sides together.' He shrugs. 'Boy, did I fall through the gap.'

However, al-Rawi was concerned that he might somehow incriminate himself, by speaking of people who - unbeknown to him - really might have links with terrorism. He also sought assurances that everything he said was in confidence. He was asked to meet an MI5 lawyer called Simon. 'He gave me very solid assurances about confidentiality,' al- Rawi says. 'He promised they would even protect me and my family if they had to. He said that, if I was ever arrested, I should cooperate with the police. If a matter got to court, he would come as a witness and tell the truth.'

Last night MI5 declined to comment on this or other aspects of the case. Despite repeated and detailed requests, their spokesman did not return calls.

In December 2001, the government introduced the 2001 Terrorism Act, allowing foreign nationals such as Abu Qatada to be detained without charge. Shortly before it was passed, Qatada disappeared. Like most of his associates, al-Rawi had no idea of his whereabouts. But one day in early spring a stranger phoned and asked to meet him at a London mosque. He took him to a house where Qatada was staying. 'He asked me if I could help him find somewhere new.'

Through a friend, al-Rawi found him a flat near the river. 'Less than a week later I saw Alex in McDonald's. He asked me straight out: "Bisher, do you know where Abu Qatada is?" I thought to myself, if I was going to tell a lie, now was the time to do it. But I didn't. I said: "Yes, I do."' A few days later they met again, this time with Alex's boss, Martin. 'He seemed excited. Up till then the British authorities had no idea where Abu Qatada was.'

Al-Rawi told Qatada that he had informed MI5 that he knew where he was. 'He looked at me in amazement. He didn't like it, yet at the same time he tolerated it. I really thought I could bring them together.'

Al-Rawi acted as a messenger, shuttling from preacher to spy and back again. Finally, in early summer 2002, al-Rawi says, Qatada agreed to meet MI5, but barely had he informed his handlers of this when Qatada changed his mind. Soon afterwards al-Rawi got a final phone call from Alex. 'It was a brief conversation terminating our relationship. It was very tense, like breaking off with a girlfriend. He was pissed off, I was pissed off. But I was also relieved: it was a huge load off my shoulders.'

Later, after Qatada's arrest in October 2002, MI5 claimed in court that they had not known of his whereabouts for almost a year. Al-Rawi finds this implausible, as, he says, did his interrogators at Guantanamo. 'As I told Abu Qatada at the time, all they had to do is follow me on my motorbike.'

On 1 November, al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna and another friend, Abdullah el-Janoudi, a British citizen, were strolling to the gate at Gatwick airport to board their flight to Banjul, Gambia. Al-Rawi's brother, Wahhab, had plans to set up a peanut plant there and the three friends were flying to meet him. Wahhab had travelled ahead.

The previous evening, MI5 and the police had been to visit el-Banna and, according to an MI5 memo disclosed to his lawyers, tried to recruit him. He could, they said, 'start a new life with a new identity' and acquire British citizenship. He refused. But the officers promised that he could travel the next day 'without a problem' - and return to Britain afterwards.

It was not to be. The three men were stopped at the gate, searched, and detained for five days at Paddington Green police station. Searches of their homes confirmed, as further police documents state, that they contained no trace of explosives or other illegal materials, while the 'suspicious' device found in al-Rawi's luggage was, indeed, a battery charger.

While al-Rawi was being held, MI5 sent its first telegram to the CIA, describing the charger - which al-Rawi had modified to make it waterproof - as 'a timing device [that] could possibly be used as some part of a car-based IED [improved explosive device].' A second telegram three days later failed to correct this, repeating the claim that al-Rawi was 'an Islamic extremist' and saying the men would soon be on their way again.

In a report last week on the case, the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee cited testimony that it was given in secret from MI5, claiming that the service had sent 'caveats' with the telegrams asking for no action to be taken. These, it was clear, were ignored. With no evidence against them, the men were released without charge from Paddington Green and allowed to book new flights for the following Friday. But the telegrams had done their job. On arrival in Gambia on 8 November all three were held, together with Wahhab and his local agent, who had come to the airport to meet them.

Next morning al-Rawi came face to face with the Americans. A man who called himself Lee was the lead interrogator.

'From the beginning, the questions made it plain that the Americans had been given the contents of my own MI5 file, which was supposed to be confidential. Lee even told me the British were giving him information. I had agreed to help MI5 because I wanted to prevent terrorism, and now the information I had freely given them was being used against me in an attempt to prove that I myself was some kind of terrorist.'

He was accused of planning a Gambian terrorist training camp - in a tiny country where he knew no one. In his last week in Gambia, one of the Americans came to al-Rawi's cell and told him he was going to a US prison in Afghanistan - the process known as rendition. 'He told me: "We know you were working for MI5", and said if I told the truth I would get out.'

The Americans informed MI5 of the pending rendition, which breached international law, but the British did nothing to help their former agent. Wahhab and el-Janoudi, who were UK citizens, were released, but al-Rawi and el-Banna did not have the protection of British passports.

Al-Rawi and el-Banna - shackled, blindfolded and hooded - were taken to the airport, where two men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas cut off their clothes and removed their hoods. Al-Rawi describes what happened next. 'They dressed me in two layers of nappies and tracksuit bottoms and a top. Over that they put a harness, and shackled and cuffed me again, fixing the chains through the harness. They dragged me forcefully up the stairs and into the plane. They forced me on to a stretcher and tied me to it so tightly I could hardly move at all. There were belts restraining my feet, my legs and my body. They covered my eyes with a blindfold, and then goggles, and something over my ears. All the way through that flight I was on the border of screaming. At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't over. It was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go.'

Arriving in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, they were driven to the CIA's 'dark prison' - a literal description. Al-Rawi's blindfold had been removed, but the darkness was absolute. The unheated cell was so cold he could feel ice crystals on the water he was occasionally given to drink. 'For three days or so I just sat in the corner, shivering. The only time there was light was when a guard came to check on me with a very dim torch - as soon as he'd detect movement, he would leave. I tried to do a few push-ups and jogged on the spot to keep warm. There was no toilet paper, but I tore off my nappies and tried to use them to clean myself. I kept telling myself: "They haven't killed me yet, this is good." You sleep and you wait.'

