CIA gets the go-ahead to take on Hizbollah

By Toby Harnden, US Editor, The Telegraph

The Central Intelligence Agency has been authorised to take covert action against Hizbollah as part of a secret plan by President George W. Bush to help the Lebanese government prevent the spread of Iranian influence. Senators and congressmen have been briefed on the classified “non-lethal presidential finding” that allows the CIA to provide financial and logistical support to the prime minister, Fouad Siniora.

The finding was signed by Mr Bush before Christmas after discussions between his aides and Saudi Arabian officials. Details of its existence, known only to a small circle of White House officials, intelligence officials and members of Congress, have been passed to The Daily Telegraph.

It authorises the CIA and other US intelligence agencies to fund anti-Hizbollah groups in Lebanon and pay for activists who support the Siniora government. The secrecy of the finding means that US involvement in the activities is officially deniable.

The Bush administration hopes Mr Siniora’s government, severely weakened after its war with Israel last year, will become a bulwark against the growing power of the Shia sect of Islam, championed by Iran and Syria, since the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Mr Bush’s move is at the centre of a fresh drive by America, supported by the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt as well as Israel, to stop Iranian hegemony in the Middle East emerging from the collapse of Iraq.

The finding, drawn up at the White House by National Security Council (NSC) officials, is a sign of Mr Bush’s growing alarm at the threat posed by Iran, which has infiltrated the Iraqi government and is training Shia insurgents as well as supplying them with roadside bombs.

A former US government official said: “Siniora’s under siege there and we are always looking for ways to help allies. As Richard Armitage [a former deputy US secretary of state] said, Hizbollah is the A-team of terrorism and certainly Iran and Syria have not let up in their support of the group.”

Prince Bandar bin-Sultan, the former Saudi Arabian ambassador to Washington, is understood to have been closely involved in the decision to prop up Mr Siniora’s administration and the Israeli government, which views Iran as its chief enemy, has also been supportive.

“There’s a feeling both in Jerusalem and in Riyadh that the anti-Sunni tilt in the region has gone too far,” said an intelligence source. “By removing Saddam, we’ve shifted things in favour of the Shia and this is a counter-balancing exercise.

Prince Bandar, now King Abdullah’s national security adviser, made several trips to Washington and held meetings with Elliot Abrams, the senior Middle East official on the NSC.

Prince Turki al-Faisal resigned abruptly as ambassador to Washington last month. Intelligence sources said that a principal reason for this was his belief he had been undermined by Prince Bandar, who had not told him of the Lebanon plan or even that he was visiting Washington.

As a quid pro quo to the Sunni Arab states, Mr Bush and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, have agreed to work harder to re-start negotiations about a peace deal with the Palestinians.

According to the Swoop website (theswoop.net), which contains briefings on diplomatic and intelligence matters: “US officials point to the Israeli release of some tax monies owed to the Palestinian Authority as the first fruits of this approach.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former clandestine CIA officer, said that such a finding would involve “various steps and types of non-military activity” agreed to by the Lebanese. “It takes two to tango. You’re only those things that the Lebanese themselves would want you to do,” he said.

Bush administration officials have spoken of their desire to promote “mainstream” Arab states and have even spoken of the existence of a “Sunni crescent” in the Middle East. But there is tension between this policy and the support for Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-led government in Iraq, which has links to Shia death squads and Iran.

“The administration is reaping its own whirlwind after Iraq,” said the intelligence source. “For 50 years the US preferred stability over legitimacy in the Middle East and now it’s got neither. It’s a situation replete with ironies.”

toby.harnden@telegraph.co.uk

January 11, 2007 | 5 Comments »

5 Comments / 5 Comments

  2. I agree with the above two.

    But on another level why should the Israelis give a tuppenny damn as to what happens the Siniora Government.

    Did any one of these people behind Siniora support the IDF in Lebanon against Hezbullah. I do not think so.