At last, after about a fortnight, they were taken to the American airbase at Bagram, 40 miles from Kabul, where the interrogations began again. On the way, 'they really beat me and Jamil up. Of course I was hooded, so I couldn't see anything. But you know how you see in cartoons when people get hit on the head and they see stars? I thought, ah, now I know what those cartoons mean. I saw stars.'

In Bagram, he and el-Banna came under pressure to incriminate Abu Qatada who by then was in prison in Britain, where he remains, now fighting deportation to Jordan, where he has been convicted in absentia of terrorist offences. Gareth Peirce, the solicitor who represents al-Rawi, Qatada and el-Banna, fears the real reason el- Banna has not been allowed back to Britain is a plan to send him to Jordan, where he too might testify against Qatada. Al-Rawi and el- Banna were taken to Guantanamo in March 2003. Like others released from there, al-Rawi describes a regime of isolation and casual brutality. For more than a year, until his release on 31 March this year, he was held in Camp 5, where communication between inmates is almost impossible. 'You want to speak to someone in Camp 5? No problem. All you have to do is scream your head off. It's like a cemetery.' One of the toughest periods came after three inmates committed suicide in June last year. For months the authorities retaliated by keeping the air conditioning turned to maximum. 'We were freezing the whole time. Other times they made it scorching hot.'

As the months became years, he sank into depression. 'One tried hard to be normal, to maintain balance. The thing was, the people around me were suffering so much, and in the end you can't help feeling pretty bad yourself. Jamil knew his mother wasn't well, and he begged to be allowed to phone her, to speak to her before she died. They refused, and she passed away last year.' MI5, it was evident, had not fulfilled its promise to help al-Rawi if he ever got into trouble. After he had been in Guantanamo for about six months, an officer came to see him. 'It was someone I hadn't seen before. He asked me: "Do you feel betrayed?"' Later his former handler, Alex, paid a visit: 'I suppose he was nice enough. He asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a book on base jumping. He never came back, and I never got the book.'

His last and strangest visit came from Matt and Martin. Despite the ordeal that their organisation had caused him, al-Rawi says they tried to recruit him again. 'They said, "You know, Bisher, if you agree to work for us when you get back to Britain, we'll get you out." They promised to return, but never did.'

There was to be yet another broken promise. When al-Rawi came before a Guantanamo tribunal to assess whether his detention was justified, he asked for Matt, Alex and Simon to corroborate his story as witnesses. The British refused to identify them, and the Americans said that, because he did not know their full, real names, they could not be traced.

Al-Rawi says he feels no bitterness towards America or Americans. MI5, however, has left him deeply disappointed. 'I used to think of them as cool, tough, as gentlemen. I used to speak about them in the Muslim community, saying they had a level of dignity and that we could trust them. When I got back home one of the first messages I got was from a friend who had heard me say that. He said: "Bisher, they weren't very honourable, were they?" I suppose he was right. All the credit for what I went through goes to them.'

America's Dark Secret

The Central Intelligence Agency was granted permission to use extraordinary rendition - one country moving its prisoners to another for interrogation - in a presidential directive signed by Bill Clinton in 1995. The practice has grown sharply since the 9/11 attacks.

Critics say the CIA renders suspects to avoid American laws prohibiting torture, even though many of those countries have, like the US, signed or ratified the UN Convention Against Torture.

The 'ghost detainees' are kept outside judicial oversight. Many have disappeared. Evidence suggests the CIA has rendered prisoners to countries including Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. Many European airports have been used to facilitate their transfer to such countries, say human rights groups which have obtained the flight logs of several planes leased by the CIA.

The practice is now exercising the minds of European legislators. Swiss senator Dick Marty released a report last year which concluded that as many as 100 people had been kidnapped by the CIA in Europe and rendered to a country where they may have been tortured.

The allegations have been denied by the White House, which insists no detainees held by the US have been tortured. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has stated that 'rendition is a vital tool in combating transnational terrorism. Its use is not unique to the United States.'

But evidence from prisoners in Guantanamo suggests the US does practise interrogation techniques which many lawyers argue are tantamount to torture. The most notable is 'water-boarding', where detainees are tricked into believing they are going to drown. Interrogation methods during extraordinary rendition remain one of America's darkest secrets.



Go to Original

Revealed: MI5's Role in Torture Flight Hell
By David Rose
The Observer UK

Sunday 29 July 2007

British source tells of betrayal to CIA. "I was stripped and hauled to base."

An Iraqi who was a key source of intelligence for MI5 has given the first ever full insider's account of being seized by the CIA and bundled on to an illegal 'torture flight' under the programme known as extraordinary rendition.

In a remarkable interview for The Observer, British resident Bisher al-Rawi has told how he was betrayed by the security service despite having helped keep track of Abu Qatada, the Muslim cleric accused of being Osama bin Laden's 'ambassador in Europe'. He was abducted and stripped naked by US agents, clad in nappies, a tracksuit and shackles, blindfolded and forced to wear ear mufflers, then strapped to a stretcher on board a plane bound for a CIA 'black site' jail near Kabul in Afghanistan.

He was taken on to the jail at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba before being released last March and returned to Britain after four years' detention without charge.

'All the way through that flight I was on the verge of screaming,' al- Rawi said. 'At last we landed, I thought, thank God it's over. But it wasn't - it was just a refuelling stop in Cairo. There were hours still to go ... My back was so painful, the handcuffs were so tight. All the time they kept me on my back. Once, I managed to wriggle a tiny bit, just shifted my weight to one side. Then I felt someone hit my hand. Even this was forbidden.'

He was thrown into the CIA's 'Dark Prison,' deprived of all light 24 hours a day in temperatures so low that ice formed on his food and water. He was taken to Guantanamo in March 2003 and released after being cleared of any involvement in terrorism by a tribunal.

A report by Parliament's intelligence and security committee last week disclosed that, although the Americans warned MI5 it planned to render al-Rawi in advance, in breach of international law, the British did not intervene on the grounds he did not have a UK passport. The government claimed he was the responsibility of Iraq, which he fled as a teenager when his father was tortured by Saddam Hussein's regime.

The report confirmed that al-Rawi, 39, was only held after MI5 sent the CIA a telegram, stating he was an 'Islamic extremist' who had a timer for an improvised bomb in his luggage. In reality, before al- Rawi left London, police confirmed the device was a battery charger from Argos.

The committee accepted MI5's claim, given in secret testimony, that it had not wanted the Americans to arrest him, in November 2002, concluding the incident had damaged US-UK relations.

But al-Rawi alleged that the CIA told him they had been given the contents of his own MI5 file - information he had given his handlers freely when he was working as their source. He said an MI5 lawyer had given him 'cast iron' assurances that anything he told them would be treated in the strictest confidence and, if he ever got into trouble, MI5 would do everything in its power to help him.

When al-Rawi was in Guantanamo, he asked the American authorities to find his former MI5 handlers so they would corroborate his story but, because he did not know their surnames, MI5 said it could not assist.

The committee report cited MI5 testimony claiming that when al-Rawi was transported in December 2002, it could not have known how harsh his treatment might be. Yet eight months earlier, Amnesty International had published a lengthy report on US detention in Afghanistan, quoting several ex-prisoners who described conditions very similar to those experienced by al-Rawi.

He had conveyed messages between the preacher Abu Qatada and MI5 when Qatada was supposedly in hiding in 2002. At MI5's behest, he came close to arranging a meeting between the two sides.

Al-Rawi has now spoken out in an effort to help his friend Jamil el- Banna, who remains in Guantanamo. A Jordan-ian who also lived in London for years, where his wife and five children are British citizens, he too has been cleared by the Americans. However, he has been unable to leave Guantanamo because Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, says she is reviewing his right of residence on national security grounds.

Sarah Teather, the Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East in London, where el-Banna lives, said his case revealed 'decrepitude at the heart of the government'. The government had 'no regard for the welfare of his children'.

His lawyers have filed a statement from al-Rawi as part of a judicial review case. In the action, they accuse MI5 of having a 'causative role' in both men's ordeals, stating it was 'complicit' in the illegal rendition and guilty of an 'abuse of power'.

14.7.07

Curfew-Bound Fallujah On The Boil Again

Inter Press Service

By Ali al-Fadhily*

FALLUJAH, Jun 27 (IPS) - Strict curfew and tight security measures have brought difficult living conditions and heightened tempers to residents of this besieged city.

The siege in this city located 60km west of Baghdad has entered its second month. There is little sign of any international attention to the plight of the city. Fallujah, which is largely sympathetic to the Iraqi resistance, was assaulted twice by the U.S. military in 2004.

The second attack in November destroyed roughly three-quarters of the city of 350,000 residents. Now, Fallujah faces assault of another kind by way of a strict curfew where people are closed in from all sides.

Many people who had earlier supported the Iraqi police that works with the U.S. military, now oppose it.

"We gave full support to the police force despite opposition from others to forming this force," a community leader in the city who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS. "Others told us this force would only serve the occupation forces, but we accused them of being against stability and order. Unfortunately, they appeared to be absolutely right."

Cars have not been permitted to move on the streets of Fallujah for nearly a month now. A ban was also enforced on bicycles, but residents were later granted permission to use them.

"Thank God and President Bush for this great favour," said Ala'a, a 34-year-old schoolteacher. "We are the only city in the liberated world with the blessing now of having bicycles moving freely in the streets."

On May 21 U.S. and Iraqi forces imposed a security crackdown on the city following continuing attacks. Local non-governmental organisations such as the Iraqi Aid Association (IAA) have told reporters that the U.S. military is not allowing them access to the city.

"We have supplies but it is impossible to reach the families. They are afraid to leave their homes to look for food, and children are getting sick with diarrhoea caused by the dirty water they are drinking," IAA spokesman Fatah Ahmed told reporters. "We have information that pregnant women are delivering their babies at home as the curfew is preventing them from reaching hospital."

Medical services are inaccessible to most because the hospital is located on the other side of the Euphrates River from the rest of the city. Extra security checkpoints have severely hampered movement within the city, and most businesses have closed. A year ago the local police cut mobile phone services.

The curfew is also restricting residents' ability to go out and find much needed supplies in the markets. Residents told IPS that there is on average only two hours electricity in 24 hours.

Residents say they are up against killing prices. "Now they are killing us with a new weapon," a young man with a mask covering his face told IPS. "A jar of gas costs 20 dollars and a kilo of tomatoes costs 1.50 dollar, and people cannot go to work."

"U.S. snipers on rooftops are enjoying themselves watching us walk around to find a bite of food for our families," 55-year-old Hajji Mahmood told IPS. "They laugh at us and call us names. They should know Fallujah is still the same city that kicked them away three years ago."

Life seems completely paralysed with little sign of movement under a blazing sun, with temperatures up to 45 degrees.

"We are sweating to death because some of us went to those damned elections," said a 40-year-old lawyer, speaking with IPS on condition of anonymity, referring to the Jan. 30, 2005 elections.

"The wise men told us not to, but we believed those crooks of the Islamic Party who promised to make things better," he said. Many people in the city accuse the Islamic Party supportive of the U.S. of leading the 'security plan' in al-Anbar province where Fallujah is located.

A local political analyst offered his views to IPS via the Internet, on condition of anonymity.

"I find it rather strange that to control a city under the flag of providing citizens with peace and prosperity, you deprive them of all signs of life," he said. "Arab, Muslim and all international community leaders should be ashamed of themselves for not even talking about this crime.

"Nonetheless, U.S. leaders are just buying more time towards more failure that they hope will magically turn into success. I am hopeless of any peace in Iraq as long as the democrats sold their fight cheap to the Bush administration."

Lt-Col Azize Abdel-Kader, a Defence Ministry official who coordinates security operations in al-Anbar said the curfew -- which runs from 6 pm until 8 am -- was necessary to maintain security.

"It is a temporary curfew and we hope it can soon end," he told reporters in Baghdad last week. "We are looking into ways to let aid agencies enter Fallujah but it is too dangerous for the time being."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)

Have the Tigris and Euphrates Run Dry?

Inter Press Service

By Ali al-Fadhily*

BAGHDAD, Jul 9 (IPS) - Two of the largest rivers of the region run through Iraq, so why are Iraqis desperate for lack of water?

The vast majority of Iraqis live by the Euphrates river, and the Tigris with its many tributaries. The two rivers join near Basra city in the south to form the Shat al-Arab river basin. Iraq is also gifted with high quality ground water resources; about a fifth of the territory is farmland.