    Again let the enemies of Israel fight it out and stay well clear. Just concentrate on the changes necessary in the >Israeli political system and especially in its relations with its army the IDF, in order to confront all of these enemies next time around. Explain this to the American people. Separate Israel from all of this.

  3. All State Department and CIA members should be security vetted and if found to hold traitorous appeasement views in support of Iran or other muslim terrorists in Europe, the Middle East, or Africa, should be immediately fired and then to safeguard our “national security” (don’t you just love that phrase?!)put on an Iran Air jetliner or Iranian cargo ship to Tehran. Never to return.

    The in flight movie (or ship borne movie)for these State and CIA pro Jihadist officials would be “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War on the West” blaring at 130 decibels through headphones super glued to their ears (in an endless repeat loop throughout the entire trip to Tehran) along with a documentary on female genital mutilation.The in flight food would be generous servings of rotting pork infested with maggots.

    Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, George Soros, James Baker, Condi Rice, Mearsheimer & Walt, the CFR, etc., would be first on the passenger list along with most of the staff of the New York Times and BBC.

  4. jlichty, you are right on target. Most of those in the US State Department and CIA who express disapproval of any pre-emptive military strike on Iran – who as we all know controls Hezbollah – owe their political allegiances and/or political appointments to the previous Clinton and Carter Administrations.

    Consider this quote:

    Many State and CIA officials retain their loyalty to the former US Administration of Democratic Pres. William Clinton and some still owed their positions to the even earlier Administration of (Democrat) Pres. Jimmy Carter. As a result, these officials have been attempting at all levels to block what they perceive to be incentives from the Pentagon or the White House of Pres. George W. Bush.

    But the conflict between the Defense Department and White House on the one hand, and the State Department and CIA on the other, however, has more institutional or sociological roots. The exceptionally liberal culture entrenched in State and the CIA, and the fact that career officials there regarded elected officials as “short-timers” and not representative of the continuity of US policy (which the career foreign service officers feel is their function), meant that any determined effort by an elected Administration to impose its stamp on foreign and strategic policy would be resisted, regardless of whether the elected Government was Democratic or Republican. The former Reagan and current George W. Bush administrations had proven particularly determined to impose their electoral mandate. State and CIA obfuscation was therefore almost guaranteed.

    One African official commented on June 27, 2003, to GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily: “We don’t know what is going on in Washington any more. Who do we believe? The US Ambassador? The State Department officials in Washington? The CIA? The Pentagon?” He added: “Some of the State Department officials we speak to seem to have more against President Bush than they do against Osama bin Laden.”

    The debate moved into the open following publication by GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily on May 2, 2003 of a report entitled The New US and the New Europe: The US Prepares Move of German-based Forces to Serbia-Montenegro, Bulgaria and Romania. But the reaction to this merely highlighted the longstanding ideological differences between the State Department and CIA career officials and the Defense Dept. leadership, and brought into focus the fact that the Bush White House was scarcely aware of some of the activities being undertaken in the name of the United States by some US diplomats. This included support for Iranian-sponsored radical Islamists in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Serbia, for example, at a time when Iran was preparing, with al-Qaida networks, to activate new terrorist and radical activities against the US and Western interests, in large part due to the pressure which the US-led “war on terror” was putting on Iran and al-Qaida.

    Several leaders in the Balkans and Africa have told GIS in June 2003 that they now felt that if they showed any support for the US Bush Administration they would, in effect, be “punished” by the US missions with which they had to deal in their home countries. One Balkan official said: “It’s as though they [the US embassy officials] are waiting for the Clinton Administration to come back. And these [embassy] people seem to be very friendly with the people from the [leftist US-based, Hungarian-born businessman] George Soros NGOs. So when we see George Soros attacking Pres. Bush, it becomes very confusing. Is Washington aware of what is going on, here on the ground?”

  5. Why would the CIA do that? Apart from the state department, there is no more arabist bunch than the CIA. I do not believe for one second that the CIA would go for such a mission.

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