"The water we have in Iraq is more than enough for our living needs," chief engineer Adil Mahmood of the Irrigation Authority in Baghdad told IPS. "In fact we can export water to neighbouring countries like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- who manage shortages in water resources with good planning."

But now Iraqi farmers struggle to get water to their crops. There is severe lack of electricity to run pumps, and fuel to run generators.

"The water is there and the rivers have not dried up, but the problem lies in how to get it to our dying plantations," Jabbar Ahmed, a farmer from Latifiya south of Baghdad told IPS. "It is a shame that we, our animals and our plants are thirsty in a country that has the two great rivers."

Iraq now imports most agricultural products because of lack of irrigation.

"I used to sell fifty tonnes of tomatoes every year, but now I go to the market to buy my daily need," Numan Majid from the Abu Ghraib area just west of Baghdad told IPS. "I tried hard to cope with the situation, but in vain. One cannot grow crops in Iraq any more with this water shortage."

Some Iraqis talk of the times when this region taught the world how to use water.

"Sumerians were more advanced than we are now," Mahmood Shakir, a historian from Baghdad University told IPS. "Over seven thousand years ago, the Sumerians dug channels to water their wheat farms and Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylonia, brought water to his great Suspended Gardens in a way that made them one of the seven wonders."

According to the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organisation, Iraq has a total area of 438,320 square kilometres and 924 km of inland waters. It is topographically shaped like a basin between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Ancient Mesopotamia where Iraq now stands means literally the land between two rivers.

Now it is another story around those two rivers. "This gift from God is not used properly by the authorities because of the UN sanctions and then the chaos that followed U.S. occupation of the country," said Jabbar Ahmed.

The U.S. company Bechtel, whose board members have close ties to the Bush administration, was to carry out reconstruction and rehabilitation of Iraq's water and electrical infrastructure. But it left the country without carrying out most such tasks.

The average household in Iraq now gets two hours of electricity a day. About 70 percent of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water, and only 19 percent have sewage access, according to the World Health Organisation. Unemployment stands at more than 60 percent.

Many Iraqi professionals blame the occupation, and companies that it brought in, such as Bechtel.

Amidst all this, the government is funding study of agricultural practices.

"The government is spending huge amounts of money on research into agriculture and irrigation," Dr. Muath Sadiq, a researcher in agricultural reform in Baghdad told IPS. "I think that is simply a way to steal more money from the government budget."

The research is not much good, he said, because the real problem "is clearly the shortage in electricity and fuel. To be more precise, the reason is the occupation and the corrupt governments it brought to the country."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)


'Arrowhead' Becomes Fountainhead of Anger

Inter Press Service

By Ali al-Fadhily*

BAQUBA, Jul 10 (IPS) - Ongoing U.S. military operations in Diyala province have brought normal life to an end, and fuelled support for the national resistance.

Baquba, 50km northeast of Baghdad, and capital city of the volatile Diyala province, has born the brunt of violence during the U.S. military Operation 'Arrowhead Ripper'.

Conflicting reports are on offer on the number of houses destroyed and numbers of civilians killed, but everyone agrees that the destruction is vast and the casualties numerous.

The operation was launched Jun. 18 "to destroy the al-Qaeda influences in this province and eliminate their threat against the people," according to Brig. Gen. Mick Bednarek, deputy commanding officer of the 25th Infantry Division.

But most Iraqis IPS interviewed in the area say the operation seeks more to break the national Iraqi resistance and those who support it. Adding credibility to this belief is the fact that the U.S. operational commander of troops involved in the operation told reporters Jun. 22 that 80 percent of the top al-Qaeda leaders in Baquba fled before the offensive began.

"Americans want Sunni people to leave Diyala or else they face death," Salman Shakir from the Gatoon district in Baquba told IPS outside the U.S. military cordon around the besieged city. "They warned al-Qaeda days or maybe weeks before they attacked the province and so only us, the citizens, stayed to face the massacre."

Shakir said many of his relatives and neighbours were killed by the military while attempting to leave the area. "I cannot tell you how many people were killed, but bodies of civilians were left in the streets."

"We all know now that the U.S. military is using the name of al-Qaeda to cover attacks against our national resistance fighters and civilians who wish immediate or scheduled withdrawal of foreign troops from Iraq," Hilmi Saed, an Iraqi journalist from Baghdad told IPS on the outskirts of Baquba.

The Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group in the Iraqi cabinet, issued a statement Jul. 1 alleging that more than 350 people had been killed in the U.S. military operation in Baquba.

The group called the operation "collective punishment" and said "neighbourhoods in western Baquba have witnessed, since last week, fierce attacks by occupation forces within Operation Arrowhead Ripper."

The statement added, "The forces shelled these neighbourhoods with helicopters, destroying more than 150 houses and killing more than 350 citizens. Their bodies are still under the wreckage. And they have arrested scores of citizens."

The U.S. military does not keep count of the number of civilian casualties caused by their operations.

Animosity towards the United States appears to be rising throughout the area as a result of the military action.

"Americans are pushing us to the corner of extremity by these massive crimes," Abbas al-Zaydi, a teacher from Baquba told IPS. "They simply want us to sell cheap our religion, history, tradition and faith or else they would call us terrorists."

Al-Zaydi added, "My son was not a fighter, but he was killed by a militia leader who is at the same time an Iraqi army division commander. Our great fault is only that we are Sunnis, and Americans do not like that."

"It is clear now that any Iraqi who refuses to serve the American plan is considered an enemy of the United States," a community leader in the city who did not want to give his name told IPS.

He said some people are angrier with other leaders supporting the U.S. forces. "The whole world is responsible for these murders, and a day will come that we say to the world, 'you supported Americans who killed us'."

A man wearing a mask, who appeared to be a resistance fighter, spoke with IPS just outside Baquba on condition of anonymity.

"Hundreds were killed and thousands evicted from the city while the so-called al-Qaeda fighters survived," he said. "Americans must be told that we will never stop killing their sons who came to kill us unless they leave our country in peace."

(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)


Al-Qaeda Escapes U.S. Assault

Inter Press Service

By Ahmed Ali*


BAQUBA, Jul 14 (IPS) - Air strikes have destroyed civilian homes rather than al-Qaeda targets under the U.S. military operation in Baquba, residents say.

But signs have emerged of an al-Qaeda presence here earlier, and some residents speak of relief that al-Qaeda has been driven out of the city by U.S. forces.

Located 50km northeast of Baghdad, the volatile capital city of Diyala province is home to roughly 325,000 people. The region that has been home to fruit orchards and rural farming has been hard hit by the military conflict.

On Jun. 19 tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers were deployed in Operation Arrowhead Ripper to attack militants in Baquba. The ongoing operation is one of the largest ever thus far in the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Diyala province is inhabited by a mix of Sunni and Shia Arabs, as well as Kurds. The province has been openly hostile towards occupation forces, and attacks against U.S. forces have been commonplace since early in the occupation.

According to the U.S. Department of Defence, Diyala province is the fifth deadliest of Iraq's 18 provinces for U.S. troops, with at least 186 killed there thus far.

After several weeks of the siege in Baquba, people were allowed in recent days to go to work. Witnesses spoke to IPS about fierce attacks by helicopters, and shelling of houses by U.S. tanks.

"The U.S. military bombed houses that were completely uninhabited," Kadhim Rajab, a 39-year-old city official told IPS. "Al-Qaeda had left the city before the operation even began because they knew what was coming even before we did."

But residents did speak of an al-Qaeda presence earlier. "U.S. troops bombed a number of houses that were actually used by al-Qaeda," Ibrahim Hameed, a 43-year-old secondary school teacher told IPS. "But there was no resistance at all, we heard no shooting."

Ismail Aboud, a 51-year-old physician, said the U.S. military had deliberately avoided armed clashes with militants. "It seems that the forces allowed the terrorists to leave the battlefield in order to avoid direct military clashes," he said.

Abu Mohammed, a 54-year-old grocer, said U.S. troops were now moving unarmed in the streets. "The troops appear absolutely sure that there is no resistance to face."

Salma Waleed, manager of a primary school in the city told IPS that after 12 days of shelling by the U.S. military, some electricity and water supply has been restored intermittently.

Waleed said U.S. soldiers had been handing out water and MREs (meals ready to eat). "Now, we can move very freely in the streets since there is no random shooting or kidnapping."

Professor Salim Abdulla, from the local university told IPS that U.S. soldiers claimed to have found a room in a house where prisoners were tortured, and also found barrels of chlorine. In recent months chlorine bombs have been used to blow up cars.

But Abdulla added, "What is disastrous is that before the members of al-Qaeda ran away from Qatoon (district of Baquba), they killed prisoners who had been kidnapped for getting money from their families as ransom."

Others spoke to IPS of the damaging effects of the U.S. military cordon around the city that was denying basic needs like medical care, food, water and security.

An expatriate programme manager for an international organisation, who did not wish to be named, told IPS that "the military operations are still continuing and the roads are still closed. One of my sources said that on Friday in Qatoon quarter a house was bombed and an entire family was killed. Only a baby survived."

The manager told IPS that tens of thousands have fled the Qatoon area. "Because of the closure (of roads and parts of the city) in Baquba the price of food has increased dramatically," she said. "Earlier 50 kg of flour cost 11 dollars. Now it is 40 dollars."

Only bicycles and animal-drawn carts are being allowed to bring basic supplies such as vegetables and fuel into the city, she said.

"Recently Iraqi police and ambulances have started removing the bodies," Mahdi Ameen Azawi, a 47-year-old retired Iraqi military officer who lives in Qatoon told IPS.

"This quarter remained under siege up to now," he added. "People suffered from the absence of electricity, water and food."

(*Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq's Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)



Iraq on My Mind

Thousands of Stories to Tell -- And No One to Listen
By Dahr Jamail

"In violence we forget who we are" -- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic

1. Statistically Speaking

Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.

Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.

The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds.

In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.

In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation."

In the United States I step away from my desk, walk into the kitchen, turn on the tap, and watch as clear, cool water fills my glass. I drink it without once thinking about whether it contains a waterborne disease or will cause kidney stones, diarrhea, cholera, or nausea. But there's no way I can stop myself from thinking about what was -- and probably still is -- in that literal water hole near Najaf.

I open my pantry and then my refrigerator to make my lunch. I have enough food to last a family several days, and then I remember that there is a 21% rate of chronic malnutrition among children in Iraq, and that, according to UNICEF, about one in 10 Iraqi children under five years of age is underweight.

I have a checking account with money in it; 54% of Iraqis now live on less than $1 a day.

I can travel safely on my bicycle whenever I choose -- to the grocery store or a nearby city center. Many Iraqis can travel nowhere without fear of harm. Iraq now ranks as the planet's second most unstable country, according to the 2007 Failed States Index.

These are now my two worlds, my two simultaneous realities. They inhabit the same space inside my head in desperately uncomfortable fashion. Sometimes, I almost settle back into this bubble world of ours, but then another email arrives -- either directly from friends and contacts in Iraq or forwarded by friends who have spent time in Iraq -- and I remember that I'm an incurably schizophrenic journalist living on some kind of borrowed time in both America and Iraq all at once.

2. Emailing

Here is a fairly typical example of the sorts of anguished letters that suddenly appear in my in-box. (With the exception of the odd comma, I've left the examples that follow just as they arrived. They reflect the stressful conditions under which they were written.) This one was sent to my friend Gerri Haynes from an Iraqi friend of hers:

Dear Gerri:

No words can describe the real terror of what's happening and being committed against the population in Baghdad and other cities: the poor people with no money to leave the country, the disabled old men and women, the wives and children of tens of thousands of detainees who can't leave when their dad is getting tortured in the Democratic Prisons, senior years students who have been caught in a situation that forces them to take their finals to finish their degrees, parents of missing young men who got out and never came back, waiting patiently for someone to knock the door and say, "I am back." There are thousands and thousands of sad stories that need to be told but nobody is there to listen.

I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

I was speechless. I couldn't say anything to comfort her. I felt ashamed to be alive and well. I thought I should be with them, supporting them, and give them some strength even if it costs me my life. I begged her to leave Baghdad. She told me that she can't because of her pregnant daughter and her grandkids. They are all with them in the house without their dad. I am hearing the same story and worse every single day. We keep asking ourselves what did we do to the Americans to deserve all this cruelness, killing, and brutishness? How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians? And why?

Can anybody answer my cousin why she and her poor family are going through this?? Can you Gerri? Because I sure can't.

In recent weeks I had been attempting to get in touch with one of my friends, a journalist in Baghdad. I'll call him Aziz for his safety. Beginning to worry when I didn't receive his usual prompt response, I sent him a second email and this is what finally came back:

Dear old friend Dahr,

I am so sorry for my late reply. It is because my area of Baghdad was closed for six days and also because I lost my cousin. He was killed by a militia. They tortured and mutilated his body. I will try to send you his picture later.

Just remember me, friend, because I feel so tired these days and I live with this mess now.

With all my respect,

Aziz

Conveying my sadness, I asked him if there was anything I could possibly do to ease his suffering. As a reporter in that besieged country, he is constantly exhausted and overworked. I hesitantly suggested that perhaps he should take a little time to rest. He promptly replied:

Dahr, my old friend,

I really appreciate your condolence message. Your words affected me very much and I feel that all my friends are around me in this hard time. I live with this mess and I do need some rest time as you advise before getting back to work again. BUT, really, I have to continue working because there are just very few journalists in Iraq now, and especially in my area. I have to cover more and more everyday.

Anyway friend, everything will be ok for me. And I wish we can make some change in our world towards peace.

With my respect to you friend, Aziz

I have also been corresponding with "H," who lives in the volatile Diyala province and has been a dear friend since my first trip to Iraq. He would visit me in Baghdad, bringing with him delicious home-cooked meals from his wife, insisting always that I be the one to eat the first morsel.

A deeply religious man, his unfailing greeting, accompanied by a big hug, would always be: "You are my brother."

He was concerned about the perception that there were vast differences between Islam and Christianity. "Islam and Christianity are not so different," he would say, "In fact they have many more similarities than differences." He would often discuss this with U.S. soldiers in his city.

Yet he was no admirer of imperialism. Last summer in Syria, he and I visited the sprawling Roman ruins of Palmyra. One evening, as we stood together overlooking the vast landscape of crumbling columns and sun-bleached walls in the setting sun, he turned to me and said, "Mr. Dahr, please do not be offended by what I want to say, but it makes me happy to see these ruins and remember that empires always fall because empires are never good for most people."

After several weeks when I received no reply to repeated emails, I wrote to "M," a mutual friend, and received the following response:

Habibi [My dear friend],

It has been very long since I have written to you. I'm sorry. I was terribly busy. I have some very bad news. [H] was kidnapped by the members of al-Qaeda in Diyala 25 days ago and there is no news about him up to this moment. It's a horrible situation. One cannot feel safe in this country.

When I pressed him for more information, he wrote me the details:

[H] was kidnapped as he was trying to get home. He was coming to Baquba to visit his parents, as he does every day. His oldest daughter who was with him told him that a car carrying several men was following them from the beginning of the street leading to his parents' home. So, when he stopped to get his car in the garage, they got out of their car covering their faces and asked him to come with them for questioning. People in Diyala definitely know that such a thing means either killing or arresting for few days. You may ask why I'm sure it is al-Qaeda. That is because no other group, including the U.S. military, dominates the whole city like they do.

We are the people of the city and we know the truth. They overwhelmingly dominate the streets and are even stronger than the government. So, there is no doubt about whether this was al-Qaeda or another group. You may ask how people stay away from these very bad people. People never go in places like the central market of Baquba. For this reason, all, and I mean all, the shops are closed; some people have left Diyala, some have been killed, while most are kept in their homes.

If someone wants to go the market, this means a bad adventure. He may be at last found in the morgue. Al-Qaeda fought every group that are called resistance who work against coalition [U.S.] forces or the government (policemen or Iraqi National Guards). Nowadays, there is fighting between al-Qaeda and other [Iraqi resistance] groups like Qataib who are known here as the honest resistance in the streets. By the way, I forgot, when al-Qaeda kidnaps someone, they also take his car in order that the car shall be used by them. So, they took his car, along with him. In case he is released, he comes without his car. I will tell you more later on.

I soon slipped into the frantic routine all too familiar by now to countless Iraqis -- scanning the horrible reports of daily violence in Iraq looking for the faintest clue to the whereabouts of my missing friend

3. Murderously Speaking

In McClatchy News' July 5th roundup of daily violence for Diyala, I read:

"A source in the morgue of Baquba general hospital said that the morgue received today a head of a civilian that was thrown near the iron bridge in Baquba Al Jadida neighborhood today morning.

A medical source in Al Miqdadiyah town northeast [of] Baquba city said that 2 bodies of civilians were moved to the hospital of Miqdadiyah. The source said that the first body was of a man who was killed in an IED explosion near his house in Al Mu'alimeen neighborhood in downtown Baquba city while the second body was of a man who was shot dead near his house in Al Ballor neighborhood in downtown Baquba city."

The data for Baghdad that day read:

"24 anonymous bodies were found in Baghdad today. 16 bodies were found in Karkh, the western side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (7 bodies in Amil, 3 bodies in Doura, 2 bodies in Ghazaliyah, 1 body in Jihad, 1 body in Amiriyah, 1 body in Khadhraa and 1 body in Mahmoudiyah). 8 bodies were found in Rusafa, the eastern side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (6 bodies in Sadr city, 1 body in Husseiniyah and 1 body in Sleikh.)"

What could I possibly hope to find in nameless reports like these, especially when I know that most of the Iraqi dead never make it anywhere near these reports. That is the way it has been throughout the occupation.

On July 8th, M sent me this email:

Habibi,

Up to this moment, I heard that one of my neighbors saw [H's] photo in the morgue but I couldn't make sure yet. Traditionally, when a body is dropped in a street and found by police, they take it to the morgue. The first thing done is to take a photo for the dead person in the computer to let the families know them. This procedure is followed because the number of bodies is tremendously big. For this people cannot see every body to check for their sons or relatives. For this, people see the photos before going to the refrigerator. I will go to the morgue tomorrow.

The next day he wrote yet again:

Habibi,

Today I went to the morgue. I saw horrible things there. I didn't see [H's] photo among them. Some figures cannot be easily recognized because of the blood or the face is terribly deformed. I saw also only heads; those who were slayed, it's unbelievable. Tomorrow, we will have another visit to make sure again. In your country, when somebody wants to go to the morgue, he may naturally see two or, say, three or four bodies. For us, I saw hundreds today. Every month, the municipality buries those who are not recognized by their families because of the capacity of the morgue. Imagine!

In one of H's last emails to me sent soon after his return home from Syria earlier this summer, he described driving out of Baquba one afternoon. Ominously, he wrote:

We left Baquba, which was sinking in a sea of utter chaos, worries, and instability. People there in that small town were scared of being kidnapped, killed, murdered or expelled. The entire security situation over there was deteriorating; getting to the worse.

Now, that passage might be read as his epitaph.

4. Subjectively Speaking

The morning I receive the latest news from M, I crawl back into bed and lie staring at the ceiling, wondering what will become of H's wife and young children, if he is truly dead. Barring a miracle, I assume that will turn out to be the case.

Later, I go for a walk. It's California sunny and the air is pleasantly cool on my skin. I'm aware -- as I often am -- that I never even consider looking over my shoulder here. I'm also aware that those I pass on my walk don't know that they aren't even considering looking over their shoulders.

The American Heritage Dictionary's second definition of schizophrenia is:

A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war [italics theirs].

That's what I'm experiencing -- a national schizophrenia that results from our government carrying out an unpopular war. It's what I continue to experience with never lessening sharpness two years after my last trip to Iraq. The hardest thing, in the California sun with that cool breeze on my face, is to know that two realities in two grimly linked countries coexist, and most people in my own country are barely conscious of this.

In Iraq, of course, there is nothing disparate, no disjuncture, only a constant, relentless grinding and suffering, a pervasive condition of tragic hopelessness and despair with no end in sight.

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for the last four years, eight months of which were spent in occupied Iraq. Jamail is currently writing for Inter Press Service, Al-Jazeera English, and is a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com. Jamail's forthcoming book, Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Independent Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books) will be released this October. His reports are regularly available on his website, Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches. (Thanks to Tom Engelhardt for the research done to provide the statistics used in this article.)

Copyright 2007 Dahr Jamail

Iraq Reporter Schizophrenic in Disneyland

What if you spoke regularly of "haji food," "haji music" and "haji homes"? What if your speeding convoys ran over civilians often enough that no one thought to report the incidents? What if your platoon was told pointblank: "The Geneva Conventions don't exist at all in Iraq, and that's in writing if you want to see it"; or, when you shot noncombatants, it was perfectly normal to plant "throwaway weapons" by their bodies, arrest those civilians who survived, and accuse them all of being "insurgents"? What if your buddy got his meal-ready-to-eat standard spoon and asked you to take a photo of him pretending to scoop the brains out of a dead Iraqi? Or what if the general attitude among your buddies was: "A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi.... You know, so what?"

These examples -- and many more like them -- can be found in a remarkable breaking story in the new issue of the Nation magazine. In a months-long investigation, Chris Hedges and Laila al-Arian interviewed 50 U.S. combat veterans who had been stationed in Iraq. They were intent on exploring "the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians" (as well as on those soldiers). The article, "The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness," offers Americans a look behind the bombings and carnage in the headlines at just what kind of a war American troops have found themselves fighting -- focusing on the degradation that is essential to it and will accompany those troops home.

It is the perfect companion to the piece independent reporter Dahr Jamail has written for Tomdispatch today, which gives a sense of what anybody, even a journalist exposed to such "apocalyptic violence" and despair, is likely to bring home with him. Even more important, through a series of wrenching emails Jamail has received recently from Iraq, you get a small sense of what the dark and horrific war the American vets described to Hedges and al-Arian, a war only escalating in brutality, looks like to the Iraqis -- the ones who stand in danger of getting run over by those speeding convoys, or are at the other end of the kicked-in door, or the racism, or simply the anger and frustration of isolated soldiers in a strange and hostile land.

Jamail's new book on the Iraq he saw but most Americans, soldiers or journalists, didn't -- Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq -- is being published in October. Like Hedges and al-Arian, he offers a sense of an ongoing war you almost never hear about on the nightly news. Tom

Iraq on My Mind
Thousands of Stories to Tell -- And No One to Listen

By Dahr Jamail

"In violence we forget who we are" -- Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic

1. Statistically Speaking

Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country -- and once defined my own life as well.

Click here to read the rest of this dispatch.

7.7.07

Whistle Blower Who Challenged Cheney Seeks Federal Aid

Whistle Blower Who Challenged Cheney Seeks Federal Aid

Whistle Blowing Against the US Government is like Going to the Feds about the Mafia.
The only problem is sometimes the government lets you live in a worse hell than death.

Whistle-Blower's Fight For Pension Drags On

By Lyndsey Layton
The Washington Post

Saturday 07 July 2007

Former defense official seeks private relief bill.

From a cramped motor home in a Montana campground where Internet access is as spotty as the trout, Richard Barlow wakes each morning to battle Washington.

Once a top intelligence officer at the Pentagon who helped uncover Pakistan's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, Barlow insisted on telling the truth, and it led to his undoing.

He complained in 1989 that top officials in the administration of President George H.W. Bush - including the deputy assistant secretary of defense - were misleading Congress about the Pakistani program. He was fired and stripped of his security clearances. His intelligence career was destroyed; his marriage collapsed.

Federal investigations found Barlow was unfairly fired, winning him sympathy from dozens of Democratic and Republican lawmakers and public interest groups. But for 17 years, he has fought without success to gain a federal pension, blocked at every turn by legal and political obstacles also faced by other federal intelligence whistle- blowers.

"This case has been put before the Congress to right a wrong, and for various reasons, they've failed to do it," said Robert Gallucci, dean of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and an expert in nonproliferation. "It's infuriating."

Barlow, 52, and his supporters want funding added to the defense authorization bill to be debated by the Senate when it returns from recess next week. The mechanism Barlow hopes to use - a private relief bill that benefits a specific individual - is increasingly rare and, in his case, still faces hurdles.

Gallucci has known Barlow since the late 1980s, when Barlow was tracking the work of A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani scientist amassing materials to produce nuclear weapons. Some of the men setting policy at the Defense Department at the time of Barlow's firing - Stephen J. Hadley, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Dick Cheney - resurfaced in the current Bush administration, which Democrats and others have accused of shaping intelligence on the Iraq war to fit political goals.

Barlow's intelligence work began at the CIA, where he analyzed nuclear programs in other countries. He contributed to the National Intelligence Estimates and presented findings to national security agencies, the White House and congressional committees. He received the CIA's Exceptional Accomplishment Award in 1988.

The next year, he became the first intelligence officer for the Office of the Secretary of Defense, charged with analyzing nuclear weapons developments involving foreign governments. He answered to Gerald Brubaker, the acting director of the Office of Non- Proliferation. Supervising Brubaker was Victor Rostow, the principal director. Rostow reported to Deputy Assistant Secretary James Hinds, who reported to Assistant Secretary Stephen J. Hadley.

At the time, the government was poised to sell $1.4 billion worth of new F-16 fighter planes to Pakistan to help the mujaheddin fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. But Congress, through two laws passed in 1985, had forbidden the sale of any equipment that could be used to deliver nuclear bombs.

Barlow wrote an analysis for then-Secretary Dick Cheney that concluded the planned F-16 sale violated this law. Drawing on detailed, classified studies, Barlow wrote about Pakistan's ability, intentions and activities to deliver nuclear bombs using F-16s it had acquired before the law was passed.

Barlow discovered later that someone rewrote his analysis so that it endorsed the sale of the F-16s. Arthur Hughes, the deputy assistant secretary of defense, testified to Congress that using the F-16s to deliver nuclear weapons "far exceeded the state of art in Pakistan" - something Barlow knew to be untrue.

In the summer of 1989, Barlow told Brubaker, Rostow and Michael MacMurray, the Pakistan desk officer in charge of military sales to Pakistan who prepared Hughes's testimony, that Congress had been misled.

Within days, Barlow was fired.

"They clearly didn't want the nonproliferation policy to get in the way of their regional policy," Gallucci said. "They were worried someone like Rich [Barlow], in his stickler approach, would insist that if there's going to be testimony on the Hill about the F-16 aircraft, that the answers be full and truthful. He was a thorn in their side, and they went after him. And they did a very good job of screwing up his life."

In a 2000 deposition provoked by Barlow's subsequent lawsuit, Hadley said he remembered underlings proposing to terminate an employee in August 1989 but did not recall "someone named Richard Barlow." In a separate deposition, Wolfowitz also testified he could not recall Barlow. But Wolfowitz told Congress in 1990 that the retaliation Barlow faced was wrong and the government was legally obligated to keep Congress informed about Pakistan's nuclear capability.

"There have been times on that issue when I specifically sensed that people thought we could somehow construct a policy on a house of cards that the Congress wouldn't know what the Pakistanis were doing," Wolfowitz told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

After a 1993 joint probe, the inspector general at the State Department concluded that Barlow had been fired as a reprisal, while the inspector generals at the CIA and the Defense Department maintained that the Pentagon was within its rights to fire Barlow. Congress directed the General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office) to conduct its own investigation, which was completed in 1997 and largely vindicated Barlow.

Barlow's security clearances were restored, but he was unable to get rehired permanently by the government because of the cloud over his record, he said. Instead, he has worked as a contractor for a range of federal agencies, including the CIA, the State Department, the FBI and Sandia National Laboratories.

That left him without the $89,500 annual pension and health insurance that Barlow believes the government owes him.

He faces no organized opposition now but has so far been stymied by government inertia, the passage of time, congressional procedural errors, and endless debates over how much money he's due and the proper legislative vehicle for his pension.

Twenty Senators and eight legislative committees have considered his case over the years without resolving it, suggesting a larger dilemma: No process exists to compensate fired whistle-blowers in the intelligence field, and those who retaliate against them face no criminal penalties.

A 1998 law instead allows employees of the CIA, parts of the Defense Department, the FBI and the National Security Agency to notify their agency's inspector general that they intend to disclose a matter of "urgent concern" to congressional intelligence committees. But there is no remedy if they suffer retaliation for using this legal channel.

"There just isn't a venue for someone like him," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, a nonprofit organization that investigates and exposes corruption. "He was trying to prevent lies to Congress about something of global importance. And he didn't even go to Congress - all he did was suggest that Congress not be lied to."

Brian and Gallucci believe that had Barlow's alarms been heeded in 1989, Khan might have been deterred from building the world's largest atomic black market - a network that has since supplied nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran and North Korea.

Some Hill staffers say they worry that granting Barlow a pension will cause hundreds of other injured whistle-blowers to demand similar treatment. Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), a known champion of whistle-blowers who supports Barlow's quest, is contacted each week by four new whistle-blowers looking for help, said his spokeswoman, Beth Levine. But Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) is considering sponsoring legislation providing Barlow a pension or a lump-sum payment, a staffer said.

Bingaman attempted to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow once before, in 1998. But another senator persuaded colleagues to refer it to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, which hears lawsuits that seek money from the federal government in excess of $10,000. During the case, which lasted four years, the Justice Department invoked a "state secrets" privilege to block the court from seeing most of Barlow's evidence, according to Barlow's pro bono lawyer, Joseph Ostoyich.

In 2002, the court found that Barlow was not entitled to protection under whistle-blower laws. "It was a galling situation," Ostoyich said. "There was plenty of evidence ... and all of [it] ... was taken out of the court's hands. I've never seen anything like it." Barlow's original pro bono attorney, Paul C. Warnke, who was President Jimmy Carter's chief arms-control negotiator, died in 2001.

An attempt several months ago by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) to sponsor a private relief bill for Barlow encountered resistance from House Armed Services Committee lawyers who said there was no precedent for it, according to her staff. Next, she tried to offer a simple resolution stating that Congress supported Barlow in his efforts, but that was thwarted by the Rules Committee, which was juggling more than 100 other requests deemed more pressing.

Since his most recent employment contract at Sandia ended, Barlow has been living in a motor home that he parks in Montana during the summer and drives to Arizona or California in the winter. Most of his possessions, including 200 pounds of documents related to his fight, are sitting in a storage locker he rents for $100 a month.

Most weekdays, he pushes his cause in cellphone calls and e-mails to Washington from his motor home, dogging Hill staffers with a tenacity that seems bottomless and can be off-putting. "This is such an extraordinary case," Brian said. "He was trying to say 'Wait a minute, Congress needs to be told the truth because they're making important decisions about nuclear proliferation,' and the guy is living in a trailer."